—T.A. 1900—
My name is Estanye Aistana of the people of the North, female, fifty-four years.
You might be wondering why I have two names, and you might be assuming things about me right now, coming to your own conclusions and likely thinking I was once part of a sect of some kind. I'm not going to keep the truth from you. As a former slave of the Wainriders, I bear the marks of servitude—a tattoo of a crescent moon upon the brow and another of a spear on either side of my face. The latter is like tears; sometimes from far away people mistake them for it. I don't explicitly know how, but somehow they see it that way. Slaves, when they are made, are given another name, and unlike most, I keep both of mine.
Now as I think about it, much time has passed since the Battle of the Plains forty-four years ago, if I recall correctly. I was ten when it all happened. I think it likely that they killed my father in the battle; he never returned to us after the rally. Some time before the Wainriders invaded my village, my mother and two of my brothers went out to the markets. They never came home.
I had three other siblings: an older sister, an older brother, and a little brother. We were called out of our homes by the Wainriders, and though they were fierce with their spears and horses, they promised not to hurt us. For days, all the children of the village were detained in an outdoor gated area, and there were guards day and night. The oldest ones were likely sixteen or seventeen, and the youngest mere infants. I remember wondering what the guards were there for; what could children do against the spoils of war?
My sister's name was Caitanë, but we all called her Caita. She was seventeen and my only sister, and thus I had always felt a special intimate connection with her. When they put us into that gated seclusion, she led us through the waves of people, keeping her own terror concealed.
"Stay together," she told us. "Whatever happens, we must stay together."
We all nodded, even my elder brother Hyelmen, who was of the same age as Caita. They were twins. You wouldn't have thought that Hyelmen had been born two minutes before her.
Beside the wall a girl was wailing. She was probably only sixteen, but I couldn't see because she had covered her face in shame and despair. Her brother was trying to comfort her, remotely patting her back, yet he himself stared off into the glaring sun, vacant.
"Why did I do it?" As a child, I could not help but stare at her. "Why did I do it? Why did I do it?" It seemed that she had been repeating the same words for hours and hours before we even arrived here.
Somehow we found an unoccupied space in the swarm and sat down. Íryë, my eight-year-old brother, was hungry, so Caita fished some hard bread out of her bag and gave it to him. He tore off chunks of it and we shared it together, gnawing at it beneath the gaze of the guards.
"Where is Mother?" Íryë asked.
"Elsewhere," Caita said. "Don't worry about her. She'll be fine."
The girl still wailed in anguish by the wall. It became a ceaseless presence, always in the back of my mind, haunting me. Even after I could hear the words ringing in my ears. Why did I do it? Why did I do it?
"What in hell did she do, for the North's sake?" Hyelmen was exasperated.
"She smothered her baby," Caita said.
Silence. A strained, empty silence.
My ten-year-old mind fought to fathom why she would do such a thing, but I do not think I ever knew until later. She didn't want the Wainriders to find the baby and hurt him.
Hyelmen shook his head, looking away. "I don't care what she did. Just make her shut up."
For three days we were detained there with only the food and water we brought in our knapsacks. By the end of the third day we had run out, and we feared that if we were to stay any longer surely we would starve. Already two infants had died, too young and frail to survive the predicament. On the fourth day we were aroused by clamouring voices and shouted commands, somehow glad for it. The waiting had become unbearable.
Íryë, however, was wary. Perhaps he was the only one of us with some sense, even though he was the youngest. "Where are we going?"
"We're going to find Mother," Caita told him, grasping our hands and leading us out. She was discernibly enlivened by this new change. "We're going to be together again."
"Don't be stupid," Hyelmen muttered, and Caita shot him a look.
It turned out that both Íryë and Hyelmen were right. They led us to the auction block. Caita likely knew too, but she didn't want to tell us—she was the one that had to keep us together, keep hope alive and burning. If the fire died, then we died too. I just want to come out of this alive.
They took Hyelmen first. He was strong and a fighter; it took two burly men to drag him away from us, biting and clawing. Caita was screaming his name, tears streaming on her face. I didn't scream, nor run forward and try to save him like I should have done. I was always the quiet one. Silent tears glistened on my cheeks, and silent prayers were whispered unheard. Caita held Íryë and I tightly as the auctioneer's voice echoed throughout the block. A strong boy. Seventeen. Good for work on plantations.
Two days later, Caita went next, then Íryë. I turned away, covering my ears and squeezing my eyes shut as tight as I could, hugging myself, alone.
Then they called me. Hastily I tried to wipe the tears away from my face. I was of the people of the north, and proud of it. I would not let them see me cry.
"How old are you?" the auctioneer asked, peering down at me.
"Ten." I could not stop myself from shaking, and nor could I stop the tears from rolling down my face as he turned to the gathered crowd.
"Skinny girl. Ten." He paused, thinking of what to say. "Suiting for anything."
My years in bondage are not worth recounting to you. They were all the same, the days dull and unchanging. The first time I was sold to a chieftain wealthy with power, three wives, and eleven children, and worked as a servant and handmaid for them for five years. There was a little skirmish in his tribe, however, and he was banished along with the entirety of his family. With nothing else to give, he sold me to another. It is not important to list them all out, though I like to remember them. Sometimes it is the little things that make the difference.
When I was thirty-nine, I managed to flee and go into hiding when the persecution ensued. It was an interesting time to think about, actually. For all my life, I hated the Wainriders for what they had done to my people, for what they had done to my family, for what they had done to me. But I did not realize until later that truly we were just two sides fighting against each other.
The Wainriders hated us just as much as we hated them. For years and years they had been left to the dust, scorned and kept away by Gondor's forces. Loathing built in their hearts like a dam holding back a river wanting to burst, just like how I had been. They prided themselves in their culture. They became one nation—the Wainriders—and all else were enemies or rivals. Then I began to wonder: if a Wainrider had to choose a side between a Northman and another Wainrider that had killed his mother, who would he choose?
And thus, the persecution of the Northmen turned from servitude to genocide. Wainriders were set against Northmen and their allies, two sides with absolutely no relations in a world of black and white.
You might now ask where I managed to run to in all of this political unrest—in fact I don't quite know myself, but somehow I came across a city where I worked as a bartender for six years. Those years were a blur. I think I might have lost myself very much during that time, forgotten who I was. I only longed to survive, and so I lived like an animal.
Now the city I was living in was a mixture of all people. Some, in fact, were escaped Wainriders and others were Northmen and Gondorians. I heard once there were even some from Rohan who dwelt in the city for a time, but I did not see them. Most, however, either did not support the uprising or took no notice of it; it did not affect their lives. And perhaps it was because of this that when the revolutionary Northmen came, they burned it down to the ground.
Things are twisted. By that time I had already learned that, yet I had not expected them to go against all I had ever known in such a way. Perhaps it was because I believed that because they were my people, they would always be good.
I learned later on that the Northmen, my people, had begun to form something that you might call sects. We have always been divided by religion. For very long we had been self-governed, uninfluenced by other countries, but when when the Gondorians came, some turned to worship of Eru Ilúvatar. They forgot the old gods, and on occasion scorned them to be less esteemed. Thus during the revolution, those that were not of the same mind slaughtered each other.
Therefore again I fled to another village, seeking refuge. At this point I wanted nothing more but to get my way around life, and I despised all.
For the next nine years I watched the Revolution transpire, evolve, dwindle, and burst. In 1899 the war against the Wainriders ended, and we had at last won our freedom and independence. It was Marhwini of the Kingdom of Rhovanion that led the attack against the Wainriders, burning their homes and camps and wagons. He had rallied the slaves and made alliances with other forces, thus becoming known as a great hero.
At the time, I questioned whether or not I should have been proud of my people's victory. The fires killed not only the ones fighting against us, but women, children, and the elderly also. The truth is we could not have won with mere peaceful protests. This was war, the consequences unavoidable.
I find now, that my mind wanders to the memory of my family that had once been. It seems strange to think that we had once all lived together in blithe tandem. They are all dead now. At one point I drove myself mad with grief and went in search of them, hoping to obtain any trace of them, yet all I found were the dreaded words and remembrances. I am the only one to survive the war. I need to tell those words to myself, over and over again, until I am used to them. I used to say them out loud before I fell asleep. And it's all right now, I say, because the time has passed and somehow I find myself so happy to be alive.
Presently I am walking down the streets of the village I had lived in as a child. The homes lay in ruins, and there are a few red stains on the ground here and there, but most of the corpses from the aftermath of the struggle for independence have been taken away to be burned in the mound. They burned both Northmen and Wainriders alike, together in the same great mound. Others are standing around the streets, scowling in the glare of the sun, clutching shawls around their shoulders. This had been their home, and now they scarcely know what to do now that it had been destroyed. They are waiting—waiting for something to happen to them, waiting for some miracle. That, I know, will never transpire; you change your surroundings when you change yourself. Those structures won't rebuild themselves, I want to tell them.
There was one point when I thought no one understood my pain. I closed myself off to the world and lived in a shell of suffering. Yet now I understand—difficulties do not mean misery. They are only the essence of change that we must bring forth from ourselves.
You must be thinking that I have gone mad. Let me explain to you. Yes, I have endured great misfortune and pain. I have lost my family and watched my siblings be sold, one by one, into slavery. I have witnessed the atrocities and the capacity of what a human being can do. But those words are so blank. They say nothing. Don't you see—those things are what made me the woman advocating peace today. I am glad, very glad, to have gone through all of this.
Let yourself suffer the hurts that come to you. Let yourself live and love the joys you deserve. Both of these are facts of life.
I see people walking down the streets, gauze bound to their cheeks and brow. They are former slaves, as I am, but they are getting their tears cut away. Now where their tattoos had been, there is only cleft skin scarring what is left of remembrances. What a sad sight—to want to forget who you are, or were.
I walk past the man who runs the operations. He was an alaego in my village when I was a child, one of the leaders of the Northmen's indigenous religion. I think his name was Bysaen, but I cannot know for sure. I don't approach his stand, nor stop to observe those who attempt to cut away a part of them.
But he sees me. "Estanye," he calls, raising a hand in greeting.
I stop and turn.
"Alaego," I answer, inclining my head in expected reverence. "I did not think you would remember me. It has been some time."
"Time," he agrees. "It does some things, but it did not stop me from remembering you. Where is Caitanë? She was always with you."
"Somewhere I do not know of," I say.
The alaego bows his head. "There is no person who hasn't lost in this war." He glances at my marks of servitude. "But I can fix your face for you."
I shake my head. "No," I tell him. "I want to keep them." There is nothing to fix.
Later I part ways with the alaego and continue my way down the street. It is only a little way to the ruins of my home, and I feel myself growing more skittish with each step. The sensation of it was very strange. If I close my eyes in a certain way, I might think that when I open them, my childhood would be rebuilt in front of me once more.
When I reach the place, I find much of it buried in rubble. Cautiously I step over the broken stones and slip my way to the front, the door groaning as I ease it open. I wanted to close my eyes, so I could pretend that when I opened them somehow Caita would be there, and Hyelmen too. Maybe they would be dancing together, Íryë twirling in the middle, and they would pull me into the circle with them. Then Mother and Father would come, with my other brothers, and they would sing a song in tandem. Let's be a family again, I want to tell them. Why didn't we stay together? It would have been all right if we were together.
But I don't close my eyes as I step into the house, the floorboards creaking under my feet. I wander around every dust-clad corner, my fingers brushing against the weathered walls. I don't see; I feel, and that is an emotion beyond words, beyond description.
In the room Caita and I shared, my old ocarina lies on the table, crumbling and forgotten in the pale light from the window. It looks so small now. I remember that it had seemed so big to me as a child, so wondrous. The same things can seem so different as time passes, can't they?
Gently I pick up the ocarina, my fingers tracing its hollow surface. I am so frightened it will fall into pieces—so frightened. Nonetheless, I cannot resist the urge but to place delicate fingers upon the sedulously carved holes and bring the mouthpiece to my lips. The first breath brought a cough through my throat from all the dust that had collected within the instrument over the years. The second was better, but just as shaky.
Allure and torment of empty years, voluptuous wandering, seductive sorrow, impenetrable grief, hollow thoughts of despair, earthly passion, deceptive gaiety—they teem within the sigh that rises and falls in a long, drawn out note, hideous with its dotage and beautiful with its passion. There is all of this, yet metanoia withal. There is an infinite amount of paths to the destination that you seek. Which will you choose?
My name is Estanye Aistana, and I will not fall.