My sweet boy, how sorry I am. Your little body in your bed, unfinished porridge by your side, both harassed by flies. Doctor Williams told me that if you survived the first two years, you would likely live to adulthood. We had only a few weeks left.

When I found out who was growing beneath my heart, I never thought I could love you. I went to our herbalist, for I knew she had helped countless girls, but she said it was too late for me.

I had to tell my parents. Mother wished to drag me out by my hair and never see me again, but Father used his authority as the head of the household, so I stayed.

Eventually, she came round, but she never stopped asking who the father was. She suspected it was our stable boy, Matthew. I swore on the Holy Book it wasn’t, so she gave up. She prepared me just as Grandmother had prepared her, yet I was still not ready. I prayed to him that you would be born blue and silent.

You came into this world at the start of the harvest season. I remember the agony, wrapped in the boiling heat surrounding me. Mother was by my side, but Father said the fields needed him. I did not see him that day. I was a sinner, and the pain of childbirth was my punishment.

The moment I heard you scream; I took all my prayers back. I begged, let him learn of my sins, let him leave me, let him forgive me one day, if only on my deathbed.

You were weak. The doctor knew the day might come. Still, I nursed you. I doted on you. I loved you. Mother helped me, often caring for you while Father required my presence with the livestock. I would watch milkmaids being chased by stable boys and wonder how many would end up with a child born suspiciously early into the marriage. Could a couple like that ever be happy? What do I know about the right way to love?

It was a very hot day. That is why I left you in the cool of the room and went out to weed the garden. Four hours. That’s how long it took Death and flies to claim you, my son. While I was tending the garden, I ceased to be a mother, and I had no idea until I went back inside.

As Mother confronted me, Father sat quietly in the corner, not daring to look at you. He would have to call for an undertaker and a priest. Of course, you were baptised, but your grave would likely be somewhere out of sight. At least we would not be bothered when together.  When I watched Father carry you to the parlour, my grief was replaced with anger. The flies followed you, refusing to give my sweet boy peace. And as I looked at you in our father’s arms, I could not stop thinking of me, your mother and his daughter, as I was.

Nikol Jana Nováková (18) is a high school student at Gymnázium Elišky Krásnohorské in Prague. Her short story The Flies came second in the Milena Jesenská Award competition this year.