Fine Linen, Chapter Six

One day, the people came back. Lina watched with growing curiosity as they gathered the bundles of dried flax plants and piled them on the cart yet again. She could not imagine what they could want with dried, dead brown stalks, but clearly they had some purpose in mind. People were mysterious creatures at best, but they surely wouldn't do all this work for nothing. This time as she jounced along in the cart, she actually felt some stirrings of anticipation for her fate.
But when they reached their destination, and armloads of flax were taken off the cart, she began to hear strange and frightening sounds. There was a loud, repeated banging that went on and on. Under the clatter, she could just make out a sort of rustling and cracking. She began to shiver again, and when the hands came for her, dread seized her.

The truth was far worse than she had imagined. She was laid across a hard, uneven surface and beaten again and again, methodically, from one end to the other and back again.

Why? Why? What joy could these people possibly take in this pointness torture? If Lina could have screamed, she would have. But as always, she was powerless to do anything but endure. The face that leaned above her, sweating from the hard labor, showed neither pleasure nor pain. It scanned her length imperturbably, then hands turned her and beat her some more.

Finally, broken in a million pieces, Lina was taken off the hard surface and flung over a different one. She was too battered and spent even to feel fear. But no, the beating wasn't over. This time the pounding was accompanied by scraping with a hard, flat blade of some kind. She could feel the broken piarts of herself chipping and breaking away. Over and over, she was flung this way and that, pummeled and scraped. More and more of her very self was lost. It seemed to go on forever.

To be continued. . .

Repairing the Breach,

Debbonnaire