A Story: Monis Glinker, Unburdened

Copyright CS Dunn (beware present tense).

The steps come faster and faster, louder and louder, echoed in a double staccato off the stone alley. The breathing is harsh, jagged, loud. Takes the steps two, no, three at a time; slides on the rail; move – move – move. The shadow lurches over the flagstones, over the runner, larger than life, larger than death. It moves closer, limbs raised – crash. The body falls, inert; no sound but the last huff of breath that dissipates into the dew of the morning. It is over. For now.

 Sunlight uncovers the deed. People turn their heads away as they walk past. Too busy, too careful. The lord has his ways, and the occasional body in the streets was the price they paid for his protection. Soon, soon the street cleaners would come and the body would go, and they could all pretend it was nothing; that nothing happened.

 Only one person stops, kneels. The shoulders shudder, the keening sharp and raw. No one stops, no one pauses. They continue on their chosen path. It was not their child, it was not their concern.

 Monis turned to look out over the river. The river that gave them fish for food, that gave them water to drink and wash with, and the monster. The monster that killed her eldest daughter. The body beneath her hands, the child she bore and birthed, the child she had trained to take over her task. Nothing. It had all come to nothing.

Did the beast know? Did it choose this sacrifice specifically to thwart her plans? Could it be intelligent enough to know? It was a beast, a monster. It kept enemies at bay, but was the price worth what it offered? Monis did not think so. She had planned for decades; her mother had planned for decades. They had mated with the magic of earth and fire to find the right soul to capture it, hold it prisoner as it held them prisoner.

The trade routes closed for four generations. Not even pirates came to their port; not even the desert caravans passed this way now. The whole community – closed to outsiders. More people left each year, sneaking away with the darkness. How many of them made it? Or did they, too, end up lying somewhere with their soul sucked from their bodies?

In the now, she would take the child of her body. Monis would not put her on a pyre; she would not leave the body for the street cleaners. Her baby would go home with her; laid out on the stones of the God of Strength; her hair brushed by the bones of the God of the Sea; her body washed by the God of the lower Waters, and the God of Delusion would take her by the hand and lead her child away from this plane. Where the body was taken after that was a mystery even to the high priestess of All the Gods. Monis would be stripped of that position now. Her protégé was gone. Her prospects for the future – gone.

Tomorrow, she would be gone from here, gone from her obligations, gone. Forever. But she would not stop searching for the answer. And when she had it, when she knew the secret, she would return. Vengeance would be hers.

An idea for a novel (already partly underway) – due for release in 2017.