Rhody sobbed to herself late into the night and whenever she tried to choke down an onslaught of gasping cries, she was overwhelmed by her grief and could not resist their pull. It was strange, yet Rhody the healer had never known such grief as this surely must be. It was consuming her very soul, which had grown so accustomed to happiness and comfort in her older brother Skerry, and was wiping out all the joyous memories and dashing any hopes she secretly fondled in the deepest recesses of her heart to the earthen floor. So she sat, sobbing within her tree on the side of the King’s highway, trying desperately to remember the happy times she had shared with her brother and failing. Her anguish kept drawing her back in to the bitter memories of her past life before they had become outcasts. That horrible day at the creek with the other children, who scorned both she and her brother at the rude word of the King’s men, the rowdy servants of Wenceslas the First. Why had they scoffed so at friendship with the two children after the guards had declared them rebels against the King? Perhaps it was because the children, as well as their older siblings and their poor misguided parents, were each and every one of them taught to regard the King with respect better suited for a god or an element. The folk of the Lands had no gods, nor had they goddesses, only the King and their lives. Life-worship was not uncommon to Rhody’s past experiences with the villagers she and her brother Skerry had lived with, before their lives had been made illegal by a few careless words that poisoned the air on one gray afternoon. Indeed, poison. Poison was what the evil words had been, and words such as they still tainted the world with their hidden vice.
Skerry had known. He had known what the good king Wenceslas the Second really was, in the depths of his crafty soul. He was no man, that beast who sat upon the throne of the Lands and made unfair rules to torment his people. Yes, that was it, poisoned injustice. It preyed upon the helpless people like so many hungry wolves after fresh midnight kills. Rhody did not even know everything her older brother did about the man who called himself almighty King. Some things, perhaps, were too dreadful for her tender impassioned spirit to bear. She would either cherish a burning hatred for the man and all his kind or ruin her life by grieving for the injustice of it all for her time upon the earth, dwelling in the known lands, trying to live without forcing her independent spirit to bend with every hasty breath spouting hasty laws. So in a way it was better for Rhody to sit grieving for something real and truly grief-igniting in the hollowed tree on the highway than to build up anger or remorse over something that might never be changed. Over such grudges battles had been fought, battles like the Great War, and over such trifling things many lives had been lost, much blood spilt, much sadness fired up. Life was unjust. If only there was another way to live it, a better way, one that did not require the wasting of life and the spilling of blood, and the vapid tearing apart of families and the breaking of hearts.
Yet is there was a way, surely it would be too hard a task for the broken-hearted healer crying over the strange goodness of her brother, who was at that moment traveling to his certain death because he would not accept the normal lifestyle of the folk of the Lands. Rhody did not realize it then, but her brother was not taking steps towards his death, but to a new life of justice, peace, and kindness.

Lorn shoved aside a tree branch threatening to smack him and looked about him. The pathway through the woods, beaten rudely by the King’s men as they passed through on their way to battles with the highlanders over the marshy lowlands or on hunting expeditions during which the King’s servants would kill for the sake of killing and give it not a thought. An odd thing, is life, thought Lorn to himself as he drew his sword and chopped at the thick tangled undergrowth choking about his ankles. Life was unfair, perhaps. Aye, that was it, life was unfair and should not be lived the way people made life out to be lived.
“Cursed forest, cursed men who call themselves my friend and then laugh at this plight I find myself being forced into, cursed…cursed…”Lorn abruptly stopped hacking at the vines when he realized the blasphemous thing which could have just leapt from his mouth unguarded, un-thought-of. The King, after all, was the one who had given him the position of King’s soldier. He had provided many a time for his needs and loved all his men like sons, or so he claimed to love them so. Perhaps this was debatable.
Alas, however, there was none in the village-kingdoms of either Warwick or Crescent who dared even to think rebellious thoughts against the King or his rulings. What did it matter whether life was unfair or not, as long as they lived in obedience to every single command of their sovereign lord the King Wenceslas the Second?
Lorn shook his head as if to clear it. Something troubled him about the whole idea of obeying the King without a thought of their own souls. Did not the individual person, whether he or her be Crescentfolk, Warwick, highlander, lowlander, Fairy or…Lorn automatically withdrew from the terrible thought of the outcast Hinterlanders, who were cast from civil society for their beliefs about a coming Redeemer, from his checklist of folk who should be able to govern their own lives. Naturally, the people of the Hinterlands could not be included. Some rumored child had been named their leader, a boy who would grow to give up his life for a rebel cause against the King and destroy set morals. What an idea! That one lone person would stand against a thousand decades of rulings and commandments from men who were deemed greater than gods in some respects, and replace them with eternal salvation from some horrible afterlife and brotherly love. Oh yes, Lorn had listened to the radical missionaries of this strange pregnant belief, a growing rebellion against everything the people of the Lands had eve lived for, a forthright blatancy, a lifestyle which boasted justice. There could never be justice; what had been done and what was still happening to the Hinterlanders and the age-old grudge still held against the Fairy folk was sure proof of the impossibility of there being an alternate way of living life.
Yet deep down within his soul, Lorn was sure that if, by some miracle, such a way of life existed, he could be the first convert.
Lorn pulled down hard upon his small silver earrings to clear his head of this dangerous thinking. What, had he been dreaming? Surely nothing so fantastic and ideal could ever happen, especially to him, a young man who was trying to be a good soldier for the King. Lorn slashed angrily at the hearts of the vegetation that hindered him from his weighty quest. Woo the girl, they had told him. Let her come into your arms like butter to a loaf of bread. Find out the secrets of this rumored Redeemer. Did the strange healer girl, whom some Crescentfolk thought to be part Fairy, know anything at all about the Hinterlanders’ beliefs? If so, would she ever relent to his “charms”, as Gorn had called him, and bear her soul to his persistent asking? Even if she would, Lorn had doubts as to whether he could stand his treachery that long. It was wrong, he knew, the horrible things he had been ordered to do for the mere sake of quelling a rebellion. Who was the King, anyway, who thought himself too good to be bothered with the honest purity and modesty withheld by some of his people? Or was it because she was an outcast of his lands, or perhaps part Fairy, whose kind Wenceslas despised, that made him order his men to flush out any hint of rebelliousness from the Hinterlanders? Lorn could never be sure -King’s men could never be sure of anything anymore- but he had his doubts and his fears, his hopes and perhaps even a few joys tucked away behind his slate gray eyes and longish sandy brown hair. Yes…yes, perhaps he did cherish a few joys within himself. They merely did not show themselves to his troubled soul.
Pausing to wipe the sweat from his brow, Lorn looked around at the tall sharp-smelling pines and the rustling of the thick leaves, made by excited birds. He grinned as he saw a rabbit skitter across his path, and spotted a snake trailing lazily along the forest floor, slithering over pine needles and around oozing mushrooms to rest on a warm log, sunned by a solitary patch of sunlight dappling its mossy bark. Lorn squinted at the gray-streaked sky and raised his nose to a puff of wind like a hunting dog after a prey. The tall soldier nearly gagged as a wafting putridity slapped his senses and he quickly covered his mouth and nose. What in the name of the King was that horrible stench? It overpowered him and made him yearn for the homey smell of his mother baking bread.
Lorn continued through the forest and laughed at himself. What a funny thought, to be reminded of his mother’s fresh bread when such a nasty smell had just filled his nostrils. Her bread must have been delicious to override such a hot, fresh death-stench. The young man tried to remember his mother’s face, but her vision was blurred by the stern gray profile of his officer.
“Lure her,” he had said. “MAKE her love you.”
The command was so simple and, as Gorn had put it, so agreeable that he could not help but wonder at his reluctance to obey. Of course, he had no choice in the matter, he would be required to obey or be labeled an outcast in disobedience to the King, and would be shoved to live in the heaths with the scraggly lowlanders or, the Land preserve him, with the disillusioned Hinterlanders. Such as they would no doubt be glad to take him in, and yet Lorn could never even begin to imagine his person in such a sorry state as to be forced to live with those madmen and rebels. The scum of the Lands, the off-scouring of the village-kingdoms, so they had been called by a few Crescentfolk indiscreet enough to mention their names. Such mere mentioning of the Hinterlanders was punishable now by ten lashes in the town square. After the first few beatings, the people were more private with their thoughts. Indeed, it seemed that the people were somehow being pushed into a silence whether they approved of it or not.
Upon these things Lorn considered as he made his way through the forest towards the King’s highway. Suddenly he saw ahead of him a wide stretch of gravel and his heart leapt within him. Finally! No more undergrowth to wrestle with. Setting hand to hilt, the young soldier walked to the edge of the forest and stood peering up and down the highway, picking twigs and tufts of moss from his sandy hair.
Lorn caught sight of a giant squat tree standing lone beside a wooded cliff, near the little-used highway. He crouched down to watch the tree, to see if anyone came forth.
Hour passed and Lorn grew weary of watching the birds alight on the bare gray branches. He was about to rise and make for himself a camp for the night, sheltered from the weather by the intertwined vines and fallen logs, when a tall dark figure emerged from a hidden shadow in the tree, which Lorn suddenly realized to be a hide stretched over an opening like a doorway. He slowly smiled to himself as the figure turned and a shapely female figure was silhouetted by the cold steely sky behind her. Long black hair floated about her slender waist and she wore a homespun dress of plain brown. A bulging pouch hung by her side, full of herbs and plants for healing no doubt, and Lorn saw the bump of a dagger stuck into her lace-up boot. She was tall and beautiful and Lorn wondered whether his job would be so disagreeable after all. A prickle like conscience tweaked his soul but he ignored it and retreated back into the forest to make camp.