--- They Said He Sat on Flowers ---
If I knew it would be this peaceful, I would’ve done it months ago. The only unpleasant aspect of my predicament is the cold touch of the tombstone on my cheek and the itchy feeling of brown curls tickling my neck. I'm not sure if the calmness is from the blood loss or the slow descent into death, but either way I'm grateful. Either way, I'm closer to seeing him or closer to realizing it was all for nothing. After all, I’m still holding the rose.
The only other sign of life, besides my muffled breath, is the mass of vultures circling above. The groans from the fallen soldiers have long since died down but the grasslands are nonetheless littered with the bodies. I tried to help a few of them before realizing the futility of my effort. Perhaps I was saving them by letting them die.
∞
You could hear the thumping of the horses' hooves from miles away when the Castians approached the city. That had been just days ago. When they finally attacked, I was up in the bell tower with Roland.
“Alaina, stay here,” he had told me. “If the Castians make it past the walls and into Maulth, go to the river. They won’t be merciful.”
“You won’t make it back," I said. "None of you will make it back.” I’d never seen Roland’s face so pale. His hands grasped mine. They were colder than usual. He knew what was to come.
“You can’t think like that,” he said. Roland’s four additional years of wisdom weren’t enough to trick me into thinking the battle could be won. I wasn’t his baby sister anymore.
“If you get scared, come back to me,” I urged him. “You can tell me stories like you used to and we can wait out the war here in the tower. You can tell me the one about the skeleton again.”
He laughed, briefly. We both knew he wouldn't do that. “Do you ever get sick of that story?"
"No, it's a good story."
"It's just a fairy tale, Alaina,” he said, squeezing my fingers once more before descending the spiral staircase. "See you soon."
I stood and looked out the window. The sky was eerily dark. The claws of the clouds stretched down towards the horizon. A veil of rain fell in the distance, but I couldn’t hear it. All I could hear was the rustling of wind through the ivy that crept up the tower and the faint sounds of horns from the battlefield.
The chimneys of the hovels, which at an earlier time produced smoldering snake-like columns, now sat smokeless. I imagined the women and children curled up in the shadows of the houses, weeping. It all seemed meaningless. The fighting, the crying. I felt like I wasn’t made for the world.
Roland emerged from the bell tower and ran off through the graveyard. He passed the giant flowers and approached the gates. The walls of the city looked tiny. I wondered if that was what queens and princesses did when cities were ransacked. 'Let the men fight and the women watch,' I thought. I wasn't sure which was worse.
The Castian army looked like a horde of locusts approaching the city. The forces pounded against the walls like a rogue breaker, some drops climbing up the bastions while the majority of the wave spilled through the gates and into the alleys.
The enemy soldiers, dressed in black garments, spread through the city like a bad rash. I was glad that the height of the bell tower made it difficult to see the swords dragging across the flesh of the soldiers, women and children. It appeared serene from a distance.
A few soldiers retreated into the graveyard, only to be struck by enemy arrows or spears. It was ironic to me that they died so close to the tombstones. It’d be less work for the grave diggers.
