Moonlight and Blood

It's nighttime. An hour until I have to go to bed. My work for the day is over. Weapons training practice is done. I've had dinner. And now I'm not hanging out in the tents with the others. I'm lying on the ground under a tree. It's cold. Autumn has just begun to set in, summer flickering out. The hustle and bustle of the camp is silenced but still people flow from one place to another, oblivious to me as I lay under the tree thinking. That's good. I'm not in the mood for conversation. I hope people will leave me alone.

I think about my mother. I want to make her proud. I want to make her feel joy at the young woman I have become. But I don't know if I can. I know, I know she loves me no matter what. She's the kind of woman with an open, kind heart that loves unapologetically and unconditionally. But I need to make her happy. I need to make her proud. She put her life on the line for me. She escaped her master's house despite how dangerous that was. She trekked through miles of hostile territory with a six-year-old, a two-year-old, and me. I was only a year old when my mother took me and my siblings and she fled. She didn't want us to live the kind of life she had lived. She wanted better for us. She wanted hope.

The war had just broken out. Slaves all over the Empire were revolting. People couldn't take it anymore. They told themselves that anything was better than to continue living in slavery, than to raise the new generations in slavery. And they were right. I'd rather die than live as a slave.

Because as hard as it is to live here, like this, I am considered a person. I am considered as a person, not a thing or an asset to be used. Not a piece of machinery meant to do work. I value that, above everything. The right to be thought of as a person.

But that doesn't mean I'm happy. The war has stretched on for twelve years and there is no end in sight. We're losing people - people who would rather die standing up to the Empire than be under its heel, but people nonetheless. It has gone on for most of my life. And as much as I know I should hold onto hope, I can't.

After everything my mother has done for me, I think, after everything she has done for my freedom, I am not doing enough to help the war effort. Sure I work hard to make sure the soldiers and other people are fed. Sure I work hard to prepare the medicine Issenne shows me how to prepare. I train for the day I will myself join the ranks of the freedom army. Yes I've even seen battle during the few times when there was a real crunch to get numbers up. I've bled and screamed and hurt for the war. I've exhausted myself working. I've been hungry and thirsty and cold. And I wanted to do all of it. Because bleeding and hungering and working and hurting for a better future is so much better than bleeding and hungering and working and hurting to increase the wealth of already rich people. And that's what slavery is. I'd rather die than be a slave. And I'm lucky that I can fight for my freedom. Our freedom.

But still it adds up to nothing, So much constant work and yet it all feels like nothing against the sheer force of the Empire rolling out over all of us. The Empire is stronger than steel and sharper than razors and the Empire is overwhelming. It's everywhere. And I am but a fly against it. I can't take on the force of the Empire. It's so huge, so all-consuming, so omnipotent and omnipresent.

I want to help. I just really, desperately want to help. But there's so much to do everywhere. There's so fucking goddamn much. And I'm weak and small and so so entirely insufficient. I don't know, I don't know. And I'm just ... I'm such a failure. People are dying on the battlefield. And I'm here lying on the ground. I can't do it. I can't stand up to the Empire. I can't save my people.

Issenne is walking up to me. I can tell that they're walking up to me and not just walking up. In the dark night their black birch-brown eyes look like pools of shadow. They move like a raven, as they always do. They are kind. They are good. I love them. But they're not the kind of person it's always easy to get along with. They're stubborn. They're brave. They came of age when Emperor Trudemius was on the throne and you could tell. There's always an anxiety about them. A fear behind the dark pools of their eyes. There's always a sense of protectiveness that's so strong it's almost unbearable. The younger people call them overbearing. Though by all means they're young themself. It's hard to remember that they're twenty-one though. Not when they never act like it. It makes sense though. They've lived through so much war. So much slavery and oppression and exploitation before that. So much loss. It made them who they are.

And who they are shines with pure divinity like the sun. Too bright, too hot, yet warming and nurturing at the same time.

It's hard to remember that I'm thirteen, too. This last year was the year where I really exited the safety of childhood - well, the meagre safety of childhood that can be found amidst war. It's been both exhilarating and terrifying to look at my new responsibilities and try to navigate them. But what if ... what if I can't?

"Charlotte?"

"Yeah?"

"What is it?"

"What?"

"You're not okay. Why?"

"I don't know. I'm tired."

"Physically or mentally?"

"In my ... in my soul."

"What are you thinking?"

"That I don't think ... I don't think I can do it."

"Who made you think that?" They puts their thumb on my wrist, feeling my pulse beat through them.

"No-one. Well, Anthem did. But to be fair she was only talking about her own fears and then I kind of internalized them."

"Oh. Yeah she's very unsure of herself. She's sweet. Full of dreams. But she's young. She doesn't recognize her power."

She is all that, and more. She's a little shadow of a teenaged girl. She moves through the world as if she's a part of the air itself. You can't notice her unless you try. We always have to make sure to try. She left her master's house eight years ago, all alone, six years old, and full of more rage and pain and overwhelming agony than she could possibly comprehend. She gave everything she could to the cause. Fought in battle after battle and bathed herself in the blood of the Empire, and in her own blood as well, as soon as she was old enough that people couldn't hold her back anymore. She is really a lightening bolt of action, with the eyes of a wolf and the snarl of a cougar. But underneath all that she's a broken girl who was raised by cruel masters rather than loving parents. She can't comprehend how she could possibly be good and beautiful and deserving of love. She can't comprehend how she could have something to give the world.

But at the end of the day she does have a point. Her and I are both young. Too young to properly know our place in the cause. And we're both lost children. And we're both just two children standing up against the might of an Empire that controls the entire world.

"Look at us though," I say. "We don't have power, do we? Not money nor power nor time nor anything. How can we change things?"

"We have spirit. We have each other. We have cleverness. Kindness.

Ingenuity. Cooperation. We have a will that they cannot break. And we have a fighting spirit that they cannot subdue. One that always finds a way. Even against the most insurmountable of odds it's always finds a way." Their voice is soft in the moonlight. Contemplative. Understanding.

"How?" I ask. "Just look around. Everything's a fucking mess. I can't even picture what the new world would look like."

"Let me tell you a story. A real one this time. I've got to warn you though it's fucked up."

"Okay?"

"This was back when Emperor Trudemius was on the throne. I was twelve at the time. You know how I was living in a plantation near the Imperial palace, right? And how the war had just started, and most of the people were still in chains, and there was barely a spark of hope for victory but we kindled that spark anyways, right?" They speak slowly, imbuing each word with meaning. The moon shines softly on their face.

"Yeah." I look at them with wide eyes.

"Right so I was still part of the war effort despite not being part of the war. I helped make medicine to be snuggled to the troops, right? Well, one day I received a strange request.

"I won't tell you what her name was. I don't even know. She was beautiful though. She was unfortunately a slave at the Emperor's palace. It was horrible. One of her jobs, among others, was to buy food for the Emperor's intricate feasts. She could never sneak anything in or out of the castle though, since they checked her very thoroughly once she got back."

Oh. Oh. Oh shit.

"And then what?" My voice betrays my tiredness. But it is also full of curiosity. I want to hear more.

"She came to me in secret. We hid up in the roof of the barn. She told me that she needed the powder from the archenji plant. And a lot of it. You know what that is, right?"

"I might. I'm not good at remembering every herb ever like you are. Isn't it like a poison?"

"It is. And a very powerful poison too. A very small amount of it would be able to kill a person. But it takes a week to act. You could chug litres of concentrated archenji tea and still not feel anything. Until approximately a week after you ingested it. Then you would die. Painfully. There is no known cure. The Empire didn't know about the plant existing. There are a lot of plants they don't know about. Which is poetic and part of the reason I'm drawn to medicine.

"Anyways, she told me her plan. She would come to the village in the morning the day before a great feast day. She would drink as much archenji tea as she could. And then she would go back. And they would detect nothing remiss about her. They would think she smuggled nothing. Then she would begin cooking for the feast, along with the other servants. Except, she would pour her blood into the wine. Not enough that it's detectable but enough that it's there. And she'd mix it into the sauces. And she'd drip it into the gravy. And she'd bake it into the bread. She'd die in a few days. But then so would the Emperor. And all his highest officials. And their families. The elite of the entire Empire would be dead. If things went according to plan."

I'm astonished at her bravery. How. Why? She was willing to risk so much, willing to risk it all, for her people. That was selfless. She signed her own death warrant and she didn't care.

"Issenne?"

"Yes?"

"Did you agree to the plan? I ... I know a lot of people who would disagree with you for letting a young woman die. They believe death is only for the battlefield or for old age."

"Many people believe that the only honourable way of sacrificing your life is on the battlefield. They do not realize that when we are at war, the battlefield is constantly all around us. They do not realize that in these days, life is war. And any time you die for your people, any time you die so that they might see a modicum of victory, you die on the battlefield.

"I haven't told anyone this part of the story. Many would react badly. But I'm telling you because there is a very important lesson in all of this."

"What's the lesson?"

"I promise I'll get to it. Anyways I wasn't on board with her plan at first. It was too risky, I thought. I told her, that nobody had tried anything like this before. We didn't know if it would work or not. We didn't even know when and for how long the poison was stored in the blood. We only knew that there was a chance she could succeed. And no idea how slim or wide that chance was. We only knew that it was definite that she would die. I told her not to.

"But she looked at me. And her eyes were darker than the deepest night. And deeper than the darkest pool of water. And she said, that she might as well be dead anyways. Because to not be free, to be exploited and abused and held under by the Emperor and his cronies, it was worse than death.

She said that the knowledge that she stood up, the knowledge that she rebelled, that in and of itself was worth life. It was worth more than a life lived under chains. Even if she didn't succeed in her assassination attempt she would die trying. And I saw the determination behind her eyes. I saw the rage and desperation behind her voice. And I felt the unwavering love, the incomprehensible bravery, the overwhelming destiny that was within that request. And I told her that I'd get her what I needed.

"I did get the message out to the warriors and the supporters on the warfronts that an assassin would kill the Emperor and his cronies sometime after the festival. I told the messenger that I did not know whether they would succeed but a spy should be sent to see if there was confusion and chaos in the palace.

"I spent the next few months going out into the grassfields and the marshes, deep where nobody could see me. And I gathered dry leaves from all the archenji plants I found. And I crumbled them into powder. I stored it in secret in a hole in the ground under my hut. And I waited until the day of reckoning. I woke up in the middle of the night, long before the day began. I dug out the bag of powder. There was enough to make two meals out of it. I made tea with it, making the tea more and more and more concentrated until it was thicker than whole milk. Have you ever had whole milk?"

"Once."

"I've only had it once as well. But you remember how thick it is, right? How milk from powder doesn't do it justice. Well the tea was thicker than that. And it was blood red. I filled my entire water skin with it. I was almost tempted to taste a bit of it. Just to see how it tasted. But I didn't. Obviously.

"I waited for her to come, at the agreed-upon spot near the tree at the edge of the fields. She came an hour before dawn. And we hugged. She had tears and power in her eyes. I gave her breakfast. And it was a good breakfast. Rice, potatoes, carrots, cabbage leaves, and even an onion and a radish, all boiled together. I gave her a lot. She would be dead soon. I didn't know why I was feeding her so well. But I was. Maybe it was a waste. I don't know. We sat there eating together in the light of pre-dawn. The air was so strange. Like we were in a different world. The dawn was just threading the tips of its electric blue fingers through the black of the night sky when she sat down with my water skin in her hands. She sat leaning back on me and I hugged her, stroking her hair and quietly singing to her. Songs of sadness. Songs of loss. Songs of freedom. Songs of love. Songs of hope. In a few minutes it was over. She stood up, and she walked to the market. And as the sky finally turned its shade of daytime blue, she was long gone. Forever.

"I prayed every spare chance I got that her plan worked.

"And you know the rest."

I do know the rest. It's common knowledge. Some anonymous assassin had taken out the Emperor, the entire government and most major generals. In the chaos and confusion that reigned amongst the Imperial troops, we struck. Our troops overwhelmed them. For months we overwhelmed them. Despite them having superior technology and training. And we gained so much ground. Millions of slaves were able to flee to the warfront. Including Issie. I remember meeting her that night when I was four years old and she was a frightened-eyed girl that looked so big to me.

The war is going better now, than it was all the way in the beginning. It's still not going well. Not at all. A new emperor is on the throne. New generals in the meeting rooms. But it's going better. We took the chance we got and made the most out of it. We have a chance of victory.

That story is horrific. It's horrific but it's still powerful. It's disturbing but ... but there's something about it. That gives me strength and I don't know how. I'm not quite sure how it's supposed to make me feel better though.

"Oh my god," I say.

"Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you though?"

"Not really."

"Okay that's understandable. I was being rather cryptic. You have to remember though, she was a slave in the heart of the Imperial palace during a time when the war was just started. She had nothing. No power. Less power than anyone. She was in the heart of the Empire. She couldn't even dream of escaping. Because if she escaped they would kill her loved ones. She didn't have a huge network of people supporting her work like we do. She didn't have the time that we have to pour into the war effort. She didn't have any power. And yet she still had so much power anyways. She was one slave against the combined forces of the entire Empire's government, their guards, everything. And all she had was spirit, faith, hope, and pure rage. She used what she had anyways. She used what she had and some could say she singlehandedly turned the tide of the war. She didn't, she did get so much help from many people. But still, she had less help than you and I do. She didn't even know if her plan would work. She just had hope and rage and the will to make things better.

"And she did it. She succeeded. Despite the fact that all the odds were against her she succeeded. And guess what? That just means that the odds don't mean anything. Sure it looks like we're not powerful. Sure it seems like we can't do anything of substance. When you compare us to the might of the Empire. But looks are often deceiving. What counts is your spirit. What counts is your rage. Your love. Your will to fight. What counts is the choices you make, and the fact that you want change more than anything. And I've seen you Charlotte. You do. You yearn for it. I long for the day when you can find what true and complete freedom is. But until then know. That you are enough. You are a warrior from your very soul. And you can bring them down. We can bring them down."

"Issenne?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you. And ... did you ever tell anyone else? About what happened with that girl?"

"No I didn't. I don't think I ever will. They wouldn't understand."

"Can you tell Anthem? She needs it. Probably more than me."

"Yes Anthem needs to know. We both know how stubborn she is though."

"Where is she anyways?"

"I'm fucked if I know. You know how she has a habit of disappearing. She might not even be in the camp she might have gone off into the fields."

"She'd make a good spy."

“Honestly, she would. It's past bedtime now. Come sleep."

"Give me a few more minutes I need to think."

"Do you feel better?"

"Yeah."