of Maidens & Swords

by Melissa Marr

  "Some births are hard," I point out.

  Despite best intentions, it's a difficult subject for me. Choosing to birth the young is risky. Not everyone survives. My womb-mother didn't. The elders try to choose the fittest of us for the task, preferring those who are built for a full womb. Sometimes, we must risk to bring forth our daughters.

  The birth lines are carefully minded. As with any crop we grow, there are those who track the origins to be sure there are healthy yields. What we cannot control is gender. We have only daughters. Once, I suspect our ancestors made a choice to make this so. We are a village of women, and we bear no sons.

  When we select womb-mothers, we work to be sure there are no traits we value that are lost in the breeding. It's harder when we must rely on the few men who stay in our breeding huts, but keeping too many men in the village leads to problems. We breed with the ones we capture, set them free, and then wait until another invader has the traits we need. Capture. Keep. Repeat. It is how things have always been.

  They seem happy, as if the constant stream of women seeking a filled womb is a gift. Rutting is what they seek of us anyhow. We explain our terms; they agree or we send them back to the ground where they can rejoin their own tribe. There is never force. We don't believe in mating by force.

  If they didn't keep trying to invade our village, we'd need to figure out another way to handle breeding. For now, though, we kill easily ten times as many as we capture. Unlike them, we never go out raiding to fill our breeding huts. They come and steal my sisters to birth their young. We simply defend our village--keeping some, killing most.

  That is my function. Not breeding. Not teaching. Not preparing meals. Aunt Mila and I were chosen to hold the swords. We keep the wolves from the village. We will die in the service of our sister-mothers-aunt-daughters some day. Each and every woman in our village has a role, and in exchange for fulfilling ours, Mila and I are fed and loved. We are valued.

  And we will value our sister-mothers-aunt -daughters until our bodies have no blood or breath remaining.

  A rustling in the brush to our side has both of us sliding steel from sheath. Our swords are often nourished with the blood of our enemies. We are not hesitant to draw or to make use of our blades.

  Above us are archers. They can kill at a distance, but the canopy is so thick that anyone who reaches the edge of the village is ours to handle. Once the wolves scale the mountain, fighting up close is often the only recourse.

  More noise comes from the dense cover.

  Something is in there. The foliage is so thick that the best we can do is watch and wait. The forest is not willing to be restrained. We would not ask it to do so either. We coexist with the earth, not at odds with it.

  A shrill cry from the growth--and we relax. A peccary's coarsely furred flank is visible. Fortunately, the feral pigs are no threat to us. If the animal charges, we'll cut it down and deliver the meat to the village. If it ignores us, we'll ignore it.

  Mila and I aren't hunters of animals. Only men. Only wolves.

  By morning's light Glenda hasn't been found, and no wolves have scaled the mountain-side, so we descend to the river far below and patrol there. Typically, we only go this far if our sister-mothers-aunt-daughters are going to collect water. The archers are on alert, but Mila and I descend with them so as to protect them.

  One of our own was taken, though. This, too, we must address.

  Swords drawn and ready, Mila and I explore as far as the paths into the forest have been carved. No one truly expects us to find Glenda. If the wolves take you, there is no reason to hope.

  Only one of ours has survived, has returned, and she has become a lesson we will not soon forget. There was a girl, back when I was no more than a child with a dagger to train with instead of a proper sword. I was only seven then.

  Her name . . . we don't speak it.

  When we found her, her lips were bleeding. Her body was covered in scratches, bruises, bites . . . and I wished her an easy death. A part of me--one I was ashamed of afterwards--thought that I would choose death over survival.

  But the body heals. Bruises fade. Bones knit.

  We thought the Nameless had healed. Voiceless but alive, she survived--and in her womb, she carried her child to the safety of our village. The wolves had stopped tormenting her when they realized their cruelty had put a child in her womb. They let her rest, but they had already severed her tongue. They took her words just as they'd impeded her freedom and invaded her body.

  So she escaped. The Nameless returned to where our archers could see her, and my sister-family killed the wolves. We brought her home.

  Her eyes were different, though. After her return, the Nameless looked into every shadow as if the wolves might hide there. She was a hunted thing. We brought water to her. We fed her. We clothed and healed her body. The village elders did not ask her to work, to speak, to care for herself. She was safe within our village, protected from everything but her memories. No one could slay those.

  But her feet did not need to touch the forest floor.

  Not long after her return, the Nameless birthed a child. When the child was born, she named the girl Victorie. The elders feared that the babe would be a boy, that they'd need to decide if it was going to be allowed to survive, but fortunately, Victorie came. The Nameless gave birth to a daughter.

  The Nameless nursed Victorie until she was sure the child would thrive. One day, when the girl was weaned, the Nameless handed the babe to one of the aunts, walked to the edge of our village, and stepped into nothingness.

  Only then did her feet again touch the soil.

  "Victorie!" Mila's rasp of a voice carries across the ropes as clearly as if I were already in the sword hut with her. Aunt Mila is rarely loud, but Victorie tries the resolve of even the most patient of women.

  The girl has just turned ten. At her age, I had already moved from dagger to sword. Victorie still has not been taught much beyond defense. It is not my place to argue, but when I can, I do. The girl is meant to fight. It is in the marrow of the bones that were made in blood and violence. I see it. We all do.

  Only Mila and I are not frightened by it.

  Silently, I step into the hut where I have spent so many of my hours and days. In some ways, the reed covered floor is more comforting than the small hut I share with Mila. This is the one space where all I am asked to do is to create the violence that is my nature, too.

  "Auntie," Victorie says in greeting.

  She takes a fighter's stance. Her form isn't bad.

  "Victorie." I have no words that are permitted. The elders had decided that the girl would not be raised in the care of Mila. Instead, Victorie was passed from mother-hut to mother-hut, her presence a treasure beloved of every mother.

  All but us.

  And yet, she was meant to be ours. The motherless daughters are given to the blade, raised to protect our village. This has always been so--until Victorie.

  Victorie's feet are steady, and her crouch is deep. The bladeless hilt she holds is gripped correctly, too. "I want to fight. I need to."

  As she has so many times, Mila starts, "You are to be practicing letters, basic defense, and—"

  "Why do you all act like I am a child?" Victorie doesn't swing the hilt, nor does she stomp her foot. "I am meant for this."

  Mila's gaze meets mine over Victorie's head. The unspoken question: do we go over the elders' heads? This is not a choice Mila can make alone. I will bear the weight of the elders' reaction, too. The daughter of the Nameless is sheltered. Victorie is our prize, the treasure we stole from the wolves. The elders want her to be kept safe, and those who defend our village from wolves are not safe.

  I nod. The choice to train her in the weapon was always inevitable: Victorie will be taught the sword, or she will injure herself trying. We will hide her lessons as best we can, as long as we can.

  She should have been ours anyhow. The girl is motherless. I had been a motherless child. Mila had too. Sure, the
village is still one family, and sure, we are all raised as family. "No girl has a true mother," so say the elders, but there is a bond between womb-mother and child that still exists. A girl who grows inside the flesh of another feels a tie to her, and so, too, do the womb-mothers. Those without womb-mothers bond together. Victorie is not mine or Mila's the way a womb-daughter belongs to her mother, but she is ours in the way of sisters, of motherless daughters, of those who survived.

  "There are reasons, good reasons, no one wants harm to come to you, Victorie," Mila says.

  "You all pretend that I don't know, but I do." Victorie lifts her chin.

  There is a fighter's spirit in the girl. It was born there when her womb-mother crawled through dirt and over rock to return to the village. It was born there when three-year-old Victorie saw that no other child had fire-tinted hair and blacked the eyes of several children for calling her "wolf girl."

  We may be a family, but we are not one without squabbles.

  "Form matters, Victorie," Mila begins.

  I take up the two-handed sword that is my own, the sword I have named and bloodied, and I begin to move slowly through the positions. Neither of us tell Victorie to follow my moves. I may execute each guard and cut slower than usual, and Mila may silently correct Victorie's form, but no one says that we are teaching her.

  No one says she is the newest of our sword-sisters.

  #

  * * *

  Over the next three years, Victorie makes progress faster than either of us could hope. Mila and I hide it. We lie for her. Something about the child makes us want to protect her above ourselves. If I ever were chosen to be a womb-mother, I expect that it would feel like this. This feral girl makes me want to slaughter every wolf, even as I see their presence in her. She has a ferocity that is unlike the daughters of the village. No other had been born in violence, and her womb-mother's rage seems to be a part of the very bones of Victorie.

  The elders pretend not to see that trait flourish. They do not remark that she clings to us like a welcome shadow. Maybe they explain it as motherless ones finding each other. Maybe they choose to ignore it because they, too, see that it was inevitable. Either way, we are not stopped from training her in stealth. It is not endorsed, but we are not told to stop.

  And Victorie takes to the sword the way I had hoped to when I was a girl. I don't recall a time when there wasn't a blade within my reach, but I was never the natural fighter that she is. Weapons seem to be an extension of her body. I have begun to fear her sometimes when she fights, but even at her most frightening, Victorie will pause and smile at us. We are not in danger. The village is safer with such a fighter preparing to join us at the edge of the forest.

  But that is not what she does.

  Her plans are larger.

  "Have you thought about going on the offensive?" Victorie asks one evening as we break bread.

  "We strike the moment they enter our village," Mila says.

  "Take the fight to them. If we trained some of the others, we c--"

  "No," I say. "We protect them. We do not ask them to risk their safety."

  "They'll keep coming." Victorie paces away from us. Back to us, she adds, "The only way they'll stop is if they are no more. Send a spy. Send me. I look like them. I can get information and--"

  "No." Mila follows and tries to touch the girl's arm. "We defend. We do not attack."

  Our Victorie is of the wolves as well as of our village, so we ought not be surprised that a year later, the girl slips away to seek the wolves. We ought not think it strange that she has the drive to slaughter those who cost her a womb-mother. We ought not be surprised that she wants to protect us: Victorie is a weapon in a way that no one expected.

  #

  * * *

  When we realize that Victorie has gone, Mila and I gather our weapons and descend. We leave our village in silence; perhaps it is in guilt. The child, young woman now, has done what we've dreamed of. At only fourteen years, she's gone to attack the wolves. She did not tell us before she left. She did not ask to have our swords at her side. In some way, we have failed her. We have lost Victorie because we were not willing to change.

  "The elders--"

  "Will not need to know," Mila insists. "We find her. We bring her home."

  It does not occur to either of us that Victorie cannot be found. It does not seem possible that she will be kept by the wolves. She is ours, and we will bring her home.

  At the base of the mountain, we look at the river where we get our water. If there were a way to draw it up to the canopy where we live, we would not need to descend at all. This is our weakness. We can collect that which falls from the sky in basins and barrels. It is not enough. The earth provides, but not always in the ways that we would like.

  I did not hesitate when we descended to the river's edge, or when we crossed beyond the paths, but as we reach the edge of the forest and step into a vast open space, I grow anxious. The land where the wolves live is different than our dense forest. The difference, the sheer openness, fills me with fear.

  Still we go, knowing that they will see us. In such space, there is no cover. If they had archers, we'd be bleeding by now. However, it is not our death they have ever sought. What they want is not a thing my mind understands. Our wombs. Our flesh. Our obeisance. I am unsure.

  But I feel exposed as we cross.

  When we see their village, my fear flashes into terror. There are more wolves than I knew could exist. They watch us. Mouths slit open like mad animals whose tongues loll out. They step forward. Weapons not in hand ,as if we are no threat. Perhaps against such numbers we are not.

  There are women, too. In the wolves' village, I see girls and women. No crones are in sight, but there are a lot of women here--enough to bear their young. They look away, and they turn their backs to our approach.

  The horror slowly washes through me like venom sliding into my veins, making its way to my heart. The wolves had no need of our wombs. The wolves could stay here and never seek out my village. My sister-mothers-aunt- daughters were never essential to the wolves, not for creation of life. We had thought they had no women of their own. We had thought they were like us, a village of one kind. Seeing their village sends the venom from vein to heart.

  They chose to come for us. They chose to bring their violence to my people. I understand rage in a new way. My sword lifts in tandem with Mila's.

  And they begin to raise weapons and surge toward us.

  Mila and I train daily. We have killed many wolves. The sheer number of them now makes it unlikely that we can survive.

  "Do you see her?" she asks.

  I'm looking, scanning the village, seeking the girl. "No."

  "Victorie!" Mila yells.

  No one answers. She is not to be seen. If she is here, I'm not sure where she hides.

  "If she comes, get her out of here." Mila does not add that we will not both survive. In truth none of the three of us may return to our home. I think briefly of the village, of no one with knowledge of swords or fight, of only manuals as a teacher.

  "Go back," I urge. "I'll look for her--"

  "There! She's over there."

  Mila and I are back-to-back now, and I see a glimpse of a girl I think is Victorie. She blends into the group of children in a way she never has in our village. Our daughter-by-choice is alive.

  A wolf comes. He is unarmed. Foolish, arrogant wolves. We end him, and several more, before we see wolves with staffs. They've taken young saplings and turned them into weapons. Rather than allow the trees to grow, they destroyed them.

  "Safe?" Mila's voice is taut with worry, but I hear her blade making contact with our enemies all the same.

  And then Victorie sees us. Her feet are like a dance across the earth, and she comes. A staff from a fallen wolf is in her hand before she is fully at our side.

  "Aunties," Mila says as she joins us.

  "We must go. Victorie, you--" A cry of pain from Mila interrupts my words.
/>
  Mila orders me, "Go. Take V--"

  But Victorie is a child of our village as much as she is a wolf-born girl. She has an arm around a wolf, a dagger from Mila's side at his throat before more words can flow.

  "Back up."

  This one wolf matters to these monsters. He speaks, "Obey her!"

  Mila and I stand at Victorie's sides. She orders their retreat, and we do likewise. With a wolf as our captive, we three retreat to the forest, to the river, to the base of our mountain.

  Women descend. They do not question. They simply treat Mila.

  Victorie stands guard, watching the wolf depart. Her arms fold as if she, too, must hold her pieces together. No one needs to say a word to know that Mila isn't going to survive. The aunts fuss, cleaning wounds, wiping blood, gathering sutures. It won't work. Mila knows it. I do too.

  She holds out a hand for me. "Come."

  I obey. The aunts are all my family. That's how we are. One family. The village is all one family.

  But Mila is mine. I've slept on her floor, and I've shared my meals with her for my life. I was raised as if I was her own child. My duty, my role in our village, was to become Mila so that when today came, the village would be safe.

  "Victorie," Mila says.

  "No," the girl says.

  "Victorie," Mila repeats, but she is looking at me as she adds, "Take her home and train her."

  Several of the aunties gasp.

  They collect their essentials, and steadily they ascend. Mila goes home with effort. The last one on the ground with me is Victorie, and despite how often I've done this very thing with Mila, this time it goes awry. Perhaps the archers are busy with Mila. Perhaps they did not watch as carefully as they ought. Either way, no arrows come when the wolf grabs me.

  Mila is far above me, ascending the mountain when she sees. She begins to descend.

  "No!" I yell, not at the wolf but at her. "Protect our home. Train another."