((A/N: This chapter's song is called Stairs in Her Hair. It's a poem by Amal El-Mohtar, and it's also been made into a song on youtube. I highly recommend it. You can listen to it here: youtube dot com/watch?v=ceeE6_I4ZIU or read it in the Welcome to Bordertown anthology.))
Mara hurries along the streets, a bag of food and other provisions slung across her back, next to Nightmare. Fili promised that they'll make a better way to hold the sword on her back, but for now Nightmare hangs from a strip of cloth looped over her shoulders, like he always has. She carries a handful of coins in her left hand. They're leaving soon, as soon as she finds her friends, they'll be out and away from this town. Mara scratches her shoulder, reveling in the softness of the borrowed shirt. She'd caught her own on a nail at some point yesterday and the worn fabric had given way without a struggle, leaving a long tear that showed her ribcage, a little more padded than it had been before meeting the pair. Unfortunately, it had torn in such a way that if she moved a certain way, it also showed anyone looking (which had thankfully been just the dwarves) a hint of the soft swell of her small breasts. Kili had lent her one of his spares until she could sew the revealing hole shut. She'd laughed at their expressions when they'd realized, their faces turning tomato-red, eyes burning in a way that made her skin burn in return.
The streets are almost as deserted as they were yesterday, people not willing to leave their warm beds until the sun has risen high and burned away most of the damp chill in the air. She hurries on, excitement bubbling in her blood, ready to leave this town and let her guard relax. Ready for the sense of foreboding she's had since yesterday to release it's grip on her innards.
A hand grabs her shoulder, yanks her around hard. It happens too fast for her to catch herself and she falls to the dirt, still muddy from yesterday's rain. Papa stands over her like an avenging god, his eyes terrible as he pulls her up by the crown of her head, his fingers tangled in hair the rusted color of old blood. She hadn't noticed him before, to preoccupied with the happiness that's filling all the empty spaces inside her.
"I've got you, you little whore," Papa hisses, breath rank with old ale. "As if you didn't shame me enough with your unnaturalness, now I find you whoring for dwarves!" He shakes her and it feels like her scalp has caught fire. She cries out and reaches up to grab at his hand, the coins she had been holding scattering across the ground. Papa sees them, eyes going hungry with greed.
"And you've been thieving again."
He drops her to the ground, choosing the coins over her. Nightmare's strap digs painfully into her chest.
There is a girl with a coin in her fist
A coin made of breath and hunger and cold.
Her mind whispers the strains of a song as Papa pats her cheek, still yellowed with the bruise he put there. "Such a good girl, taking care of her Papa." The shift in his mood would've given her whiplash if she hadn't known it so well. The deadened hope in her heart gleams like a coin in the sun.
There is a girl with a coin in her fist
Who buys whatever she's sold.
The cong in her mind is mournful now, like it knows she's giving up.
"Come along girl, it's time to get home." She stands, seeing the gleam in Papa's eyes as he takes in her appearance for the first time. "I see your whoring paid off. You've gotten new clothes." He pats her yellowed cheek again. "Good girl, one less thing I have to provide for your useless hide now." Mara had forgotten she was wearing Kili's shirt, her own still torn and waiting for her in the room she shared with the brothers. She fought not to cry. Would they think she had just used them, running off without a backwards glance now they had remade Nightmare?
A girl with a voice and a girl with a name
A girl with strong hands and eyes like the rain
A girl too young and too easy to bruise
A girl with nothing to loose, oh
A girl with nothing to loose.
The song mocks her now, so loud she almost misses Papa's next words.
"And they fixed that rusted piece of shit, eh? I should be able to get a pretty price for that, not as much as if you had gotten them to make you one out of dwarven steel, but any dwarf-blade goes for a high price."
Papa notices when she stops, rage darkening his bloodshot eyes as he notices her rain-colored eyes flash with defiance. She sees Fili and Kili in her mind, Kili's scent on the shirt she wears, Nightmare strong and proud thanks to their efforts. She has something to loose now. She has happiness and friendship and that odd tightening in her chest when she thinks of the brothers. She is living now, rejoicing in each breath she takes, instead of simply existing. She can't go back to that now, can't go back to bending under Papa's wrath. She opens her mouth, but Papa backhands the words before they have a chance to be voiced.
Here is a girl with a stone on her tongue
Plucked from a wave on the shore.
Here is a girl with a stone on her tongue
That keeps her from asking for more.
Mara spits blood into a puddle, watching it swirl in the murky water. She glares at Papa, all the rage and pain and humiliation that she has ever suffered through under his heel shining through her eyes. The song spins wild, singing battle through her blood.
I am a girl with a coin in her fist
But I have learned to be bold.
I am a girl who will never be missed
If she's borrowed or broken or sold.
She stands slowly, her head spinning with pain and anger, she looks up at Papa's face.
"You will not sell this sword, Papa. It is mine. I have paid for it with every drop of blood and sweat, every tear I shed, while living under your roof. It became mine for every night it was my dearest friend when you left me broken on the floor. I may have your boot prints on my back, but now I have something to loose!"
Papa's brown eyes, so unlike her own, darken with further rage and disbelief. He swings his foot back, preparing to kick her back down into the mud. Mara catches it when it swings forward, a sharp tug and the man she feared for so long is on his back in the mud, gasping painfully as he tries to recover the wind that was knocked out of his lungs.
"Now you will look up at me with fear, like I looked up at you so many times, begging for mercy," she says, Nightmare singing as she swings him free of his cloth binding. The warg on his blade snarls silent defiance. The last verse of the song swells in her mind, singing her on.
I am a girl with a voice and a name
A girl with strong hands and eyes like the rain.
A girl who can fight and a girl who can choose
A girl with so much to loose, oh
A girl with so much to loose.
Nightmare cuts through the air and splatters mud on the face of the quivering man at her feet. He screams and his eyes roll back as the smell of urine fouls the air. Nightmare rests against his cheekbone, gently, almost like a lover's touch. The edge of the blade is so sharp that the skin parts, even at such a light touch.
When Mara turns, she realizes that a crowd has gathered, people pouring out of doorways to watch with the familiar mix of disgust, fear, and hate in their eyes. The man at her feet is well-liked, even if his daughter is warg-spawn. The crowd murmurs in dissent, faces darkening as they eye her. Mara lifts her chin and stares them down, stares down her death, as she stands alone.
And then, suddenly, she isn't alone. Fili and Kili have materialized, seemingly out of nowhere, standing with her against the angry crowd.
"Why do you protect the warg-spawn?" a voice howls from the crowd. "She'll set her wargs on you without a second thought, bite you in the back just like the wargs she controls!"
The words sting against her skin like hail. She can sense the dwarves falter, can almost hear them thinking about the warg they'd etched into her sword yesterday evening.
"I didn't control it! I asked it to leave, to stop terrorizing you! The deaths are on your heads!" Mara spits the words out, they leave a foul taste in her mouth. She knows that she could tell that the sky is blue and they wouldn't believe her. Hopelessness wells from somewhere dark inside her and the evil voice in her mind cackles You knew it wouldn't last, but you fell for them anyway, a stray pup begging for a handout, and now your friends will kill you. Bitterness rises in her throat, her eyes sting, but she will not show weakness. Not to anyone.
~/~/~/
Fili freezes when he hears Mara yell her defense back at the crowd. It wasn't what he expected. It's not I didn't control the beast, I was just as afraid as any of you! Instead she yells that she asked the beast to leave. He thinks back to the drunken tale he and Kili had heard their first night in this town.
The man has drunkard written all over him, from the broken veins in his face to his bloodshot eyes and bulbous nose, but he's friendly enough. He even buys them two tankards of mead while they listen to him yammer. He's surprisingly understandable, even though he wobbles on his chair like it's a ship in stormy seas.
"There was a warg here, young masters. Must've been… oh, a good ten years ago now. People couldn't leave their houses for fear of it, walking the streets like it owned them. And in broad daylight too! How d'ya like that? Anyway, it was a great beast, in it's prime and plump with our townsfolk. Then this pair walks in, traveled from some town down the road a ways, hadn't heard of the Dall Beast. Stopped at this very inn, they did. Father and daughter. Father was respectable enough, he still comes 'round sometimes. He's a likeable sort, buys me a tankard whenever I'm in!" The man lets loose a guffaw loud enough to make the brothers wince, before he drains the tankard in front of him and bellows for another.
"The daughter though, she was a right little beast. She was a tiny little thing, must've had some Halfling in there somewhere, and she were only around ten years or so, but unnerving, starin' straight at you with them pale ghost-eyes, straight faced. I thought she was gonna spit a curse at me, make me fall down dead where I sat. Then the warg howled, and the whole place goes dead silent in time to hear the girl howl back at it. Never want to see something like that again." The man shudders. "She gets up and walks to the door, all hunched over like it hurts her to stand upright. She goes out into the street, bold as brass, whole town's got it's eyes on 'er. She walks straight up to that warg and says, 'Please leave, you're scaring folk. It's not nice.' Not nice. Like she were talking to some little shite she played with! Well, someone throws a chamberpot or something at them, and I don't blame 'em by the way. Cursed unnatural thing to see, girl and warg in the street like old friends. But it strikes the warg's back, and the thing doesn't even blink. It picks up that girl in its maw like she's it's long-lost pup or something, gentle as you please, and sets her down out of the way. Then it charges into the house where the thrower was and killed everyone inside. Walls dripping with blood, they were. Not enough left to fit in one coffin, let alone the four for each person in that house. Anyway, the beast's never seen again and that girl neither. Good thing too, that girl was no good. Would've brought down wargs wherever she went."
He'd dismissed the tale as just a drunk's talk, but obviously he'd been wrong to do so. He looked at Mara, took in the fear and anger and heartbreak on her face, and knew she had been the child to stand against a warg for the sake of a village that wanted nothing less than her blood today. A stone flies from the crowd, and Mara's head snaps to the side, a quiet cry breaking from her lips. The sight of her blood is like the call to battle and the mob surges forward, powered by fear and hate, screaming for more. Mara turns and takes off, the sword shining on her back like a small sun.
~/~/~/
Mara turns and runs as she blinks blood out of her eye, fear lending her speed. She doesn't want to die at the hands of a bloodthirsty mob, but she wants the dwarves she called her friends (for almost a day and a half) to turn on her even less. She runs and runs and runs, putting distance between herself and all the hate that burns in the eyes of creatures that walk on two legs. She runs until she collapses on a thick carpet of leaves, lungs burning for air. Mara looks up and sees the sky through tall trees; the patches that show through the boughs are turning the swirling, vivid colors of sunset. Happiness seems a long time ago, sitting with two dwarves as they laugh and sang silly songs about her kindness. Her eyes burn, and she presses the heels of her palms into them, silent sobs shaking her body. She lies there for what seems like forever, until darkness reigns over the forest again. Pinpricks of light appear in the velvet night sky, and the green-yellow spots of lightning bugs dance drunkenly among the tree trunks. Brush crackles in the distance, but she doesn't move, secure that no one will find her in this darkness.
Her fingers find the scars on her neck, where warg fangs had held her and moved her to safety. She wonders if she should've accepted the warg's offer, gone to join its pack. Would she have been loved then? If she had, would she think she was an ugly furless, two-legged warg? The long ago beast had told her she would be accepted, that she could learn their songs and sing with them. It had told her that no two legger would accept her now. She should've known it was telling the truth, should've gone with it.
The two faces float through her mind, Fili and Kili, and it feels like she's just ripped open a fresh wound on her heart. Would she have met them if she had gone with the warg? A twig snaps nearby and she starts, eyes straining to make out the threat. Two shapes, only distinguishable by the fact that they are slightly darker than their surroundings, move toward her. Before she has a chance to react, they've flopped down beside her. The smell of leather and sweat and woodsmoke and dwarf wash over her, stealing away all pain and sadness.
Fili, on her left says, "Damn, you run faster than a warg."
Kili, on her right says, "You sure as shit don't have fangs like one though. I like that in a girl."
She can hear smiles and laughter in their voices. They're joking about it? Her disbelief chokes her.
Kili's arm around her, pulling her close to him, Fili curling around behind her.
"We don't care what you are," Fili says, "You're just Mara to us."
"Although, next time, run a bit slower so we can keep up."
Kili turns the sob in her throat to a watery chuckle.
"Okay," she whispers, her tears soaking into Kili's shirt. Fili's lips brush the scars on the back of her neck, Kili's brush her forehead. She falls asleep in the arms of to dwarves who are beginning to love her, just as she is beginning to love them in return.