The Woman Who Buried Nations
Page 6
He sheathed his blade, and made a motion for the others to disarm. And I was thankful, because in my heart I knew I was still not ready.
“You are permitted to mourn your adopted people,” he said, pointing to the carnage. “I hope you know that I once loved them too.” He spit on the ground of his own castle. “Well, at least one of them.”
“These were my people,” I said. “They were the only family I had.”
“You’ll always be a Kimall,” he said. “As will I. Open your eyes.”
“They never close, Lord Dober. “And all I can do is see and see and see.”
He put his heavy arms on my shoulders, and for a moment we stared into each other’s very souls, even though he had long denied the soul’s existence. We all have souls, but we do wrong in assigning them virtues they do not possess. They are neither good nor evil, they just are.
He broke away first, but then his next action was to step toward me with heavy feet. I was certain he was going to snap my neck, or unsheathe his blade and impale me with his sword. Instead, he placed a gentle kiss on my cheek, and then he retreated to the anteroom to make plans for his voyage.
Why did he let me live? I suppose he was grateful that I lent him a new dream. More probably he decided I was the best person to entrust his daughter with as he set sail. He had yet to give her a name, so I of course named her Daphna. She lived until forty, a beautiful old age for a Mellitian. She never married, and she never had children. And me? I keep going, like some decrepit sea serpent unaware it’s been washed ashore. Perhaps I’m too vile to die? I do wonder.
To this day, I am unsure why I didn’t present Lord Dober the book sooner. I don’t suppose there was much of an opportunity to do so during the metal of battle. But if I had acted sooner, perhaps I wouldn’t live to be the “last Mellite.” I think of all the future generations, lost in the void. For to kill another is not just to take one life, but many, down the line. As each Mellite fell, their futures darkened into an infinite black. And now they are extinct. Extinct, like the Kimall clan. Extinct, like someday all nations shall be, save perhaps the bancheki. Some blame the gods, but I cannot. The problem is us. Always has been, perhaps always will be. What more do you need to know about history than that?
In our lives there are those who build and those who destroy, and there must be a balance. You see, Lord Dober needed a mission. He wanted to believe. He was not meant to create libraries, for he was a man chased by bancheki, and then forged in fire. And that is why it made a certain poetic sense to me, when I learned several months later that he died at sea. As you know, my good little historian, they say the ocean swallowed him and his men up, somewhere in its vast middle as they cast about on their monomaniacal journey onward, ever onward to an imaginary land that I created.
The power of words, I tell you.
The Future
It’s so kind of you to ask about my future. What is left for these old bones? For something always comes next, until it doesn’t. It’s an honor to be asked for once, even if I bated you more than a little. But the truth is, I no longer care about my future. For I have already lived it, only like everything else, it too is now in the past. It’s all part of the same mechanism.
As I said, Lord Dober was presumed dead at sea many years ago. But it was only two months ago that I was certain he was gone. I was collecting cockles along the Brimline shore when I came upon a rusted axe. Could it be, I thought. But when fate drips with such honey, how can you not believe? I said a prayer over that primitive blade, or maybe it was a curse, I don’t know. Time rusts all of us, everyone and everything. I washed my feet in the cool tide to remember I was still alive.
Later that day, on my return to the village I stopped and stood in the Hopewell Meadow. I had not left my home in many months, but that afternoon I felt unafraid of who may see my face. I was old, I was bruised, I was both the world’s last Kimall, and its last Mellite, but I was alive. And I thought of those who had passed, and the confounding days of youth, when I would run through that same meadow giggling, if not carefree. But I was mostly alone then, and I was entirely alone now. And I thought of my unyielding sister, who was so afraid of any nick or scratch. How strange to have outlived her, to be ancient enough to have outlived caution. And of course my mind turned to Lord Dober, my only brother. To have outlived evil – that is an accomplishment indeed! What a thing after all these years, I thought, to still have a future…
From the depths of the wilderness came many eyes, all at once. It was the banchecki, crawling and slivering toward me, old post in the ground that I was. Did they remember? Did they somehow sense that the old woman who stood before them was once the little girl who escaped from monsters, the least of which were them? Soon I was circled by the sweltering mass, and they pawed at the ground around me, snorting and drooling. But by then I was older than fear, too. And though I stood still, it was with all the freedom of a dead tree. A husk in a world of husks. Someday we will all be gone, and everything will be returned to nature, and the banchecki will rule again. I don’t care what they teach you at university, pray for that day, my dear. I say the sooner it comes, the better.
“I’m not afraid, my little darlings,” I said to the wonderous beasts. “It’s not my time yet. Soon. Very soon.” And I laughed about how time had come so full circle, how I was now the wondering herb witch, like Dramadi was in decades past. Both the joys and the fears of youth erode with time, as though life itself is but a giant swath of sandpaper.
“Mushroom?” I said, holding up an old, faded stem to the gathering horde. “I have nothing else to offer you, my lovelies. I am far too old to run, and much too spent to fear. And I have lost almost everything, so you see? I have nothing left to give.” And in that moment they approached, and they nuzzled me from all sides, as though they really had been domesticated all those years before. It was like an embrace of all the seasons at once. It was a reunion with my oldest kin. It felt like a river of love.
“I’m sorry that we lack even your nobility,” I whispered to the assembled mass. “Now go, get back into the shadows where you belong.” A few protested and hissed as I shooed them away, but eventually they turned and followed their leader back into the mountain dales. I was again alone with my thoughts. Who are you? I wondered, when you’re the last of your people? What are you?
And then from somewhere – I know not where – a wellspring of perfect monarch butterflies ascended and danced through that meadow. Over my head, between my scraggly old legs, up toward the heavens. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. It felt like a kiss from my other lost people. It felt as though a promise had finally been fulfilled.
Finally, finally the future was here: a perfect day for butterflies.
As for my future, meaning the moments still to come? I say the same thing to you that I speak to the gods each night in prayer: I am ready, I am ready, I am ready.
THE END
Also by CT MACNAMARA
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To read more speculative fiction from CT MacNamara, visit the author’s website at www.ctmacnamara.com.
If you Enjoyed the Woman Who Buried Nations, check out these other works by CT MacNamara:
Death and the Mayor, a full length novel about a rural farming village during the Great Depression beset by supernatural events such as mass animal die offs and a persistent, unexplainable noise.
Demons and Daemons: Tales of Inspiration and Devilry, a short story collection featuring fifteen never before printed supernatural tales. Can you determine between demons and daemons?
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