“I toured the northern outskirts of Saarfy Rainforest,” Eleim whispered, their third day in the jungle. “With twelve escorts on either side — all armed with longswords and cycles of experience in the wilderness — I felt a lot safer than I do right now.”
“What are you talking about?” Balsithedeen retorted in a murmur. “I’ve got this dagger, and you’ve got that shepherd’s crook. You’re fifty-nine, and I’m sixteen. We’ve got this.”
Their attempts to follow more closely to the cliffside coastline were met with peril. The land would crumble beneath their feet, and the shores had given rise to the thickest of the bristled vines. And the proximity to sunlight attracted other sorts of life to that section of the jungle; a pack of silver wolves slept near the coastal cliffs. Down a ways, a nest of vipers hissed at Eleim’s slow approach. Sunlight would have to elude the ambassadors for now.
She kept watch over the snoring Eleim that night, as he slept ten feet from the forest floor, in a contorted branch. In her diary, she reminisced on how she came to volunteer for the position of ambassador — the adventure unmatched, the reprieve from everyday life, the prowess of a title like “Ambassador”. Perhaps her mentor Henhadn wouldn’t scoff at the notion of her eldest son Henhall marrying a poor farmer’s daughter if that daughter had gained herself such a prestigious designation. “Ambassador Balsithedeen. 8th day under the Hawk’s Moon, in the 325th year of the Yaangd Dynasty.”
After a napkin full of stale bread and fresh water from the leaves of nearby vegetation, Drea’s secret letter seemed to pulse against her hip. It begged to be opened. But her companion awoke himself with a hearty snort. “Eleimhadn?” he cried, and Balsithedeen climbed to his side.
“Quiet, Eleim. You woke up from a dream. You nearly fell from the tree.” She patted his arm. “Sounds like it was a nice dream though.” He sighed, smirked, and sat up.
The two of them switched places, and Balsithedeen dreamt of Henhall’s chest gleaming in the moonlight. As on that night they shared by the public pool in Enesma, Balsithedeen sat with her toes in the warm water. Henhall filled her head with thoughts of summer. He emerged from the pool, and Balsithedeen handed him his blue tunic with the intricate yellow patterns around the hem and neck and armholes. As it had been in life, this dream version of Henhall tried to kiss her. But she stopped him, out of respect for her mentor — his mother. Henhall did not react to the sudden roar of a bear. This never happened. A vicious black bear stormed into the pool and leapt onto Balsithedeen.
She awakened in a fluster. Her body quivered, and she looked down from the tree to find Eleim against the base of the tree. The shepherd snored, loud as a mother bear. She descended and shook him awake. After profuse apologies, he led the way forward.
They started to pick berries to avoid running out of food, though the seaweed ran out the next day. Herbalist Glaadhedeen had explained to the ambassadors how to avoid poisonous berries after Hunter Fenhall had taught them the basics of hunting for food. Balsithedeen, though, could intuit what to do when she stumbled upon an injured doe, unable to stand on his twisted legs. Hrash watches over us. The umber doe writhed in agony, her underbelly mauled to shreds. She must have hidden well enough to escape the predator, though Eleim pointed out that her attacker must be nearby. The doe’s misery left her eyes as the jagged dagger entered her throat. They kept the fire as small as possible.
Bread ran out on the sixth day. I thought we had brought so much more. It had gone hard anyway.
Neither of the journeyers could marshal much rest. The jungle closed around them. The predators encroached. The green eyes watched. Howling mingled with buzzing, and it all blended together to chill the soul. The sun’s warmth could not pierce the layers and canopies of dense forestation. The cold seeped through their tunics and overshirts. Eleim used the tent as a coat, and Balsithedeen had falteringly skinned the doe for its thin hide.
But no wolf tore into their flesh. No green-eyed orangutan ripped arm from shoulder. No serpent filled their veins with venom. On the eighth day in the jungle, the thorns and creeping vines receded. Instead, oaks and apple trees sprouted from the green earth. The heavy muck turned back to hard-packed dirt and strewn gravel. They could see the cerulean coast once more, and Balsithedeen kissed Eleim on the lips.
“Come to think of it, I don’t want that jungle named after me,” Eleim laughed. “Men will curse my name for the lives lost.”
“I don’t care what you name it! We’ll find a way around it on our return journey.”
Eleim grew somber at the notion. Balsithedeen planned on returning to Henhall, with an impressive new title before her name and a new foreign ally by her side. But she worried at Eleim’s reaction to the notion of a return journey. Perhaps Eleim should not carry the gift-worthy furs and gemstones in his backsack. But she pushed the trepidation from her mind and marched on.
A herd of deer pranced across the sparse prairie. Spots of bog dotted the horizon, but the grassland had mostly fought off the nearby jungle. Eleim removed the tent from his shoulders and assembled it under the shade of a thin quiver tree. He insisted Balsithedeen take first slumber, as he had a taste for deer. Eleim promised his hunt would not take him out of sight of the quiver tree, and Balsithedeen rested her head on a corner of the doe hide. I will need to mend my kirtle when Eleim takes his turn at sleep. She dreamt of Henhall, though his gray eyes had turned green.
She awoke to a gravelly yelp, and her dagger bathed in moonlight. Her eyes adjusted to the real world. Eleim sat not by her side, but off some distance. A struggle — she could not make out the situation. She leapt to her feet and stumbled towards her companion.
A snarling hound sprawled across Eleim’s writhing body. With its foaming mouth, it snapped at Eleim’s shoulder, but he seized its neck. Eleim’s neck already sported a gash, but the pain did not stop him from digging his fingers into the hellhound’s eye socket. As it squealed in pain, Balsithedeen stabbed the frantic mutt in its side. Before it could turn to pounce on her, she stabbed him again in the temple. It was dead.
But a silver shape from nowhere leapt into her, and her head slammed against the cold gravel. She wrestled to turn over, only to find another large, green-eyed dog biting at her neck. The foam about its lips splashed into her eyes. One thrust of its maw had opened the flesh in between her cheek and earlobe. The sensation of dipping one’s ears underwater.
She fought him elbow and knee. She felt so fatigued. It lunged for her neck once more. Before her evasions could inevitably fail, Eleim knocked the mongrel off of her with his bloody crook.
The quicksilver wolfhound jumped to its feet and lunged at the two bleeding ambassadors, but the jagged dagger found its throat.
Eleim cursed and collapsed. Balsithedeen howled and wrapped her cheek with the torn kirtle. Her mouth and nose were hidden from view, but she could see just fine.
She staggered towards the convulsing shepherd. “I’m so sorry,” he uttered. “I was stalking the deer, and I sat down to rest… I fell asleep, Balsithedeen. I fell asleep. Leave me here.”
“Nonsense,” she said, her words muffled through the crimson kirtle. Crimson to conceal how much blood I’m losing. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Those wolves — the bison before the woods—”
“Yes, and those green eyes.” Balsithedeen tore Eleim’s breeches from his hips to wrap the trouser cloth about his neck.
Even in this crisis, Eleim winced in embarrassment. “My underclothes—”
“I pissed myself, too. This is to save your life.”
Eleim squirmed weakly. “So tight.”
“This is how you live, Eleim. Now stop fidgeting.”
Physician Aerhall’s voice whispered in her head: Wrap the wound tightly. Upon the bandage’s oversaturation, remove quickly and pour alcohol on the wound. Then, reapply fresh bindings.
Balsithedeen carried Eleim unconscious to the quiver tree, where their supplies rested against a root. She rifled through the moonlit provisions
, her eyes strained and her fingers tense. She opened the bottle of rum from her backsack, removed the bloody kirtle from her cheek, and poured the rum onto her face. She shouted the foulest curses, and the fire-hot rum bubbled like a boiling spring. She awoke with her wound in the dirt; she had blacked out. Another tip of the rum bottle, and she bit her tongue to stay conscious. She pulled the roll of cloth bandage from her sack and wrapped her cheek tightly.
The rest of the rum bubbled on Eleim’s gaping neck. The rocky soil gulped the blood leaking from his once-brown breeches, which Balsithedeen had discarded. Now, Eleim awoke with a scream of terror. Rum splashed in his eyes. Balsithedeen calmed him with soft whispers and a firm caress. The rest of the bandages swathed Eleim’s neck.
“Rest, Eleim. I’ll keep watch. Your wound will heal if you rest.” In her cheek, she could feel the pulse of lifeblood trying to evacuate her arteries. “There’s no more danger,” she hoped. “Stay with me. Please. Go to sleep. But don’t… Don’t leave me.”
Eleim slept uneasy. Thrice, he jumped up and cried out, “Wolves! Balsithedeen! Watch out!” She patted his arm and led him back to the tent. She watched as the fear and vigor fled from his face, along with its color. Balsithedeen succumbed to fatigue once, but the half-dreamt mind-image of the green-eyed hellhound pried her eyes ajar. She would not be able to sleep that night.
The sun crept above the remnants of the jungle behind them, and — by an indisputable miracle — they both hobbled eastward. Their gait had slowed, and their bandages had marinated. The only cloth they still possessed sheltered their shoulders from the morning chill. Physician Aerhall’s far off whisper could not convince Balsithedeen to continue east in the nude.
Six drops of rum remained in the glass bottle until Eleim let it empty onto his tongue. Balsithedeen ate nothing but apples for four days. She had not cooked their predators. The foam about their blood red lips told a story which Balsithedeen did not like.
The sun set, the sun rose. Half a lunar cycle outside of Independence, the rolling clouds obscured the sweet, yellow sun. Two days more in the grassland, and the apples ran out. Another day, and the grass grew tall. Amidst the elbow-high blades, Balsithedeen could not tell what happened to her companion. But he no longer followed alongside her. She searched for two hours, but she could find no sign of Eleim. His backsack contained the furs and gemstones meant as gifts for any foreigners we met. And she wept for the first time. Alone and scared and aching — she prayed to Hrash; her mother had taught her the prayer one recited when a Hrashmaadite perished. Or, a Hrashhillite now. Who cares?
Balsithedeen felt used. At the end of her life, her duties remained unfulfilled — to find a foreign people to ally with the pilgrims, to deliver the Drysword’s secret letter, to return and marry the man of her every fantasy. Why did she have to die? She felt cheated of a purposeful end to this — her final diary entry. She wanted to mourn Eleim aloud, but her throat cracked with a blistering dryness. Let the wolves come. And then the vultures. And then the Hrashhillites, who sent me on this cursed journey. So they can mourn me. And feel the guilt that is due to them. I do not deserve this.
But her ears heard a sweet sound — sweeter than strawberries. Words. Words she could understand. “Who is that?” Wherever he lay, Eleim breathed no more, his heart still as stone. This is not Eleim’s gravelly voice. Balsithedeen’s own heart had stopped for just an instant — confused, hopeful, frightened. Even with her only companion bereft of life, those distant sounds were impossibly understandable.
“Who are you?” shouted the distant voice. Is this figure what Congresser Drea told me about? The secret letter—
“Balsithedeen,” she yelled, though all that came out was a hideous rasp. She hadn’t spoken in days, except to mourn Eleim. She flailed her arms instead.
A figure on the horizon, one step closer, then another. A longbow, nocked with a slender arrow. Soldier’s raiment, standard issue.
“Who are you? Speak!”
She squinted to focus her vision. The world distorted around her, and the sparse trees danced like streamers in the wind. She tried to speak, but only a dry cackle emerged. She swallowed what little spit she could muster and tried again. In a crackling whisper: “Balsithedeen. Ambassador Bals…”
He saw she could not speak. His sharp features softened. “Take my hand.”
Chapter eleven
Wed
The herbalist and the lumberer. Wed. How domestic. Gird in cerulean and seafoam silk, the bride floated down the center aisle. Her arm interlocked with an old priest, his gray robe fringed in gold tassels. The tall groom and the gray-robed rector chanted a somber hymn — a hymn which Falhadn hated.
Grooms, rectors, and eventually brides would always sing this horrid hymn to open up a marriage rite. Four verses: a solo by the rector, a duet with the groom, a trio with the bride, and a full cacophony when every witness joins in. Falhill couldn’t sing to save his own neck, but, at his own wedding, he had shouted those grating holy words for all Hrashmaad to hear.
The herbalist Glaadhedeen joined in for the third verse. She smiled ear to ear, but her voice shook nervously. Nurses would tell young girls that a shaky voice on the day of their marriage rite meant a life of sorrow and loss. But Falhadn did not suspect Glaadhedeen bought into such trite superstition. She looked like the happy bride all the way down the aisle.
The groom struggled not to smile, lest he allow emotion to take hold. “Men should be men,” the clerics would say at a marriage rite where they did not like the groom, or the match altogether. “Emotion is for young girls.” But this lumberer Calnhall kept his eyes dry and his chin held high. Calnhall’s shoulders stretched twice as wide as Glaadhedeen’s, but they complemented one another. One was not more attractive than the other.
It came time for the fourth verse of the wedding hymn, and Falhadn moved her lips. Beside her, Falhill screeched like wind chimes dropped down a stair. All in all, seven hundred voices joined as one — the largest wedding Falhadn had ever heard of. Seven hundred, out of the fifteen who fled to the colony. Whether mothers tended to young children, or old men hoed their gardens, or bitter crones envied a young happy couple, or a lech used the opportunity for some rendezvous, half the protestants in Hrashhill hadn't turned up for the wedding of Herbalist Glaadhedeen to Lumberer Calnhall. The amount of attendees still qualified as far too many.
Glaadhedeen’s father died in Enesma, and she never knew her grandfather, so beside her stood Cleric Jeulcaln — her groom’s distant cousin, who had served as a mentor to the young couple. Presiding as rector was Traamis the Truly Annoying, who had agreed to officiate the marriage rite only after the congress had commanded him. Traamis disliked the fuss of public appearances, but Drea and his congress knew how the commoners would love to witness their recently-recovered priest-hero join the first protestant couple in holy union as his first public appearance since the assassination attempt.
Falhadn remembered back to Enesma when she pulled Traamis from the chilly waters. If she hadn’t, Traamis wouldn’t have made it on the ships and arrived on this virgin shore to officiate this irksome wedding. Hooray me.
The seven hundred voices resonated through the trees to the north and the waves to the south — and piqued Falhadn’s whelming headache — but the hymn finished quick enough. The words prayed over a protestant wedding were much the same as an old Hrashmaadite wedding, but Falhadn couldn’t help but see the glow about Glaadhedeen. She’s known the lumberer, and more than once. Falhadn could not judge this woman, with whom she traded on occasion — herbs and balms for fish and nails. Glaadhedeen had been in the middle of her marriage rite when Theul and his False Priests sacked Enesma. By her reckoning, the eve of the Great Flight should have been her wedding night. At her Enesma wedding, her father Lumberer Glaadhill had perished, minutes before he would have been renamed Glaad.
But the congress had changed the colony’s naming customs. Marriage would no longer give way to the same types of naming conventions.
/>
Last week, Falhill had griped about the herbalist and her grumbling. Glaadhedeen penned a brief letter to the congress, requesting that she not be the first bride in all of history not to take her husband’s name. Falhadn understood what the congress was trying to do, but the situation would prove sour to all affected for an entire generation.
Glaadhedeen clearly worried herself with other matters at the moment; the bride lifted her veil of seafoam green to reveal a lightly painted face of cream and crimson. Her cheekbones could cut glass, but her neck sagged somewhat.
The groom was all sinew. Even his mouth sat squished between two bulging muscles that passed for jowls.
Traamis finished reading Hrash’s commandments concerning marriage and love, and the couple shared a chaste kiss. As they presented themselves to their myriad witnesses and began to dance to Rudrud’s lively harp, Falhadn couldn’t help but recall her own small wedding ceremony.
It had snowed. White blanketed the capital Eangd as Hullahedeen had floated down the royal temple’s courtyard, eager to adopt a new name. Falhall sang with the rector — some young ecclesiast Yaangd later burned alive — and Hullahedeen controlled her anxious breathing, just like her nurse Maerfy had instructed. When that stupid hymn arrived at its third verse, Hullahedeen’s voice brooked no tremor. Her harmony flowed from her like a river before a waterfall. The tones her slender throat produced sounded perfect. So why have I known such sorrow and loss?
Glaadhedeen and Calnhall ended their dancing, and the hundreds applauded. Traamis nearly continued on and announced their new names, but that was not the new way. Glaadhedeen visibly tensed, but she commenced with the reception. Newly wed, she and her groom returned down the aisle whence they came, and hundreds shadowed them.
The Heirs of History: A Nation From Nothing Page 13