The sea battle ended by mid-afternoon.
On shore, white-bearded druids roamed the fortress and urged the stunned women to
move, shaking some and slapping them when necessary. “Gather your children!” they
shouted. “This place is not safe! Go!”
One by one, the druids pushed the women onto the beach—all but Emyn. A peasant, yes,
and still young, but not even druids presumed to order the oracle about! She let Gorio, a
child, lead her out to a dismal, broken world. Emyn clawed at her own hair, sticky from mist
and tears, and pulled it from her face. Ancestors clustered beside women who had slumped
down to weep and pound the sand; gray hands stroked braids and shoulders.
“You know what the Romans will do if you stay!” one druid roared at the wailing crowd.
“Shall I take a knife to you myself?”
Emyn did not linger to hear more. Gorio had her hand; she limped a step behind him, her
stick nearly useless in the sand. The Roman fleet had sailed south, so the refugees headed
north.
They walked through the long afternoon of summer, a day that should have been full of
delight, not death. As the tide peaked, the highest waves left a line of dark, wet ash that
snaked through the sand as far as she could see. When it receded, it deposited body parts
along on the shore, in clumps with charred wood, scraps of leather, and other wreckage: the
remains of ten times twenty ships and their crews.
Emyn stopped to gaze at the debris. “Is this all that’s left?”
“Of what?” the boy asked.
Of the ships, she wanted to scream. Of the Veneti fleet, masters of the sea for
generations! She didn’t scream, though. She’d seen much death in her twenty-three years,
but so had the boy in his lesser span. Screaming would not help.
The faint lights of Gorio’s ancestors danced near him. Emyn saw none of the spirits that
usually crowded her life, waking and sleeping—just these ancient, forgotten souls.
Gorio tugged at her skirt. Ghosts could not protect her or the child. They had to keep
moving.
The sun lowered in the west, its golden light sparkling on the waves. Nothing could mask
the ugliness, though. Along with the tang of salt water, each breeze carried the stench of
decay. A few steps more . . . Emyn wedged her stick between rocks and leaned on it to
stare at a severed hand, posed as if it had just that moment dropped the knife or sword that
failed in its defense.
She kept up with the boy—or maybe he slowed—but she could not stop looking. Shreds
of striped wool and a rope belt caught her eye. These scraps of fabric belonged to someone,
a man hot and alive in the morning. So did this twisted piece of iron with a chip of coral still
attached. Once she gasped and nearly tripped when she realized that the rock before her was
not a stone but a head. She stared into eyes already pecked by gulls. The tangled hair was a
yellowless blonde like hers, like her brother’s.
“Don’t look,” Gorio urged. “Just walk.”
None of the bits of men strewn here wore armor—those would have sunk. What washed
up belonged to fishermen, peasants, and slaves pressed into service to sail the ships: men
who could not afford the mail shirts or helmets that had dragged their owners to the bottom
of the sea, men whose children would cry for them as darkness fell--just as the children of
the warriors would.
Carrion birds hollered as they circled, eager to feast. The dead replenished the earth and
nourished living creatures, but the invaders didn’t understand that. They burned and buried
their dead as if their bodies were too precious for the gods. Emyn’s people knew better, but
they vanished, and soon there would be nothing left to feed the earth or sky. The end of time
had truly come.
In a heartbeat anger replaced her sadness. How could such ignorant armies triumph over
Celtic tribes in their own land? The Romans sneered at wisdom—
The shadow of a gull flew across Emyn’s face and she stumbled. Gorio jumped back to
help, grabbing her waist to keep her upright.
“Thank you.”
He hoisted his bag and they plodded on.
“You warned them,” a hideous sound, more like the scrape of rocks than a voice,
reminded her. “You bless, you warn. Your words are useless.”
Emyn knew this ghost better than any other, and she waved her hand as if she could
sweep it away. She had blessed Satto and prayed for the warriors. They fought like heroes
today. Her prayers were not useless.
“Only one battle among so many,” the grating voice taunted. “Caesar turns your rivers to
blood and fills his wagons with your children. Slaves for his friends, whores to amuse—“
She covered one ear and hummed to shut out the ghost as Gorio urged her forward. She’d
repeated this spirit’s words since childhood, but there was no audience for him now.
“Listen to me, fool! Who else can guide you—”
She hummed louder. Her eyes like waves washing over the sad debris that they passed. A
Roman sandal sat among the pebbles, soaked and stained with water. Emyn forgot that some
of the bodies would be Roman. Where did they go when they died?
Her hand dropped from her ear, and Gorio took it. She followed him, looking down on
soft dark hair that curled and swayed. The ground leveled a bit, and Emyn walked faster.
Gorio had strong legs, but what good were they if he would not leave her side?
Throughout the afternoon, most of the other refugees had passed her and the boy. Some
recognized Emyn and ran faster, averting their eyes for fear of the ghosts that the mystic
attracted. A few stopped and asked where they should go for safety. She glared at them. No
place was safe, and her mouth was tired from screaming.
One man was insistent, and his legs pumped with vigor as he approached. He hugged a
canvas bag to his chest and gripped the strap of another slung over his shoulder. Coins
jingled inside both bags. “Wait!”
Emyn paused The man was fit and young enough to run. Many heroes had perished
today, yet here he stood. He expected her to guide him. She was an oracle and must know;
he was rich and could pay. “What should I do?”
Her throat hurt as she growled out an answer: “Die bravely.”
While the sun dropped further and turned red, Emyn and Gorio stepped around clothes and
shoes, leather sails, cups, empty sheaths, apples, small carved gods, lengths of rope singed
at both ends, and light chains of tin. Wood was everywhere: beams and planks splintered
into small segments, carved and polished or rough and weathered. Charred wooden handles,
burned or yanked free of their metal blades, lay twined in seaweed. The wood of ten times
twenty ships.
They left the beach and veered inland as the sun slipped away. Her stick was useful in the
shadows, poking out a path, helping them avoid large rocks. The half moon was far to the
west when they curled together on a grassy slope—the last bit of landscape they could
discern in the night.
Even in her sleep, the battles raged. Emyn dreamed of seas lit with flames; men screamed
as they ran out of the water. She stood in the middle of it all, unable to look away as waves
lapped at her feet. At times she woke choking then fell into more nightmares of havoc. She
saw again, as she had last year, the skull temple of the Belgae burn; this time horses trampled
and smashed the bones. Only a circle of broken skulls and ashes remained—a sacred circle
that none could cross.
Was time a line or a circle?
Emyn coughed and jerked awake. Gorio slept on. As she settled back to the ground, he
shifted closer and rolled his head onto her arm. She stared at the stars, the only side of the
world left unchanged. They shone like the year’s first snow dusting a field.
Questions raised in dreams had no answers, did they? How could time be a circle? The
druids said it was, but they could argue the stars into daylight given the chance.
Time had no end and no beginning, the wise said. That was silly; everything began
somewhere. She’d been born. The philosophers, Emyn told a druid once, were tricksters
who played with words and told lies that wouldn’t fool a child. He tried explaining time to
her, but she was stubborn and didn’t really want to understand.
“Our lives continue in a circle; they don’t end.” She could almost hear his deep voice in
the darkness. “Rebirth, over and over. We’re in this world or the next. We are never
nowhere.”
“But when you make a circle you begin it,” Emyn had insisted, “You start somewhere.
Don’t laugh . . . .”
She never thought before she spoke. Maybe that was why the dead had such an easy time
speaking through her. But when she died, who would tell her story?
Death Speaker
By Vickey Kalambakal
The end of the seventh day of Elembiu
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