DAUGHTER OF KART-HADASHT

DAUGHTER OF KART-HADASHT, by Rebecca Buchanan, audio by Karen Menzel

 

Romans are liars.

They say that my father, the greatest of generals, the most brilliant of minds, the fiercest of hearts, faltered at his end. They say that he drank until his feet were unsteady, falling from the highest window of Bithynia’s capital. They say that Flamininus, foul-tongued, poisoned my father’s wine and that he drank willingly. They say that Flamininus poisoned my father’s sword, and that he cut his thumb and died, wailing. They say that Flamininus slew my father with his own sword, smelted and silvered by the smiths of Heavenly Tanit, and threw him from the highest window of Bithynia’s capital to the sea far below.

None of these tellings are true.

Romans lie, remember?

It was I, known as Il’issa, named for that ancient Queen, who slew my father. His heart was fierce, but his hands were unsteady, his eyes failing. He would not be paraded in chains through the streets of foul Rome, strangled with rope for their entertainment.

No.

He gave to me his own sword, smelted and silvered by the smiths of Heavenly Tanit. He turned his face to the sea and the moon, and I drove the sword through his fierce heart.

I shall not say where I buried him.

I carry his sword still, its hilt shaped in Tanit’s sacred symbol; a twin to the silvered burn on my arm.

Many have tried to take it from me, through false promises and violence, through unholy magic and treachery. Fabia, witch and wife of Flamininus, was only the first.

 

***

 

She came upon me on the third morning after I buried my father, his sword hugged tight to my chest as I slept. The sudden silence of the birds, only moments before celebrating the new day, and the cold tingling of my burn mark, alerted me to her approach. She came naked, barefoot, bareheaded, long hair a soft brown, a belt of bones and animal skulls around her hips.

She smiled when she saw me waiting by the low fire, sword held at the ready. “Ah. Elissa, daughter of Hannibal, asleep in rags with only the branches of trees for shelter. I should have expected no more.”

“Il’issa,” I corrected her. “And you cannot even say his name properly. I will cut out your tongue for that alone.”

She laughed. “I will take his sword and I will take the mark upon your flesh, and then I will take your tongue.”

The witch deftly lifted an owl skull from where it hung at her right hip and pressed it to her forehead. The woman disappeared and an uhu appeared, eyes a bright orange, with a wingspan that would have dwarfed even my father.

The mark upon my arm flashed cold.

The owl launched herself at me, sharp beak wide, talons extended. I dropped, rolling across the ground, leaping up behind to swipe at her belly.

Miss.

The owl screeched in frustration, spun around, and dove for my face.

I swung the sword again, the blade scattering dawn light across the trees. The owl shrieked, wings beating at me. Talons wrapped around my wrist, holding my sword away, while the other foot dug into my scalp, cutting deep. Blood ran down my forehead, my cheeks, my throat.

A desperate idea drove my free arm up, my hand skimming across the witch’s beak — bite! — and eyes, between her eyes. Feeling blindly.

The shape of bone.

I closed my fingers around the enchanted skull, pulled, twisted, wrenched it free, my bloodied hand shaking.

The uhu screamed again. Madly molting feathers, she flailed backwards and tumbled to the ground, a woman again.

The burn mark tingled painfully.

Pushing to one knee, she snarled, teeth bared. “The sword. The mark. And your tongue.”

I dropped the skull, leveling the blade between us. “Not today, witch. And not tomorrow.”

Her fingers twitched, her hand moving towards a python skull at her left hip.

I struck, blade spraying sunlight. Her fingers tumbled to the ground. She howled, lunging for me, and I took her head, the sword slicing clean. Bouncing end over end, her head rolled into the trees, soft brown hair collecting leaves and twigs.

The witch’s body fell with a dull thud.

Drawing one heavy breath, then another, I waited, sword held aloft.

But she was still. Dead, for now.

I limped forward, knees stinging, and cut the belt of bones from around her hips. Dragging the uhh skull and the belt across the ground with the tip of my blade, I tossed it into the low fire. Slowly, the bones warmed and blackened. Flipping my sword around, I smashed the hilt down, cracking the sacred symbol of Heavenly Tanit against the bones over and over again.

Others would have taken souvenirs. My father taught me better.

When it was done, I found her head and cut out her tongue. That, too, went into the fire.

The witch would put herself back together, eventually.

But, for now, the birds were singing and the silvered burn on my arm was quiet.

My father’s sword upon my back, I walked east, into the morning.

________________________________________

Rebecca Buchanan is the editor of the Pagan literary ezine,
Eternal Haunted Summer. She has published a number of poems, short stories, and novellas, the
most recent of which is “Blood, Honey, Snow: A Tale of Murder at the Edge of the World“.

Karen Menzel earned an MFA in Creative Writing: Popular Fiction from the University of Southern Maine. She teaches and mentors students at Iowa State University and Western Technical College. She serves as the Assistant Editor of the Pseuodopod Horror Podcast Magazine. She is the 2016 recipient of the Horror Writers Association Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Scholarship. Her poems, short stories and novellas appear in more than 40 publications and her first novel, SWIFT FOR THE SUN, debuted from Dreamspinner Press in 2017.