by Jesse Teller
“Shush up, girl, save yourself,” Yellowfang said. She patted Ellen’s head and shook her own. “I don’t think the child survived.”
Ellen gripped the shaman’s hand with her heavy one. Her grip was weak and slipping.
“Can you save my baby?” Ellen asked, “Can you bring it back?”
Yellowfang frowned. She shook her head. And Ellen sobbed. Yellowfang kissed her forehead and wiped tears from her eyes.
Ellen did not want to live. She hoped the shaman’s magic would fail. She closed her eyes and let her exhaustion carry her away. Sorrow, bitter and biting, fell onto her, and she sobbed as she slept.
The sun pounded down on her but she clung to the blanket Yellowfang had given her as they walked. The shaman stayed with her for a month, feeding her and caring for her, and now Ellen was standing and walking for the first time.
Her legs were unsteady under her, and she felt as if she would vomit, but she kept moving. She swayed and Yellowfang grabbed her. They walked out of the trees and to a small clearing. The ash still stained the ground, but the grass was growing back already.
She looked at the small lump of ash where her baby’s pyre had been, and felt as if she should be crying, but realized she had gone numb weeks ago. She looked at the pile of dust, something small and twisted rising from the ash.
“What is that?” Ellen asked.
“It is what is left of a bone,” Yellowfang said. She was the bone shaman. And as Ellen watched horrified the woman bent and picked the bone out of the dust. She blew on it and held it up. Her face shifted, and she closed her eyes. She smiled the briefest of moments, and kissed the bone. “Take this fetish and keep it with you. It will bring you truth.”
Ellen pulled back in horror. “You want me to keep my baby’s bone?” She stared at it with dread and stumbled back.
The woman held the bone in the air and kissed it again. She stepped closer and showed it to Ellen. It was small and thin. A leg bone or arm bone, she was sure. The shaman tucked it behind Ellen’s ear and smiled.
“Keep it always. Keep it safe. It can only lead you to the truth.”
Ellen pulled it out from behind her ear and stared at it in misery. She sobbed and held it to her chest, then collapsed weeping. Yellowfang sat behind her. She wrapped her arms around Ellen and hummed as Ellen wept. Ellen held the bone to her mouth and kissed it. She whispered she loved it, and Yellowfang sighed.
Ellen looked at the village as she walked through it as if it was a foreign land. Buildings that had been familiar were now just collections of boards and nails. Items and places that once meant something to her were now shallow reminders of the betrayal that had befallen her. She walked slow and staggered through the village until she came to the house of the man she loved.
It was not her father. Tena Black Knuckle had abandoned her long ago. It was not her grandfather or any other man related to her. She stopped before the house of Breathos Steeltooth, and she swayed there.
The door opened and the man filled the frame. He stared at her before smiling and kneeling to hug her. When his mighty arms wrapped around her, she sobbed. She collapsed. He swept her up in his arms and carried her into his house.
His wife brought her tea while Breathos sat beside her and patted her leg.
“Thank you for coming to visit me so often,” Ellen said.
“Wanted to see the prettiest girl in the village is all,” Breathos said. “They had the light of the Stonefist tribe tucked away in the hills. Had to go see how she was doing.” He looked at her ear and frowned.
“What do you have there?” he said, pointing with his thick finger.
“All that is left of my baby,” Ellen said.
“I see.” He put his arm around her, and she laid her head on his chest.
“They all hate me. The entire village hates me.” When she spoke the words, she felt nothing. The great numbness she had been in the grip of held her tight to its bosom, and she could do nothing but sink into it and wait.
“They are afraid of you,” Breathos said.
She laughed. It was a humorless thing that fell from her lips to flop on the ground. “They do not fear me, Breathos.”
“Yes, dear, they do. You stepped outside of the realm of their behavior. You did the thing they fear and you suffered the consequences of it. Every girl in this village is afraid of your fate, every boy ashamed that he wishes to do the same to a woman. Every mother fears you will come for her children. Every man fears he will desire you for your age and your experience. You fill everyone in this village with fear, save my wife and me, save Gaulator and his line. The others fear to get close to you, afraid you might be no different than them, that they might befall your same fate but with a tiny nudge. They fear you, Ellen, and they always will.”
“Then they fear the dead,” she said. “For no life lives within this body. No joy can be born within it. No future can come to it and no end will embrace it. I am a dead girl, Breathos.” A yawning abyss opened under her. He wrapped his arm around her, hugging her tight and holding her, it seemed, from falling in.
“You were believed dead to be sure. Mista ran off and your mother held you until the end came for you. She came for help with your body and when they returned they found you gone.”
“Yellowfang,” Ellen muttered.
“The Howler shaman?” he asked.
“She came to find me and bring me back. She took me into the woods and helped me find myself again,” Ellen said.
“You will live with me,” he said.
She felt a violent reaction. She quaked in his arms and pulled back in revulsion. He let her go, and she pulled away from him on his couch. He looked across the room at his wife but said nothing.
“I will keep you in my house until the stigma has passed. Until the village has moved on and can accept you again.”
“I don’t want their acceptance!” she shouted. “I want nothing from them. I will not live with you or any other. I am dead to this village. I have no home.” She stood, swaying, and glared at him.
He looked at her with infinite patience, and she wanted to slap his face. “Then you will live elsewhere. I will escort you to a different village. I have many friends on this mountain. I will ask for one of them to take you in and set you up with a house within their numbers.”
“No!” she screamed. She clawed her fingers down her face, seeking to feel, seeking pain, seeking an escape from the grip. “No, I won’t. I want nothing from anyone. I want nothing from you!” She stomped her foot, and she screamed. She heard a baby cry, then turned to see Breathos’s boy wailing in the doorway behind her. His mother picked him up and Ellen froze.
She stared as the woman began to turn away and Breathos stopped her.
“Ellen, would you like to see Burle?” he asked. The boy was young, maybe one, maybe two. He seemed small. His cheeks were fat, his eyes clear blue. His hair was a shock of pure black, his tears haunting.
“He never cried.” She saw her own boy, twisted limbs and covered in blood. No color of hair beyond gore. No fingers to be seen. No arms like these, pudgy and perfect. “He never even cried.”
Breathos stood. He stepped beside her, touched her shoulder gently. “I know, Ellen. It breaks my heart.”
“If I had a heart that beat, it would break mine, too,” she whispered. “She burned him,” Ellen said. “Did you get to see him before she did that, Breathos?”
“No, Ellen, no one did. She burned the baby while we searched for her. She was beaten and driven from the mountain. Mista will never hurt you again.”
“She called me a whore.”
She heard his teeth grinding.
“She called me a whore, Breathos, but she was wrong. I’m not a whore. I’m just a girl.”
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.
“A dead girl,” she said. Then she wept.
He picked her up, put her in his lap, wrapped his big arms around her and let her cry. She cried for a long time, or ju
st for a moment. She could never know. Grief washed up around her, rising like a high river to drown her. She let the only man who loved her hold her, and she let it all come. When she had wept for a while, a sudden rage gripped her, and she screamed. She hit him and scratched him. She gripped his hair by the fistful and fought to rip it from his head. She screamed that she hated him, and she bit him, and he weathered it all. He let her rage. She broke against him, fighting and kicking, and when she had let out all her wrath, dropped lifeless in his arms.
She woke that night to the bitter cutting wind and sat up. He had laid her on a stone wrapped in a blanket of fur. She looked out at the night and the moons wheeling overhead. In the village below her, shadowed and dark, she could see the central fire. The boy working it, she could not recognize, but she hated him.
She smelled cooking meats, and turned to a cave, its wide jaws poised to devour her. Within sat Breathos with Gaulator. They were cooking what looked like a chicken, and drinking from a jug. She braced herself and stepped into the cave.
Breathos did not look up from the bird. He had gashes down his cheek and a bruise on his jaw. She tried to hate herself for it, but could not.
Gaulator looked up at her and smiled. “This will have to do until I can get some men up here to build you a shack.”
She stared at him, unable to think, unable to reason out what he was talking about.
“I’ll see to its construction,” Breathos said. He looked up at her sheepishly, and she smiled at him.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No need. It was an honor to bear your wrath. A good shield can take a beating.”
She felt her stomach roll and realized she was hungry. When she ate, the chicken had no taste, though heavily spiced.
“You will live here. We have a bell for you in case you need us.” Gaulator motioned to a great bell on a rolling hoist. “We will send you food when we get it. We will send you water when you need it. We will leave you alone for as long as you like. But you must agree to something, Ellen.”
“I will not soil your boys,” Ellen said. “I’m not going to steal your children or tempt your little men. I want nothing from you people. I want to be left alone.”
“You must agree to something if you want to live near my village. If you will not agree, I will find a way to force you to,” her chief said.
“What, Stonefist? What do you want me to do for you?” she snapped.
“If anyone comes up here to hurt you or insult you, if anyone comes up here to try to force you to do anything or jeer at you, ring this bell four times,” he said. “Four times, loud and hard. You ring this bell if anyone comes to hurt you.”
“Why?” She sobbed. She spit a bone out then thought of her son’s bone. She touched her ear and felt it there.
“You ring that bell so I can come up here and break whoever is here to hurt you,” Breathos said. “Four rings and I will come running. I will make any man, woman, or child I find here hurt for abusing you.”
“If you do not agree to do that, then I will have to take you back down to the village. I will have to watch over you myself,” Gaulator said. “You have no choice in this.”
She did not cry, though she almost did. “I agree.”
“Three rings if you want Breathos. Two if you want me,” Gaulator said.
“If you need supplies, five. If you are hurt, one,” Breathos said.
She did cry then. They let her cry as they ate silently. Breathos passed her the jug, and she tasted clear, cold water. It made her feel clean. She drank more.
III
36 Years Before The Escape
Thirty-nine.
Her language had thirty-nine possible sounds. She had made a symbol for each. She needed pauses. Two more symbols. She needed a symbol for when she was quoting a person’s words or ideas. Two more symbols. She made a symbol for every feature she could think of, a symbol for every sigh, and when she was done, at the age of sixteen Ellen could write.
Her people did not have a written language. She had heard of the outlanders being able to write their thoughts and words down and read them back later. After a year of creation, Ellen had crafted a written language of her own.
She had nothing to write it all down on. She tried to use paint, but the paint the village used was too thin and did not show well. She refigured the recipe, thickened it up and made it easier to use. She dried it to a small, tacky brick, and when she dragged it across rock, it wrote. She was not happy with it yet, so kept working. The makeup of the paint made it impossible to wash off, and she needed to be able to correct her mistakes. She asked Breathos for a cauldron, and he brought her one. She asked for a crushing stone, and she got it. It took a lot of boiling and stirring. It took a bit of creativity, but within two weeks, she had a paint she could write with thick enough to stay, easy to handle, and could be washed. She experimented with colors for a while until she found a dark red she liked. She crafted a box of clay that could keep her paint tacky, and made enough to last her a while. When it was all done, and she had run out of ways to procrastinate, she built herself a ladder and leaned it against the flat wall of the cave. She climbed it, with her paint in her hand. She took a deep breath then began.
I am the Dead Girl.
I am the one despised. I was wronged. My child was murdered. I am in exile and I have no hope. This journal I make so anyone clever enough to decipher it can understand what killed my soul. And why I killed myself.
She descended the ladder then looked up at her work. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she let them come. This would be her conscience. This would be where she set it all straight. She sat on the floor, staring at what she had written.
When she was ready, she went back up the ladder, and wrote more.
She took a knife, pared down the dry, tacky paint stick to a sharp point, and drew on the next line a small bone. She pulled back, blew on it ever so softly until it was dry to the touch. She kissed it then started writing.
It would have held him up. It would have made him strong. It would have allowed him to run and fight. It would have grown hard and helped him grow mighty as well. It had a destiny and a chore to fulfill. But it was taken from him. It is nothing now but a reminder of his corpse, the symbol of a dead baby that can only be held and cared for by the dead. When I have put it all down, I will take this bone and sharpen it. I will use it to slit my throat. Until then, it waits behind my ear. Waits for the day it can finally be useful.
The days passed as she wrote. Time seemed to stand still, as if the day waited while she wrote, as if time itself held its breath for the moment she set herself to rest. When she wasn’t writing, time rushed by her. The days passed in a blink, the nights came with reprieve, and she could sleep well for the first time in years.
When she rang for Breathos, he came. Never did he tarry. Never did he make her wait. It seemed he stood just over the hill waiting for her tolling to call on him. He talked to her or brought her things. He brought her stones, stones he had smoothed down for her. They were of all shapes and sizes, their edges shaved away.
She asked him once why he brought them to her, but he did not tell her. Every time she called on him, he brought a new one, and handed it to her with a smile.
“How is the Dead Girl today?” he asked.
It pained him to say the words. She knew he hated them, but she wanted him to call her that, so he did.
“Can you see what I have done?” she asked.
He turned to the wall and looked at it, then crossed his arms on his chest.
His mouth fell open. “It is sounds,” he said. “You have learned to write sounds. This is a written language.”
“It is.”
He spun and rushed her. She cringed, then he gripped her by the armpits and lifted her into the air. She giggled as he spun her. “This is amazing. You are the cleverest girl I know. By the Seven, the cleverest soul I know. How many times have I said it, Ellen? You are a genius.”
“It is
a feat anyone could do. It is nothing at all,” she said, but she knew better. The average mind could not have fixed it all to a point. She knew she was brilliant. She knew this was a marvel. She needed him to tell her, though, and he did it again.
“It’s a miracle,” he said. “The outside world has this technology, and it has created a world out there we cannot imagine. Borlyn will be so excited. This is the exact thing he was talking about. He wants thinkers, Ellen. He wants art.” He turned to look at the wall again, and shook his head. “When can I send people up here to learn?”
“Never.” Fear jumped up and seized her, and she battled it down within.
He turned, horrified. “What do you mean? This could change the mountain forever. This is just what we need to affect a revolution of mind and soul in our people.”
“This is for me and only me. I need this to remain private,” she said.
He looked at the wall again, and sighed. “This is your letter to us, isn’t it? This is what you will leave behind.”
Her throat closed up, and she croaked. “What do you mean?”
“This is the record you leave behind to tell us all why you did it.” He sounded as if his heart were breaking. His head sank on his shoulders. “This is all that will be left of you one day.”
He knew her intentions. She wondered if he would try to stop her, and her heart broke a little when he didn’t.
“When you are gone, I will wash it off for you or I will figure it out. It is your choice. But please know when you are gone, I will learn this cypher and teach it to my son. I will use it to lift the Ragoth to the sky.” He turned, cupped her face in his hands and smiled. “This will be a record of your pain. It will be a record of loss. But I will turn it into something beautiful when you go, and your people will thank you. This is the legacy you leave to us all.”
She kissed his thick, calloused hands, and asked herself for the hundredth time why his son had to be so young. Why Breathos had to be so old? She cursed the cruel fate that had devised for her a life without his love.
