by Jesse Teller
When Rachela spoke of the men who had come to get her, she said terrible things about them, but not all of them.
“Do you know him? He was not like the others. He was nice. Smaller than the rest, too. I think he was younger. And had a good face. Too strong a jaw, but otherwise very good to look at… Very good to look at.”
“You are talking about Ruggamon Flurryfist. He was just branded a man five days ago. He is a good man and very gentle. He might come talk to us if I ask him to.”
Rachela struck Ellen with a shrewd eye. “He is a man. He is vile and will try to capture me. We need to go for home. We need to start heading back. I think it is north.”
“Will they be glad to see you, Rachela?” Ellen said. “Will your people want to take you in?”
Rachela glared at Ellen, then heaved a great breath and broke into the most sorrowful tears Ellen had ever heard.
They lived together for a few more days, Ellen cooking and talking to Rachela. Ellen told her about the mighty Seven and the Redfist king chiefs. She told her about the Beastscowl family and how fierce they were. She told her of the daring things that name had done, and how they were the most terrifying men on the mountain.
Ellen told Rachela about her father, and when the two girls walked down to the Stonefist village hand-in-hand, Gerber met them in the middle of the village. The little girl stared at him, then glanced up at Ellen. She squared her shoulders, facing her father, before looking back at Ellen.
“Go ahead, Rachela. Try it out. See what he does,” Ellen said.
Gerber eyed her as if she was crazy. Rachela drew in a great breath and screeched like a mighty eagle. Gerber looked down at his daughter in awe, then back up at Ellen.
Ellen nodded to him. The mighty Beastscowl roared in his little girl’s face, and when the cry died an echoing death far out and away, Rachela rushed to her father’s arms.
“Well done, Ellen,” Breathos said. “I knew you could bring her to her people.”
“She will be fine. She left her bow in my cave.”
*******
Did he banish me or free me?
“You will leave this place,” Borlyn said to me. “This mountain holds nothing for you but pain and death. You live now, but stay in this state of waiting, and you will dry up. Breathos alone cannot keep you. You must be strong enough to find yourself, to find your enemies, to face them and make them pay. This cave can only become a prison if you stay.
“Therefore, I exile you to Tergor. So you might find the battles to fight that can give you back your life.” He said the words as if they were justice, as if they were clearly the only words to be spoken. He spoke them as if he were not dealing a death sentence.
We argued. I called him a monster, and I threw him out of my cave. I cursed and I spat, and I flatly refused to obey such a cruel command.
But now I see. I have stayed for another month. Breathos has been to see me four times, bringing four stones with him. We have talked about the command for hours. We have cried about it. He held me and let me cry as I once had. Let me beat and scratch, and when I was done, he set me on my feet and began to pack.
I will take my paints. I will take my clay box. I have with me enough food to get me there twice. Two changes of clothes. My sandals will not make the trip. I have boots given to me by Breathos’s wife. I wept when I realized our feet were the same size. There was something so grisly about that. I will leave the stones. Standing back and looking at them now, I see why he brought them to me.
Here sit nearly a thousand stones, all polished and neat, all different shapes and sizes. This is a log of how many times he came to see me. How much he cared, and how I was never as alone as I thought I was. I wept when I came to that understanding.
Breathos packed my bell. Said it was mine and would always be. Said I was the only woman a bell had ever been cast for. Said it would ring me home when I found one. Two for home. Four for meeting. Five to shut me in my house and six for love. He made a rolling contraption that will get it down the hills. It is not a small bell, but not as large as some I have seen.
It is bigger than others.
We leave tomorrow. He is going to get me there. I won’t be able to leave him. He will have to leave me. For any of you that might one day decipher this, I want you to know this.
A man once saved a girl. He carried her out of her misery and made her breathe again. He was kind and mighty, and will live for all time as the savior of a soul, a mind, and a heart. Of all the mighty things Breathos Steeltooth ever did, the mightiest of all was to love a Dead Girl.
Ellen stepped back and looked at the wall. She had never washed clean a single inch. She kept it all. The wall in her cave was sixty feet tall and over ninety feet long, and she had covered nearly all of it. The opposite wall was much smaller, at twenty tall and fifty long, and covered as well by Rachela and her great battle. The girl had colored on it with the red paint great bows firing massive arrows. She had drawn men with shields being shot full of arrows and flowers covered in blood on the battlefield. Feathers filled everything not covered in childlike battle, and down deep in the back corner, the profile of a girl screaming. Ellen kissed the screaming girl then found one clean spot of wall on which to write.
Rachela Beastscowl, Warrior of Myth.
With a look and a smile, Ellen left her home of three years.
She didn’t look back.
IV
32 Years Before The Escape
With a sudden scream of metal-on-metal and a snap of cloth, light rushed into the room and twenty-year-old Ellen groaned. She rolled over, covered her head and moaned.
“I hate you,” Ellen said. She summoned up the power to ask for the death of her good friend, and when she had it, she begged it. “Please, for the sake of the Seven, kill her or make her go away.”
Madeline laughed.
“And when you have struck her dead, please close the curtains,” Ellen said.
Madeline giggled and crossed the room to the cot in the back. Ellen gripped the covers as tight as she could, but the girl ripped them free with a quick jerk.
“The morning is whispering your name, Ellen,” Madeline said. “It is begging you for a visit. Sunlight, Ellen. The brightness of day. The happy sounds of—” Madeline threw the window open, and not far below, she heard a sow being butchered. “…The butcher.”
“Not happy. Not begging. Not brightness. Morning has none of these things in store for me,” Ellen said.
“Then what does the sunny perfect morning say to you?”
“It whispers the sweet words: ‘Push her out the window.’” Ellen laughed and hated it. Madeline always made her feel this way.
Ellen sat up and grabbed the wooden mug beside her bed. She drained it of the wine she had fallen asleep drinking, and she threw it at Madeline. The girl danced left and caught the mug. She twirled it in her hand then set it down.
“Good to see life from you, Ellen. Come, Tulbo has been asking about you.”
“Tulbo?” Ellen sat up. “Tulbo Stonefist was asking about me?” She ran her fingers through her hair, feeling a sty of ratted strands and crunchy dry mess. “What does he want from me?”
“Children,” Madeline said.
Ellen scoffed. “That is not funny.”
“He wants you to teach him your language.”
Ellen looked up at the walls of her house. Thousands of written words covered the walls, words of hope and words of despair, words that kept her busy for years.
First, it had been the house. She picked a rundown mess of an abandoned hulk when she arrived over four years ago. She spent the first two years hammering it back into place. She personally replaced all of the six floors, replaced every windowpane and refitted the outside of the building with new slats. She dug a root cellar and bricked up a drying house for her meats. She laid a new chimney that allowed for three fireplaces, and plastered all the interior walls. When men came to help her, she scared them away. She thatched the roof, grew a garden
in the attic. She worked every inch of the house she could, and when two years of work was through, Ellen found a new reason to hide.
She was keeping a journal again. She titled it Dead Girl. Every day she stared at the name, thought about washing it clear and naming it again. She could not think of a new name, so she did not.
For two years she had been working on covering every inch of her walls with her script. And now that she had done it, she stood and stared at the streets below with fear bordering panic. Now all that was left to do was walk the streets and meet the people.
She looked at Madeline, the dear little girl whose heart had been broken a year ago, and extended her arms to her. Madeline rushed to her, hugged her, and smiled up at her.
“Tell me she will die a wasting death,” Madeline said.
“That little Fendis bitch might die a violent one.” Ellen nearly screamed at the Brotherhood Feast when Flak had given himself away to that Fendis princess. For years, Flak and Madeline had courted. Since they had been children, they held hands and whispered to each other. Madeline had seen him practice his sword and every other weapon, over and over. She had been taught to speak and care for the people by Flak’s own mother. She had been pruned and manicured for years to one day take the Redfist name, and in the blink of an eyelash, Flak had given it all away.
“She had to have bewitched him. She was gone for a year when she was young. I bet she was given some kind of diabolical gift while out there that let her ensnare my Flak,” Madeline said. “I keep asking him what I did.”
Ellen took the girl by the sides of the face and looked into her eyes. “You did nothing wrong. It was that little Fendis bitch. She is a witch, and she worked some sort of power over him. This union they have set will not last. Now, I have a task for you,” Ellen said. “Go get me some water. I need to clean a few mistakes from the third-floor guest.”
“No,” Madeline said. “I will not do it. And if you force me to, I will splash that bucket on the wall of your bedroom. You can’t stay locked up in here anymore, Ellen. You have to start living. You have to come outside. You have to be one of us.”
“One of who?”
“One of the Ragoth.”
The words stung. She loved her people, loved her nation. She patted the girl on the head and smiled. “Go outside and wait for me. I promise I will be there in but a few minutes. There is something I must do.”
“Let me go with you,” Madeline said. From the look on the girl’s face, Ellen could tell she knew what Ellen was about to do.
Ellen shook her off. She had many friends, but she would not allow any of them to enter that room. Ellen watched Madeline go, and she went to the sixth floor. Ellen found the room in the front, overlooking the street, and opened the curtain. Under the main window sat a small shrine. On it, she had drawn his face. Beneath it, she had placed a replica of the Steeltooth, a small version no bigger than a foot and a half. Under that, holding the shield, sat nearly a thousand polished stones.
When word had gotten back to Tergor that Breathos had been killed in battle with the Bloodblades, Ellen felt as if her heart had dissolved in her chest. She sobbed and wept for months. She looked at the pile of hair set on the floor beside his shrine, and touched her collar where her hair now stopped. She had cut it the day she heard the news, and would never grow it back again.
Ellen stared at the stones, piled up to hold the shield and out to cover half the floor. It had taken her three trips to the mountain to carry them all from her cave to the city. The last trip, Tulbo had sent her with three warriors and a scout. Things were getting dark on the mountain.
The new king chief did not come to visit Yenna Redfist. When Yenna sent out the invitation, the mountain king chief sent Yenna a dead, decaying rat as a response. The Sons of the Seven had been furious. Gerber demanded men enough to crush this upstart king chief in his very throne, but Yenna refused.
The third time she had gone to the mountain, they had been attacked by a roving group of bandits comprised of Bloodblades, a few Fendis with mangy looking wolves, and about five Ragoth. The bandits tried to lay a hand on her, but the men she had been sent with were warriors of Tulbo Stonefist. The mess they made of the bandits had been both inspiring and sickening.
At this point, no one went to the mountain. At this point, they all knew the golden age of Borlyn Flurryfist’s rule was dead, and a new rotting regime had risen.
She stared at the shrine. She kissed her fingers, touching them to the shield. She turned to the city, to the streets of Tergor. She could not hide from it any longer.
Rachel met her at the door and wrapped arms around her.
“Ellen, you came out today. Can we go shopping?”
“No,” Madeline said. “Ellen is going to see Tulbo.”
Rachel huffed and rolled her eyes. “There is a new delivery of feathers from the mountains. Papa said he will have a new dress made for me if I pick some out.” Ellen looked into the nine-year-old’s face and saw utter happiness in her smile. She saw a slight bruise on her cheek, and touched it gently.
“What happened to your face?” Ellen said.
“Brother Hunet accidentally head-butted me,” Rachel said.
“How did he do that?”
“He folded in half too fast when I kicked him in his man parts.”
“Rachel!” Madeline gasped.
“Well, he drank all the honey ale Papa made,” Rachel said. They both looked at her in shock. “He won’t make more for the rest of the week!”
Ellen stared at the little girl and shook her head. “Fine. Well, I must say you deserve that bruise then.”
“Maybe the boys will stay away then,” Rachel said. “I’m getting tired of beating them up. They keep trying to kiss me.” She screwed her face up in disgust.
They turned their feet for the market in the Flurryfist ghetto, and Ellen smiled at Rachel.
“The boys kiss the girls they think are cute, Rachel. You won’t hate it for too long before you want more of it.”
“I told them all the same thing,” she said. “If they can beat me up, they can kiss me.”
Ellen shook her head.
“I’m not going to marry a male that can’t take a hit. The man that tames me will be a mad dog in battle. The man that wins my heart will do so covered in blood,” Rachel said. “Mine or his, it’s all the same.”
“You are a brute,” Madeline said.
“I’m focused,” Rachel said.
Feathers and clay. A few bolts of silk. The three of them bought a few things. Ellen bought a few vials of oil and a bag full of chalk. It would all go a long way toward refilling her paint stores.
“Are you going to teach him?” the oil trader asked.
“Teach him my language?” she asked. This was one of her favorite people. He always sought out the things she needed to make her paints.
“Are you going to teach Tulbo?” the man said.
“If he can beat her up,” Rachel said.
The man screwed up his face, and Ellen shoved Rachel away.
“No man can earn that gift. No man can command me to give it. If the Stonefist wants to learn my language, he will have to torture me to do it,” Ellen said.
“I’m not thinking torture is in the plan, if you can see what I’m after,” the man said with a wink.
Ellen shook her head and walked away.
They passed men and women still wearing the armband of black that signified the grief of having lost Borlyn, and she scowled. Where was the cuff for the loss of Breathos? She shoved the thoughts away and went home.
They split up, Madeline going into the Black Hand ghetto to visit her uncle, Sallon, and Rachel running home to have her dress worked on. Ellen was walking home alone when she heard a scream, and she spun. She dropped her basket in the street and rushed forward as the woman screamed again.
A girl stumbled, covered in sweat and sickly pale, up through the city, her eyes wide and dazed. The white dress she wore was covered in blood
from the waist down, and the woman’s feet were slick with it. Ellen watched horrified as the woman swayed on the brink of collapse.
Ellen ran, shoving people out of the way until she caught the girl and lowered her to the ground.
“Get help!” she shouted. The people around her were too shocked to move. They could only stand and stare at the horror as the bloody teenaged girl trembled and shuddered in her arms.
Bloody hands reached up frantic and smeared blood across Ellen’s face when she spoke in a harsh whisper.
“The baby?”
Ellen gasped and looked up to see women coming. They knelt around the wounded girl, as Ellen stood and stumbled back. Baby. The girl had lost a baby. The women below her pulled the white dress up. Ellen saw a few ragged slashes hastily cut across the girl’s stomach, and a great void where a womb should be.
Ellen looked at the trail of blood and followed it back, tracking it as the people drew in closer to look at the spectacle. Ellen kept walking. Kept moving. She could see it now. Could see her guilt. She had been sitting idle. She had been hiding from the city when the vile beast of a midwife walked free. Ellen rolled her sleeves up to her biceps. She growled as she walked the path of blood until she stood within the Redfist ghetto, looking up at a building with a sign that read “Hall of Mothers.” A blood trail led into it, and Ellen followed the path.
She entered the building. It was cool and dark, and the first room filled with beds. Most were empty. A few held sleeping women. Ellen moved past them all. She kept her treads light so as not to wake any of them, and moved toward the door in the back of the room.
She opened it a bit so she could peek inside, and saw a group of women standing around a chair covered in blood. This room was filled with chairs, all fitted with a hole in the seat, with a bucket beneath the hole. A young girl crouched near one of these, scrubbing it clean and weeping softly. Ellen could see the women deep in conversation near the bloody chair, but saw no face she recognized.