Strawberry Fields Forever - BFF prompt

Clara hiked her pack more securely in place and looked at the winding road ahead. It wound up and on and round and out of sight, ever closer to the clouds crowning the mountain. Walking her way around Europe had seemed like a great way to pass her gap year. Now, with aching feet, blisters, stiffening joints and a head pounding in time to every forward motion, all she wanted was a bed for the night and a train station. Enough was enough. Time to go home.

An hour later, she turned a corner and saw a hole in the clouds ringing the mountain. Beyond lay lush green fields bathed in sunshine. For a moment she stood, frozen. Faint memories of a film flitted through her mind. What was it? The light shifted, sent fleeting shadows and then beamed once more, the edges of the clouds turning a delicate blush of golden-pink. Shangri-La! That was it. Some fabled village where everything was perfect, always. Getting her feet moving up the now straight path, Clara knew her nirvana would contain nothing more complicated than a bed and instructions to the nearest bus or train to the closest metropolis.

Clearing the cloud layer and treading the last stretch to the village walls, Clara noticed one thing above all others. The low wall surrounding the village, possibly to keep the sheep out, was a soft strawberry-pink. The stones looked almost soft, like pieces of rock candy melting in the sun. She couldn't resist touching as she passed within their confines... just in case. Maybe she'd discovered some candy village like a strange version of Hansel and Gretel.

Everywhere she looked strawberry-pink walls rose to surround her. At first it seemed quaint, cosy, welcoming, but her first encounter with the local church took some of the shine off. Again, the warm colour of the walls drew her attention, but the church was unpleasant, for all its gaudy stone. It rose high, towering, square, blocky, more a fortress than a welcoming place of worship. The fact that gravestones were carved from the same stone, that a bench under a yew in the graveyard gave off the same rosy tones and a rose-pink path led up to the entrance all colluded to give a creepy quality which made her shiver.

Walking into the town square, contained within rose-red walls, Clara saw a sign hanging jauntily in the lace-curtained windows of a single storey house. 'Vacancy'. Praying it wasn't just bad translation and actually meant the people were on vacation, she strode up to the door, knocked and hoped.

The door was opened by the type of woman who tends fields all day, feeds 40 farm hands in one sitting and leaps tall haystacks with a single bound. Tall, muscular and with hair tied resolutely under, of course, a strawberry-pink headscarf. However, her manner was warm as she swept Clara inside, assured her she would have no problem finding her a place to sleep, and then asked to be excused.

“I have a couple of tourists in. I'm telling them the legend.”

Despite her exhaustion, Clara's ears pricked up. She was a sucker for local tales and folk stories. Her request to tag along was readily accepted and she followed the large woman up a boxed-in staircase and onto a narrow landing where two young people stood waiting. It was more than a squeeze to get everyone into the tiny bedroom at the end of the landing, but Frau Dietrich launched into the legend of Seline, the gypsy girl and Clara soon forgot her woes, including the warm breath of the male tourist who stood unnecessarily close.

It was a fairly standard story as these things went. A group of gypsies had passed through the town. They'd stayed long enough to help with the harvest. Also long enough for one of the local lads to have his way with a pretty gypsy lass. Angry at such dishonour, the gypsy king had asked for recompense. No daughter of his would wed a common labourer, so better hand over the best stallion in the village. Unsurprisingly, the villagers took exception to this idea and ran the caravans out of town, with much brandishing of fire and hurling of stones and insults. Pausing just beyond range of the missiles, the gypsy king had risen from his seat on the tail vardo and cursed the village. According to legend he swore that, unless a girl was sacrificed for the virginity of his daughter, the place would never be able to grow food and every first born child would die of starvation.

The villagers jeered and calmly went back to the business of planting and rearing strawberries, which had been their tradition for hundreds of years. Within a month the plants were dead in the fields and the graveyard contained the stark count of dead firstborns, steadily rising. A decision was taken, in secret, by the elders of the village. They chose an orphan girl, smuggled her to a house on the outskirts of the village, but could not decide how to accomplish her sacrifice. Eventually, an old woman, mother to one of the women who had lost their firstborn child, grabbed the girl by the arm, dragged her kicking and screaming to the attic, shoved her inside and locked the door.

“Let her starve.” was her only comment.

The folk of the village went about their lives as before, everyone careful to ignore the screams and pleas from the attic window, the frantic battering of fists against the glass. After a few days the screams became weak, barely audible. Soon they were no more. The fields bloomed in vibrant health and everyone thought it was over. What they hadn't understood was the terrible power of the gypsy's curse. They soon learned that a girl had to be sacrificed every year if they were to eat, harvest and bring forth viable children.

Frau Dietrich hushed, let them absorb the tale and then raised her eyes to a pale brown square in the ceiling. Continuing in whispers she explained that a coffin stood on the attic boards and none in the village had the bravery to remove it lest the gypsy curse come back.

“It is said to contain the bones of the last girl they ever sacrificed.” she intoned and Clara shivered. Her hostess chuckled.

“Have no fear. We don't sacrifice village girls any more. Come, let me get you a meal and then show you to your room.”

The tourists were fed and set on their way. Clara was almost asleep as she trailed back up the stairs, the meal had been heavy and plentiful, climbed the pull-down ladder Frau Dietrich set in place and headed up into the guest room. Asleep on her feet, she fell into the boxbed and slept.

She awoke refreshed, sat up and banged her head on the sloping ceiling. Realising she was in the roof space made her a little uneasy, recalling Frau Deitrich's tale. She slid out of the bed, crossed to the window and watched the sun warm the strawberry-pink walls with morning light. It took her a moment to locate the the square of pale brown which indicated the trapdoor, and was a little concerned when she could find no pull-ring, no mechanism to open it. She rapped on it, calling to her hostess, but received no answer. She crossed back to the window, banged on the glass and called to an old woman passing in the rosy street below. The woman did not look up.

Clara turned back to the room, hoping she had missed some lock, a switch, anything with which to open the trapdoor. What she saw was her sleeping place, her comfortable boxbed in which she had slept for twelve hours, as if drugged. Her brain tried to shy away from what faced her, but she couldn't deny the coffin which sat squarely in the centre of the room, replete with comfy pillows and blankets. 'Accept your fate' it murmured. Clara began to scream in earnest.

Outside the villagers went about the business of growing their crop. If Clara had been sane enough to care, she might have looked out from her high vantage point, across those warm red walls to the fields beyond... strawberry fields forever.