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“My dear tidy yourself” she said while handing the young girl the jaggedly cut piece of cloth the old woman always kept by her side. She used this often at times to wipe spills of wine and spills of tears. Perhaps that is why it was always tucked in her head covering and stained deep red. It smelled of rotting grapes and similar to an old tunic, too small to be her father’s, the young girl found that her mother had kept tucked away in her drawers. The young girl had not yet been able to scent to death.
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“Look at me girl,” the old woman said, the young girl obliged as she always has, “men fight with battles and business and daggers” the young girl turned to a deep, what seemed deep to her, slash in her arm. The girl winced, hurting from her scrapes and hurting from her honor.
The girl had tried to pick flights out in the courtyard with a few of the boys older than her, ‘the other younger ones were wiser,’ she would say. She had been struck by one who happened to procure an honest blade and fell to tears.
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“I just wanted to-”
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“Women,” the old woman had interrupted, “women use secrets.”
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“Secrets?” she asked, the largest secret she had ever been trusted to keep was when her father had taken the blame for tearing her mother’s gown she had dressed in once and slipped. Secrets held no power to the young girl at this point in her life.
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“Swords, daggers, knives, and battle are violent my lady,” she said as she meticulously cleaned and dressed the young girl’s wound “but secrets are messier.” The old woman stood from her stool quite slowly and gave a slight bow to the young girl who smiled gingerly in return, still pondering what the woman’s words could even mean as she listened to the scrape of her door before the echoing pang of it being shut.
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The young girl wanted to cry more than she was allotted but she gripped the pungent cloth in her hand suddenly realizing that she held onto the only possession she knew her maid to have and immediately ran out her chamber door to return it.
The young girl had just left her chamber, turned the corner of the hallway toward the east wing and five men stood in her path. They seemed to be as tall as mountains to the girl who stood what she wished was a hundred centimeters. She looked them in their eyes in an attempt to find answers as to who they were. They were dressed in a dark hue that was not quite blue or red but one the girl had no word for.
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The older woman, the young girl’s maid, Alva, was at the men’s feet, her hands still clasped together, still resting on her knees as if asking for forgiveness. Her hands were no longer connected to her.
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“Sweet wine” she spoke to the little girl as a tear left her eye and having no cloth to catch it as the smallest man in the five wielded his blade and struck the neck of Alva. the girl screamed as she fled away from the five.
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She had known only one truth as she scattered through the servants' passages, tunnels, and living quarters. She repeated the phrase to herself as she fled as if an attempt to ensure she was correct about what Alva had said.
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“New Elderfruit Sweeten Wine .'' This is what Alva had taught the young girl so she would always remember where she was when outside of her home. In her country of Eirinn the elderfruit was used to create wine when the shrubbery was plentiful, much before the young girl’s time. Most of the native plant on the west of the country was burned to ash during the siege of the Eskiean. The only lands still fertile enough to produce the delicacy lay in the east of the kingdom Eirinn which had always aided the young girl in finding her way home.
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Alva had used her last words to tell the girl to head southwest of her home. The girl knew not of where her maid intended her to go but she knew Alva was from the west of Eirinn and she knew that the farther west she was to go, the more difficult it would be for her to find her way back home.
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The girl, with only nine years of knowledge on this land, was terrified as she stared at the old wooden door that marked her exit to the south wing of her home. She still wanted to cry, and she still had the piece of cloth from Alva gripped tight in her hand, and she let her tears wet her cheeks. Her mother had always hated when she hid from her lessons in the servants’ passageways, she would say that the smell she would acquire from long stays was more horrid than the stables. The young girl loved the smell of the old wood rotting away, the rarely washed bed sheets and tunics, and mostly, the burning wood from the fires that were always lit.
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A sharp cry of a child no older than a babe that ended as quickly as it started summoned the courage needed in the girl to push through the old wooden door and out into the vast southern land of the kingdom. She ran. Ran as far as she could and in the most south west direction that she could perceive without looking at the possible danger behind her.
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When she reached what was named the Valley of Vik she knew she was far enough away from her home to collect herself. She had no food, no knowledge of where she was headed, and no person to advise her. She did not feel like crying at this time. She looked out to her beautiful surroundings and listened to the river flow over rocks and she smiled.
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She was Myrna Mac an Righ, daughter of Padraig Mac an Righ, the king of Eirinn, blessed by the God Lysander, the savior of the sinners. This is not where her story would end.
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