I lost awareness of what was around me—and her. Some of those rough bloodied foreign men remained in the forest. Lost, far from their homes. Angry men who perceived defeat and failure in their fight.
You must know, Aoife, not all foundlings are lost and abandoned. We take into our care children who bruise and bleed from all parts of their bodies, who are sick with neglect, who survive horrors they did not cause. Explain to me a human being who can do this to a child. Explain to me how anyone can again do what was done to them. So— There were three of them. They captured us—the girl, the dead boy, and me.
I understood not a word they said. They debated what to do with us, I could tell, debated long.
Makha, yes, I failed to mention Makha. She accompanied me everywhere, watchful, loyal companion that she is. She understood to stay away from the human battles. Her teeth and stealth were no match for blades. But she would not leave the closeness of my side, or the sight of me.
I knew she watched as the men subdued us. One grabbed the girl and the dead boy she refused to drop. Her brother, no doubt. Two wrestled me to the ground and bound my arms behind my back. I knew this danger was worse than any I had ever faced. They bound my hands and ankles and tied me to a tree. They took the baby from the girl and threw him to the ground. She screamed and wept. She was tied to a large tree several feet away. The rope coiled around her chest. In my delirium I wondered where they found the ropes. Why they let us live.
It was night. There was a cooking fire. A hare torn apart among
them. A squirrel, too. I was starved, thirsty, sore. One of them tossed a shred of meat near enough that I could bend to the ground and take it. I tried to breathe. My training all came to one breath and the next. This moment. This moment. They had no drink but they were drunk. The man who seemed to lead, the cruelest of them, but also the most calm, flashed his sword at me. Pricked my skin enough to bleed. He spoke and they all laughed. The girl looked at her brother, who was lost in the dark.
Then this man, who made me bleed, approached the little girl. He knelt in front of her. He spoke in a tone that froze me as I became hot with a terrible fury. I cried out and he laughed. I had told him to stop, which he didn’t heed, no matter my words. One of his companions drew his sword at me at a threatening distance. What provoked what happened next, I cannot say. I don’t know. I cannot fathom. Why?
I remember he looked at me. Looked me square in the eyes. They were dark and they glistened. They were strangely vacant, then strangely full of elation.
The man robbed the girl of her clothing. He wrenched her legs apart. He desecrated that child before my eyes. What was the word you said in your language? Rape? Rape of a child. I screamed and she screamed screamed screamed screamed. I strained against the rope, my chest raw with thrashing, screaming to let her go. The sword sliced me open and Makha howled as the blade swept through. My wound her wound. Blood from my throat to my groin.
The rage. I had never felt such rage. I wanted to kill them all, especially the fiend. What being does that? The other men did nothing to stop him. Not a word or gesture. They allowed it. Yet worse. Worse. I wanted him to kill the girl. I wanted to kill her because I could not imagine how she could survive this horror. I wanted her dead. I wanted a child dead. I might have killed her myself with my own hand, given the chance, if the fiend had not stabbed her again and again with such force that he had to pull the sword from the tree. I saw the tree sway and felt its roots moan under my feet. It wailed and I cried and I welcomed the wicked mercy.
My legs were wet with my own blood. Makha howled again— that time with warning—and the men looked at each other with fear. She was near enough to attack. Had I called her, she would have risked her life for mine.
I couldn’t decide whether I wished to live or die, so I breathed and willed my blood to clot to give me moments to decide, or to prepare to die at their hands. My wolf lay in the brush. I sensed her. She watched me.
Someone cut the child free and pulled her body and the baby’s into the forest. They fell into thick exhausted sleep. I reached into the well of myself. It was so empty. I never knew such emptiness. Come morning, I was still alive. My body hurt. Flies crawled on my open flesh. The men arose. They seemed surprised, then angry, that I had survived the night. The fiend and one of the men went into the forest, while the third kept guard. They returned with a hare snared on a rope. The fiend laid a piece of raw meat within reach. I bent to take it—my body primal in its response to survive—and I took it in my teeth. I raised myself to chew as a man and swallowed a loose morsel, then saw what was hidden under the flesh. The orb of evidence stared at me.
The fiend laughed and laughed and laughed. I gagged and tried to stand, and he kicked me in the jaw. I fell to the ground. They untied me and—still conscious, though barely so—I was thrown into a crevice where soil had eroded from the roots of a tree. They covered me with dirt and rocks.
They buried me alive. A narrow stagger of stones must have given me enough room to breathe.
The next moment I remember, Makha licked my face. She dug her teeth into my arm enough to hurt. She forced me from the hole. I lay on the ground as she licked my body. The wound was sore and alive. Alive, yes, because I saw the white maggots in her silver muzzle.
She bit into my hair and forced me to crawl to water. I drank. I vomited. I drank. I went unconscious. She hunted for me but I could not, would not, eat. She disappeared, only to return with a honeycomb in her mouth. She crushed it with her jaws. The honey oozed on my skin and into the wound. She smeared it with her nose. I screamed with pain and she whimpered in reply. She wept with me under the moon. She forced me into that dim light and slept against my side. Some nights, I didn’t know whether I was man or wolf, alive or dead.
She fed me honey, dressed me in honey. We did not speak, not
what we humans call speech, but she communicated beyond words
in a way I always understood.
You must live, she told me.
Why? I asked her.
That is your reason to decide, she said, but I love you and want to save you as you saved me.
I could eat, then sit, then stand. I had no awareness of time. My wound crawled no more but would not heal. I wept every day until I was exhausted. Had I left the girl alone, she might have lived. She would not have endured those final hours of her brief innocent life. What happened to her was my fault.
I led the fiends to her. And no matter what I had been taught to believe and trained to honor, I no longer considered those men, men. I had believed evil to be a perception. I experienced it as real. That evil lived in me—that power and desire to destroy. I feared myself. I feared all of humankind. I was not spared this sickness. Makha knew the way into the realm. She had accompanied me before. She led me to the Three. You thought they were myth? They are no myth. I risk my life for their mystery while others mistake the treasure they keep.
So—
I stood before them with my weeping wound. The woman-wisp gave me a potion. The dwarf laid me on a soft bed in a cave. I felt no pain but I was awake. The dragon blew fire on a brand that the dwarf seared into my back and the woman cooled with water and song. This was a ritual meant to cleanse me. The wound healed with a slight leak, and the dwarf crafted a plate to protect my flesh as well as hide my pain. Prepare yourself.
Look, woman. Look at my body. Never mind the slices and gouges.
Look at the scar that split me in two. My navel is gone, eaten by maggots. The blade ripped only skin and muscle, but the deed tore more, far more.
I awake every day with that child’s blood on my hands and in my own body. Every day with the trace of rage I could not conceive I possessed.
A sickness festers beyond our settlements, worse than I ever imagined. I am witness, and now I am carrier.
I looked into the fiend’s eyes before and after the deeds. That was a wholly human evil. That was a wholly human choice. And I must endure the rest of my days knowing he and others like
him live and befoul—in mundane ways, in secret hidden ways, in the worst ways—what is sacred. My wound reminds me of what I could not, cannot, protect.
SPEECH AND MOVEMENT ELUDED YOU. A COLD SWEAT CONTINUED ITS creep across your skin. Your heart beat wild. You were in shock. Your mind’s eye continued to see the frightened, defiled, dead child.
Then you were four, five. Your brother was crying again. Your mother was silent. Your father was a shadow. You hid and screamed a wordless petition for escape. Take me from this place. I don’t care the cost or the trouble or if someone dies, even if it’s me. Take me far away. Please.
Leit slipped on his tunic. He put his head in your lap. You touched the welts on his neck. You smoothed his hair. All you could do was smooth his hair. Later you cried alone all night. So many tears, endless as the suffering you caused and endured.
NOT LONG LATER, YOU WENT TO HIS BED. THE INVITATION WAS UNSPOken.
The night was one of ice and fire. You walked to his home after a late meal with friends. He stepped ahead of you to block the force of the wind. Snow and ice covered horizontal planes. A world of white silver black. You loved the bell-chime flutter of falling snow.
Makha split through the darkness when you crossed the threshold. You felt intimate space before you saw its corners. He lived in a small two-room hut with no other person. He invited you to sit on the high bed near the hearth. It was warm from Makha’s heat. She jumped next to your hip.
Leit placed logs and struck flint. He knelt at work until flames leapt. The space echoed with a sharp noise. You thought that cracks of fire and ice sounded much alike. A release, a giving way.
He removed his cloak, a fur-lined hat, a wool overshirt, and a tunic. You could discern welts that reached from his waist to his neck.
He stoked the fire. This is where memory loops, the first and the last | you think the last | and unions between. A precise steward of an efficient fire. He returned to you with his face and chest blazing on their own. Transferred to you. Oh, you move in and out of this memory because these were moments before | and after | Wei. Strange, the stray details that cling with such tenacity.
He gave a short bark to Makha and pointed her to the floor. She jumped down. He took you in his arms. Warm. You were so warm.
You asked him to sit with his back to the fire. You looked at the brand. He had not shown it to you when he revealed the scar. The shapes were not random. They formed an image. You swept his dark hair away from his neck. He was marked with a dragon.
And this didn’t hurt? you asked.
No. I received merciful care, said he.
You asked him to lie on his back. The darkness beyond the fire spared you full sight of the gnarled knit but you could not avoid its texture. With gentle hands, you touched the scar for the first time. You reached the place where his navel had once been. He choked with a cry. He grabbed your wrist.
Allow it, said he.
You understood. You placed both hands where his life had begun. He held your arm as if it were a rope. He wept. You wept. Makha whimpered. You kept one hand on his belly and stretched at his side.
Where are you now? you asked.
Leit looked into your eyes. His hands twisted into your hair. His mouth sealed yours. He remained solid and he became fluid.
You were unprepared for the transformation. He abandoned himself to you. You, surprised, abandoned yourself to him. The cold beyond the bed gave love an edge. A border to contain it. Despite his scars, he was in other ways whole. There were places where sharpness had never touched him.
As you curled together to sleep, your hands rested each upon the other’s healed skin. The one flashed through your memory, touched where your thighs met, and was gone. Aza and your daughter would later help you purge him for good.
YOU WERE NOT FOOLISH ENOUGH TO ALLOW THE SOWING OF AN UNWANTED seed again. All of the women of the settlement knew where to get aids to continue their cycles. You visited a midwife who had special knowledge of these matters.
You thought of your life before. There were rumors of those who had plant wisdom. Discouragement of all kinds kept women away, including you. There were coercions, and there were lies. The wish to fill the womb was natural and welcomed. This was the female’s highest purpose. As well, you, all of you, were told, in one way or another, that you suffer your mistakes. This had been ingrained in you without your knowing how. The inevitability of consequence. You resented it. Yet the twins were proof of how you embodied the lesson.
The old woman sat next to you in a cushioned chair. She asked if you’d had children. You could have lied. No one knew. But you stated the facts. Yes, twins. Did they survive the birth? Yes. How old are they now? You became blank and mute, then said, They would be five. Are they still with you? No. When did they die? They didn’t. Or haven’t, I believe. I had to leave them. | the truth |
I feel sorrow to hear that, Aoife, said she.
Yes, well, some time has passed, you said.
She stood to prepare two cups of tea. She closed the door to the hut.
We must have a talk about our ways in matters of new life, said she.
We are the only beings, at least to our knowledge, who can choose to create another, said she.
The beasts and we are driven by our bodies, but we have greater faculties. Unlike the beasts, we are aware of what these impulses are. This must be important, otherwise we wouldn’t have this awareness.
The human can be long-lived. We rarely die in large numbers. We have no predators as the beasts have among each other. Nature seeks to balance itself. We are part of Nature, but we can manipulate it. We have no natural enemies—except one another, it seems. If we crowd, we can sicken each other. Some maladies are of the body. These correct with loving care, rest, and wholesome food.
Some believe wars are a way to thin our herds. The old woman believed violence was a sickness itself.
Without awareness, humans could strain, even break, the balance of which they were part. The land, the water, the beings whose lives were taken for food could be in peril.
The old woman said that the Guardians understood most people desired to have children. They also believed that none should be denied the joy that children bring. She reminded you of the myths of Azul the Orphan. Love transcended the body and all that came of it.
You gave birth to two children who survived, Aoife, said the old woman. You continued the cycle of young and gave your legacy and that of another man.
She said she could not and would not forbid you to have another child. It was not her place to decide for you. Her responsibilities were to share knowledge of their ways and treat you to bring you health and comfort. Before you left her hut, she gave you a pouch of herbs and told you how to use them.
Never once had you considered bearing another child. However, the visit sparked thoughts you didn’t expect. You had no dispute with the strive for balance. The view was practical, although you knew of the instinctive forces that fought against it. The woman didn’t speak of such impulses.
Neither did she mention dangers no beast considered. You thought of Nature’s uncertainty. The Guardians, like you, were subject to drought, cold, famine, disease, and predators. All were brought forth in risk. Born to die. But the principle remained the same. Life repeats itself. Life wants to be.
You had replenished. Because of that alone, perhaps you should have considered no more. You could have waited for a foundling.
Still, the instinctive animal in you stirred. You had the prospect of a virile mate. You were not yet too old, in your thirtieth year. You felt your body warm in waiting.
You chose to pair yourself again. You left your room and your housemates. Leit’s small hut was enough for you and the silver wolf. By mutual agreement, you decided to have the bonding ritual. You chose spring for obvious reasons, and one significant for you. It would mark your fifth year in your chosen home.
Any elder could have the honor, but you asked Edik to perform the ceremony. He smiled an
d held you close. He took unexpected joy in your happiness and your inclusion of him. His delight made you cry until your heart hurt.
You acquired a simple silk gown from the stores. A gifted friend cut and stitched it to fit. You had no mirror to see yourself at once, but you felt beautiful.
Leit reflected your feelings in his eyes when he beheld you that day. His gaze was transcendent. He was handsome in his new clothes. Three embroiderers had worked long on the elaborate vest that covered his linen shirt.
As agreed, you didn’t exchange rings. He surprised you with a narrow sapphire bracelet with a center crystal of Guardian blue. You gave him a gold torc decorated with beasts of the forest. Neither could have chosen a gift more suited to the other. Yet that night, after the celebration, he brought to the bed you shared | room, house, life | one last token.
I smithed some fine pieces and traded well the last time I was away. Here, said he.
You opened a wooden box. Inside were several vials of ink, a clutch of feathers, and a stack of writing sheets. You had never seen the latter. They were made of fibers, not skin. They were so thin that light glowed straight through.
I thought you might like to try this for your writings, said he.
He knew about your records of the Guardians’ history and ways. He encouraged you, although he didn’t fully understand the purpose.
The ink and quills I’ll use soon, but I will save most of the sheets for a special work, you said. You kissed him with pure affection.
FOR ALMOST A YEAR, THE DECISION TO HAVE A CHILD WAS A MATTER OF discussion. Not so had it been with Wyl. This had been a given in your life before, not an option. The awakening to bear another was a mystery. You were fully aware of it but confused. Your body seemed to want one thing, your mind another.
Yet one thing you did know. You had to tell him the secret.
I gave birth to two children. Twins, a girl and a boy. I left them in my exile, you said.
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