A collection of historical short stories for the @HistoricalFiction SmackDown contest. All of these are based on a prompt, have a rather strict word limit and are written in a short span of time.
1. The Blacksmith's Apprentice - 500 words
Alis, a y...
Her mother used to say that decent young girls did not become blacksmiths. They sat at home, married decent young men and raised a dozen children. Alis, however, had no desire to be decent. She had no desire to marry the man her uncle had chosen for her—no desire to marry at all.
Alis waited until everyone had gone to bed, and then waited some more to be sure. When she could no longer contain herself, she slipped from the narrow bedstead, her sister mumbling as she turned away.
She snatched the warm dress she had laid out earlier and put it on over her shift as quietly as possible. One of her cousins was snoring softly. She slipped into her shoes, grabbed her pack and spread out her wedding dress over the empty chest. It was no doubt the best dress she had ever owned, and she couldn't bring herself to take it with her. It felt wrong.
She snuck outside and padded down the hall, to the master bedroom—her uncle's room. He had something that belonged to her.
Pushing the door open with a creak, she tiptoed inside. Her aunt snored louder than her cousins, providing a certain cover, she hoped. Her uncle slept farthest from the entrance, one arm dangling from the bedstead. The speck of moonlight that slipped through the window shutters helped her to navigate around the bed.
There it was: a small chest with a study lock. She took out the small iron key from under her shift. It was her uncle's key, one she had stolen the day before.
Alis knelt down and entered the key into the lock. It jammed. Her hands trembling, she wriggled it until it nudged forward, all the way in. With a racing heart, she turned the key.
The click of the opening lock resounded through the room and Alis stopped breathing. Her aunt's snoring had stopped. The bed creaked. Her heart thumped erratically in her chest, surely loud enough to wake her uncle. After a few endless moments of the most terrifying silence she'd ever experienced, her aunt's snoring recommenced.
She let out the breath she'd been holding and opened the chest. She plucked out a pouch of faded linen with familiar embroidery.
It was her dowry.
The last of the money her father had left behind, it was meant for her, to be given along with her to the man she married. Since she would never marry, she figured to money belonged to her, to do with as she pleased. Without it, she would never be able to afford the apprentice fee to any master blacksmith.
Tucking the pouch beneath her skirts, she crept out of the room and out of the house. She looked back one last time at the house she had grown up in, a stone cottage at the foot of the foggy mountains.
"I'm sorry, Uncle," she whispered. "Forgive me."
She walked away into the night towards a new and uncertain future.
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Word limit: 500 words
There, the first story. This one is based on a story I have been working on since I first joined Wattpad (ages ago). It's set in 1174, the High Middle Ages, in the middle of a rather obscure civil war. I hope you like this little glimpse into Alis's world.
It's been such a long time since I've done a SmackDown, and the historical one is special, because I organised the first one myself (together with Sissa). The word limits are quite a bit shorter than I'm used to, but I'm really excited about doing this!
