This is the second entry for the new Fantasy Smackdown competition. I used the following quotes from Group 2: War & Roses:
1) "I just want them to know that they didn't break me."
2) "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government."
3) " 'I was beginning to think you were afraid to fight.' 'I'm just naturally lazy, but I will if I have to--and it's starting to look like we have to.' "
4) "There is no escape. We pay for the violence of our ancestors."
5) "Will you have some supper? I am doomed; you are hungry. One has very little to do with the other, so there is no reason for you not to eat with me."
6) "Do not go to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no."
8) "Don't profane crows. Some of my ancestors were crows."
--- The Women of the Black ---
The day the Black consumed our city, the sky had warned us. On retrospect, I should have known. It was in the way the clouds swirled and funneled down like serpents, flirting with the peaks of Maldine’s bastions. Even the blind must have felt it. The air was colder. The birds stopped chirping. But instead, I sat in the study perusing the texts of our ancestors.
I could feel Feld watching me from the dark corner. She was probably concerned that I spend too much time reading old and dusty books instead of conversing with the other children of the Royal Guard.
“Will you have some supper?”
I wasn’t hungry. She was always forcing food down my throat. I guess that’s just what women of her old age are left with, a burning desire to satisfy the young as their own days grow shorter. Her skin was bunched up beneath her neck, rolls that attested to her penchant for eating. Had I eaten every time she offered, I would have looked the same. I heard the kids in the alley joke that she was twice the size of a Gullback Boar. It was probably true.
“I’m not hungry,” I told her, flipping the page of The Chronicles of Maldine: The First Encounter with the Black. I always felt bad denying her, since she's going to die sooner or later. Maybe not tonight, or this week, but soon the infection would take its final stab and render her lifeless. But I couldn’t eat at a time like this. Not when everyone knew the Black was approaching and still no one knew what would please them, what would send them back to their bogs and swamps.
Sparks flew when Feld struck the flint and lit another candle. “I am doomed; you are hungry. One has very little to do with the other, so there is no reason for you not to eat with me."
She was wrong. They had everything to do with one another. Had she not eaten so much the sores on her feet never would have carried infection.
“I’m sorry Feld, I’m just not hungry. I have to find the answer.”
The sound of Feld’s lips smacking together as she chewed on something made me want to throw the book at her. “Dear Jesoa,” she started, “nothing will halt the women of the Black’s journey here. They far outnumber us, and their hearts burn with a rage few have seen. They will overtake us, and we will perish. The least you can do is please an old lady by eating some stew.”
“There has to be a reason. They have to want something. This book says their system of government stresses equality and honor. Where’s the honor in attacking harmless people?”
"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government,” Feld said.
I wish I would have started learning about them years earlier. A race of all women, brutal warriors with savage hearts who spent their days living in the sweltering heat of the southern bogs.
Feld stood. "There is no escape. We pay for the violence of our ancestors."
“You talk as if we’re a bunch of hopeless crows. Like we don’t have a chance.”
"Don't profane crows. Some of my ancestors were crows."
Feld was losing it. Our conversations always ended like this. I would say something meaningful and she would follow it with the rant of a dying old woman. I turned the page, and the colorful illustration caught my eye and took my breath away.
The Daladem flower, it read. A magical bud that eases all worry and conquers all hate. A dying breed, located only in the hills miles west of Maldine.
“Feld, have you ever heard of the Daladem flower?”
“Oh I’ve heard the word thrown around here and there. They say it’s the flower of the Elves. They say it grows beneath the massive trunks that the pointy-eared folk live in. But they also say do not go to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no. We’ve already tried to reason with them in years past, and all they gave us were riddles.”
If we couldn’t go to the Elves, why couldn’t we just flee? I wished my father used his standing as a member of the Royal Guard to convince the King to admit defeat and run from the impending doom of the women of the Black.
I held my finger in between the pages and looked to Feld. “You have no urge to stop them? To preserve what we have all created here?”
“Of course I do,” Feld told me. “But what is an old, swollen lady to do?”
I smiled. She always had a way of bringing humor to dark times. "I was beginning to think you were afraid to fight.”
“I'm just naturally lazy, but I will if I have to - and it's starting to look like we have to. Perhaps I’ll hit those wenches with my cane.”
When the bells chimed and the deafening rumble made my ears itch, I knew it was too late. There would be no time to search for magical flowers or for the Elves that hide in the trees. We wouldn’t be able to reason with the women of the Black. I stood up, calmly, and walked towards the window. Feld grabbed my arm and her worn and wrinkly hand felt like snakeskin.
“This is it, dear Jesoa. I do hope I raised you well. Your mother would have been proud.”
“You did the best job you knew how to,” I said. I don’t know if that gave her comfort or not, but the truth often lacks such niceties.
Even in the dark of night you could tell the difference. It was a stampede of something that stood out from darkness, an empty void in the distance. I heard their screeches as they banged their clubs against our walls. The soldiers on the bastions were probably shaking in their armor, knowing that the end was near.
I had barred the door to the study three times over, and I could walk Feld through the underground chambers until we reached the outside. She would probably fall or yell or cry and the women of the Black would find us, but it was a chance at survival. I thought about the authors who wrote the texts I had spent weeks reading. All they wanted to do was create something permanent, something that lasted past their frozen breath and temporary lives.
I imagined the author writing his last words in the volumes, satisfied that he had created something that crossed the boundary of mortality. “I just want them to know that they didn’t break me,” I could hear him saying as he smiled. “I just want them to know that I won with feather and ink in hand. These words are my testaments, and no woman from the Black will take them from me.”
I closed the dusty tome and took a deep breath. Perhaps I would have one last meal with Feld before the tower was taken. Or perhaps I'll take my own feather in hand and scribble some markings on the parchment beneath the candle. I wish I had one of the magical flowers, so I could bookmark this page and when the women of the Black open it their hearts will turn from black to white and my words will seep through their soul. But no, not feather. Maybe I'll chisel away at a slab of stone. It would be something that would persist through the fire and fighting of our final days. It could be my own testament to what the women in Black were about to take from the world. Written proof that my words survived longer than I did, letting the world know that they may have broken me, but they'll never break my words.
