Further filings
The Village
★★★☆☆
We required a woman we could carry. We required that she not scream in a language we would have to answer. We required a date on the calendar so that none of us would have to admit we chose the river. Three stars. She keeps arriving early.
The rite is older than the word they will not use. That is the village's favorite sentence. On or around the twenty-first of March — once the fourth Sunday of Lent, Laetare, also called Black Sunday or Death Sunday — they make a woman out of straw and walk her past every house so that no household can later say it did not know. They dip her in the puddles. They burn her. They throw her in. They run home without looking, because the last one back was said to die that year.
They require a date so that the choosing looks like agriculture. They require that she not scream in a language they would have to answer. They will sing. They will call it spring. They will be wounded if you suggest the river was optional. She keeps arriving early. The village finds this unprofessional.
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