The Woman Who Buried Nations Read online

  “Ryne of family Dober,” said Heinrich, “Do you take back what you said about my sister?”

  “Sadly, I cannot,” said Dober, his dark eyes blazing but his voice soft and saturnine.

  Heinrich shifted his weight to the soles of his feet. “You do not deny saying you saw my sister fornicating…with a mule?”

  “With much regrets, I cannot deny the truth. I know what I saw, sir…”

  Heinrich’s eyes blazed like the flames of perdition, his head bobbed and dipped in a rage. For a long moment not even the wind dared to whisper her presence.

  “Fight, you bastard smithy,” Heinrich said, and he charged with his mattock, the old grub axe no longer gripped by the beard but by the handle, and his large calloused hands firm in the charge. As Heinrich neared, Dober lowered his weapon with a clank, and he made no effort to thwart Heinrich’s approach other than to turn ever slightly, so that the swung bit of the axe merely flensed past his right shoulder, rather than into his throat. Heinrich swung so hard his aim wasn’t true, and he made only a surface slice.

  “You see that I did not raise my hand first,” Dober shouted to the crowd. Then he bent down and retrieved his pipe, his nostrils flaring, and yet he had let out no cry of pain from his injury. You see, Kimall’s are in many ways the opposite of Mellites. If they are butterflies, we are but the claws of a praying mantis. We can sustain almost any physical injury or malady and survive. Perhaps we evolved thus over many generations fighting the banchecki and other clans.

  “You all see that I have been attacked for merely speaking the truth,” Dober shouted. “I have no choice but to end this, though I never dreamed of slaying any other man, let alone an Elder.” He walked over gently, tiptoeing forward on the balls of his feet as a dancer might. Heinrich didn’t move, perhaps he was too shocked by the younger man’s reaction and the feast of youthful bravado. Heinrich remained kneeling, almost transfixed as Dober brought down his metal upon him, and then again and again.

  Of course, the histories written during Lord Dober’s reign depict all of this in a far more favorable light. In any telling, it cannot be denied that he fairly earned the title of ‘The Wounded King.’ But no, he didn’t live the rest of his life with an axe protruding from his shoulder as it was later written. People of your generation must do better than us; you must strive to distinguish between fact and myth. You must remember that not all magic is used for good…

  At the time of Dober’s first usurping act of violence, I was still living in the Mellitian hut community, and I had fully resolved to acknowledging Warwick as my father, and Daphna as my sister. My given name was Loreena, but they called me the “Wild Strawberry,” because I had been plucked from the mountains. I suppose magic is always some alchemy of nostalgia and optimism, but when I look back upon those days now I can’t help but long for them like the gentle caress of a young lover. It was not an easy adjustment of course, coming from a people who deployed their bodies to a society focused on the mind. (Not to mention the Mellites’ insistence that magic was not real.) And yet, the hardest adjustment remained having to tamp down that part of me who wanted to play roughly with others.

  You see, the Mellites could not fight, for they were too fragile to do much good on the battlefield. Even basic farming was difficult for their people – the use of animals too dangerous for their delicate skin. Lacking vigorous bodies, Mellites were forced to utilize their supple minds. If you had attended university sixty years ago, your instructor would assuredly have been a Mellite. They were also well represented in the ecclesiastical realm, not to mention as physicians, advisors, and traders of everything from animal pelts to books. Despite what some say, they did not all work in the scriptoriums, at least not during the early portion of my youth, and not historically.

  Although they often appeared grotesque by the time they were twenty or thirty, Mellites had the potential to live almost as long as any other human. ‘Ghouls,’ is what people called their elderly. ‘Living cadavers.’ And when they were young and beautiful, ‘butterflies.’ For if you but touched them, they might disintegrate in your hands. I wanted so badly to be one of them, to use my mind in their nuanced manner. Yet sometimes it felt as though my mind and body were in a constant battle for superiority. It’s far from easy to consist of two nations, and nearly impossible to be of two minds.

  Warwick was a lector, working every day reading the stories of our gods in three, sometimes four languages. I’ll never forget his claudicate walk as he limped to the Ceremony House each morning, a jug of milk in his right hand and two biscuits stashed in the oversized pockets of his gray woolen cloak. Daphna’s mother had died during childbirth, which of course was more common for the Mellites. They say she had sparkling hazel eyes, raven-black hair, and a soothing face, battered and bruised though it had been, devoured as it was by the hounds of time. She met father at a strawberry picking festival. Father did not speak of her often. When he did he called her his ‘Sweet Strawberry,’ before mournfully casting his eyes far, far away. “I went to a festival to pick strawberries, and I picked her instead. A most fortunate and glorious day.” Then he would look at Daphna and I and smile. “And years later, after she was gone, we found a wild strawberry. I plucked the first strawberry for myself, and the second for Daphna.” I was, of course, the second strawberry, there to entertain his pride and joy.

  I suppose I was happy enough with my makeshift family. But it was frequently difficult not being able to play with Daphna the way I would like. Because she was so fragile, father wouldn’t let us get into too much trouble. And of course, the parents of the other Mellite children felt the same way. It was frequently isolating, and my otherness felt most acute during warm spring days, when the wind blew down from the hillside and there was nothing I desired more than to run and laugh. To act young, in those few years I was.

  As Daphna got older, she became increasingly concerned with her own wellbeing. She wanted to maintain her beauty at any cost. Not that you could really blame her, but of course I did. Once when we were in the woods I dared her to jump off a high rock. She did, and when she landed unevenly she bruised her lower shins. When we returned that afternoon, with the permanent scar blazing under her skirt like a floating heart, it was I who drew Warwick’s ire. Luckily the Mellites didn’t believe in corporal punishment, but I saw the rage in his eyes. There was nothing he wasn’t capable of in that moment, and I knew it. I was surprised when he resisted his baser impulses. A Kimall would never have done so.

  I was fed and taken care of by Warwick, but I knew I was never on the same plane as Daphna. It would have been odd to pretend otherwise. She was ever the princess, and I the handmaiden assembling her ample auburn tendrils, and I accepted my position at the bottom of their hierarchy because I was grateful for any sustenance and affection I could obtain. I still am – it’s no small thing having another care about you in this great big world, even a little bit. There are, after all, so many other things one could care about.

  One evening as I walked to gather firewood, I saw a moving cloud about the hillside. It was the banchecki, peering down from atop the bald hillside. Their fur glistened in the last rays of the dying sun. They halted for a moment, and the world seemed to stop as we observed one another. It felt as though they were trying to decide my fate. If only the universe cared, even that little, about what happens to each of us.

  “Do you remember me?” I called. “Because surely I remember you.”

  They shuddered and shook, and stood up on their rear legs.

  “Send my regards to the Kimall clan,” I shouted, and with that they blistered and sneered. “You are unclean,” I shouted. “Not because you are wild, but because you would dare to be tamed.” They started in a rumble down the hillside, and I braced myself for instant death. But then, at the last moment, they made a sudden turn away from me, as though some unseen river had blocked their passage. I stood in awe as the banchecki turned at once, and slowly made their way back into the wilderness. It felt a
s though I was watching some sort of religious ritual, only in a language I did not understand, could never understand, and that in part made it all the more wonderous. So long as there remains the concept of death, there will be the banchecki. And so long as there is death, then there must be life, for everything operates on a continuum.

  They say the bancheki possess a greater intelligence than humans, but if that is so, how did they ever see fit to trust Adair Kimall? Perhaps they knew all along he wouldn’t be able to live up to his bargain. Perhaps they instinctively knew, as I would later learn, how to give others just enough rope to hang themselves with.

  I would only see the banchecki one more time, and that comes at the very end of my tale. I’ll tell you all about it, should you express any interest at all in my future.

  After he bested Elder Heinrich, the newly crowned ‘Lord Dober,’ set forth to conquer and unite all of the nearby provinces. His legend grew with each victory, and the myth and fable of his name spread even faster than his empire. Many believed he was a god, others that he was immortal. To that end, Lord Dober made sure to prominently display the axe, which allegedly protruded from his right shoulder and demonstrated bravery and tenacity to anyone who dared look upon its rusted vestige. It was a prop, of course. I knew that all along. Strong as we are, there has never been a Kimall yet who bested death. Well, unless I somehow do, as I am surely the last Kimall on this side of the soil.

  Lord Dober’s axe was a symbol of strength, of course, but it also implied that he had access to magic, for not even Lord Dober the man could be strong enough to survive such an attack without infection and death. He and his soldiers, known then as the Band of the Broken laid siege to the garden city of Tunsia, they bloodied the canals of Coastalis, they returned from Figalia with the spoils of war: women and gold and Figalia’s king’s head on the tip of a crooked pike. And with each victory Lord Dober was further celebrated as a great man, a generational man who would restore order from the chaos of the realm. Isn’t it strange how greatness in a man and greatness in a woman are so differently defined? If the world had more female historians, perhaps the pages of history books wouldn’t emphasize bloodshed and war. And if the world had more female rulers, perhaps the pages of history books needn’t run red at all.

  Lord Dober’s Return

  “We must all be joined together, as the bones of a body connect,” Dober shouted at a speech I observed when I was perhaps thirteen. I watched while dangling from a tree above the parapet. Daphna too sat on one of the endless branches, for once ignoring the risk to her fragile body. By then Lord Dober had taken to wearing a crown, a large bronze one that he had rusted to match his axe. Everything he said seemed to be carried, as if by golden fairies, to the adoring masses.

  “We have almost conquered the known world,” he said. “Once everyone is under our dominion, then we can work toward perfection. And this very ground shall be the capital of the greatest empire the world has known. Who says heaven is only for the gods? Who decided we should be denied heavenly nectar just because we roam these woods, and are filled with blood as a fruit contains juice? I say, no more shall we be constrained by the superstitions of the past We will liberate those citizens of unfortunate nations. In time we will restore freedom and peace…but first we must fight!” Everyone applauded – me the loudest of all, of course – because of our friendship and shared history. And I must admit, the fact that Lord Dober had grown to be classically attractive certainly did not detract at all from his many, many beautiful words.

  It seemed at times as though he spoke only to me. The crowd melted away, and an odd intimacy hung in the air. By then, I understood physical attraction. I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted, mind you, but I knew I wanted something. Something yet indescribable. Lord Dober in that moment seemed to embody those vague borderlands between lust and familiarity. Not that I was ready to act on anything, and not that I ever dared think someone like Lord Dober would want anything to do with me in that way.

  There were plenty of beautiful people for me to choose from among the Mellites, of course. And I didn’t particularly mind the thought of them growing sickly and physically unattractive. I have never been a vain person, at least not when it comes to others. The fact that I was attracted to Lord Dober quite disgusted the more rational parts of my brain. Not because I thought him evil, as at the time I did not, although I did suspect him a brute. Rather because some sliver of me did think him like a brother, given our shared journey and ancestry. The complexity of these feelings remain confounding to me even now, some sixty years later. I felt badly about such desires, because I didn’t seem worthy of the romantic roads I hoped to travel. I blew him kisses at the end of his speech all the same. And so did Daphna. And so did most of the other girls, and more than a few boys.

  Later that week, while Lord Dober was still performing his homecoming dance, I came upon an old woman as I was picking mushrooms in the surrounding woods. From behind all I could see was a mess of bedraggled gray hair. I felt instant fear, in a manner I had not known since I encountered the banchecki. I smelled something ancient yet familiar, and my first instinct was to flee. I was still not prepared for whatever came next. Perhaps then I wished to live forever.

  “Child,” said the voice from over a worm-licked log. “There is no need to have fear in your heart.” She did not turn around, not yet. “Well of course there is,” she continued, “but not of this simple old beggar woman.”

  “Reveal yourself,” I said. “Please, or I will run.”

  “Oh, Loreena dear,” said the voice, “Haven’t you learned that running from a monster only makes it give chase?” She whirled around and before me stooped Dramadi Moore, the herb witch. She looked ever more haggard and ancient—and remember, I had never known her in her youth. Time’s funny, is it not? Even then in the woods that day she was probably a decade or so younger than I am now. Time is a wonderful assassin that way; you never see its act, and yet its results can never be denied.

  Anyway, of course I felt a susurrus of emotions as I stood in those lonely woods, staring into a mirror that reflected only the past.

  “Dramadi, grandmother,” I said, trying my best to appear calm and respectful. I even approached her first, I drew close enough to breathe in the musky scent of her. She smelled of death forestalled. Of mud and faded parchment. But as I approached, she smiled and placed her withered hand upon my forehead.

  “I’ve always known you were out there, somewhere,” she said. “My little survivor.” She smiled proudly.

  “Is that what you’re doing out here all alone?” I asked. “Searching for me?”

  “No, child,” she said. “I wish I were on so noble a journey. I’m just wondering the countryside, because I have nowhere left to go, and nothing much to do. I suppose I have…outlived my usefulness.”

  “How are they?” I asked.

  “Who?” she asked in an incredulous tone.

  “My mother and father,” I said. “And Boyd, and —”

  “Hush, child,” she said. “You must forget those names.”

  At first I didn’t understand. But of course, it was the Kimall custom to not speak of the dead. I recalled our ritual of benediction on the year’s anniversary of a lost companion, and vowing to never again speak their name. It was considered a form of honor, of respect. One simply did not speak the names of the dead. And thus from Dramadi the herb witch, I learned that I truly was an orphan in the world.

  “There’s nobody left,” she whispered. “Not a one.” She smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “Well, aside from you, and me, and your friend, Lord Dober.”

  “His parents…?”

  “I said they were gone, save the three I named. Oh poor thing,” she continued. “It is your destiny to be the last one remaining of two lesser nations.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, although of course now I do. “Ryne—er, Lord Dober, he had always held out hope,” I said, stretching my arms forward as though the force of ambulati
on might somehow change or shift Dramadi’s grave message. “But part of me always knew. I suppose one always senses when they’re all alone.”

  “There are far worse things than being alone,” she said. “Take it from the wondering witch of the mountains.” She smiled, and for a second I felt that I had some kin left in this world after all.

  “Listen well,” she said, growing serious. “Lord Dober, the child known as Ryne.”

  “Yes?”

  “You see far too much of the good in him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean exactly what I said, child. What else could I mean?”

  “What do you ask of me?”

  “I ask nothing of you or anyone, little Loreena. Since the day our people turned on the banchecki, and they devoured us to the man, I ask nothing of anyone or anything.” And I could see it then, how short Boyd’s reign had been. There must have been civil war, and perhaps some of the people retaliated against the banchecki. No mortal can win by waging war against death itself. Not that you can tame or befriend death, either. Perhaps the greatest sin of humanity is our mass delusion of control.

  “How did you escape?” I asked.

  “They sent me away before it happened,” Dramadi said. “Exile.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “Because I know, child. My third eye always saw the Kimall clan clearly.”

  I stared at my shoes for a while, uncertain of how to respond. When I looked up she was gone.