Huddled behind a tangle of thorny brush, in the shadows where the sun, the stars, and most importantly, the people couldn't see her, Daezin removed the leather band that had lived around her wrist for as long as she could remember.
The band itself didn't look special. Sweat-stained and nicked from the many times her knife had slipped while practicing her carving, the band served its purpose. It hid the part of Daezin that had her parents treating her with kid gloves but also something shameful. Something that they must hide away so that no one would know what she was.
In their own way, her parents loved her. At least, she hoped so. However, they were afraid of her, or rather, they were afraid of what she meant. Of what her presence in their lives could bring. Because of that fear, they made Daezin wear the stupid band all the time. The only time she had it off was when it wore out and fell off, or if she accidentally caused it to become unfastened.
No. The band wasn't the problem. The band merely represented the real problem. The problem that lay in her very skin, covering her pulse, her very lifeblood. In the thin skin of her right wrist, the gods-touched mark didn't look like much. An oblong blotch of blues and greens, like two thumbprints end to end. It didn't even look like anything. Other people had birthmarks that were much darker in color and much more visible, but they weren't asked to hide. They weren't made to feel othered. They weren't made to feel shame for their very existence. But this mark apparently meant something.
Daezin had never been allowed to go to the temple. She vaguely remembered the priest coming to the cottage a few times to consult with her parents and pray over her, but she hadn't been allowed into the building that seemed to be the center of village life. She wasn't allowed to touch the god-mark or do any of the other little rituals to show respect to the gods. She had never been taught any of the prayers. To the adults in Daezin's life, the mark meant she would bring doom to everyone around her. If she gained the attention of the wrong god, she would hasten that day. That is all she had been told. And so, she wasn't allowed to garner the attention of any of them.
The gods-touched mark ruled her life, and she wanted it gone.
##
Several weeks passed and Droman continued to shun her. In fact, he began to disappear for long stretches of time, a few of them several days. Her parents treated her with the same coldness as before and she felt a chill in the middle of winter from the isolation after the years of love from her brother at least.
"Did you hear that there's a witch in the woods?"
"I heard that she could do magic like they talk about in the old tales."
"Old Maura said that she saw the witch cure someone of the Develian pox. All of those seeping ugly sores one day, then after the witch casts her spell, clear skin the next. It's amazing if it's true."
"I heard--" The girl who spoke stopped abruptly and sneered at Daezin where she stood across the dusty road from the group of gossiping girls. "What are you looking at?"
Daezin carefully studied each of the girls who should be working rather than gossiping, and said, "Nothing. Absolutely nothing." She walked off, ignoring the huffs of indignation. She had a witch to see about a spell.
