by Y. R. Shin
Morgana.
When she heard that name ingrained in her bones, she recalled the memories of the last battle. The abominable sight of the fort she could never conquer flashed in her eyes. But it was all from a far, faraway past. It grieved her, but it did not infuriate her. She simply listened to the stories of Morgana becoming an empire after winning the war, who the current king was, how afraid the other countries were of Morgana, and what other big events had happened since then, like they were unrelated to her.
Looking back at her past self in times of peace, she knew she had been a hypocrite.
She had swept the battlefields with her brother who was called “the ghost of war,” stronger than anybody else, proud of not losing one battle. She had later been blinded by her mad ambition to conquer the whole continent. Wearing the disguise of patriotism and shedding countless people’s blood as sacrifice, she had not felt any guilt. The queen who had believed madness to be conviction was a fool, not a genius.
Reuyen frowned at the chaos that prevailed in the house when she came inside after cleaning the stable.
“Why don’t you go out for a walk or something?”
The news of death had brought its stench from the battlefield.
Her brother, who was three years younger than her, was glaring out the window with red eyes and veins sticking out on his neck, a more miserable expression on his face than ever. Bringing her train of thoughts to an end, she quietly asked, “Did you eat?”
“It’s because of what I said. I was the one who said that crap…if he’ll receive a title. I…because I blabbered that sort of shit…”
“If you haven’t eaten yet, I’ll make you something. How’s Mother?”
Sidan’s head turned like a wooden doll at her excruciatingly serene voice. “How are you this calm?”
Looking back at his eyes full of hatred, she recalled another memory.
There will only be pain beyond this point.
Belbarote Paseid Brionake.
The man praised as the greatest king of the new dynasty of Rarke. She thought of him when she saw the white wolf banner of the royal army that came to buy horses and collect food now and then.
You can stop now. You have already proven yourself enough.
Oh, the wise man of the queen. He knew. The pain, the resentment of those who would have to live on. His advice from two hundred years ago that she’d understood at death’s door had become a reality.
She turned away.
“He knew what he was getting into.”
“How can you say that kind of crap? He’s our brother! Our brother has died… Those bastards of Morgana butchered our brother!”
The most powerful patriotism stemmed from hatred.
She, who had been a tyrant in the far past, knew that as well. So, she understood her brother’s fierce aggression. After pointlessly moving her lips, not knowing what to say, she coaxed him. “Let’s stop. At least you should come back to your right mind.”
“Dear smart sister, please tell me. It’s a lie, right? Right? I keep thinking, but it doesn’t make sense. He was as good at sword fighting as you. He was good, right? They said that they couldn’t find the body, so he must be just missing. That must be it, right?”
Who will retrieve the bodies one by one on the battlefield, where hundreds and thousands die? They had probably been piled up and burned all at once. But her young brother was too unstable to know the truth.
“I’ll cook.”
Reuyen headed to the kitchen.
Her father hadn’t spoken a word since the day they got the news, and her mother hadn’t gotten out of bed. Even Sidan was overwhelmed with hatred. She could not figure out where to start, or how to console them.
While organizing the tableware, she suddenly let out a hollow laugh. She kept thinking she was fine, but her hands were shaking. Was her heart paying the price of not stopping her brother, who chose to leave? Was the guilt of ignoring the truth she knew this heavy?
Morgana.
Why is Morgana imposing this shameful pain on me again? The foe from two hundred years ago was merely breathing and living. She shook her head. It was such a self-centered thought. They had only chosen to bloody themselves to clean out years’ worth of baggage.
Sidan’s enraged voice came flying at the back of her head. “I can’t accept this. I can’t forgive this!”
“What are you going to do, then?”
“I will fight too.”
She snapped back to reality.
You have to look after our family now.
Reuyen dried her hands and turned toward her brother to shake him back to his senses. Her enraged, ready-to-fight brother was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. After a moment of silence at his obvious despair, she walked outside.
“Bring your sword.”
Clank.
Sidan took half a step back, shaking his hands. Not losing that opportunity, Reuyen swept in with the back of her sword and threw Sidan’s on the ground. Then, the edge of the sword sharp enough to slice through iron, she lunged for Sidan’s neck.
The point of her old sword stopped right before reaching his collarbone. While his chest huffed and puffed, Reuyen kept her steady breath. It was an easy victory that came with the cost of a young man’s pride.
“Do you think any more would make a difference?”
But even without his sword, Sidan did not give up; he ran into her with a great cry. Reuyen smoothly pivoted around and kicked the side of his knee like she had been expecting it.
Her at-least-a-head-taller brother dropped to the ground with a groan.
“You died twice today. Good thing you have multiple lives, Sidan Detua.”
“Ah…Ahhh…! Shut it! You think I’m going to give up here?”
“What if you don’t? It all ends once you’re dead.”
“That’s not happening. I’m having my revenge!”
She almost actually slew him in a burst of anger. She held her sword tight to calm down again and glared at her pigheaded brother.
“Stop talking so recklessly. You, who can’t even beat me, will go out there in the midst of war and kill enemies for revenge?”
“You’re just stronger than normal! You’re the strongest in our town! You monstrous woman!”
“So what if I’m the strongest in this tiny town? Not being able to beat a frail woman, someone who’s far more inept than the knights fighting out there, just means that you’re weak!”
She stared down at the side of his scrunched face that looked like he was about to cry, then kicked his sword lying on the ground far away. After a while of just lying there and fuming, Sidan growled, “Are you not…are you not enraged by this? How can you be so cool?”
“Don’t defile the road of patriotism Eivan chose, you fool.”
“Youuuu! Ahhhh!”
She bent the arm of her inflamed brother coming at her and knocked him down again. But the obstinate Sidan turned back around and started punching her.
A young man who spends his days riding horses and running errands around the stable is stronger than meets the eye. Feeling the aching pain from her chin like his last blow broke it, Reuyen grabbed his neck, anger flashing in her eyes.
“Ahhh! Let go of me! Let go! So what if he chose it himself? I can’t even grieve him since it was his choice? You heartless, inhumane monster!”
“You’re the one who’s deluded! Do you think a battlefield is an easy place for a soft, weak boy like you to even survive? You think you, a mere boy, can be in the dogfight amongst those who crush their own friends’ bodies and live only to take the lives of others, driven by madness?”
“What are you?” His resentful eyes stared straight at hers. “You! You’re so great, so gifted that you know everything, don’t you? You’re not even like a human!”
Tears seeped into the ground his hands were so desperately grasping at. Reuyen slowly loosened her grip on his neck.
“You’re not even human.”
His cry echoed in her ears. She took her shaking hand off him and stood up.
“You’re saying that I’m not even human. You can only say that because you’re still blinkered…truly.” Everything happening now was rooted in the past. “A battlefield is a place where humans become humans no more.” Like the queen, the foolish queen who could not reflect on herself until her love for her country degenerated into madness. “So, come back to your senses. Next time, I’ll break your legs for real.”
With that, Reuyen threw her sword to the ground. She couldn’t stand holding it any longer because its hilt resting in her hand felt freakishly familiar. She turned her back to her brother, who was still on the ground, his eyes furious.
“You cold-blooded monster!”
Ignoring the wretched cry, she walked toward the stable, where the familiar smell of horse manure wafted in the air.
She stopped at the entrance. Her father was tending to the horses as usual, with his back to her.
“Father.”
As he fed the horses with slightly shaking hands, his back looked smaller and weaker than ever. She walked to him and put her arms around his waist.
“Let me do it.”
“…yelled at him.”
At his muttering, Reuyen’s head tilted and she touched her father’s back.
How could she not feel his heart shattered to bits and pieces? His was that of a parent who recalls how he yelled at and struck his own child to change his stubborn mind, and how that led to Eivan not even being able to say goodbye in the end. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how regretful her father must be.
“My son… he was my son,” her old father murmured pensively. “Thank the good lord at least you’re in your right mind. Yes, now here’s a true Detua.”
His shoulders started to shake as he continued as if he was consoling himself. A gentle sob followed.
“What was he thinking? I kept telling him not to, but he…”
“Men don’t stop running until their whole world falls apart at a glimpse of hope.”
He turned his cloudy eyes to her. He wasn’t looking at her like she was some monster, as Sidan had. But she could still detect a hint of disappointment in her cold-heartedness in those old eyes of his. A cacophonous sound came from the yard, like someone was breaking things. Jess turned his head away from that piercing noise, brushed off his hands, then turned back around.
“Yes, back to reality. The living must…”
Reuyen silently let go of him. She stood there by herself, looking at the stable that stank of manure.
This prevailing sorrow, yet men still lived on. The grief for someone who was determined to go to war was a grief that would fly by like birds of passage. Even the ordinary ones who could not understand Eivan’s intentions would eventually walk their own ways, dragging along baggage rooted in their own reasons.
The death of a son, of a brother. Nothing could be worse to them than that, so all that was left to do was to lick each other’s wounds and move on.
But five days later, she had no choice but to face her naiveté. Sidan had disappeared.
After Sidan’s departure, Senila’s sickness worsened. Jess didn’t even talk about it or get upset, like he had never had a son at all.
Standing alone in her brother’s empty room, Reuyen broke into laughter. It was truly a ridiculous act. Young men who could have lived completely sheltered from war took off for a long journey like moths lured into a fire.
As the oldest daughter, you have a lot of responsibilities. When I’m not here, you protect the family.
She dejectedly leaned against the wall and ruminated on the dead’s whispers. An old, lifeless creaking noise, like from an abandoned house, rang in her ears louder than ever.
Chapter Three
Two weeks later, the third young man who had left with Eivan and Toby came back one-legged. After hearing the news of the stagnant state of the war, some residents left to find some other city far away from the border.
With the young man came news of Sidan as well.
“Reuyen,” said Eivan’s one-legged friend. “Sidan was at the front as a volunteer for the Gerad border. Did you know?”
The front. The hell where blood and despair crashed around like waves.
Senila, who had been trying to collect herself by convincing herself that Sidan had left to cool down, finally had a heart attack and collapsed. She lived, thanks to the doctor who swiftly came and took great care of her, but her last hope had been destroyed.
The next day, Reuyen left the house early in the morning. She walked into the forest, following a small trail until she was alone, and held up the bow she felt as comfortable with as a sword. She aimed at an old tree and fired anything and everything.
She pulled on the string until her lips started bleeding and her fingertips festered, and the arrows drew a circle around the big old tree one by one under the sunlight.
Draw and fire.
Pull like your life depends on it, then let go like nothing matters anymore.
When she ran out of arrows, she plucked the ones out of the tree and shot them again. It was a meaningless repetition of an action, like collecting an abandoned heart and then abandoning it again. But in that meaningless repetition, she started to feel resentful of the countless traitors who disobeyed her orders.
“Fool, fools, imbeciles…!”
But it all meant nothing.
Soon, the thick night fell. After repeated shots, the tips of the arrows became blunt and the string hung lifelessly, frayed like it was about to break. Reuyen lowered the bow.
Her limbs shook, exhausted, and the pain from her skinned lips and fingers came back. After wiping her sweaty chin with her sleeve, Reuyen ripped off a piece of the fabric she had used to wrap the bow with and put it around her bloody hand. Then, she sank to the floor. Everything was a karma from her past self.
You must protect our family. I’m relieved to have you as my sister.
Her pale lips drew a sneer.
How can I, Eivan? They’ve already left my hands. How?
She had never been more desperate for an answer from someone in her life as she was now.
After the sun set, she fumbled through the darkness on the trail back home. In the quiet nightscape, without even the slightest smell of dinner being cooked, Jess was blankly staring out the window. The same window that Sidan had glared at with hatred.
“Father, you should take Mother and the horses and move away, just in case.”
“No.”
“Guiyon Fort is known for its impregnable walls, so it should be safe there.”
“No.”
“We’re safe now, but it’ll be too late after the war hits here.”
His stern, heavy voice echoed in the room. “This is our family’s house and town.”
With that, the only sound in the house was Senila’s mournful cries coming through the closed door to her room. Jess stayed in his seat like a corpse and shut his lips.
Instead of answering, Reuyen looked at the sword that was leaning against the wall in the corner. It was a sword for killing. A tool of murder that sometimes made a hero and sometimes made a slaughterer. A sword, a freakishly familiar piece of metal.
She walked over to the corner and grabbed the cold, cold hilt. Then left the house. She didn’t forget to tell Jess, though it was not a goodbye.
“…I’ll be back.”
Where are you going? Jess did not ask, but she still answered like she was reassuring herself.
“I’ll bring Sidan back.”
Two hundred years after she had left the battlefield, she was going back of her own free will, though she had believed she never would again.
She took a step into the pitch-dark world, as dark as hell at night. Her father’s cry sounded from the house.
She carried those tears on her back, not abandoning a single drop. In the stable, she saddled the six-year-old babe of Dekallia. He was the fastest horse the Detuas had.
Eiv
an had named him “Den.”
Eivan.
Just recalling that name hurt like a well-sharpened spear piercing her throat. She jumped on the saddle. Then she held up a painful whip.
“Let’s go.”
She didn’t wish herself good fortune for the coming journey. She rode through the night, swallowed by grief.
She rode across the flatlands beyond the fields with unripened crops, across a small stream, past a forest she knew well. Every time the night and day switched and the sky changed its color, she rested for a bit and then rode again.
She only thought of one thing on the horse. Where she was headed.
Back…
“Whoa, boy!”
After riding for quite a while, she suddenly felt dizzy and pulled on Den’s reins to stop. A dry smell came from across the field. Her heart, which had hardened like a stone, beat harder and harder as she got closer to the battlefield.
Are you going back…again?
Recalling that sincere voice by itself made her heart writhe in pain. She swallowed her mutterings and shook off that voice.
She was after one thing. Bringing Sidan back. But her memories made her recoil from war, like a traumatic wound. All the foolish deeds she had committed with her comrade Peijak, who would have returned to dust by now.
In her childhood, the cool sensation of the blade hit her neck every day, until she let go of all the memories. For a crime she hadn’t even committed in this life, she had to be executed every day.
The queen had met such a wretched end. Why was she born again?
She was confused at times, but she considered it a message from God to live a new life this time. So, she lived like a witch in the forests who was content with a life she chose not to see or hear.
But now, she wanted to cut off her legs that desired to go back to the fields. A strange fear grasped at her ankles. She whipped her feet that wanted to stop, trying not to give in.
Coming down after precariously swaying in her seat, she caressed Den’s legs.
“Let’s take a break, Den.”