"Zamora - 2 - Blackened Bones" by Ashley R. Wynn

Word Count: 2461

January 30, 2006

            The day had been fine - clear skied and mild.  Zamora had finished her chores quickly and spent much of the day exploring the pasture’s edge and swimming in the cow pond.  Her dreamy summer’s afternoon had turned into a hellish nightmare of an evening.

After supper, Zamora and Nana had spent the last hours of sunlight enjoying the pleasant breeze from the front porch.  Each had a bowl in her lap and was shelling purple hull peas.  From their seats on the porch, they could see where the cart path from their house joined the road.  Twilight was upon the land, and cicadas droned their buzzing calls from the immense Wildwood surrounding the little farm.

“Shall we take these peas inside, Nana?  I’m afraid that if I bring out an oil lamp, it will just attract more insects . . . Nana?” 

Zamora looked to her grandmother when she failed to answer.  She followed Nana’s gaze down the cart path to the road.  She could see the blaze of several torches in the gloom gathering beneath the trees that lined the road.

Zamora glanced back at Nana and frowned at the look that set the old woman’s jaw.  “What is it, Nana?”

“I should have done as Donncuan said and sent you away to school at Merdain, Zamora.”  Nana looked pained as she turned to her only grandchild.  “I’m so sorry.  I’ve been so selfish.”

“What are you talking about, Nana?  Art Donncuan?” Zamora was puzzled.  Nana and their neighbor Mr. Art had had some sort of argument when he visited a few days previous.  The snippets of their shouting match Zamora had heard through the door to the sitting room had made no sense.  Apprehensively, Zamora glanced toward the approaching torches.  There were at least six, and they had turned onto the cart path instead of following the road.

“Listen, child, please.  Remember your lessons and your prayers.  Remember all the things I’ve tried to teach you in the kitchen.  Remember your grandpapa and your parents.  Remember me.  Remember your family.  We are proud of you and who you are – what you are.”  Nana’s words were urgent, and Zamora felt the first wrench of fear in her guts.  “Remember the nest-egg.”  Nana took a chain from around her neck and dropped it over Zamora’s head.  The medallion disappeared beneath her collar.  It was warm against her breasts.

Zamora could hear the sounds of men and horses clearly now.  Soon she would be able to see their faces in their torchlight.  She could tell they had no uniforms, but she could see that they were well armed.

“Quickly, sweetling, take the peas inside.  Don’t try to go out the back door.  They surely have it guarded.  The One Father’s Sons are coming, Zamora.  Get yourself through the root cellar crawlspace.”

The One Father’s Sons!  Zamora felt as if a frozen fist had been buried in her stomach.  Suddenly she could not seem to get enough air.  Mechanically, she took the bowls of shelled peas inside and set them on the table. 

“Ceruva of Merdain! Known herb wife and confirmed witch!”  Zamora heard a man yelling outside.  Her hands shook as she fumbled the pantry door open.  It was a mistake!  Nana was not a witch.  A glance out the window at the men gathering around the porch left her colder inside.  The one shouting from his saddle wore a sneer, and made a sign against evil before he continued.  Zamora could see the faces of the men, even the riders.  There were familiar faces there.  She would remember them, bathed in torchlight.

“By writ of the Holy Emperor, the One Father’s Holy Sons have come to put an end to your evil ways and relieve the terror of your neighbors.  You and all of your offspring are condemned to death by hanging and fire, so that your evil will be wiped from the face of the One Father’s world.  Your belongings are now property of the Holy Empire, and all books, papers, and other burnables shall feed the Holy Flame the same as your flesh!”

Zamora did not hear Nana’s reply as she wriggled into the crawlspace that was an exceptionally deep root cellar.  She did hear the front door slam and its heavy bar dropped into place.  She also heard the dull thuds of axes and the sound of splintering wood, as the shutters were broken.

As she worked her way through the tunnel on hands and knees, Zamora thought she heard Nana behind her.

“Keep going, Zamora.  I’ll always be right behind you, sweetling.  The Goddesses will protect us.”

In the tiny dugout room beneath the yard bird coop, Zamora waited in darkness, straining to hear the sound of Nana making her way down the passage.  She heard nothing but her own ragged gasps and the alarming thump of her heart.  The slight breeze she had felt while crawling through the tunnel had picked up.  Air from a warm summer twilight gusted past her face at an alarming speed.  Zamora’s breath was snatched away and sucked back down the tunnel toward the house.

Panic began to flicker behind her eyes.  She could see it, a haze that reddened the darkness.  They had set the house on fire.  Zamora had to get out of the crawlspace and into open air where she could breathe.  She had to get Nana outside, but Nana was not coming fast enough.

Zamora opened the trap door and gulped in fresh air.  As she crawled from the hole, she emerged beneath the yard bird coop, stirring up old droppings.  The ammonia-laced dust clung to the back of her throat.  She scrambled to the back and dashed into the darkened cornfield gasping and sobbing, unaware of the tears streaking her grim face.

Zamora was near a woman grown; yet fear still clenched her stomach.  Intent on being as small and quiet as possible, she never felt the night borne insects drinking her blood.  She hid in the cornfield, silently praying to the Goddess of Darkness to hide her.  Zamora prayed that the field of ripening corn was far enough away from the house.  She prayed the fire would not spread; that darkness would rule the night and all light should be put out.  She prayed as Nana had taught her. 

At some point, Zamora’s panic and fear had turned to anger.  Anger at the

One Father and His Sons.  She was angry that Nana was not coming out quickly enough, and angry that things were happening so quickly and so far beyond her control.

            Firelight limned the edges of the yard bird coop between her hiding place and her burning home.  A thousand agonizing thoughts and memories clamored through her mind.  Thinking clearly was difficult, but she tried.

            The roar of the fire was dying, and Zamora could hear men’s shouts.  Her stomach roiled as she tried to retreat into the corn as stealthily as possible.

            “Form up!” Zamora heard one voice call over the others.

            “The witch and her progeny have been burned, and our Holy Duty fulfilled.  Our appropriations will be divided up at camp.”

            Zamora shuddered uncontrollably as the rough band of men gave an unmistakably victorious cheer.  Too deep in the shadows to actually see her assailants, she pictured them raising axes and swords in victory salutes, firelight reflecting dully from them.  Their torches had burned with her home.

            “Return to camp and seek a good night’s rest, Holy Sons.  Know this is a job done well.  At dawn we leave for Feldspar, to uphold our Holy Duty there.”  Zamora imagined the leader, mounted before his circle of imperial soldiers and mercenary ruffians.  In her brief glance at them, Zamora had counted no more than a dozen, and had recognized two of the horsemen. 

They had changed since they’d left the village for the Emperor’s war, but she knew the Gartson brothers when she saw them.  Their faces were scarred and scowled unfamiliarly, but their pale yellow hair and wide noses spoke loudly of her childhood companions.  Their presence baffled and hurt her, and had sunk a spike of fear in her spine.         

Zamora waited in the dark depths of the cornfield until she was sure the Sons were gone.  Then she inched around the yard bird coop, hugging the shadows.  Nana’s prayer to the Goddess of Darkness repeated itself in her mind. 

All that could have burned in the house had burned.  Zamora’s bedroom and the weaving room were charred and smoldering timbers.  They had been added on just before her grandpapa had passed, and were made completely of wood.  The rest of the house was made of mud bricks, in the fashion of Nana’s people.  The walls were intact, but held the smoking remains of a home.

Zamora tore the Emperor’s Writ from the broken front gate.  She thought about her future, as she fed the parchment to the dwindling Holy Flame.  Merdain sang in her blood; she would go there and learn what she could, far from the hands of the One Father.  The past and present were too painful to really consider.

By the time the sun reared its yellow head, Zamora had Nana’s grave dug.  She had known where to dig, where her grandmother would like to be – right beside her grandpapa and Zamora’s mother, facing the sunrise and the homestead.  Zamora knew she would find Nana’s body, but she had to wait until the fire had cooled before she could try to recover it.  Digging passed time.

From the edges of the ruin, Zamora couldn’t tell what the One Father’s murderers had looted.  Carefully, with a long stick, Zamora searched the remains of her home.  She walled her memories into the smallest, darkest corner of her mind.  The linen closet had only burned partly, and Zamora scavenged an old intricately woven tablecloth that Nana had brought with her from Merdain as a part of her dowry.  What was left of Nana’s body was easily bundled up and carried to the gravesite. 

Before covering the lacy bundle with the earth that was the Mother Goddess’s body, Zamora remembered Nana’s lessons about the family bone.  Quickly, to get the unpleasant act over with, Zamora found her grandmother’s left hand and worked the family bone free.  She put it away in her apron pocket.  Zamora felt guilty about being revolted by her grandmother’s corpse.  She had the words said and the dirt spread faster than she had expected.

It was still well before noon when she wriggled under the yard bird coop and into the trap door of the cubbyhole.  The tiny earth-walled room smelled of smoke and stale air.  Daylight filtered in from under the coop, and Zamora could make out the shelves and chests that lined the walls.  Bundles of cooking and healing herbs were carefully stored with the surplus seed they’d had in the spring.  Canned fruits and vegetables took up two shelves alone.

From one of the ironbound chests, Zamora withdrew a small cedar coffer and an intricately inlaid box.  She ran her hand across the smooth wood of the coffer – what Nana had called her “nest egg”.  After rummaging about, Zamora found an old leather bag, smooth and waxy from waterproofing, but stiff from disuse.  The coffer went into the sack and was joined by the inlaid box after Zamora dropped Nana’s blackened family bone in with the others.

Packed away in the bottom of one of the chests were some of her grandpapa’s old clothes.  They had been carefully put away; neither time nor rodent teeth had damaged them.  Zamora held them against herself in the dim light and decided that they would have to do until she could find anything better.  She would need something to wear other than the filthy housedress and apron she had on, and Grandpapa had been a small man.

Under a cloak, Zamora found a birch-bark tube full of her grandpapa’s maps.  Some he had bought on his travels, but the best and most beautifully detailed maps he had made himself.  The clothes, the map case, and what appeared to be a couple of Nana’s old cookbooks went into the sack along with a few other things she thought might be of worth.  She put everything back neatly, knowing she would probably never be back to claim what was left of her home, of her family.  Zamora pushed the sack out from under the coop then joined it in the noon sun.

Long stick in hand, Zamora poked through the ashes once more.  She knew she should get going, but there was something she wanted to look at again in better light, now that the sun had well cleared the horizon and the tree line.

Nana had not perished alone in the fire.  The unidentifiable remains of two mail-clad corpses had been near that of her grandmother’s.  She examined the bodies more closely than she had to begin with.  Their mail and short swords were useless to Zamora.  A shine in smut caught her attention and Zamora picked up a coin-sized piece of metal.  It had been enameled, but the fire had damaged it beyond recognition.  It seemed to be some sort of collar pin.  She searched the other corpse and found a similar pin where there had once been a neck.  The enamel had not been melted off of this red scythe.  She pocketed the pins and took up her shovel.  After a great effort, Zamora managed to free the charred skulls from their spines.

It was afternoon once Zamora had her pack shouldered and had crossed the pasture.  As the sun had climbed higher, Zamora had felt urgency, the same icy fist in her belly from the night before.  Zamora didn’t even stop to wash her hands at the pump.  She would go as far as possible tonight before she stopped.  She needed distance, though she did not know where to go other than north and east.

Zamora realized that she had not slept in a long time, and the last thing she had eaten had been a few uncooked peas as she shelled them.  Feeling neither hunger nor fatigue, Zamora stepped into the woods.  Zamora felt nothing.

The house was still in sight when a rustling through the trees caused her heart to start thumping again.

“Zamora!” A voice called quietly from a bramble thicket.

She froze and watched the thicket for whoever was calling her name.  Certain that the Sons of the Father were long gone; she waited until the rustlings became a dirty, skinny boy.  She recognized him – Corcc, Art Donncuan’s oldest boy.  The red hair was hard to misplace.  He also seemed to be larger than she remembered.

“Zamora,” he panted, dropping to his knees before her.  “My da told me to watch this side for you or your gran.  He’s watching t’other side of yer pasture . . . I’m supposed to take you to a safe place.  Can’t take you home to ma and the little ones – Da says the Sons are watching our place.  Can’t track us in our own woods, though, they can’t.”  The boy paused and sucked in air.  The blank look on Zamora’s usually clean face worried him and made him feel afraid.  Especially since her grandmother wasn’t with her as his da had hoped.

“Come on, Zamora.  We’ll help you,” he said softly after he caught his breath.  Corcc took a couple of steps into the thicket.  When she did not begin to follow, he went back and took her hand, leading her into the Wildwood.