Betrayal

Undaunted I stare at you
try not to glare at you
Hoping my look is conveying enough

Your story jumps here to there
Alibi in disrepair
knowing full well I am poised to rebuff

You've underestimated
Just why I've hesitated
Let you exhaust your most fraudulent tongue

Despite what you've spoken
The bond is now broken
Of all of the words you've said I believe none

Ember: Part 1

I always want to start in the middle. That's where the action starts. I don't want to wait, the waiting was the hardest part so why would I put you through that fair readers? So should we speak of the sword first? The one that split their skulls and severed various limbs from various foes or do you really want the beginning. Why would the woman becoming the destroyer be of any interest to you? Do you need to know why? The proverbial straw, the accelerant to the ensuing inferno explained? I suppose it's important that you can understand why an executioner became such. If not to make sure you do not tread the same cliff's edge then to make sure you can at least understand and stop the next bringer of doom. Ember is my name, they chose it for the black hair with a tuft of sparkly red at my widows peak. They did not yet know it would also represent the smoldering that would occur within me. The explosion that would level a town. Now at that moment it was a long way off, but the flames had already been fed. You see they did not name any girl in the village until she reached the age of 5. You may think it was due to disease or just perchance unfortunate deaths of the young citizens of the village. Notice though that I said girls. There was reason that we hardly made it to 5 years. That reason was the men of the village, well, the men's brutality and the women's acceptance of it. Now I've already told you that it was the girls that died in great numbers before 5. I suppose now you'd like to know why. As if it matters. Would it be easier to accept a wholesale slaughter of the girls when the food grew sparse, or sexual brutality by sick men that often went too far too fast. In ways that a toddler girls body couldn't handle. Perhaps it was just that the girls, upon ability to walk, were given the gathering jobs in woods thick with perils and hungry beasts and frequently didn't return. It could have been any one of these things or all of them but I'm not going to give you the pleasure of knowing so that you can reason yourself into tolerance. I was named at 5, as I said, and was given a broom in the ceremony. This was the ritual. What did this symbolize you ask? Servitude. Not magic not a clean slate but servitude. That was the woman's role in this village. The only one. One day I was sweeping with my new broom at 5 and 1/2 and a beast approached me. It tried to grab me it tried to hurt me. I beat it with the hard end of the broom until it lay on the ground in agony still trying to move towards me. The stick was dull but I still managed to drive it into the beast through a hole that it already possessed but when I felt resistance I kept pushing until it was dead. My mother found me and the now deceased foe and quickly urged me to drag it into the woods. Women were not the hunters. Women weren't allowed to kill things. I asked here what I was supposed to do let it kill me? She only nodded. We cleaned the broom and though streaks of red still lived on it, it was hardly noticeable. Still she urged me to rub it with rocks to try to remove the stains. She locked me in the vegetable hut for 3 days so I could complete this task. When she returned the broom handle was clean and the garden spade was sharpened and hidden within the folds of my skirt. I would not be caught unaware again. She smiled with a smile of relief and told me excitedly that she doesn't think any one has caught on to what had happened. She said it as if our vegetable yield had been double what was expected. I asked her why she was so excited by that, why it wouldn't be better for the village to know. Perhaps this was a form of protection we could exploit, fear. It seemed a popular one amongst the men in the village. She beat me and threw me back in the vegetable shed. By the time I reached 11 I had racked up a total of six months time in the vegetable hut for saying things like that. So when I once again slipped up she sent me to the local inn instead, to help clean up there for 3 days. I shortly realized upon arrival what that meant. This is where the adventurers and hunters from other nearby villages would stay while on their trek. It was all men, of course. I had my trusty spade with me but the risk of being in a building full of men that all believed that same things was perhaps made it too high a risk if survival was my intent. The gods however smiled upon me. The man I was paired with was a drunken fool. He passed out swiftly and harmlessly the first two nights. On the third night he made a move but could not deliver on his end of the tryst. As he cried himself to sleep I settled in the chair in the room. As he left the next morning he complained to the woman who managed the Inn and just before my mother came to pick me up and she beat me. Just as my hand reached for the spade my mother arrived. I still wanted to slice her a good one but just as I had been spared, I supposed she could be as well. Besides I had this growing feeling that I should wait until It was absolutely necessary to reveal my defense. I felt the danger growing each day. I felt the band stretching tight and soon, it would snap.

The Creaking Wheel Part 2

Her feet pounded up the stairs, ringing with each step on the metal. She wore a wheelmen’s uniform that had been altered to fit her small frame and topped it off with an expression of determination. Her teeth sat tightly clenched in her cheeks, squaring her jawline. Her hands were balled into white knuckled fists and moved rigidly at her sides as she walked. She pushed the door open, and it banged loudly against the wall. A chorus of men chuckled and shouted, “New Guy!” and the chorus carried throughout the workroom. As the second round of jeers began, they turned to see the boss’s daughter standing there slowly pinking in the face. They stopped heckling, some mid-syllable, and the room fell silent except for the moaning of the machinery. She surveyed the work room and was met with darting glances and some sneers below the goggles on the men’s faces. She heard everyone clear their throat at least once and wondered if this was some kind of secret code the workers had to communicate dissatisfaction amongst each other. She lowered her eyes and made her way to the office to meet her father and husband. The heavy door swung open, creaking a warning to the workers. Her father stepped out the door of the office and looked at each worker, face by face. Most of them turned back to their work when he made eye contact, some did so after a very audible gulp. If she didn’t know better she would think that they were trying to be funny. Her father was well revered among the workers but also feared. She had seen him fly off the handle when a worker made a nearly fatal mistake; she had never seen the color that was upon his face that day anywhere else in nature before or since. She stepped in the office, and the door creaked shut behind her. “Are you sure you want to do this honey?” her father asked. He took a breath to say more, but she held up her hand and simply said, “I’m sure.” They spent the rest of the work day going over the schematics of the wheel, vital safety measures, and how the wheel was operated. After they were done, they made their way out of the office. Most of the workers had already left for the day, and the rest were in the lockers packing up. Her father led her to the wheel. He asked her to name off the safety rules with the exact wording and in the exact order in which he had taught them to her. She made it three-quarters of the way down the list and started to flounder. “You’re not ready,” he said sternly. She nodded dejectedly. Her husband tried to plead with her father for another chance. “Don’t worry darling, tomorrow morning I will be correcting him on the rules,” she said winking. “I don’t doubt it for a second honey,” her father said nodding. “If that’s the case,” he continued, “then tomorrow, you work the wheel.”

The Creaking Wheel

What once churned was now stagnant. It's rusted facade hinted at the decrepit innards it magnitude kept hidden. Even a torrential wind could not move the wheel. Giant and rotting it was a representation of the life that it once supported. A thriving town, full of young hopeful minds and strong breakable bodies. The mill that pumped the blood of the town turning it from a shell of dried skin to something viable and supple. The wheel turned, the town prospered. It was a simple metaphor much like life in this young town. The mill seemed to provide them all they needed, food, water, money, even energy to run the things in the town that needed running. Families came and grew and lived happily in proximity of the great wheel. 

A dark secret would soon rumble within the town however. The men who were in charge of the wheel had always seemed kind and fatherly. They loved the town and were happy that their wheel had brought them so much success at the good life. The town had schools, doctors, markets, churches and even a hall where they would hold great dances and socials for the townsfolk. It was a tight knit community and the men and woman of the town would defend it to the death. The men who owned the wheel knew this and at first felt a sense of fatherly pride for the townsfolk and their loyalty. Being a great success and supporting so many with their wheel began to tax them greatly. The responsibility like an anchor around their necks. Soon they began to make mistakes and these mistakes would prove to be deadly. 

A young man had come up in the ranks as a wheel worker and showed great promise. He was a fast worker and a hard worker. One of the wheelmen thought him a good chap so he introduced him to his daughter. He had never had a son and was looking for someone to take his place as a wheelman when he became too old. The daughter seemed to fancy the young man and soon it was set. They would be married and he would begin training the young man for the wheelman job he may soon possess. There were many men however who had worked the wheel for much longer and were unhappy that they were not chosen to take his place.

An unrest spread among the masses of men around the town. The wheelmen were dismayed that so many were unhappy and tried to think of a solution. They held a townhall meeting in which every man would have a chance to voice his concerns about the recent turn of events. The young man however was upset that so many were questioning his abilities for as far as he could tell he was the best man for the job. The wheelmen wanted to appease the people of the town before it became heated so they held the meeting. The young man entered last with his wife and  they stood next to his father-in-law rather then being seated with the other townsfolk. The resentment sprung from the crowd quickly and voices rattled the hall. 

The wheelmen raised their hands up to quell the raucous noise that emanated from the crowd. The wheelman whose daughter was in attendance told the crowd that if they were in his shoes they would do the same thing to make sure the wheel would keep going, and that they town would keep going. The taste for power however had been tempted in the men and they rose their voices once more. A shrill word silenced the men in the room. The daughter of the wheelman looked out onto the crowd and announced that rather then her husband taking over it would be she that would take over. There were immediate murmurs of disagreement but noone would come forth to challenge it for they knew the meaning of family and tradition.

So it stood, tommorrow the wheelman's daughter would learn how to work the wheel.

To Be Continued...