Vampire High Sophomore Year - By Douglas Rees Page 0,19

were just old New Sodom.

I flipped the book open and read this:

February 18, 1676

The men came and took Father. He fought mightily, but they were too many. They have taken him to Crossfield. Mother and Prudence and the baby and I were all hid in the secret place which Father did make for us against this day. They made to burn our house, and so find us out, but Captain Danforth came with his men and did prevent them. Two of the enemy were slain and drunk from, but the rest were safe in Crossfield.

All this we were told when Captain Danforth, who knew where we were, did come to us and convey us to this place of safety. We see the fires now against the night, and know that our house must be one of them. Captain Danforth says we shall take the town again, but our men are so few, and the militias from Boston and the towns around it do make the enemy stronger by the hour.

If my Beloved were here, I believe that this never would have happened. He and Father together might have stood off the whole company of gadje until Captain Danforth and his men appeared under their double-headed eagle. But he is far away and will not return to me.

Mother do hold the baby and rock, humming a song that is not a song. I fear she may be mad, or near it. Prudence asks where Father be, and when he do be coming. I know, but cannot tell it. I cannot speak a word. My tongue be stone. But I write this, that this night may never be forgot.

When Ms. Shadwell came back, I didn’t hear the door open. I was a long way away, with Mercy Warrener.

9

Ephemera. Bits of paper that don’t have any permanent meaning. Bits of paper that survive a hundred years, two hundred years, three hundred years, and suddenly become important because they have survived.

That’s what Mercy Warrener’s journal was. Ephemera. But she had tried to give it meaning across the years.

The first page said:

I, Mercy Warrener, do leave this book for a remembrance to my family. These journals I have kept since I was a girl. Now, as I see the end of life approaching at last, these memories of the old times may serve to instruct and warn those whom I love so much. May God forgive any vain design I have in doing so. In my heart I wish only to leave a token of the life of our family to our family. May it continue in spite of all that has happened, and all that is to come.

Mercy Warrener, 1818

The journal was really just a collection of odds and ends from Mercy Warrener’s long life. Her personal ephemera. Most of what she had left behind was just the kind of thing that anybody might write about daily life. Of course, this was a daily life that had begun in 1650 and ended in 1820, which was kind of unusual, but nearly everything she had written was stuff like:

March 14, 1664

A warm day and so we did wash the clothes after this long winter. They made a mound as high as the eaves of the house. We do all be very tired from the work. The blueberries will not soon be ripe to pick.

The next page was a recipe for robin pie.

But every once in a while, in the earliest entries, there would be a note at the bottom of whatever she was writing about.

Thomas Thornton taken to Crossfield.

Allen Ames taken to Crossfield.

Hope Carlton taken to Crossfield.

These were names I knew. Names of the selkie kids on the water polo team. Friends. These were their ancestors, and it wasn’t hard to figure out what “taken to Crossfield” probably meant.

Those entries stopped after 1676. That was when the Compact of New Sodom had been signed. From then on, the jenti families had done their drinking outside the town limits, and the gadje had left them in peace. That was something I’d learned from Justin. So nobody was taken to Crossfield after that.

But Mercy Warrener had lived through a lot of history besides the local battles between her people and the gadje. Once in a while, it had touched her.

April 20, 1775

There is great stir and doing. The militia have gone to join the army besieging Boston. The British did try to seize the stores of powder and shot at Concord, and have been sent back beaten