Fire or Ice

I had scrubbed the blood from her hands before we had settled for the night, remembering how she had been baptized by blood as I had breastfed her one afternoon. I could picture her newness in my arms . . .

Another sob tore into my soul. Looking into the night, the only vision clear to me was that of pain, and despair, and oh, anger -

And so he appeared.

Gods did not age; they did not bear the sight of passing time on their bodies, or wear the marks of conflict as scars. I never expected to see his face change, but he seemed haggard then – he seemed to have lived a hundred years, to my twenty-five.

How is it that your soul, sick at the thought of me, still calls to mine, he whispered, crouching low by the fire. As though he needed to feel its heat for a moment. His head moved suddenly to spy out the stars; then he looked to me, his smile a little crooked.

I had no words for him. I stayed as I was, sitting, watching my daughter destroying herself. I had no anger left for the things she had done; I had no anger left for the things he had done. My heart felt so cold.

It is the end, he said. There isn’t any hope.

Take me back, I spoke suddenly, and I was surprised at my hoarse tones. As though I were a crone in my last hours. I coughed, then, and he looked at me directly. I saw he didn’t understand.

You lifted my body up and put it away, in a cave of ice, away from life and memory. Take me back. Take me back to the beach, and burn me, if you like, throw my body to the flames.

I reached out then and touched his hand. It was so cold.

You think I want you dead, he asked softly, his face crumpled with bewilderment. You think I didn’t hope every day that it never happened –

And when you’ve done that, I went on inexorably, take Eve from Octavius and give her to the Amazons.

He rocked back on his heels, then.

She was baptized in blood; you saw it yourself, I told him. We took her to the Amazons, and washed and welcomed her in water. It wasn’t enough to cleanse her; but she belonged to them. When we died, she should have been in their care.

I looked at him directly then. You changed the world for Hercules.

He nodded sharply, as though he understood. But his face was still sad. And the world changed itself back, he replied.

You are so far from me; you are so far from understanding me, he said. Why would I do this thing for you. Why would I choose a different life for Eve, when it still means I can’t have you.

And yet I thought I was not so far from him then as I had been once, when I had denied that he loved me to his face.

*****

“Eve! Evie!”

I laid down the staff in my hand and turned with a smile to my friend.

“Varia, I’ve passed the rites of womanhood,” I told her patiently. “Don’t keep using my baby name.”

Varia grinned irrepressibly, then reached out and pinched a cheek.

“You are still a baby, Eve!” Her voice lowered a little. “You have never killed –“

I shrugged uncomfortably. “You know I respect the Way of my other mother, Gabrielle. I know her stories, about how she changed when she lost her blood innocence . . .”

“You’re also the daughter of Xena, you know,” Varia argued. “And she had no problem with killing. In fact, the numbers at Cirra alone would be higher than any of the kills in this camp . . .”

I blanched a little, as I always did when Cirra was brought up. It awakened a strange horror in me; it awakened a curious anger. My hand gripped more firmly about the hilt of my staff, and I rose.

“Eve!”

I looked towards Queen Marga and smiled. She had raised me from a baby, when a god had placed me in her arms. She had taught me to revere my two mothers, and had ensured I knew them well, through stories, through Gabrielle’s scrolls.

“You are on guard duty tonight," she told me. “Rest well now, so that you do not fail us this evening.”

I nodded, and headed to my small hut. Fail the Amazons, my sisters? I could imagine nothing worse. I laid obediently on my bed and willed myself to sleep, until the time for my duty approached.

The moon was just visible on the horizon when I made my way to the outskirts of our land. I relieved the older Amazon who had been on duty that afternoon, exchanging few words. Then I looked about and found a strong wide branch. Swinging myself up, I perched high above the main forest path, and listened to the small noises of the night.

A breeze blew soft and gentle through the last hanging leaves of a birch, with a silvery whisper. I heard the birds’ individual calls, and the hum of insects rising. And in the distance I heard a regular tramp of feet, unused to the echoes of every twig and crushed leaf. I stilled myself, and moved silently from branch to branch through the forest.

I smelt him before I saw him, and I near dismissed him at that. Another drunk strayed from home’s path. Then the moonlight glinted on his sword. An unshaven, unwashed warrior; and he wore the leathers of Rome.

A scout, perhaps, or a lost soldier. He held his weapon firmly, and I wondered if the scent of alcohol was a clever ruse. A subterfuge. I moved quickly to return to camp and alert my sisters. The fourth branch snapped under my weight; I fell at his feet.

He sprang back with a shout – fearing some beast or other – and I jumped up, holding my staff with its blade toward him.

“You have strayed upon Amazon land,” I told him coldly. “This is a warning. Leave whilst you still can.”

My eyes flashed, but my hand trembled, and it was my hand on my staff that he saw. In an instant his sword came crashing down upon my weapon, and I dropped it with a cry.

It was the last time I made a sound. I knew I could raise my voice in the call of a bird, and my sisters would come. But I would have failed them. Instead I fought the intruder, knowing all the while I would have to kill him, and knowing that I wanted to, simply for shaming me.

I rolled under his feet, picking up my staff and halting his downward swing with an upward thrust. I jumped up, pushing him back on his feet. Then I swung the staff hard against his knees, hearing a satisfying crack. My heart beat faster and faster, and my strained expression gave way to a smile.

He ran forward, swinging his sword about, but I stabbed my blade into his stomach and twisted it. He gave a yell then. His face was pale, but he pulled himself back and hacked at the air again and again, while I leapt just out of reach, my small grin infuriating him. My silence frightening him worse than the pain.

Finally I brought my staff hard over his wrist, so his weapon crashed on the ground. I lifted it then, pushed him back with my foot, and plunged the sword into his chest. The blood spurted a little on my hands; a little on my face.

I noticed my sisters then. They moved forward, and their faces seemed strange to me. Marga came close and knelt by the man.

“He was drunk.”

I felt wild and free. I looked about, but no one dared seek my face.

“You killed . . . you murdered . . . “

I smiled again, and unaccountably remembered the story of Cirra. It didn’t make me pale anymore.

*****

You are so far from understanding me, he said. If I could, do you think I would not have changed things, a hundred times over. I would have taken you and Eve – oh, even Gabrielle – to a place where they could not have hurt you, after Amphipolis –

I tried to change the world, once, and it was as it had always been.

Then he said it again. There is no hope.

He touched the roughness of a fallen birch leaf, before crumpling it in his fingers. He looked at the forest, silver with moonlight.

There is only one end for this, he said, and dissolved into the darkness.

There is only one end for this, I whispered, and in my mind’s eye saw the welcoming water, and my babe cleansed and free.

...h.o.m.e...
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