The Twisted Tale of Saffron Schmidt Read online

  Following in her mother’s footsteps, Saffron had spent the last four years learning the trade of being a seamstress.

  “After all, sweetheart, who’s going to do it once I’m gone?” Anna said to her.

  Taming her wants to be an animal trainer, Saffron placated herself by teaching Henry tricks whenever she had spare time. She realised that if she wanted to make the town see that women could do the same jobs as men then she would have to wait until she was at least an adult.

  The supply trips had become a regular monthly outing for Saffron. A friendship with Sam had soon bloomed as he grew accustomed to the Saturday’s when Saffron would visit—always the first Saturday of the month. He would pick out new books he thought Saffron would enjoy and had never once failed in his selection.

  Saffron’s excitement of the City had quickly faded away. Aside from the extensive library, nothing of it appealed to her. The polluted air choked her, and the pompous clothes worn by the City folk made them resemble turkeys trussed up for Christmas dinner. No one seemed to have a moment for anyone; everyone was controlled by time, rushing from work to the shops, then back to work, shunning whatever may steal precious seconds of life.

  To Saffron, this was no life. Life to her revolved around learning, soaking in the true beauty of the world around her, and helping nature bloom. She had quickly learned that the City had its perks—the schooling equipment, medical supplies, and fabrics made their life in Sehrstadt much easier. However, these small pros were not enough to lure Saffron from the safety and comfort of her cosy town.

  When she read, Saffron had become an expert at blending into the background behind a stack of books. Usually, she would read down by Henry’s field, giving her the view of staring straight up into the town. When her eyes became tired or strained, she would rest them by quietly watching the environment around her. Over time, she developed the guilty pleasure of people-watching.

  It didn’t take long for her to become amused at the people she’d grown to love and cherish. Just like the zombies in the City, people here, in Sehrstadt, were too caught up in their day-to-day tasks to notice what was happening right in front of them, to see a bigger picture unfolding.

  A perfect example was Herr Humphrey Mayer, the resident lawyer who dealt with all manner of things from wills to land sales. His secretary was Hanna Hood, a beautiful young blonde just a year older than Saffron. With Humphrey being old enough to be her father, the idea of being attracted to the young woman repulsed him. But that didn’t stop whispers from flying around the village, wondering what a lonely old man does all day shut inside a small building with a tempting young lady.

  Saffron smirked whenever she heard this. They were correct, but only in the manner that he was lusting after someone and indulged in satisfying that desire three days a week. Everyone became so preoccupied and set on the idea that it was Hanna, no one batted an eyelid at his regular trips to Frau Becker, the village cook and baker.

  The plump older lady was a jolly ray of life. Always smiling, cheeks permanently flushed red from laughter and a little too much wine, Sabine was nothing more than a widowed grandmother. Her infectious, deep giggles were enough to turn the saddest of souls into a smiling friend, and so in reality, it was no wonder the lonesome Humphrey turned to her for physical affection.

  Similar to a magic show, people became so focused on one idea and proving themselves right, they often lost sight of what was actually happening in the background, where the real trickery lay. After all, why would Humphrey want a chubby, grey-haired grandmother when he could have a young, fertile virgin?

  Saffron happened to still be a virgin. Not through lack of offers or opportunity but through choice. Despite their cut-off status from the world, some modern-day practices had leaked into their way of life, and that meant remaining pure until your wedding night was now a choice for the folk of Sehrstadt rather than a strict order.

  As twilight gave way to the curtains of darkness that evening, Saffron didn’t yet know just how that life choice might affect her.

  Chapter Nine

  Currently January, the last throes of winter were melting into the past, bringing a promising warm spring into the future. Weather in Sehrstadt was either beautiful and warm or bitterly cold. Seasons seemed to turn at the exact same time every year, as if it was pre-programmed into nature.

  With it being the last day of the month and a Friday, tomorrow was the supply trip. The spring sun heated the icy breeze blowing across Sehrstadt today. Saffron’s pink cheeks were wind-kissed, giving her a cute appearance as they contrasted against her otherwise pale skin.

  Walking home from school, Saffron pulled her thick brown fur coat tighter around her, keeping the worst of the windchill off her. She found herself thinking about tomorrow and what wonderous books Sam would have picked out for her.

  As she had grown older, Sam had seemed to instinctively know what direction Saffron’s reading interest would go. By the time she was fifteen, whimsical ideals of fairytales were nothing more than hopeless dreams after he introduced her to the fables of the Brothers Grimm. The romantic promises of love, marriage, and children that Sehrstadt conditioned all young girls to was soon just a whisper of a false world to Saffron.

  The dark twists, frightful monsters, and lack of happy endings brought the dawning realisation to her that the world she lived in contained these exact things. She quickly learned that if something seemed too good to be true, then it often was. A nagging feeling lay deep within her, quietly whispering that a dark secret lurked in the forest, one that was patient, ancient, and waiting for the next chance to strike.

  It was impossible to ignore the fact that this year was the Offering. And Saffron had just celebrated her seventeenth birthday. From a quick calculation off the top of her head, another six girls would turn seventeen before the Offering which always happened on the autumn equinox—September 22nd.

  The man in the red checked shirt still visited her dreams. Since her birthday two weeks ago, he’d appeared to her every night. Always the same dream—where he reminded her of James from her books of younger years, and the librarian being mauled to death by a tiger.

  Lots of wild animals lived in the woods, as the weekly hunting parties proved when they came back with spoils of pheasant, wild boar, and rabbit. However, there were definitely no tigers. Where this majestic, yet strange, character had interjected itself, she had no clue. What she did know was that the mind worked in mysterious ways and it either meant nothing at all or it meant as much as the appearance of the handsome man.

  Saffron knew every line and crease on his face by now. For four years he had haunted her dreams, on and off. She had decided he wasn’t a man, but neither a boy. It was as if he was stuck in some weird limbo with the body of a fully-grown man but the young fresh face of an older teenage boy, somewhere around her own age.

  His green eyes had become a focal point for Saffron whenever she found herself in this dream. They were startling, almost glittering like gems, like they had a life of their own. Something about them hypnotised her more and more with each dream, as if he was trying to influence her in some way.

  The next morning, after yet another visit from the handsome man to her dreams, Saffron got herself ready for the usual supply trip. Mia still joined her, although her love for reading had waned as she’d gotten older. Promises of meeting previous Offering’s had long since been forgotten about.

  Whenever Saffron asked, she was met with the same response, “Not this time, Saffron. Maybe next time.” As the months rolled by, she eventually gave up asking, but the fact she had been consistently steered away from this want had not slipped her mind.

  The supply trips had been uneventful ever since that very first trip, four years ago. However, every time the wagon trotted deeper into the woods, Saffron couldn’t shake the apprehension building inside her.

  As always, when they reached the City, Saffron hopped off and headed straight for the library whilst the others went about collecting their own spoils along with the town’s necessities. When she was eighteen, Saffron would be expected to gather items from whatever list she would be given. Then, she thought to herself, then she would meet the previous Offerings, but by then, the valuable insights they might be able to give her would be inconsequential.

  Of course, Saffron had no idea if she would be chosen as an Offering or not. That wouldn’t be decided until the actual day, but she firmly believed it couldn’t hurt to be prepared. Knowledge is power, after all.

  Walking quickly into the library, Saffron was greeted with a beaming smile from Sam. He was stood behind the desk on the ground floor, checking books in with his scanner. The high-pitched bleep sound it made always went through Saffron, making her shiver.

  “Hi!” Sam said, putting his scanner down. “How are you?”

  “Great, thank you. How are you?”

  “All the better for seeing you, my dear. I have some fantastic books for you.”

  Saffron’s eyes lit up like new-born stars. “What have you got?” she asked, placing her previous months books on the counter. Last month had been reading all about Norse mythology.

  “A bit of a twist on mythology,” Sam replied, leaning down underneath the counter. He stood up with six thick books all piled on top of each other. “Classic mythology. Much like your ancient such as Norse and Greek, but these are a bit closer to home.”

  Saffron rushed to the dark wooden counter, eagerly grabbing at the first book. “The History of Witchcraft and Demonology.” She frowned and picked up the next, “The Werewolf in Lore and Legend.” The creases in her forehead intensified as she read the title of the next one, “The Vampire: His Kith and Kin.” She looked at the author name, noticing they were all from the same author, “Montague Summers
.” Glancing up at Sam, she gave him a puzzled look. “I went through the vampire phase when I first started coming here. Are you trying to make me re-visit my childhood?”

  Sam laughed. “Not at all. What you read was fiction, my dear. These—” he placed a hand on top of the books “—are non-fiction.”

  “Non-fiction? As in true?”

  Sam nodded. “Montague Summers was a Reverend. Not someone to be laughed at. He wrote over thirty books, most of them on witches, vampires, even demonology. He wholly believed in the supernatural and that it lives around us. His books are fascinating. Read them with an open mind.”

  “When exactly did this guy live?”

  “Not that long ago,” Sam said, a playful smile tugging at his lips. “He only died in 1948.”

  “Oh.”

  Sam laughed. “You were expecting hundreds of years ago, weren’t you?”

  Saffron grinned. “You can’t blame me for thinking it.”

  “Just trust me. Shake off all your modern ideals and just embrace his literature. I promise, you’ll enjoy it.”

  Keeping her doubts to herself, she said, “You know me, Sam. Always keen for the next book.”

  “I’ll cut you a deal—if you don’t like them, I’ll quit my job.”

  Saffron’s mouth fell open. “That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

  “I pride myself in knowing people’s reading tastes. If I can’t do that anymore, then I may as well not be here, right?”

  “Wow, ok. I’m not overly confident with you risking your life on me liking some books.”

  “You don’t have to be confident. I do.”

  Saffron laughed. “Ok. I guess we’ll see in a months time then.”

  “Have you got much time to sit and read today?”

  Pulling her gold pocket watch out, a present that all sixteen year olds received from the town, Saffron checked the time. “Yes. I’ve got about thirty minutes.”

  “I cleared you a space over there,” Sam said, pointing to a small table nestled at the back of the ground floor.

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  Saffron made her way over to the sturdy mahogany coloured table. Two matching seats surrounded it, making it obvious that she would have this tiny space all to herself, unless some real inconsiderate human decided to come along and ruin it.

  Plonking her stack of books down at one end, and sitting down at the other, Saffron made herself comfortable before getting stuck into The Werewolf in Lore and Legend.

  “Excellent first choice,” Sam said, giving her a cheeky wink as he replaced some books on the bookcases surrounding her.

  Saffron smiled at him before getting stuck into the introduction. It was an annoying yet common theme with non-fiction books. However, this one had her grabbed by the fourth line. The author spoke of his original intentions to include information about various other were-animals including tigers, jaguars, lions, and leopards. He even mentioned hyenas and foxes.

  Somewhat shocked, and definitely stunned, Saffron sat back and looked up at Sam. He was stood at the other end of the table, watching and grinning at her wildly.

  “Does it look like I’m keeping my job?”

  Saffron smirked. “All of these creatures? Really?”

  Sam nodded. “I guess a better term for it would be shape-shifting, but technically that’s wrong. A shape-shifter can move into any form, whereas those listed there are strictly limited to just that particular animal.”

  “A fox? A lion, a leopard...” Saffron’s mouth was wide open in disbelief. “It never even entered my head that that could happen outside of a wolf.”

  “A lot of people don’t think about it. The natural assumption has always been for wolves. I think because most native tribes are associated with them, but literally any creature you can think of, there will be a were-form of it.”

  “Even a crab?”

  Sam burst out into laughter. “I’ve never found any literature about them, but anything is possible in this world, right?”

  Dazed and her interest piqued, Saffron buried her head back in her book, eager to know more about this intriguing subject.

  THE AUTHOR HAD A UNIQUE sense of writing. It was old school; lots of long sentences, intercepted with a questionable amount of commas, that made you forget the beginning of the sentence before you’d reached the end of it. It was mentally tiring reading it but so definitely worth it.

  Saffron was quite glad when her half an hour was up and it was time to head back to the wagon. She needed a brief reprieve from the heavy concentration, and she hadn’t even reached the end of the first chapter yet.

  Pleased to see she wasn’t the last one to reach the wagon, for a change, she climbed up into the back, taking an unusual seat near the front of the wagon. Frau Mueller and Frau Fischer were both seated opposite her, fussing over the white cloth that covered their supplies for the journey home.

  Within a few minutes, everyone was back on board and heading back to their peaceful town. As they trotted down the winding country lanes, nearly back to the forest edge, some workmen had setup a tree cutting exercise on the side of the road. Splitting the already narrow road in half, they had placed some bright orange cones around their work area to keep passers-by out of harms way.

  Their chainsaws roared and growled through the air as they sheared off overhanging branches from the road edge. As Herr Bauer guided the horses around the cones, a branch came tumbling down, crashing onto the road. Its long length caused it to spill out of the safe area of the cones, right into the path of their wagon. The horses merely stepped over it, it was barely half a foot thick, but the wheels on the old cart clattered and banged against it, causing everyone and everything to jolt around and come unstuck.

  That included the supplies from under the white sheet at the front of the wagon.

  Several parcels, wrapped in white greaseproof paper, came rolling out from underneath the sheet, hitting Saffron’s left ankle and foot. She glanced down, frowning, and picked one of the smaller ones up. Turning it over in her hands, she saw smears of blood on one side of the paper.

  Frau Mueller and Frau Fischer were too busy repacking the fallen over fabrics and bags of flour to notice what Saffron had in her hand. As curious as ever, Saffron carefully undid the tape and opened the package.

  When she saw a mound of freshly diced meat, she gasped.

  Frau Fischer turned to her left, noticing the two remaining packages by Saffron’s feet. Quickly re-taping the meat up, Saffron handed Frau Fischer the third package with a thin smile.

  “Thanks, Saffron,” she said, taking it from her like it was a fragile ornament.

  Saffron didn’t respond. Her mind was whirling, spinning at a hundred miles an hour. Why had they come to the City for meat? They had hunting parties go out every week into the forest. Why would we waste valuable resources for something the forest can provide for free?

  Reasoning with herself that perhaps it was a just a treat, a one off that maybe one of the women wanted for their family, Saffron shooed any doubts and suspicions from her mind.

  Chapter Ten

  When they returned to Sehrstadt, Saffron decided, instead of immersing herself in her new books, she needed to relax and empty her mind. The only way for her to do that was to go riding.

  Henry had now replaced Hanna in the daily routine up to the forge, meaning that Hanna had more or less been retired, save for the weekly ride that Saffron still took on a Sunday morning.

  Carrying her saddle and bridle down to the paddock, Saffron whistled the old mare over. Hanna came cantering over, her ears pricked and nickering softly.

  “I know I’m a day early, girl, but I really need it today.”

  Hanna rubbed her head up and down Saffron’s chest, signalling that she wanted a scratch under her forelock. Giggling, Saffron lifted up the flaxen wisp of hair and gave the old mare a tickle in her favourite spot. When she’d had enough, Hanna lifted her head and nudged at her saddle sat on the fence.