The Dollmage

She was standing now. Only a little while ago, the forest on either side of the path had been dark and full of cougar and wolf. Now it seemed welcome, a place full of only childish nightmares. On the path she could not outrun Areth, but perhaps in the forest. Annakey ran.

She could not outrun Areth.

When he caught up to her, he pushed her hard and then was on top of her before she could get her breath.

“You have promised me with your eyes and your smile and your gentle ways,” Areth said. With one hand he covered her mouth and with the other he pulled up her dress and looked at her breasts. Annakey bit his hand and he pulled it away with a yelp. That gave him reason to do what he was going to do anyway.

“Areth!” she cried. “Do not force me.”Annakey began to weep. “I will promise you anything....”

Areth could not remember having seen her cry before. He stopped, there on top of her, crushing her. He looked around himself as if waking up from a dream. He pushed himself up on one arm. “Promise me you will marry me,” he said.

Annakey’s mouth moved but she did not speak.

“Promise me you will marry me,” he said angrily. His hand closed around her neck as he said it.

“I promise,” she said.The agony in her voice rang through the forest.

Areth looked at her. Now that she was his, she was not so beautiful in his eyes anymore. Now that she was his, she was no more to him than one of his fine cows that he cared for— not because he loved them, but because then he would be the best in the village. Now that she was his, he despised her.

And because he despised her, he forced her anyway.

Annakey did not scream. Horrors come in silence.

“I’m sorry,” he said, when he was done. He began to cry, and then he stopped, angry that she did not sympathize with his pain.

Annakey stood, shaking, and without looking back, began to climb the hill.

You look at me and look at me, expecting me to go on. Ah. What has gone out of me? Why can I not make words tor what Annakey felt? Is it because I am old? Have I traded every passion for wisdom, every love for tolerance, every wild and wicked dream for a full stomach and a soft bed? When did I know that there was nothing to know? All the sharpness and selfishness and wild laughter is gone, and I am never in one moment. Now when I laugh, I see a child who died. When I weep, I know that weeping will cease and I will laugh again. Well. There will be no more first tastes, but also gone are the fears that lived in all my dark places. Now, all the dark places have been plunged into, and I cannot see where the light ends and the dark begins. I am fearless and speechless. I cannot mourn out your mourning for Annakey with words. You must find them in your own heart, in your own memory.

Old woman, the children say, what matters but the story? Put aside your whining and tell us the story.

I will tell you another story for a moment to relieve the pain of this one.

Aula Leeside, you remember, was famous for her stew. It had a fragrant flavor that no one else could duplicate. One day her neighbor, Etta Peekhole, spied on her stew making. She watched as Aula gathered the little mushrooms that grew in the clover, plucking their little white caps. She watched as she placed them in her stew, and when it had cooked for a long time, Aula plucked the little boiled bodies out. Their flavor had been left in the juices. So that was her secret! Etta Peekhole plucked a few mushrooms of her own, polka-dotted ones, and put them in her stew. She died screaming. The end.

There.

That is better.

You all remember that night, the night that Etra screamed and screamed, how in your fear you sucked the shadows into your mouths. That night, all the little children stopped being children.

In the same way, that day Annakey stopped being a child. It was her soul that screamed. There were no forest shadows anymore, because all the shadows were in her soul. The wild animals that snuffled near the path were stuffed dolls to the wild things that bit away at her heart. She climbed the mountain almost at a run, until she moaned from the pain in her side. She did not stop until she reached the summer meadow. When Annakey reached the outskirts of the summer meadow, she found she could not go in. She could not go to the ones who were keeping the sheep there. She felt that they would be able to smell her shame on her. In the woods outside the summer meadow, she found a fallen tree upon which to sit, and she watched the shepherds through the veil of the forest’s edge.