The Rage

by Lassiter Williams

  “Tribulation Sarahdaughter!” a voice cried out. “Turn around and fight, you honorless coward!”

  Trib watched two New Murians emerge from the trees, swords drawn.

  “Master Jezebel,” she said. She recognized the other New Murian, a young apprentice, no more than 13 years old, but couldn’t remember the girl’s name.

  “Traitor,” Jezebel greeted her in return. “Both of you,” she said, pointing her sword at Morrigan as well.

  “Don’t reckon you’d want to hear my side of the story?” Trib asked, slowly moving to stand in front of the priestess.

  “You’ve betrayed Aoifa, the Scath, your fellow warriors, and all of New Murias,” Jezebel said. “What more is there to tell?”

  “You reckon I should hang, no questions asked?”

  Jezebel shook her head. “No time for that. Aoifa’ll be just as pleased if I bring her your head and tell her I caught you trying to teach those primitives the Rage. It won’t help them, of course. The Goddess gave us the Rage, to use against our enemies. It won’t work for them. I don’t even know if it will work for you anymore, though I’m willing to find out.”

  “Jezebel, we ain’t supposed to engage,” the apprentice said nervously. “The Scath’s orders were just to find the primitives’ village and report back.”

  “We found the village,” Jezebel replied without taking her eyes off Trib. “You know how? Because that pretty-eyed Native of yours told Aoifa all about it.”

  Trib felt the earth tilt beneath her feet. “What did you say?”

  “Aye,” Jezebel sneered. “Aoifa’s been having her way with him for days now. He’s told her everything she needs to know. Now summon your Rage, traitor. If you can.”

  The veil of red instantly started closing over Trib’s eyes, but she shook her head to clear it away.

  “I ain’t going to fight you,” she said through gritted teeth. She had no desire to hurt Jezebel. The person she wanted to kill was Aoifa, and she intended to try immediately.

  Jezebel let out the blood curdling shriek of her Rage summons and threw herself at Trib. Trib heard a second Rage summons and assumed it was the apprentice. She managed to deflect Jezebel’s first frenzied assault but knew she couldn’t defend herself against two Rages without summoning her own.

  Jezebel was tearing in for her second attack when she suddenly stopped and pitched forward. She landed face down and didn’t move again. The back of her head was caved in. Kinteka stood over her, her face red, her eyes bulging. She held a bloody ax in her hand. It was her Rage summons Trib had heard.

  Kinteka turned towards the young apprentice, who was now crying in fear. Too late Trib realized the girl hadn’t even been Initiated yet. She couldn’t summon a Rage to defend herself.

  “Kinteka, stop!” Trib shouted, but it had no effect. The apprentice was cut down as she backed away from Kinteka, begging for her life.

  “No!” Trib cried, starting towards the girl.

  Morrigan stopped her. “Kinteka is still in the throes of her Rage!”

  Kinteka spun back towards Trib with her bloody ax raised. Trib watched her come, unwilling to summon her own Rage. All she could think of was what Morrigan had said about causing the Native’s deepest pain. She wasn’t in the least surprised that Kinteka was identifying her as the enemy.

  Morrigan had begun to speak to Kinteka, her voice quiet and soothing, and so low Trib couldn’t tell what language she was using. Kinteka lowered her weapon as the Rage drained out of her. Eventually the Rage left her completely, and she dropped to her knees, exhausted.

  Morrigan knelt down beside her and put an arm around her shoulders.

  “She’ll need some time before she regains enough strength to walk back to the village,” Trib said.

  “I’ll stay with her and see to the apprentice. You go now.”

  Trib looked surprised.

  “Go,” Morrigan said again. “Find your storyteller. I will tell everyone to get ready, that Aoifa is coming.”

  Trib didn’t need to be told a third time. She turned and started running in the direction of the New Murian fort and Kwineechka.

  wineechka felt no pain. He felt no grief, he felt no shame, and he felt no hope.

  “You are home now,” Crow Woman sang and he knew she was telling the truth. “You belong here with me, nowhere else.”

  Crow Woman’s song was all he had. He didn’t want to hear anything else. He felt her hands on his body, but he didn’t care. His body didn’t matter to him anymore.

  “You belong with me. You will never leave,” Crow Woman sang.

  Kwineechka tried to remember where he’d belonged before her, but it all felt meaningless.

  “Tell me where your village is…”

  He had no reason not to, so he told her. He told her where the village was and how many people remained in it. He told her that Trib was going to teach them to fight so that they could defend themselves against Crow Woman.

  She laughed and kept singing.

  After a time Kwineechka became aware of a noise that wasn’t Crow Woman’s voice. At first it was only a mild annoyance, and he waited for it to go away. The noise grew louder. It was another voice. He thought he recognized it.

  “Ignore it,” Crow Woman sang. “She means nothing to you. Think only of me.”

  Kwineechka started to obey, but then he felt someone touching his face.

  “Kwineechka!” the familiar voice rang out. “Wake up!”

  For a moment, Crow Woman’s voice left him. Kwineechka’s eyes came into focus, and he knew where he was. He was trapped in Crow Woman’s prison again. And he knew the person standing in front of him.

  “Trib!” he gasped.

  Then her hands were torn away from his face.

  “Do not listen to her,” Crow Woman sang. “She is a bad dream, and I will not let her trouble you any longer. Stay with me. You have nowhere else to go, and no one else cares about you.”

  He felt the warm darkness closing around him. His sight failed. Trib’s voice faded, and he didn’t think of her again.

  “Storyteller of the People.”

  It was a new voice, strong and clear.

  “I used to go by that name,” Kwineechka replied. “No longer.”

  He became vaguely aware of the sounds of struggle around him.

  “You were chosen by the ancestors to be the Storyteller of the People. You cannot stop being the Storyteller until you die and even then your voice will remain part of every story told.”

  “I allowed the Story of the People to be taken from me,” Kwineechka said. “I am not worthy of the title of Storyteller. I am nothing.”

  “No story can be taken from you.”

  “Who are you to know this?” he asked.

  Suddenly his sight was fully restored to him, but instead of Crow Woman’s prison, he saw a multitude of shadowy figures surrounding him. The voice spoke again, and he knew it was not one voice but many speaking as one.

  “You know who we are.”

  Kwineechka knew, deep in his blood, bones, and being.

  “You are the ancestors,” he said.

  He could still hear Crow Woman’s song. It still pulled at him and filled him with a sense of hopelessness.

  “Free yourself,” the ancestors said.

  “I cannot. She took the story. She controls it now. Me, the story, and the People. I am not strong enough to defeat her.”

  “You have the power of the Storyteller.”

  “But the stories are all yours. I only let you speak through me.”

  “That is not the power of the Storyteller. It does not belong to us. It is yours and has always been yours. Use it now.”

  “How?” Kwineechka cried.

  “Release the past, release Crow Woman. She has no power over you except what you give her. Tell your own story. Tell the story of now. We will lend our strength and help you, but we cannot tell it for you.”

  “Kwineechka!”

  He heard Trib’s voice
again. Then he opened his mouth and started singing a new story. A story in which he was free and Crow Woman had no power over him. A story in which the shame of what she had done to him was hers alone, not his. And a story in which he still belonged among the People as their Storyteller. The ancestors joined him, and Crow Woman’s song died away completely.

  Kwineechka brought his story to an end, and when all was silent once more he blinked his eyes and looked around. The ancestors were gone. He stood in Crow Woman’s prison. Crow Woman was a crumpled heap on the floor. Trib, lost to her Rage, was overcoming the last of Crow Woman’s guards.

  “Trib,” he said calmly, “you can stop fighting now.”

  She dropped to her knees as the Rage left her.

  “We are leaving now,” Kwineechka told her. He helped her to stand.

  “There will be guards outside, more warriors,” she said.

  “They won’t bother us,” Kwineechka replied, the power of the story still echoing in his voice. He didn’t know how long it would last, but he knew that for the moment it would go however he chose to tell it.

  He heard Crow Woman’s voice behind them, small and broken. There was no power in it even when she laughed and said, “Run now, but you told me where your village is. I will come for you.”

  “Let me kill her,” Trib said, turning back. “Or we’ll never be free.”

  Kwineechka held her tight. “We have always been free. She has no power over us.”

  Trib let him lead her out of Crow Woman’s prison.

  ow long do you think we have until she attacks the village?” Trib asked as she and Kwineechka moved away from the fortress under the cover of darkness.

  “At least a day,” he replied. “She is weakened after I broke her spell. We will have time to warn the People.”

  “What did you do back there?” she asked. “How did you break her siren?”

  “I released the shadow that clung to my spirit,” he said. “I stopped believing her story.”

  Trib couldn’t see his face, but she heard the smile in his voice. She wanted to ask him more about it, but so many questions were crowding into her head, and she was exhausted after travelling all day to get to the fort and then using the Rage. She couldn’t seem to organize her thoughts into coherent speech.

  They walked in silence until the eastern sky began to lighten. Then a single thought floated to the surface of Trib’s chaotic mind.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Kwineechka turned to look at her as he walked. His face was blurry in the faint light, but her heart skipped a beat at the sight of it. She realized how much she had missed him, so much that it caused her physical pain.

  “Why are you sorry?”

  “I promised to stay close to you. I promised I wouldn’t let Aoifa touch you again.”

  She looked away, overwhelmed by regret at the thought of what he must have undergone as Aoifa’s prisoner.

  Kwineechka stopped walking and took hold of her arm so that she had to stop too.

  “You could not protect me from her, and I should not have asked you to. Even if you stayed by my side forever, she still would have had power over me until I learned how to free myself.”

  Trib pulled away, instantly missing the warmth of his fingers on her arm. She continued walking. He fell in step beside her, easily, as if there was nowhere else he wanted to be.

  “I betrayed you when I stayed to teach the People to fight,” she said.

  “I understand why you did this. You wanted to help the People.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t want to hurt you. I…”

  “You what?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  They continued walking as the morning progressed, sometimes in silence, sometimes talking of the things that had happened since they’d last seen each other. Trib told him about training the Original People and the Puritanics to fight together.

  “I would not have believed it possible after what the Pure Men did to the village of the Original People,” Kwineechka said.

  “Aye, they nearly killed each other at first.”

  Kwineechka was quiet after she told him about the incident between Josiah and Kinteka, though he seemed impressed when she told him how the Reverend had responded.

  “They are men after all, not just monsters.”

  “For now they are united against a common enemy,” Trib said. “We can only hope this alliance holds until Aoifa attacks.”

  “And Kinteka? She is all right?”

  “She seems well enough,” Trib said, thinking of the deaths of the two New Murians the day before. “She took to both combat training and the Rage well. It’s Nishingi who seems most upset.”

  Kwineechka smiled. “He has wanted to marry her since we were boys.” His smile faded. “I think he will not get the chance now.”

  Trib knew this was true. Many would die in the coming battle.

  She realized they were drawing close to the village of the Away People and knew she wouldn’t have another chance to speak with him alone.

  “I need to tell you something,” she said, her heart suddenly pounding.

  Kwineechka stopped and waited.

  “I tried to put you out of my mind,” she said slowly, keeping her eyes carefully on the ground. “I thought I would never see you again. But when Jezebel told me Aoifa had you…” Her voice trailed off and she kicked fiercely at a pinecone.

  “I reckon I care for you like I’ve never cared for anything or anyone,” she said finally. “Didn’t know I was capable of such a thing, but it’s the truth.”

  Kwineechka remained silent until she looked up at him.

  “Say something,” she said miserably. “Please.”

  He stared at her. The expression on his face was so unhappy that she turned away in humiliation, her heart sinking.

  “Tribulation,” he said and the next thing she knew she was in his arms. Her first instinct was to fight the embrace—she had never really been held before, except in situations where it wasn’t a good thing. Some other instinct took over almost immediately, and she relaxed against him, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her face against his chest, holding him as tightly as he held her. For a moment, it felt like the most natural thing in the world, like she had been waiting her whole life to find herself in this place. The only other time she had felt anything like this was when she was dancing—like everything fit, and she knew where she belonged.

  Then he stepped back and she saw that he still looked unhappy.

  “I am married,” he said.

  It was as though he had hit her again, the moment after impact before the pain set in.

  “Oh,” she said, moving a few steps away, trying to put distance between them before it started to hurt. “To who?” she asked vaguely.

  “Hinutet of the Away People,” he replied.

  “Oh,” she said again, feeling dizzy.

  She leaned forward and put her hands on her knees. “Of course,” she muttered. “I’m a fool...”

  “You do not understand…” Kwineechka took a step towards her, but just then a terrible cry arose from the direction of the village.

  Without another word, Trib straightened up and ran towards the sound, pulling her sword from her back as she went. Her mind was blank except for one horrifying thought—that Aoifa had arrived sooner than expected.

  Aoifa had not arrived in the village of the Away People, but the scene that greeted Trib was almost as bad as if she had. She heard Kwineechka arrive behind her and then heard him retch at the sight of so much blood. For a moment Trib’s mind was a confusion of destroyed bodies—her mother, her sisters, Cuss, Heresy, Morrigan…Then she returned to the present and identified the body on the ground as that of Josiah, the Puritanic who had attacked Kinteka.

  Kinteka stood over him, soaked in his blood. To Trib’s horror, as she looked at Kinteka, she realized the young woman was not in the thrall of a Rage. She had killed without it, just as Trib had killed the Puritan
ic boy.

  “No,” she moaned.

  Kinteka sank to the ground, her face in her bloody hands. The People stood around her, silent and still, unable to make sense of the atrocity they had just witnessed.

  No one knew what to do until Nishingi rushed forward and gathered Kinteka in his arms. He lifted her to her feet and led her away from the carnage. As he passed Trib she heard him saying something over and over again, crooning as if to a child.

  “What is he saying?” she asked Kwineechka, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  “He is saying she should have let him do it.”

  Okahoki stepped forward to stand beside the body. He spoke to the People who had gathered and then began to sing. Slowly, the Original People came out of their stupor and began to sing with him.

  “They are singing his spirit across the River of Death,” Trib said. “I recognize the song.”

  “Yes, and he has sent someone to get the leader of the Pure Men, so that they may bury him according to their custom.”

  Trib saw her father among the singing people and went to him. He put his arm around her shoulders, and she let him. She didn’t know the words to the song so she stood and prayed to the Goddess or Manito or whoever would listen, and asked that the angry spirit of Josiah would not linger around Kinteka.

  The Reverend came alone to gather Josiah. As he pulled the body away from the village on a litter of pine branches, Jongren spoke to him.

  “Will your men seek recompense?”

  The Reverend shook his head. “We knew he would end this way, though I had not expected the girl to do it with her own hands.” He looked at Trib and nodded. “I will pray for her.”

  When the Reverend was gone, Trib said, “I need to see her.”

  Jongren walked with her to Kinteka’s house. As Trib pushed through the door, she saw a blood-stained dress on the ground and stopped.

  “What is it?” Jongren asked.

  “The dress Kinteka embroidered. Her sister made one too, and she let me wear it to dance in. Before I turned her into a killer.”

  “Trib, don’t…” Jongren started to say but Trib moved past him.

  She found Kinteka asleep, wearing a clean robe. Morrigan sat beside her on the sleeping platform, washing blood out of her hair. Nishingi sat beside her on the ground, his knees pulled up to his chest. His brother stood near the door, his arms crossed, his face hard.