Androphobia
-
Aside from the occasional blizzard, the small village in Ilia where Florina, her two sisters, and her parents lived was a quiet and friendly place to live. After moving from Edessa at a young age, Florina and her family settled in a hamlet nestled in a large forest, with a small abandoned castle to the northeast, nearby a cold rushing river that froze over during harsh storms and emptied into a large lake to the southeast.
Every year, the sisters and their family traveled to the village to the north for their annual festival honoring the birth of Barigan and the birth of new pegasi, where performers came from all over Ilia to sing and dance, and the villagers lit huge bonfires stretching towards the sky. The festival was all about the sights of the men and women in masks, and the sounds of music and peddlers walking about selling statuettes of Elimine's goddess and figures of pegasi, and the smells of food being cooked and sold cheaply. Around the village, revelers pranced about in pegasus costumes of ceremonial masks, doing silly things to entertain the partygoers. Off-duty pegasus knights came to celebrate on festival nights, bringing their mounts with them, sometimes bringing pegasi foals for the children to pet.
All of the sisters enjoyed traveling to the festival, but young Florina in particular was always enthralled by the sights, the sounds, and the smells of the festival. Eldest sister Fiora often drifted off to speak with the Pegasus Knights' Brigade recruiters while Florina and Farina reveled by the fire in the center square, Florina drinking cupfuls of warm apple cider, singing and dancing, while Farina watched, humming to the rhythm of the music and giggling at her younger sister's jubilant silliness.
Something happened one day, when Florina was only eleven. It was a month before the festival and already Florina had started to anticipate and obsess over its coming. The village's local tailor had promised to make her a fancy ball dress for the festival, and Florina had saved up a large pile of gold coins from helping her fellow villagers, which she hid under her mattress in a small woolen satchel. Fiora had recently returned from her training with the pegasus knights in Edessa and had returned, elated, telling everyone who would listen that she had became a trainee in the Pegasus Knights' Brigade. The entire morning, her two younger sisters asked questions about the pegasus knights, those larger-than-life heroes that seemed to them so distant, even though they knew almost everything about them by heart.
That morning, Florina had left for a walk through the woods after giving her sisters big hugs, taking her lucky goddess icon—the one with all the little scratches and worn places—with her. In the center of the village, as the sun rose overhead, Florina stopped to play with a few of the village boys, and Mr. Murphy from the local shop, a kindly man who always greeted her and her sisters with a broad smile and a coin from the day's profits. Every day she was greeted by smiles and kind words by everyone she passed by, as everyone in the village was immensely fond of her, so precocious and good-natured. Some of the older boys of about twelve and thirteen loved to play with her, some of them with hot faces wondering why they suddenly became so shy around "beautiful Florina".
Florina left the outskirts of her home and walked through the snowy pine forest to the south, through the usual trail she traveled when she wanted to absorb the outdoors. Neither Farina nor Fiora could join her—although Fiora adamantly insisted that her youngest sister wear long stockings and her biggest coat—, and so she walked alone down the trail, sometimes skipping, in her tiny boots and fur coat wrapped tightly around her body. The snow was only falling lightly that morning, filtering down from the sky, slowly gathering in her lavender-colored hair, the long silvery strands rolling down the back of her neck. Florina loved the outdoors, and her desire to explore only grew upon leaving Edessa and discovering the quiet chastity of the forests, where no one but her ever seemed to tread. Maybe there were fairies here, Florina thought, especially in a place as magical as the forest, where anything could happen at any time.
Ten minutes down the road and the forest fell quieter and the shadows seemed to grow taller the further she walked. The pines were larger and more prevalent here, the lowhanging branches all tangled in a jungle of needles under which the whole world crawled. Most of the detritus on the forest floor had already buried itself beneath moist loam and the morning's fresh snow. More to the south, Florina knew, there were a few small villages and a larger road leading further south, but she didn't plan to travel that far. The sun had finally risen overhead, but she felt cold, and there was a shadow directly in front of her, looming large over hers, and Florina stopped, suddenly frightened, praying that the old story about clicking one's boots together to return home really worked. She shivered. Florina turned around, startled, and dropped her goddess icon in the snow. She felt pain, and saw blackness.
-
"What now?"
"What now?-!-? Idiot! We talk to the people of her village, get them to pay up, that's what! This was the one, right? The popular one?"
"Yeah, I-I think so."
"What the hell do you mean 'think so'? You mean you don't know if this is the right one? You stupid b—"
"It is! It is! Th' one with th' lavender-colored hair, right? It is her! We're gonna get the money for her, honness, you watch!"
"You better be right. If you screwed this one up you better hope someone else comes to save your wretched ass."
Voices. Rough voices. Male voices.
Florina opened her eyes. She was lying down on a hard mattress, still in her dress and stockings, but her fur coat was gone. Her boots were as well, making the truth of that old story a moot point. Her aching head was propped up against a pillow so she could see the room, a small room with stone walls and flickering torches high on the ceilings. There was a door across from the foot of her bed, but nothing else. Her arms and legs were tied down to the mattress with rope, leaving only her fingers, feet, and head untied. She watched one of the men—the larger of the two with the black hair—leave the room and slam the door behind him. She rose her head up to get a better look at the man still in the room, a tall, thin man with a wiry frame and tousled brown hair. He turned around and saw her, awake, with her head up. She gasped. The man smiled, and eleven-year old Florina saw half his teeth missing.
"So yer awake, are ya?"
Florina said nothing as the man walked to her bedside. She could feel the light of the flickering torches, each focused only on her. She opened her mouth to speak, maybe to scream, but no words came out—only a weak whimper.
"Don't worry," he said, and he smiled a smile that was everything but comforting, and he strangled her with his dark eyes. "As long as that village of yerrs pays up, you'll be out right fine," he said without any indication of sincerity. The man held a single gold coin in his hand—Florina realized she no longer had her own coin in her pocket—and he sneered at her, dangling it out in front of her then pulling it away. He turned and walked away, and Florina couldn't understand why the man was laughing as he closed the door. She leaned her head against her pillow and cried until she fell asleep.
Time passed—it seemed about an hour or two, though Florina could not be sure—and Florina awoke to the sound of men entering her room, looking her over curiously, then leaving.
The room where she lay nearly immobile was steadily becoming familiar. It was dimly lit and smaller than her bedroom, with stone, windowless walls that looked in places to be threatening to crumble. Some of the more distinctly patterned stones on the ceilings Florina gave names to, including a stone that she would have sworn looked like the profile of a pegasus. She called that one Fiora. Florina came to hate the pungent odor of chemicals that lingered over the room and the smell of something else—some other scents she could not recognize.
She didn't know when it was, or for how long she had been bound, when a man came through the door, the tall man with the brown hair from before. It seemed so long ago now. He held a sword in his left hand and he sneered as he approached Florina.
"It doesn't seem like anyone from yer village cares about'cha," the man said, slowly pacing around the bed on which the girl lay. "Because, y'see, they don't seem to have the money we want from them, and they don't seem to want to get it, so…" The man continued to pace deliberately, step by step, step by step, step by step around Florina's bed, cold shoes against cold stone. She was too frightened to take her eyes off him, her eyes beginning to well with tears seeing him sneering back at her. He raised his sword and leaned in, pointing the tip directly at her face, between her eyes.
"Are we gonna have to?" the man said, his face moving in closer. "Are we gonna have to?"
Florina shuddered. She had sobbed enough for one childhood, but something about the man's persistent smile made her want to cry until the end of the world.
The man caged around her, staring into her eyes. The room was quiet and Florina could hear the heavy sounds of his breath. The man laughed. He sounded crazy. "Are we gonna have to kill ya? Is that what we're gonna haffa do? 'Cause we will." He moved his sword closer until it was inches from her face. Florina pressed her neck against her pillow as hard as she could, but the blade followed her.
"I guess we'll have to break some things, habbout it? Sound good t'ya? Huh? Good!" The man raised his right hand and Florina closed her eyes and forced herself to look away. The man held her goddess icon in his palm, the one she had lost in the snow, his fingers wrapped tightly around it. Cackling, he set the statuette on the floor, pulled a hammer from inside his vest, and smashed it to bits. Florina was crying openly when the man stood by her and held his sword nearly to her neck. She could feel his hot breath beating against her neck. He smelled awful.
"Next thing we break's gonna be sommin' of yers!" He tapped Florina on the shoulder and instinctively her eyes jolted open and she turned to face him. He was every monster that had ever hidden under her bed, every malefic haunt that her parents had ever jokingly said would snatch her away in the night.
"So you better tell," he said, and he moved closer— "all your little friends" –closer— "to give us" – closer, and now he was no further than several inches away from her face—
"OUR GODDAMN MONEY!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, and he walked away laughing like a lunatic, leaving Florina to cry hysterically alone, her heart having jumped halfway out of her body.
-
After a while, things happened. Time passed. Days could have passed or hours could have passed; it felt to Florina at that moment in the afternoon as if a full day had rolled by, though she couldn't be sure. She remembered men coming in to look at her, sometimes discussing things she either couldn't hear or couldn't understand. She remembered men coming in to threaten her with their knives and swords, men coming in to make sure she was securely restrained and one man held the edge of his axe so close to Florina's face she could almost taste it over the saline taste of her tears. Her eyes burned.
During the times when there were no men around to leer hungrily or angrily at her, Florina thought about her sisters. It was lonely here, Florina realized. Even the memories of her sisters, so bright and vivid in her heart, seemed to be growing fainter, as though they had gone away and hadn't left a note. Florina called out Fiora's name to the pattern on the ceiling, but to her dismay, she heard nothing. She had never before realized how wonderful it was to have sisters around who cared about her. She would have settled for one of Fiora's reprimands or for Farina teasing her about her singing, or...
Florina gasped and her heart fell through the floor.
"No!"
She pursed her lips tightly, scolding herself, and she hoped that no one had heard her yell out. Tears poured silently from her eyes. What if they had found Fiora and Farina, too? What if they had found them and they were in another room, tied up like she was?
Florina was interrupted when a man walked into the room, a man she didn't recognize. He was older than most of the others, with ragged gray hair and leather clothes. They were all men, Florina thought, her body shuddering as the man moved over to her bedside, smiling. They were all men. Florina thought it odd they were all men, when everyone knew that Ilia was a woman's country. Even Florina knew that only girls could be pegasus knights, and that women were immensely important to the nation. The men in the village were always kind, but it was always women who talked about important things, and it was her mother who earned the gold that Florina knew paid for the family's food. But all of the people here were men, and little Florina had a strange feeling that there were no women anywhere around here.
The man stood looking down at her. He was old, older than most of the adults in the village, but younger than her village's elders. His face was wrinkled and lashed with stubble and his hair dangled down over his forehead. He had soft-looking hands. Florina looked into his empty brown eyes, paralyzed.
"So you're the little girl everyone is talking about," the man said. His voice was raspy but tender. "They said you're a cute little girl."
Florina shuddered.
"Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you," the man said, still smiling, so broadly that his lips almost tapped his ears. He looked different than the other men who had come in. Older, better dressed, with a softer voice. "Why would I want to hurt such a beautiful girl?"
She couldn't believe it. Had someone had finally come to help? He had called her beautiful. She couldn't believe it. His face made her shudder, but his smile was the biggest she had seen since she had been brought there.
"Just be good," he said, and he sat on the edge of her bed on top of the fringes of her ruffled dress. "This isn't going to hurt at all," the older man said, and he swallowed hard, swinging his legs onto the bed, kneeling on the mattress, one leg on either side of hers. "Beautiful…you're going to feel better."
Better. She was going to feel better, he said. She didn't know what the old man with the rough whiskers could possibly do to make her feel better. Florina just wanted to go home, and she looked at the man, wondering how he would manage to get her home from here. He leaned in closer, his head hanging over hers, still smiling. He held his hand out and brushed his fingers tenderly along hers, his fingertips rough and callous, skin peeling away, the whole of his arms up to his sleeve smooth and near-hairless except for his hands, which were like grisly fossils.
"Don't move," he said, glancing at the restraints that bound her arms and legs, and he laughed quietly. Florina looked up at him, into his face. His breath was heavy and stinging against her cheeks. Every so often he turned to look at the door, sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly, like he had been snapped to look by the tug of a leash. "Everything will be fine. Everything will be…perfect."
His smile was broad, but it was all teeth. He wasn't moving around or away either, Florina noted. They were getting no closer to her home. In fact, he was only getting closer to her, and Florina shook her head and pressed the back of her neck against her pillow. No, he drew in closer and his breath was too hot and smelled rotten, no, and his whiskers were nothing like her daddy's smooth face and warm eyes, no, and he was smiling wildly with hollow eyes and his chest was heaving, no, no, get away, get away, and then he laughed.
"We're going to have a great time together," he said. His cracked lips now hung over hers and Florina bit her tongue, the only thing she could do to stop from screaming. He was not her father, he was nothing like her father, no no, he wasn't allowed, get away, get away, and his hands clenched her wrists, get away, get away, and he seemed to enjoy watching her writhe and wriggle under his grip, and all Florina could think was get away get away get away, I don't want, I don't want you here! She closed her eyes and looked away because maybe he would go away if she didn't move, maybe he would just get away get away get away, no, no, he was not going away, no, no, no.
Seconds, which seemed like minutes, which seemed like hours later, the door burst open and the man jumped suddenly from the bed and whirled around. The large man with the black hair from before stood there, scowling, growling.
"Boss!" the older man said, and now his voice was deep and rough and his shoulders were held high, square. Florina lay back, not watching, just shivering, unable to even cry, unable to even move.
"You…dumb…bastard!" the 'Boss' yelled, walking up to him, grabbing him by the collar as Florina shut her eyes. "Don't…touch…the...girl! The villagers are so damned close to paying us our ransom, and in the devil's name, if you did anything, if you so much as put a goddamned scratch on our prize, I swear I'll—"
"All right, all right," the older man growled. "I didn't do nothin', kid—Boss. I'll go."
He turned and walked to the door, but before he left, though Florina could not see or hear him, he muttered something unrepeatable and stormed away, his hands shoved deep in his pants pockets.
Hours passed and no one came to her room again. She didn't know if she wanted to see anyone coming to her room. She watched the door to the chamber always, her heart beating furiously like pegasus hooves against her ribs, knowing that at any moment one of the men would burst in again, and when they did—
Then a scream, a scream unlike any scream she had ever heard before, a scream of absolute hatred, and several screams of pain. Her body shuddered and she began to cry uncontrollably, and then she heard innumerable loud footsteps growing louder, thundering closer.
The door opened and several men burst in, panting, each one looking angrier than the angriest person Florina had ever seen in her life. They stormed towards her bed with heavy footsteps and screams in their wake, and for a few moments, Florina believed she was going to die.
"Who was it?" the 'Boss' from earlier screamed. "Who in the name of hell let this happen?"
"I-It musta been Barnes," one of the men said, the man with the sword from before. "He was guardin' the front an' he didn't—" The rest of his voice was drowned out by the screams of men and the din of war. The three men turned around and Florina gasped when she saw women dressed in the distinct uniform of the Pegasus Knights' Brigade rushing in with swords and spears, as fierce on foot as they were on pegasusback. They were all women, come to save her, and the men tried to fight but they were knocked back, the boss sent flying backwards, falling against Florina, knocking against her head. She felt a sharp surge of pain, heard the fading war cries of the pegasus knights, and everything turned to blackness again.
-
Florina could hear familiar voices talking before she fully awoke, and she lay there in her bed, under her warm, soft covers, listening. She opened one eye just to see she was in her room, and then let her eyes close and her body relax.
"You don't understand!" Farina's voice.
"No, you don't understand!" Fiora's voice. "Being a pegasus knight is a big responsibility, and—"
"And you don't think I can do it? Is that it? You don't think I'm good enough, do you, sis?"
"That's not what I meant!"
"Yeah? Then what do you mean?" Farina said, rebellious. Florina could imagine her blue-haired sister puffing her chest out as she always did when she thought she was right.
"Just to become a squire in the Pegasus Knights' Brigade is difficult," Fiora said.
"Yeah? You became a squire, so how hard could it be?"
Fiora gasped. "Farina…how could you?"
"You just don't get it, sister, do you?" Farina said, and Florina heard the sound of pacing feet half-stomping against the wooden floorboards. "If we had enough money, we could have rescued Flori sooner, before the Pegasus Brigade stomped in and started—"
"Without them, Florina might not be—" Fiora stopped. "You don't understand. Those women put their lives at risk for all of us. I wish I could have been there, but—"
"But they only work for money!" Farina snapped. "We had to pay them gold anyway, so what's the difference paying those damn brigands—" at the word 'damn', Fiora gasped— "some gold to get our sis back sooner?"
"Farina! You—don't you dare talk like that about—about—"
"About what? Money? As long as we have enough money, we'll be fine. Mother and Father said we're moving back to Edessa, right? When we get there, I'm going to become a mercenary. I have to, because all of the others only care about their pay!"
"You don't know anything about the pegasus knights! They were doing all they can, to—to—"
"Oh yeah?" said Farina, and Florina almost began crying, hearing the hurt and anger in her sisters' voices. "Is that why they didn't go in to rescue Flori until we'd shown them we had enough money? Is that the 'niceness' of the Pegasus Brigade? That's why nobody but Ilians trust them!"
"You don't get it, Farina. That is the only way they can live, that's the only way they can get what they need!"
"And money comes before Flori's life? That's stupid! I'm going to be the best pegasus knight who ever lived, you watch! I'll make a million gold and use it to make Ilia better, and I'll never put money before my sisters."
"You just want the money for yourself. You're so immature," Fiora said, and Florina heard footsteps as Farina walked to the door.
"Yeah, and you're so stuck-up," Farina spat. "You don't care about anything but your 'Pegasus Pride'. I don't even know what that really is, but it sure didn't help save Flori sooner!"
"Take that back!" Fiora yelled, and Florina cringed silently. She had never heard Fiora so angry, and she had never before heard her sisters argue so passionately.
"No I won't! D'you know what Florina was mumbling in her sleep while I was sitting with her and you were off with your little Brigade?"
"You—"
"She kept saying 'men…no men' over and over again. If I had had enough money, I would have been able to save her! I would have been able to stop them from keeping her all that time! I'm becoming a mercenary no matter what you say. You're not any better than me!"
"Wait!" Fiora said as Florina heard the door to her room swing open.
"What?"
"When Florina wakes up…don't tell her about what happened," Fiora said sternly. "It's best if she just forgets everything."
Farina scoffed. "I wasn't even thinking of tellin' her in the first place, unlike you," she said, and left.
Florina had already forgotten the details. She was tired. It was already a blur, a blur of orange flame and gray stone and the laughing faces of many men. It was all one great distant blur punctuated by an aching pang of hunger. She could smell the familiar smell of her mother's soup wafting from the next room, and she could hear the hushed sobs of her sister Fiora at her bedside, how she tried to inhale every tear.
"Never," Fiora said quietly, patting Florina on her head, and Florina wondered if her sister knew she was only faking sleep. "Never ever. Not for money. Never."
-
Time passed. When several weeks had gone by, the family moved back to Edessa, citing their interest in being close to a pegasus knight headquarters, and everyone in the village knew it was only in the interest of safety. The sisters said goodbye to everyone; Fiora in particular to the elderly women who had once been pegasus knights themselves, Farina to Mr. Murphy (one of only two men she ever admired), and Florina to the kind girls of the village who gave her their love. The boys of the village all wondered why she never said goodbye to them too, only saying goodbye reluctantly to the older men.
Their family moved to Edessa, and Florina made fond memories there, memories of the city and the people. Fiora became a true pegasus knight and strove to become a captain. One day, Farina left home without warning, taking her life savings and leaving to become a squire. Florina became a pegasus knight because of her sisters and people like them.
Now she fights, fights as part of the group she idolized growing up, one of the elite squadrons that seemed much less glamorous when she got stuck in a tree while fleeing from bees and men on the plains of Sacae. That was where she met Lyndis, and that was when her life began, and now it continues.
Time passes. It always does. Florina remembers things like childhood festivals now, and how embarrassing it must have been to dance around so childishly—these things, at least, Farina will not let her forget. She remembers things like comforting old legends about great dragons and magic boots, like her hometown of Edessa and its comforts, like her sisters and their smiling faces. She likes remembering these things. She treasures the gentle bravado of Sain and the honorable kindness of Kent, even if their sudden appearances are often startling, even if their broad smiles are always a little too broad for her comfort. She loves her allies who fight alongside her, she loves the women of her traveling party, and she values Lyn's company above all else.
Florina doesn't remember why she fears men. She can't remember because her mind won't let her. All she knows is that she is afraid of men, always nervous, always timid, always uncomfortable. She always wonders why. Her sisters would rather she never find out. She is loved and happy. That is all that matters.