We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire

by Joy McCullough

  “How did you know . . . ?”

  Jess waits, giving me a chance to articulate what happened. When I don’t, they say, “. . . that you literally fell on your sword?”

  “My sword?”

  “Dagger, actually. But falling on one’s dagger isn’t a thing. Though turns out it can cause similar damage.”

  “I didn’t fall . . .” At least I don’t think so, but it’s hazy what happened before I woke up here.

  “You did eventually,” Jess says. “They think you fainted at the blood. I realize I’m not the one who deserves sympathy here, but do you know how shitty I felt when your mom called me, asking if I knew how you’d gotten your hands on the deadly weapons under your bed?”

  “My mom called you?”

  “I was starting the third course of the feast: roast suckling pig, thank you very much, and sitting next to a lovely and charming silver fox named Antonio when my phone buzzed, and I wasn’t going to answer it, but then I glanced at the screen and it was you, so how could I not? Because by that time you’d stopped trying to contact me, so of course I was desperate to hear from you. Only it was Kath.”

  “On my phone?”

  “Not the pertinent detail here.”

  “She interrupted your special old-timey feast?”

  “She didn’t know. She still doesn’t, so don’t you dare tell her. I went straight to the airport.”

  I want to tell them they shouldn’t have done that. That I’m sorry, for all of it. That I was an idiot for trying to master the rondel dagger because I’m a girl in a world where the knights can’t be trusted and I don’t deserve Jess and I’ll make them all the suckling pig and pottage they want as soon as I’m out of here. At the very least, I’ll go with them to the Medieval Faire out on the peninsula, and even wear a costume.

  But I’m being pulled under yet again, so I squeeze their hand as my eyes drift closed.

  * * *

  —

  The next time I wake, it’s pitch-dark outside. I have no idea what time it was when Jess was here, but now it’s Mom at my bedside, snoring softly in the uncomfortable hospital chair.

  The fog of medicine is clearer now. I try to sit up, but my brain says no thank you. Back to the pillow I go. The thing is, I have to pee. When Nor was recovering from a burst appendix in seventh grade, a catheter allowed her to stay in bed while her urine collected in a bag at her side. She thought it was revolting but I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

  I don’t have a catheter, as far as I can tell. That seems like a good sign. It’s slowly coming back to me now—Marguerite confronted by a soldier who recognizes the crest on her ring, dagger at the ready, my own rondel at my side, in my hand, protecting Marguerite, Elinor, my mother—

  I don’t want to bother Mom, but I also don’t really want a strange nurse helping me pee—and I think the ship has kind of sailed on bothering my parents.

  “Mom?”

  I barely whisper, but the second I’ve spoken, she’s on her feet. “I’m awake! I’m up! Marianne? Sweetheart? Are you okay?”

  “I have to pee.”

  The look on her face morphs from severe anguish to slight confusion to a mixture of relief and amusement. “Okay, pee. I’ll call for a nurse.”

  She reaches for the call button, but I stop her. “Can’t you take me?”

  “Oh. Okay.” She brushes hair off my forehead. “Sure honey. We can manage that.”

  I’ve never wanted peeing to be a joint activity, but if I have to do it with someone, better my mother than anyone else, I guess. She helps me sit up slowly and pivot my legs off the side of the bed. With each movement my entire right thigh screams.

  “Nice and slow,” Mom coos.

  My bladder isn’t going to wait. I sling an arm around her shoulder and let her hoist me to my feet. I thought my thigh hurt before. I let out a moan and Mom drops me back down, which doesn’t exactly help.

  “I am going to wet the bed,” I say through gritted teeth. “Please.”

  We try again and this time make it the few feet to a room barely bigger than an airplane bathroom. There are convenient handrails all around and another call button for the nurses’ station in here as well. Because I guess not everyone has their mom at their side when they suffer a self-inflicted medieval dagger wound.

  Mom settles me on the toilet and squats down in front of me, ready to catch me if I should topple off. It’s sort of the most vulnerable thing in the world to pee like this, with her right here, but it’s also sort of okay? She’s my mom—she grew me inside of her, washed my diapers, changed my peed-on sheets. She got bloodstains out of the white skirt I was wearing the first day of seventh grade when I got my period.

  We’ve shared everything. Except that she left out one huge part of her life, her experience of being a woman. Which she didn’t owe me, but at the same time, if we had known, maybe it would have changed things somehow. Maybe Nor would have made another choice, maybe I would, maybe . . .

  * * *

  —

  The next time I wake, both Mom and Papi are there and bright sunshine streams through the windows.

  “Hola, mija,” Papi says, leaning over to kiss me on the forehead. “Jess sends their love.”

  Mom’s still on the chair where I guess she slept the night, her skin ashen and the circles beneath her eyes an alarming shade of gray.

  No Nor.

  “When can I go home?” I ask. Papi sits on the edge of the hospital bed and I try not to wince at the searing pain in my leg.

  “Hopefully today,” he says. “They need you to talk to one more doctor this morning, and if all goes well, vamos para la casa.”

  “Just talk?”

  Mom shifts in the chair, clearly agitated. “Go on and tell her, Andrés. Better she be prepared.”

  Papi sighs. “It’s a psych evaluation.”

  I thought my brain was clearer this morning. I even jotted a few notes on where I left off: Marguerite comes face-to-face with the man she’s been betrothed to since she was twelve. A good man, but not good enough to understand what she could possibly be doing in the camp of the king’s army.

  Still, I can’t quite put it all together. Some of it came back in pieces through the night when I woke up to change position, take a pill. Frantic between the dagger and the pen, working out how Marguerite would protect herself, face-to-face with someone who could ruin everything. She’d be outmatched in brute strength, but not cunning and agility. She could wield a dagger as an extension of herself, she could send it slicing through the air until—

  “They have to make sure you’re not a danger to yourself,” he says more softly.

  I blink at him. “A danger . . . ?”

  Mom rubs her face. “It’s not generally the most well-adjusted individuals who stab themselves with a medieval sword worth thousands of dollars.”

  “Kath.”

  Mom stands abruptly. “Sorry. I’m going to get some coffee.”

  She doesn’t return. Papi’s the one who stays with me when the psychiatrist comes, tablet in hand, less warm and fuzzy therapist than clinician checking off boxes to absolve the hospital of liability if I get out and impale myself more effectively the next time.

  I try to stay calm. That’s the whole point—to show them I’m mentally stable. I wasn’t trying to kill myself. Or even hurt myself. There was an accident. And blood, apparently, and I passed out.

  But it’s almost like she’s trying to press my buttons. Maybe she is. She brings up Nor’s case and the notorious video—I feel like learning how to use a fucking sword; she wants to know where I got the weapons. I don’t see how that matters until I realize she’s hinting they might be stolen.

  But I don’t want to get Jess in trouble.

  Finally I lose my temper. “First of all, it was a dagger, not a sword. And if I was trying to kill
myself, wouldn’t I have gone an easier route than stealing antique weapons and trying to impale myself?”

  She doesn’t rise to the bait. “So they are stolen?”

  “They belong to her friend, Jess,” Papi interjects. “I believe Marianne was storing the weapons for her friend.”

  Coming out of someone else’s mouth, I realize how dumb that sounds. It’s not my weed, Mom! I was holding it for a friend! But my parents know Jess and they know me, and they trust us both. At least they did until now.

  There are more questions, but finally, with follow-up appointments scheduled and pain medications prescribed, we’re on our way home.

  BIAS

  This is highly improper—

  I must speak

  with the governor.

  Ismidon de Primarette

  is flustered

  by the girl

  before him.

  The twelve-year-old

  he was betrothed to

  was unpolished, wild,

  but surely I’ve been refined

  in his years away?

  I have traveled

  from the duchy of Anjou

  and before that

  the convent at Salette

  and before that

  my own home

  which is now a morgue

  filled with rotting bodies

  of my parents and our household.

  Our families are meant to be allies.

  I must speak with the governor.

  An aide dispatched

  to locate Zahra,

  de Primarette leaves

  to locate the governor.

  It seems he does not want

  to parade me through the camp.

  The horror.

  For once

  I do as I am told

  and sit, wait, hope

  I have not been a fool

  to trust this man.

  At least no more a fool

  than every person

  in this camp

  who forsakes the comforts

  of home, their family’s peace

  of mind, to chase victory

  in a war that has no end.

  Zahra sobs

  and falls

  into my arms.

  Her escort sighs,

  these feeble women.

  Zahra had been stranded

  outside the camp, no word

  of where I’d been taken

  and no assurance

  she’d ever see me again.

  I wipe her tears.

  She wipes mine.

  Chin up now.

  We cannot let them

  see us cry.

  The moment a man

  senses weakness

  in a woman

  a creature he already

  judges as weak

  even though she bears

  the children, the weight

  responsibility for all

  evil in the world

  he only finds

  his bias confirmed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Chester jumps on me before I’m all the way inside.

  “Fuera, chucho,” Papi says, shooing him away.

  I kind of want to throw my arms around Chester, the only one with no opinions on my dagger injury, but it hurts to lean down and pet him.

  “Couch or bed?” Papi asks, his hand gentle on my elbow.

  “Her bed is a mess,” Mom says from the kitchen table, where I’m startled to see her sitting with Jess. I don’t know where else I thought Jess would be, since neither of their parents is in town and they came back to Seattle because of me.

  I crumple on the couch while Papi heads to clear off my bed. I can’t remember what’s on it—scrapbook stuff or Marguerite stuff—but at least it’s Papi and not Mom. Chester jumps up and settles at my feet, his breath steady and warm—Chester, my hound, my constant.

  Jess sits on the floor next to the couch. “You got the all clear?”

  “Just a flesh wound,” I say.

  “It’s not a joke.” Mom doesn’t fawn over me.

  “Your sister said she’d come by later,” Jess says, glancing briefly toward my mom.

  “You talked to Nor?”

  “We’ve been texting a little. She has class until four.”

  At least she hasn’t forgotten me, isn’t angry with me, like Mom. Not angry enough to completely ignore me, anyway.

  “Aside from the flesh wound, how are you feeling?”

  “I’m okay. Sore.”

  “Who would have thought?” Mom says. “That if you stabbed yourself with a medieval sword, you might be a touch sore!”

  I don’t think pointing out that it was a dagger is the right move here. Thankfully Jess reads the room as well.

  “But I’m so glad to hear you’re feeling fine,” she goes on. “The rest of us are just peachy too.”

  Chester sits up, ears cocked, considering Mom’s strange vocal register. Probably the other dogs in the neighborhood do too.

  “Since everyone’s feeling so excellent, maybe now’s a good time to discuss this!” She holds up something I hadn’t noticed on the kitchen table in front of her.

  My notebook. A rusty smear across the cover.

  Her bed is a mess.

  “You went through my stuff?”

  Now she gets up and heads my way, but I don’t think she plans to stroke my hair. “Oh, excuse me if I put a few things away when I was scrubbing the giant bloodstain on your carpet!”

  Jess scrambles to their feet between us, putting up an appeasing hand. “She didn’t, though. She didn’t find the notebook in your stuff. I showed it to her.”

  “Thank you, Jess,” Mom says. “I really appreciate all you’ve done. Would you give us some privacy now, please?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Ma’am? Jess throws me an apologetic look and heads down the hall, going into Nor’s room.

  “Nor’s room?”

  “Absolutely none of your concern,” Mom snaps. Then she pinches the bridge of her nose and takes a slow, steady breath. When she’s done, the manic gleam in her eye is unchanged, but she pulls a chair closer to the couch and sits, gripping the notebook in both hands. Marguerite.

  “We talked about this.”

  “Mom—”

  “No, you know what? I’m going to talk now. I try to listen. I try to be the kind of mom who listens. Sometimes I screw it up, but most of the time I think I do a pretty decent job—”

  “You do—”

  Death glares stop me in my tracks. “And all that listening sometimes means I don’t get my say. I have plenty of opinions about your choices, Nor’s choices. Don’t think I don’t. But I bite my tongue until it’s raw because you’re your own young women and I’m trying to let you make the mistakes you have to make to grow, but sometimes you’re Chester sticking your nose under that fence, asking to get scratched!”

  She takes a shuddery breath as Papi steps into the room. “So I’m speaking my piece now. You’ll have your turn.”

  Which is honestly kind of a relief, to know that no one’s expecting any explanations from me right now.

  She holds up Marguerite. “We talked about this. We talked about how it was upsetting you. Of course I want you to express yourself. Of course I believe in the power of story. You can judge the books I teach so there’s food on our table, but you’re not the only one who loves stories around here! The difference is I want our family to be able to move on and I don’t know how we do that if we keep rehashing this one event!”

  This one event. Like it was a piano recital or a house fire.

  “If all you were doing was expressin
g yourself creatively, well okay then. But, Marianne, my love, you stabbed yourself. After you were televised telling the whole world you wanted to learn how to use a fucking sword.”

  “I wasn’t going to hurt myself. Or anyone else! It was research!”

  “I don’t care.” She’s the worst liar in the history of the world. She cares like Marguerite cares, like Duchess Isabella cared when she rode into battle herself to rescue René from men holding him for ransom. Like Isabella’s daughter Margaret of Anjou cared when she ruled all of England in place of her mad husband, so pissing off the men with her power that they disinterred her remains and scattered them during the French Revolution.

  That’s life for a woman who won’t shut up.

  “I’m keeping this for now,” Mom says, holding my notebook close. “You need to rest. Clearly we need to get you some counseling. Jess explained about the swords and your father is going to lock them in the shed with his tools. That’s all I have to say right now.”

  She gets up and heads toward the hall, taking all my research, words, heart with her.

  “How’d that work out for you?” I could control myself, but I don’t. “Keeping silent. Stuffing it down. Not telling anyone about what happened to you. Super healthy, right?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She’s almost reached her bedroom door.

  “How about Marla? Does Marla know?”

  She stops, her shoulders tense. I’m right, I can see it. She never told anyone else. Maybe not even Papi. My mom, who took me to endless marches as a kid, waving signs that said I WILL NOT BE SILENCED.

  “And that teacher? Your silence worked out pretty well for him, I’m guessing. How about the girls he hurt after you were gone?”

  Her face echoes that night when she arrived at the emergency room and couldn’t process what the doctors were telling her, but then I stepped out of Nor’s exam room into the hall and she realized we would never be the same again.

  I can’t explain my fury with her, that she didn’t tell me, because I know she doesn’t owe me. I’ve done enough reading about survivors to know they get to control who they tell, that they don’t have to tell anyone, that not everyone is safe enough or wants the scrutiny, I know all this. But also, decay thrives in darkness.