"May it be when darkness falls
Your heart will be true
You walk a lonely road
Oh! How far you are from home…."
Fighter: Lord of the Rings
They told me I couldn't fight. I'm a child, they said, and I'm a girl, they added. Two pathetic reasons why I shouldn't be allowed to defend myself or others. No matter how strong or determined I was, they wouldn't teach me swordplay, or mace-swinging or even the Dwarves' axe-wielding devices. Nay, I was a woman. Not even a woman yet, but a twelve-year-old girl. At least, I was twelve the first time that I had evidence that they were wrong.
They had been wrong. So wrong that I would never be the same. Never trust in men.
Only myself.
My father was a traveling salesman and my mother helped him in his work.
"Keep up, Selïsyan." My mother had called back to me.
I was moping that day, holding a grudge on my three years older brother, Seroe, for refusing to come with us this time so he could learn swordplay. Maybe I wasn't so angry that he wouldn't come, but it was more that I couldn't go to the warrior training as well.
"I'm coming," I muttered loathingly. Had I been a seer, I probably would have shed kinder words upon my parents. Ahead of me, on his gray mare, Father jingled and jangled with his goods for trade. My mother slowed down to have a word with me about my poor behavior.
"You are almost a young lady and such actions are not tolerable! You are an ambassador for Gondor and you must keep a chipper face." I can still see the disappointed look in her dark blue eyes. Even under the warm sun she sat straight as a rail and managed to look as though she could be a queen's lady. I slouched like a man.
"A pox on Gondor," I spat furiously. "A pox on you and a pox on Father."
Mother slapped me across the face. "You don't speak until the words are apologetic."
Initially I wanted to cry, hurt that my mother was treating my so. But I was so furious that I kicked my horse and raced ahead. My parents didn't chase after me. They knew I'd be back soon and furthermore, I knew my way. We had made the trip a thousand times. My soul cried with the pain of injustice and jealousy. Why did Seroe have rights more than I? Could I not love a country despite a monthly bleeding?
Jezebel raced ahead with me upon her back, glad to be running, ever the limber mare. We passed through the trees and my long braided hair flew behind my head. I fancied it would be last thing my parents would see of me as I ran away. In my mind, I would go off on some great adventure and years later all of Gondor would apologize to me on bended knee, realizing that I alone was the greatest warrior of all time. I envisioned myself brandishing a glorious and beautiful sword that was sharper than the sword used by Isildur when the dark lord Sauron was defeated.
It was Jezebel that pulled me out of my reverie and into a bizarre parallel consciousness. She had slowed abruptly and pulled anxiously at her reins, as though hinting to me that we should take another path.
"What is it, girl?"
She naturally had no words, not that I expected them. I clicked my tongue at her and kept her on the path, my fury fading. Still, I wasn't about to apologize to my undeserving parents. Jezebel froze suddenly in her tracks, snorted and turned violently to the right, running into the trees.
"Whoa!" I shouted at her. Bouncing high out of my saddle, I tried to stop her to no avail. I never pulled hard on her reins, but now I had no choice. I had to try something, anything, to stop her wild galloping. My chest was walloped right then by a tree branch and I was unseated and thrown back to the forest floor. Winded, I felt certain that my body had broken. Momentarily stunned, I lay there and stared miserably through the tree branches. My life was horrible. A pox on the gods for giving it to me. I started to cry tears of fury. I hated everything. I wished that I would die. Thinking these thoughts of self-pity, I lay there for awhile before again being snapped into a hideous reality.
Shnrff. Grunt.
I frowned, wiping my face of its salty damp on the backs of my arms. I heard the heavy footsteps of passing creatures. Terrified, I jerked up to my hands and knees and crawled to the shelter of a hollowed tree. I pulled my brown hood over my head and peered nervously around. My breath caught in my throat as I saw six full-grown orcs, tall and terrible, running through the woods, clumpy hair waving about their sinewy backs. I swallowed hard.
"The merchant comes this way? You are certain?" I heard one growl.
"Shush. I know." Another responded. The six stopped by the side of the road up ahead. I couldn't hear them any longer, and assumed they, in turn, could not hear me. I went around my tree and hid in a presumably safer bush.
My heart was racing somewhere near my throat for what seemed like hours. I hoped that my parents would come looking for me. Suddenly, I wanted their company more than I had ever deemed possible.
There was a high-pitched shriek. I jerked out of my bush. I tried to call out to someone for help, but my voice seemed to have faded into nothingness. Even my legs felt wont to buckle. It was the final shriek and the maniacal laughter that sent me running recklessly back to the road. When I arrived, it was too late for me to do anything of use.
I did collapse then. I remember exactly what it felt like, the rocks jabbing fiercely at my knees. That pain was nothing, nothing next to the wretched feeling in my heart. I vomited all over the ground and cried all the while. That scene will never fade from my eyes, the blood and gore of my beloved parents all over the undeserving ground. There was nothing left for me to weep into. I would never again release my tears into my mother's bosom; never again feel my father's strong embrace around my shoulders. I don't remember, however, what exactly led me from crying in my own vomit and my parents' blood to becoming a killer.
There was a sword left on the ground and an axe with a splintered handle. I saw those and I think I picked them up. I must have. They may have flown to my hands, so vague is that part. I remember running for a long time. I remember seeing the orcs feasting on our dead horses. I remember their screams, their shock and most of all, their deaths. My glorious revenge. They hadn't expected a twelve-year-old girl to kill them with axe and sword. It was a whirlwind of emotion combined with cold determination. I don't know how long I stood in the mess of death I had caused, but it was until Jezebel had come to me.
I thought killing those orcs would be revenge enough. But it was my fault that my parents had died. My fault that they had left knowing only my bitter words. I swore that I would never again let an orc live. My oath was to protect all that I came across in need. I was weary that evening, as I blundered in search of a stream. The blood of the orcs and the horses and my own parents was caked to my skin and washed off slowly in the flowing waters. I spent a night, or a week, or a month in that forest with nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep, nothing but self-loathing.
Even now it seems as though that's all I really have. It has been six years to the day since my birth as a fighter, since my death as an innocent. I could never return to Gondor. As far as I knew, my parents were never buried. It's hard to say which years were the most difficult. Perhaps it was the first, struggling to gain mastery of my weapons and fighting simply for my parents. Maybe it was later when I began to need food and shelter as well as the bittersweet taste of revenge. Or possibly it was when I was condemned to a life of solitude not only by myself but by the others.
They knew who I was, these humans, these dwarves. Oh, stories had been told of a roguish girl who killed just for pleasure. I never stayed in any one town for more than two days. Was the most difficult part longing for a kind voice? Was it the dreams of my father kissing me through his beard and tickling my cheek? Was it my mother's sweet smell as she sang me to sleep? Could it even be my brother, as he pinned me down and tickled me until I cried for mercy? What of my friends in Gondor? Or Jezebel, my last companion, after she had been killed by those men of the town?
I felt no love for anything. I found no pleasure in life. I lived by my memories and had become a hardened shell.
Yet I knew that I still had a purpose to serve, be it bloody, be it death, I would fight to find it.