Love in Ashes

Smoke had been filling the sky for hours, flowing up over everything from the north. Lupita watched through the queen’s telescope because everyone else had tired of looking.

            “Congratulations on your victory in the archery, Sir Longbow.” She turned to see who’d spoken. One of the new warlocks in the Royal Coven, Aaron Cairn, gave her a smile.

            “Thank you.” She bowed her head.

            “I hope you win the duelling at the next tournament.”

            “Sir Fabian deserved his victory and did well in the archery.”

            “Eleventh,” scoffed the boy.

            “Don’t let him hear you say that, or he’ll show you how good he is with his sword.” She winked.

            “Did you hear about all of the refugees from the south? ‘Bout a hundred, I heard. They said Crann is being called the Land of Second Chances because people come here from all over when they have to leave their homes. Usually ‘cause of magic. They said the Church of Red Knives pointed them our way. Imagine that?

            Where are they all going to live? A hundred in a day? There’ll be no space.”

            “That’s why the new houses are being built so tall,” Danielle said, watching the dark sky.

            “Leonor don’t look the same anymore.”

            “Aren’t you from Riverton?”

            “I’ve been here for months; I’ve watched it changin’. As many foreigners here as Cranners now.”

            “They’ll help us fight the empire when the empire comes back.” Danielle was giving the responses automatically. Her attention had turned to the curves of her girlfriend’s figure. “There’s not that many of them here anyway. It just seems that way.”

            “Hopefully that new wall in the south is for all of them. They can live in their own bit of the city, where the guards can keep a watch on them. I don’t trust ‘em.” The boy spoke of a wall that might eventually double the size of the city to the southeast.

            “The new wall is meant for fields and orchards. That plot of land will help feed Leonor.”

            “I should study.”

            “Yes, you should. You should also be kind to new people who came to make the city their home. You came from Riverton. I came from Fisher’s Gasp. Most of us in Leonor now weren’t born here. We have to learn to live together.”

            “Definitely,” said Aaron Cairn. He clearly didn’t mean it at all, but she had no authority to scold him for his prejudice. She was hearing too much of it across the city.

            BANG!

Everyone fell to the floor, mostly from the shock of a noise that had given them all a headache in a moment. Thirty people held their hands over their ears and looked around the room to see what had exploded.

            “Find out what that was immediately!” Queen Malin was helped to her feet by Sir Ironwill. Blank faces looked around the room where they had been experimenting with gunpowder. Everything looked fine.

            Out of the window, to the north, an orange spark on the horizon lit the grey smoke.

            Danielle helped Lupita to her feet, getting an eyeful of cleavage as her girlfriend stood and adjusted her green robe. Sneaking a peak through the telescope, Sir Longbow saw a jet of orange then black rising into the sky. An entire mountain was glowing orange from the top down.

            “It’s the mountain,” Danielle told them all. “The mountain is on fire.”

            “Show me,” Queen Malin lurched forwards, grasping the telescope. “It’s a volcano.” She looked back at her coven. “Get me maps, I want to know which volcano that is. Go to the people in Leonor. Check that there’s no panic. The last thing we need now is hysteria. Implement a curfew if you need to. Sir Longbow, get to it.”

            “Yes, your majesty.”

Along with other members of the coven who weren’t helping with the maps, she walked through the castle, telling everyone she saw that the sound had been a volcano. She barely knew what that meant.

            Outside the castle crowds stood on the cobbled streets. They peered at the sky in horror. Some moron said something about the end of days. Chaos.

            For all Danielle knew, the world was ending. Panicking about it wouldn’t help anyone.

            “Go back to your home and lock the door. Let in your family if you hear their voice. Get off the streets.” She yelled the instructions repeatedly. Soldiers did the same, yelling the until only green tabard wearing warriors were outside.

            “What now?” A guard with an enormous ginger beard threw up his hands. “It’s all very well telling them not to panic. I’m panicking.”

            “It’s a volcano. It’s in imperial lands. Not our problem. If anything, it might delay the next attack sent by the emperor. We need to keep people calm, avoid riots and looting. There was no point in all of us fighting for Leonor against the imperials if we destroy it ourselves in fright.”

            There were grunts and nodding heads.

            “We should tell everyone to stay in their homes until daylight tomorrow. Hopefully this will be over by then.” Men and women with swords on their hips sighed and walked away in different directions.

            “Wise words. You make a good leader.” Danielle turned and saw the same soldier with a missing hand who had been at her knighting ceremony. She finally recognised her.

            “Alexandra? What happened to you?” She asked the woman with short grey hair.

            “Why can’t you call me mother?”

            “Because a knight should be honest.”

            Alexandra smirked, showing the deep creases in her face. “I’m done apologising Danielle. I made a mistake, a terrible mistake. You don’t ever have to talk to me, but I wish you would. I know I’ll regret throwing you out forever. I’m sure you’ll regret missing the chance to be family again if I die first.” She held up the stump of her left wrist. “Next time it might be my head.”

            “Should I care if you live or die?”

            “It doesn’t matter if you should or shouldn’t. You either will or you wont. Only you can know which. My point is, if you realise that you want a mother after I die, it’s a regret you’ll have to live with for the rest of your life. I know how that feels. Regret sits in your gut, gnawing at you. Every day.” Alexandra scratched her stump.

            “Tell me why you left me.” Blurting it out without thinking, Danielle let the demand hang in the air.

            “Fair enough. I threw you out of my home because I feared what you are. I hated what I am.”

            “I don’t like riddles, Alexandra.”

            “You love women. I know that you live with Lupita. I’ve seen you together. I see that she makes you happy.

            When I was small, I lived in Crosston. I liked a girl.” Danielle looked up from the dirt on the cobbles at her mother. “We had grown up together. As we got older, we grew closer. We kissed for the first time when I was eight.” Alexandra’s jaw clenched. “We had to keep it secret. Religion, the imperial religion, says that love between anyone but man and woman is impure.

            We pretended to be friends. We met at night and went to the shore of Worldworm River to kiss.

            Every night we stayed there a little longer. We thought no one knew about it.

            My father knew. He was devout. He told everyone. Both of us were beaten in the street in front of everyone we knew. I was ashamed. I loved her but I believed my father. I had been to church three days a week all my life.

            I was sent to Fisher’s Gasp. My parents never spoke to me again. I don’t know where she went. I returned to Crosston once to look for her. She wasn’t there.” She sniffed and continued. “I saw you with a girl. I saw the same magic in your eyes when you looked at her. I had been taught that forbidden love brought damnation. I didn’t know what to do.

            Recently I began to see all the ways the religion was designed to keep us down. Did you know that in the empire now the priests say that only those with blonde hair and blue eyes are worthy of salvation? Their lies were revealed to me. It bans magic because magic is the only force that could go against their endless army. Commanding everyone to be with people they don’t love and have children makes them more soldiers.”

            “Why did you never tell me any of this?” Danielle asked. “Why did you marry that man? And father, me?”

            “You are the only consequence of my denial that I don’t regret, Danielle. The rest of it was me trying to be what scriptures said I had to be. I’m done with that now. If you can forgive me, great. If not, I still have a life to lead and years to make up for.

            I found someone. Like you have Lupita.”

            “Who?” Danielle’s jaw hit her toes on the way to the cobbles.

            “You’ve met her. You beat her in the archery tournament. Her name is Rose. Rose Fletcher.” As the daughter paused to process the information flakes began to fall from the sky.

            “That isn’t snow.” Alexandra caught a flake and licked it. “Argh, its ash.”

            “We should keep moving, we need to tell people to stay inside.”

            “You’re right. Walk with me?” Alexandra asked.

            “Fine. Tell me about Rose. Where did you meet her?”

            “In battle. She saved me with a few of her arrows. I bought her a drink to say thank you and-” She shrugged, holding up one hand and a stump. Either she didn’t remember, or she wanted Danielle to put two and two together.

            “We’ll need to get a drink together when the sky stops falling,” said the daughter.

            “I’d like that.”

            “I still haven’t forgiven you.”

            “I’m not asking you to.”

Ash settled on the ground, turning to grey mush. The blue moon gave the smoke in the sky a haunting beauty. It was tempting to forget that the same woman by her side was the one who abandoned her. She thought for a moment of convincing herself that everything she hated about her mother had lived in the now gone left hand.

            They had to pull collars over their faces to avoid inhaling the ash. She realised that she just had to spend time with the woman Alexandra had become. She might never be Danielle’s mother again. That love had been laid to rest. A friend perhaps. The company of the woman with a smile she remembered from childhood began to fill a void that she had long accepted was permanent. Happiness fought with anger that she was giving the woman another chance to betray her. It was a risk but there would be no doubt, no regrets.