The Last Pages

{of a story I'll never write. How sad is that?}

I lay back against the pillows with a contented sigh. The sunlight had finally broken through the clouds that had covered the land for six long months, warming everyone and everything it touched. Young men and women gasped with delight and scattered to the few patches where the rays gleamed on the ground. I heard a bird singing in the tree branches above my head, the first bird in a long, long time. I smiled.
The village Healer knelt beside my litter and began to change the bandages around my head. When the wound was exposed to the air—crisp and cool, like the beginning of spring—he reached for new cloths. I placed my hand on his.
“No. It will do no good. I want to feel the breeze.”
He looked at me in silence for a long time, struggling between his duty and the truth. He knew I was right. After several long minutes, the Healer gathered his medicines back into his basket and stepped away. I nodded my thanks.
The youths returned from the splotches of sunlight and clustered around me once more. I gazed into their faces, reading their expressions. They all wore a mask of hope, with underlying tones of despair. They knew what would happen as well as I. But I could find no animosity, nor hatred, nor the fear I had come to expect from people over the last few months, and that was a blessed relief. They were all familiar faces, faces I had grown up with, faces I knew. It seemed ages since I had seen them last, instead of the scant year.
Throughout the clearing, the soft chant of many women’s voices replaced the silence. A farewell to a departing hero. A funeral cry. I looked around at them, pityingly. They didn’t understand. They couldn’t understand.
I was only seventeen and had already traveled farther, seen more, done more, and heard more than they could ever hope to during their entire lives combined. What I had experienced could never be matched, and I feared I would spend my whole life trying to. I had not reached womanhood, yet had already become the stuff of legends. I had led great armies, vanquished nearly insurmountable foes, seen and held the world’s most coveted treasures, and rid the land of the Dark Shadow.
No. It was better this way.
The chanting grew louder.
One young man pushed his way through the crowd. My betrothed. My promised, before the Terror had come and I drawn into the midst of it. He was kneeling at my side a moment later.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my strength ebbing fast.
“There is no reason to be,” he said, and gently kissed me, then slipped his arm under my head.
I smiled and touched his hand. Since the Terror had faded, I smiled more. The breeze grew stronger. The chanting reached its peak.
As the last of the clouds dissipated and the sun’s rays caressed my face, my eyes closed, and my soul was caught away on the swirling wind.


End