Field of Swords
By Kendall Clarke
I awake to the taste of dirt: fine, gritty. I roll my tongue over my teeth, suck the granules down. Mud and wet fill my nostrils, and I pretend it’s the scent of my clay hearth, that there’s soup over the fire and I’ve just returned home from the market. Perhaps I had traded a bundle of parsnips for a small lump of red meat, patted dry before rubbing in the spices—black pepper, ginger, cardamon. Broiled and then left to cook in the stock.
I want to open my mouth and bite into the earth. My final meal.
Pressure against my eyes takes the form of amorphous gray shapes in the darkness: a blindfold, I realize. Blindfolded with a coarse, rough fabric that itches like a thousand little fingernails skittering across my eyelids. It’s damp and cold from the muck against my cheek.
What else? Hands bound behind my back, the frayed rope cutting into my wrists. Chosen for my discomfort, the twiney bits like thorns or teeth or the eyes of an entire village.
Sounds: bells tolling, the clatter of wood against wood, stomping, squelching boots. Voices of a crowd—hushed, hushed, and then silent. The village, their anger smoldered under a wet blanket. Or perhaps they pity me? Pity that they mistake for sympathy, yet they would not be silent if they had any intention of stopping this.
Then there’s the sound of the wind.
Pain, sharp: a boot heel sinks into the back of my head. It scrapes against my skull as I struggle to turn my face to the side, avoiding suffocation. It’s not time for the worms to pour into me, to crawl along my insides and declare my body theirs. Not yet. His voice above me: the magister. He hisses obscenities, and I can hear the heat in his breath, can picture the droplets of spittle flung from his mouth. My alleged crimes, my refusal to repent, the just nature of the punishment he has designed for me.
A hand grabs the back of my collar, drags me up like a street cat. My feet suddenly below me, knees knocking against each other, and I hate it, hate the image of myself weak and frightened, a newborn doe barely able to stand, much less walk. And walking is the only thing I can rely on from this point forward.
My legs eventually find themselves, remember their function. More sounds: yells, jeers, spitting. And then once again silence.
My shoulders are turned by the same rough hands. Likely the executioner. What a darling. Wind against my back. A shove, and then: “Walk.”
One step.
Wet earth between my toes. The land is barren. Water pools at the topsoil, too hard-packed for roots to penetrate. Nearest vegetation is a three-day’s walk.
Two steps.
The itch of my blindfold. I could loosen my restraints, break free, and remove this fabric from my eyes. But not now, not in front of them.
Three steps.
The metallic scent of blood rust. I am not the first to die like this.
Four.
The crowd still silent.
And then there’s the wind. The low, low howl of the wind. No voices to hear out here, just the hollow screams of the open plain. Gusts warp around my bare ankles, tendriling up my body. They grab onto me, pull me forward as though they know that I will soon be in their domain, their embrace. Five steps.
She is hungry for more company.
Six steps.
The wind threatens to knock me down, bending my spine into a crescent moon, asking me to bow and break. Seven.
What the villagers see: A woman of known, unknown, unknowable crimes. A woman who continues to walk—out onto the exposed, bleeding earth. Her figure slowly diminishing into the grand expanse, into the line between land and sky. But as the wind consumes her, her hair starts to dance…long, limpid strands reaching out for anything to hold on to.
THE END
Author Bio: Kendall Clarke is a recent graduate of Rollins College, where they earned their B.A. in English. Their work has previously been published in Brushing. Kendall has also co-authored work that has been published in Sky Island Journal and The Headlight Review.