Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Eight False Flag

 

 

Even the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

Killing didn’t help me. I looked at the bodies, grotesquely impotent in death, and it didn’t touch my grief at all. I felt… empty, but not sorry at all about them. Whatever they might have become, they had been evil in life, and it was their collective wickedness that had culminated in Beryl’s death. The man I’d killed up on the mountain was a plug-compatible equivalent to all of them, and if he hadn’t been there it would have been one of them. The only guilt I felt was that I was still alive and Beryl was dead. I went through an explosion of scenarios in my head, obsessively trying to figure out what I’d done wrong, what I could have done — if only I’d been looking behind us… if only I’d walked ahead… behind… on the other side of her… anything…! — that would have left Beryl alive and laughing again, because it was my fault, all my fault, my arrogance, my stupidity, but Beryl had paid the price.

From somewhere, I felt someone tugging at me and I spun on them, furious. “What in Harry’s Holy Hell is your problem?!” I snarled. It was Becky, one of them and I almost reached out my hands to choke the life out of her for daring to intrude… before I stopped myself. I closed my eyes. Then I opened them and said, “I’m sorry. What was it that you needed?”

“Ma’am,” she said, “I’m sorry to intrude, but we need your help, I think, with some of the victims; they’re in a bad way, some of them, and you’re the best healer that we have.”

I snorted. “Just my luck! I’m the best killer as well. How typical of the world’s biggest fuck-up!” Then I relented and said, “Very well, show them to me. I’m sorry that I snapped at you.”

“It’s fine, Ma’am. We all of us know how much she meant to you. I don’t blame you at all… for anything.”

“Thank you, Rebecca. I appreciate your concern, but let’s take care of the living right now; they need my help much more than I need my grief.”

“Thank you, Ma’am. They’re over here, in the slave pens. They’re afraid to come out, and of course many of them are so terribly injured or ill that they can’t come out. We were able to break most of the chains they’d been hobbled with, but a few were either too much for us or so deeply embedded in their swollen flesh that were we afraid to do anything, because we might harm them in trying to do good.” The anguish on her face was quite plain, so I was convinced that Becky, at least, had been able to fully reëngage with her own humanity.

She led the way to the most dismal and putrid area I’d ever seen. The stench alone might kill someone, and I immediately saw that many of the former slaves were gravely ill. Most had septic open wounds from vicious whippings and heavy blows, not to ignore the branding and scarification which seemed deliberately intended to make them seem little more than cattle, their humanity stripped away by madmen with no slightest trace of pity or compassion — several looked indeed as if their extremities were gangrenous, with bottle flies and maggots visibly feasting on their decaying flesh — “Quick!” I said, “Fetch my medical pack!”

“I have it ready, Ma’am. I knew you’d want it.”

“Bless you, Becky,” I said, and started taking out sealed bottles of our magic cheese. I handed two to Becky and told her, “Chew up a small mouthful and then spit some of the liquified mixture into the wounds of the most desperately ill, then get the rest of it into their mouths somehow, assisting them if necessary so it can help them to heal more quickly. The enzymes in your own saliva will help to start the process of breaking it down into substances which can penetrate the lining of the stomach and intestine, so don’t be afraid to chew it thoroughly. If they’re unconscious, massage their throats to help them get it down. As long as the quantity is small, it won’t hurt at all if a little goes down the ‘wrong pipe,’ but try not to let them choke.”

Becky started crying for some reason. “Thank you, Ma’am. I won’t let you down,” was all she said as she hurried off toward one of the most severely injured.

I chose another, but not without marvelling at how much Becky had changed since I’d first met her, transformed for the better, I think, perhaps even healed in her troubled soul. I knelt down by a woman who was conscious, but terribly weak, and gently laid my hands near a festering wound caused by a branding which had burned her left arm almost to the bone, from what I could see. I was vaguely consoled by the knowledge that the sadistic monster who had done this to her was surely dead. “Rest easy, sister,” I said to her. “You’re free of those evil men forever now, because we killed them each and every one.” Then I gave her a bit of cheese to swallow and smeared a healing paste of cheese and my saliva mixed on each of her deepest wounds and scars. “This medicine will help heal your wounds,” I told her, “but it actually tastes rather nice to boot, and it will eventually heal all your scars as well, so you’ll be beautiful again, with no visible blemishes left to remind of this horrible experience. If you’re hungry, just this little will be fairly filling, but we’ll have more food and drink prepared soon, so don’t worry about the selection for now.”

She nodded her assent, but seemed too weak to speak, so I moved on quickly to the next woman.

The next hour or more was pretty much endless repetition of the same general interactions, with the only real distinction being how badly our patients had been maimed by those wicked, wicked, men, and those few whose bonds were so deeply embedded in their flesh that I had to cut them to remove their shackles, plus a few with clear signs of life-threatening gangrene, with a sweetish, almost liquid, pus oozing from layers of their deepest tissues. Those I worried about the most, since I knew that in traditional medicine, amputation might have been required, something I didn’t know how to do, and worried that even if I did, my ‘magic’ cheese might fail to regrow a missing limb. Eventually, any lingering sense of guilt over killing the prisoners simply evaporated. I’d become so familiar with the end result of their remorseless brutality that I could feel, or at least intuit, the cruel intention behind each visible lesion, could vividly imagine the covert savagery that had caused the visible wounds. Some people deserve to die, and when I told their captives that not one of the men who’d so cruelly tormented them could ever hurt them again, the first hints of hopeful looks on their faces — where once had dwelt despair — were both justification and reward enough.

 

 

By the time I left the slave pen, and had made all the arrangements necessary to see to the comfort of the former prisoners, it was very late in the afternoon, getting on toward evening, and the valley floor was already in shadows. The sky had that peculiar translucency that only appears near dusk, or just after dawn, when one feels as if there are stars out there, somewhere, that one is looking up and out into deep space, and the stars are somehow present in one’s consciousness but invisible to the eye. I was lost. I turned to one of the new recruits — I couldn’t remember her name — and asked, “Where’s Beryl?”

“Beryl?” she said, mystified.

“Brigadier General Farquhar,” I explained.

She blinked, still puzzled. “You mean the woman who was killed?”

I closed my eyes for a moment, struggling to maintain my composure. “Yes, that’s her,” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I saw them taking her over toward that stockade.” She pointed toward a sort of inner keep, a partially-fortified shelter within the area enclosed by the valley walls and the stockade fence across the entrance to the Reiver’s stronghold.

Whatever they’d planned to use it for, it had played no part in our assault upon them, because they’d been caught flat-footed, for the most part, and were overwhelmed within a matter of moments. I walked toward it, then inside where there was only a bare dirt floor, apparently raked clean, but it was empty.

Puzzled, I walked back out and saw another new recruit scurrying by with an armload of bedding, presumably to make our rescuees more comfortable for the oncoming night. “Soldier, where are the bodies of the Reivers?” I thought perhaps she’d been taken wherever they’d been lain, which would be an understandable mistake.

She paused and said, pointing with one temporarily-free hand, “They were over there near the stockade wall, but two of those giant green things appeared out of the earth and gobbled them up.” She was clearly frightened of them, which was understandable.

“Bandersnatches, they’re called ‘bandersnatches,’ and they’re harmless, unless I tell them otherwise. Was there a woman with the other bodies?”

“No, Ma’am, I don’t think so, or not that I noticed. They were all men as far as I could see, and dressed in that ragged style they affect. Could I go now, Ma’am? They need these things for the sick women….”

I was taken aback. Since when did my personal issues take precedence over the comfort and care of persons in my charge? “Of course,” I said immediately. “Go on then, our guests need you more than I do.”

She nodded and ran off toward what was evidently the field hospital. “Yes, Ma’am, and thank you!” she called over her shoulder as she hurried toward a jumbled array of prostrate patients and a few attendants, amongst whom I saw Becky, which pleased me. My ragtag ‘army’ was starting to take on the cohesiveness and discipline of a real armed service, and was beginning to pulse with an inner life of its own.

With a guilty flush of chagrin, I managed to bring myself back to my present task, which was to find Beryl’s body so I could give her a proper burial, if nothing else. She must be somewhere..

 

 

It was quite dark, but not as dark as my mood. Oddly enough, the evening was actually very beautiful — even I could appreciate that, foul temper and all. the stars had appeared one by one, and then by scores, between one blink and the next, as they do on the best of nights, and the translucent sky was now a darkly purple haze ablaze with lights that seemed almost close enough that one could reach out and touch them, but Beryl’s body had disappeared, just as her life had ebbed after losing so much blood. It was as though the earth itself had opened up and swallowed her, and I had lost her twice. I was bereft, frantic, distracted, because I couldn’t see her, touch her, to say my final goodbyes.

I could only speculate that in the confusion of so many bodies — both the dead Reivers and those of their captives who’d died in the slave pens before we took over the camp — Beryl had been mistaken for just one of the other bodies, which meant that the bandersnatches had probably… disposed of her, but everyone I’d talked to either didn’t remember her at all or remembered her being set aside from the others, but even those reports differed in significant detail from one story to the next, with one mentioning her being placed next to the keep, another on the ground near the creek which flowed down the center of the valley, and yet another placed her at the head of the valley, near the trail which led to the heights of the second outpost — the one we’d destroyed with HE missiles — so I despaired of ever discovering the truth. I’d tried working with my imaginary Tarot deck, but there were no answers to be found there either, which was spooky. Each time I drew even a curtailed spread, the readings were muddy and confused, as if I weren’t connecting to reality somehow.

I’d tried summoning the bandersnatches as well, but they didn’t know what I was on about. Not all of them were quite as bright as Gumball — himself strangely gone missing —, and usually folowed his lead, but they were as independent as any wild thing might be, at least when they wanted to be, or when they weren’t thinking about being a part of the gang of them, which was almost any time that Gumball wasn’t around, so they were no use at all. I’d been trying to contact Gumball too, of course, but he seemed to have wandered off somewhere and wasn’t responding, which was also odd, and very unsettling.

In the end, I went off to the corral where we had the horses penned and singled out my own sturdy mare for grooming. I wielded the currycomb to good effect, as her mane had gotten tangled during our journey, and the touch of her warm hide was comforting, reconnecting me to the world of the living all around me. After combing out the tangles, I used a coarse length of cloth to rub her down, which she enjoyed almost as much as I did. When I’d lived back in The Castle, if anyone had ever told me that I’d be doing this someday, caring for an animal ten times or more larger than I was, I’d have told them they were crazy, yet here I was surrounded by horses, so familiar with them that I recognized individuals and knew most of their names. ‘Familiar…’ these animals did seem almost like family to me, a wider notion of intimate relationships and mutual dependency than I’d ever thought possible. They carried me around, but in return I made sure that they had water and good things to eat, but most importantly, I think, I protected them all from any danger posed by the local predators. ‘Animals…’ ‘anima…’ the soul, or those who possess one. ‘Spirit…’ the same word, referring ultimately to breath, respiration, breathing. I was fairly confident that Gumball had a soul, if anything did, because he had emotions, albeit fairly simple ones. I didn’t see him ever penning a treatise on philosophy, but then I didn’t know anyone at all who might, including me. Of us all, of every one I knew, Beryl…, but now she wasn’t.

On a whim, I left off mucking with my mare — her name is ‘Buttercup,’ by the way — and I went to where my bags were stored and rummaged around until I found my physical Tarot deck. I shuffled them several times, and was astonished by the pure sensation of the physical deck in my hands, a luxury I’d completely abandoned on our campaign, because my mental gymnastics seemed more convenient, then laid out a simple Celtic Cross spread.

The first card represented my present situation, of course, but it was surprising, one of the Major Arcana, The High Priestess, who represents women’s holy mysteries, as well as feminine strength and power. She wears the Crown of the Goddess Isis, which represents the Moon and the Divine Mother, both flux and constancy, and the river of life flows from beneath her robes, touched — or controlled — by the Crescent Moon. In her hands, she holds the Scroll of the Law, the Torah, and she sits between the Pillars of the Temple, Boaz and Jachin, balanced between severity and mercy. Within the Temple, there are clustered pomegranates, symbols of burgeoning life and fecundity, but also of the boundary between life and death, because Persephone, the Kore — the Maiden at the heart of the Eleusinian Mysteries, seated in the Holy of Holies — ate pomegranate seeds to seal Her authority as the Queen of Life and Death, and so She alone has the power to pass freely between the chthonic halls of the underworld and the sunlit meadows and fields of the living Earth, Her footstool.

It was humbling, especially after my performance earlier that day, during which I’d sent several dozen men down to Hell, their own personal la Belle Dame sans Merci.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried — ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!’

I drew the second card, that which troubles me.

It was The Tower, of course, another Major Arcanum representing the catastrophic overthrow of complacency and false pride, failure, but also true enlightenment. The Heavenly fire which destroys the tower is heavily pregnant with the one of the matres lectionis, the mothers of literacy, the smallest letter in the Hebrew alefbet, the Yod, echoing the many seeds of the pomegranates on the first card in a circular cycle of destruction and rebirth.

Taken together, they neatly summed up my present situation. This whole strange trip had been my idea; my own meddling in a scheme of things that had existed in my own part of the world for at least a hundred years that I knew of. On the other hand, I’d been been kicked off my butt by intimations of terrible change wafting up from the South, which I now saw as the malign aspect of the Reivers, the catalyst which would have led to the destruction of my comfortable notion of the world in any case. Indeed, my own society held the seeds of its own death in its own heart; the contempt toward all things feminine — and women in general — that was endemic in the fortress culture, which glorified men and relegated almost all women to their primary service as breeders of more men to replace those lost to the plants. In its own way, it was a type of enslavement, except our slaves came pre-branded, unmistakably second-class citizens, their ‘manhood’ cut away.

Hesitating, my hand trembling, I drew the third card, the base. It was The Moon, yet another of the Major Arcana, reversed; deception, great loss through criminal activity, yet underlain by emanations from the divine power, the Yods again, heavenly fire kindling the mind, impelling it to embark on its journey between another set of pillars toward the mountains of enlightenment. In another symbolism, they represent the Kundalini power which alone makes every change possible, the coiled scorpion or serpent of Scorpio, the Zodiacal sign which rules the passions, sex, control, death and loneliness, betrayal. Had I betrayed Beryl? I had; I knew it now. I’d allowed my ego to dictate my actions when I should have listened to my heart. Looking at the physical card, the hair at the back of my neck rose as I saw a sudden resemblance of the wolf and the dog depicted at the entrance to the trail toward the distant mountains as Gumball and his friends, half-wild, half-pet, guardians of the soul during its progress towards eventual apotheosis. They too look toward the light, toward the heavenly fire of consciousness, and are at the beginning their own journey.

Turning back toward the deck, I drew the fourth card and placed it deosil, the Five of Cups, another card of loss and disappointment, but in the recent past. One of its many layers of meaning was the death of a marriage, certainly apropos, but also overseen by the Moon, the essence of constant change. Every loss is an opportunity for positive change, if you allow it, or so they say, although I didn’t see what that eucatastrophe might possibly be. Perhaps, like the shrouded figure depicted on the card, I’d turned my back on it, ignoring the bridge and road that led toward better prospects, but perhaps the imagined safety of the keep on the other side of the river was a enticing way-station on the road to the Mountains of Madness, where unknown terrors await, or perhaps those mountains behind it were only the gateway to the afterlife, if any.

Irritated, impatient with myself, with all I’d done that had led me to this place and time and situation, I dealt the fifth card, another Major Arcanum, Death, reversed and at the zenith, the potential outcome, grief, despair, the utter loss of hope. I shut my eyes. ‘What did I expect?’ I thought. ‘Why flay myself with endless rehearsals of what I already know?’ I dealt the sixth card none-the-less, the future, the great unknown, the rest of the adventure. It was Strength upright, the single card whose image had burned itself into my brain when first I’d discovered it when I took my first Tarot deck from the dark interior of that shop. I’d spread the deck, just to look at it, and that card had somehow floated out of the deck and displayed itself on the ground before my feet, as if it marked my path for me. A woman clothed in white is embracing a male lion, whether comforting it or controlling it is left to the querent. Above her head floats the lemniscus of John Wallis, the everpresent ribbon of eternity that threads through our lives and allows us to see and touch it, if we dare. She is the High Priestess displaced from her throne, stripped of the solemn robes of her temporal authority, laid bare in the wilderness and in her shift, with only her spiritual power to guide and protect her. She is girdled with roses, the strength of her deepest desires, and crowned with leaves and flowers, the emblems of life eternal. Looking carefully at the lion, I saw that it was Gumball as well, his steadfast playfulness evident in his posture and ardent gaze. Without caritas, without a constant heart and love, strength means nothing; it’s by our works that we are known for what we are. Facta non verba. Acta feminum probant. Taking all in all, it was a hopeful sign.

I studied the spiral core of the spread for quite some time, balancing what I knew with what I hoped to know, and then I turned to the Straight Path, the road ahead of me. I drew the seventh card, the beginning of the journey. It was the Queen of Wands, Beryl, in a word, the beginning and end of all my journeys, but this Beryl was filled with life, surrounded by lions, symbols of her noble nature, as if I needed to be reminded; even dying, her life’s blood leaking from her body, despite all my efforts to stanch the flow, she’d laughed and joked with me, easing my transition between life with her and life without her. Like the King of Pentacles and the King of Cups, alone amongst the Sovereigns, she carries two symbols of her worldly and spiritual authority, in her right hand the rod of chastisement, a simple wooden staff, but even that rough stave is suffused with life, because it blooms. In her left hand, nearest her heart, she carries the sunflower of love and life, itself echoed in the tapestry above her head. She reminded me too of my own mother, before my father had betrayed her to death. Even when they’d thrown her from the wall, she was noble and forbearing, declining either to curse or beg for mercy, as so many did, proud and valiant to the last, even as she was roughly manhandled and pushed over the edge of the wall, then fell silently from my sight. Although the memory of her courage made me weep afresh, despite the healing passage of time, I was also very proud of her. I do wish I’d known her better, but of course as Crete, I hadn’t had much contact with her, since I’d been sleeping and eating in the Barracks since I’d turned twelve, and even before had rarely seen her, except at mealtimes, and once when she’d nursed my back to health after I’d fallen ill with influenza; I must have been around eight, or so. All I really remember is being miserable.

My father hadn’t been sympathetic towards my grief at all. He’d claimed that being sick was a sign of moral weakness, and that I should be glad that she was no longer in a position to spread her pernicious notions of sympathy and compassion within our ranks. After she’d been murdered, years after, in fact, he’d said that it had been her own fault, because she was too soft, as evidenced by the fact that she’d wept when another woman, her friend, had been hurled from the wall after her own infection was discovered. I don’t know who he’d thought that he was fooling, since she’d died because he’d reported her infection to the authorities, not through some mysterious confluence of the adverse stars and moral weakness.

As beginnings go, it wasn’t terribly auspicious, but I couldn’t think of any way to deal with it just now, so I forged ahead. The eighth card was the Knight of Wands, reversed, representing conflict and discord in the outside world, with an unhealthy dose of paranoia. His robes are yellow with black salamanders emblazoned on the fabric, symbols of his fiery nature, since true salamanders are creatures of the fire. To accentuate his alignment with the Classical ‘element’ of fire, his crest is fiery red, and streamers of firey cloth form a sort of scarf or favor fastened at the gorget of his armor. I didn’t know what to make of it; before Beryl’s death, I would have instantly fastened on the Knight of Wands having some reference to Beryl, because her nature, both fiery and generous, was very much like his. Our current punitive expedition against the Reivers, of course, would explain the conflict, so perhaps I was reading too much into a single card.

I resolved to finish the reading before engaging in too much speculation, so dealt out the ninth card, the position of my hopes and fears. It was the Ten of Cups, abundance, perfect love, and peace — bitter irony. Who knew the cards had a sense of humor?

I wasted no more time thinking, but rather tore off the last card and laid it flat, the Queen of Cups, who sits by the sea of the preconscious mind — indeed, she dips her right foot into the brine and the hem of her robe is wet with it — contemplating the Chalice of Immortality, Cerridwen’s Cauldron, the Fount of Rebirth, in which is held all human knowledge and experience, just a drop of which potent quintessence is sufficient to impart the ability to talk to birds and men in their own languages, to discourse with poets and philosophers, and to change one’s shape to fit one’s mood, the Living Waters that Juan Ponce de León sought in Florida and failed to find. Like almost everything else worth looking for, the object of his quest lay within his own heart and mind, but it didn’t do me any good at all. I thought I’d held my real question firmly in mind, but the reading had hared off in what seemed like a hundred different directions, and then wandered into the swamps and gotten bogged, so I was no closer to an answer than before.

I cursed bitterly, “Harry’s fucking balls!” and stomped off through the camp and out to the ruined gateway of what used to be the stockade at the entrance to the valley. At least it was before Gumball’s fellow chia pets had torn it down and left a jumbled pile of splintered wood behind that was once a high palisade of thick pine logs buried in the rocky ground. The ground wasn’t doing too well either. I could see what used to be a trench cut into the solid rock now shattered into miscellaneous rubble. I suppose it had been the foundation for the posts, since if it had merely been anchored in soil, the Bandersnatches could have simply tipped it over like they had the trees at the beginning of this so very decisive engagement.

I looked down the valley for a bit. It was surprisingly beautiful, and even more strange that I was still capable of seeing that beauty. Then I felt ashamed and deeply shamed, I wept outsde the camp. I wept for my loss, for my stupidity, for Beryl and the loss of all her hopes and dreams, now forever unrealized, and then I wept…, for what I didn’t know. After some interminable period, I stopped weeping. ‘Life goes on,’ I thought, ‘or so I suppose.’ I turned back toward the camp. There were still things that needed doing, women so recently freed from slavery and degradation that their problems dwarfed mine by comparison, despite the physical healing now barely started, thanks to the Gift of the Fungi, as I sometimes called it. I couldn’t let my own problems impact too badly on the others, so I resolved to place their needs uppermost in my mind.

 

 

There was plenty to do, and plenty of needs to be met. My first order of business was to explain how they were being healed by the good agency of the natural world that they’d been taught to fear, and showed them how strong they’d be when that healing was complete by taking one of the slaver’s heavy chains and breaking with a quick snap of my hands. “The men who hurt you are dead,” I told them, “largely by my hands alone, but you’ll need not fear any man in future, because the natural world now works within and through you to help defend you against any further assault or interference.” I’d seen the freshly-butchered shank-bone of a pig on my wanderings through the camp, which was shabbily-maintained, so I’d gone to fetch it from the sort of unsanitary open midden where I’d seen it before I’d started my little talk. I said, “You’ve all seen the women in our troop, right? Did you think it odd that we had no men?”

One of them said, rather sourly, I thought, “Not really. All the men we’d ever seen since they’d killed our husbands and sons either didn’t care or actively encouraged their ‘transactions,’ so we expected no help from anyone, but then we’d never thought of women as warriors, so if anyone was going to avenge the murders of our families, our friends, our children and friends, it would have had to be women, not that we’d looked for any such help.”

“I apologize then, for our tardy arrival,” I said. “Since our communications failed, we’d had no word from other fortresses, so assumed they were in the same straits that we were, trying desperately to hold fast against the encroaching plants, but then we made a discovery, quite by accident, of the fungal transmutation you’ve all of you benefitted from, as have we all. As a byproduct of that transformation, we discovered that the plants no longer thought of those us who were transformed as their enemies, and so left us in peace, or at least made no overtly hostile actions against us, so we’ve had the liberty to regroup and think about our scattered comrades. This small punitive expedition was part of a somewhat less ambitious exploration of a continent which was merely unfamiliar to us at the time, ‘scouting out the land,’ if you will, until we met with the first party of these slavers, these so-called ‘Reivers,’ and determined that they were our enemies.”

“And just how did you determine that?” she said suspiciously.

“Quite simply,” I said. “They were driving women in chains, so it was perfectly obvious to us that the only real difference between those women and us was that we were free and they were bound. At the time, we were were armed only with the typical weapons of the Horticulturist Services of North America, HE missiles, flamethrowers, machetes, and — our own innovation — crossbows. We saw that they had rifles, so we determined to take them away from the slavers and free the women.”

“Just like that?” she asked, still sceptical, perhaps even incredulous.

“Just like that,” I told her. “Of course it helped that we were smarter, quicker, and stronger than they were, but we defeated them mainly with our natural cunning, not brute force of arms. In fact, we were badly ‘out-gunned’ by their force, and less numerous besides, so of course they had no real chance against us.” I grinned at her, but for the benefit of them all.

“What happened to them?”

“We held a military trial of all those left alive — which wasn’t many — and whose captives were able to testify against them. We assumed that they were deserters from the Horticulturist Service, since they carried standard issue weapons, for the most part, and had portions of official uniforms amongst their belongings, so they were found guilty of heinous crimes against civilians under color of authority and immediately executed, since we had no facilities for imprisoning any of them. The ones whom we determined were not personally culpable, but merely caught up in the general lawlessness as a matter of survival, we transformed, reasoning that their own self-interest would switch their allegiance, since the Reivers would be far more likely to try to fashion stronger chains than to admit any sort of women into their ranks, and would in fact be more inclined to try to kill them outright, because they’d be an existential threat to the outlaw hierarchy.”

“What do you mean by ‘threat’?”

I picked up my shank bone in one hand and snapped it in twain by way of demonstration, then said, “I mean that in any society in which ‘might makes right,’ our new breed of women would quickly rise to the top, so those men who weren’t complete fools would realize that if anyone was going to be enslaved, it would be them, rather sooner than later. Even rape takes on a different character when one is as likely to walk away pregnant from any forced sexual assault as would be the theoretical victim, so I doubt that there are many women who entertain fantasies of being rapists to begin with.” I thought about that for only a moment before I added, “Actually, now that I think about it, and reflecting upon my own monthly cycles, I suspect that any theoretical woman rapist would be more likely to walk away from the encounter pregnant than her female victim, if ever the impulse arose, since our level of sexual desire tends roughly to correspond to our level of fertility. Although we’re all of us theoretical hermaphrodites, our ‘male’ parts are just barely worthy of the name, much more like an enlarged clitoris than a penis, so any woman attempting to ‘get off’ without the enthusiastic coöperation of her partner is probably more likely to impregnate herself than her putative ‘victim,’ with all the accompanying risks of birth defect or miscarriage associated with a complete lack of genetic diversity.”

“Will we be able to do that trick you did with the bone? Will we be able to snap chains with out bare hands, as you and your companions did when you freed us?”

“You will. For now, I’m quite a bit stronger, but only because my changes have had time to develop over a longer period.” I smiled for all of them and added, “You may also be interested to know that the fungal infusion of genetic material seems to enhance the very best genetic qualities you possess, so not only will your scars and other injuries fade to nothing, but you’ll grow more beautiful with every passing day. I myself was rather plain before my exposure, but my looks are now considerably improved from what I was before.”

My interrogator wasn’t satisfied, though. “You said that you’re faster; how much faster?” she asked me pointedly.

“Quite a bit,” I said, “but I’ve never actually measured my speed or reaction time.”

With that, she suddenly threw a stone straight at my head. I hadn’t noticed her clutching it, and she’d obviously had it ready, but I snatched it from midair. “There’s no call for violence!” I said, more than a little pissed off.

“What?” she said, as if people threw things at each other every day. “You said you were quicker than any of the Reivers, and I just wanted to see how fast you really were.” She pursed her lips. “You’re pretty fast. This scar,” she pointed at her arm, where a rapidly-healing ‘T’ was branded on her arm, “was given me by the leader of this band of Reivers when I managed to hit him with a very sharp stone. It stands for ‘Troublemaker,’ but he had a scar almost as big on his ugly face.”

I thought I vaguely remembered him as the first guy, the arrogant one, the one who’d sneeringly wanted to ‘speak to the man in charge,’ despite being held at gunpoint by the two women who’d gotten the drop on him from their own damned guard post. “You’ll be pleased to know then, that he’s undoubtedly dead. I killed him, I seem to recall, because he wasn’t following my very specific orders to surrender, took a condescending tone with me, and sounded like a jerk who’d be tiresome to have around. I wasn’t feeling particularly charitable at the time.”

She laughed. “That sounds like him alright.”

“You’ll notice as well that there are no self-styled ‘Reivers’ left alive within this valley, so if he was present when my companion and I attacked, he’s definitely dead.”

“So you aren’t planning to take over from where they left off?”

“Haven’t I said so? Why on Earth would we go to all the trouble to strike off your chains and eliminate every sign of bondage if we had any inclination to perpetuate this corrupt and inhumane travesty of the law in any way? Both the Canadian and United States Constitutions outlaw slavery in any form, in Canada since 1833, although the USA took a bit longer, until 1865. The notion that the scattered outlaws and brigands who prey upon the trust and sometimes weakness of our citizens can alter the laws of our two nations by mere force of arms is laughable, and they are even now feeling the heavy weight of law, as supported by the armed services of our two lands and now prosecuted with renewed vigor. All those here present who imagined that they were above the law have now paid the ultimate price for their treasonous and cowardly assaults on our outposts and fortresses, and for their ensuing murders and cruel mistreatment of innocent civilians, right here, in this place. We intend to do the same to every nest of these vipers we encounter, and to diligently seek out the last refuges of those who seek to hide.”

“Big talk!” she scoffed at me.

“Talk? Do you hear any debate from the felons who formerly controlled this compound? Perhaps you’re in contact with their ghosts through your crystal ball? Thus far we’ve wiped out at least three largish bands of these violent criminals with just two dozen women. Once we really get started with more local recruits and with better knowledge of the terrain and potential hideouts, I don’t doubt that the rest of the region will be all that difficult. Would you like to put something other than your mouth on the line? I’m quite sure you could make a real difference that way, and with the sturdy courage you’ve shown with a simple rock, just think how much fun it would be to have a rifle in your hands with a group of other women beside you, dangerous Furies and Harpies all, raining Hellfire and damnation on all enemies of our two great nations, but especially those vicious cowards who dared to target women and children.”

She was taken aback for a moment, I could tell, but the fact that I was quite willing to put a deadly weapon in her hands obviously demonstrated a level of sincerity that no mere words could possibly convey. I could see her mind working, but not for too long. “I would,” she said. “Where do I sign up?”

“Right here, and right now,” I answered, then I smiled. “It’s only a formality, you understand. Your word is good enough for me, and if you become pregnant, all you have to do is ask to be released from your service, since our primary responsibility is to reclaim this tortured land of ours for all the citizens thereof. ‘They also serve…,’ and all that stuff. We’re also changing the overall position of women in our new nation, since soon enough — eventually — we’ll all of us be responsible for the next generations.”

Then I turned to all the rescued women and former slaves and said, “I don’t know what your own situations are, whether you have loved ones who may be looking for your return, and we are not a ‘press gang’ who have any inclination to ‘shanghai’ you for our own purposes. If you want to go home — if you have homes left to go to — you’re perfectly free to do so. If you want to join us on our campaign, you’re free to do that as well. We take freedom seriously, and we intend to restore civil freedom for all of us, not just one more-or-less monolithic group of men with arbitrary power over the rest of us. While a ‘State of Emergency’ might have justified that for a few years, the emergency seems to have lasted for hundreds of years, and the problems got worse, not better, under the dubious leadership of a bunch of men who supposedly knew the ‘proper methods’ of dealing with all possible threats.”

Unlooked for, I felt the pain of Beryl’s death grip my heart like an iron fist. It was then, just then, when Beryl would have chimed in with a few well-chosen words and slammed the point home in a way I wouldn’t have thought of in a millions years.

‘Get a grip, girl! These women are depending on you!’ I set my jaw and ploughed on, “In fact, when you think of it, that overly hierarchical structure, where every substantive decision was made by the oldest man not quite senile enough to be ‘eased out’ of his position of authority, undoubtedly contributed to the strategic and tactical weaknesses that the bandits — the self-styled ‘Reivers’ — exploited with fatal consequences for many of your loved ones and friends.”

“What do you mean by that?” one woman shouted out, her voice gone shrill with anger.

“I mean that the late and unlamented ‘Reivers’ who once controlled this camp had a hierarchy quite similar in overall concept to that of the fortresses; an opaque command structure answerable to no one; absolute authority over life and death decisions with no recourse or appeal possible; and a general contempt for women, who were always second-class citizens or worse in the fortresses, with some few of them relegated to the status of unpaid ‘whores’ at the beck and call of the troops, and most cast in the rôle of servants.”

“Our men weren’t anything like those monsters!” another woman shouted.

“Of course they weren’t,” I soothed their feelings, “but the system itself was vulnerable to exploitation, because it concentrated too much power in the hands of too few men, which made it easy for a few very bad men imagine setting up a similar system with themselves at the top of the heap.” I paused to let that percolate through their heads, then continued, “so the Reivers — who seem primarily to be deserters from the Horticultural Services, and so were very familiar with the military protocols and jargon — just eliminated their requirement to do anything at all for the people they once protected, and adjusted their sights from looting abandoned cities and towns — as do most of our ‘foraging parties’ — to pillaging fortresses already relatively well-supplied with the fruits of other people’s labor and effort, with the added benefit of enslaving their pick of the most beautiful women and raping them at will.”

“But we had husbands, sons….”

“I’m sure you did,” I said. “and I’m sure they loved you well, but enlisted men weren’t free to marry at all, were they? Barracks life isn’t exactly conducive to a happy home-life, but ‘everyone had to make sacrifices for the common good,’ didn’t they? The men who weren’t lucky enough, or smart enough, to be officers, and the women who weren’t smart enough, or lucky enough, to attract the attentions of an officer, had to make do with sordid encounters in quiet corridors and rooms, with the ‘gift’ of a bit of extra food held out from the general pool at the end of a foraging mission as their reward.”

“But…,” the first hothead started to say, the one who’d chucked a rock at my head…

I made a wry face for their benefit. “Let’s face it. Women as a whole were always second-class citizens in the prevailing culture of the fortresses, as were ordinary troops, for the most part, so at some point some trooper — possibly many such troopers over the years — got the bright idea of staging a mutiny, and it worked. He and his cohorts didn’t have the advantage of a fortress after turning tail and running, but the local plants weren’t nearly as hostile as they were out on the plains, so they made do without, but were ideally suited up to pretend to have been unwillingly separated from their own homes, and begged assistance from those who might pity them, and thus got first pick of everything for their murders, rapes, and treason.”

“So the treason spread….” Our hothead made the connection inside her brain. You could see it filtering through layers of self-justification and denial.

“So it spread indeed,” I said. “Civilizations are usually brought down by their own armies, if you look at the long haul. They hold most of the power, unless they willingly cede it to the overall population through tradition and pride, but when things start falling apart, they’re usually the only ones left with the training and discipline to start over from scratch.”

 

 

Pearl, that was the tough broad’s name, the one with the rock and ready sneer, kept her word. Once she realized that I was serious, that I wasn’t just a ‘Reiver’ in a skirt, she threw herself into organizing our further adventures with a right good will. “Ma’am? We’ve got the women who are going with us ready to go,” she said, saluting rather smartly, for a raw recruit. Many of the women had decided to stay, once they figured out that they had a very good chance of being able to defend the valley on their own.

“Excellent! Pearl. You’ve done very well.” I’d asked two of our bandersnatches if they’d like to stay behind — well, as coherently as one could manage with non-verbal communication — and had explained their care and feeding, which was pretty simple as long as they had access to water and organic matter of any sort as fertilizer.

It wasn’t much of a problem, because there were already three young bandersnatches running around who were about the size of Gumball when I’d first met him. Evidently, the addition of a large number of corpses to the local soil was very good for encouraging the growth of burrowers, so the women left behind already had the beginnings of their own heavy cavalry if they ran into any trouble, and I’d had Becky explain how any roving bands of Reivers would approach them, thinking that they were still in trade, and I’d left behind almost all the ammunition and weapons, except for a bit to lug along for our new recruits. The Reivers had been mad for guns and weapons though, so there was a huge stockpile in two hidden bunkers to pick and choose from, and they’d already picked out one big woman who could manage enough of a reasonably ‘masculine’ voice to lure them in. Good luck to her. Even as a man, I’d been a tenor, and was now definitely singing the soprano rôles.

Thinking of Gumball, though, made me miss him, since he’d disappeared just around the time that Beryl’s body had gone missing. ‘Gumball!’ I gave him a mental shout, but wasn’t really hopeful, since he hadn’t been answering for almost a week by now.

‘Gumball!’ I ‘shouted’ again, ‘We’re about to leave! Come on, Sweetie!’

No joy. But then, after a long interval, I felt a faint stirring somewhere. ‘Gumball!’ I called again. ‘Are you coming with us?’

Then, there was a rumbling, a deep growl of movement from deep underground, and the earth began to roil in the clearing. Several of the women, already mounted, had to spur their horses to stay clear of the trembling earth, and many were frightened, including me. Whatever it was, there was more of it than merely Gumball, as huge as he was. I backed up my own mount. “Gumball? Is that you?” I shouted aloud, as an instantaneous gulf opened in the clearing and a huge burrower, bigger than I’d ever seen, rose from the depths, rising into the air until it towered above our heads. “Gumball?” I queried the apparition. It turned toward my voice and I knew instantly that it was Gumball, but grown beyond anything I’d thought possible. He must have been eighty or ninety feet tall, the size of an average office building back in the city downtown.

He smiled. Then he opened the dark and toothy maw that was his mouth, an opening large enough to house our entire troop of horses and women, if not exactly comfortably, and somehow a shape rolled out across the bed of nails that were his many rows of teeth, rolled out and gently rolled, once, twice, shrouded in many leaves. It had a vaguely human form, about six feet in length, and I moved immediately to dismount and investigate. I wasn’t at all frightened, although many of the women around me were, never having seen exactly how big bandersnatches could become, although I remembered them well from my first encounter with them, when just one of them had eaten almost our entire foraging party in one gulp.

I touched the leaves, which were a loose blanket covering what must be a human figure, although they were so entwined and braided that it took me a good long time to untangle them enough to get a good look at what they concealed. It was Beryl, and she was warm, evidently sleeping though, because she didn’t stir. “Beryl? Is it really you?” I asked, or perhaps it was a prayer.

“Who’s Beryl?” the figure asked, her eyes fluttering until they opened. Then she looked at me and smiled and said, “I was dreaming of you.”

 

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012-2013 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved