A wisp of dust swirled and then scattered across the ruins of ash and molt. The clouds finally gave way to the blue of the heavens and the little creatures of the earth that survived the blaze, at last emerged from their hidden dens. The smell of the fires was swept away with the passing of the days, for the nights danced with the Eastern winds that flew alongside the banks of the River Red. Perhaps the elements danced for the death of those who perished in Hafar, as they were welcoming the dead into the Halls of the After.
The winds merry feet tapped with such bravado, half-circling and swirling and kicking at the earth that all traces of the massacre turned to ash and all that was left were the trace outlines of what once was. All that remained were the blotches of grey, scorched batches of rubble mixed of wood, tools, and bones. The cries of the massacre had echoed beyond sound into the depths of an unchangeable past.
Only now were villagers from neighboring settlements and inquisitors from the Imperium making themselves comfortable with the ruins. In their eavesdropping and investigations, the Alamaens suspected a massacre, for it seemed common knowledge that what Lieutenant Graves found he often left broken in pieces. The Alamaens were wise enough to keep their suspicions to themselves and away from the ears of Imperial officials, and those who voiced doubt were reminded why they shouldn’t.
The officials surmised that a rogue Alamaen suspected of sedition and treason had been confronted by Lieutenant Graves and his men. According to the Lieutenant’s reports, the suspect had been bested, but sour in defeat, the suspect set the whole town ablaze in both self-righteous immolation and imperial defiance.
Radical thoughts had been brewing in the Empire, especially in Alamee. It would not be the first time a revolutionary paid for his beliefs with the blood of the innocent. It was with displeasure but without protest, that the Alamaens did not press the issue further when the Imperial Officials swiftly came to a ruling and supported the finding of the Lieutenant’s story.
As night wrapped the world in darkness, rain fall pooled atop the hilltops that overlooked the Hafar settlement. In one of these pools, unawares that life still clung to him, Shadowfoot lay in quiet breaths. It was the pounce of a fox’s paws that landed on his chest that finally woke him. Shadowfoot inhaled a sharp breath of pain that felt like a horse kicked him in his ribs.
The world appeared to him in a shadow and a gloom. Instinctively, he tried to raise himself, but the pain too intolerable, he threw himself back down against the muddied earth. No man could have survived what Graves had done, not even himself. Had he died and now awoken in the next life as he left the last? Had the Goddess forsaken him and this was punishment for his sins? No! Suddenly all that had happened loosened in his mind.
Shadowfoot had survived it all. His powers of regeneration had always served him well in life, but they had somehow forestalled death. He let his hands brush against the flesh where Graves’s knife had pierced his ribs, but the broken blade was missing, and already the scars had formed and would slowly start to disappear as the days turned to weeks. The outline of shadows was all he could see, but his eyes too would heal and turn darkness back to light. Shadowfoot had been taken to the brink, far beyond what he thought imaginable. He lived.
Yet as he lay there, he could not help but wonder how he was to be so far removed from the massacre. He was too weak and broken to have stumbled so far up the hillside, even in a stupor. Someone had moved him. Shadowfoot remembered the voice, a woman’s voice fading before he had fallen unconscious. Mayhap it was her voice that succored him, had saved him from the flames, had transported him to safety. A shock of pain suddenly jerked down Shadowfoot’s spine and returned him to a dreamless sleep.
* * * *
Shadowfoot woke to the warmth of the sun beaming upon his cheekbones. He opened his eyes and saw the world a little clearer. He looked upward towards the mountaintop. There upon one of the many crowns, he saw a lone settlement but not as clearly as he might hope. As powerful as his gift might be, Shadowfoot was famished. He would need food to recover his strength, food to let his body work its magic, and proper rest to recover entirely. In his state it would take a half day’s journey to reach it, and up is always the harder route in comparison to down. His shirt was ripped, his boots were burnt and holed, and his pants were tattered. He might reach the remnants of Hafar in half the time, and hope to come across a traveler near the road, a person that might clothe and feed him.
No, said a voice. The woman’s voice, so familiar that he might have known her all his life, and yet it felt as indescribable and foreign as the clouds above. Ascend.
Shadowfoot did not know what to make of it all, for the wisdom of the gods had always eluded him. Lady-Flowers always had been on and about when it came to religion, telling him about the Goddess Dushara and her Twelve kin, the Welädein. She would have said he survived because of providence. It was with thoughts of her kindness, that he indulged fate and took the arduous path. His body ached at the thought of it, but he remembered then what the suffering of Hafar had been, the loss, the death, his friends and family butchered, even the sweet Lady-Flowers. He remembered Graves’s face, his words, Slow Death is your fate; Ravaged Corpse, Decayed Scourge, Withered Whisper. He imagined the man’s cruelty and his malice, and Shadowfoot remembered his vow to find and kill him even in death.
For hours and hours these thoughts wrestled with his desire to sleep, to wither into the grassy hillsides and let his body give way to the earth. Yet Shadowfoot climbed up and then rolled down with the hills, up and down inching ever closer to the estate. The mountainsides were bereft of civilization, the only settlement a tuft of life upon the low mountain range’s peak. Shadowfoot reached a dirt road paved between the crest of two mountains. Small wooden fences, braided together with fibers of wood separated the cliffs edge from the path before him. It spiraled a half circle to the summit, along with mustard leaves that grew from the mountain’s side.
* * * *
Nightfall crept as Shadowfoot slipped onto the farm. A cow lay in the grass snoring, a single goat and a lone lamb crept into each other’s bodies for warmth. A coop stood in a fenced enclosure that opened its way into the barn house. The quaintness of the estate was not lost on him, even with his blurred vision.
Once upon a time he had imagined a quiet life on a hilltop not unlike this one. The house remained dark as the earth reflected the lights above. Still the Red Moon half showed her face and the stars were just as bright. Shadowfoot opened the door when a sudden growl emerged, and were followed by teeth and a hound the size of a small horse. He sidestepped the dog’s lurch, swaying like a sail out of harm’s way. Before the hound had a chance to recover, Shadowfoot had slipped inside the door and shut it behind him. The howls breached through the walls, but this did not avail the hound.
Shadowfoot stumbled toward a table with a lantern on it. He struck a match, the Sulphur filling his nostrils as the light from the flames bore light to the shadows of the home. A corridor forked into two chambers, a living space one and a bedroom the other.
A large mattress stretched across the bedroom’s wall; its blankets were scattered still upon it as were patches of hair from the dog that shared it. Books and parchment stacked upwards across a table near its lone window. An adjacent dresser sat withered away, its wood like the brittle weeds of harvests past. Blank Canvasses draped the walls while colorful bowls of oil overflowed in packs across the furthest wall of the room. A litany of hand-fashioned brushes lay like reeds across the floor. They seemed to have brushed the floor as eagerly as they might have the canvasses.
Near the window a portrait shined beneath his lantern’s light. The painting was that of a young man who stood on the hillside overlooking the setting sun. The village of Hafar sat in its former existence beneath the hills. It looked like it was made long ago, the dust collecting on the corners and near the edges of the painting.
Shadowfoot turned and inhaled the rest of the home. A hearth already prepared for wood sat in the furthest corner from the door, and in front of it a vat of pitch. The house had been quiet for a week at least, all signs seemed to indicate such. There were signs of the slightest presence, that of the hound but he was ostensibly well behaved. His movements had been confined to the bed and the rug that lay beneath it.
Someone of course must have attended to the house in the absence of the owner; solely to feed the hound perhaps. Such a caretaker barely disturbed the place. Shadowfoot could hear the hound’s movements circling outside, until it faded into a dawdled pace. The hound finally stopped, perhaps making itself comfortable in the light of the moons. It quieted its barking to the lulled low hum of a howl. Shadowfoot put flames to the pitch and filled the emptiness of the room.
A loaf of bread shined in the light of the flames, as did a jug. Shadowfoot instinctively reached for the loaf and shoved it in his mouth, the dryness of his lips contending with his overzealous bite. Uncorking the jug, he pressed its spout to his lips and tilted it. The sweet liquid broke the bread that was caught somewhere between his mouth and his throat.
It was red wine, the subtle taste that Night Wind had always preferred over food. Shadowfoot had known no one more fearless, and yet, when the old man had taken to the sip of wine, his past seemed to speak to him. The horrors of all those lost since even before the Rebellion, those memories never disappeared, and the wine, like the moon, evinced the howl of the beast inside the man.
Slowly and kindly, the wine sang its whispers to Shadowfoot. He was overtaken by the prospect of undisturbed repose, as even the mattress in all its patches of fur looked like the finest bed. He fell into a tunnel of dreams, and the wine so sweet in his blood.
He saw Lana so young and sweet, with her green eyes that looked like the freshest olives, and in them spiced the faint specks of reds ever so slight. Her hair too was as red as the moon herself, and the tan of her face like barks of cinnamon. She had looked just like mother, a resemblance uncanny, as father had used to say.
He dreamt of that last evening before the siege began, before the Imperial forces increased their presence in their lands, before they began to force people out of their homes. It happened all at once, and yet, father said it had always happened, would happen again, always and forever as the Empire itself.
He saw Father sitting down with a young Shadowfoot, mother and sister with them. Father had always towered over most men, stronger and sturdier than many, Shadowfoot had never seen fear in his father’s eyes. But Shadowfoot remembered how small father had seemed that night, the look of a great warrior stripped bare his armor. There was fear in father’s eyes, a quiver that lined ever so faintly in the back of his throat. He had tried to hide it, but Shadowfoot remembered hearing it, there beneath the groan of a man summoning up the courage to speak honestly.
Father told of the possibility of the days to come, of a history of uprisings that were all quieted into submission. Time had summoned forth another generation of angry Alamaens displeased with Imperial rule. Things would get worse before they got better.
The vision persisted. Shadowfoot quietly yearned for the quiet of the moment to endure forever, for this would be the last time they all sat together. If only it was a vision of mother in her happiest moments, the sun in her hair and an unserious grin that made one feel loved. It was not, and Mother’s face remained blank and expressionless, the brightness in her eyes hiding somewhere beneath a shroud of worry.
Young Lana did not seem to understand anything Father had said. The quiet silence ended, and Mother beckoned Lana to bed and for Father to say what he needed to say and join her quickly. A young Shadowfoot remained seated on his cushion, his eyes fixed on Father; he was only nine years old then.
Shadowfoot remembered the conversation, saw clearly now as the past relived itself in front of him. If he were a god, he saw the moment unfold like a god might, invisibly present, already-knowing, but without the power to change the things to come.
“Mishall,”[1] he remembered it clearer as Father broke the silence. “Never let forget who you are, even in the face of salvation or death, always remember.” Shadowfoot wanted to yell Never father, but the vision continued uninterrupted. “Never fear it or hide it. Wear it like your skin, live for it, bleed for it, and know that many have died for it. You are my son, an Alamaen of the Three Kingdoms of Dushara. We are born in these lands of Olives and Thyme. We will ever be the Pulasati,[2] a tribe as old and true as any of Dushara’s people. Don’t you ever forget, and don’t let Alamee forget either.”
A young Mishal sat speechless looking into his father’s eyes. They were cowled in the shadow of the dark room. Mishal had not known then the power of those words, the way they would shape and change his life, but he knew they meant the world to Father. His father’s eyes told his younger self that there was nothing more to be said. Mishal sulked off to his bed, holding his father’s words closely as he disappeared out of father’s view. Turn back thought Shadowfoot, his heart pleading to his younger self, just one word…
“Who are you!” said a woman’s voice breaking the visions and bringing the waking world crashing back. Almost a familiar voice. “Stay Houri.”
Shadowfoot felt a shovel’s tip pressed against the edge of his neck. A woman’s wide deep eyes looked at him, her face aghast and the hound at her waiting for the signal to pounce. A glimmer of light seemed to glow off of her face, as the sunlight breached the windows and pressed against the auburn of her long flowing hair. His eyes were open and unblurred, he inhaled a thing of beauty that seemed so stern a contrast to the pain that pulsed against his limbs.
“Speak,” she shouted. “SPEAK!”
“I was just seeking shelter…” he spouted, the words unintentionally leaving his lips. He sat up and removed the blanket that masked his torso. The flesh still healed with wetness and the softest of glimmers, for slices and cuts, bruises and burns, they covered his skin like patchwork. Her face was searching, and the sudden look of bewilderment as her eyes met his.
“Sleep,” she said quietly, almost kindly. “Back to your dreams…”
Her words seemed to lull him, seeping into the spaces between his muscles and bones, convincing him that only her words mattered. Those big beautiful eyes, they became the most compelling apologists.
“But,” Shadowfoot stuttered.
“Sleep,” she pressed. “Close your eyes.”
She sat at his side on the bed as he indulged those words, his ears savoring the song she began to hum. Swiftly his eyes drifted into darkness, the vision of his father’s face slowly returned. It came to him like a wisp of smoke this time, the air clouded with vapors that blocked his sight. Suddenly a woman emerged from the smoke, the woman with the shovel, but in the vision, she was unarmed, least not with a weapon. Her eyes still pierced him, the smoke siphoned away as the hilltop over Hafar came into view. The air stirred just right as the sun above warmed his skin. Her warmth too pressed against his side, her hair flowing against his cheek and the smell of buttercups lingering there.
Writings by Samson Mousa 
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