As the lottery began, it was not difficult for Ciara to appear concerned.
The lottery was an annual tradition in her village. As it began, an urn was prepared (it had been the same urn since Ciara's Grandmother's first lottery), filled with one white ball for every girl of bleeding age in the town. Then, in a solemn ceremony in front of the assembled village, a single white ball was removed, and replaced with a black one. The urn was stirred, and the women of the village came forth one by one, each to draw a ball from the urn, beginning with the eldest and continuing down to the youngest.
Ciara was neither the oldest, nor the youngest.
The black ball Ciara held in her pocket felt heavy, and dull, and hot. She reached into her pocket, every few moments to touch it and assure herself that her plan was in place. Even so, a portion of her plan relied on luck; just under half the women in the village were older than she, and any one of them might draw forth the black ball.
"You can feel the difference", she heard a teen boy near her hiss to his sister, trying to reassure her and ease her fears, as she fought to hold back tears. "The black ball is going to be warmer. Plus, they're not the same
size
; the black ball is bigger."
Ciara knew such thoughts to be untrue; the balls were polished to be perfectly rounded, and all were identical except for colour. She should know; she was one of the few living women to have touched the black ball. She'd had to, in order to make the copy she held in her pocket.
There was a sigh of relief among the crowd as the new widow Mary Schaffer drew out a white ball. "S'only right", a man to Ciara's left hand side said to nobody in particular, "What with her having such a hard year".
Ciara reached into her pocket, and ran her fingers over the ball again. She'd tried to think of a way around this portion of the Lottery struggling to come up a way to avoid the risk that someone who had to take their turn before hers would draw the ball. She'd thought of a dozen ways, but none that could be assured they wouldn't have been noticed.
She palmed the ball again, then released it. She glanced about, and wondered if anyone had noticed how often she was reaching into her pocket. The faces in the crowd, though, told her she could have been doing near anything without raising anyone's alarm, so long as she was not the one drawing from the urn.
Abruptly, a gasp rippled through the crowd, and Ciara spun to face the bin, feeling the color drain from her face. There stood Laina Woods, mother of three children (two girls), bride to Ryan, and there, between her fingers ....
The black ball.
"No!", Laina cried, dropping the ball as though it was scalding hot, and it landed with a dull thud that seemed to echo over the crowd. Ciara's mouth hung agape, as she watched all of her planning for this day had be ruined by Laina's terrible luck!
"Now, now", the mayor said, as the crowd twittered, simultaneously disapproving and relieved. "Now, now, Laina, everyone takes their turn. You'll have a chance to say goodbye to Ryan, and to the children, of course." Then, to the crowd, he continued, his voice changing to sound almost upbeat, "The choice is made! Laina will be this year's Queen of the Feast!"
Amidst the cheers, and Laina's tears, Ciara made the decision to act quickly. She turned on her heel to leave the celebration, not sparing the time to watch Laina's husband embrace her for what he thought was the last time, or watch her crying children cling to her side. If Ciara's plan was to still go through, she needed to act quickly.
She hurried to her house, moving as quickly as she could, running through her quickly formed plan in her head. She'd anticipated leaving, of course, and even anticipated the possibility that she would not win Queen. Therefore, her packing would be brief. When she arrived, she hastily daubed a hint of cow's blood behind her ears and on her wrists, as the Queen's attendants would do for Laina. Ciara then took her packed satchel, full of honey and mead and sweets, with a brush for her hair and twine to tie it back, and her book, a very special book, thick and dark blue, bound in the scaled hide of what most would find an entirely unfamiliar creature.
And then, with one last look back over her home, she fled thru back door and into the night.
Ciara knew the path the Queen followed into the woods each year was not long, and that it ended in a clearing around a tree stump. Then, on that stump, the Queen would sit waiting for her King to bring himself forth from the marsh and bring his blessing to their union, allowing the town to prosper for another year.
Ciara meant to bring an end to the tradition and a spot of bad luck was not going to be enough to stop her! Though she doubted that anyone from town had noticed her missing, but just in case, she moved quickly and quietly to avoid raising an alarm. The sound of the raucous party behind her continued, with the town contributing to the Queen's preparations, as she crept along in the quiet stillness at the edge of the swamp.
The clearing appeared before Ciara abruptly; a last-minute turn had kept concealed it from notice practically until she had taken her first step into it. More, she was surprised how near it was to town, no more than a few minutes away. It had so often been implied that the queen had quite a walk to meet her King.
It was quiet and still in the clearing, and in the center there was an ancient tree stump. Around the stump, there was simple circle of rocks, and around them a ring of longer grasses and flowers had taken root. That stump was the spot, the place the Queen was to meet the King. Ciara breathed in deeply, taking in the damp and warm scent of the nearby marsh. She exhaled, set her jaw, and advanced towards the stone circle.
At the edge of the stone circle, Ciara stopped and began to make final her preparations. She adjusted her shirt, and the skirt; like many others, she'd already been wearing her best for day of the Lottery. She drank the honey she'd brought with her, grimacing at the sickly-sweetness as she chugged it down. Then rinsed her mouth with the wine, both of which were essential parts of the Queen's readiness. She had already daubed the blood behind each ear, a scent to call to her King. And hastily, she wove a crown, as she'd done before as a young girl, of twine and grasses and flowers, to wear upon her head.
All preparations done, Ciara gave herself one a final moment of hesitation, and then, with a notable effort and artificial certainty, she jammed her eyes closed and stepped into the center of the circle of stone, to wait.
After about forty seconds, Ciara released the breath she'd been holding, nervously opened her eyes one by one, and looked about the clearing. She remained alone. She wasn't certain what she'd been expecting, as nobody could watch the Queen enter the circle. She'd anticipated something more dramatic than nothing at all.
"Hello...?", Ciara called out to the woods around her, immediately feeling foolish for doing so, as she heard her voice echo back from the trees. Yet her calling out helped to make it clear that she was wrong when she thought nothing had happened while her eyes were closed. Now, a strange tension hung in the air; since she had set foot in the circle,
something
had changed, even if Ciara couldn't put her finger on what it was.
A moment later, the realization dawned on her. "So
