Lexa had never been so far away from her village. Everything was new. The sharp smell of a great, stagnant pond nearby. The glowing blue butterflies lighting up a dark part of the forest. The rush of a big river she couldn't see. Sometimes she'd close her eyes to pick out sounds she'd never heard before, but then she'd worry that she was missing out on seeing something incredible. She had loved her village, knew it like she knew her mother's voice. She knew it was time to head home for dinner from the way the sun cut through the tall trees. She knew the tiny chimes that called out when a breeze wandered through were the bells that hung from the healer's tent. Now the world was giving her a thousand new ways to know it, but she couldn't stop to explore. The warriors who took turns carrying her on horseback did not seem to be as enthralled with the forest as she was.
Even from the saddle, though, she loved the land. The land never tried to hide: the trees shined after a rain and mud clumped underfoot. When the summer got too hot, smaller plants withered. When the temperature dropped, still water froze.
The land made sense to Lexa in a way people didn't. When the travelers heard the grumble of some enormous animal in the trees, Tux cursed angrily at his horse and dug his heels into its haunches, driving it forward with a terrible lurch. Lexa, with him on the saddle, felt Tux's muscles tense and caught the scent of his sweat: fear. Her nomi always smiled when she was frustrated. Titus kept close to Lexa, his glances full of warmth and protection, but there was a shadow in him that she didn't understand. Adults confused her. Their words never matched what the rest of them told her. But she learned that they didn't like when she pointed this out, so she usually tried to stay away from them altogether.
But now she was the only child among many adults, warriors whose primary ways of communicating were empty silence or wary anger. Except the woman Indra with the tattoos curving around one side of her face. Her silence was warm, full of both hope and heaviness. When she did speak, it was often in response to whatever Lexa had thought but not spoken. "That's a bullfrog," she'd say when Lexa's head turned toward a loud clicking sound. "They love these bogs." Lexa liked when she rode with her. Indra was a mystery, like a gift Lexa had to wait to unwrap.
Polis started as a trickle of traders on the road. A woman with dried fish in a basket slung over her shoulder. An old man pushing scrap metal in a small cart. Then it began to flow into a steady stream of different people, the traders along with warriors with heavy swords and spears strapped to their backs, their faces tattooed in sharp black lines like Indra's or masked in animal skulls. As they drew even closer to the city, a horde of children hovered around the road to take in the spectacle and hope for some traders' wares to come loose from their bundles.
Their eyes widened as the Fleimkepa's party approached. Warriors wore no uniforms or indications of rank, but these warriors rode horses, gapa, and only the Commander's warriors rode horses. As the horses drew closer, the children saw that a child rode with them, and a child accompanying the Fleimkepa could only mean one thing.
"Natblida!" they shouted as they ran alongside the group. "Show us your blood, yongheda!" Young Commander. Lexa got the sense they didn't mean it as a compliment. She shifted nervously in the saddle in front of Tux who hissed at the children. "Move on!" But they kept pace, staying just out of reach of the warriors' boots.
"I'll knock you down, natblida!" one of the bigger boys shouted, more to his friends than at Lexa. "Can you even hold a sword?" The group laughed and stared. Lexa didn't know what a sword had to do anything, so she stayed quiet. "She can't even speak!" the boy taunted.
Lexa swallowed and took a breath as she turned to look at him. His eyes were a mix of bright green and chestnut, beautiful, but they blinked as if asking a question when she held his glance. She tilted her head and smiled at him, the way she smiled at squirrels coming closer and closer. You don't need to be afraid. Suddenly, the boy's eyes darkened into a storm. The rest happened in a blink. The rock that appeared in his hand, the sharp pain in her knee, and the way Titus flew from his horse to pin the boy on the ground.
"You will respect those who bear her burden," Titus growled at him as he pushed his forearm into the boy's throat. Veins sprouted across the tattoos covering Titus' head, and his eyes narrowed to black slits. "You have no idea…" The boy's face turned red, then blue, and his eyes rolled back.
"Fleimkepa." Indra had quietly dismounted and stood behind Titus with her hand softly on his shoulder. "He's just a child."
Titus sucked in his breath and lifted his arm. The boy gasped and coughed as his friends pulled him away. Titus turned around and looked at Indra. "So is she," he said, walking towards Lexa. "Are you hurt?" He rolled up the loose woven pants she wore. No blood, but the skin just below her knee was darkening into a bruise. He lifted her foot, moved it up and down. "Does that hurt?" Lexa shook her head.
She'd been hit harder with the thick sticks during bleirona training. She didn't train with the other children in the village. She had private lessons in a clearing deep into the woods. So that no one knows how good you are, her nomi said. Her mother had lied, Lexa now realized. She winced at the memory.
"That hurts?" she heard Titus ask distantly. Lexa shook her head again, not looking at Titus. "I'm not hurt." she said.
She had liked her training. The stick sword felt right in her hand. Since she was so small, she had to learn to move her feet even more than swing the sword. It was more like dancing than fighting. Good, Lexa! the teacher would say as she spun away from a blow. When can I train with the other kids? Lexa would always ask. When you're ready, the teacher would always reply, never looking Lexa in the eye. Then Lexa would let it go. Until the next lesson.
The riders were silent as they continued into Polis, but the city grew more and more alive the further they went. The streets were a maze of tall pine trees and canvas tents and huts pieced together from metal sheets scavenged from the remains of the world after praimfaya. One after another, they rose up on either side of the road in walls alive with people and chickens and dogs and who knows what else.
The walls pushed in on Lexa. In the forest, everything was new, but there the smells and sights and sounds rose up slowly to meet her. In this place, every step was a barrage. The cries of unseen babies. The flash of sunlight on metal strips hanging from a tent, and the hollow tinkle they made when a breeze blew through them. The squawk of chickens dodging feet. The smell of roasting meat and the cook yelling towards them, "Gonakru! You must be hungry! Come! Try!" In the opening of one hut a man sat sewing what looked like a child's tunic. Another tent was lined with tables filled with knives and short swords. A stony-faced, stony-muscled woman in a headscarf sat at the back of the tent, her arms crossed as she kept an eye on the weapons. Children gathered in the gutters of the road, shouting gleefully and fighting with sticks.
Lexa had never seen so many people at once, and she knew there were many more she couldn't see. Their joy and sadness and boredom rose in her chest in indistinguishable waves as she moved from one hut to another tent and on and on. She watched each person go about their business and tried to imagine their life. What did they eat for breakfast? Do they sleep on the ground?
"What do you think of Polis, Lexa?" Titus had sidled up to her.
"It's...big." She couldn't think of any other word.
"The biggest city in the twelve clans," he said idly. That's not what she meant, but it didn't matter. He was just talking to fill space, like adults sometimes do. She never liked when they did that, so she stayed quiet.
As they rounded another corner of the maze, the tents gave way to a small grassy area where warriors were sparring and children were shooting twigs from homemade bows. The meadow sloped steeply so that the horizon opened up before them, revealing a city that filled a valley surrounded by hills and mountains. Lexa's eyes grew big, and she sucked in her breath. It was a pramkapa, a great city that had been destroyed in praimfaya. Huge metal arms twisted painfully towards the sky, and blackened walls with eyes tilted precariously. Lexa's gaze, though, was drawn to the tallest thing she'd ever seen, a huge round pillar that rose far above even the tallest trees. It looked as though a giant had thrown boulders at it, and a tall flame burned at the top, like a candle.
Titus noticed her big eyes and smiled. "That's where the Commander lives, little natblida."
"How tall is it?" Lexa's eyes were drawn to the flame.
"Tall enough to see Azgeda from the top."
"Will we get to go to the top?" Lexa asked eagerly.
Titus felt his smile sigh a bit, as he finally got a glimpse of the little girl acting her age. "We're going there now. That's where all natblida live."
"I get to live there?" She squealed, leaning forward in her saddle and squinting to look closer. Light danced in her green eyes. She looked over at Indra who nodded and smiled. When Indra smiled, it changed her whole body, like she had suddenly shrugged off something heavy.
The slope brought them down into the center of the city where the roads were wider but the tents and stalls were packed even closer together. Sometimes they passed tall stone houses, and when Lexa glanced inside she saw people laughing and spilling whatever was in their cups. As the rode on, the tower grew taller and taller until they were engulfed in its shadow. Finally they were right under it. Lexa looked up and flinched. She swore it was about to fall on her. But when she glanced up again, it was still in the same place.
Tux dismounted and then pulled Lexa off the horse and set her on her feet. She rubbed the back of her legs where they hurt from the ride.
"Come, natblida." Titus was almost inside. She ran to meet him, leaving the other warriors with the horses.
The ride to the top of the tower felt like a year to Lexa. The cart they rode in clicked and squeaked the entire ride up, and the small space became hotter every inch they travelled. She wondered if the air would smell different so far up, if she would be afraid.
Titus' voice cut into her thoughts. "I will go in first. Do not speak to the Commander unless he speaks to you." He droned on with other instructions, but Lexa returned to her thoughts. Where in the tower will I live? How will we eat so far away from hunting forests? I'm hungry. The cart suddenly jerked to a stop with a sharp click, and a knock came from the other side of the door. Titus knocked back, and the doors slid open. Titus stepped out with Lexa behind him.
On either side of the door, two warriors stood guard with spears. One had black lines tattooed across his brown face like wisps of hair blowing in the wind. The other, a woman, had her thick black hair pulled back in braids on top of her head. Lexa stared at patterns of half moons scarred into her skin down the sides of her face. The woman's eyes snapped at her, and she looked away.
As they stepped across a small hallway into a large chamber, Lexa saw dust floating in small shafts of light streaming in. Titus reached down without looking at her, stopping her. She waited at the edge of the room as he continued to walk in.
She took in a deep breath. The air does smell different. A twinge went through her as she felt many eyes on her. A small group of children and some teenagers sat cross-legged in a line on the floor staring at her, more curious than hostile.
"Welcome back, Fleimkepa," Lexa heard a voice say. She looked up and saw a man-or boy?-sitting on a great chair made of twisting tree branches. The chair was on a raised platform so that the he looked down on the rest of them. He was tall like a man, and he was wrapped in wiry muscle, but his face reminded Lexa of the boys who used to chase cats around her village.
"Thank you, Heda," Titus responded, bowing deeply.
"Is this our newest novitiate?" the young man asked, looking behind Titus at Lexa. His voice was was bright and warm.
"Yes, Heda. This is Leksa kom Trikru."
The young man beckoned her towards him with a wave of his hand. She walked in, stood next to Titus, and looked up at him. His face, like his voice, was bright and open, but she saw shadows behind his gray-brown eyes. He stood slowly. As he did, the group on the floor joined him and, much to her surprise, they all bowed deeply to her.
"Monin, Leksa kom Trikru," the man said when he rose. "I am Mazo kom Yujleda. And these," he looked at the group of kids, "are your new brothers and sisters."
Lexa instinctively returned the bow to both Mazo and the group of kids. Her heart started to pound as she suddenly realized that she was now home, in this place she'd never seen-that she would never again eat dinner with her nomi or chase the sounds of chimes in her village. She bit her bottom lip and tried to think of something to say, but she didn't know what she was supposed to say to a Commander, to other natblida. The kids continued to look at her, but the pounding in her chest drowned out any awareness of them. She looked around the room, behind Mazo, and saw the sun streaking into the room through the cracks of red gauzy curtains that swayed a bit with a breeze she couldn't feel. There was something behind those curtains. And then she said the only thing she could think of.
"Can we go behind them?" she asked, pointing at the curtains.
A bright smile spread across Mazo's face. "Of course, Lexa. It is my favorite place." He turned to the other natblida. "You may go. I think it's time for dinner, isn't it Fleimkepa?" Titus lowered his head in a nod. "You'll have lots of time to get to know Lexa. Gyon au!" His smile was still wide as he watched them leave in a line with Titus in the lead. "Now, I wonder what's behind the curtain…" Mazo looked playfully at Lexa. He gestured with his head, let's go see. She stepped up onto the platform and around the big chair towards the curtains. "Are you ready?" She nodded eagerly. So he slowly drew the curtain back. She squinted as the sun poured in. Mazo motioned for her to walk through.
Her eyes had to adjust for a moment with the brightness, but as they did, she saw she stood on a ledge overlooking the whole world. Green rolling over hills and jutting up over sharp mountains. The sky just starting to turn orange and pink as the sun crawled towards the horizon. And the maze of Polis stretching even further than she thought into the forest toward a lake in the distance. She wondered how many people were down there, how many trees. She wondered how far away the sun was.
"What do you think?" Mazo asked as he looked out towards the sun.
"It's so...big."
"It's almost like you can feel all the people moving around down there, isn't it?" Mazo replied, still looking out with a thoughtful look on his face. Lexa liked him already. She stepped towards a gap in the balcony's broken barrier to get a better look.
"Wochas, natblida!" Mazo pulled her back from the edge, his eyes creased with worry. "That's a long way to fall." He dropped down to his knees to look straight into her eyes. "Here's your first lesson as a novitiate: you must take good care of yourself. Be safe. Be cautious. Be suspicious. For me. For all the Commanders before." He looked through the gap out at the city. "For all our people." His eyes had suddenly turned more gray, pushing the brown to the edges.
Lexa tilted her head in confusion. Mazo shook his head and smiled. Sadness hovered at the edges of his lips. "You will learn..." he said distantly. He shrugged his shoulders as if shaking himself out of some dark thought. "In the meantime, here is your second lesson: whenever I address you and we're in front of others, you must always say, 'yes, Heda.' Can you practice?"
"Yes, Heda," Lexa replied, still feeling confused. The light returned to Mazo's face as he threw his head back and laughed. The joyful sound hung in the air as they looked out on the sky turning from red to purple. Lexa looked out into the forest and wondered what her nomi was doing.
"These are our people, Lexa." Mazo's voice, serious but still warm, interrupted her thoughts. "Every one of them." He looked out past the horizon and then slowly turned his eyes on Lexa. "Never forget that."
"Yes, Heda."
Thank you so much for reading! Please follow my story if you like what you saw, and feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts. I'm always open to suggestions for making my writing better.
As always, Trigedasleng is in italics, and translations can be found at trigedasleng dot info.
