Jadxea rolled under her blankets and squirmed. Her eyes opened slowly to the sight of an empty bed across from her. She shook her head to clear it of her sleepy haze. There was a vague recollection of her mother calling out in her sleep. That was nothing new. Jadxea had known her mother to talk in her sleep ever since she could remember. But still, something seemed out of place.
Jadxea squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. She had dreamt. Nothing had been clear, or at least it wasn't now, but there was a farmhouse. Two women; one light, one dark, had been watching children playing around the porch. Four children who laughed and ran and screamed happily. Jadxea had been one of them... but she was much younger. There was a storm. The thunder had woken her up.
There was a flash of light outside the hut, followed by a clap of thunder. Jadxea pulled her blanket tighter around herself. The fact that her mother was nowhere nearby made her nervous. Storms didn't usually upset her, but something was different. Something was wrong.
"Jadxea?" a voice called out.
"Mother?" Jadxea bolted out of bed and made for the door.
But it was Terreis who passed through the animal skin curtain. She was drenched and red in the face. She held her hand out to Jadxea. "Come on! Come to my hut!"
Jadxea hesitated, a step back... what if her mother returned and panicked when she found that her child was gone? Terreis offered her hand again, an encouraging look in her eyes. Jadxea glanced around the empty hut once more before taking a tight hold of Terreis' hand and following her frantic race through the rain.
The pair panted once inside, laughing a bit from the adrenaline rush. Jadxea suddenly dissolved into giggles and Terreis examined herself, and the girl, closely, to find what wasa so funny. "I forgot my boots!" Jadxea gasped, revealing her mud-soaked feet. Terreis laughed and led her through the little hut.
"Here, we have a fire to dry your feet. You can borrow something of mine." Terreis sat the girl by the fire and disappeared into a joining room. "Mother? Mother, she's here!"
Jadxea hadn't considered Terreis having a mother. To her, Amazons seemed so other-worldly that they could sprout spontaneously from trees and Jadxea wouldn't question it.
Terreis returned a few minutes later and sat next to Jadxea. She dropped a sack between them and stared up at the roof with a sigh. "Your mother said she'd be back in a few days. You can stay here if you want."
"A few days?" Jadxea snapped at the young Amazon.
"She and the other woman left a few hours ago," Terreis confirmed. "She asked me to keep an eye on you." Terreis smiled, seeing the girl's mind race. "Hey... my mother's cooking isn't that bad."
Jadxea smiled, but turned back to the fire and sighed heavily. "I hate it when she does this!"
"Well... you're in luck," Terreis set the sack in front of Jadxea. "I found these a few years ago. Keep it quiet, though. No one knows that I have them."
Jadxea, curious and confused, pried open the drawstring and stared into the packed sack.
"Your mother must have left them here when she left us," Terreis smiled, watching her little friend reach inside to retrieve the prize.
Jadxea grasped one of the scrolls by it's end. As she pulled it out, the smell of the old parchment assaulted her. The edges were old; worn out and torn. There was writing where the rolled ends met.
"I've read them all a few times. I thought you'd like to have them, though." Terreis pulled a few more out, looking at each title in passing.
"I don't understand." Jadxea picked up a couple that Terreis had discarded on the floor.
"They're your mother's scrolls. When she was a bard," Terreis giggled when Jadxea's eyes grew wide and she gathered the abandoned scrolls onto her lap eagerly. "Here," Terreis offered her the one in her hand, "this is my favorite. The Greater Good. It's one of her best. You can see what a great leader she was, even when she was so young!"
There was so much admiration in Terreis' eyes that Jadxea found herself wondering if they were talking about the same person. She didn't doubt her mother's strength or ability, but for anyone else to see her as something of a hero was just strange. She'd experienced the same feeling when the Amazons had bowed to her the other day. Gabrielle was an admirable person, yes... but a person none-the-less.
With some trepidation, Jadxea unrolled The Greater Good and began reading, trying to ignore Terreis' excited fidgeting beside her. But after a few minutes of reading, she stopped and looked up at her friend, her brow furrowed.
"Who is Xena?"
"So... Mother sacrificed herself," Eve sighed. The fire crackled at her feet, and the heat crickets saang on under the night sky.
Gabrielle stared blankly into the fire. She proded it once or twice with a stick, but the fire wasa already strong, her attention did nothing but create sparks.
"She did the right thing," Eve commented reverently, her eyes downcast. But she looked up when Gabrielle threw the stick angrily into the fire. She watched the blonde woman get up and pace. "Gabrielle..." she knew the comforting voice would do nothing for her, but was compelled to try, "she did do the right thing."
"I should have stopped her!" Gabrielle mumbled to herself. "I should have known what she was going to do! I should have saved her!"
"Gabrielle..."
"Why couldn't she just tell me? We could have found another way! There's always another way!"
"There wasn't!" Eve tried to reason. "Mother knew that there was no other way. Don't blame yourself."
Gabrielle stopped pacing and spun to fave Eve, her face glowing with hatred in the firelight. "No... you're right, Eve," she admitted in an eerily calm voice. "Xena and I had no choice. Akemi took that choice away from her. Some selfish little girl in Japa used Xena. Told her she was her friend, and then used her! No thought to what might happen to Xena afterwards!" Gabrielle's voice was growing to such volume that she was nearly drowning out the crickets. "There was no consideration for her future, her soul! And now... this woman... my best friend, has been forced to sacrifice herself for a deed that could have been prevented by a vengeful little girl!"
"Gabrielle..."
"I loved her!" Gabrielle bent across the campfire and yelled at Eve. "I loved her! And that girl took her from me!" Her tears fell freely and the campfire greedily swallowed them up. "You're right, Eve. I shouldn't blame myself. But the alternative means hating someone that my best friend loved. And even in death... I could never do that to her." She pulled herself upright and put her hands to her face, trying to stop the tears.
"She wouldn't want you to blame Akemi or yourself. She would tell you that the choice was hers to make." Eve wanted so much to hold, and be held by, Gabrielle. But the poor woman had something of a shield around her. No one could touch her. Eve guessed she'd been that way for a long time now. "My mother felt she had a debt to pay, and she needed to pay it the only way she could. She never blamed Akemi, and you shouldn't either."
"Eve," Gabrielle began darkly, drawing her hands down her face slowly, "your mother died to put 40 thousand souls at peace, and we are riding to Amphipolis because her soul isn't. By the Gods, I will blame someone for it!"
Gabrielle steered Danae along the path along so amazingly familiar to her. So many, many years ago, a little girl had begged a ride from a stranger in exchange for stories, just to follow a hero on her journey. That little girl had no idea how important that hero would become to her. The day that she laid in the middle of the road, praying to Hermes, she didn't know that she would one day become an Amazon leader, a follower of Eli. There was no way to know that she would become a warrior, or assist in the killing of the Greek Gods. That little girl didn't know what it was to have blood on her hands, to give birth to a child, to lose the person she loved beyond all measure. In a way, she missed little Gabrielle of Potedia. She regretted nothing of her life. If given a second chance, she would still follow Xena through everything. But as the road to Amphipolis wound to an end, Gabrielle felt fully the loss of her innocence for the first time. She wouldn't, couldn't cry for it... she had done that too many times in her life. But the impact of the emotions weighed down on her heaavily, and when Eve shouted excitedly, she was shocked out of her revery.
"Gabrielle! It's beautiful!" she pointed ahead of them to the little village of Amphipolis.
Even from this distance it was obvious that the village thrived. Villagers, farmers, and artisans alike mingled in the square. Smoke billowed from multiple chimneys, and childrens' laughter floated on the wind to reach the two travellers' ears.
Gabrielle smiled affectionately. "That's the Amphipolis that I remember. They were only just rebuilding when I was here last."
Eve stared at her compationately. "When mother died?" she asked gently.
Gabrielle was silent for a moment, the only sounds were of the horse hooves and the distant villagers. "I had a promise to fullfill," she told Eve quietly. "I brought her home... didn't even stay the night. I couldn't bear to sleep in that tavern. The villagers didn't even know I was here."
"You should have stayed," Eve told her, suprising her. "Mother deserved tribute in her own village. Now, all they know is that, in the cover of darkness, Xena was placed in the masoleum with her family."
Gabrielle bowed her head. She had never considered that. No one in this village had known Xena, had grown up with her. But she was of their village. She was the Warrior Princess, a hero. In her own self-pitying heartache, Gabrielle had never considered Amphipolis wanting or needing to pay tribute to their fallen heroine.
Gabrielle was silent all the rest of the way into the village. The inhabitants smiled curiously at them as they passed through the gates and rode through the center of the market. Gabrielle pulled Danae to a stop in front of that all-too-familiar tavern and stared at the open door, the customers moving happily in and out. Somehow, for some reason, she still expected to see Cyrene; small and dark Cyrene, wiping her hands on a dishtowel as she came outside to greet her daughter and partner. She supposed Cyrene had become like a second mother; her kind face and warm hospitality... it was hard to imagine anyone else running the tavern.
Eve swung herself off of her horse and wraped the reins around the post a couple of times. She looked up at Gabrielle, who seemed lost in thought, and spoke softly so as not to startle her. "Gabrielle... I'm going to get us a room. We may be here a few days." But there was no responce, not even an acknowledgement from the woman. "Gabrielle?"
Gabrielle drew in a deep breath, coming back to herself. She shook her head and blinked hard, trying to clear her disorientation. "Um..." a look at the tavern, and then she turned back to her companion, "Eve, I..."
Eve held up her hand and smiled sweetly. "I know. I'll get us the room. I'll join you in a little while."
Gabrielle glanced around, blushing at how easily she was read. Ultimately, she just nodded and pulled Danae's reins to steer her away and down a side alley.
