The images and scents from the past only made sense to Lucia after the bucket appeared.  Before then she only registered wants and needs; her developing mind unable to neither comprehend the strange events nor put them all in sequence.

She remembered the dryness of her throat, a woman’s voice singing near wordless melodies, once green fields wilting in the shadow of near-night woods, and not much more.  Back then, these things didn’t have much meaning, all except the desperate dryness; nothing meant anything till she fell down this well.

The bucket rose, sloshing.  Everything in her body screamed out something was wrong and her mind chased after the cause for alarm.  Nothing natural or liquid could have come from the arid well; it was only filled with white stones, strange sticks, thousands of shimmering silver-gray threads, and her.

Lucia sat on the only solid surface, a cold stone island amid a colorless sea, watching the bucket escape.  A normal child would have screamed and begged for help.  Sure there were tears streaking across her chubby cheeks and she wanted her mother, but Lucia already knew it was pointless.  So she watched the bucket imploringly and heart broken.

Biting back the shiver from the cold that attacked her from the torn shreds of her infantile dress, Lucia rocked herself seeking comfort.  There in the depths of the earth she was left wondering what ever would and had become of her.  But the well wanted to cut such thoughts short. 

Like before, like when she hungered, the sea of sticks and stones broke surface, offering what she needed, a wool dress yellowed with age and worn in spots.  The cruel kindness spurted her to action and she fought the remains of her old garb and her blood-starved limbs in an attempt at warmth.

It was never what she wanted; only what she needed.  Had it been a wishing well, the rubble would have parted and the brown haired woman who had consoled and loved her would have come and sang those wordless melodies to her once again. 

Where she learned such things, she didn’t fully understand.  All she knew was that now the feelings in her heart and stomach were more robust.  She found her mind tainted with experience she had yet to garner.

Everything was different from before.  Now she was grown and her toddler tears born from frustration, lack of understanding, and wanting had matured.  Now they swam down her face suffering broken dreams, bitter fears, and longing.

***

The rusted handle made the empty bucket creak as it made its slow decent.  Down in the well, with its smooth, iridescent walls, where time seemed meaningless and to a six year old it certainly was.

Half way between Lucia and to bright circle sky it stopped, having met its end.  Swinging back and forth, it seemed to have come up short.  But it didn’t need to go further than that.

Lucia exhaled and it was a sea of sparks and lights, fireflies and stars.  All of them swimming through the air; her fingers unable to catch a single one and shove it back in.  Oddly it reminded her the smoke some grandfathers let loose from their pipes, twirling and swirl across fire lit rooms late at night.

It was a sadly comforting thought, for she couldn’t ever remember meeting hers, and come to think of it she barely remembered her father.  All she could remember was her mother and the wordless melodies.  But in her mind were so many grandfathers and grandmothers, aunts and uncles, and families of different times and sizes.

With the air around her once more clear she was able to see.  Though Lucia wished she couldn’t.  Now she knew that the sea before her was not of stones and sticks, but of bones. 

How odd she found this thought and revelation.  Having lived with them this long, however long that had been.  Having never feared them or thought more of them till now, only to find her stomach turned a little at the thought.

But the well and her body drove these thoughts from her mind.  Her hands suddenly grabbed and ripped where ever they could.  The wool dress viciously pinched the muscles of her arms and strained against her chest, making it hard to breathe. 

Then like the time before Lucia grew scared and wanted her mother, but the bones only brought another old dress.  While ripping the last of the old wool dress she decided, no matter that they kept her alive, she despised the bones.  Her fingers angrily reached out grabbing the garment that Lucia wished she could have done without. 

As if they sensed her thoughts, the bones took out their punishment cutting up her hand for her ungratefulness. 

For the first time since she was two, Lucia screamed.  "I hate you.  Mommy, help me.  Help Me!"  The tears of pain and rage soon fell after that and the bucket rose up once again full.

***

Time meant more to a nine-year-old.  But the well was a cruel place.  With the trees hanging over them and the weather tainting the pitch of the skies, it was always hard to tell anything.  She measured her imprisonment by her hunger, her sleep, and whatever means she could.

The seasons, temperature, and light never changed.  It was always a bone filled, barren cylinder.  The air was cool like the sweet water that once must have flowed through its shaft.  And the stones emitted a light that reminded Lucia of fall’s endless rainy days from another girl’s memories. 

Everyday she tried to out smart the bones, find escape, and it always ended in failure.  Until one day she asked for her mother’s song and got a music box.  That was the best it could ever do.

But it came as no surprise.  The witch had done her work well.  So many were the warnings and legends of the witch and her hell.  How was a child of two to know?

The dryness made so much more sense; Lucia cursed herself for ever having been born with a mouth.  A spell, a drought, a lure to get what the witch wanted.  Another victim.  Another source. 

Lucia still couldn’t remember her father, or where her mother had been.  She just remembered walking up to the edge and looking in.  Just like so many of the other girls. 

As the bucket drew down, she knew what time it was.  It was time for the witch to get her fill.  According to the stars and fireflies in the dark above, it was time for Lucia to die a little more.

***

Now she knew how to cook, clean, and mend.  She was a wife in the making, a few more years and the right training was all it took.  One more bucket, in the reality of her well.

She was numb to the fact that all that surrounded her was death.  Her fingers were cut up from trying to keep the bones from tumbling in and filling the hole she dug searching for the horror’s bottom, any way to salvation.  But it was a ghost of a try because she, like so many others who had fallen, had resigned herself to her fate.

Lucia hated the hairs the most.  The shortest were on par with her own locks current length, far too long to do any good.  They kept tangling around her fingers and wrists till she feared no circulation would ever be restored to the limbs and the bones crashed around her falling and filling her holes.

Her failures always beckoned her tears.  Her tears always sought solace.  Solace was the music box and the wordless melody.

"Mother," she said it more like a prayer to a God than a child’s cry.

Holding her bleeding hand, she sobbed knowing the sound overhead whispered worse things than doom.  Often she wondered why her pleas were ignored by the denizens of gracious divinity only to be answered by malicious demons and their harbinger of misery.

"This isn’t fair!  This isn’t fair!"  Lucia’s screams echoed around her but went nowhere she knew.

The beauty of the stars and fireflies of her life was now being lost upon her.  Like a gardener who got sick of being pricked by his rosebushes, she wanted to swat them all down and burn their remains.  Instead they filled the bucket overhead and for the first time ever Lucia could have sworn the heard the witch above.  The bitch laughed with glee.

***

This well had a long history.  Pieces of memories from other constantly whispered to her about it.  Water had never filled its belly, mostly girls.  The boys and animals, for some reason there was no trace of them here beyond their bones.  Sorcery was an odd thing.

For Lucia the hardest thing to accept was that anyone had gone down here willing, but a few . . .  a cowardice few had.  In times of ignorance and perhaps weakness, men of the village shoved girls down here.  Other times people did it to hide their mistakes.

Lucia’s blood ran hot and cold with the lives and experiences she only picked up second hand.  She hung on to the few that were hers, but they faded under the pressures of the others.

More skills came to her now that another bucket had passed.  She guessed herself at about sixteen.  If there had been a contract for her hand she would have been married by now.  Otherwise she’d be shopping for a husband and taking what she could get in the next year or so.

After the last bucket she began wondering, panicking.  How many more would there be?  How much longer would she go on like this?  And her fingers still bled and ached from that hair.

That damnable hair, it finally became useful.  So many people, so many animals, so many strands, and one ounce of hope combined for what each memory truly yearned for.  If it all worked out soon they would have their release.

With six feet of coiled around her feet, Lucia smiled as the bucket once again drew near.  The next bucket, she promised herself now aging more towards twenty, the next bucket.

***

Many things could have gone wrong with her plan.  Only desperation wouldn’t allow her to notice them.  And though she had more than enough rope, she kept working on it until, creak, it was looming over her once more.

Her arms were scratched, bleeding, with some wounds angry and festering.  Just like the restless girls’ souls.  Still they found the strength, her last ounces of hope.

Creak.  It was almost to the bottom.

"Mother," she whispered.  It was a promise more than a prayer.

The fireflies and stars filled the air, twinkling not as brightly as they had in her, not so long ago, youth.  Aging came harder and fewer were the others’ memories of living life, normal, true lives, at this age.

Like a dream, slow and breath taking, the hand made rope flew across the air and tightened around the creaking bucket.  Lucia wasn’t sure if she ever told her body to go, but soon she found her hands climbing one over the other, spilling her youth back upon her skin and straight to her soul.  This time she was not letting the witch rob her precious youth from her again.

At the top, the hag fought the rope, shaking it with her ill fed frame.  Lucia wondered if it was the guilt that made her so thin, or was it something to do with evil.  She could only think such things because she knew the witch’s attempts were futile and escape was preciously near.

Screeches, hateful words, and possibly spells spewed from the witch’s thin lipped mouth.  But after living in the well there was nothing Lucia feared more than the bony depths of her life sucking prison.  She just laughed at the witch’s attempts as her unpracticed hands strained her delicate muscles, drawing the two women closer together.

When Lucia was near the top, the hag grew still.  Lucia’s fingers itched and craved the edge.  Fist, over fist, over fist, until her hand found purchase on the ledge.  It was like she had conquered nations of savages that were only malign pimples on the face of the world.  No one would truly ever understand how she felt.

But her first sight of the world was an ugly one.  The witch stood still, black shadows oozing from her skin, gathering over Lucia’s well.  It steamed and stunk and she knew it was no good.

No, she thought, no.  The strength began leaving her arms at the thought of the witch’s treachery, at her foul attempt.  She was going to burn her, fling her back down, and steal her hard earned freedom. 

The bigger the cloud grew, the bigger the smile on the hag.  And all this made Lucia shake violently with fear rattling and loosening something deep inside her gut.

It grew and flew, storming up through her throat and out her mouth.  "No!" But it wasn’t just her voice.  It was hundreds of women’s.  All of them flew from within her, a part of her, drawn into her body because of the well.

They shot at their abuser like a horizontal geyser, one right after another, mingling theirs bodies to be one force.  Dragging the large boiling cloud back over the hag’s way, letting it rip loose.  Boiling acidic rain pillaged her withered skin, while the souls of her victims crammed themselves through her mouth and deep with her belly.

She flailed like she was possessed by a demon, but truth was she was a demon possessed by the good and the out come was just the same. 

Feeling hollowed out and weaker, Lucia watched her fingers involuntarily let go just as the last souls escaped her flesh cage.  For an instant she feared the worst, but she should have known better.  They grabbed Lucia and pulled her, their champion, free from the hell of the well, sparing her the fate they had all endured.

Worn, shaken, and safe, Lucia could only watch as her sisters in suffering took out their revenge on the witch.  They tore her to pieces, but left her living.  She was a rag doll in a rabid dog’s mouth.  There was barely a semblance of who or what she was as the spirits threw the witch down the well.  Crashing the stone walls down on the witch’s tortured body until the well, the spirits, and the hag were no more.

And despite herself, Lucia giggled and smiled.  The strain and delirium faded in the face of happiness.  In the moments of quiet she found the will to move wanting to collect on promises of seeing her mother once.

Each step was like a drum roll that never ended.  Nothing seemed to get closer and nothing was truly familiar.  But beyond the break in the trees, she knew that was home.

The sun was setting as she finally saw the small houses with their fields.  Men worked hard, sun burnt skin stinging along with their over worked muscles.  Children laughed as if the well, such unspeakable horror, had been a thousand miles away.  Women called from doors, their voices all holding all the promises a child would need, love, comfort, shelter, and food.

And after watching them, Lucia shuttered.  Lucia knew.  She could never go back.

Her body, though scratched, beaten and abused, was that of a woman.  And the woman, the one wearing red and carrying the tiniest of tots, her mother expected someone else. 

The two-year-old soul within her adult shell thrashed and cried.  Though the other girls had warned Lucia, life would never be the same, her soul never truly understood until then.  And together her soul and body wept.

As the last rays of sun vanished from the earth, Lucia stared across the distance, to the door her mother had vanished behind, never to be seen by her again.  The only consolation she had after all this was the bitter sweet reward that never again would a child grow up only knowing her mother’s wordless, melodic song.