by Travis Bughi
Molly and Paul’s hands exchanged a squeeze. She looked to him for comfort, and he gave it to her in a curt nod.
“If amazons are from the jungle,” Abe asked, “what were you doing in Lucifan?”
“Some amazons travel there once a year.”
“Just once?” Emily asked. “Why?”
Molly buried her forehead into her palm with her free hand and sighed. Paul looked like he was trying to hide a smile.
“Go on,” he said. “Tell them. They’ll just ask for themselves when they go to Lucifan.”
“A group of amazons goes to Lucifan once every year to meet men,” Molly mumbled. “Some go just for the fun of it—the chance to travel and see the city—but most go to meet other warriors from around the world and have children. The men there are considered a pleasant change of pace and, well, better stock than the men in villages around Themiscyra.”
There was a moment of silence again, but to Emily the world was alight with noise. Her head felt so crammed full of disbelief she felt it would burst. How could Mother hide something like this from her? She was a warrior from some distant land, capable of downing a behemoth with a single arrow, and she’d hid that from her kids for what? So that she wouldn’t have to be embarrassed? It didn’t make any sense to Emily. It seemed like the most pitiful excuse in the world. Didn’t their mother know just how much they craved information about the world?
Of course she knew, Emily realized, and she hid that from us.
Emily’s bewilderment turned to anger. She remembered all the times she’d asked her mother about the world and had been denied. Now suddenly, Emily felt like her whole life had been a lie. Not just hers but Nicholas’, too. How many questions had he asked that she’d secretly wondered about, too? Countless, surely. Their mother had pretended not to know, though, and Emily felt a sharp betrayal at that thought.
Molly, in turn, watched these thoughts swarm over her daughter’s face, and those of Nicholas and Abraham. She pursed her lips and drew in a breath.
“I’m sorry,” Emily’s mother said, barely above a whisper. “I’m sorry I never told any of you.”
“Is that where you learned to shoot a bow?” Nicholas asked.
“Yes. All amazons are taught to use a bow from birth. It’s as much a part of us as six-shooters are to gunslingers, or swords are to knights. We also use knives—big hunting knives that we can fight with.”
Emily wanted to ask more about the world, but her anger was seething. She was still trying to absorb the truth that had been hidden from her and her siblings for their whole life. The house creaked, and another long pause ensued. When it finished, Paul gave his wife’s hand another squeeze.
“It’s going to get worse, Molly,” Paul said.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Mr. Bagster didn’t have much on him except for his pistols. Now we need money for a new barn and also to hire a minotaur to plow the fields. Fortunately, our plow wasn’t in the barn when it tumbled down, but there’s no way we can plow the whole farm and build a new barn at the same time.”
Paul was giving Molly a meaningful stare, but its meaning was elusive. Everyone stared blankly at Paul until he spoke again.
“We’re going to have to pack up all that behemoth meat and sell it in Lucifan.”
The children sighed in frustration, seeing their meals of smoking meat disappear. Was it not enough that they were lied to? Now they had to go yet another year surviving with half rations of bread and corn before the new crops grew in. Their groans were superseded, however, when their mother seized up with unreasonable concern.
“This week?” she gasped. “Paul, we can’t go this week! Can’t it wait?”
“No, Molly, we’re already behind as it is. You know that. If we don’t plow now, we’ll be off for the harvest, and we can’t risk that. We’re too short on food supplies as it is, and one dead behemoth won’t cover that, not for five of us, not while we have a barn to rebuild.”
Molly took her hand from Paul’s and buried her face completely this time. She shook her head, her short hair waving about her cheeks, cursing quietly into her palms.
“What’s wrong with going this week?” Emily asked.
“This is when the amazons are in Lucifan,” Paul answered for his wife. “There’s a good chance we’ll run into them when we’re traveling through there.”
“Ah!” Abe jutted in, slamming his fist on the table. “That’s why!”
All attention switched to Abraham, and he retracted slightly at the sudden shift.
“Uh, I mean, well, last time we were at the city, this leprechaun was eyeing me. She said I was cute, and that I should come back to Lucifan this week for a good time.”
Molly groaned into her hands before dropping her elbows onto the table.
“Will they try to hurt you, Mother?” Nicholas asked, fearful.
“No, no dear,” she said, lifting her head up. “They’ve long since stopped caring about me.”
Quickly and unintentionally, Molly’s eyes flicked to Emily before going back to Nicholas.
“Well, if they don’t care anymore, what’s wrong with us going?” Abe asked.
Emily’s mother tried to stop herself, but her eyes fell on Emily again. Emily met her gaze and stared back. What are you not telling me now?
“It doesn’t matter. We have to go to the market anyway,” Molly said. “But Emily and Nicholas are staying.”
“What! Why?” Nicholas shouted.
“Not this time, Molly. We have to bring them,” Paul said. “There’s a whole cartload of meat that needs to be packed and transported. We need everyone.”
The two exchanged a glance that, to Emily, looked like a contest of wills. Emily had seen it before when their parents had disagreed, and she held her breath despite knowing that it was usually their mother who won those brief battles. Paul didn’t give up, though. He held his gaze steady.
“You can’t keep her away forever,” he whispered.
Nicholas and Abe looked confused, and then followed their mother’s gaze to their sister. However, Emily did not shrink back from the attention. Her anger had returned.
“What’s going on?” she demanded.
Molly took another deep breath, and it seemed for a moment that all would be explained. Then she suddenly stood out of her chair and turned to the door.
“Come on,” she said, tilting her head. “We have to pack up all that meat if we’re going to leave by tomorrow morning.”
Without another word, she walked out of the house and into the sunlight, letting the backdoor squeak closed behind her. In unison, the children rotated their heads to look at their father. He opened his mouth and drew in a breath, but then closed it again and breathed out loudly. Then he, too, got up.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go help your mother.”
He walked out and let the door squeak and slam behind him, too. A moment later, with Abe first, the two brothers rose from their chairs to follow their parents outside. They stopped to give Emily a shrug at the door, but that did little to comfort her. She stayed until they had both left. She looked into her hands and tried to piece back together the life she’d had just one hour ago, but it had fallen apart, shattered because it had not been real.
And to be entirely honest, she wasn’t all that upset about it. She’d find out the truth soon enough. She promised herself she would. And when she did find out whatever it was, she’d . . . well, she wasn’t exactly sure what she’d do.
* * *
By morning, with skill, teamwork, and unified silence, the meat was stripped off the behemoth, salted, and packed away in crates that were normally reserved for crops. The hardest part had actually been just getting to the meat itself, because nothing manmade could pierce behemoth hide. Fortunately, a behemoth’s stomach was just as vulnerable as its eyes, so the family latched hooks onto the behemoth and used the unicorns to roll the beast over. That took a lot of effort in and of itself, and by the time th
e crates were being stacked onto their unicorn-drawn cart to be hauled away, the entire family was near the point of collapse. Any anger that Emily could have had was sapped from exhaustion, and she slept soundly for the few hours she was given before the family was roused and started heading northeast to the city of Lucifan. The family walked beside the cart, because the huge stacks of plump meat were almost too much for the unicorns to bear. Raw meat was much heavier than plants.
Fortunately, John Bagster’s unicorn was there to help. At first it felt wrong, as if they were stealing from the dead man who’d given his life to save their home, even if he was unsuccessful at it. However, with no letter of his family or word from him, there was nothing else to do but give the unicorn a home, hitch it to the wagon, and travel north across the rolling, golden hills of the plains.
The Great Plains didn’t have an actual name like the forest or the city. It wasn’t important or interesting enough for anyone to give it a name. It was forgettable, dull, and void of value. It wasn’t like Lucifan, the city where angels had descended from the sky and a utopia of trade had gathered. The port city controlled the only bay and, therefore, was the only place along the Great Plains with access to markets overseas. Emily didn’t know what any of them were, and she only had a vague sense that they even existed.
For now, she was preoccupied with thinking about the city, and only the city. Her previous thoughts of her mother’s secrecy had evaporated first due to the work and then had been pushed aside as Emily realized she was traveling towards the grandest city in the world. It would be one entire day’s travel to get to Lucifan, and once there, they would stop along the road outside the city at dusk, for her parents said it was too dangerous to go inside at night. They would enter at first light and sell their meat throughout the day. Emily listened intently, her anticipation a drum banging out all other thoughts.
She was finally going to see Lucifan! She was finally going beyond the plains! She kept quickening her steps and having to slow down to keep pace with the cart, her previous night’s fatigue discarded. To climb the hills, the family had to get behind the cart and help push it up, and when they got to the top, Emily turned to peek out across the land, waiting to get a sight of the grand metropolis. She wanted to see the buildings of stone, the knights in shining armor, and hopefully a pegasus, too! Ogres, leprechauns, pirates, vikings, anything and everything was just a day away! She wanted to see it all and talk to everyone—family secrets be damned. The world was waiting for her!
However, Emily soon found that over every hill was just another hill. Down into one valley and up the other side, they walked on for hours, pushing the cart up the hills, following it down and then back up again. After each hill, Emily was finding it easier and easier to keep her pace at the cart’s speed. By midday, she found it difficult to keep up. As the sun began its descent, Emily and Nicholas began to exchange sweat-drenched glances through heavy breaths. No wonder their parents hadn’t let them come until they were older.
“Mother, I was thinking,” Abe broke the silence after a few heavy breaths.
“Yes, Abraham?” she asked.
Abe paused, trying to think of how best to form his question, or perhaps just to catch his breath. He rubbed his chin in nervousness. Abraham was starting to grow a beard like his father, and he scratched the tiny hairs there.
“Perhaps in Lucifan, Nicholas and I could go search for a blacksmith,” he said.
Emily’s mother was quick to catch on to his thinking and shook her head.
“I’m sorry, boys,” she said. “We’re selling the six-shooters at the market along with the meat.”
Nicholas and Abe gasped and froze in place. They stood there for a second, mouths open in shock. The cart continued to pace on without them until they recovered enough to dash forward.
“But, Mother,” Nicholas started, “Father?”
Paul looked away, unwilling to verbally end his sons’ dreams, so Molly took up the difficult task.
“Listen, you two,” she said. “We don’t have the money to pay for bullets. After nine shots, those guns would be worthless to us. If we don’t sell them now, we’ll just end up selling them later. Not to mention that we need the money now, badly. We have a new barn to buy and a minotaur to hire. Not to mention with what those guns are worth, we’ll be able to eat well all year.”
Abe went silent, and Nicholas’ shoulders sunk. In unison, their heads hung so low that they risked kicking themselves in the face as they walked. Neither Molly nor Paul offered any condolences to lessen the blow. Emily felt guilty for being unable to help her brothers. Being a gunslinger had been their dream, and now they were as close as they had ever been, yet still too far away.
With even less cheer than before, the sun and the Stout family continued their journey. They climbed and descended hills through the limitless expanse of the plains until it seemed there was no point in traveling at all. The entire idea had become absurd to Emily, and for the slightest moment, she wondered why she had wanted this. Then they climbed the next hill and down the other side, and Emily saw the grand city of Lucifan in all its glory.
Chapter 6
Lucifan was huge. It sprawled out from ocean’s edge in a half circle, taking up the majority of the land that comprised the bay. The buildings were bigger than Emily imagined, and there were so many of them. They were built so close together that they turned the land grey with their stone walls. The buildings in the center of the half circle were the largest, towering over the others, with one central tower standing highest above them all. From there, the structures seemed to stair-step down across the large city from massive mansions to lofty taverns, all the way down to tiny houses smaller than Emily’s home that surrounded the city like a giant apron. At this distance, she could see crowds of what looked like tiny dots—whether people or creatures, she couldn’t be sure—in the narrow streets. The city pushed right up to the shore, and long docks extended out into to the water towards the several dozen ships waiting there. All around, the landscape sloped at a steady grade down to the city and thus to the shore. Finally, Emily could see what a bay actually looked like and not just what her brother had told her.
Out beyond the bay and city were the cliffs that kept the people of the Great Plains high above the crashing ocean. The cliffs, extending north and south, came close to each other but did not touch, which left a gap that looked as if it had been eroded away by the constant waves. It was through that break in the cliffs that water had escaped and created a bay. The plains, as if knowing this was meant to be, sloped down toward the shores to meet the water’s embrace. The violent waves were kept away, out of reach from the precious docks, and Emily could see all of this from the basin’s edge.
“Well, we made it,” said Paul through heavy breaths.
Emily peeled her eyes away from the city for a moment to look at Nicholas. His mouth was wide open like hers, and his eyes never blinked, despite the wind. Abe was smiling at his brother and sister, doubtless thinking of how he had looked when he’d first laid eyes on the city. Emily looked to her mother and saw a blank expression. She showed neither guilt nor fear, neither happiness nor hope. It seemed she had given her life to fate, which was something Emily had never seen her mother do before.
“It’s so big!” Nicholas shouted. “The buildings! Wow!”
Abe stepped forward and wrapped an arm around his brother’s shoulders.
“Look over there, between that big, black building and the white one.” Abe pointed with his finger.
“Where, oh there?”
“Yes. See that big thing walking through the streets. That’s a colossus.”
Nicholas gasped, “I thought that was a big statue! I didn’t even realize it was moving!”
Emily followed Abe’s directions and saw a large statue shaped like a man. It towered over all, even most of the buildings. Then she saw it was moving and took in a sharp breath. Its slow steps reminded Emily of the behemoths, and in her mind, she knew the
colossus was passing over buildings in a single step.
“Just wait until we get into the city. You can feel them walking around,” Abe’s own voice was quivering with excitement.
Emily realized her heart was still pounding. It had been pumping hard from all the walking and pushing the cart, but it hadn’t calmed down upon seeing Lucifan. Emily put her hand to her chest to feel it. This was the most amazing thing she’d seen in her life, without a doubt. There was nothing she’d ever seen that she could compare to this moment, except her own mother shooting a bow, and she stared at every inch of the city to take it all in. Emily knew in that instant she would never forget the first time she saw the city of Lucifan.
“Alright, we’ll sleep here for the night and go into the city at first light,” Paul ordered.
Emily and Nicholas were slow to respond, and they kept sneaking glances at the city, but eventually their bedrolls were laid out around the cart, the unicorns were untethered and fed, and the food distributed. A few pieces of the behemoth meat were taken out for the occasion, and Emily savored every bite, because this was the only time this year that she’d be able to eat it. In the morning, the rest of the delicious meat would be sold at the market.
“Okay Emily, Nicholas,” Molly said. “There are a few things you need to know before we go into the city tomorrow.”
Emily and Nicholas perked up their ears.
“First things first, stay close to us,” she began. “The city is huge. There are a lot of people, among other things, and it is very easy to get lost.”
Emily and Nicholas nodded vigorously as their mother continued.
“Stay away from the buildings. It will be daytime when we go in, so the gargoyles won’t be active, but there will be ogres and other guards who won’t be kind if you are unwelcome. Don’t be fooled if someone tries to beckon you, either. If they want to talk to you, they can come to us, okay?”
