The Lost Hero: Chapter 15

By: Anna Schroeder

She woke mid-morning in her bed.

Firn was there. Firn was always there, knitting, sewing, reading. Juen rolled onto her back with a groan.

“I always wondered where he snuck off to,” the old woman said. “He’d come home dirty and bruised. Never complained, never spoke of it. As he grew older he was better at hiding it.”

Was Juen allowed to speak about it? It felt wrong. Not a secret, but sacred.

“Tell me about him.”

Firn counted stitches as she spoke. “I remember the time he knocked down a beehive and came home covered in welts. Shot it out of a tree with a slingshot, given to him by one of the Watchmen, no doubt. They doted on the boy. He was in a fair way to being spoiled rotten by them.

“His face was so swollen, I hardly recognized him. ‘What in the Lady’s name have you been doing?’ I demanded. And he, like always, replied ‘nahn, Firn, tes nahn larkin!’

“‘I was only just,’” Firn translated. “All his excuses started with ‘I was only just…’ Just swimming in the mill pond. Just catching frogs. Climbing the signal tower. Riding an elk.”

Juen’s abdomen ached as she giggled. “An elk?”

“Caught and wanted to train it as his mount.” Firn sighed. “The boy was insatiable, always doing, moving, running.”

Juen thought of his restless pacing, trapped in the stone confines of her palace. Not much had changed in the intervening years.

She sat up and yawned. Her clothes were stiff with sweat and blood, still the same as when she collapsed in the early hours. How had he done it, up all night and then all day, barely a few hours rest between?

Firn helped her out of bed. Juen scowled down at her too large trousers, cinched at the waist. The Champion’s tunic was equally ill-fitting. Who ever thought the Hero could be a woman?

Firn tried to brush her matted hair. Juen stopped her, looking at her newly thin face in the mirror. Her hair fell past her waist, once taking an army of servants to keep clean and styled.

“Just cut it.”

Firn hesitated. “All of it, my lady?”

It would be so much easier, not to mention cooler. But she still admitted to some vanity. “Long enough to put up, I suppose.”

The knife sliced through the strands. Juen shook her head and dark tresses fell everywhere.

“Is there a seamstress in the house?”

“Of course, my lady.”

“Can they do something about these clothes?”

“I will see to it.”

At her archery lesson, she still struggled to pull the weight of an adult bow.

Lift your elbow, use your shoulder and torso, not your arm.

It wasn’t his voice, maybe a woman’s? It carried the same emptiness as the Ancient Hero’s. Something from long ago, a memory.

Juen squinted at the target. Davin had moved it back and the center was barely visible.

The center never moves. The size and range do not matter. The center is always the same.

She loosed and was surprised to see her arrow close to the mark. Davin’s surprise was not as pleasurable. “Well done! Let’s do it again.”

Juen lumbered in the armor they gave her. It fit well enough, but it was so heavy. She stopped and gasped for air. Her hair still stuck to her neck and face.

“I have to have something lighter,” she panted. “I can’t run in this.”

They were concerned about her defense.

“I will never win in a contest of strength. He is stones heavier. He beat an A’alam up a volcano on foot. I can barely run the ridge path.”

She hated that narrow, winding trail, more than any other of her exercises combined.

“I need more speed, more flexibility.”

Wetlin, the armorer, stroked his beard. “I will see what I can do.”

Juen forced herself to rise early and bathe and dress. She ate until she thought she would be sick. She ran the ridge line trail until she was sick, retching into a bush before resuming the steep ascent.

An afternoon riding lesson was interrupted by shouts of alarm.

“Athus! Athus, come quickly!”