Lady in Waiting is a flash folk-horror told through prayers. Each episode is just minutes long. This is an immersive audio drama. So, turn your volume up. A supplement to the audio drama The Thief. Listen on Apple, Patreon (totally free), Spotify, or subscribe to the newsletter. Previously, the lady-in-waiting discovers she is no longer alone on the road. Exhausted and exposed, she wonders at the haze in the distance. A hallucination of her servant, Brona, warns her to get off the road - but she doesn't. Day EightI am never more than a lope from “Boots,” part of the Burhwick chattel escort who found me in the road. It’s rationed but there’s water. They left my biscuits in the dirt but there was a stew when I’d come to - and I feel better. Boots is not young, but he is not old, and he mistakes me for a failed runaway. I don’t correct him. When we are marched behind the wagon, I am roped together with everyone else, but the ties aren’t good, and the pace is slow. We trail behind because where else would we go? These are families, and I am not of them. They don’t care. We don’t talk. No one talks, not really. There are no raised voices but for the Burhwicks, who don’t care either - or can’t tell. I am in the current. I sign thanks to the fay of the land because I need a blessing, or need to feel blessed, and I choose to interpret having been so easily assimilated as a blessing. I’m no longer Wirwen Osgard. No crown-traitor. I am - no one, given a gift of anonymity. I see the old woman see my thanksgiving, and she cocks her head like a dog. Ahead, the driver-in-the-habit yells “no, damn you, left!” and the wagon creaks into a small crater with a shuddering SNAP of the wheel. “Damn it, damn it -” damn, damn, damn the driver yells with the rhythm of the switch crack on the horses’ backs. It turns out there is a wainwright among us and while he is made to work, we are the rest of us corralled into a sprawling circle and sit in the grass. We are commanded to silence. But I could reach out and touch the observing old woman and I lean-in and ask, “Pardon (!), but where —” I look for Boots and lean closer — “where are we going?” She snorts. And — I don’t know, forgetting my circumstance, I am offended. But she sees these things and this makes her laugh. “They’re marching us to the longboats waiting for us on the shore.” She looks me up and down, and scoffs. “Oh yes, you are leaving fine things behind, you are. How does it feel?” I speechlessly think of my comb. She likes this. But there is a thonk and she reels over a-sudden, her face bruising from the rock thrown at her. “I said quiet!” says Boots. Furbelow Written and produced by Michael Schofield Performed by Rae Witte Introduced by Jeremy Román Inspired by S. Kaiya J.’s game Her Odyssey Boots is Jeremy Román "Siren Acapella Voices" by Orchestralis Lady in Waiting is produced by the fyrd: Emelie Johansson, Hannah Radcliff, Ivan Duch, Lucas Duff, Patrik Deraković-Rakas, Jon, Kier Hodsgon, Charles Villard, Jeremy Román, Kari Sutcliffe, Nandi K., and Amz Deen.
