3.
The whole town turned out to help build the altar.
They worked until sweat ran down their faces, and every one of them shot me a look like I was an enemy as they passed.
Someone spat on the ground near me. Someone else knocked into me with a shoulder.
I sat on the stone steps in the back courtyard of the county court and watched them come and go, and felt nothing much at all.
Once the altar was finished, my mother-in-law arrived.
Her hair was combed slick and shining, and in her hand she clutched the pouch of compensation silver the court had just handed down, heavy enough to drag her wrist toward the ground.
She turned to face the townsfolk crowding in and drew herself up straight.
Sure enough, someone called out first: "Old Mrs. Henson, what righteousness! Giving up her own daughter-in-law to save the whole town. She's a living saint!"
"Isn't she just! Anyone else, who'd have the heart to hand over their own son's wife?"
"The Hensons cut their own flesh for this town!"
Every crease in her face folded up with pleasure. She waved a hand. "It's only right, only right. I couldn't let the whole town suffer for one person under my roof."
As she spoke she hefted the pouch of silver in her hand again and tucked it into her sleeve.
The townsfolk dragged me up onto the altar. The rope bit into my wrists, and the pain forced a low groan out of me.
Elias Henson stood at the very front of the crowd, head down, as if he were afraid someone might recognize him.
I didn't look at him.
The torch was passed into my mother-in-law's hand. She took it, stepped forward twice, and stopped at the edge of the woodpile, the firelight playing over her deeply furrowed face.
She looked at me, and there wasn't a trace of hesitation in her eyes. Only impatience.
"All these years since you married in, which of the clothes on your back, which meal in your mouth, wasn't paid for by my Henson family?" She held the torch up and spoke in a voice only I could hear.
"The well is mine, the silver from selling water is mine. You're an outsider who married in. What right did you have to stand in the way of me earning?"
Her wrist twitched, pushing the torch a little closer. "You cut off my livelihood, so you deserve to die. Curse, no curse, that's just something to tell outsiders. I stopped being able to stand the sight of you a long time ago."
Below the altar there was a beat of silence, then someone shouted, "Burn her!"
The shouts rose after it, joining into one wave and surging up like a tide. She heard it, and the corner of her mouth pulled into a satisfied smile as she lowered the torch toward the woodpile.
I watched that ball of fire draw closer and closer, and all at once I found it funny.
She said I'd cut off her livelihood.
But what I'd brought her was far more than one well.
