She left as quickly as she had come- within a few hours’ time. I had often wondered what it would be like to live to see her. As children, we’d always been told the many yarns that had been spun and passed from mouth to mouth throughout the years, about her and the day she would come upon us.
The most common of the bedtime stories, however, was whispered often in the hushed silence of the night by mothers. It was sung sullenly around campfires out in the alleyways by the homeless minstrels who sought to gain a half-pence or two. Everyone knew the chant about her, but only in the darkest, eeriest hours of the night was it murmured. For this tale was one unlike any other.
It told not only of her, but of the one who would, at last, rise up against her and free our people.
It not only spoke of her matchless power, but of the one who would be able to conquer her misuse of authority and give us liberty once again.
I had never thought the day would come that someone would take a stand. But, as she rode her steed of pure, slick ebony out onto the drawbridge which separated our small civilization from the dangers of the outside world, I felt an urge rise up inside me. Standing next to my love, Keisean, who was my unsealed companion, I grabbed his hand. He looked into my eyes with a painful intensity, his brown eyes sparkling. He was also a knight. He was the best of them, in all actuality. We were both part of the Resistance, a group which fought against the Mistress and her powerful grasp on Milloan. We sought to rid ourselves of her talons that gripped as tightly as possible.
As the feeling grew, I could not stop myself from crying out:
“The Mistress is mighty,
Indeed, she is deadly,
An hundred, an thousand
Could not toss her o’er.
But somewhere within
The bounds of Milloan,
A subject will rise;
A peasant will roar.
And that roar will grow louder;
His shouts shall undo her;
Her power is matchless
To all except one.
The dawn will awaken
A new sound, outspoken,
And then shall the Mistress
Be ever undone.”
As I sang, the people around joined in, voicing their independence unanimously. In unison, our chorus rose up the hills and canyons around Milloan, and we joined hands in defiance of her leadership.
We haled our cries up and over every crag and stone; the ground felt as though it shook with our statement of revolution.
And she, the woman with the ivory skin and the long, blonde locks turned around in her golden saddle to face us, her prisoners. We cheered, rising up in a wave of fervid determination, not allowing her a moment to breathe. Our voices whirled around her in a cyclone of might.
Her large brown eyes seemed to quake with fury. Finally, she screamed out the loudest cry I’d ever heard.
“You will not defy me!” A deep, dark silence fell over the confluence of villagers. All that was heard were her screams. “After all that I have done-protected you, saved you, given you a place to call home- this is how you choose to show your gratitude? I do not believe that any of you have considered how much paler, how much bleaker, how solemn, I could decide to make it, here in Milloan. You would do best to hold your tongues. For, now, I must teach you that disobedience will result in punishment.”
She laughed gruesomely at the multiple frightened countenances found throughout the bystanders. She shook uncontrollably with rapture and flicked her golden sceptre. We could not have prepared for what was to come.
