Whisper

by Harper Alexander

  I turned him away from that battle, and ran for the hills.

  Twenty-One –

  As we ran I fantasized about not stopping until we got all the way back to Safeguard, but it was one of those emotional fantasies anyone might have, of which the flame died down and gave way to practicality as I used my energy up. Once we were beyond range of the battle, we slowed, and I slumped over Char's neck, panting, trying to get a hold of myself.

  What had come over me out there? No glorious fantasy to employ this time around, that was for sure. What in the world was the method to this madness? Could I expect to be bolstered by otherworldly glory one time and then inconveniently wracked by ruin the next? At the mercy of the whim of opposite extremes when I was expected to perform?

  Had Jay been absolutely right? Was this nothing but folly? Had it only been some fluke the first time that I had no business letting anyone else blow out of proportion?

  Char stood patiently beneath me, his breathing growing gradually slower.

  “Who am I fooling?” I murmured to him, then changed my tune in a realization of dismay: “Who have I fooled?” He didn't reply, of course, but I didn't require an answer. An answer would not get me out of what I'd gotten myself into. How was I to explain my choke to the Lieutenant, after she had just put faith in me? She would be less than impressed. And I couldn't go crying to Jay this time.

  Toby...?

  But I discarded the thought as quickly as it came. He and I didn't have that kind of relationship. I could talk to him, and he was perfectly nice, and we were actually getting to know each other rather well, but expecting comfort from him? It didn't feel appropriate.

  “You're all I've got, Char. And you don't even understand why we're not out there.” I let my eyelids fall shut, collapsing forward to rest my face against his mane. I had created so much to answer to for myself. The only bright side lay in the fact that if there were people left for me to answer to when I got back to camp, we wouldn't have lost any battles because I had baled.

  *

  I didn't prance back into Safeguard, victorious, like the others. I brought up the rear – or near the rear – and kept my eyes fastened on a neutral path. I was not going to hang my head, but that didn't mean I had to acknowledge the world, either. I didn't look at Toby, where he paused his fire practice to let us pass, or acknowledge stand-out Cambrie, always loitering somewhere to welcome the soldiers home like there was one in the pack just for her. I didn't look for Jay, where, if he was watching, he would undoubtedly be relieved to see me alive but would also assuredly be glaring with mordant disapproval at the fact that I was with the rest of them at all. I sat tall and distant on Char's back, among them for the return but not one of them. Not today.

  I took Char straight to his pen away from the others and rubbed him down, not keen on any reunions this time around. I just wanted...I just wanted to have not gone in the first place. And since I couldn't have that, I just wanted to be able to pretend, to dive back into duties here like I had never had any others. This I could do. This was decidedly my element, and when I was doing it I could easily pretend I always had been and always would be.

  I avoided Jay like the plague, pretending with equal dedication that he didn't exist. That was a little harder, though – except for the fact that he seemed to be avoiding me in the same manner, and so it worked out for the evening.

  It was someone I hadn't accounted for, on my list of 'people to avoid', who got through to me in the end. I had just entered my tent that night, thinking I'd gotten away unscathed and no one could bother me now, when a voice stopped me just shy of sealing out the rest of the world.

  “Alannis?”

  Dismayed, my shoulders slumped, but I supposed there was no avoiding it forever. Whatever 'it' was to be.

  Footsteps scuffed up to my tent, and I looked over my shoulder to nudge the tent flap aside, granting my ambusher a small window. Lady Alejandra took the invitation, inserting her arm through the flap before I could let it fall. I moved aside to let her enter, and she came to rest respectfully just within.

  “Let me just say...it happens to everyone, Alannis.”

  So word of me bombing the operation had already spread. “No,” I denounced humorlessly. “I don't think so.”

  “Alright,” she gave in entirely too swiftly. “So I lied. But it does happen to the best of us.”

  I spared her a glance, but didn't reply as I had myself a seat and began stripping my boots off. The Lieutenant had been kind to me as well – in her own way. Of course no one had had the presence of mind to notice me missing during the battle, but she had returned to camp and taken one look at me, and come to the conclusion: “You look like you didn't have the chance to get your hands dirty.”

  I had avoided her eyes, met them, shifted, not known what to say. But she had been tired and apparently without inclination to give me a hard time, and had moved on without elaboration happening between us.

  “Care to tell me what happened out there?” Lady Alejandra probed.

  “Why would I?”

  “Because I'm not quite as intimidating as military authority, and you don't seem keen on taking it to your Jay-bird.”

  “Yeah, well. He told me not to go. So. All he would say is 'I told you so'.”

  “Well, I didn't tell you so. Did I?”

  Finally, I allowed myself to look at her, considering her offer. Grudgingly, perhaps, but considering it. Then I speared the tent wall with my gaze. If I was going to tell her, I wasn't going to look at her while I did it.

  “I choked,” I said. “The first time, I flourished. I charged out there like I'd been born to, like God himself was on my side, propelling me, invigorating me...making me some glorious force of potential, all at once come into my own. Some fantastical champion who knew how to take an entire army by surprise.”

  “I don't know that a self-gratifying stance such as that is one that ought to be chalked up to God, love.” She cocked a meaningful brow, suggesting I rethink that particular clause, as she made herself comfortable on the ground opposite me.

  “Whatever it was,” I dismissed because it wasn't the point, “it didn't happen again the second time. The opposite did.”

  “Well,” Lady Alejandra said thoughtfully, resting her arms outstretched over her knees. “What was 'whatever it was'? Let's address that.”

  “And how do you plan on addressing the issues of my mental beast? You're just some wandering gypsy, right?”

  “We're all a smattering of things, these days. Why don't you try me.”

  I extended an impatient shrug of my hand. “You try me,” I offered wryly, for it wasn't me who had any idea where I was going with this.

  “Has something like what you described ever happened before?”

  I was silent for a time, and then I figured what the hey. It wasn't as if my gifts were a secret from anyone now, and people had witnessed the spell on the battlefield. And if Jay didn't want to hear it...maybe it was time I told it to someone who did.

  Giving in, I told her of my past experiences. When I was finished, I ended with returning to the issue of me freezing this past time. “I went out there and just started glitching,” I said. “The horses were antsy, shifting around, jostling up against one another... And the unsettled motion beneath me kept reminding me of earth tremors, of a quake coming on... I just started panicking.”

  She nodded, not surprised. “Post-traumatic stress coming through. Very common. And in your case you had both past quakes and your prior experience on the battlefield to contribute to it. It doesn't surprise me that they joined forces and chose to manifest when they did.”

  So it was all good and well to put a name to my malfunctioning disorder, but that didn't explain how I was supposed to kick it – if I was to kick it. I didn't even know that I wanted to go out there again. Ever.

  But Lady Alejandra was not so easily discouraged. She thought it over for a few moments, mulling over the details I had divulged, and then came to a d
ecisive conclusion on the matter. “Don't worry, Miss Wilde,” she said, meeting my eyes with hers. “We just have to heighten the fantasy.”

  I had no response to that – could only sit there questioning the wisdom of her solution. But she was grinning, the Irish in her eyes twinkling, and she finished with confidence,

  “Then you'll be back in business.”

  Twenty-Two –

  They came into my tent next time with bundles of fabric and a suspicious tray of paints, as well as a mysterious little box of which the contents I could only guess. It was midday, and I was taking a moment to rest from my duties and regroup for the afternoon, when they barged in quite uninvited.

  'They' being Lady Alejandra and Cambrie. What was the latter doing here? Not that I had the slightest what Lady Alejandra was up to, but surely Cambrie had no need to be included.

  “What is this?” I asked as they moved right in and made themselves at home. I was not prepared for such an intervention.

  “Your makeover crew,” Lady Alejandra replied cheerfully.

  Makeup? Surely not. “I work in the dirt,” I pointed out. “With animals.”

  “You also ride noble steeds into battle, and have the presence of mind to dress them up like kings. No, better – like mythical kings. That horn you fashioned Char is quite the nice touch.”

  “It's a gimmick,” I protested, trying to gain back some ground.

  “And gimmicks catch on like nobody's business. Face me; arms out,” she prompted without missing a beat, taking a long string out of her bundle of tricks. “We must take your measurements.” And before I could think to prevent her, she had erected my arms perpendicular to my body and was drawing the string across me to see what she had to work with.

  “What? No,” I objected, clamping my arms back to my sides and taking a possessive step backwards. “I don't have measurements.”

  “Nonsense. Every woman has measurements. And I dare say you might actually have some nice ones. So come here before I'm forced to estimate based on the current unflattering impression you've cultivated and end up making something too small. You want breathing room on the battlefield, trust me.”

  Were they serious? They actually wanted me to go out there dressed as some misfitting pageant wonder?

  “What's she doing here?” I asked since my defenses were failing, jutting my chin in Cambrie's direction where she was arranging the paint tray on the tent floor. She was always the tray girl, wasn't she?

  “She is the qualified makeup artist of the camp,” Lady Alejandra said, pulling me into submission once again before her.

  Cambrie straightened, unaffected by my questioning, and came to hold paint colors up to my face in experimentation. “My sister was a rodeo queen before the quakes,” she explained, apparently brave enough to hold her own in my presence when she didn't have to look me in the eye. She concentrated very deliberately on the colors she was trying out for size, pulling off the illusion that she was actually applying some expert, trained eye to the matter. “She got tired of all the fussing from different professionals trying to prep her before every event, and I always liked playing with her cosmetic set, so she taught me how to do that part for her. I was always silent in concentration, being so young and not wanting to mess anything up, so I guess she thought I was a good trade. She would do her hair, and I would make her face pretty, and she would always end up centered, instead of frazzled, before riding.”

  Good for her, I thought. “Well I can relate to how she felt about being fussed over,” I said pointedly, ignoring the opportunity to allow this story to serve as one that humanized Cambrie in my eyes. I focused instead on the fact that I was not surprised she and makeup had a thing together. It went right along with her other grievances, and only served to heighten the impression of superficiality that had been established in my heart for her.

  “But you're not just going to be a queen, dear,” Lady Alejandra said. “You're going to be a goddess. A spectacular war goddess. You're going to believe it, and you're going to like it.”

  I highly doubted that, but they had come determined. I had no choice but to stand for them as they established a fierce perimeter. “The Lieutenant is going to pee her pants if she sees me in...all this.” I gestured in agitation to the general heap of feminine supplies that lay around the tent, which were slated to turn into an embarrassing masterpiece if these two ninnies had their way. “I'm going to look like a pansy. Like a great, big, glaring pansy, in the middle of a sea of men who have enough of a time taking me seriously as it is.”

  “The number of men you down need be the only factor that serves to earn you respect,” Lady Alejandra replied, unperturbed. “The element of surprise is just another advantage in taking this direction with you.”

  I couldn't believe this was happening. They couldn't be serious, and yet – they were. Completely serious. This was going to happen.

  “So, what, you expect me to haul all this with me on Char's back like he's some pack mule for my luxuries, and prep myself to perfection in my tent every time before a battle?”

  “Of course not. Your job is simply to get up on the horse and perform. We'll be coming with you. Your official aids. Handmaidens. You'll have your very own entourage.”

  “No offense, but I can't exactly see Cambrie joining us at the front lines.” It was true; I couldn't. She didn't have it in her to pack up and leave this haven and stake herself out there.

  “I'm sure she can't either, dear,” the gypsy said matter-of-factly. “But you can't see yourself going through with this, either, so it will be a horizon-widening exercise for both of you.”

  And just like that, I became a guinea pig at the mercy of their transformative whim.

  *

  I went about my duties as usual, ignoring the fact that behind the scenes there were two obsessed nannies working on outfitting me for what they misguidedly thought was some grand pageant to strut me around in. It was easiest to humor them when I ffound myself in my tent with them, and occasionally the female company was even a nice change, but it was safe to say no amount of their fussing or making promises about the end result won me over to their side.

  Once, I forgot that my face was all made up in experimentation, and put my regular clothes back on and returned to my duties, obliviously neglecting the effects that existed above-shoulder. Toby took one look at me as I arrived for our daily playing-with-fire and his eyebrows went up.

  “Going for a new look?” he asked.

  “What?” And then I remembered. A very keen kind of horror shot through me, at having been seen in such a state. One would think I'd been caught in my underwear, or diapers – the horror was on par with such scenarios. Was that an overreaction? I wondered as I tried to stammer up some excuse. But there was no reason other than exactly why I was walking around camp like some misplaced fashion model to be...walking around camp like some misplaced fashion model. It must look even more ridiculous next to my ordinary, grungy attire, I thought.

  “I'm, um... Oh. This,” I said, touching my dramatically up-swooped hair. It was plastered with some make-shift substance that passed for hairspray. I probably didn't want to know what Lady Alejandra and Cambrie had scraped together to concoct the sticky product. “Cambrie just needed some... Uh... An avenue to get the girlishness out of her.”

  “I see.”

  “Yes, well – you don't see many soldiers wanting to pose for model guinea-pig duty.”

  Holding up his hands, Toby shifted back to his torches. “I'm not judging. You look...fantastic.”

  “Maybe you could do me a favor and burn it off. I'd rather not flounce around like this. But you wouldn't believe how long it takes to undo. Take down. Scrape off. Scrub clean.” I sighed gustily, turning to the horse that was our own guinea pig for the day. “I feel like I need a shovel just to get the first layer off.”

  Toby chuckled behind me, and I stooped to scoop some dirt into my fingers. Nothing scrubbed off grease and grime like good old-fashioned grit
itself. I'd used dirt to fight grime many a time when soap was not an option. Why should this be any different?

  When Toby straightened with his torches in hand, he found me scrubbing my face with the arena sand. He stopped to stare. “Are you going to do that to your hair, too?”

  That would probably be taking it a bit far though, I told myself. And I could let the hair slide. At least it wasn't some bright, unnatural color.

  “Maybe,” I said. “How's this?”

  “Scary,” Toby replied when I looked at him. I could only imagine the streaks that must remain, and the dirt that now caked my face to boot.

  “Good,” I said. All the better to blame on Cambrie. Cruel of me, perhaps, but I had to keep blame alive and fresh where this nonsense was concerned, lest any of it be attributed to my own condoning.

  I would not change my stripes on the matter until later.

  Until they finished a rough draft one day, and I looked in a mirror. Lady Alejandra worked with the garment she had snared me with until it fit, and Cambrie played with my makeup until she cocked her head to the side and a sound of approval escaped her, and then they flitted off in excitement to drag some mirror into my tent, where I was instructed to look at myself.

  Giving my head an unconvinced shake, I humored them and positioned myself in front of the pane, unenthusiastically letting my eyes find my reflection in the glass. At first, I had no reaction, because I didn't find myself. Then I realized the girl in the gown with the exotic, stunning face and dramatic hair was me, and I stared, completely taken aback.

  I was...

  I was...

  Beautiful was too unaccustomed of a word for me to be comfortable applying it to myself, but opting for a synonym didn't do anything to dodge the point. I was beautiful. They had worked all of my angles, enhanced my best features. The 'gown' I was wearing was not really a gown of any tradition, but it was the term that came to mind for lack of a better one. It was crimson red, sporting a corset-like bodice with swooping, off-shoulder sleeves that belled off my wrists and drifted in wispy curtains to the floor; the skirt had a crazy long train, but was gathered up at the sides and pinned at my hips for riding's sake. A satiny, rope belt encircled my waist, tying at one hip where the tasseled ends draped down my leg.