DHUFEAINNEWEDD / ishtar atta isil.
upon seeing him, ishtar knows : this is going to be a shit day. there are perhaps more polite ways to express the existential dread she is wearing like a cloak, how it pools over her shoulders like red velvet deeper than blood, but she is too exhausted to pretend she cares about appearances, especially in the no man’s land that is her mind. the wild plain of her imagination has been burnt to ashes, the lush forest has been reduced to a single pyre, where all ideas spark an endless fire of anger. if malborne were there to see the mess that his pupil has become, he would weep some wise sentences about magic being a gift meant to elevate the minds & lighten the hearts. and if ishtar were to hear such words, she would reply that even if there was nothing lighter than an empty heart, still ghosts would tend to pile up after a time ; and a thousand feathers still amount to a thousand feathers. in short, the weight is not the problem, it’s how much space they eat up. but that is the thing, is it not? the silence. there is no malborne to banter with & no forest to go back to. in the shambles of her wandering thoughts, she is endlessly lost, meant to be both sides until she is too bored to see how the argument plays out. she throws the ball & catches it, hoping her newfound wisdom will save her the need for justification. and no, do not look at her like that, as if she is to blame for the lack of company. she tried. she tried to join life as one would join a village dance, hand holding nameless hand, hoping the warm palm would soon uncover a nice smile ; but one always gazes down. that is her curse, in some ways : one always sees. there is no mistaking the dirt under her nails & the blue electricity of her eyes. unnatural & improbable creature. her name has yet to become a source of terror but it still holds power. she knows the choreography … eyes go down & see the rest of her, the scars & the magic, only to throw her out before the day has fully awaken. there is only so many confusion spells one can do. only so much can be done before trying feels hopeless.
so you chose killing instead?, and that voice is anhaern's — she was always a rude one. she did not accept the girl who came into the forest ; and when malborne gave her the name, anhaern simply stared in disbelief. they train sorcerers akin to druids, not witches. so anhaern’s magic had always been of the softer kind. flowers would bloom under her feet & birds would sing her favorite lullaby as she cooked. still, there was something utterly mesmerizing about her and ishtar, tall as a mushroom and desperate to learn, had refused any rebuttal : each day the sun rose & each day ishtar went to her, desperate to capture her essence in a gaze, in a thought, in a dream. and as she stares across the town square to watch the soldier, whose gaze is forever stuck in her mind, she remembers these moments. how much work it took to be attentive, and soft. how difficult it had been to make flowers bloom & birds sing. but do you know what came terribly naturally to her?
destruction. « talk for yourself. » what a bold claim. she was definitely there to kill him. worse, even : it was a lie. he had meant to kill when he had come to her forest, and he meant to kill now. the only difference between those two scenarios are the proceedings. back then, she was a nameless girl meant to die for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. now, she is the girl who has killed half of a king’s soldiers simply because she could. and yes, that is why the villagers are scared, she knows. she has stolen their fathers & their uncles without feeling any remorse. some say she has smiled while taking their brother’s life. but that is justice, isn’t it? they stole from her until she had nothing left but her own scattered thoughts. shouldn’t they feel the same as she did, terrified out of her mind & incapable of fighting back? one simple reaps what one sows, and all that. « oh, magnificent you say? well, in that case. cuff me up & take me to him! i wouldn’t want to cause a fuss. » voice comes out as a spell, soft as grass on a rainy day. one would certainly risk being bewitched if she did not look like a wounded animal, all gleaming teeth & hungry tired eyes. that is the risk of beauty, certainly, when it is given to an impure heart : it looses its value until it is no longer recognized at such. as soon as the words have been spoken, hands clap as thunder strikes, the village’s well starting to fume seconds after lightning has touched it. despite the distraction of the sound that forces all the villagers to run faster, ishtar does not move. she does not breathe. she simply looks, and as the light is reflected into her bottomless eyes, she smiles. « come on. i am waiting. »
‘ party tricks, ‘ he sneers, looking at ishtar as though she is as much an empty offscouring as the fumes that rise from the well. the light in her eyes, reflected in his own, takes on a sickly glimmer. firefox sniffs, wincing against the sudden cold of the air, hawks, and spits onto the ground in front of his feet. ‘ well? you heard her! get on with it then. it’s rude to keep a lady waiting. ‘ he jeers at the men who tarry uncertainly in their places, but he doesn’t take a step of his own. TALK FOR YOURSELF, says the ventriloquist to the puppet. ( easy for her to say; she holds the strings in her palms, but she’s never once been bound by them. ) TALK FOR YOURSELF, says the god to the non-believer. ( and the cynic, hearing a voice from the clouds, frowns at the sky and claims to have discovered thunder. from then on, they call womankind tempestuous. ) he does talk for himself –– spits words into his palm, each one a writhing piece of his gut / wipes the corner of his mouth, dressing his cheeks with his beliefs like open wounds / grins into the burning sun, incisors flashing red with the remnants of bloodied letters. oh, but he’ll speak for others, too. that’s the luxury of power: reducing men into echoes that answer only to those who call them, denied of bitter poems and honeyed proses. power, it is said, creates silence so that one voice can speak for many. ( i am the empty. i am the cracked. i am the broken bottle and the smashed glass. i am the mess that reeks of spilled spirits and acrid smoke. and my raw, mortality-stained words give the fucking order. )
… so why don’t they move? ‘ surely you’re not cowed by her witchy nonsense? ‘ fear is a powerful deterrent; he must fashion his anger into the more convincing motivator. restful sleep has not touched his eyes in a fortnight, and there is barbed wire where a collar should be, digging into the skin beneath his chin like a silent knife. the teeth of phantom rage gnaw a hole in his chest, the black fingertips of violent longing staining the skin where he has attempted to sew the wound shut. ( he occupies an open grave, forever flitting between being the priest and the sacrifice. ) how can he convince his spectators that he knows what he’s doing when each day he is in a manic stupor long before the sky even pales? his mind, impalpable and precarious, reels among layers of reality. sometimes the men watch as it slips away, leaving only a body that paces the room like a prison cell. he wouldn’t even know if the cage caught fire –– not until the sun returned in the morning and unveiled all his crimes. ( THAT ONE IS A DRUNK AND A FOOL, the court whispers amongst itself. TRUE, shrugs the king, BUT THERE IS NOTHING QUITE SO DANGEROUS AS A DRUNKEN FOOL WHO ISN’T AFRAID TO BURN. ) perhaps this, then, is why a single dangerous look thaws the soldier’s fear-frozen joints. they glance uncertainly at one another, readjust the grips of dirty fingers on dirty blades, and advance. ‘ a sword through the gut ought to straighten her out, ‘ he calls out after them, his voice the clearest tone among the shuffling of heavy boots and the dull clattering of armour. beneath the cutting edge of his scowl lurks the beginnings of a cruel smirk, the sharpest of its edges yet drowning under the flushing of freckles that mar his face like constellations of fallen stars. this, the sort of smile that exists only on the faces of those who were fashioned by years of breaking against ocean cliffs and having their cuts filled with brine. ‘ silver or steel, a sword’s a sword. one sharp blade cuts as well as any other –– don’t you think so? ‘
to whom does he speak, and for whom does the bell toll? no man stands alone in the world, and no man ( nor peasant, child, or sorceress ) has any choice but to bear witness. the soldiers, wary in their resolve yet stony in their countenance, find some solace in the wisdom of steel. weapons emerge from their sheaths –– cold and detached, drenched with promise and shivering with the ring of metal against metal. they approach ishtar, the devil, in the way that walks towards death are always done: in a trance, senses suspended apart from being aware of the enveloping tension and the whisper of her power. fissured stones sink further into the ground as heavy footfalls press against them, passing through the wide stretch of withered grass that constitutes the main-square of this ragged town. in the middle of a plateau littered with dry branches and chicken bones, the moss-covered well perverted by ishtar’s magic is the only thing of note in the whole village. ( the peasants, cowering behind flimsy walls and skittish mules, allow themselves a moment to consider what will happen if they should survive this encounter: what life can be led in a town without water, and what water can be pure once touched by the chaos of the arcane? ) the first soldier, pock-marked lips pressed firmly together, runs at ishtar with his sword raised. they are the king’s mercenaries, for the rest of the hunters have been lost somewhere along the violent braid of time. as such, they move not as one front united against a common cause; they move out of fear, falling against the sorceress like the uneven spokes of a broken wheel. firefox, for his own part, takes this time only to crouch, touching his fingers to the dust of the ground beneath his feet. barren. parched.
a smarter man would have realized thus: ishtar did not pull herself from the ashes of a burning forest to die in this clearing, where the fox and his carrion birds can feast on her charred flesh until she is nothing more than black bones.
