As soon as we stepped back into our house Luna's smile returned and the Mother's stain was vanished from our minds. She pulled me into a hug with her one hand curling through the hair on the back of my head and the other rubbing circles up and down my back. I just held her, squeezing to hold on.
Luna pulled back first. Her one hand cherishing my cheek, "I am so proud of you."
I smiled at her, praise from the Mother, even as Luna, was rare, "Thank you."
Her smile was gone again just like that but the fierce narrowing of the eyes was nothing of the Mother's. Luna's eyes stared into mine and demanded my full, most serious attention.
"Clarke," I had forgotten the sound of my name. I looked away from her to relish in it but Luna's hand gripped my chin and forced me to stare into her blue eyes. Eyes that looked like a picture of a supernova from the Ark. Maybe all eyes are exploding stars and each of us carries a bit of Ragnarök within us.
Luna brought me back to attention with another jerk of my chin, "Listen to me Clarke. You are a warrior now," She closed her eyes for a few seconds and took a steadying breath, "You need to know what is involved. What you must do. I need to know that you can do what needs to be done."
I nodded as best I could with my chin held in her hand, "Of course Luna."
"Swear to me that you shall not run."
I looked at her, at the tense nearly anguished look on her face, "I don't think I can do that."
She yanked on my chin again, "Swear to me!"
I looked at her eyes closely, at the way wrinkles were etching themselves underneath her eyes from constant lack of sleep, the way her smiles had left grooves all over her face. I broke then, because I could see my Father in those eyes, "I swear that I will not run."
"Good," she released me. I rubbed the raw skin on my chin. I would have dark bruises the next day.
Luna turned away from me, her steps across the wooden floor of our home creaking the whole house and echoing through the map filled room. Maps covered every surface, including the ceiling. Luna's war council regularly met around our meal table or the fire pit outside. I glanced around, taking in the furs that layered the walls from Luna's past hunts. Braids of the fallen littered one shelf. Hundreds of braids must have laid there. Hundreds dead by the Ice Nation.
Luna went to her room and opened the door. She stared at me expectantly and for the first time I entered her room. It was rather barren with wooden walls covered by more of the furs that littered both my room and the main hall. More than that, it almost lacked the smell of fish that permeated everything else. It smelled like flowers and copper. I looked around, no one had been injured so why did the room smell so much like blood? I looked at Luna but she was just staring at me.
She went over to her desk, it stood on the opposite side of the room facing the door. Her bed lay just behind the desk. She sat down and pointed me to sit in the chair across from her.
"You know of our war with the Ice Nation?" It was a rhetorical question, who could not know of the sun or the earth, "Sometimes our typical raids are not enough. They do not send the right message, or persuade them strongly enough to stop attacking us. Most of our children know this, their parents take them to a display early on. They know the measures we need to take to keep our people safe," Luna reached for some of the maps on her desk and fiddled with them.
"I know you keep prisoners," I could see that this was hard for her but there was no need for so much tension. I expected her to calm down at my reassurance but it just tensed her up further. I decided to persevere, "I know that you trade them in return for our people."
Luna looked at me and I noticed the bags underneath her eyes once more. She seemed tired, more tired than I ever remembered her being before. She stopped fiddling with the maps, "We do not always trade them. War is ugly, Clarke. War is horrid and awful and you need to do everything that you can to make sure that your people are safe," I nodded. This was nothing new, "We do not always capture warriors, Clarke."
"There are only warriors."
Luna shook her head, "I appreciate your view, but that is a limited philosophy. The other clans do not understand war the way we do. The Ice Nation do not train all in the ways of war," her hands reached for the maps again but she stilled them, "They take our children Clarke. They slaughter them and burn them and eat them and rape them and pull them apart. Then they send back the bodies." Suddenly the smell of blood grew stronger. Luna pulled a red soaked package from underneath her desk, "I receive one of these every other day or so."
I stared at the package. Luna cleared her desk with one hand as she placed it in the center. Red liquid pooled at the bottom and leaked onto her desk.
"They mostly send them to me fresh, so the blood still smells but the maggots haven't set in yet. Occasionally there are maggots."
Luna began unwrapping the package. The smell grew worse and I attempted to cover my nose. She took off the rope that bound the cloth covering first. Then the peeled back the blood soaked fabric. I stared at the empty eyes on the head before me. The hacked up hair. The mouth frozen in a scream with all of the teeth missing. The tongue that had been nailed into the head's chin. The nose had been maimed beyond recognition and the ears had been removed completely. I stared at it. The smell made my eyes water. Every other day.
There was a rage building up in me. It had begun with the news of this war, with the families divided on the streets. It had built with every word from Luna and every war party that returned in tatters. Every war party that did not return at all.
Despite the hacked up state of the head in front of me, I could recognize it. The cheekbones and face matched clearly with the warrior trainee that had disappeared a week ago. The empty sockets stared at me accusingly. How could I not protect him? How could I not protect all the people of Hali?
"Why?" I asked Luna as I stared into the black void in front of me.
"Because they can," She had walked around the table and now placed a hand on my shoulder, "Because this is war," together we stayed and stared at the head in front of us. A rumble spread through my stomach and before I knew it I was leaning over to throw up in the pot Luna held out to me. She held back my hair as I emptied my stomach.
"Why?" I asked Luna as soon as my stomach was empty. The smell of rot had begun to replace the blood at this point and I feared it would never leave me.
Luna just placed her hands on either side of my face and kissed me on the forehead, "There are two sides to every war."
I looked at her again. Her face had fallen with her hands and now she stood as the Mother, not Luna. She walked back round her desk to the wall next to her bed. She moved the furs aside and opened the door behind them to reveal a dark stairwell leading down.
"It is time to see the other side," I obeyed her command and followed her down the dark stairwell. When we reached what may have been the bottom I walked into her outstretched hand and waited while she knocked on the door in front of us. It opened quickly into another dark room.
The Mother pulled me into the room, "Remember your oath," the door shut behind me.
"Yes Mother," I stood still as her hand slipped from my grip. Rustling filled the room. I must have been desensitized to the smell by this point for the constant scent of blood wafted through the room and I paid it no mind. Perhaps it was because I had no mind, my mind had left just like the eyes from that man's head.
The darkness of the room was eradicated by the light of the fire Mother had just lit. Warriors I had never seen before stood on either side of the two doors into the room. Along the sides there were numerous tools and weapons all arrayed on shelves on the walls. Occasionally a moan would break through the silence.
"Welcome to Death Row," the Mother stood in front of me, her face a mask of platitude and her eyes dull as a child's family drawing, "This is our side of the war."
She grabbed a cloth wrapped package, this one not soaked, from the unknown guard that handed it to her. Another guard handed her a torch.
"Follow me Clarke. You are a warrior, my little warrior, and you need to know what that means."
I followed her even though half of my brain screamed at me not to. A long dormant part of me told me to run, to get as far away from this monster as I could. Strange that the voice sounded a lot like Abby Griffin.
I followed her through the door into a long hallway filled with metal doors on either side. Occasionally a moan or scream would break through the silence. Our footsteps rung on the stone floor in a parody of movement on the Ark. We passed one door where the inhabitant whispered death threats at us. Other doors where they screamed them at us. I forced my back to remain tall. My shoulders to square up.
Two sides to every war.
The Mother stopped in front of one of the cells. This one made no sound as we stood in front of it though I could hear breathing within when the screams momentarily stopped. She pushed me forward lightly to tell me to open the door. I grabbed the key she had offered over to me and pushed it into the lock. It clinked cleanly when the door was unlocked and I passed the key back before opening the door fully and stepping into the room. Once the Mother stepped in behind me the room was illuminated with the light of her torch.
There must have been twenty people in the room. All of them chained together at the hands and bound by cloth at the mouth. One of them was the Ice Nation trader I had noticed and pointed out to Libra when I passed her in the market. They were all people I had seen before; people I had bought stuff from or passed on the way down the street. Their Ice Nation tattoos and scars clear on their faces for all to see.
The Mother pressed the cloth of the package she'd received from the guard into my hands. I held it in front of me and began to open it.
"Every one of us has to do this. As soon as we are given a sword of our own the first command must be to kill with it. You are my little Warrior. May your sword be true," the Mother dragged the first person forward. The woman stared at her, eyes pleading for a mercy that if given from me would be stripped by another.
I opened the package and therein lay the sword I had been dreaming of for years. My own sword, proof that I was a true warrior.
"Remember the head, Clarke... There are two sides to every war," I nodded at her. The sword fit in my hand perfectly. I swung it a few times experientially.
It barely occurred to me that I was about to kill the green eyed woman in front of me. Perhaps she had done nothing wrong, perhaps she had done something awful. But as the Mother stared into me and melted into Luna with a smile, I knew that the only path for me was forward.
I had been training for this. I knew the dangers of the Ice Nation. The way they invaded our lives and took everything for granted.
My sword slid into her chest before I could fully comprehend the depth of my thoughts and the voice of Abby Griffin could whisper in my head.
I flew through the motions. Each person that the Mother lead in front of me I slaughtered. There was no hesitation past the first, just a single puncture to make it as painless as possible. It was still there in their eyes though. The way they looked at me, calling for answers I did not have.
I started to smile at one point.
I was still slashing at air when the Mother laid her hand on my shoulder and I finally slipped out of the mood I had fallen into. I counted the bodies in front of me as Luna melted out of the Mother and began to comfort me. She whispered the number I already knew into my ear, "Look at you, my little warrior. There was twenty-two of them."
The blood had soaked into me. My hands stained. Tips of my hair red. Splatters across my chest. Finally, I knew why warriors wore black.
I saw Libra on my way out of the hallway. He refused to look me in the eye as Lupa pulled him into the shadows of a room holding a single bound man.
It would be a lie to say that I slept peacefully after that night. Truthfully there was no such thing as peace. It was all a lie they told you in the sky to keep you calm.
Abby Griffin told me that peace is the absence of war.
The Mother told me that peace is the ignorance of war, for war is the constant.
There are two sides to every war. A winner, a loser or neither.
I believed that this was why I was marked with twenty-two scars upon my back after my first visit to the hallway. The other three warriors all received one, an introduction into a perfunctory lifestyle.
I was the Little Warrior. The Mother had greater plans.
"Clarke look at me," I looked at him. Libra's hands were halfway through braiding my hair, "You did what was necessary. They were traitors to the…"
"The Mother," the words felt like a curse upon my lips, "The Mother."
"Look at me, don't let your eyes fall," I looked him in the eye. Brown, like his hair and skin. He was a splotch of brown wrapped in armour and served with tea, "You will have to do despicable things. Awful, horrible things-"
"Great pep talk, I think that cliff over there looks nice."
"Don't interrupt me!" He ruffled my hair and ruined the braid, "Anyways, awful, horrible things will be done both to you and by you. That doesn't mean that you're an awful, horrible person."
"Just an awful one?"
"Just an awful one. But if you're not awful then you're not living life right! There are so many people who are going to tell you that you cannot be a good leader and awful. But only awful people make good leaders. You can make the right choices, save more of your people. Sometimes awful people do amazing things. They do the best things that can be done because awful things happen for good reasons."
"And what, only awful, horrible things happen for bad reasons?"
"Yes!"
"Your worldview is messed up."
"So is yours."
"Why do you think we're friends?" Libra and I smiled at each other and turned back to watching the sunset. His hands slid cleanly through my hair as he made new braids and my knife sliced across the wooden block I was turning into art.
I focused on the grooves in the wood, my knife flowing with them. Peeling back the layers to reveal the masterpiece I could see in my mind. It wasn't charcoal but it was still art.
Just as I was about to begin defining more of the shape of the miniature sword I was carving, Libra placed a steadying hand on my shoulder and shushed me. A few feet away from us in the grass on the hill lay a squealing form that had just rolled out from underneath one of the bushes.
"What is that?" Libra asked me in a whisper. I had no idea and shrugged into his hand.
I leaned away from my position between his legs to get a closer look. The creature was small, brownish red in the dusky lighting, "It looks like one of those rodents!"
"Damn things ate my supper last night."
"They're cute!"
He coughed, "Menaces," he coughed again.
"Where's his Mom?" I looked around, normally such a young animal would have a mother close on hand at all moments to protect it. This one was curled up by itself in the grass.
"They don't have parents. They just spawn from the abyss," I reached forward even further to cup it in my hands. The tiny body fit snugly in my palm, "What are you doing?"
"I'm going to take him home; give him a fighting chance."
I looked back at him. He was smiling, his cheeks nearly covering his eyes.
"What?"
"You're such an awful person!"
I punched him.
I don't think the fact that the sunset was red with the grey of storm clouds really clicked until I was about to fall asleep and a sense of foreboding filled me.
