by J. Naomi Ay
It was the worst time ever in my memory. My beloved Senya was dead, and the old king’s heart was broken. He cared naught for us, his people, anymore and Prince Akan took advantage of the void that was left. Ruling by edict, Akan transformed Mishnah. Those we had elected, he replaced with those of his own choosing. Laws that had existed to protect and safeguard our people since the time of the Saint, Akan tossed out and declared his voice a law unto itself. Our government no longer stood for the people but stood instead for Akan and nothing could be done. The courts that had held blindly to justice and the written word of the Saint from a thousand years were compromised by judges who sought only Akan’s favor and the rewards he would bestow up on them.
Akan taxed us for our very breaths claiming each of us emitted too much carbon into the atmosphere. He took control of every business and institution because they too polluted what had once been a clean and beautiful planet. There were no jobs in Mishnah anymore. There was no one willing or able to engage in commerce for if they did, they were regulated and taxed such that their efforts were effectively confiscated by the Crown.
Akan ruled us with an iron fist by raising an army of jackbooted thugs. This army was comprised of the homeless youth who might otherwise have worked in the trades that didn’t exist anymore. He gave his army food, lodging and clothing though their conditions would have been deplorable by the standards before his reign. He issued them weapons and granted them permission to fire upon his own people. He sent them to Karupatani to pillage and rape the few who remained and to steal their crops for their own consumption.
The Duke of Segefor, Senya’s father, holed up in his palace with only a small staff of loyalists to fight against Akan’s army when Akan sought to reclaim the Duke’s holdings for himself. When the Duke’s guards were dead, it was said that he fled back to Karupatani only to discover his entire village decimated, his people and the King hiding in the hills.
It was as if the heavens saw the tragedy of that which Rehnor had become and wept with us. For ten years, every winter the snow fell as never before creating frozen mountains in the streets making it impossible to pass, impossible to leave even so that one might buy a morsel of food with our few remaining pennies. The summers cried upon us too, the rain falling endlessly from day until night and then again until the winter set in and returned to the snow. What had been a land of abundance became swampland unable to nurture a crop to feed our starving people and so famine and disease were added to our already troubled lives.
I owned my buildings outright and diligently put coin away for many years so that I could pay the taxes. My tenants were devastated, without employment or coin to pay the rent. Some left, too proud to live off my charity. Rather they chose to live or die among those that wandered the streets. The few that remained became my family. We shared food, what little could be found, and during the coldest of times, clustered together in a single room for heat. The men swept the snow and boarded the windows as they cracked and splintered. The women turned whatever cloth we gathered into something that could be worn again or stuffed into a shoe. For fresh water, we boiled rainwater and snow over a fire in the hearth, the firewood once a chair or a table beside a bed.
For entertainment we told stories to each other as books that did not glorify Prince Akan were forbidden to read, forbidden now to print. In a hushed voice I told the tale of Senya and soon my hallways became crowded with those who had come to hear of him, of his sparkling silver eyes and his magic. They wept when my tale was ended for truly it seemed that the Saint had sent him to us and finding us unworthy, had taken him away from us again.
Occasionally, a fancy speeder would go by slowly, and pennies were tossed to us in the street. My tenants and I counted what we collected and then I took them to the grocer, walking up and down between his barren shelves, desperate for something that could be made into a soup that might last us more than a day. If I was lucky, he might have secreted away a cup of milk powder for the only child left in my buildings, a small girl who at eight years looked no more than four. He had a bone or two and a carrot or beet that would fill a soup pot enough, and though I paid him what I held in my hand, I brought him home with me to share our supper.
One morning I woke up, and the sun shone in through my window, and I knew in my heart and soul that something had changed. It was August, and for the first time in ten years, summer heat began to warm my room.
“Blessed Saint,” I cried, falling to my knees in prayer while I basked in the golden glow. It was then that I realized that this day was the first of August, and with a stroke of melancholy, I reflected that it was my Senya’s birthday, twenty-seven years ago this day.
“Meri, I’ve got some dandelion roots on the stove,” one of my tenants called as she knocked upon my door. “Come have a spot of tea with me. The sun is shining, and it looks to be a glorious day, thank the Saint.”
I rose to my feet and dressed myself, joining my friend on the front stoop along with many others who came to feel this unexpected blessing of sunshine upon our faces. I was sipping my tea, my skirt pulled up to my knees so that my toes and ankles might enjoy the sun too when the grocer came running up to us. He was out of breath and held his hand to his chest.
“Meri,” he called. “Meri, I just heard, he’s alive. Thank the Saint he’s alive!”
“Who?” my friend asked, but I knew. I spilt my tea all over the stoop as again for the second time in the morning I fell to my knees in prayer. Tears poured down my face as I thanked the Saint and the Karupta God for whoever controlled our heavens now I did not care. May they all be blessed and thanked.
“It’s our Senya,” the grocer wept, tears as thick as my own, rolling down his once round face. “Our Senya is alive. Akan captured him and held him upon the Child Moon in the quarries, but he’s been found, and now they are sending him to Rozari to recover. He’ll come back, Meri. He’ll come back and everything will get better!”
“How did you hear this?”
“Who would say?”
“What about Prince Akan?”
The voices of the people erupted around me.
“The King. The King was on the balcony just now, and he announced that his own guard, Captain Loman has taken the lad to Rozari. Our Senya’s in fine form despite it all and will come home soon. His Majesty promised. In the meantime, the King wants to resume his duties. Prince Akan won’t be our next King. Senya will!”
A cheer rose up around me. In fact, the cheering continued down the street as the word spread from mouth to mouth, stoop to stoop until all across the city, all across the country and the planet, everyone knew that Akan’s reign had ended, and our Senya’s would soon begin.
Rehnor began to heal, but it was a slow transformation. Akan remained at his father’s side and his people instilled in all branches of government could not easily be rousted. Akan’s guards were a formidable force, and though the old king sat his throne once again, he had not the wit nor stamina to fight against the government Akan had created
“Patience,” I told my friends. “We have lived through the worst. We must bide our time now until Senya is ready to return.”
“And what if he doesn’t return?” my friend asked.
“Or what if he is no better than Akan?” another said.
“He will and he is,” I replied for I raised the boy as if he were my own and only I knew what was in his heart.
“The lad’s got magic in his fingers,” the grocer said.
“That he does,” I agreed. “More than any of us can imagine.”
“How do you know, Meri?” my tenant protested.
“I know. I’ve seen it.” I remembered the night that I had seen him take a ball of fire in his hand and toss it heavenward to light up the sky. “He will return again,” I swore. “And, he will save Rehnor.”
A Preview of Book 2
My Enemy’s Son
