The first arrow hit Sadira.
It was one of those nights, much like this one, when the sunset taunted me. Warm embers of today’s ire feathered out into soft hues of violet, promising the end of another successful evening, bringing forward another day without her.
Sometimes, if I crane my neck upwards long enough, I can see her in the softly clotting clouds. Tonight, I won’t gaze upon her. Not when I’m like this, with the drying blood speckling my face and sweat thick in my hair. Sadira hated it whenever I hunted and always refused to touch my hands no matter how many times I washed them clean.
My eyes fall to where they hang by my sides, limp and sticky. The curved handle of the blade she would use to crush herbs was carefully wiped clean. It gleams in the flickering light. Carved into the wooden handle, are our initials: a promise made. It’s one of the last pieces of us that survived the purge.
Where the Wisdom’s hailed from is among the great unknown. Its knowledge lost to time or buried too deep to unearth. All we know is that they know all. They speak to something greater than gods, speak of something richer than prophecies: they speak to fate and fate whispers back.
And on nights like this, I let my thoughts unravel on what life could have been.
I dream of where we would have travelled, the friends we would have made and the songs we would have sung. I never wanted to come back here after it happened, but that Wisdom. She just kept going on and on about her glorious sacrifice, one year on and she wanted this, to host her little gathering.
We never asked for the women of our village to be cut down. But the Wisdom asked for this, she all but begged me to come home. I had to do it: keep doing it. Every time I hunt now, I do it only to experience an echo of what it felt like when she lived.
This place was once beautiful.
The thought hits me with such force my knees buckle: this place was once sacred. The ruins at the edge of my vision were once a temple. Those walls were weathered by time, etched with stories of the women who walked them before me. The air was fragranced with the sweetness of burning jasmine oil, basked in the sunlight that soaked through the archways.
We poured ourselves into it: washed those tiled floors with our hands. We kept the wax candles burning to remember our sisters. Our temple was devoted to the heart. I may have not been the most devout, may have enjoyed those extra hours in bed rather than in worship. But it didn’t make it any less mine.
Until it wasn’t: until they butchered it. Sanded down the carvings, hollowed out the essence of dedication for the sake of sacred knowledge. It wasn’t about gods or man; it was about people. Until they made it about truth, fate and the will of the wise.
It was a space between time: untouched by wrath and vengeance, until it met me. And I would never have touched it, would never have ruined it had they not taken my heart. That’s the thing about the Wisdoms; their word is held with the mightiest of righteousness.
“Be wary and be watchful of wayward daughters.” Rua Wise had urged the village people. The worshipped whisperer of the ways had the sight, through her opal gaze she could see the very threads of time strung between us, “They are the reckoning that will be your undoing.”
And that was the end of everything I loved. Those words would mean nothing coming from anyone else. We had never even laid eyes upon a Wisdom before, there were none in the mountains: only us. The people of the harvest, we buried their dead with flower petals and danced barefoot in the earth.
We didn’t know of violence, not until that Wisdom arrived. They’re heralded by children dressed in bells, carrying their songs wherever they trespass. This child came to our home, promised us glory in the hands of one who sees all. They wanted to build a temple where our own was to feed our souls and when we refused, she cursed us.
Be wary and be watchful of wayward daughters. They are the reckoning that will be your undoing.
I drag the back of my hand across my upper lip, the blood seeping from my nose has dried a bit. Need to find my way back now, if I don’t, I might just fall here. Sink into the soft grass and choke on the black smoke billowing from the Temple.
The ire boiling my blood began to relent, the sweat sizzling down the nape of my neck soaked into the cotton of my tunic. The fire was ravenous, devouring everything and everyone in there. Those dry twigs I doused in oil blazed, they demanded ashes. It’s a wicked heat but it was free from guilt, from mercy, from fear.
“You can’t blame them for their fear, Visha.” Sadira’s voice trembled. Something changed when the Wisdom told her truth, something dire hung in the air. Waiting for the strike. “These people are our kin: trust them to know us as we know them.”
And that was who Sadira was: faithful. A devotee to the hopeless, she would never turn her back on the child who shakily aimed an arrow at her. No, she promised him that no matter what, everything would be okay. Her trembling smile desperate and forgiving all at once, her wet salty tears dragged down her cheeks.
When she moved, I moved because her path was one forged from something peaceful. And that stupid fool knew it too when he notched that arrow, and he knew it when he released it. I can still feel the wind being knocked out of her.
Can see the way she fell back a step, how the thick braid of hair fell off her shoulder. How her berry-stained fingers reached for her chest. Those very fingers that massaged oil into my scalp just the night before. I don’t know what we last talked about or if I braided her hair before or after she did mine. I think I did hers last because I could never get her still enough to finish weaving together her soft hair.
A sob tears through me before I can choke it and just like that, I’m split whole again. I am the remnants of something once good. An echo of a person who knew what it meant to believe in something pure. I am unworthy of this life I never wanted to live without her.
And I know this isn’t what Sadira would have wanted. To see every Temple in the vast lands burned to cinders. To listen to the sound of the bells clanging, screams harmonizing in those unearthly walls and the crackling submission of flesh to flame.
“Upon these blackened bones, we will build a new empire.” Rua Wise declared. I heard word of her praise over the slaughter. She wore silver robes with emeralds hanging from her brow. She wore her hair in a strong braid that fell down her back. “In their honour, I will bring forth a greatness all can relish.”
Well, much use she was when she didn’t even see me coming. Rua Wise, the woman who drenched her hands in blood, who knew better than all. Wrinkle lines speared around her eyes from all the wretched fates she inflicted upon anyone who deafened their ears to her words. She and her Wisdom sisters believed their way was the only way.
And this is where my grief strangled me, an unrelenting hold on my soul: Sadira was wrong.
Fear is no fickle thing. It’s the destroyer of sense and devourer of kindness; fear makes a monster out of all. Fear will put weapons in the hands of the ignorant. It is fear that will make you see nothing but evil where there is courage and independence. It will take you by the hand and it will make you kill eleven girls, some who hadn’t even bled yet.
And the Wisdoms command it with every breath they take. They control the minds of all who bow in their honour.
None should wield such power: all should see their true faces. But how can they when all they see is a figure of reverence? No. No, they must be given the freedom to see what a monster is. They must be unbound by the lure of what is beyond our comprehension.
A Wisdom is nothing more than a façade: a pretty string of words. None of what they say holds any truth, but their tongues are sacred to the unseeing. It’s why they must be cut and burned.
I do this for them. For those who have been felled by false tongues. Many more will sing their songs, of how none know the difference between greatness and madness until it’s too late. None of them will remember Sadira, none of them deserve to.
To think, eleven girls was all it would take to destroy Temples full of more.