To Sleep Without Dreaming

[Listen to logic]

Josiah Redburg lived outside of Rhy'din proper his whole life, as all his family before him. He understood the Nexus, the temptation of modernity and the fascination with the ancient, but he and his family much preferred their ways: quietly living in the woodlands, existing without interruption. His great grandfather built a small home in the forests past the city to the West, took a wife; as they had children the home grew into two and then three as his sons and daughters lived there, hunting and fishing and existing without interruption. When Josiah was born and joined their ranks, he was no different.

Josiah was the last of his family. His wife and daughter both died in child labor some twenty years back, and after mourning, he contented himself to a life of solitude with himself and his hunting dogs. For many years he continued to live to his family's unspoken creed, living without need or want or temptation away from Rhy'din City proper. And then something shifted.

It took him several months to realize that he was not the only one using the beaten woodland trails, and weeks longer to realize there was someone building a structure off of one of them. He found a young woman and an older man building a one-room cabin. Still, Josiah never approached. They weren't bothering him and he had the intention of doing the same for them.

Time went on. He would see the woman and the older man, or hear his hunting dogs whining at their far off presence. Josiah guessed that they knew he was here, but there were never any visits or signs of contact on his property. Eventually, the man stopped coming and it was only the woman. One time he caught a proper glimpse of her: a tall, lean thing with a gleaming blade. It was one of the only times he allowed the curiosity to get the better of him, and he came close enough to the cabin to see the deep marks in the nearby trees, the ground stamped down from pounding feet.

Part of him took comfort in his unspeaking, unseen neighbor. Perhaps she too was seeking an existence without interruption; perhaps she would be the next generation. But he was unable to forget the scored trees, and though he was a man of little experience, he could match the marks to a sword. The bile in his gut told him his life would be unsettled, as much as he tried to disregard it.

And so the life of Josiah Redburg went on, him and his hunting dogs, through day's beginning to end, until the solstice of spring approached.

In the dead of night, the first screams came.

[Listen to logic]

The sound bounced off the trees and echoed from every direction. The dogs howled in their pens, anxiously pawing at the gate and snapping at each other with anxiety; Josiah nearly pissed himself at the suddenness of it all.

Josiah could remember his grandfather's stories about banshees and thralls, pained and broken creatures living out their miseries past death. It was the only comparision he had, and even as an old man, it scared him. He screwed his eyes shut and tried to shut his mind off, but remained sleepless until dawn. He didn't recall when the screaming stopped, but when he stepped out of bed, the sun was shining bright and the first sparks of Spring warmth were combating the frost on the ground. Maybe, he thought, it was a dream.

"Well," he told his dogs as he fed them the scraps from his breakfast. His old hound dog looked up at him, and Josiah seemed to gather from its expression that the screaming was either a figment of his old mind or beyond his caring. Life, he reminded himself, untainted and uninterrupted.

When Josiah stepped outside to care for the chickens, he found an unfamiliar man standing there.

The armor the man wore reminded him of Arthur's Court: gleaming plate armor and a sword at his back, his blond hair taken back. Still, something about him made Josiah's gut roll.

"Good morning," the knight said.

Josiah stared dumbly, having forgotten how to speak with another human being. The knight hesitated for a moment before anxiety had him continue.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," he began, "but I was hoping you might help me. There is a woman I'm looking for, and I heard she lived out here." The knight paused and smiled weakly. "I see that you're not her, but perhaps.."

Josiah's jaw tightened. He held no loyalties. He shouldn't care. He had never spoken with her, nor was she one of his family. This was his opportunity to be rid of her and the chance that she may change his way of life.

"No," he heard himself say, his voice coarse and hard. "Ain't no one here in these woods but me'n my dogs. Been here for years, ain't no one since my wife died. Quit botherin' me."

The knight's postured slumped a little and a faint disappointment read on his face. "I see. I don't suppose-- no, no." His lips pursed. "Sir, if you do see a woman here in these woods.. please, come to the city. She's a danger and I don't want her to pose any threat to you."

When Josiah had no reply, the knight bowed slightly. "I-- won't bother you any longer. Good day." The knight turned and departed down one of the many deer trails that lead back toward the city, leaving Josiah standing in front of his home with every dog barking and chicken squawking.

"Hell," he muttered, and whistled for his hounds. The chickens could fend for themselves a few hours longer. Josiah turned away from the farmhouse and headed down the narrow trails that lead toward a one-room cabin and the downfall of his life's ideals.

[Listen to logic]

I am dreaming again. I find that as Death catches up with my stride, he leaves me offerings like this, once my body is too wracked with pain to leave my brain awake -- pieces of my past I am left to relive until the day he takes my hand.


They are painting my skin with henna. It's not a tradition of my father's house, but my mother's, and I honor her request. I am watching my mother and my father's slave girl paint delicate strokes on my throat from the mirror across me; my chest is bare and my skin is prickling from the winter cold. They are painting the story of my life and the hopes for my future on my flesh as a prayer to the gods.

Nothing of what they write will come true.

My mother, now a wispy, gray-haired woman, brings her dye-laden brush down my collarbone toward the curve of my breast. Occasionally, she stops and looks at me with her hard, black eyes as if reading my thoughts and returns to her task with greater concentration. My eyes are the only thing I have inherited from this woman, whom otherwise I would call a stranger. I am my father's daughter.

My father's slave is a mute. He cut out her tongue after she grew heavy with child and blamed him; despite his outright denial of bedding her, he took the child as his second son and continued to give his slave a roof over her silent head. As she fills out the delicate details along my throat, I feel her warm breath on my skin and see the brand on her shoulder that marks her as a slave of House Greene. I have no remorse for what was done to her.

"A fine match," my mother says for the third or fourth time. I've lost count. "You're lucky, Eleanor. Most women are not half as fortunate. A fine match."

I don't reply. I know what she's refering to. In a land where a man's name is his legacy, few will take a barren woman as their wife, at least not without a whore or a slave like my father. I am different. Taine is different.

Taine.

Somewhere above my breast, near my heart, the slave girl has inscribed his name in the old tongue. Taine Firenze, the Lion of Kesina.

I close my eyes and I see him. His skin is tan with summer heat, his hair freshly cut as he prepares for war. His eyes are gray as a coming dawn and filled with heat. His body is heavy with scars, but he holds himself with an unrepentant pride that I fell in love with -- that many women fell in love with. But he's mine and I claimed him from the start, from the first day I saw him pick up a sword in his father's courtyard.

I open my eyes and the dream has shifted.

I am standing across form Taine. He is older now, his hair has grown long, and he is dressed in the bloody armor of the High Knight that Dugal made for him. Between us lies the dead Prince Gabrael, and to our left, past the throng of his men -- our men -- the King lies in a pool of his own blood. There is hurt in Taine's eyes, but more than that, there is loyalty. That loyalty was never to me.

I press forward and my blade pierces the exposed leather just below his left arm. I feel it slice cleanly through and into his chest. He looks at me with the eyes I fell in love with, and the ferocity fades. I have killed him.

The world stops.