The air always felt like so much cold water at this time of year. Especially at this time of night. Bodo, his tunic dirty and his leggings damp, trudged through the once familiar woods on the way to the little cottage he'd shared with his family on the mense. He'd carried a heavy stick for protection halfway from Courbevoie, but had to let it go as his shoulder ached with every step.
Things just kept getting harder every day. Ever since the Plague drove them all from their homes, claiming both prince and pauper, the clergy and the laity, the old and the young and all those in-between. The Church blamed it on miasma and lack of piety while Bodo's neighbors - the few who still lived - claimed it heralded the End of Days. The timing was right, for did not the Savior himself say He would return after a thousand years?
Would that he hurried along, Bodo thought blasphemously to himself. For every day since their flight, he'd been needed in the fields along with all the other surviving men. His back couldn't take it anymore! He'd grown too used to Gerbert, his eldest son, doing the hardest plowing while he worked in the Abbé's house repairing shoes. But the Plague took Gerbert and so many others. Only Bodo remained to care for little Wido and Hildegard and he wouldn't be able to much longer...
Read the whole thing at Blood Moon Rising Magazine!
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