The Chained Seven

[aquafortis]

They were called the Chained Seven. It was a story told to frighten little children, to keep them out of the forest and away from Donoby's Swamp. Behave, parents would say, or we'll leave you in the swamp for the Chained Seven. Don't stray too far from town; don't get lost in the woods, or the trapped ones might snare you and you'll join them in their watery tomb under the bog.

There was a real story behind the Chained Seven. At least, Ashling was sure there was. Of course she'd heard the tale everyone told when you asked them, the one that had been handed down by her grandmother to her mother to her. The Chained Seven, said the legend, had once lived in the village, seven sisters who were the daughters of the flour miller. The miller had no sons and no wife, and was a hard man, and so his seven daughters were put to work in the mill, or the garden, or the kitchen, as soon as they were strong enough to carry grain sacks.

And this was the part Ashling found strange. The miller had no wife; yet somehow he had these seven daughters. They appeared periodically, and were supposedly a year or so apart from one another in age, but where was the mother? Ashling knew there was more to that part of the story, but when she asked the answer was one of two things. Either the mother had been there, but wasn't particularly notable and then died in obscurity, or the miller had made a bargain with the devil or a witch or some other nefarious party.

In any case, when the first of the seven sisters reached marriageable age, which at that time (another thing the story was hazy about—the exact time this happened) was about sixteen, a suitor came calling. The suitor was the son of the baker, who visited the mill twice a week to pick up flour. According to the story Ashling had heard—not the version for little kids but the one that Richie had told her when they'd been canoodling behind a tree just inside the boundary of the forest—according to the "secret" version of the story, when the miller found out about his eldest daughter's intention to marry the baker's son, he flew into a rage and wouldn't hear of it. He needed her to help in the mill; he could not part with her for anything.

There was a horrible fight. The eldest daughter locked herself in the bedroom and wouldn't let anybody in. Nobody knows what happened next, but the daughter disappeared, never to be heard from again. Later that week, a traveler approaching the village through the forest path reported that he'd seen a strange apparition, a young woman barely sixteen, reaching out at him from the swamp, dripping with pondweed and bound by chains.

As each of the remaining sisters reached marriageable age, the same thing happened—a suitor entered the picture, the miller flew into a towering rage, she locked herself in to avoid whatever fate her sisters had suffered—and then disappeared. Nobody in Ashling's memory had ever witnessed the Chained Seven, but she'd asked her grandmother once, and Gramma had said that her mother had been walking in the forest—secretly, with a boy—and they'd heard a metallic rattling, a wet dripping, and then the sound of slow footsteps. They ran—oh, how they ran, said Gramma. It was usually lovers who witnessed the Chained Seven. And it was said that they were neither alive nor dead, but somehow enchanted. Or cursed.

***
This post inspired by Encadenado by Flickr user skymix--who has some seriously badass pictures with interesting color filters. And yeah, I think I might have lied when I said I wasn't going to write about zombies, 'cause I sort of did...but I was also vaguely thinking about the fairy tale The Maiden Without Hands.

[Donal Murphy]

Cool fable. Evil millers, multiple daughters and handsome suitors, always a tragic combination in fairytales. That Maiden Without Hands story is gruesome.

[TadMack]

Eek! Always lovers - illicit ones -- hearing those slow, ponderous footsteps, that horrible metallic rattling...
Yeah. Just a story to frighten the, er, children...

[Elimare]

ooh I like it. I wonder if you'd left the exposition bit out (with Aishling and her Gramma) would it make it stronger? This could make an excellent faiy-tale.