My Mother-in-Law Sacrificed Me in Drought, Then Went Mad

2.

Three days I was gone, and the Hensons never got the sight of me crawling back to beg.

It was Felicia who cracked first, going around the town's water stalls and the market, telling anyone who would listen.

"That daughter-in-law of ours, from the day she set foot in our house, not one drop of rain has fallen. You tell me that isn't strange."

"I never used to believe in this sort of thing, but the more I think on it the more it turns my stomach. Three years of drought, and she's been with us three years. What are the odds of that?"

The more she told it, the truer it sounded, until in the end she was slapping her thigh and weeping. "There are dozens of us under the Henson roof. I won't have the whole town dragged down for the sake of one woman."

"This old woman is willing to put family aside for what's right. If the heavens will only send rain, do whatever you please with her!"

The people were half mad with fear of the drought, and whoever handed them a reason, they believed.

One told two, two told ten, and inside a couple of days the whole town was cursing my name.

At the water pool a man threw down his bowl. "It's that Henson woman! Her own mother-in-law said so with her own mouth. She's a curse!"

In line at the water stall a woman wiped her eyes and spat, "My children are half dead with thirst, and there she is, eating well and drinking well, choking off the rain and sitting on a whole well besides!"

Somebody knelt at the gate of the county court, knocking his head against the ground. "Your Honor, bind that curse and offer her to the heavens! The whole town, young and old, we beg you on our knees!"

Behind him a crowd went down in a rush, sobbing and cursing all tangled together.

One man shouted himself hoarse for the heavens to open their eyes; another said through his teeth that if they burned the plague away, the rain would come.

Some even came all the way to the wall of the Henson yard and wept toward the inside of it. "Nia, girl, if you've got any conscience at all, step forward yourself. Don't make the whole town die alongside you!"

"Weren't you the one with a saint's heart? Then a saint should give herself up to save the people!"

I did not want to leave under that name.

That evening, at dusk, I walked to the county court alone.

The steps were packed with kneeling people. When they saw me coming, they froze, then parted to open a path, fear and hatred both in their eyes.

I looked up once at the plaque over the court, then stepped forward and spoke toward the inside.

"No need to seize me. No need to bind me. I'll take part in the rain ritual of my own will."

The magistrate shot to his feet in shock, and outside the door the crowd went still for a heartbeat before the sobbing swelled louder, this time from a wild, grateful sort of joy.

"Send the rain now, Heaven, the curse has confessed her sin!"

I did not turn to look at them. I only lowered my eyes to my own palm.

The scale was still there, pressed against the flesh, warm to the touch.

Tomorrow at noon I would return to my divine throne, and the town's last two wells would run dry along with me.

Then they would learn which one it was who, burned in sacrifice to the heavens, actually did the trick.