Vol.5, Ch.3, P.12
Elsewhere whilst the Quiremen’s council was convened, a rustle stirred amidst the murmuring mountain air. There, afore a flowerbed beside the Dēlūbrum, was huddled a hulking figure. Tall stretched its back; wide spanned its shoulders. From such a silhouette of size, one could never have fancied it a female’s. Yet in truth, that was the very case.
A young woman of twenty winters she was. Short was her ruddy, rusty hair, crowning with wild and wavy curls a face of simple features. Most unassuming she seemed, almost pastoral, as with a wisp of a smile and a sheen of sun-glinting sweat, she beavered away at the flowerbed. Posy after posy were cared for by her large and callused fingers. Watch her for but a moment, and plain to see would be her pleasure, her love for all things that spring fair and free upon this earth.
“Bobbin’ buds t’day,” she hummed, “bloomin’ beauties t’morruh.”
A gentle voice. A gentle heart. And like them, a gentle name: “Malena”.
A misfortune, then, that all too seldom was she called by it.
“Oi, ham-shanks!”
“Augh!?”
A shock shot through her burly back. But from the feel of it alone, Malena knew well what it was: the kick of a boot. Forth unto the flowers she foundered. The breezy beam upon her lips, that all the blossoms had so basked in, now frowned from pain.
“Two, three dawns till battle breaks, and here you are, twiddling with daisies!” barked a scolding from behind. “Bumbling bint! Get your arse to the arsenal! Posthaste! There’s armour to be mended!”
“A-already mended, s-sir-ruh,” stammered Malena as she turned and prostrated afore the fuming Quireman. “Mended, oil’d, an’… o-oh! This! This-suh!”
Soil-caked fingers fumbled in the pockets before presenting to the Quireman an object of sheenless black.
His eyes narrowed. “‘This’?” he said. “What mean you, ‘this’?”
“A cha-ch-charm! A-a charm o’ charcoal! Made jus’ like Ma an’ Pa did!” answered Malena. “Brings luck, it does. ’Ere, sir-ruh. One for you, one for ev’ry—”
“Peh! Rubbish!” screeched the Quireman. “Better it fed the furnaces than blacken our hands and hilts!”
Then, as though unsatisfied with just an insult, the Quireman kicked Malena once more.
“Oufh!” she yelped, reeling right back unto the flowers. She then raised herself by the elbows, only to find the Quireman leaving with a stamp in his step.
“Furbish some blades, why don’t you!?” he growled over his shoulder. “Or it’s back to the kennel with all the dumb and idle dogs that begat you!”
Malena’s heart sank. Even were she to do as he told, only more beatings and more bludgeonings awaited her, for not unwarranted were the swords and spears of the Salvators to be touched. It was the case, then, that the Quireman had said what he said simply out of hate for whom he hated.
But none the wiser, “Uah…” moaned Malena as she slowly climbed back to her feet. But looking back to the flowerbed, she discovered the sprouts all bent and bruised from the weight of her twice-come fall. “Oh… oh, no. Oh, no no. I’m sorruh,” she hoarsely whispered, and bending down over them once more, began attending to what flowers may yet be saved.
Yet young they were, not much more than buds bobbing in the breeze. But surely would they shine one day. A choir of colour, singing under the sun—just the very thought summoned again to Malena’s lips a little smile as she toiled away at their tending. Yet in truth, underneath that smile of hers, there spanned a sea of misery.
“I’m sorruh… I’m sorruh, you all… I… I’m…”
Ever along her labours did Malena whisper that word: “sorruh”. To every bud that she touched; to every bulb that she held—and further still to that which was unseen, but by whose hand had long forced upon Malena this cruel fate. Forgive me, forgive me, her heart would too oft beg it.
For Malena’s was never a blessed life. Born in a farming village more fallow than it was fertile, she had lost her mother and father to malady at the mere age of eight. Her place of breeding being emparished, however, she was taken in by a deacon of a local church and subsequently raised within its walls. Sadly, not all good is given with good intention.
Indeed, the deacon’s designs served more himself than it did Malena. Fostering orphans solely to further his own image and eminence—scandalous, to be sure, but scarce a seldom sight in the Yonaistic clergy. Hence, day-by-day was little Malena made to labour away at drudgery far more dreadful than any child ought be charged with. But to earn her keep, it was all little Malena could do. And so do it she did. Being left without a relative to speak of—nor any caring acquaintance, for that matter—Malena, little and all alone, was thankful just to earn some scraps of stale to fill her belly, some hay upon which to rest her weary body, and the morning sun to congratulate her on another night survived. But upon a day after she had turned fourteen, the fickleness of the fates turned foul.
For odyl had been discovered within Malena—
—without the girl having ever undergone the Rounic rites.
This was utterly preposterous. No Man is begotten with odyl. Only by kneeling afore a servant of Yoná and receiving the holy rites could magicked strength be bestowed. And yet, here was this child, unbaptised and yet “blessed”.
Might this have been an exception? Some gift from above? Nay, not so. To be given the grace of odyl is to have communed with Yoná Almighty. But to possess it from the outset is worse than what one might call “stealing from the sacred”. No; this is denial itself; a clear challenge to creeds long cultivated by Church and Quire.
To the “how” of it did many baffled minds bend their thoughts. And from their fevered meditations, there arose one possibility: that running through Malena’s veins was the taint of Nafílim blood.
Unlike Man, to the dark ones was odyl a thing innate, manifesting right at the moment of conception. Suppose, then, that their shadow lurked in Malena’s flesh, that somehow a Nafíl had infiltrated her family tree some generations past. Yes; only then would all the pieces fall into place.
To the Church and Quire, however, the very idea was sacrilege. Since time out of mind had they held the Nafílim to be a base and bestial race, a kind to be culled from all corners of the land. But to now humour the absurdity of Man and Nafílim as equals? To imagine children and families and lineages springing from their union? Sacrilege, indeed.
But regardless, reality told a different tale. For creed was only ever that: a sermon to be heeded—or baulked at whim. The sons of Man in their majority lusted little for Nafílim flesh, that much was true. But to the more deviant minority—the “dilettantes” amongst them, as it were—the dark flowers of the Nafílim were a delicacy to be savoured. Hence was it so that, though very seldom, in the deep cracks of history, there would take root in the belly of a Nafílim slave the forceful seed of her Mennish master.
Such conceptions, albeit, were never brought to term. No; not under so ironclad a Sceptre and Crosier. But even were such a seed allowed to sprout, all to await it were the snipping shears—and fires to scorch whatever soils that did nurture it. One might debate the legality of such cruelty, for in truth, no Londosian law was ever laid to punish such aberrations. Not that there existed any need to, however. For to legislate it was to necessarily acknowledge the very possibility that aught could be bred from the bonding of Man and Nafílim. And to maintain that stance, that “reality”, naught was off the table, legal or no.
This they understood very well. They who lusted; they who sowed their seeds; they who watched the bellies of their slaves burgeon—they who, from the beginning, never intended to welcome into the world their mud-blooded babes. Thus would they discreetly call cutwives into their sunless, slave-holding cellars, and have such babes stricken from the womb.
Incidents secret. Incidents sinful. Never to be recorded. All to be lost to time. But as with everything, there ought have been an exception or three. Somewhere, somehow, a happenstance beyond all chance. A seed-sown slave escaping into the night, perhaps, or a master too merciful to unsheathe the knife. Such was guessed of Malena’s situation: that a drop of Nafílim blood had seeped into the sea of Man and produced the pitiful child.
But that was all it was: a guess. And that was enough to spare Malena a murderous fate. For on the occasion that odyl had been discovered within her, already was the deacon assigned to some post abroad, leaving none that might claim responsibility for this outrageousness.
And thus was Malena allowed to live. But for how long? The young woman was as a stone upon the wayside; too small and too insignificant to deserve a deeper inquiry. But were this “secret” of hers slipped into the ears of some minister or magister of influence, surely would the sword hanging over her head be loosed at last. Indeed, Malena lived, if only on borrowed time.
But till such time when the sun would set upon her soul, Malena had only discrimination and persecution to keep her company. Rumours as to her breeding were already abound, and so to be loved by the other lambs of Yoná was, alas, a fancy long-faded.
Her fifteenth winter came and went without the reception of any rites, being a year much like any other: one of terrible labour, of daily abuse, of meagre sleep and sustenance. And yet, like a stubborn flower stabbing through stone, Malena persevered, growing large and strong—a wonder owing, perhaps, to some secret essence asleep inside of her. But even that sooner proved a curse. Having swelled to a size unimaginable for a daughter of Man, she was summarily singled out and oppressed all the more painfully.
That changed little upon her conscription to the Salvators some years past. In fringelands far from the memory of home, Malena could escape neither the labours forced upon her nor the constant clouds of persecution. Not even here in the shadow of the Dēlūbrum—upon the eve of a horrible battle to which she had been summoned to succour not more than a week prior—was her lot made any different. The sanctity of Déu Tsellin, it seemed, had dulled little the stinging hand of her associates so summoned along with her.
But to Malena, abuse was bearable. What was not, however, was another thing entirely.
Drip. Drop.
Falling unto the flowers now: tears, fresh and fraught.
“Mm… mfh…”
And with them, a weeping whimper. And the smile, too, once maintained to the best of Malena’s efforts, began now to quiver and crumble.
“…fhuah… aah…”
Yonder, there walked a clique of Salvators, buoyant with banter. A banal sight to the average eye, but to Malena’s tear-mirked own, it was a bright and blessed one, indeed.
Till this moment, it could not be counted how many times she had tried to find a new friend, to join in jolly circles of conversation and laughter. And as equally uncountable were all the times she had been brushed off—first with words, and then with fists.
The very first few of these times, Malena could not comprehend what had happened. She had merely thought it due to bad timing, that her Salvator peers were in too foul a mood for friend-making. And so would she approach them again, always with a smile. And so would she be berated, always with a bruise.
On and on, the woe kept wheeling, till came one grey and gloomy evening. Whilst weeping away in the corner of a shed, Malena had realised it at last: that she was unloved.
Nay—hated.
Her earliest years in that farming village might have been her best. There, she had no companions of equal age to call her own, true. But at the very least, she had her mother and her father, and oh, what gentle souls they were. Come her orphan days in the church, however, it seemed her sun had westered all too soon. Ordered to work day and night by the deacon, little Malena had not the time to even talk to the clergy or the church-goers, or even the other foundlings. But even that might have been preferable to the misery of military life that Malena was now mired in.
Drop after drop fell her forlorn tears. And ever as they did, so did she weep and her weighty body shiver.
“…It’s so hard,” Malena lamented. “So, so hard… so, so lonesome. I… I’m…”
All alone.
A girl who had never known solitude till the passing of her parents. A girl who, having tasted it, disliked its lonesome sting with all her being. The truest of tragedies, then, to be steeped in it through all the days to come.
“I… I’m so…” she whispered brokenly. “…Ma, Pa… where’ve you all gone to? Come back… come back…”
A friend. That was all Malena wanted; all that she could have asked for. But not by so cold and cruel a world could that simplest of wishes be granted.
That is, for now.
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