Milkmaid
a flash fiction story reimagining a common folktale
This was written for the 30 Days of Fright Writing Challenge, prompt 18: hidden intentions; someone has disguised themselves. Hosted by Wendy Cockcroft.
I was giving some thought to the folktale about the milkmaid who spills the milk because she is daydreaming about what she’ll buy with the money and how she’ll get chickens and make more money and get a fancy dress and dance with all the boys. This is NOT that story.
Milkmaid
The farm boys are always ogling us as we walk to town on the dusty road, milk buckets balanced atop our heads, hands full sometimes with baskets of apples or pears or whatever fruit is in season.
We are the milkmaids, but they have other names for us, too. Impolite names, full of leering and innuendo. Rarely do they call us those names to our faces, but they talk amongst themselves, leaning over the fences, loud enough for us to hear.
I hate them.
My mother thinks I should marry Danny Baker. Fine young man, she says. Father’s got a strong herd, good milkers.
Danny Baker touched Elsie McGovern in all the wrong places last spring behind the apple-bobbing shed at the Harvest Festival.
I’m not going to marry Danny Baker.
***
I wear my yellow cotton dress with its white apron, and my yellow braids, and my girlish smile like a disguise. I am like the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Ironic. (But that’s another story.)
For three nights around the full moon, I am not a milkmaid. I am my true self.
***
Sometimes I daydream. Yesterday, on the way to market, I spilled the milk. The bucket came unbalanced, plummeted to the road where the parched earth drank it up.
I had been imagining the bucket filled not with milk, but with their blood. The blood of the boys who stood leering from the fences. I imagined tearing into the throats of the haughty, lustful boys in the market square who hoot and call when the milkmaids come by. And I even thought about ripping apart their mothers who turn a blind eye, pretending not to see their supposedly perfect sons’ imperfect behavior.
Last year, one of them forced himself on Rosie, got her pregnant. Now she’s alone with a babe, shunned and belittled.
When I got home, I had to tell my mother about the spilled milk. She wasn’t happy with me.
I hadn’t meant to waste the milk. “I’m so sorry, Mama,” I said with my best look of contrition. She’s not my real mother, you know. She, a young widow, found me in a basket, left for dead in Fenner Woods, brought me home and raised me as her own. I owe her a lot.
But, still, I lied to her.
I told her I’d been daydreaming about using the money I got from selling the milk to buy us some new chickens—nice plump ones. (Our previous chickens had succumbed to a fox attack a while ago. Lied about that, too, I hate to say. That was the first time I changed. Went feral, I did. I have more control now).
Anyway, to sweeten my lie, I continued, “And then I’d be able to sell some of the eggs, like we used to, and buy me some of that blue fabric from Mrs. Johnson’s shop, and make me a dress. And then wouldn’t I look a picture at the Barn Dance this spring? Maybe catch more’n just Danny Baker’s eye, I might.” I tried to wear a dreamy expression.
My talk of boys appeased her. She seemed to have nothing on her mind lately, but my future marriage. Maybe it’s on account of her being a widow at such a young age that she’s forgotten what men are like.
***
On those three nights a month, when the moon is round and bright and hangs heavy over the fields, I sneak out of the cottage. I slip past the barn, giving it a wide berth, for I don’t want to scare the poor cows with my feral scent.
I stalk to the edge of the field, where the trees begin. I slip out of my yellow dress. Stand in the moonlight. And I wait. For my bones to bend and re-shape themselves, my hair to grow longer and lush, my senses to escalate until I can smell even clean laundry hanging on the line and the scent of farm workers’ sweat and ale wafting on the breeze from the village.
The crickets reach a crescendo and I am transformed. Not a docile milkmaid, but an undomesticated beast.
The first time, I wasn’t prepared. I ate all the chickens, I admit it. Poor darlings.
I’ve learned to adjust.
I think it’s a bit like being drunk, like that time at Cousin Julie’s wedding when I drank too much mead. Like with drink, when I’m the beast, I know what I’m doing, the choices I’m making, but… I just don’t care. Maybe, like people who drink too much, I’m using my transformation as an excuse. Maybe. But let’s not go down that road.
After I change, I turn to look back over the farm and our cottage and the quiet, dusty road that leads into the village. Then I leap the fence and bound into the woods, feeling the sticks crack like bones under my clawed feet. I hunt in the woods—deer, rabbits. Only what I need to satiate my untamed hunger. Only what it takes to feed my bloodlust.
I don’t want to daydream about buckets of boys’ blood.
I don’t want to disappoint my mother.
But I have a feeling that one of these nights, I won’t run off into the woods. I will let out a fierce howl—one I’ve suppressed for so long—and I will head off down that dirt road into the unsuspecting village. And instead of milk, the dry earth will soak up blood.
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Oh, wow!
I love this! Let’s read this to our class instead of the other one! Lol!