Iron Axe

by Steven Harper

  “You’re mine,” Farek gasped into Kalessa’s ear. “All mine.”

  The awful words spoken to Kalessa shattered Aisa’s paralysis. Her fear evaporated, replaced with hot anger and desperation. She snatched a butcher knife off the table and slid it across the floor toward Kalessa. Her hand closed over the handle. Kalessa swung, and the knife connected with a meaty thunk. Farek howled in pain and outrage. Blood gushed down his side. He rolled off Kalessa and scrambled to his feet while Kalessa coughed and gasped. Farek tried to swing at her with his fist, but Kalessa ducked and sliced him with the knife instead. More blood flowed.

  Clutching at his bleeding forearm, Farek snarled, “You’ll pay for that later, little slut!” Then he lumbered out the door and disappeared.

  Aisa ran over to help Kalessa to her feet. “You call up some terrible illusions, sister,” she said. “Even for a human.”

  Guilt washed over Aisa. Twice Kalessa had taken pain meant for Aisa herself. Twice Aisa had come close to losing her entirely. Now that the fight was over, the realization that Farek—or this image of him—could have killed Kalessa made her shake with unrealized panic.

  “I’m so sorry,” Aisa whispered. “So sorry.”

  “No, no.” Kalessa dismissed her apology. “It was foolish to let him close to me like that. My fault.”

  “You must not take such risks on my behalf.” Aisa brought her to a bench while Old Aunt wordlessly relit her pipe at the hearth. “You must not—”

  Kalessa flared. “What sister would deny me the honor of fighting for her?”

  “I … I don’t …”

  “You, Aisa, must occasionally let people take care of you,” Kalessa said, “instead of always taking care of others. Oh yes, I know. Your sharp tongue disguises your need to do this, but even the healer sometimes needs—ow!” She gasped, cursed, and gasped again.

  “A pig fell on you and hurt your ribs,” Aisa observed tartly. “You are to stay as still as possible while I make medicine.” Then her voice softened. “And I will make no more remarks about your risks if you make no more remarks about my sharp tongue.”

  “Agreed. Sister.”

  “It’s not over yet, dear,” said Old Aunt as Aisa rummaged through the medicine cupboard. “Why did you bring Farek here?”

  “I didn’t bring—”

  Heavy, fat footfalls fell outside the open cottage door. Aisa froze.

  “Well?” Old Aunt asked. “You hated Hamzu, or you claimed to. Farek, another big man, is someone you fear. Why is that?”

  Aisa stood paralyzed again in front of the cupboard. The words stuck in her throat. For some reason, the hunger for elves awoke and raged through her.

  “He’s an illusion,” Old Aunt said. “He’s only big and powerful because you remember him that way. How much power do you want to give him?”

  “Farek has power,” Aisa cried. “He hurt me.”

  “In what way did he hurt you?” Old Aunt asked in her relentlessly gentle voice.

  The footsteps grew louder again.

  “He raped me,” Aisa shouted. “He took me into his stable two and three times a week and pushed me to the floor and he raped me.”

  The footsteps paused.

  “The bastard,” Kalessa spat. “I’ll cut his balls off.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Old Aunt said quietly. “That was a terrible thing he did to you. It was awful and unfair and horrible in the worst way. I can’t think why anyone would do something so horrifying to someone so kind.”

  The acknowledgment of the pain ran through Aisa like hot water through ice. It was the first time anyone had recognized her ordeal for what it was, and she hadn’t realized how powerful that simple act could be. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes and choked her throat. The hunger prowled through her like a ravenous tiger. Words spilled out of her.

  “I’m not kind,” she said. “I have a sharp tongue and Farek was punishing me for it. I deserved everything he did to me.”

  Farek’s heavy shadow appeared in the doorway, and his harsh whisper wafted through. “… you’re mine …”

  “No,” Old Aunt said. “No one deserves such things. Farek wasn’t punishing you. He was a cruel man who only thought of his own pleasure.”

  “But—”

  Old Aunt quietly got to her feet, leaning on her stick, and the presence of the goddess Grick filled the cottage. Walls groaned and shadows fled. “Remember who I am, girl, and remember the authority behind my words.”

  Aisa swallowed. It was true. Old Aunt was so down-to-earth and … grandmotherly, Aisa had forgotten who she really was. Resolve filled Aisa. Strength returned to her limbs, and she stormed over to the open door. Farek was just outside, leering and grasping with his sausage fingers. Blood ran down his face and side. The awful hunger raked at her, goaded her.

  “You’re nothing to me!” she spat. “You have no hold on me or mine. You are no man, and dog shit has more honor.”

  With every word, Farek shrank. His fat melted away and he grew smaller and smaller, until he was the size of a man, a child, a dog. He looked up at her in fear. The hunger abruptly let up.

  “Go fuck a goat!” she snapped, and slammed the door.

  “That’s my sister!” Kalessa said from her bench.

  Old Aunt sank back to her stool by the fire. “Very nice. Good delivery, fine timing, excellent grasp of the vernacular. But I wonder …”

  Aisa, who was leaning with her back against the door and feeling amazing, proud, and powerful, gave a heavy sigh. “What now?”

  “You once told Talfi that you never wanted a man to touch you again.” Old Aunt blew out a cloud of aromatic smoke. “Is that really true?”

  “I …” Aisa paused. She had been about to say it was indeed true, but suddenly she wasn’t so sure. “I do not know.”

  “Well, then, how about we get this mess cleaned up?” Old Aunt said. “And by we, I mean you. I have a pipe to smoke.”

  Kalessa, it turned out, had a cracked rib. Aisa spent many more days—she lost count of the number—nursing her and keeping house for Old Aunt. Kalessa chafed at the time she had to spend immobile, but Aisa was firm with her.

  “The more you move about, the longer it will take to heal,” she said.

  “Orcs heal faster than humans,” she grumbled from the padded bench Aisa had set up for her in the kitchen opposite Old Aunt’s spot at the hearth.

  “Even so.” Aisa handed her a mug of ale. “I still know so little of orcs. How do you choose your wyrm?”

  Kalessa’s eyes lit up. “Slynd. I miss him. I hope he is not worrying over me.”

  “Do wyrms worry?”

  “They are very intelligent, much more so than simple serpents. You have to be strong to command one from the line of the Scarlet Wyrm.” She drank from the mug. “When I was ten and a woman, our nest went to the hatching ground where the wyrms buried their eggs. It takes a week or more for them all to hatch, and we all wait for them to crawl out of the ground so we can claim them.”

  “Do you form a lifelong bond by looking into their eyes?” Aisa asked.

  Kalessa laughed. “Nothing so simple. When Slynd came out of the ground, I wrestled him. We rolled across the ground with the rest of the nest cheering for me and the other children who wrestled with the other wyrms. It was like fighting an iron band, and more than once I wanted to give up. Slynd tried to bite me several times, but his teeth hadn’t come in completely, and he only scraped me. It still left scars.” Kalessa held up her arms to show the marks. “But in the end, I wrestled him to submission. The contest made him hungry, so I fed him a baby sheep, and that made him mine.”

  “I fed a stray cat once,” Aisa said wistfully. “He followed me home, and Mother let me keep him. I named him Sand because that was his color.”

  “But then something dreadful happened to him?” Kalessa said. “One of your brothers set him on fire, I suppose, or cut his tail off.”

  “No.” Aisa shook her head with a smile. “He was my cat for y
ears. He grew old and died, not long before my mother took sick. I still miss him sometimes.” She paused a moment, and realized that her scarf had fallen away from the front of her face. She hadn’t noticed. How long had it been like that? Kalessa and Old Aunt hadn’t remarked on it. Nothing bad had happened, though the elven hunger still nagged at her. She offered a shy smile to Kalessa. For a moment, she felt completely naked, but Kalessa only smiled back with straight white teeth against faintly green lips, and Aisa relaxed.

  “What happened with your wyrm?” she asked, pretending nothing momentous had happened.

  Kalessa played along. “A few months later, he was big enough to ride, and I broke him to saddle with reins made from one of his own shed skins. My brother Hoxin helped me make them. That was a good day. My parents were proud of the status their only daughter brought the nest.”

  “That’s an important thing, is it?” Old Aunt asked.

  “It is the only thing,” Kalessa said seriously. “When I die, my status will decide whether I go to Halza and Vik’s realm or to Valorhame itself.”

  “Will it?” Old Aunt said mildly, poking at the fire with her stick.

  Kalessa started. Like Aisa, she had forgotten whose house they were in. It was easy to do. Old Aunt didn’t look like someone who was married to the King of Birds himself. Kalessa turned to her and winced as her ribs twinged.

  “Is it not so, great lady?” she asked. “Your tone makes me doubt.”

  “She won’t tell,” Aisa said. “They never do.”

  Old Aunt puffed her pipe. “The Nine are more fair than you think. Status matters, little one, but only your status, not your family’s or your ancestors.”

  Kalessa looked shocked. “But … everything my parents and grandparents have worked for …”

  “Means nothing for you,” Old Aunt finished affably. “On the other hand, it also means that people who commit dreadful crimes do not also seal their children’s fates. Every slave, every thrall, farmer, merchant, soldier, earl, and king has the same chance for Valorhame. And now I should like a nice horn of ale.”

  Aisa, feeling more than a little awed, set one on the hearthstones next to her like an acolyte leaving an offering on an altar. Old Aunt accepted it and drank deeply, then relit her pipe and fell into a heavy silence. Kalessa pressed her with more questions, but she gave as many answers as a stone.

  While Kalessa’s ribs healed, Aisa continued the work about the house. It was harder without Kalessa to help, but Aisa managed. At night, Old Aunt’s haunting melody sent her to sleep, and in the morning, she woke sweet and refreshed. She stopped wearing a scarf over her face entirely, though she still covered her hair. And every evening after the work was finished and the supper dishes put away, Aisa talked while Old Aunt listened. She talked about whatever came to mind, though often the conversation came around to her mistreatment at the hands of Farek and her remaining anger at Hamzu. Despite the latter, she missed him with an intensity that surprised her. He had done something wrong, but so had she, and it was time they made good again, like grown people.

  “So you love him,” Old Aunt said one night after the feather beds were put away. Aisa had declared Kalessa’s ribs healed, and the young woman had spent the day in a whirlwind of activity: hauling buckets, bringing wood, and toting feather beds. Even housework, she declared, was better than sitting still.

  “Missing is not the same as loving,” Aisa said tartly. “It’s easy to miss someone. It happens all the time.”

  “Because people leave you all the time.” Old Aunt lifted a coal to her pipe, lit it, and tossed the coal back into the fire, a trick that never ceased to amaze Aisa. “It’s difficult to get past people who leave you—or who shove you out the door.”

  “Why?” Aisa asked. “You are not planning to—”

  For a third time, the door smashed open. Aisa scrambled to her feet, heart in the back of her throat. How many times would Old Aunt put her and Kalessa through this?

  Kalessa had learned from the previous visitor and always kept her sword close at hand. She leaped in front of Aisa, blade at the ready. “Come on!” she snarled. “I am for you!”

  But the thing that muscled through the door made even Kalessa gasp and take a step back. It had eight legs sticking out from a single trunk of pink and brown flesh that looked melted together from too many other bodies. Eight arms stuck out in all directions, half of them holding swords or knives. Atop this monstrosity perched four heads with dreadful, wild eyes and tangled dark hair. With a cold chill, Aisa recognized her family—her two brothers, Fayyad and Nasim, her father, Bahir, and her mother, Durrah. The monster that was her family rushed at Aisa, snapping and snarling.

  “You failed in your duty as a sister!” Fayyad growled.

  “You showed loose and wanton morals!” Nasim howled.

  “You failed to stop me from gambling!” Father groaned. “It was your fault I had to sell you!”

  “You let me die,” Mother whispered, and that pierced Aisa’s heart with an arrow of stone. She remembered desperately searching for herbs and rendering tinctures, listening to conflicting advice from male doctors who refused to enter a woman’s sickroom, all while cooking and cleaning and sweeping for two brothers who wouldn’t touch women’s work and a father who gambled away so much money they couldn’t afford to hire any help. And more than once, Mother begged for something that would end her pain, and Aisa wished she had the courage to give it to her. But in the end, Mother had slid slowly into death with Aisa helpless at her side. All the guilt she had been suppressing for the last eight years crushed her down, paralyzed her while the monster family stormed across the kitchen toward her.

  For the third time, Kalessa leaped in front of her, sword out. She swiped at the monster, and even though Aisa knew this wasn’t really her family, she wanted to shout at Kalessa to leave them alone, not to hurt them. But the words wouldn’t come.

  Kalessa slashed at the creature and opened a gash on its trunk. “Ha!” she shouted. “I have you—”

  The creature flicked Kalessa aside with one arm. She flew across the room, crashed against one wall, and slid to the floor unconscious.

  “You’re a failure!” the creature roared in one voice. “A bad daughter! Bad sister!”

  Kalessa, Aisa’s defender, was gone. Old Aunt, meanwhile, sat on the stool, smoking her pipe and scratching at the hearth with that damn stick. Fear and loathing pulsing with her heart, Aisa spun and snatched the stick from her. She faced the monster that was her family, and the hatred grew. They had betrayed her, hurt her, and now they dared to call her names? She stood straight.

  “Filth!” she shouted. “Stay back!”

  But the monster lunged at her. The familiar but twisted features of her family leered down at her as they came. She raised Old Aunt’s stout stick at them like a club. At Fayyad, who always lifted her so she could pick the juiciest pears from the tree behind the house. At Nasim, who conspired with her to stay up late and spy on the grown-ups during Rolk’s feast. At Father, who took her on his shoulders to the market and let her listen to the men while they bargained. And at Mother, who made colored eggshell mosaics with her every spring until she became too weak to leave her bed.

  Aisa faltered. Yes, they had betrayed her. They had also loved her. Her father couldn’t stay away from the dice any more than her mother could force herself to stay healthy. Her brothers had been trapped by a culture that decided men didn’t help in the house. The monster rushed toward her with its monstrous form and familiar eyes. Nothing excused what they had done. But none of it meant they hadn’t loved her. And pain was not solved with more pain.

  Aisa lowered the stick. In one smooth motion, she pulled her scarf off her hair and stood before them as she had before the slavers took her. “I love you.”

  The monster halted only half a step away, loomed over her. All four heads breathed warm, sour breath down on her face. Aisa’s mouth was dry with near panic, but she forced herself to hold her ground. “Nasim,
Fayyad, Mother, Father. You are my family, and I love you.”

  “You are a—” Fayyad began.

  “Shh!” Aisa reached up and put a trembling hand over his mouth. His lips were rubbery. “You caused me pain. I hated you for it. Part of me still does. But you are my brothers and my parents, and I still remember the good things, too.”

  “You are—” Mother began.

  “No,” Aisa said gently. “I never was. No one is a saint, and no one is a monster. We are a mix of both.”

  “You—” Father began.

  “I will no longer carry your pain,” Aisa said with tears in her eyes. “I forgive you. All of you. Go now.”

  The monster stared at her. After a long moment, it turned and slunk toward the door. Aisa stood unflinching behind it, feeling tall and powerful with the stout stick at her side. Old Aunt puffed on her pipe at the fire. At the door, the monster turned.

  “You were always a good sister,” Fayyad said.

  “We are proud of you always,” Nasim said.

  “I was wrong, and I am sorry you suffered for my weakness,” Father said.

  “No one else could take better care of me,” Mother whispered. “You were the best daughter anyone could want.”

  Tears of relief and joy ran down Aisa’s cheeks as the monster slipped out the door and disappeared. Aisa sank down on a bench, overwhelmed at the power of this day. A great weight lifted from her back. She felt strong and weak, powerful and meek, all at once. The stick lay across her knees.

  “Yes,” said Old Aunt from the fire. “Very good, my daughter.”

  A groan came from the corner. Aisa gasped. “Kalessa!”

  Kalessa was already staggering to her feet by the time Aisa got to her. She seemed unhurt except for a bump on her head. “I was of little help,” she complained. “The monster still attacked.”

  “Your job as the defender,” said Old Aunt, “was to do what needed doing. In this last case, you needed to stand aside. Now I’m sad.”