The Mapmaker's War (21 page)

He molested me. He meant to rape me, you said.

The Guardians had no singular words to describe what had happened and almost happened to you. You had to say some of it in your native language at first, then you tied words together in your adopted tongue to explain. Silent at last, you shook and cried because of what you'd exhumed. You remembered the animal fear and human horror. You had fought and wanted to fight harder but you had not the strength. You hadn't expected to feel such shame and rage. Because I can, said he. He would have, if he hadn't been stopped. What would have happened to you if he had?

Leit crawled around Makha. He put his back to the nearest tree and held his arms open. You curled against him. You welcomed the comfort.

Tell the truth.

His response gratified you. You were not proud you felt that way.

I feel sad and angry for you, Aoife, said he. You're not the only woman born away who has come to us with this story. You're safe now. You're with me, with us, and you are safe. Go to Aza, and she'll help you come to peace.

Neither of you spoke for a long while.

Then said he, That doesn't happen here. That doesn't happen here yet.

Days later, he said he wanted you to be his witness.

You agreed.

He told you the story of his scar. When he was done, your heart and mind could not contain what he'd said. You had to let it out. You secreted yourself away and wrote down his words. | you were told never to tell | They are here. His pain lives, although your beloved is dead.

This is what he spoke of the child, the tree, the wound, and the wolf.

| of evil incarnate |

We kept them at bay.

Our people didn't know how close they were. An easy three-day walk from our settlement.

The closest village—a people who had always been an ally— gave us away to the men who came to invade and plunder. Our Voice was brave and moved through the village as a peddler, all the while listening to the adults speak. They were promised a portion of the bounty seized. What they did not fear, as it turns out, they envied. They knew of our mine, land, and livestock. The foreign men would sate their desires through our near neighbors' complicity. Our warriors entered the forest armed and ready. We didn't want to kill but we were determined to stop the spreading violence. We knew what losses our people had suffered.

Our restraint—and it was restraint—wore thin. My warriors had spoken of their urge to kill. I reminded them of their oaths, as they reminded me. The men who assaulted us were crazed with exhaustion and hatred. Our restraint infuriated them all the more. We battled through the morning, spattered with blood, vomit, piss, and shit. Our own, that of the other men.

This you know. You've heard this before. These tales we tell about our deeds.

We gathered our injured and dead. Both sides. They lost heart,
lost too many men. I don't know.
Then I saw the child.

She peeked around a tree, then was gone. Our Voice—oh, our Voice, who sang to our bleeding and dying, trying to heal them— she said to leave the child alone. I pleaded with her to help me find her to see if she needed to be led home or taken as a foundling. Our Voice relented and searched, but the child eluded us. She thought the girl had gone back to her family. I argued we were too far from the village. She reminded me there were many people hiding in the forest who had fled the village soon after the foreign men arrived and the fighting began. I believed there was just cause for my concern.

Our Voice wasn't uncaring. She was grief-stricken and overwhelmed and wanted to save the warriors who had a chance. I did, too, but after all the bloodshed, sick with the knowledge that I had killed on purpose, I wanted to save someone.

You knew, didn't you, I was known as the warrior without a de
liberate kill.
Her rescue, I thought, could atone.

I said I would stay behind until the last of my warriors were on the way home. I kept watch for the girl.

I saw her again. She sat against a tree. She was four, five years old. She wore no blouse and she carried an infant. I watched her attempt to nurse the limp baby boy. He was naked and dirty. He cried weakly. I knew he was dying. I called to her and waved. I approached her with calm and a sweet tone in my voice, although she understood not a word I said. She stood on thin legs—she was so thin—and ran with the baby in her arms.

I pursued her. I know now I was delirious, lost in my own way, because I abandoned my warriors when they still needed my attention. I tracked her and didn't sleep, to keep an eye on her. In the night, the baby boy died. She carried his stiff body and shook him. I'm not sure she understood.

I tried to gain her trust. I reached my hand to her from a distance, and I left her food in the open and where she could see me. I could have captured her. She was weak and small. She could not outrun me. But I didn't want to take her by force. She was enough afraid.

I lost awareness of what was around me—and her. Some of those rough bloodied foreign men remained in the forest. Lost, far from their homes. Angry men who perceived defeat and failure in their fight.

You must know, Aoife, not all foundlings are lost and abandoned. We take into our care children who bruise and bleed from all parts of their bodies, who are sick with neglect, who survive horrors they did not cause. Explain to me a human being who can do this to a child. Explain to me how anyone can again do what was done to them. So— There were three of them. They captured us—the girl, the dead boy, and me.

I understood not a word they said. They debated what to do with us, I could tell, debated long.

Makha, yes, I failed to mention Makha. She accompanied me everywhere, watchful, loyal companion that she is. She understood to stay away from the human battles. Her teeth and stealth were no match for blades. But she would not leave the closeness of my side, or the sight of me.

I knew she watched as the men subdued us. One grabbed the girl and the dead boy she refused to drop. Her brother, no doubt. Two wrestled me to the ground and bound my arms behind my back. I knew this danger was worse than any I had ever faced. They bound my hands and ankles and tied me to a tree. They took the baby from the girl and threw him to the ground. She screamed and wept. She was tied to a large tree several feet away. The rope coiled around her chest. In my delirium I wondered where they found the ropes. Why they let us live.

It was night. There was a cooking fire. A hare torn apart among

them. A squirrel, too. I was starved, thirsty, sore. One of them tossed a shred of meat near enough that I could bend to the ground and take it. I tried to breathe. My training all came to one breath and the next. This moment. This moment. They had no drink but they were drunk. The man who seemed to lead, the cruelest of them, but also the most calm, flashed his sword at me. Pricked my skin enough to bleed. He spoke and they all laughed. The girl looked at her brother, who was lost in the dark.

Then this man, who made me bleed, approached the little girl. He knelt in front of her. He spoke in a tone that froze me as I became hot with a terrible fury. I cried out and he laughed. I had told him to stop, which he didn't heed, no matter my words. One of his companions drew his sword at me at a threatening distance. What provoked what happened next, I cannot say. I don't know. I cannot fathom. Why?

I remember he looked at me. Looked me square in the eyes. They were dark and they glistened. They were strangely vacant, then strangely full of elation.

The man robbed the girl of her clothing. He wrenched her legs apart. He desecrated that child before my eyes. What was the word you said in your language? Rape? Rape of a child. I screamed and she screamed screamed screamed screamed. I strained against the rope, my chest raw with thrashing, screaming to let her go. The sword sliced me open and Makha howled as the blade swept through. My wound her wound. Blood from my throat to my groin.

The rage. I had never felt such rage. I wanted to kill them all, especially the fiend. What being does that? The other men did nothing to stop him. Not a word or gesture. They allowed it. Yet worse. Worse. I wanted him to kill the girl. I wanted to kill her because I could not imagine how she could survive this horror. I wanted her dead. I wanted a child dead. I might have killed her myself with my own hand, given the chance, if the fiend had not stabbed her again and again with such force that he had to pull the sword from the tree. I saw the tree sway and felt its roots moan under my feet. It wailed and I cried and I welcomed the wicked mercy.

My legs were wet with my own blood. Makha howled again— that time with warning—and the men looked at each other with fear. She was near enough to attack. Had I called her, she would have risked her life for mine.

I couldn't decide whether I wished to live or die, so I breathed and willed my blood to clot to give me moments to decide, or to prepare to die at their hands. My wolf lay in the brush. I sensed her. She watched me.

Someone cut the child free and pulled her body and the baby's into the forest. They fell into thick exhausted sleep. I reached into the well of myself. It was so empty. I never knew such emptiness. Come morning, I was still alive. My body hurt. Flies crawled on my open flesh. The men arose. They seemed surprised, then angry, that I had survived the night. The fiend and one of the men went into the forest, while the third kept guard. They returned with a hare snared on a rope. The fiend laid a piece of raw meat within reach. I bent to take it—my body primal in its response to survive—and I took it in my teeth. I raised myself to chew as a man and swallowed a loose morsel, then saw what was hidden under the flesh. The orb of evidence stared at me.

The fiend laughed and laughed and laughed. I gagged and tried to stand, and he kicked me in the jaw. I fell to the ground. They untied me and—still conscious, though barely so—I was thrown into a crevice where soil had eroded from the roots of a tree. They covered me with dirt and rocks.

They buried me alive. A narrow stagger of stones must have given me enough room to breathe.

The next moment I remember, Makha licked my face. She dug her teeth into my arm enough to hurt. She forced me from the hole. I lay on the ground as she licked my body. The wound was sore and alive. Alive, yes, because I saw the white maggots in her silver muzzle.

She bit into my hair and forced me to crawl to water. I drank. I vomited. I drank. I went unconscious. She hunted for me but I could not, would not, eat. She disappeared, only to return with a honeycomb in her mouth. She crushed it with her jaws. The honey oozed on my skin and into the wound. She smeared it with her nose. I screamed with pain and she whimpered in reply. She wept with me under the moon. She forced me into that dim light and slept against my side. Some nights, I didn't know whether I was man or wolf, alive or dead.

She fed me honey, dressed me in honey. We did not speak, not
what we humans call speech, but she communicated beyond words
in a way I always understood.
You must live, she told me.
Why? I asked her.

That is your reason to decide, she said, but I love you and want to save you as you saved me.

I could eat, then sit, then stand. I had no awareness of time. My wound crawled no more but would not heal. I wept every day until I was exhausted. Had I left the girl alone, she might have lived. She would not have endured those final hours of her brief innocent life. What happened to her was my fault.

I led the fiends to her. And no matter what I had been taught to believe and trained to honor, I no longer considered those men, men. I had believed evil to be a perception. I experienced it as real. That evil lived in me—that power and desire to destroy. I feared myself. I feared all of humankind. I was not spared this sickness. Makha knew the way into the realm. She had accompanied me before. She led me to the Three. You thought they were myth? They are no myth. I risk my life for their mystery while others mistake the treasure they keep.

So—

I stood before them with my weeping wound. The woman-wisp gave me a potion. The dwarf laid me on a soft bed in a cave. I felt no pain but I was awake. The dragon blew fire on a brand that the dwarf seared into my back and the woman cooled with water and song. This was a ritual meant to cleanse me. The wound healed with a slight leak, and the dwarf crafted a plate to protect my flesh as well as hide my pain. Prepare yourself.