The Last Time We Met

Winter 2700BC, Yamna (present-day Russia)

The cold knocked me back, a bitter wind.

Distantly, Cosima's voice guided me.

Look down at yourself. Take in what you're wearing, what shoes you have on your feet.

I wore a tunic made of an animal pelt, with the fur side against my body, and a long-sleeved woven shirt beneath that. Leather straps attached to bags and tools criss-crossed my torso and waist, and I had on leggings laced with more leather straps. My shoes were stitched together, almost like moccasins. I couldn't help but notice that I was a woman, with a long braid of black hair over my shoulder.

Now look up, and look around at where you are. Do you see buildings, or roads? Notice the trees and animals.

It was the tail end of winter. All around, tall pines reached for the sun, snow dripping from their needles. I stood on what at first seemed like a road, until I realized it was less a road than a trail carved through the trees by the people passing me by. They were dressed in a similar fashion, pelts and coarse fabrics, all with thick dark hair and brutish faces. The men carried weapons – spears and bows and knives, and many of the women did as well. The horses were covered in shaggy fur, carrying heavy loads.

The progression of people stretched not too far into the distance, but there were perhaps a hundred of us, trekking through the forest.

A few of them glanced at me, as if to tell me to keep going. I began walking, and as I walked I understood why we were walking. We were escaping. Moving from the steppes where we had built our farming communities to a better place.

Now I'd like you to go to the most important or significant event of this life.

The forest disappeared. I was inside of a mud-walled hut with a tall thatched roof. And I was clinging to a body that was certainly dead.

The grief hit me like a sledgehammer. The scent of the body didn't bother me, nor the flies that buzzed around us both. I clung to him, my love, my only reason for being in this world.

He had found me after my father had cast me out and left me to fend for myself in the forest, all because I had lain with another girl, my best friend. We had only been curious, but Father had grabbed me by the hair and hauled me to the edge of the forest and told me never to come back. With nothing, no weapons, no clothing, I had wandered, lost and afraid, certain that death would come to me from the massive deer that haunted the forests.

Instead, as I lay shivering in a cave, a boy found me. He had taken off his thick fur outer layer and wrapped me up in it, and then he had quickly put together a fire and held me until I had warmed enough to eat some of the food he had in his pack. He had been sent on a solo hunt, a tradition of his tribe. Instead of bringing back meat, he brought me back, and announced that I was his now.

His tribespeople had accepted me warily. Some of the women believed me to be a spirit occupying the body of a girl, while the men were suspicious – of what, I did not know, for I had no power, no weapons, nothing. But my love and I made a life for ourselves, and while I never bore him children, we were happy.

Until now.

The sickness had come suddenly. Fever first, then coughing and an insatiable thirst. It was all I could do to bring him enough water to soothe his throat, but soon he began coughing blood. His skin blistered, and lesions festered on his skin. It was not only him, but he was the only one I cared about. And now he was dead.

I clung to him, even as several men entered my hut, with cloths wrapped over the lower half of their faces. They said nothing to me, but grimaced at the smell.

"You cannot take him!" I shouted at them.

They ignored me. Together, they lifted him and carried him out to a waiting wagon, with another body. I followed the carriage past other huts that looked like mine. Beyond the huts were flat grasslands, with mountains off in the distance.

"Please, I must bury him!" I pummeled one of the men, who shoved me away. Though I staggered and fell into the mud, I scrambled to my feet and continued following them. "He must be buried, so his soul may find rest!"

It was like I spoke into the wind, and my words were carried away before they reached the ears of these men.

The wagon finally stopped before a hut. The stench made me cough and cover my nose. Through the dark entryway, I saw the faint outline of bodies. Many bodies.

The men hauled out my love and tossed him inside like a rotted carcass. "No, please!" I begged, rushing toward the hut.

Shoving me aside, into the dirt, they took up the second body and threw it on top of him. Words failed me then. I screamed and wept, groveling in the dirt. Grief overwhelmed me to the point where I could hear nothing, see nothing. I was a raw nerve.

Now I want to you go to the end of that lifetime...

The voice jerked me away from this scene.

You will feel no pain in remembering how that life ended. You will observe, detached, feeling the love of those around you.

A tether jerked my consciousness to halt a few feet above this scene. I could see myself screaming. I could also see the men nearby, who were watching me and having a heated discussion, even as they lit torches from a large bonfire in the village's center. "It is her fault. She has brought this misfortune upon us. My children are dead because of her."

"She is grieving, as we all are."

Beyond them, horses and oxen and wagons were being loaded. Everyone in the village was preparing to leave. This had been going on while I watched my love die. They had been planning to leave, to escape this disease.

And while I watched all this happening, the grief no longer swallowed me whole. But a sense of horror had begun to bloom inside my chest.

"She has cursed us all!"

"We must leave. She can choose to stay or go, it makes no difference."

I knew how this was going to end. She had already escaped a plague with her family. They had traveled through the forest, I had seen that part. They had been running from disease, yet the disease struck again.

"We could cast her out."

"She will follow us. She will sicken us even as we flee."

The men's voices clashed, joined by some of the women's. The anger grew. One man turned from the group, torch in hand, and he marched toward the hut full of corpses.

As my father had before, he grabbed her by the hair, lifting her screaming body up.

You are not sad or afraid. You have already lived this life. Leave that life, remembering all you've learned...

He tossed her through the doorway, then touched his torch to the thatched roof.

___

I certainly wasn't expecting the story to go here, were you?  I was planning for Ancient Egypt and the Biblical plagues, but then I discovered an article about the earliest evidence of a plague, where archeologists dug up a hut where over 100 bodies had been hastily placed and burned, and the other buildings in the village had been deserted in a hurry.  

This is one of the reasons I love writing historical fiction - whenever I go to research something, I always discover some other cool facts!