An Old, Worn Truth

08/20/2023

Down in the old quarter, the bell began to ring, and a familiar tension pierced the evening humidity. Deep, mournful echoes cast a dark frequency across the neighborhood, interrupting conversations in kitchens and at dinner tables. A rare, peaceful evening ground to a nervous halt and a new chatter began. Children fell silent as their parents argued and lamented aloud, previously happy tones melting into a frenetic back and forth that fed the bell’s woeful sound.

As if drawn by the reverberations from conversation and bell, a hot wind arose. It came from the sea and whipped around the stone buildings so typical of the quarter’s centuries-old style: a layered mix of limestone, sandstone and clay smashed against climate and conflict. Rock weathered like the faces of those sheltered within glowed as the sun bowed the day away. A child sensing the tension wailed, and the shadows of dusk swiftly gathered like a theater crowd late to the show.

The wind gained strength as it zipped through cobbled alleys and danced into open windows. It caressed freshly-cleaned, tiled floors and sun-wizened faces alike, bursting through narrow hallways, agitating clothes still hanging on balconies from the morning’s wash. Those clothes carried the stains of their recent history: medlies of red and browns and black and yellow that faded like a bruise but never quite disappeared completely. Those clothes bent and shook and held, as the people of the old quarter did so often in this age, bruised hearts beating with a faded beat.

They will bend again very soon, crooned the wind as it flew through the square. Its dark whispers turned into desperate howls, complementing the bell’s eerie, methodical melody. The wind carved a path underneath worn, sandstone arches shaped like crescent moons deep asleep, arches carved into a metamorphic rock older than the oldest written memory of the City.

But the people remembered, their suffering tattooed on the furthest edges of their eyes. A grandfather rubbed his grizzly hands together, as if to conjure a small flame to burn away the wind, and the terrifying portend it brought with it into his family’s home. He rubbed until his sons gently touched his head and then sat while tiny vibrations racked his body. He remembered a time when tears meant celebration and life. His sons had no tears left in them, so he burst open for them all.

The wind blew across the man’s face, drinking his tears as it dried his cheeks. It vanished as it appeared, turning itself into the soft, soothing whistle of a little boy trying to calm a frightened street cat. Unsatiated, it greedily bent west across the square in direct line with the pulsing red sunset. Back to the sea the wind warped, drawing dust from the cobbled streets upwards in roiling clouds of faint, translucent brown. The dust always sparkled red to the people of the quarter. They coughed and squinted, turning their heads downward in blind prayer. The red-tinged wind mushroomed upwards towards the dusk filling the entire square with breathless rumor.

They cannot escape this truth, the wind cackled as the bell continued its monotone ring. Old and young alike perched in shaded windows and covered doorways, watching the newcomers enter the square. Small children clung to their mother’s legs, little fingers digging unconsciously into calves and thighs. Soft, dirty faces burrowed deep into the folds of brown and red cloth dresses, creating a safe black space in those little, unformed minds. A place for their little hearts to escape a familiar fear; a place for their little minds to forget, even for a moment, what their little mouths could not yet say aloud.

The older children stood apart, the sting of familiar trauma freezing their movements, forcing them to find physical space within which to retreat. They shuffled feet and tugged at loose threads and breathed nervousness in short, sharp succession. A mother snapped her fingers and brought her own roost back to the present. Other mothers around the square did the same, bringing children to attention: this was not a time to float away. They could not lose themselves like last time. They had to hold as tightly to dignity as the old truth held to its unpredictable delivery.

The bell choked a final note and fell silent. Little, frightened eyes welled as the wind returned for another watery serving. A mother’s moan escaped her thin, cracked lips and echoed across the square. The people drew ever tighter to each other.

—

“Stay close,” ordered the guard-captain, motioning the four newcomers to follow the lead guard. He took the rear position with another and the group began marching towards the square.

The newcomers slowed as they crossed the square. Their hazel eyes darted from side to side, coldly analyzing the scene around them. Golden brown curls of hair draped elegantly upon crisp white tunics. Clean, red-painted fingernails reflected the sun’s last rays. Brown-stained leather sandals barely touched the street as they stepped lightly to the beat of their darkly-dressed escorts. Tan leather bags swung back and forth in hands to the same anxious foot rhythm. The dust bent around them as the newcomers passed through the square underneath the south arch, pace quickening. They felt eyes all around them staring, pleading. But the motion was set.

How could they take from us again? The wind breathed the thoughts of every man, woman and child who lived this indelicate transfer of ancestral history each day, then fled further west towards the incoming dusk, leaving the people alone with their old truth once more.

Flanking the newcomers were soldiers who wore dark masks and darker faces underneath. The soldiers’ heads swiveled in practiced form: left and right, up and down, constantly watching the crowd, the roofs, the windows, and the street. Black-polished, knee-high boots thudded in perfect unison, their dull song marred only by the slightly off-rhythm shuffling of the leather sandals in between. Masks of black leather and ivory fangs tied tightly in a clove hitch turned from side to side, scanning intently for threats. All they found were haggard faces peering from dusk-lit spaces, terror dancing from cheek to cheek.

They are all a threat, whispered the wind, and the soldiers tightened their formation.

Their hands clasped leather-bound wooden hilts tempered with the royal sigil: a bleeding, red moon. That same red moon rested dramatically on each breastplate, reflected in the full moon rising above the horizon. That blood red moon drove the people of the quarter off the streets and into their homes, dizzy with the unknown terror that might befall the moment. That vicious, dark red moon dripped down from the middle of the breastplate to the waist, a detail the king had expressly requested in design. Some of the people on the quarter said those moons bled each time one of their own left the world. Those people said the guards never removed their armor once donned: whether asleep, in the thick of war, or resting injured on a battlefield, the armor remained a constant from the first moment it touched its wearer.

The moon above started to turn pink as it made its way above the sea and into the upper reaches of the sky. The soldiers’ gnarled knuckles flexed white beneath black leather gloves, ready to take life with a simple, precise thrust.

This would be another violent night.