In Starsha forest, Katherine the Great finally stumbled, wet and miserable, with an equally wet and miserable horse, into the first of the caves. They were all connected below ground, but above there were five entrances, arranged like the 5 of a die. As uncreative as they may sound, the names were, North, South, East, West, and Center. The elves had their own names for the entrances, but they had to have human language names for them too, so that’s what they were stuck with. She had stumbled into the north entrance to be found by an elven scout and his brother, posted at the entrance for just this purpose. Being female, they assumed she was looking for the Dryads and so took her and her mare for them to deal with. The Dryad Queen recognized Katherine at once.
“Katarina,” she said in her soft accented voice, “What can we offer you?”
“Thank you mother, sisters,” she said, nodding to the forming group, “I am in need of a guide to show me the rumored marshes and get me to Cosynth soon. Can you provide me with what I desire?” she asked, lapsing back into the old speech.
“Katarina. You ask what we may provide.” The old queen pushed forward a slight girl, with green eyes flecked with amber, black hair which curled tightly, and loose clothing. She looked young, even for a dryad, but also looked haunted, or rather, hunted. “Her name is Zosia, she will take you there.”
“Shall I pay, Queen mother?”
“No. Nature will take what she will. If you give then you have paid.” And with that she and the rest of the group turned and left. Zosia looked up at Katherine as if to say “Well?” but looked away quickly. Katherine saw that she was quick, nimble, and agile, even for a dryad.
“What time shall we start out?” Katherine asked.
“Dawn,” the girl murmured as she pulled out two blankets and laid one of them out on the dirt of the tunnel and handed the other to Katherine. “Crack of dawn.”
As Katherine settled down to sleep, she thought of how cold the girl seemed, and yet how she herself was not repelled by this. The girl’s eyes had seemed to light for a split second on seeing Katherine’s face, but she had immediately begun to frown. She was fighting sleep but realized that it wasn’t worth it. Her journey to Cosynth would show her enough of what kind of a person Zosia was. Katherine simply could not keep her eyes open any longer, and so she dropped off.
* * * * * * * *
The great Katherine awoke Saturday morning to a white ceiling and the ring of the phone. As she hauled herself up out of bed, the phone stopped ringing but that annoying sound was replaced by that of The Mother screeching,
“Kathy! Get the phone before your friend hangs up in disgust!”
“Right!” she yelled back annoyed, and rolled the rest of the way out of bed, stumbled into the hall, and picked up the cordless phone out there.
“Yes?”
“Kathy? What’s up with that name?” it was Socratina. Perhaps she’s have to deal with her before Monday.
“That’s just The Mother’s name for me. Don’t you dare call me that. Watch need?”
“I don’t need anything. I just wanted to ask you about yesterday. I mean, I’m not exactly happy with how you treated me, “ Socratina said.
“What do you mean?” asked Katherine, confused again. “I only asked you why you act the way you do.”
“I shouldn’t have to answer to you. I can be who I want to be. I can do what I want.”
“But what...”
“...I’m going to be gone for the weekend,” she cut in, “Don’t bother to call me back. I’ll talk on Monday.” Then she abruptly hung up.
* * * * * * *
In the morning, Katherine the Great and Zosia the guide packed up their things and hiked deeper into the Starsha forest. Katherine had her mare still, but the brush was so dense that she had to lead her instead of ride. At midday they stopped for lunch, and while Zosia gathered what dry wood there was, Katherine tried to talk to her. It was in vain, for the girl seemed not to be able to say much more than “yes”, “no”, and assorted grunts. She wouldn’t make eye contact, but the one time she did, she turned away quickly.
That night, the first thing she said as they made camp was “The simplest answer is usually the correct one,” which left Katherine staring at her, and when they were almost asleep, she said, “acception is the only way to know thyself.”
Katherine would have slept, but that comment was too much.
“What are you saying?” she asked, annoyed, and sitting up.
Silence. Zosia turned over but was still.
“Why now?” she asked with increasing disparity.
More silence.
“Forget it. You can shove your witty sayings.” Katherine turned over and after pondering it all, fell into an un-restful nights sleep.
The next day they headed for the newly discovered marshes. They hit them about dusk, as the sun was setting in hues of pink and red and yellow. Zosia went first but was having a hard time seeing, unusual for a dryad. The tragedy struck. Katherine gasped as she saw Zosia scream and start to sink. The Marshes. She ran over to help but had no idea what to do, or how to get close enough without falling in herself. She knelt at the edge of the quicksand and reached her hand to the gasping, floundering girl.
“Let me help you, grab my hand!”
“No. I have to tell you something,” gasped Zosia, quickly sinking, and grabbing on to Katherine’s hand despite the no. “I love you. I desperately need you. In my society there aren’t any men born to us, so we must go after travelers, but strangely, none of us resorts to loving each other. That is shunned highly. But I...I love you. I don’t want to hurt you with this, and so I’m going to ask you to let me die here, and my secret with me, so I shall not have to look and wish that I could have you, or any other. Please.”
Astounded, things suddenly became clear to Katherine. She realized also in this moment that Zosia had too much pride to ask for what she obviously craved. Still holding her hand, Katherine leaned out over the quicksand and kissed the lips of the dying guide.
“Never quite like you mean, but I love you too,” ended Katherine.
And with a look of bliss on her face, the young dryad sunk out of sight below the hidden menace of the quicksand that had claimed her life.
She crawled back from the edge of the quicksand to a tree where she curled up into a ball and let hot tears seep from her eyes. She didn’t sob nor cry out, but sniffle a few times and let her red eyes excrete what they would.
* * * * * * *
Feeling utterly alone and utterly desolate, the great Katherine went back into her room and shut the door. Crying wasn’t an option for this Katherine, she was much too hardened for that and it just didn’t seem clean enough. But what would be? she wondered. There really wasn’t anything that wouldn’t leave a mess, or something that she would have to clean up to the shame of The Mother’s bereavement. God, she hated her mother. Both of them. She pulled out a pen and a notebook, maybe to lose herself in writings. She accidentally dropped the un-capped pen, marking a black line across her pure white arm.
Katherine stared. She stared at that white arm and that black line, almost as if to make it disappear, in horror and numbness. She reached for something, perhaps a tissue to wipe it off with, but the first thing that her hand touched was a letter opener. She closed her fingers over it. Painfully, blatantly obvious, what she had to, was destined to do. Carefully, she slowly ran the letter opener along the length of the mark, from one side where the hair ended, to the other where it started, horizontally, then jabbing, ripping from side to side, over and over and over. Filled with an alien anger and desire to do something to show them, she gouged again until it drew blood. She numbly got up, opened the door, and went across the hall to the bathroom. Katherine closed that door, still wishing she could cry and looked at herself in the mirror. It was at that moment that she realized why she had done it, or at least one of the reasons. It wasn’t as much for want of pain, or cleansing, or self hatred. It was of jealousy.
“Suicide is bad. Not socially, not that way I don’t mean, but if you fail then it’s hell.”
“Oh sure Socratina, like you can talk. What do you know?”
“I know that it hurts like hell afterwards, the cutting at least, and you’re filled with anger and regret and loathing.”
“I’ve thought about it before.”
“Yeah Katherine, but have you ever really done anything?”
“Well kinda.”
“Mmhmm.”
It was that sense of inadequacy, of being wrong by being right that had led her to do it. Of course there would be other explanations, and she would never even admit that to herself, but it was there. She had thought it was suicide, and that is what it would become if that was all she said it was, but it was there. Yes, there was that self-loathing, the hatred, but she had to find that out for herself it seemed. And now it was time for the explanations. If anyone saw that is, which they wouldn’t. She didn’t need help, she needed love, someone to care if she did it again, not that she was going to.
* * * * * * *
Katherine the Great finally woke up the next morning. Her mare had wandered off a few paces, but hadn’t left for good. She decided she’d ride to her hovel for sure, but it wasn’t just a stop. It was for good. They knew where to find her, she thought. She scratched a message in a tree about what happened and hoped that the dryads wouldn’t mind too much. It needed to be told of how she died. Upon leaving, she was in a trance-like state. Oblivious to everything.
Katherine arrived at her hovel in a week of hard riding. It was a small cottage with a small stream about twenty feet away on one side, a large boulder on the other side, a grove of trees on the third side, and a meadow leading to the ocean out front. There was a forest surrounding the back of the house, the boulder and stream, but it wasn’t anywhere near as thick as Starsha. It was a very welcome sight to the grieving and travel-weary Katherine. She stayed in seclusion for many months, barely eating, pondering Zosia, sleeping, and trying desperately to forget that she had a country to oversee and to keep in line.
After these many months, Katherine was surprised one morning to see a figure on a horse riding up. She was in her garden as usual, tending to her vegetables and thinking only about how nice the morning was.
“Ahoy!”
“If you were on a ship that’d be the right call, but you’re on land now, sailor!” she called.
“Howdy then,” he said, riding to a spot just in front of her so she was looking into the sun to see him. She had expected someone to try to come after her, but she had lost that sense of paranoia after the first month had passed without a sign of a search party.
“Alexander, is that you?” she started forward, squinting.
“That it is,” he said as he jumped off the horse, “Have I grown?”
“And that you have,” she said to him, hugging and then pulling him away towards the cottage. “Have you come to rescue me?”
“No, I haven’t come to rescue you. More like you rescue us. There’s some good news and then there’s the bad news, I’m afraid. The state of things isn’t pretty. Plagrath...”
“Well then,” she said, cutting him off, “If it’s Plagrath then we’ll talk about it over a nice cup of tea. I’ve gotten to be quite the cook, being on my own as I have been. Come on now.”
Once inside and with their tea, Katherine sat down and invited Alexander to do the same. Then she started the conversation again. She decided that she’d be better off at least hearing about the newest troubles, even if she wasn’t going to solve them.
“Tell me what has happened since I’ve secluded myself,” She instructed, “Or rather since you reached Cosynth. Don’t leave anything out, you know I like things detailed.”
“Well, let’s see,” Alexander realized at that moment how much Katherine the Great had changed. So motherly now, he thought, and yet still ready to do business. It wasn’t so motherly, he took back, more like a calm, a new determined set in her jaw. It could be a good thing, though he still didn’t know why she had gone off like that. Nobody did, nobody had dared to venture into Starsha to ask the “little people” if they knew. He wondered if he would ever find out, if she would ever tell anyone.
“Okay, well, it started like this,” he resumed, “A few days after I reached Cosynth, news came in from Meno that there was a group of people trying to create a dictatorship, or,” he paused, “dictatorize, the democracy. This dispatch from Meno was pleading for help. Poe said he couldn’t do anything until they had talked to the duke at Plagrath. A while later we hear from another dispatch that the people sent to Meno were sent by the duke at Plagrath. Now you know that Poe had to be heartbroken, but there was nothing he could do without causing civil war. He told them that, but they still left angry.”
Katherine took the pause that Alexander had left to take a drink in to watch him and see how he too had changed. Poe had made a man out of him, she thought, either that, or he had done it himself. Her little Alexander, about as old as she was now. He must not be though, because she had rescued the little bloke from a certain life of pick-pocketing and thievery. She remembered when she was in Ratet for the first time, and she was walking down the streets of when he had come up and grabbed hold of her leg, begging for money or food or whatever she would give him. She picked him up in obvious disgust, but had let him tag along because he was a good travel companion and the mare liked him. Funny, the mare seemed to know who was bad and who was good, most of the time at least. She’d bite almost everyone at the palace though, which perplexed Katherine. She just figured that it was like when the mare was at Homet and she was spooked at the thought of being back there.
“.... we were saddened, “ she finally tuned back in, “but then angered when we heard that not only had the miners left the mines to strike, but they had rallied to get support from Ratet and Namcre and even Uslum to fight Plagrath for possession of the mine. Unfortunately, Namcre, with it’s sword happy and superior army, volunteered and is now fighting with Plagrath while trying to keep up the fight against Ratet. It’s horrible, the slaughter. At least Ratet didn’t join in the melee, they hate Namcre too much, or so Poe says. He just doesn’t know how to deal with it, whether to join in, or to try to stop it, or to try to separate them and stop them.”
“So what’s the good news?” Asked Katherine, laughing. “Let’s go outside, I need the sun and you can tell me the rest of the story out there.”
He could tell that she didn’t need sun, she was brown already, and he pointed that out to her. She agreed, but added that it just felt good to soak up the rays.
“Okay,” he said, as he sat down, “I’ve got the good news.”
She grabbed an old blanket off a clothes-line and sat under her favorite tree. It wasn’t too hot in the shade. “So. What is this good news? Is it good?” she asked.
“What a question! But ah, it concerns the stranger. He wasn’t found sane for reasons I don't understand, having seen the guy. He looks sane enough to me. But anyway, he was not killed or anything. It also happens that he ended up being the dispatch to talk to Poe the first time. I can tell you about him if you like....” he trailed off invitingly ‘till she looked up in anticipation, and then he looked away teasingly. “But first the rest of the story. The stranger has been seen all the way up to Xama, and down to Vancle. Not stirring up trouble as we, or rather the rest of the court, had thought he might. Instead, he’s been spreading knowledge, teaching if you will. He takes the children of a village out into a meadow for a day and passes out paper-- can you believe it, paper!-- and charcoal to write with and he leaves them with the spelling of their name and the alphabet. The adults don’t trust him really, but they want to learn too, and so they let the kids go just for one day. To some, this may seem like stirring up trouble, but can you believe it, literacy! Well anyway,” he ends shyly, “I think it’s neat.”
“And that it is,” Katherine replied. “So tell me about this learned stranger.”
“He wears a coat with tails, light caramel brown, with black boots, tall, green corduroy pants, a white or peasant shirt, rough, and...” he looked up quite thoughtfully, “a black top hat sometimes, and a backpack full of things. He got a dun horse somewhere on his travels which he rides easily. He holds himself very royally, but kindly, ya know, all knowing.” he stopped and looked at her. “Anything else?”
“No,” she said quite pleasantly and somewhat thoughtfully, “No, I think that’s all.” And she stood up and was followed into the house by Alexander.
To be continued....Next_Chapter_(7) Back_To_Chapter_5 Back_To_Main_Page