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So, yeah… I teared up writing it, so get your Kleenex’s ready…

WARNING – This section discusses killing to the point of genocide as well as acts of prostitution. While the genocide and killing are in self-defense (due to a blood curse), and the prostitution was because she was in abject slavery practically from birth, if that make you uncomfortable, you may not want to read this. (it details what happened generally, but doesn’t go deep into sordid details).

 

Excerpt from WIP – Aefflaed’s Weakness: A Love Story (1809 words)

 

 

I stood and ran after him.

Shuffling past Yaxkin, I searched for him. The wind was strong, but there were a few small gaps in the clouds above, and the rain was light. Not seeing Hanniumm, I looked to Yaxkin and followed his gaze. Seeing a shifting shadow far inside the forest, I raced after it.

Hanniumm plodded along, his robe billowing behind him. He didn’t turn to the left or the right, even after I came up right beside him.

“Hanniumm, where are you going?” I asked between breaths.

“To end this.”

I quick-stepped to keep up with him. “The king gave me strict orders to keep you here until you’ve fully recovered.”

Hanniumm stopped and turned to me. He was even more handsome in the rain. “I assume the poison is gone?”

I slowed to a stop, then held my arm with my left hand. “Um, yeah. The antidote worked.”

“Then I’m cured,” Hanniumm said flatly. He turned and headed off again.

I hurried to his side once more. “That doesn’t mean you’re recovered. You still have that wound on your chest, and you need to rest and recover your strength.”

“I’ll recover on the way.” He was walking fast and wouldn’t slow down.

I had to keep him here somehow, but my mind was drawing a blank. “You… you can’t very well recover energy when you continue to use what little you have.”

“I know my limits.”

I was beginning to doubt that. Did he really know his limits, or was he just suicidal? Going up against a man like Cairbre half-cocked…

I stopped as an idea formed in my mind. “Fine. Transform into a tannink’esh.”

Hanniumm paused and looked back at me. “What?”

“If you want to convince me you’re recovered enough to face that vaelintrien, then prove it. Transform into that tannink’esh thing.” I crossed my arms and tried my best to look stern. Water droplets slid down my face, and I twitched and blinked to keep them from getting into my eye.

Hanniumm frowned, scoffed, then turned his back on me. “You don’t know what you’re asking.” He trudged on.

I rushed after him. “You can’t do it, can you? You’re too weak to even do that.”

“The tannink’esh is a creature of Myf. It is not so easily-”

“But you could do it, couldn’t you?” I asked. “If you weren’t so weak? If you were fully recovered.”

“I have nothing to prove.”

I reached out and grabbed his arm. “Then you have nothing to lose.” The rain slowed down to a light trickle.

Hanniumm paused, staring at the ground. “I won’t let anyone else get involved in this.” He pulled his arm from my grip and walked on.

I ran in front of him and stood in his way. “You’re not getting us involved. We already are.”

Hanniumm tried to walk around me, avoiding eye contact, so I moved to intercept.

“It was our choice to get involved, Hanniumm.”

He turned and headed away from me.

Running in front of him again, I placed a hand on his chest. “The king called you his friend.”

He finally looked me in the eyes, but then turned his back on me. “I can’t afford to lose him.”

“And we can’t afford to lose you.”

Hanniumm scoffed. “I’m expendable. You should all just forget about me.”

“Hanniumm, no.” How could he say such a thing.

“This is my problem. I started it, and I will finish it.” He began walking away again, but much slower this time. A portion of the sky was lit up as lightning flashed, hidden somewhere beyond the trees.

“No.” I followed behind him, the subsequent boom of thunder echoing in my ear. “That vaelintrien head sage, Maclohlan, started it when he cast the blood curse. That wasn’t your fault.”

The rain intensified as Hanniumm turned again and headed deeper into the forest. “Maclochlainne.”

“Um, yeah.” I stumbled forward as Hanniumm picked up the pace. “He started this, not you.”

“But I was the target.” The wind began picking up.

“You were just defending yourself.” I caught up and led him a little, trying to make eye contact.

Hanniumm raised his voice to match the falling rain. “And what’s one life compared to an entire race?” He angled his shoulders away from me and turned his head.

“I don’t think you can-”

“You just don’t get it.” Hanniumm spun around, reached out, and grasped my shoulders. “It didn’t stop at the capital.” Rain streaked down his face, and his grip was uncomfortably tight.

I winced. “You can’t blame yourself for self-defense.”

Letting go, he turned and slammed his fist into a tree.

“Day and night. Every waking moment. No matter where I chose to hide, it didn’t matter. Still, they found me. Every single time. They came, and I buried them.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You just don’t get it.” Turning around, he grabbed me by the shoulders again. “The curse effected every single vaelintrien in the entire world, not just at Evonium. And until I’m dead, it will never stop. This curse never ends. Do you understand me?”

Hanniumm shook me as his sorrow mixed with terror. “They came in mobs, and then in groups, and then the groups just got smaller and smaller, until they were coming at me one by one. Face after face, I killed them all. Day after day, week after week. They wouldn’t stop.”

He put his shaking hands in front of my face. “I had to bury them, Aefflaed. It wasn’t just soldiers. It was women, children, and old ones too. I butchered an entire race, and it all would have stopped if I had just let myself die.”

Hanniumm fell to his knees and bowed his head. The rain pelted his back and dripped from his hair. Clenching his fists against his forehead, his whole body shook.

I dropped to my knees. I had no words for him. Was he right? Was it wrong for him to fight for his life at the expense of so many others? But he didn’t have a choice.

It was a blood curse. But, did that mean the vaelintrien’s didn’t have a choice either? A curse that would never end until Hanniumm was dead? Who would do such a thing?

I shook my head as tears mixed with the rain falling down my face. That was beside the point. The question was, what was Hanniumm to do? And how could I console him? Did I even have a right to say what he should do?

I didn’t even know what he should do. What would I have done?

That was a foolish question. I was no warrior. I’d have died on the very first night.

Hanniumm stopped shaking and slowly stood up. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

I gazed up at him, straining to see as the rain fell into my eyes.

His eyes were red, and he was soaked to the bone. “Whether he dies or I die, the vaelintrien race is finished. He’s the last of his kind.”

Hanniumm turned and shuffled on.

It didn’t matter? Was he planning on letting the vaelintrien win? He was carrying the weight of that entire race on his shoulders. Sorrow filled my heart, and I raised my hand to my mouth as I began to whimper.

What could I do? What was I supposed to do?

Then my own past came to mind. I may have been ordered as a slave, but I had done things I wasn’t proud of. Time and time again, I did them, even though I knew they were wrong. My mother raised me to know right from wrong, yet still I did what they told me. I resigned myself to my fate.

But then Adalwin saved me, and he taught me the worth of a human life.

The teaching of my lorthew filled my mind, and I began to get angry. Angry at the vaelintrien who cast that curse. Angry at the pain and trials that curse put Hanniumm in. Angry at the world for seeming so unfair.

Standing, I took one step forward and screamed after him. “Murder is evil.”

Hanniumm stopped and dropped his head. “Then forget about me.” His shoulders slumped further over as he started moving again.

“But so is adultery.”

He stopped, the rain puddling at his feet.

 

I stomped over to him, shivering as my wet clothes weighed on me.

“I did things,” I yelled at him through the rain. “I did things over and over again, even though I knew they were wrong.”

He shook his head, refusing to make eye contact.

“I let men touch me, and I touched them. I even let them order me around to touch other women and to do other things that just aren’t natural.”

Even after moving over so that Hanniumm blocked much of the falling sheets of rain, I still couldn’t read Hanniumm’s face very well, but I didn’t care and I didn’t stop.

“I served many who had strange fetishes. Some beat me. Some tied me up. Some wanted to play house.” The wind howled through the trees as I hollered at him as loud as I could. “My masters spruced me up and sold me out like some prized turkey. And then they returned me for more. They told me to seduce a man, I did. They told me to drug a man, I did. They told me to steal, I stole. I was their puppet on a string.”

Hanniumm shook his head. “You had no choice.”

“My body was a thing to them,” I screamed at him, clenching my fists. “No life is worth that misery. I’m forever tainted, broken, used to the point of desolateness. I had no choice?” I pounded on his chest. “I was a prostitute. I was a thief. Men disappeared because of me. You’re telling me I had no choice?”

Hanniumm grabbed my hands to keep them from hitting him. “Then what?” he hollered back. The rain continued to pour as we stared at each other, shivering in the cold. “What do you want of me?”

I pushed against him, his hands still holding my own. “I want you to stay. I want you to live. I want to be forgiven.” Breaking down, I fell into him, resting my head against his shoulder.

For a moment, I wondered if he heard me, or even if he was going to reject me. But then he wrapped his arm around me and picked me up.

Draping my arms around his neck, I looked up into his face. He stared straight ahead, and I couldn’t tell if he was crying or if it was just the rain. Then he turned and headed back toward the hovel.