[story] clear as god's own tears
author: mellish (scratchmist)
email: scratchmist [at] yahoo.com
The river is cold when they dip their feet into it. They wade in, carefully, over the stones and weeds. She doesn't shiver, and once the water reaches her hip she ducks down entirely, sinking until her nose is barely above the water. He reaches out for her - she can feel his fingers brush against her elbow. She takes them and gives them a tight squeeze. Slowly, she stands upright again. Now the water rises midway to her belly. He draws closer.
"Are you cold?" she whispers.
"No." His voice trembles. There is barely any moonlight here, under the dense cover of trees. She can only see the faintest impression of his round face, his wide eyes.
"Are you frightened?"
"No," he repeats again, a little more forcefully this time. She laughs. Of course he is. They all are.
"Come," she says, and pulls him closer towards her. His head comes up to her breasts, now. He has grown so much. She cups water in her hands, and pours it in a stream over his head. The chill makes him shudder. He grips her elbows while she runs her fingers through his hair, clearing it of the dirt and dust from the roads, the forests, the hiding. The long journey. The escape. When she's finished, she washes her own hair, unraveling knots when she finds them. There are many knots, and he grows restless. He swims a little bit away, poking through the water plants. He seems to have grown used to the cold.
"Are you frightened?" he calls out to her, unexpectedly. His voice is high, and suddenly seems so far away, as if the stars are talking to her instead. Something steely and warm boils up in her stomach, and without meaning to she recognizes it - as tomorrow's blood on her hands, and perhaps her own blood on her hands, but not his blood, ever. She is prepared for the battle - she will sleep tonight dreaming of it. She means to answer no, but the words are suddenly stuck in her throat.
He swims back towards her, and fumbles for her hand again. She clutches it, takes in a sharp breath and tries once more - "No," she hears herself saying, her heart counting out the single syllable, resonating with the force of the lie. He does not reply, but nods his head, as if following a script. They make their way out of the river as slowly, gently, as they made their way in, and dress themselves on the banks without a word.
Their makeshift camp is lit with a few lanterns when they return. The twins are seated, cross-legged, polishing their knives with studious care. Dragonfly is changing the bandages on her shoulder. She looks up, and smiles briefly at them. The gashes on her shoulder have hardened into clots; the pain has receded to the point where she can ignore it. She’ll be able to fight normally again tomorrow. Scar is napping, his head lying flat against a large stone. Arrow is meditating, hunched in thought, or perhaps he is sleeping as well. One can never tell with him.
Leaf is nowhere to be seen. She stiffens, then breathes out when she hears his familiar footsteps coming from the opposite direction. He carries an armful of what seem to be fruit.
"Did you enjoy the river, young lord?" He directs the words to the boy beside her, but she feels his eyes on her, taking in her wet hair, the smell of river on her clothes.
"It was boring," the boy responds.
"And you, Lady Star?"
"Not lady," she begins with a sigh, their usual conversation. She hates what the title connotes. She is not named for the pretty things that hang in the sky, but for her proficiency with needles and knives, the way they glimmer artfully before embedding themselves in her enemies' heads. "But I would like some of that fruit. It is fruit?"
He throws one to her. She catches it and tears it carefully in half. She hands one half to her lord before biting into the other one, enjoying its sweet flavour. She gives Leaf an appreciative smile, but does not hold it, lest he want anything else. There is already too little that they have. She stoops down, and finishes her piece of fruit, spitting the seeds onto the peel. Leaf walks around, handing out the rest, one for every member of their band save the sleeping Scar. Dragonfly starts a discussion with the young lord, who has squatted down next to her to watch how she layers her bandages over the mint paste they took from the last friendly village. They talk about their favorite sweets.
She is unsurprised to find Leaf's feet stopping in front of her. She doesn’t look up; he kneels instead. She gives him a tired glance.
"What did I do?" His cheerful tone betrays how plainly he is hurt.
"It's nothing," she answers.
When she tries to shift away again, he puts his hand gently on her knee. "Do not worry for him. We will all be here, and I will not let him die, and I will not let you die." He puts emphasis on the last few words.
She smiles at that - or twitches her lip, anyway, the irony sending a new sharp pang through her stomach. "You, Leaf, will not need to protect me." It is the truth. His blush could be another dim lantern in the night. "What you need to do is check your weapons, then sleep."
"Yes, oh Lady Star, great queen of battle tactics," he responds, lifting his hand away from her knee. The sigh of relief that escapes her lips is snatched away when he suddenly ducks in to kiss her, and the pang through her stomach becomes a raging fire. But surprise leaves her too stunned to hit Leaf, who has already slipped off. She means to glare at him, but his back is turned. He seems to have drawn out his sword for polishing, as she instructed. Dragonfly and the young lord, momentarily silent, sensibly resume their conversation.
She decides it's not worth it, not tonight. Her face is still as she laces her fingers over her knees. She leans her head back, and contemplates the sky.
The memories are indistinct, drawn from her by the scent of forest, by the anxiety she tries to ignore. The young lord's father, her master for as long as she can remember, is showing her how to pitch a knife at a leaf that falls ten, fifteen, twenty-five meters away. His hands over hers are large and reassuring, and the real battles seem so distant, in the peace of their training grounds. That does not mean she does not suffer when she fails to do her prescribed training. She remembers the welts across her knees, her palms. The way even freshwater stings, when one's hand is covered in cuts. Shattering her wrist once, landing the wrong way in a sparring match. The lord allows concern to cloud his face, even as he tells her to stop crying.
Your mother, the master would often say, was a beautiful and deadly woman, and you are in every way like her. The words warm her heart, and make her feel strange. The master's face in the sun is both young and old. He is not her father - she has no father - and her love for him is compelled by the fact that she owes him everything: the water she drinks, the roof over her head, her clothes, her bruised knees, her knowledge of how to break a man's jaw. The young lord is a beautiful baby that her master allows her to hold. He has no mother. They are a strange existence, but peaceful, until things begin to change. People come and go to speak to her master, and for the first time, some people stay.
Dragonfly comes because, or so Star hears, her mother was stripped and beaten and her father's head lopped off. She is well-trained and well-mannered and they become friends immediately. Scar arrives with one eye bleeding and eats all their porridge and the master thumps him on the back and calls him a right pain. The twins, Salt and Snow, are messengers from another band that got dissolved. Wanderers, now. And very much welcome. Arrow who once passed through often enough, remains with them. He whittles the master's long bow and talks out of the corner of his mouth of impending troubles. Star has an idea that they are something like rebels, but the label is vague and irrelevant.
Leaf comes upon their small space like a wanderer, and no one quite knows what to do with him because he talks so loudly. They assume he is a travelling musician, but the master wastes no time engaging him in a mock battle after dinner. They are all rather amazed to learn that he has skill with a blade. Leaf then tells them of his own band, a village of fighting monks now burned to the ground. Scar and the master spend a long time discussing what is happening, and Star smells the beginnings of trouble. They all train, more ferociously with each passing day, and they grow close as one shambling family. Leaf, young and eager, begins to let his gaze linger over her longer than she feels comfortable with. He is kind and never old and much too tender, and her heart extends for him before she can help it, though she never gives him any reason to hope.
The master calls her brilliant. She still owes him everything. The young lord is a beautiful boy that clutches her hand and asks her to tell him stories about dragons and river gods.
Then the fire, then the blood, then the master going limp in her arms. Enemies everywhere, before they can prepare. Two years ago, their life fell apart. Twenty men in an hour, dead by her hands. She doesn't keep the count for the next few weeks, somehow aware that it will always, always be higher than she expects. Scar takes over command, if they can call it that, but in battle, they turn to her without question. It is as if the master's hands are her hands, guiding them all. She steps into the role so naturally, it is strange to realize that he was not (was never?) her father.
The enemy is a stinging shadow round every corner. They are rebels. Now the word means everything. Leaf can say he is in love with her and she knows he will kiss every space of earth she walks on, but there is nowhere in her heart for this. Maybe there never will be, and he knows it. They've spent twenty months in this strange, awkward way, knowing each touch is going to hurt. The two of them, like everyone else, have been broken and mended repeatedly in their need to flee, by turns their need for revenge. But they are still breathing, and there is the young lord - why they live at all. He is a beautiful boy that she holds close to her heart and she will not let him die, no matter what happens, no matter what.
"Hold my hand," she tells him, even if she doesn't need to. "Don't let go."
Their footfalls in the forest are quickly pursued, but this is according to plan, and she hears a cry as Arrow, in a tree somewhere overhead, finds his mark. There's a clang of metal - the twins' trap has been successful, and they have started their battle. The leaves crunch underfoot. Something clad in orange runs the path parallel - Dragonfly, marking her out as back-up. Leaf should be on the opposite side, but because he's wearing green, she can't see him. That's all right. She can trust him as well as her own heartbeat. There should be a ring of trees here, not far now, where they'll be safe as long as she keeps her focus.
Fifty. That should be the number. Fifty is doable. Any more than that and she will need a miracle. Someone's cries, another bunch of flying arrows, the clang of metal, tearing cloth. Dragonfly whistles. The ring of trees appears up ahead. She steps into it, right where she knows her power will spread best. Then she waits. The young lord's breathing is shallow and ragged beside her and she knows he is channeling his energy, concentrating it into his arms and legs, because she can feel it through his palm. It is competing for space with the knives she has at the ready, two between every finger, and she can feel the chill of several more running up along her arms. Not long now. Dragonfly will come in after the first wave, and Leaf - and the young lord, he too can deal a decisive blow if necessary.
The forest grows eerily quiet. The wind blows gently, deceptively steady. She draws a deep breath, then lifts one foot and stamps down, hard. The impact moves in circles beneath her, and makes the space around the grove freeze, every branch rigid, every leaf suspended in place. Everything becomes rooted to the earth, artificially bright, and the shadows expose the men coming at them from all directions, between the trees. Every one of them suddenly has a knife stuck in his throat. The silence extends for a long moment. Even how they drop to their knees is quiet, the spray of blood around the ring of trees almost tender.
Then a cloud, moving indelicately overhead, reveals the sun. She pitches another round of knives as the second batch of men come pouring in, the movement slower than she expects - Dragonfly screams, her sleeve flaps as she deflects two arrows, Leaf has decapitated a man, he is moving faster than she ever has seen, with more grace and power than she remembers. The young lord has let go of her hand and looks like his father, both young and old, yelling ferociously. Everything is scarlet and everything is clear, sharp as the pain that suddenly erupts in her stomach, and makes the whole world brighter than she recalls, as if all the light in the universe is suddenly somewhere inside of her.
The river is cold when they dip their feet into it. They wade in, carefully, over the stones and weeds. Neither of them shivers, though his tiny hand trembles a little in Leaf's grasp. Leaf is not surprised. His own body feels the chill, but the discomfort is distant, something entirely outside of himself. "Are you cold?" he whispers. Dragonfly could do this better, but she has declined on account of her damaged arm. He knows how much it hurts, and he doesn't mean to force anything from her. He won't force anything from anyone, least of all the young lord.
"No," is the tiny reply. He's in the water up to his waist, now. This should be all right.
Leaf cups some water in his palm and pours it over the young lord's head.
"That's good," he says, but his voice is very far away. He is watching the dirt rinse out of the young boy's hair, stream down his face, onto his chest and shoulders. The silt and grime and blood. He pours another cupped palmful, and runs his fingers through the boy's hair, the motion inexorable, deliberate. In this way he ignores how his eyes, in their streaming, have suddenly become one with the river and the moonlit sky.
the end
email: scratchmist [at] yahoo.com
The river is cold when they dip their feet into it. They wade in, carefully, over the stones and weeds. She doesn't shiver, and once the water reaches her hip she ducks down entirely, sinking until her nose is barely above the water. He reaches out for her - she can feel his fingers brush against her elbow. She takes them and gives them a tight squeeze. Slowly, she stands upright again. Now the water rises midway to her belly. He draws closer.
"Are you cold?" she whispers.
"No." His voice trembles. There is barely any moonlight here, under the dense cover of trees. She can only see the faintest impression of his round face, his wide eyes.
"Are you frightened?"
"No," he repeats again, a little more forcefully this time. She laughs. Of course he is. They all are.
"Come," she says, and pulls him closer towards her. His head comes up to her breasts, now. He has grown so much. She cups water in her hands, and pours it in a stream over his head. The chill makes him shudder. He grips her elbows while she runs her fingers through his hair, clearing it of the dirt and dust from the roads, the forests, the hiding. The long journey. The escape. When she's finished, she washes her own hair, unraveling knots when she finds them. There are many knots, and he grows restless. He swims a little bit away, poking through the water plants. He seems to have grown used to the cold.
"Are you frightened?" he calls out to her, unexpectedly. His voice is high, and suddenly seems so far away, as if the stars are talking to her instead. Something steely and warm boils up in her stomach, and without meaning to she recognizes it - as tomorrow's blood on her hands, and perhaps her own blood on her hands, but not his blood, ever. She is prepared for the battle - she will sleep tonight dreaming of it. She means to answer no, but the words are suddenly stuck in her throat.
He swims back towards her, and fumbles for her hand again. She clutches it, takes in a sharp breath and tries once more - "No," she hears herself saying, her heart counting out the single syllable, resonating with the force of the lie. He does not reply, but nods his head, as if following a script. They make their way out of the river as slowly, gently, as they made their way in, and dress themselves on the banks without a word.
Their makeshift camp is lit with a few lanterns when they return. The twins are seated, cross-legged, polishing their knives with studious care. Dragonfly is changing the bandages on her shoulder. She looks up, and smiles briefly at them. The gashes on her shoulder have hardened into clots; the pain has receded to the point where she can ignore it. She’ll be able to fight normally again tomorrow. Scar is napping, his head lying flat against a large stone. Arrow is meditating, hunched in thought, or perhaps he is sleeping as well. One can never tell with him.
Leaf is nowhere to be seen. She stiffens, then breathes out when she hears his familiar footsteps coming from the opposite direction. He carries an armful of what seem to be fruit.
"Did you enjoy the river, young lord?" He directs the words to the boy beside her, but she feels his eyes on her, taking in her wet hair, the smell of river on her clothes.
"It was boring," the boy responds.
"And you, Lady Star?"
"Not lady," she begins with a sigh, their usual conversation. She hates what the title connotes. She is not named for the pretty things that hang in the sky, but for her proficiency with needles and knives, the way they glimmer artfully before embedding themselves in her enemies' heads. "But I would like some of that fruit. It is fruit?"
He throws one to her. She catches it and tears it carefully in half. She hands one half to her lord before biting into the other one, enjoying its sweet flavour. She gives Leaf an appreciative smile, but does not hold it, lest he want anything else. There is already too little that they have. She stoops down, and finishes her piece of fruit, spitting the seeds onto the peel. Leaf walks around, handing out the rest, one for every member of their band save the sleeping Scar. Dragonfly starts a discussion with the young lord, who has squatted down next to her to watch how she layers her bandages over the mint paste they took from the last friendly village. They talk about their favorite sweets.
She is unsurprised to find Leaf's feet stopping in front of her. She doesn’t look up; he kneels instead. She gives him a tired glance.
"What did I do?" His cheerful tone betrays how plainly he is hurt.
"It's nothing," she answers.
When she tries to shift away again, he puts his hand gently on her knee. "Do not worry for him. We will all be here, and I will not let him die, and I will not let you die." He puts emphasis on the last few words.
She smiles at that - or twitches her lip, anyway, the irony sending a new sharp pang through her stomach. "You, Leaf, will not need to protect me." It is the truth. His blush could be another dim lantern in the night. "What you need to do is check your weapons, then sleep."
"Yes, oh Lady Star, great queen of battle tactics," he responds, lifting his hand away from her knee. The sigh of relief that escapes her lips is snatched away when he suddenly ducks in to kiss her, and the pang through her stomach becomes a raging fire. But surprise leaves her too stunned to hit Leaf, who has already slipped off. She means to glare at him, but his back is turned. He seems to have drawn out his sword for polishing, as she instructed. Dragonfly and the young lord, momentarily silent, sensibly resume their conversation.
She decides it's not worth it, not tonight. Her face is still as she laces her fingers over her knees. She leans her head back, and contemplates the sky.
The memories are indistinct, drawn from her by the scent of forest, by the anxiety she tries to ignore. The young lord's father, her master for as long as she can remember, is showing her how to pitch a knife at a leaf that falls ten, fifteen, twenty-five meters away. His hands over hers are large and reassuring, and the real battles seem so distant, in the peace of their training grounds. That does not mean she does not suffer when she fails to do her prescribed training. She remembers the welts across her knees, her palms. The way even freshwater stings, when one's hand is covered in cuts. Shattering her wrist once, landing the wrong way in a sparring match. The lord allows concern to cloud his face, even as he tells her to stop crying.
Your mother, the master would often say, was a beautiful and deadly woman, and you are in every way like her. The words warm her heart, and make her feel strange. The master's face in the sun is both young and old. He is not her father - she has no father - and her love for him is compelled by the fact that she owes him everything: the water she drinks, the roof over her head, her clothes, her bruised knees, her knowledge of how to break a man's jaw. The young lord is a beautiful baby that her master allows her to hold. He has no mother. They are a strange existence, but peaceful, until things begin to change. People come and go to speak to her master, and for the first time, some people stay.
Dragonfly comes because, or so Star hears, her mother was stripped and beaten and her father's head lopped off. She is well-trained and well-mannered and they become friends immediately. Scar arrives with one eye bleeding and eats all their porridge and the master thumps him on the back and calls him a right pain. The twins, Salt and Snow, are messengers from another band that got dissolved. Wanderers, now. And very much welcome. Arrow who once passed through often enough, remains with them. He whittles the master's long bow and talks out of the corner of his mouth of impending troubles. Star has an idea that they are something like rebels, but the label is vague and irrelevant.
Leaf comes upon their small space like a wanderer, and no one quite knows what to do with him because he talks so loudly. They assume he is a travelling musician, but the master wastes no time engaging him in a mock battle after dinner. They are all rather amazed to learn that he has skill with a blade. Leaf then tells them of his own band, a village of fighting monks now burned to the ground. Scar and the master spend a long time discussing what is happening, and Star smells the beginnings of trouble. They all train, more ferociously with each passing day, and they grow close as one shambling family. Leaf, young and eager, begins to let his gaze linger over her longer than she feels comfortable with. He is kind and never old and much too tender, and her heart extends for him before she can help it, though she never gives him any reason to hope.
The master calls her brilliant. She still owes him everything. The young lord is a beautiful boy that clutches her hand and asks her to tell him stories about dragons and river gods.
Then the fire, then the blood, then the master going limp in her arms. Enemies everywhere, before they can prepare. Two years ago, their life fell apart. Twenty men in an hour, dead by her hands. She doesn't keep the count for the next few weeks, somehow aware that it will always, always be higher than she expects. Scar takes over command, if they can call it that, but in battle, they turn to her without question. It is as if the master's hands are her hands, guiding them all. She steps into the role so naturally, it is strange to realize that he was not (was never?) her father.
The enemy is a stinging shadow round every corner. They are rebels. Now the word means everything. Leaf can say he is in love with her and she knows he will kiss every space of earth she walks on, but there is nowhere in her heart for this. Maybe there never will be, and he knows it. They've spent twenty months in this strange, awkward way, knowing each touch is going to hurt. The two of them, like everyone else, have been broken and mended repeatedly in their need to flee, by turns their need for revenge. But they are still breathing, and there is the young lord - why they live at all. He is a beautiful boy that she holds close to her heart and she will not let him die, no matter what happens, no matter what.
"Hold my hand," she tells him, even if she doesn't need to. "Don't let go."
Their footfalls in the forest are quickly pursued, but this is according to plan, and she hears a cry as Arrow, in a tree somewhere overhead, finds his mark. There's a clang of metal - the twins' trap has been successful, and they have started their battle. The leaves crunch underfoot. Something clad in orange runs the path parallel - Dragonfly, marking her out as back-up. Leaf should be on the opposite side, but because he's wearing green, she can't see him. That's all right. She can trust him as well as her own heartbeat. There should be a ring of trees here, not far now, where they'll be safe as long as she keeps her focus.
Fifty. That should be the number. Fifty is doable. Any more than that and she will need a miracle. Someone's cries, another bunch of flying arrows, the clang of metal, tearing cloth. Dragonfly whistles. The ring of trees appears up ahead. She steps into it, right where she knows her power will spread best. Then she waits. The young lord's breathing is shallow and ragged beside her and she knows he is channeling his energy, concentrating it into his arms and legs, because she can feel it through his palm. It is competing for space with the knives she has at the ready, two between every finger, and she can feel the chill of several more running up along her arms. Not long now. Dragonfly will come in after the first wave, and Leaf - and the young lord, he too can deal a decisive blow if necessary.
The forest grows eerily quiet. The wind blows gently, deceptively steady. She draws a deep breath, then lifts one foot and stamps down, hard. The impact moves in circles beneath her, and makes the space around the grove freeze, every branch rigid, every leaf suspended in place. Everything becomes rooted to the earth, artificially bright, and the shadows expose the men coming at them from all directions, between the trees. Every one of them suddenly has a knife stuck in his throat. The silence extends for a long moment. Even how they drop to their knees is quiet, the spray of blood around the ring of trees almost tender.
Then a cloud, moving indelicately overhead, reveals the sun. She pitches another round of knives as the second batch of men come pouring in, the movement slower than she expects - Dragonfly screams, her sleeve flaps as she deflects two arrows, Leaf has decapitated a man, he is moving faster than she ever has seen, with more grace and power than she remembers. The young lord has let go of her hand and looks like his father, both young and old, yelling ferociously. Everything is scarlet and everything is clear, sharp as the pain that suddenly erupts in her stomach, and makes the whole world brighter than she recalls, as if all the light in the universe is suddenly somewhere inside of her.
The river is cold when they dip their feet into it. They wade in, carefully, over the stones and weeds. Neither of them shivers, though his tiny hand trembles a little in Leaf's grasp. Leaf is not surprised. His own body feels the chill, but the discomfort is distant, something entirely outside of himself. "Are you cold?" he whispers. Dragonfly could do this better, but she has declined on account of her damaged arm. He knows how much it hurts, and he doesn't mean to force anything from her. He won't force anything from anyone, least of all the young lord.
"No," is the tiny reply. He's in the water up to his waist, now. This should be all right.
Leaf cups some water in his palm and pours it over the young lord's head.
"That's good," he says, but his voice is very far away. He is watching the dirt rinse out of the young boy's hair, stream down his face, onto his chest and shoulders. The silt and grime and blood. He pours another cupped palmful, and runs his fingers through the boy's hair, the motion inexorable, deliberate. In this way he ignores how his eyes, in their streaming, have suddenly become one with the river and the moonlit sky.
the end