A Simple Thing

K. Ryan, 2006.

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A fairly graphic description piece. Much ickiness and melodrama.

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The woman was lying on her front, naked and alone; her back a hot point of colour in the room. Glistening reds and pinks were loud, and there was bruising purple and black; green, too, with ragged edges of grey only half connecting skin to the frayed slabs of muscle that stayed beneath it all. The room was close, hot, airless, and she could smell yarrow and honey and the cauterizing agents which burnt her nose and the air she breathed as well as her skin, and herself.

She was barely able to think, most of the time. Pain, painkillers, they both made thoughts fall away from her, echo strangely, disrupted by the line of pure sensation that was her spine. But somehow she held onto a few things: one, that her name was Aud, no matter how many times healers tried to name her the frilly other name she was born with. Two: that she hurt. A simple, simple thing like not hurting was beyond her.

The third thing was this: Aud knew that she would never fit her body again. It was shrinking around her, a clenching mass of skin and limbs, and she stank. Aud would never escape the stench of herself.

(“Not nice, is it—scream all you like. Maybe they’ll hear you, pay your ransom.)

Memories floated, random and multilingual, without a start or end. When Aud felt one, she tried to turn over, barely making half an inch before passing out. Anything to force them to slide back into quiet.

(“Sneaking in…there’s always one of you. Don’t you wish you’d just gone at us on your big horse? Things would’ve been quick, that way.”)

Some voices weren’t memories. One blurred shape fluttered around her room most days. Bringing water, opening and closing windows, crying—all those sorts of things. She was small and dark, delicate. A mother. Aud was nothing like her.

“Aurilee, darling. Is there anything…please, can you speak yet? They say you’re healing up nicely, you’ll be able to walk!”

Aud’s mother had always seemed breakable—they shared that, now, at least. Sometimes, Aud tried to talk to her. Once, she’d said, “…ransom,” and her voice felt tinny and wrong.

“Ransom? My poor girl, what ransom?”

“Sent. Exchange. Gold…for me.” This was another thing Aud was sure of. She’d been taken, and they’d wanted money that never came, and the days owing were marked by cuts.

“Auril…Aud.” she could hear her mother’s voice shaking, perplexed. “No one contacted us. No one asked for money. Dear heart, it was the boarder conflict. You…you were found. The only…” tears in that voice, now—“you were the only one left. You…you tried to access their camp? And….”

(“…getting sick of waiting, girl.”)

“…No.” Nothing made sense. She throbbed with no-sense. Nonsense. The world faded.

“—Yes, you stupid child!” Mother had been shouting. “If you’d just left that stupid custom for dead you wouldn’t be here like this! We never needed another dead knight!”

(“…A knight, then? Didn’t think there were any of those left this century…and that’s really pathetic armour, you know…”)

Aud turned her face away. Shifted, letting tacky new skin touch the rough sheets, and she tried to die. Alone again, and naked, but with her back unseen.