by Megan Bannen
He steps intimidatingly close to her. “You know I never ask for anything twice.”
She shrinks back from him, pressing herself against the shabby cupboard. “Yes, Husband.” She turns hurriedly and goes on tippy-toe to fetch two onions and a potato from a meager store on top of the cabinet, her bulbous stomach hanging over the work surface. For a breath, she pauses and looks to the statue of Saint Brivig, the patron saint of wives. I know she’s sending up a heretical prayer to a saint, the way I used to pray to Saint Vinnica when I didn’t know where else to turn. I’m looking at only one piece of the puzzle, but I can already see the whole picture, the way this man ruins her life every day and all the time simply because he was born in the image of the Father. The spirit inside me roils, swirling together with my own anger.
Tavik comes back and shakes the rain out of his hair before he notices the husband.
“Come in, come in,” the man says as if his home were a mansion and he were welcoming an old friend. He’s treating complete strangers with the esteem he should be showing his wife, the mother of his child.
I step between him and Tavik, and it’s all I can do to keep Elath’s rage from setting my eyes alight.
“Gel-el-elgar?” Tavik calls uncertainly behind me.
I ignore him as I draw myself up to my full height. I want this man to see just how much taller I am than he is. “I don’t care for the way you treat your wife, sir,” I tell him in a voice edged with frost. “She is not your property. She is not your chattel. She is not yours at all. And you will treat her with dignity and respect as the Father commands you. Do you understand?”
I’ve rendered him speechless. He nods as he gazes up at me with eyes full of fear simply because he believes me to be a Knight of the Order.
“If I ever return to this place and find that you have hurt that girl in either body or spirit, I will unleash something far worse than words on you.” I lean in so that he has to look me in the eye. “As the Father commands me.”
We eat rabbit broth and hard bread in silence. I make sure Pruda saves her hen. After the husband, whose name I haven’t bothered to learn, goes to bed, I pull Pruda aside. “If he ever hurts you, in any way, you should seek help from the Monastery of Saint Helios, all right?”
She smiles weakly but says nothing in response. She knows the truth as well as I do. The monks of Saint Helios would only send her back, instructing her to obey her husband as the One True God wills it, because a man is made in the image of the Father, and it is her duty to submit to him.
I want to help Pruda clean up the kitchen, but a man would never do such a thing, so I’m left to watch her work as I sit with Tavik by the fire. What little warmth and energy filled me after I first arrived drains out of me all over again.
“Was it me, or did you kick ass this evening?” Tavik asks as we lie down by the fireplace after Pruda goes to bed.
“I’m not entirely sure what that means.”
He laughs. “Probably for the best. Good night, Brother Elgar, Kicker of Ass.”
“Good night, Brother Remur.”
As the fire’s flames turn to embers, I consider what little good I’ve done today. Pruda is as much a prisoner as I am, and a prison, too, when I consider the baby inside her, especially if that baby is a girl. It reminds me of my wedding, the way I had no say in what happened. At least it was fake.
I roll over and look at Tavik, his face slack in sleep, angelic by the light of the fire.
Fake. Definitely fake.
Probably.
After a while, as sleep continues to elude me, my mind drifts to Mera, the girl she was, the woman she’ll never be, the friend she might have been. You’re so lucky, she told me, and maybe she was right. At least I’m still among the living, and at least I still have a few choices left.
Which is more than I can say for Pruda.
In the dream, Zofia-who-is-not-Zofia sits on a stool beside me, frowning at my work, Her arms crossed, Her lips puckered in disapproval. “You’re taking too long with this.”
I stare at my desk. Usually, I keep it fairly tidy, but today there are stacks and stacks of books and papers and scrolls. The sight of so much work overwhelms me. I don’t know where to begin. “I can’t remember the assignment,” I admit sheepishly.
Behind me, the sound of drumbeats drifts into the scriptorium. I turn in my chair and gaze into the darkness beyond the door in confusion.
“That,” She says in a tone of exasperation. “How can you forget?”
The rhythm grows louder as I step into the hallway and follow the sound through an ever-thickening forest. I dance, feeling the drumbeats in my chest like the beating of my heart. The path carries me to the clearing, the stream, and the huge tree towering above me, so expansive that it would take twenty men linking hands to encircle the trunk. The drumming swells, and the stag waits at the clearing’s center.
No.
Not a stag.
Tavik.
On his head, he wears a crown of antlers.
The drums stop, and I am no longer dancing.
The woman is there again, as indistinct as before, but I know who she is now.
“Ati!” I try to call out to her—the Hedenski word for mother—but no sound comes from my mouth. I am powerless to move or speak as my mother drags the blade of her dagger across Tavik’s throat, letting his blood onto the roots of the tree. The stream of his life pours into the river, and my heart splits with its own cut.
My mother’s voice is Zofia’s voice, ringing sharply into the night. “The son gives his death so that the Mother may live!”
Thirty-Three
The first thing I see when I wake is Tavik’s back, curled away from me in the predawn light. I listen to him inhale and exhale like the ebb and flow of the sea, reassuring myself that his death in my dream wasn’t real.
But the tree was real—is real.
Everything falls into place like a well-played game of Shakki.
Elath’s body is a tree, just as it was in the text Tavik and I put together. I have seen it with my own eyes, danced before it in my forgotten childhood.
I know what it is and where to find it, but there’s only one way to get to the great tree that is Elath’s body in Hedenskia: through the Dead Forest. Tavik swore he’d protect me, but how can I ask him to face the telleg again? How can I face them again? Goodson Anskar was the one who got me through that nightmare ten years ago, and he may be the only one who can help me now, no matter what Tavik promised.
My mind is certain of this. My heart is not.
Careful not to wake him, I rummage through my sack for the last strip of my Daughter’s sash and sneak out the front door. If only I could slink away from the dreadful truth as easily.
There’s a gelya tree in the yard, visible from the road that leads to the Monastery of Saint Helios, and I tie the red strip to a low branch. I’m not sure why. I know he’s not looking for me, and I know he’ll never see it. It’s just that there’s something comforting in the gesture, like hugging my old rag doll to my chest. The fabric flaps in a gust of wind that smells of decay and the early approach of winter. I kneel on the carpet of wet leaves, clutching the Goodson’s triptych in my hand. I don’t press my forehead to the earth. I no longer know to whom I’m praying, but I do know that I’m not subjugating myself to any god’s will, the Father’s or the Mother’s.
“Let me be wrong,” I pray. I beg. “I don’t want to go back. Don’t make me go back.”
It takes nothing to recall how a telleg’s mouth rips itself across its chalky, faceless head. I can still hear the screams of the murdered tear past me, even when I’m awake.
How can you forget? Zofia’s voice asks me.
But that wasn’t Zofia, was it, the life humming inside me, speaking to me in the guise of the only mother I have ever known?
Mother.
Elath.
Goddess.
Demon.
I rise to my unsteady feet, close my eyes, and bre
athe deeply through my nose as I begin the sequence I have seen Tavik perform more times than I can count, slow, methodical, deliberate.
Beautiful.
It’s harder than it looks to move so slowly, to turn and stretch so precisely, although that may be my own exhaustion at play. I open my eyes a hair to keep my balance, but my focus is on the movement. I’m praying, I tell myself. This is a prayer. And it is. It feels the way a prayer should—reverent, clear—only now I’m praying with my whole body, not just my words.
I reach my arms outward and back, my elbows pointing skyward. Then I bring my hands down to my sides, remembering the way Tavik turns the swords over his hands, or tries to. I’ve never appreciated how difficult that maneuver is until this moment, how hard the entire prayer must be for him, holding the weight of both swords steady through each painstaking sequence. I feel the tugging sensation I felt so long ago, mild in comparison to the moment the seedpod burst in my hand, but related, similar. An answer from within.
I start from the beginning, my eyes glazing over, my breath like a bellows. In my mind, each movement has a name: Zofia, Mera, Pruda, Vinnica, Lanya.
“Gelya?”
I stumble to a halt. Tavik stands before me, sleep rumpled and confused. Like me, he left his cloak and sword belt inside, and his tunic is wrinkled around his waist.
“I—I’m sorry,” I stammer, mortified by what I’ve done and even more mortified to be caught doing it. “I’m so sorry.”
“Was that my prayer?”
I can’t look him in the face. “Are you angry?”
“No.”
“I was just . . .” I begin, but that’s as far as I get. I smooth down my hair, unsure what to say to him. There are suddenly so many things unsaid between us.
He comes to stand by my side.
“What are you doing?” I ask him, his proximity like a fire blazing next to me.
“I’ve never tried it without swords. Can we start from the beginning?”
I hesitate, but Tavik doesn’t wait for an answer. He gives me a nod and says, “All things in balance.” Then he moves his arms directly skyward in two parallel lines, arcing them slowly downward to his sides.
“This is the Greeting of the Morning Sun,” he tells me, and by the time he’s retracing the movement back the way he came, I’m with him.
“The Farewell to the Morning Star,” he says.
He names each movement.
The Celebration of Birth.
The Gift of the Mother’s Love.
The Creation of Life.
“The opening sequence begins as my own life did, with the Mother,” he explains without pause, moving directly into the next pose.
The Molding of Woman from Whom All Life Comes.
The Flooding of the Delta.
The Gathering of Grain to Feed the Hungry.
Together, we bow low into the Supplicant Child and reach outward. “The swords extend from the soul at the center of your being,” says Tavik.
The Offering of Man to the Father’s Service. Here, the arms move in different directions. “I lead with what would be the Sword of Wrath if we were carrying blades, the weapon of the weaker hand, because death is weaker than life.”
The Sweeping Away of What Came Before.
We arch our backs, and our arms cross behind us in a gesture Tavik calls the Acceptance of Death, followed by the Triumph Over the Dark Night, the part where he struggles, the moment when he spins the pommels of his weapons over the back of each hand. But without the swords, there is no possibility of failure.
The final gesture closes with our fists brought together before our hearts.
“The Promise of Right Action,” Tavik murmurs.
We stay like that for a moment as an awkwardness creeps in, at least on my part.
“How did I do?” I ask him with a nervous laugh.
“The execution wasn’t perfect, but the sanctity of it was.” He faces me, and something in that look makes my skin light up. He rubs the side of his leg, his eyes shifting away from me. “It isn’t strictly a Kantari prayer, you know. I mean, it is, but . . .”
“But?”
“It’s my prayer, specific to me.”
He bites the inside of his cheek, and I think I may have done something really and truly offensive. “Oh. I didn’t realize. I’m sorry.”
He scrapes the toe of his boot through the rotting leaves. “There are lots of poses and sequences for prayers. When you become an adult, you string together the ones you find most meaningful.”
“Is it bad to pray someone else’s prayer?”
He smooths out the trough he made in the leaves with his foot. “No.”
“Have you ever prayed someone else’s prayer?”
“No. It’s kind of complicated.”
I want to make certain that I haven’t offended him, so I ask, “Does a woman ever pray a man’s prayer? Or a man a woman’s prayer?”
His gaze shifts away again. “Not often.”
And then his eyes find the flag I tied onto a branch of the gelya tree, and my cheeks burn with regret as I watch the understanding of what it means sink in.
“What is that?” he asks icily.
“It’s . . . It’s . . .” How can I tell him about the tree in Hedenskia, about the Mother’s body, about the path I must take to get there? I told him I wanted the truth, but now that I have it, I can’t seem to say it aloud, to give voice to all the fear rushing into me.
“How long?” he spits.
“Please don’t yell at me.”
“Well, yelling is what people do when they’re really mad! Go figure!”
“Let me explain.”
“Explain what? That you’re leaving a trail for the Goodson so he can come save his precious Daughter? That is what you’re doing, isn’t it?”
There are so many things I need to tell him, but my hurt and fear come bursting out of my mouth instead. “I am a Vessel and a Daughter of the Convent of Saint Vinnica, and the Goodson means the world to me. What did you expect?”
“I expected you to know good and well who you carry inside you. I expected you to do the right thing by Her. But you would willingly put Her into the hands of the monster who is going to lock you away if he ever gets his hands on you.”
“That’s not true.”
“He’s already kidnapped you once, so why in the name of the Mother do you trust him now? And what was he doing in Hedenskia in the first place, I’d like to know? He showed up ten years ago, and then the Hedenski coincidentally shut down their only two harbors and cut off what little contact they had with the outside world? Have you ever thought about that? Because I’d lay even money you haven’t. What kind of man takes a child through the Dead Forest, through the telleg? Ask yourself that.”
“It wasn’t like that. You don’t know him.”
Veins pop along Tavik’s neck as he leans his livid face into mine. “I know he sent Brother Miklos to level my town. I lost my family—my brothers, my mother. And then he shows up in Hedenskia and did the Mother knows what to your own people. At least you have the luxury of forgetting. And he did all that to hunt down a goddess he thinks is a demon, the same ‘demon’ who’s inside you, I might add. So let me just remind you that if he ever gets his hands on you, he’s going to lock you up and throw away the key. The one thing he is absolutely not going to do is help you.”
Tavik might as well run me through with the Sword of Wrath, and he’s not even finished yet.
“And here’s something else you might want to think about, my beloved wife. If you’ve left a trail for one Knight of the Order, who’s to say another knight hasn’t followed it? You wanted to bring the Goodson to us, but what if you’ve led Brother Miklos right to our doorstep? Good job! Well done! Brilliant!”
Holy Father, I never considered that possibility. What if Brother Miklos has been following my flags? What if Mera and her family died because of what I did? My chest heaves with remorse. I turn on my heel and head straight f
or the road that will take me to the Monastery of Saint Helios and to the Goodson and as far away from Tavik as I can get.
“Fine! Go!” he calls to my retreating backside. “Go find your savior! But don’t come crying to me when he leaves you to die in a dungeon, and then the whole world shrivels up because the Mother will be dead and gone, too!”
I pick up the pace. I can’t get away fast enough. By the time I hear him hawk and spit behind me, wasting his water out of pure spite, I am no longer walking.
I’m running.
Thirty-Four
I run so fast that the world around me becomes a blur and my lungs scream for air. The burning of my muscles feels better than the ache in my heart, so I pump my legs harder, pushing my body until I can go no farther. I stop in the middle of a harvested barley field, so close to the monastery I can see the chapel’s spire in the distance, but as I try to catch my breath, I look behind me, not ahead.
There’s no sign of Tavik.
I’ve been tethered to him so long that I have no idea what to do with my newfound freedom. Only it doesn’t feel like freedom at all. It feels like the unmooring of a rudderless boat, like setting out on a journey under a starless sky.
I turn in a circle and take in the rolling land in all directions. The world is vast, and I’m so small within it.
I wish I could run all the way home to Saint Vinnica, but even as I think the words, the dream dissolves. Once you rip the flower from the soil, you can’t replant it and expect it to grow and thrive. You can only hope it lives, and what kind of life is that? What life is left to return to at Saint Vinnica when Zofia is dead and when I hold a being inside me that the Goodson hates?
He’s going to lock you up and throw away the key.
Why did Tavik have to say it?
The impulse to throw something as hard and as far as I can makes my fingers curl, and with no stones in sight, I bend over, yank what remains of the ruined, rain-spoiled barley stalks from the earth, and hurl them into the air, flinging them every which way.
“I don’t want this!” I shout to the sky, raising hooked fingers toward heaven as if I could claw my salvation directly from the Father.