by Jesse Teller
“Ghean what?”
“Ghean nothing,” he said. “I do not claim my father’s name. I wish to be known for my own deeds.”
“What deeds have you done you are so proud of, then?”
“Call me Ghean Ellen Charmer,” he said.
She barked out a snort of a laugh and slapped her hand over her mouth, horrified. He laughed, but she did not think he was laughing at her. She fought the hilarity until she had control of herself, before she would let loose her mouth. She did not trust it. It would no doubt betray her again if he said something funny. Her nerves took hold as she thought about snorting again.
“You would like the name Ellen Charmer?” She stepped closer to him.
He smiled. “I would find that name very fine.”
“How about Horde Breaker? By far a better name, a name for a hero to be sure. Horde Breaker would be best,” she said.
“No, that will not do. I can find no greater a deed than to cause a girl like you to laugh.”
She giggled.
“If that is what you want to call it.”
She gasped and crossed her arms playfully. He chuckled and stepped closer. She could see his face well in the light of the moons. As he looked down at her, she wanted to kiss him.
“You are with Borlyn?” she said.
“My king chief, yes. I will be with him until the end. My father has given me over to him.”
“Given you how?”
“Well, my father traveled with Borlyn when he went down to Tergor, City of Exiles,” Ghean said.
“Why would our righteous king chief go to such a vile place?” She felt revulsion at the thought of it, her king chief with criminals and hated men. “Did he go to dole out justice?”
“No, he did not. Borlyn went to talk to Yenna Redfist.”
A chill ran up her spine when she heard the name Redfist, and she gasped. “Redfist?”
“Indeed. Borlyn went to talk with Yenna.”
She did not like the way he said ‘Yenna.’ She thought it too familiar. “You mean Yenna Redfist.”
“What did I say?”
“You said Yenna,” she said. “I didn’t like it. Call him Redfist or not at all.”
Ghean looked at her before he smiled. “Yes, of course. Borlyn, our king chief, went to speak to Yenna Redfist about the mountain.”
“What did they say?” she gasped, stepping closer.
“Borlyn asked the Redfist to come back home. Said he could hand over the Ragoth and the Fendis to him if he did,” Ghean said.
“The Fendis?”
“Yes, indeed. Evidently, Borlyn is so respected he thinks he can talk the Fendis into bowing to the Redfist, or at least making a deep and powerful peace with them.”
“Borlyn’s first act as king chief was to try to give his rule over to the Redfist?” she asked.
“It was. But this Yenna Redfist would not hear of it. They ended up staying there for quite a while, and while my father was with him, they learned of an ancient custom not recognized anymore. They call it master and squire. Yenna said every king chief chooses a young boy to serve him. The king chief teaches and guides that young man until he is powerful and grown.”
Ghean was very close now, and she liked it. She was growing warm, and she decided she would let him hold her hand if he wanted to.
“I was excited to meet Breathos Steeltooth when I heard Breathos had served as Yenna’s squire.”
“That is not possible,” she said. She stepped closer, then he touched her shoulders. He looked deep in her eyes, and she forgot what they were talking about.
He did not ask her anything. Gave her no warning at all. He simply kissed her.
The kiss was warm and soft. His tongue slipped into her mouth, and she pulled back alarmed.
He smiled at her.
“What are you doing?” Ellen asked.
“I was kissing you,” he said.
“You didn’t ask.” Her heart hammered in her chest. She was scared now. She looked around, and he stepped away. Her heart sank at the motion, confusion swelling around her. She could hear her heart beating in her chest, and she stepped back. “You never asked if you could kiss me.”
“I’m sorry,” Ghean said. “I thought it would be okay.” He turned to the nearby shack and sat on the porch. The motion was so bizarre she felt a tremble rush through her body. She looked at him and back at the celebration.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m sitting.”
Why was that strange? He was just sitting. She looked at him, wondering what was next. Was she furious and about to run away? Was he going to hurt her? She was confused, and did not know what to do next. “What do we do?” she asked. No one had ever been this awkward before. No one ever felt this embarrassed or out of place.
“Do you want to go back to the feast or stay here with me?” Ghean asked.
She looked at the bright lights between the houses and back at him, just a shape in the dark. She did not want to leave. She wanted to start over with the kiss. She stepped closer, and he smiled, teeth gleaming bright in the moonlight.
“Come,” he said, patting the porch. “Come sit by me.” His smile looked hungry. “I’ll kiss you again if you want me to.”
They kissed all night long. Her mouth didn’t work right at first, but soon, the basics of kissing came to her. His mouth felt right against hers, and she felt an ache in her body as she pressed against him. After what could have been an hour his hand slipped to her ass. Her heart stopped. She froze. He kept kissing her, and she felt it all go. All her caution, all her fear, she shoved it all away and moved his hand to her breasts.
She felt powerful and right. Like a woman. Like a goddess. She wondered if he would be her husband after this, wondered if he might take her with him when he left. She let him kiss her and grope her, and when he lifted up her skirt and picked her up, she felt her heart stop in her chest. He placed her on him, straddling his lap, and slipped his hand up her blouse to her breast.
When his bare fingers grazed her nipple a tremble of pleasure ran through her entire body. She gripped his hair and gasped. She heard someone stumbling up the street, and she pulled back. She rose to her feet, swaying, and grabbed Ghean’s hand. She tugged it ever so gently, then he stood.
Ellen could hear the man or woman coming around the corner, and she turned and ran. She ran for the forest, for the trees. She slipped into the cover of darkness with her Ghean, and led him to a rock she knew about. She would sit with him there until the feast was over. She would let him touch her there. She led, and when they were alone in the woods, he grabbed the hem of her skirt and lifted it over her shoulders and head.
She froze.
He folded it into a pillow and laid her down. Right then, she wanted to be home.
She didn’t sleep that night. She lay in bed listening to the crickets outside her window and the sound of her father talking about Borlyn, and the ruin the king chief would lead them to. She lay thinking about the blood and the way it had pooled, just a bit of it on the rock below her. She could see his face as he slid into her and the ecstasy he felt.
She had tried to enjoy it. Told herself women enjoyed sex every day, but she felt wrong. She guessed now she would marry him, would have to travel with Borlyn and become part of the Flurryfist tribe. Borlyn valued learning, and she was smart. Maybe she would be accepted there. Maybe the stares and the talking behind her back would come to an end. She tried to imagine how it would be to be a married woman, and decided she would try to make the best of it until she found herself in the chore.
The light came and the world went gray. She stepped out into the morning, and tried to figure out how she would tell her father, how she would look at her mother when the truth came out that she had given herself away. She needed to talk to him, needed to see Ghean.
He had slipped away. Some errand Borlyn sent him on, she was sure. He was gone all day long. When the night came, the tribe was invited into the hall
by the king chief. Gaulator Stonefist, the chief of her tribe, said not a word. But the men grumbled. The hall was for men and serving girls. They tried to talk back to Borlyn, but with the chop of his mighty hand and a look, he silenced them all.
“The people will celebrate together. Families will be embraced and children will run at our feet. In honor, we will all sup. Today I killed a great boar for the feast. Tonight, I will cook it,” Borlyn said.
The women muttered and the men boiled, but Borlyn held up his hands. “I am not too good to cook for my nation. The man that says I am will face my fists.” The king chief turned to the matron of the hall. “Noble woman, please show me to your spit. I have a meal to prepare.”
While Borlyn braised the boar and talked with the women, Ellen searched the hall for Ghean. Her heart stopped, and she nearly sicked up when she saw him kissing a girl from her tribe. The girl was young, younger than Ellen, and Ghean took her hand and led her outside. This was not the prettiest girl in the village. This was not the smartest. This was just a girl, impressionable and young. A virgin. A girl like her.
Ellen ran. She wept, and vowed she would never tell anyone what had happened. She would die before she admitted to her time on the rock with Ghean.
II
39 Years Before The Escape
From this height it was a short but fatal fall. Ellen knew she would not step out off the cliff and to her death, but being here, this close to the end of it all, was soothing. She let herself feel the wind, wished it was strong enough to throw her over. She touched her belly and the thick hump of flesh that held her first-born child, and she closed her eyes.
“When this is all over and you have come out, we will leave together,” she said. “We will leave the mountain and find the City of Exiles. We will seek the Redfist and see if they will pardon us.” She looked down from the cliff, at the Stonefist village below, and grief closed comfortable around her. “They don’t want us now. They can’t accept us ever.”
She turned to the cave behind her, staring at its massive maw and the black that waited deep within. The mouth of the cave was huge and lit the first room of the cavern bright. She walked into it, making her way to the farm of mushrooms Mista had sent her for. She picked eight and turned to go. The climb down was short but slippery. Ellen didn’t mind. Even nine months into her pregnancy, the climb was not too much for her, and she liked the way her stomach pitched when she stepped close to the edge.
She came to the shack where they had sent her to live, and saw Mista at the fire before it, her filthy cauldron bubbling up some horrible meal. The midwife believed everything a pregnant girl would eat was to be foul. As Ellen watched her stir in what looked like a fist full of cobwebs, she sighed.
This woman hated her. The whole of the village hated Ellen, but this woman more than most, because this woman had given birth to monsters. Mista’s children had all been banished from the mountain. Her children were all vile, and she had grown bitter as a Bach Root about it. She knew more about childbirth than any other woman in the village, however, so this hideous woman brought all the babies of the Stonefist village into the world. And Mista hated every one of them.
“Give me those mushrooms, you silly girl,” the woman hissed. “How long ago did I send you for them? You would make me wait all day so you would—what?” she waved a dismissing hand. “Dream about dropping to your death?” She spat. “Bah, good riddance. From now on when I tell you to get me a thing, you better do it as fast as you split your whore legs, or I will beat you from my shack and send you back to those people.” She stabbed out at the Stonefist village. “They can have you,” she said.
Ellen was tired of being called a whore. She was looked at like a whore and treated like a whore. Her mother called her a whore, and her father’s last word to her had been whore, right before he stopped talking to her altogether. She stepped closer to the vile, little midwife and kicked her horrible pot over. The contents hissed when they sprayed across the fire, and the woman screamed. She waved her knife at Ellen, but Ellen ducked it and grabbed the wrist. She bent it back viciously and snarled in the woman’s face.
“Call me a whore again,” Ellen said. It was not only the word. It was not only the looks. It was the horrid way she felt about herself and the hate she held for all men. It was the cold bones Ellen felt in her body and the hate she felt for her baby. Ellen wanted to slit this woman’s throat and it was all of it, all the horrible things she suffered in the last nine months that brought her to action.
She felt a surge of pain in her middle and staggered back. She slipped on the filmy remains of what was supposed to have been her dinner and fell. She landed on her belly and screamed. Agony, wicked and terrible, ripped through her body as her womanhood spit blood. Ellen wailed in horrid pain, but the woman leered down at her. She grinned and rushed into the shack.
Ellen felt the world throbbing in her body, in her heart, in her stomach, in her womanhood, and her eyes. Every throb brought new levels of pain. She gripped her swollen belly and screamed for her mommy.
She screamed and prayed. She did not know who she was praying to, but she realized it was probably the woman hovering over her with a reeking mouth full of shattered teeth and a snarl of hate on her face.
“Please help me,” Ellen wept. “Please, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt—” Ellen screamed again in terrible agony and kicked her feet. She felt the stones slick with blood and tissue beneath her, and looked up in utter terror. “Please, I’m dying.”
“You’re a whore, Ellen, say it.”
“I’m a—” another terrible slice of pain raked through her tender body, her child within thrashing for freedom. “I’m a whore. I swear I’m a whore. Please help me.”
The midwife rang the birthing bell. Ellen screamed again as her womanhood vomited blood and tissue.
Women burst from the trees and the midwife turned to them.
“She fell,” Mista said. “Landed on the baby.”
Ellen’s mother cried out in horror, and Ellen felt as if the baby had grown claws and fangs. It was gnashing at her. It was fighting to rip its way free of her body. She wailed again, and her mother gripped her head and pulled her into her lap.
“She fell?” Her mother gasped. “Can you save her?”
“She is a clumsy girl that has probably killed her baby, but I will try to save one of them,” the midwife spat. “Get me water and my knife. Get me rags and get out of my way. This little ingrate will get my lore, though she doesn’t deserve it.”
Ellen felt her back shatter, jagged pieces moving around her. She wondered how any one being could feel this much pain and this much fear. She gripped her baby trapped in her flesh, and looked up at her mother.
“Raise it to love me,” Ellen said. “Tell it I loved it.”
“You are going to be just fine, girl,” her mother said, but she did not believe it. “You are going to raise that baby yourself.” Her mother wiped tears from her face and sobbed.
Ellen felt as if she needed to push, and she sobbed. She was not ready yet. She could feel something burst in her, and fought to shove with all her might. Nothing came.
“This foolish child is turned around backwards,” the midwife spat. “Nothing to do. We are going to lose them both. Gotta save one.” The woman held the knife above Ellen’s middle. Her mother screamed.
Ellen sobbed, and the woman began to cut. The blade sliced Ellen once deep, and she realized it had probably hit the baby. The woman sliced again, a second gash up and down from Ellen’s breast to her crotch. Her body went slack. She felt all her insides shift and slide and bulge out of her body, and she sobbed. Mista sliced again, this time side to side, and Ellen saw her body open up like two flaps. The baby was ripped from her. She saw gore and twisted limbs then the midwife wrapped her arms around it and turned. She ran and Ellen’s mother screamed.
Ellen felt the world slipping away. She fought to bring to mind the image of her bloody, twisted child, but all that
came to her was the smile of Ghean and the way he looked as he walked out of the hall that night with another girl in his arms.
The ground was soft. Nothing spread out in every direction, fog and mist swirling everywhere. A great swooping bird dropped from the sky to land at her feet. The wings parted, and Ellen saw this was a tiny girl, her shoulders draped in feathers.
“Ellen, I don’t have long. Yellowfang is coming for you.” The girl’s tongue was small and sharp, her blonde hair feathered back on her head. “You will know love. You will know pain. You will know loss. Your life will be about suffering, but you must not give it away. Your footsteps will echo through the mountain when you walk it. You will save thousands.” The girl stepped closer, and Ellen dropped to her knees.
The tiny girl kissed her lips. “Face it all with dignity and grace, and your name will bring hope and light. Through your suffering, you will find joy.” The ground whipped away, and Ellen was brought screaming back to the world.
She was in a building. Her body felt so heavy, her arms too weary to move. Her eyelids weighed on her face, and she could not keep them open. She groaned and a face appeared above her. Ellen gasped at its savagery. She opened her mouth to scream but could only sob.
The face was framed in filthy hair. It was lined in dry, yellowing bones and painted with blacks and yellows. It snarled at her before breaking open in a great smile.
“She is back,” the woman said. Her voice was dry and brittle. The woman pulled back the covers and looked down at Ellen. “She will live. She is fierce. She is strong.” The woman stuck her finger in her mouth and smiled as she sucked it. She pulled it out and touched Ellen’s face with it. “I like her.”
“Who are you?” Ellen managed.
“You mustn’t talk,” the woman said. She laid a soft, warm hand covered in wrinkles on Ellen’s forehead, and Ellen felt loved for the first time in months. “I am Yellowfang. Howler shaman. You were gone, and I brought you back.”
Ellen’s fear rose only to dissipate like smoke on the wind. She did not have the energy to fear anything right now. “Where is my baby?”
