Pagan: Anna: The Corn King (John Barleycorn)

[k_a_webb]

Written for LJ user ysabetwordsmith’s prompt: Anna musing on the myth of John Barleycorn. (My favourite typo – John Barelycorn.)

Some days, when Anna felt like she really couldn’t cope, she spent hours surfing the net because it helped her to stop thinking. If she was honest her problem wasn’t thinking too much, but dealing with the people who didn’t see her. Every day someone reminded her of what had happened and it made her wish she could run away from her problems. Instead she forced herself to keep going, because it seemed like it was the only thing she could do, even though giving up would probably be much easier, or maybe pretending for a little while that she was Charlotte. The girl she wished she could be and never wanted to be at the same time.

Coming across the story of John Barleycorn had been an accident. Anna couldn’t remember exactly how it happened, but she kept going back to reread the page. It made her wonder why things had happened the way they had. Was Charlotte a sacrifice? If so, what was so important about the person it made Anna? She kept the page with those two questions scribbled on it where she could see it and couldn’t come up with any answers.

The Corn King died every autumn so his blood could be used to fertilise the land. Did Charlotte die in order to fertilise Anna? Anna shook her head. That didn’t even make sense. How could you fertilise a person? She stared into the mirror, looking at her reflection. It was still Charlotte’s reflection too, no matter how many changed she made, and sometimes she wished she could have plastic surgery so she looked like Anna. There were days when she knew she had too many wishes and no fairy godmother to grant them. Instead she had a Lloyd, who was doing everything he could to help her, and a possible new friend in Vitali, which was more than she had hoped for when she first woke up without her memories.

At least it looked like John Barleycorn knew what was coming. There was no mention of memory loss. Charlotte hadn’t known what was going to happen when she got into the car on the night of the accident and Anna hadn’t known what was coming, if she had even existed before. If Charlotte had of known what was going to happen then she might not have got into the car. Anna may not have existed. She sighed. Maybe it would have been better that way.

Or maybe it wouldn’t have been. Anna didn’t know what Charlotte’s life had really been like. It could have been that Charlotte wanted a way out and somehow that had caused Anna to come into existence. She had a feeling it would take a long time to work out what the real answer was, if there was an answer at all. There was a possibility that it had all been down to pure bad luck, Anna was just a construct created by a body without any memories, and due to that nothing would ever be the same again for Charlotte.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>>no matter how many changed she made<<

That should say "changes" above.

This is pensive but beautiful.