There's a kingdom many days travel from here which is constantly warring with all three of its neighbours. The fighting stops for snow season, with promises and rumours of peace negotiations come blossom season, but the fighting always resumes instead. This constant state of war leads the nobility to keep their women and children confined to estates well away from the borders. It's these estates, with their carefully managed farmlands which keep the kingdom self-sufficient and without need of trade partners instead of enemies. But to be born a child of the nobility there is to be sentenced to life in a gilded cage. Perhaps the cage extends to the next nearest estates, but it's still a cage. There is no travel beyond these central estates. There is no word of life beyond them either. The whole world is the estates which keep the kingdom running well enough to perpetuate the war.
Curiosity is a curse in a child so born. The curious are silenced and punished until they fall into line with the demands of their elders. Well, in most cases. The few who persist in their curiosity eventually find some means of escape and the tales told of their fates, true or not, provide material for crushing the spirits of the next generation. I was a curious child, but in the care of a wise woman who recognized it early and took care to channel my energy into seemingly appropriate pastimes. To all others, I appeared to be a complacent, dutiful young girl. The means by which my curiosity was kept hidden were as secret as the trait itself. I didn't know then, who the allies of my nurse were. Who kept her supplied with the books which introduced me to a world beyond both the estates and the eternal fighting on the borders. I was taught, in secret, real world history and geography, natural sciences, self defence and wildland survival skills. I learned to recognize accents, weapons, and plants. To properly identify animals and their tracks. To count and name all the kingdoms of the known world. It seems it very suddenly occurred to my father that his daughter had grown into a woman. For one day I was treated as a child and the very next my marriage to the son of the nearest neighbour was announced. I knew the young man in question well enough to know marriage to him would be torture of the highest order. He was as ignorant as a pupil of his tutors could remain and viciously cruel to every living being around him. These traits were concealed, if poorly, from his elders, but all too obvious to those his own age. Our wedding was to be held early in the next blossom season, although arrangements began the day of the announcement, which was made in the midst of the elder season. Before the first elder moon phase had passed, my nurse procured for me the clothes of a common boy. My woman's shape was concealed by means of tight, body altering garments which could be concealed beneath the shirt and trousers. There was an old all-purpose knife such as a common boy would own and a pack which held a second set of clothes and some food and water. My hair was cut after the fashion of a common boy and I was instructed in the proper accent of the local common folk. In this disguise, I was smuggled from the estate in the back of a cooper's wagon. I was aware both my parents and my intended would seek me out. The cooper's cart carried me across three estates, but nowhere near far enough from my home. I had to walk cross country, across freshly harvested fields to reach the outer edge of those central estates. Even then, my parents had guards who were capable of seeking me out so long as I remained inside the kingdom's borders. My nurse suggested I seek employment at an inn for a time until I could find a traveller I could convince to smuggle me out of the country. Being less convinced of my own powers of persuasion, I changed my disguise for the garments of a poor county undertaker's daughter and enlisted in the army in a shield maid corps.
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AuthorAlexandra A. 'Lexa' Cheshire is the author of numerous novels and short stories published through Howling Wolf Books. Lexa is a wife, mother, cat owner, and music lover. Archives
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