The journey never understood

The battlefield lay open to her, she stood there with her sword in hand looking at the field where her dreams were to be made. The wind blew sorrowfully across the landscape, the valley that this ground was nestled loomed over it like silent sentinels. The queen looked down on where the bodies were once, she was old now and her kingdom had grown. Here men and women fought in the name of what they held dear and believed in. The soil was once rich with life now bore the scars of death and destruction, the river that ran on the western edge had dried up out of shame from carrying the blood of hope.

The queen fell to her knees weeping at the memories of those that fell, she was young and full of hope when she stood on the hill with a young boy holding the flag of her small kingdom. They all looked up to her the guiding light, the pain brought by the greedy king had bled the people dry and children had less to eat and no future. She knelt there with tears running down her cheeks, it was 30 years since her last visit here. Now it was the time to give thanks to those who trusted her. The kingdom has peace but it is poisoned by the very thing she fought against, the greed of the few has metastasised in the breast of the people and turned them against each other.

As she torn of her regal clothes and stood naked on that hill she raised the sword and shouted the same battle cry she sang before the war then, here only her horse stood vigil as she asked for forgiveness for not stopping the ruin. Her son had become a tyrant and forced her into exile and the people who admired her now shunned her. She was a queen to a broken kingdom.

A long figure emerged from the small grove of trees behind her and walked to where she stood holding the sword. Completely cover in a robe the figure moved silently to stand next to the queen, it did not move just waited to be noticed. The queen finally saw the figure and let out a laugh and dropped the sword. She turned to the figure and spoke in a quiet voice.

“So you finally came, how long will I have to suffer my folly before you give me what I have been asking for so long?”

The figure turned its head to look at the open field and then to her and a voice spoke in her head. “I was always nearby; it was not my judgement to take your daughter but what was written for her. Your son, though a weak man, was given a higher calling.”

“Who makes all these rules, the gods have long abandoned me. I wanted peace and for a time I saw it was possible but now I see my folly, the weak will always follow the easy lie rather than accept the harsher truth.”

“Why do you say weak? Weren’t you also warned about your son by a trusted advisor? He was then assassinated to silence his voice of truth, you knew all along what would have happened but you chose your maternal instincts instead of logic. Humanity never wanted the truth, only the convenient lie. I existed before this world was created and will continue my task long after it is ash. I have seen great men and women rise to rule their people with a sense of direction only to fall in the simplest of vices. I have seen children die of hunger under the tables of food they were never allowed to touch. What made you any different.”

The queen now stood looking at the figure, this was death and it had come to here when she stood at its feet begging for the life of her husband. Now here it stood before her, she was naked and her body showed the ravages of the battles she fought and age. Her stomach looked like melting butter, the scarred skin was folding over each other and her shrivelled breasts showed the old abuse she suffered in the hands of other men. Her arm and leg muscles barely held on to her bones as her fingers were gnarled with bone sickness. She cried to death to release her.

“You were punished, until you repaid the debt of killing the old man you would not receive my gift.”

“Repaid that debt a thousand times over, I took his dream and brought peace. I did not expect that the very deceit I was fighting was festering in my womb. Had I known I would have cut it out, a mother cannot kill her child after birth no mater how hard she tries. I have seen many who did so but what they became after were worse than the madmen in the sanitorium.”

“You believe you paid the debt, but did you really understand the debt was?”

“Until I bring peace to the land, until the journey home is complete I will never know death.”

“The journey home, what does that say?”

The queen stopped and tried to think, she never knew what it really meant. All she held on to was brining peace to the land. The journey home never came up in her mind.

“Your journey home was not the castle where you raised your daughter and son, no. The journey home was the path of peace in yourself. Here you stand on the first step to bring peace to the lands soaked in tyranny and yet despite your feats nothing changed. The cycle of pain and lies continues unabated. Warriors always forget who really they are fighting for, they use the world around as proxies to the peace they never found in themselves. You are no different queen, you never sought the peace of who you really are.”

The queen sank to her knees again and wept before death, she remembered what her father told her once. “Always remember, when you have peace within yourself you will become a beacon of it to everyone.” A wise old blacksmith who never turned away anyone asking for help, though they had enough to eat they never wanted anymore than that.

Death walked over to the queen and placed a hand on her shoulder, it did not have empathy but eons of watching women like her rise and fall in the same promise made it understand that the cycle of pain is in their hands but they will never learn to use it a method to find the true peace.

“I have lost all then, I do not know what it means to have peace within. All I have ever found is pain and suffering,” the queen wept.

“Then remember your mother, remember how she was at peace even when there was no food on the table for her. She found contentment in your full bellies and your father. He found happiness in your stories and lessons, though they died protecting you and your brother they died knowing that they did their duty.”

“Rise now O Queen Kalat, know that your journey is not on these broken lands, venture forth to lands new and find the one thing you never knew.”

With that the youth in the queen was restored and she stood up looking exactly as young as they day she first picked the sword to protect the people who now betrayed her. Donning the garb that was left for her, she drove the sword into the ground as a final gesture to those that fell as a thank you and remembrance to their sacrifice. Getting on the saddle she rode to the sunrise to the lands she knew not but saw that it was time to write a different chapter in this journey of her peace. Behind her the field was now filled with the spectres of the fallen soldiers looking at the rider disappear into the horizon, as the sunrise passed over the battlefield the souls rose up like smoke and all finally received their freedom from the imprisonment for this cursed land. They all smiled as their flew up, death stood looking at the disappearing figure as another joined it. The second was a feminine figure and she spoke, “she may still make the same mistake. I just hope this time we will not have to create a greater flood to wash the slate.”

Death turned to her and replied, “we are just harbingers, our duty is to fate. He is a pain to talk to but hopefully this time he is right and maybe we have a greater beacon at the fore.”