A Tale of Bronze and Blood

Chosen

Chapter 4

When my father bought my mother and brought her to Sparta, he gave her a new name, and she learned our language. She never once spoke to me in her mother tongue, never once taught me the traditions of our ancestors. She tried so hard to fit in to what a modern Spartan woman should be that she hacked off pieces of herself until there was nothing left but skin and fear.

I was born under the blanket of her fear, I wore it around me like clothing. She was the one who told me never to let anyone know how scared I really was, she was the one who taught me to hold myself still when I most wanted to run. Because my body is nothing more than a house that my soul lives in, and my soul is the one thing no one can touch. I don't know if that's the lesson she meant to teach me growing up, but that is the lesson I learned.

So, when I am faced with this girl holding a knife, in this foreign land, far from home—I straighten up.

"What are you all doing out here in the middle of the night?" I ask. I keep my voice quiet so that my fear isn't so loud. She hears it anyways and quickly assesses me. Im both ashamed and relieved when she seems to deem me as not a threat and cocks her head to the side, her black hair falling like a curtain around her as she speaks.

"You're the one Maya found by the ocean, mysterious and dry, with our symbol on your neck," she crosses her arms, the blade in her right hand glinting int he moonlight. I nod a little.

"How is it that you understand me?" she asks then shakes her head. "Never mind, you should go back to your tent," she looks over my shoulder, at the procession of women still entering the mountain side.

I know I should listen to her. I have no right to be out here, as curious and as intrusive as I am. I still need to figure out how I got here, and how to get home. Yet, still, I stay rooted in place. A feeling in the centre of my chest holding me fast.

"This mark," I say with the meekness my family prizs, and move my hair to the side. "I was born with it—I don't understand how it can be your symbol if I have never been here before."

She looks back at me from where her eyes had been wandering, then scans my face and my neck with impassive eyes. I can tell she wants to leave, there's a spring in her step, the reason she was running—she is late. I don't know why but I feel panicked at the thought of her leaving without me.

"Take me inside with you," I do not command her, no I am much to aware of my disadvantage for that, I plead.

At this she scoffs, a probably rare flash of straight whit teeth in the darkness.

"You are not one of us, you can not come into our temple of worship," she says shaking her head, amused enough o have momentarily forgotten her tardiness.

I want to ask again, but I then hear a thin bell being rung from behind me, from inside the cave. I look at the girl and her eyes are back on the door.

"I have to go mystery girl, Lea will talk to you tomorrow about that mark," she says with a brief nod, and begins to walk away before I can stop her.

I feel panic rise in my chest, so I speak out the first thing that comes to mind—"Wait, what is your name," I ask as she passes by my side.

"My name is Klonie," she says, and continues walking, her white dress ghostlike in the mid night pitch.

. . .

My dreams come like crashing waves onto a shore in the middle of a storm. I am first at the top of a great tower made of white and gold. I watch as far below me men fight on a battlefield filled with dust. I hear their screams int eh mid day air, I smell their blood, and I see their shadows flickering this way and that. I see them twitching towards me like flowers to the sun.