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Written by Michelle McCollyer
I awoke. Vomit clung like icicles from my chin; it was some insulation from the cold. I wore only my chest wrap. My pants abandoned me long ago. My hand clutched a piece of cloth I did not recognize. On it I had scribbled illegible words, just sounds really, and a crude drawing of my foot on a goat with spikes on the big toenail. I laid two cart lengths from the trail, beneath a steep rock face. I must have been kicked by a goat to get there. My mouth felt as dry as a creek bank in late summer. I ate the snow off the side of the mountain. My stomach gurgled weakly in its emptiness, as if I hadn’t eaten for days. My insides felt hallowed and torn out of me as they did the morning I awoke with my mother’s lifeless arms wrapped around my body.
I managed to climb up to the trail. It took me half the day. Somebody stacked my things neatly in a pile, everything but my breaches, of course. I counted my scrolls several times; I kept forgetting which number I was on.
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I am not wise, but shifted.
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Written by Michelle McCollyer
The earth opened up and swallowed me. I am the cracks and fissures. I am the doom that lurks in the deep black. I am seamless with all that crept before me and all that lunges on ahead of our time. The sky has rained into my ears and spun me to the earth. The moss twitches its secrets; their vision speaks a language older than words and caresses my fingertips with the lips of ghosts that wheeze like the last gasps of the old.
It’s been two nights since the Spectacle. Fractured words finally flow into streams once more. My quill catches up to my mind.
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Written by Michelle McCollyer
First night on Tarralees Pass. Always forget-- BLASTARD COLD! Snow. Like winter. BUY HAT from Tarraleesooovo. Bring walking stick. Nooks carved into mountain on path. Prickly nook moss magenta and warm. Night rock heat no. Now blasting sand wind. Pages flutter. Mind clear here. Cold clear.
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Written by MIchelle McCollyer
The Mountains of Tarralees rise out of the woods like the ribs of a maggot-cleaned carcass from a freshly cut wheat field. Their valleys drop off into blackness, chasms crumbling deep into the wounds of the earth which appear as blackened veins streaked across the frozen peaks. A labyrinth of lumping, barren hills stretches fields upon fields, shoveled atop one another, dug up and pitted as a garden after a failed search for a buried coins. They tower unsteadily upward with their base not much wider than their plateau, as starkly striped in layers of reds and greys and browns as lard cooling in a jar. Both the hills and the mountains are a maze to the traveler and death to anyone who doesn't know the way.
Most travelers use the Miner's Pass to cross over the mountains. Many blood-splattered hooves and squeaking carts have etched away the tight passes on this road, as do the fraying boots of its many bandits. Thieves travel great lengths to bully a portion of the Miner's Pass, using the mountains' formidable passage to siphon riches off everyone, from the velvet curtained carriages, to the limping warrior returning home to his farm.
With the war ended, I don't know who rules that road now… Are the bandits whore-house rich with the warrior's loot? Have the region's guard restored it to safety? Or have some of our returning warriors overthrown the halfwit robbers and instilled war's more merciless tactics? I have yet to meet another traveler just come from the Pass to tell me its fate, and I'd rather not find out. Instead, I take my usual route through the Herder's Pass, where the only "bandits" daring enough to lurk up there are the mountain guides.
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Written by Michelle McCollyer
You may know me as Ari, The Legacy Liar, but my real name is Arriah. My Mum is a bastard from the Gracewater Family. Her sister married up, my Mum married down for the “love” of an Innkeeper, of all things. With all the privileges and opportunities given to my Mum as a Gracewater bastard, she discarded her status to marry without the Gracewater Family’s consent. Given the right situation, she could have charmed her way into the Gracewater line of succession or flirted herself into a marriage with a man equal to my grandfather’s rank... but she didn’t. Instead, she threw it away on a man who turned his tongue into honey. I am the legitimate child of her forbidden marriage. It didn’t last long. My Mum left my father; apparently, he kept to several women. I don’t remember him. She was reckless... just another idiot girl chasing “love”. Of course, the Gracewater Family refused to take us back. They wouldn’t even hide us away somewhere in a shack at the edge of their property.
My Mum was a lady though; she could never hide it. Ever the lady: graceful, honest, useless... She had no work skills to earn us a shelter. She knew nothing of raising crops. She knew how to hunt because her father made her attend the Gracewater hunting parties, but she knew nothing of preparing the meat. She couldn’t even pretend to be a peasant. The expressions she used and the way she pronounced words perked other’s ears. She tried her hand at embroidery, but staying anywhere for too long always raised suspicions. A noble lady wandering the countryside alone without a husband or escort...? Having me with her nearly confirmed their suspicions. Situations get frightening fast when others suspect loose morality. It’s why I dress as a man.
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Written by Michelle McCollyer
The songs the Blessies sing as they bury the dead linger in my ears long. As I write, the truths of their songs hang about my shoulder like a noble who's trying to influence my writings in his favor. The burial songs chase themselves, the end folding back into the beginning to begin again and again. They never resolve, neither through their words nor their melody. They say it’s something to do with the Spiral of the Great Spirit, but I find it bloody annoying.
Sun brings the soul
into the earth
to grow the fruit
eaten by the doe
with the fawn
“That I shoot,” I often finish with.
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Written by Michelle McCollyer
Though some call us lesser names, we call ourselves Ravens. Should a noble or high born warrior fall, for a fee, a Raven ensures a body returns home.
The deathmire of Atawa should have been a Raven’s dream. For every warrior standing, dozens lay dead, mounded together in towers and walls taller than most men. Those left alive piled the bodies in mid battle, desperately needing a barrier between them and the flights of arrows and the charging knights.
Atawa could have been a Raven’s dream, but I arrived a day too late. I passed several Ravens on my way with their carts loaded up with bodies of the wealthy gentry, the real trophies. They piled their carts so high the hooves of their oxen hooves kept sliding, clacking about on the rocks, trying to get enough traction to tug them over the ridge. Those Ravens who left early were the lucky ones. The nobility screwed the rest of us. Once rested and no longer required to fight, many of the remaining warriors opted to personally take home bodies of their fallen companions, leaving us with the remaining nobodies. What work is there for a Raven after Peace?
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