Status: Sort-of Hiatus. An on-the-side story that just came to me. A penny for your thoughts?
Jez
Prologue
Screams rent the once still air, flames licking up the wooden huts and making the darkness flee. The fire danced from thatched roof to thatched roof, alighting each home as though they were kindle, just waiting to burn. Over the crackling of the flames, a man’s bloodcurdling scream was abruptly cut off, and a splutter was heard. The child overhearing this ducked her head between her knees, hiding in a produce stall. Her fists were white from clutching her hair and pulling at it so desperately. A few reddish brown strands had separated themselves from her skull from her intense grip, falling loosely over her shaking hands. She had her eyes squeezed tightly closed, her lips mouthing words that no one heard.
The splutters of the dying man faded away, to be replaced with fresh screams and the wailing of a toddler. Hearing someone younger than her, the child perked her head up slightly, crawling to where she could see between the boards of the poorly carpentered stall, but regretted it. Nearly screaming, she wrenched her gaze away from the scene of a husband laying dead on the ground, his throat slit, with his wife laying over him with an arrow in her back. Her dead hand was still clasped around the small hand of her toddler son, whose head lay four feet from his small, frail, malnourished body.
Unable to help herself, the small girl retched. An instant after she had finished, a hand grabbed her by the hair and pulled her out in the open. Assaulting her sense of smell were the metallic scent of blood and sweat, and as soon as she was dropped, inches from the toddler’s severed head, she let her stomach empty itself on the ground. She was sobbing as she vomited, tears streaking down her cheeks as she tried her hardest to ignore the head slightly to her right, or the dead family of three behind her.
When nothing more would force its way through her throat and out her mouth, she was yanked up by the hair and examined by the grimy, sweaty, dirty man. The leather armour he wore clearly showed that he was no soldier. A bandit, more likely, or a mercenary hired by a band of slave traders.
“She’s about the right age, ain’t she?” he asked a companion in a gruff tone, shaking the girl by the hair he held in his fist. She made the mistake of opening her hazel eyes and spotted a mother with six arrows in her back, her newborn rolled out of her grasp and crushed by the hooves of a slightly untamed horse. Something in her broke then, and any thought of struggling left the young girl’s mind.
“Yeah, that she is,” the other one told the first, leering down at the child.
“Should I take ‘er to the others?” the first one asked, shaking her by the hair again.
“Chain ‘er up with ‘em,” the second nodded, “and we’ll find something to do with ‘er.”
The young girl would not remember anything but the sinking feeling in her heart, knowing that she was alone in the world, with her parents and younger sister and cousins gone. She knew with startling clarity that she was alone, empty, and perhaps about to die. Her heart raced with fear, threatening to leap from her chest, but her young mind worked slowly, calmly, and rationally for one of her age. Though fear and uncertainty would have clouded all her senses if she let her heart get in the way, she focused on the rationality of the situation as she was dragged over to a line of other children, varying from five years old to around twelve or thirteen, all chained together by the ankles.
They were all still alive, she told herself. She and the six other children she recognized from her village. There were others chained with the group, looking worn and with agitated red skin underneath the cuffs on their ankles that showed they had been treated like this for at least several days. At least one girl, about nine by the look of her, seemed ready to collapse, and was probably helped along by the boys, about eleven and twelve, who walked in front of and behind her.
Even as young as she was, the girl could feel and see the despair and desperation, the fearfulness and fright that radiated from her companions. The boy next to her, who seemed younger than she, was trembling, his eyes wide and staring at who the girl knew was his mother. She lay in a puddle of her own blood about ten feet away from the line of children, her mouth open in a forever silent scream, and she had fallen with her arm outstretched toward her son.
Knowing it wouldn’t do much to help, the young girl placed her hand on his arm, and he jumped as though branded with a hot iron, turning to her with blank and emotionless eyes. She remembered later that she felt unnerved when he looked at her like that, as though there was no possible way any of the children in their situation could ever find happiness.
*
For weeks after the brutal massacre of her village, the young girl, one of eleven children from her village who had been found, and the other twenty-seven children stumbled along in their line, trying not to trip for fear that they would bring the whole chain falling. The frail girl who had fallen and had others trip over her had been brutally whipped in front of all of the other children. Then she had been returned to her spot in line, forced to continue walking, where the eldest boy in the group, who was found to be fourteen, nearly - and would’ve - carried her, if only the chains dangling wouldn’t have tripped him up.
Weakened and thinned beyond recognition, the band of children were forced to walk day after day, their only hope being that some rich, kind person would buy them from these slave traders soon and feed them up and care for them…take them in as though they were actual people. The children all hoped and prayed for their saviours. To come and to hold them and shush them and tuck them in at night and tell them everything would be okay…but the notion was utterly unlikely.
At the tender age of seven, the girl knew enough about human nature to know that people didn’t often step in for those they didn’t know, and sometimes not even for those they did know. They preferred to keep their own necks safe, clean, to stay out of harm’s way and let the atrocity of herding or selling human children like chattel go on unhindered. If some weak, frail, ten year old girl were sold to an old, lecherous lord and he abused her and used her and raped her, who would care but the girl herself and others just like her? Who would even understand what was going on behind the scenes, behind closed curtains and locked doors, when the candles burn dimly or not at all in the house of a rich man?
And who would care, consequently, if the child were impregnated? Or, yet, who would know? The answer is that no one would. They would be to preoccupied with their own affairs that they wouldn’t be bothered with the chatter and gossip of servants, or they wouldn’t care that a wealthy lord raped a ten year old nightly, because he had, after all, bought the wretch off the streets. But no one would know if she was pregnant, for she’d have an impromptu, brutal abortion, or a forced sort of miscarriage, which could result in her death for which the lord of the house would say she fell ill and there was nothing he or his personal physician could do to save her - and who would know he lied? Who would believe that he had lied, or even care if he had? Surely not all those who benefited from his lies and deceitfulness, and he could just buy another wench from the next slave caravan that came through, for who would know the difference? One wretch changes to another, and no one would even notice the absence of the first.
It was nearly as bad for the boys. Taken to work on plantations, on farms, in mills, where they could die of heatstroke or in a tragic accident. Where one slip-up or argument with the wrong person could end up in the boy’s discovered body, strangled in bed or hanging from the tree by his room. Not learning quick enough how to deal with the plants he tended properly could have him killed or whipped. If he spoke wrongly to his superiors, it would be the whip, or maybe the stocks, where he would be laughed at and humiliated publicly. And if the boy happened to be young, unable to lift the heavy loads he was forced to attempt to move, it would be his fault. There really would be nothing he could do about it, but the boy would be whipped and abused and perhaps, purposely incapacitated so that he can just be killed so his owners could be rid of him.
This was not the life for such young children, but maybe what made it worse was that the seven year old girl knew all of these things. She knew what could happen to any one of them, at any time. She knew that the next village she came to could be where she met her end, where her companions were separated from her, or where she was sold to be used in the most heinous, godforsaken ways imaginable. And she knew it all. The consequences, the hardships, the unfairness and the inequality that she, as a captured child turned into a slave, would face.
She lived for two years with this fear, some of her comrades disappearing, either sold or dead, only to be replaced by two or three more. Even so, the group dwindled, then swelled, then dwindled, until she remained the only one from the original group she had been unwillingly inducted into. The traders were often overheard contemplating on why she had not been sold, or why they didn’t just kill her to end it. They never did follow up on the threat to kill her, but she was still mildly surprised each morning she awoke. She had always expected to wake up with a knife in her chest - or rather, not wake up at all because there was a knife in her chest.
She was nearing ten, still at the young age of nine, when the first time any of her faint, childish hopes came true.
That night, the slave traders and their mercenary guards were all either murdered or captured by a company of the king’s men. The night would be stuck in the girl’s head for a very, very long time.
It all started with the blare of a horn, and all of the adults went rigid. They knew what they were doing was forbidden in this area, which is why they had tried to skirt the edges of the capital, but it appeared they’d taken the group too close. Moments after the horn sounded, the thunder of hooves was heard, and then a group of about twenty-three men, in gleaming armour, burst into the small clearing. They didn’t wear their helmets, as though they feared nothing in the world less than these crude men who reveled in the prospect of selling innocent children. Swords raised, they let out shouts.
“You are breaking the laws that the King has set upon his lands!” a stern, smooth voice said loudly. Even to the girl’s nine year old ears, it sounded as though his voice were liquid honey normally, but he was so firm in what he said that she wouldn’t have dared disobey anything he told her to do. “You break the laws our King has set. Do not pretend you do not know.”
Following this statement, there was a quick scuffle, ending with twelve of the men captured and three dead. At the time, there were only seventeen children, as winter was upon them and had taken several. In the fray, one of the mercenaries had taken a younger girl hostage, holding his blade to her neck with an ugly, bloodthirsty smile. It was this that caused every single one of the king’s men to freeze, not doing anything but guarding their captives. The five year old whimpered as blood trickled down her thin neck, the warmth probably burning her near-freezing skin. The rest of the children, who were freed from their chains and cowering back behind the men in armour, stared with fear at the youngest of their group. Only the nine year old girl who had been fascinated by the king’s company had not hidden behind them, and stood behind a tree that was behind the mercenary threatening the younger girl.
Perhaps it was a very foolish thing to do, but she felt she had to prove herself. To prove that she was not as useless as these slave traders thought she was, and that she was worth something. She had seen enough pain and suffering that picking up the rock that her bare foot was pressing down upon uncomfortably was almost second nature. Unseen, even by the hawk like gazes of all but the main soldier, she crept out of her hiding spot and behind the mercenary. She was lucky she was tall for her age, and that the man was short, for it allowed her the perfect opportunity to slam the rock into the nerve in the back of his neck, causing him to crumple. In a move faster than would be thought possible for a girl her age, she grabbed his arm and whipped it straight out to the right, taking it cleanly away from the five year old’s tender neck and letting it drop from his nerveless fingers.
Immediately, the king’s men surged into motion, three figures leaping from their horses and rushing toward the two girls, the five year old sobbing unrestrainedly into the nine year old’s tunic. The nine year old didn’t much look like the girl she was - her hair had been cropped recently from lice, and in the hope to get her sold they had taken her raggedy smock and exchanged it for the equally ratty tunic and breeches of a boy that had died.
The two men with red tunics that showed they were practiced in the use of medicines took the smaller girl aside, while the leader of the group of soldiers knelt in front of the nine year old.
“You were very brave tonight,” he said softly, placing comforting hands on either of her shoulders. “You may not be a boy, as you seem to be and are dressed, but you were very, very brave. There aren’t many who would risk that much. You should be proud of yourself.”
She nodded mutely, gazing into the sandy-haired man’s blue eyes.
“May I ask your name?” he asked kindly, smiling at her and removing one hand from her shoulder. “I am Sir Kenneth.”
“Jezebel.” the girl whispered, saying her name for the first time in a long time.
“I think it’s safer for you right now if we keep up the look of a boy, okay? So, until we get back to the city, I’ll call you Jez.”
“Can I stay Jez longer than that…?” she asked tentatively. “It…it feels more comfortable right now than being a girl.”
She said this softly, as though embarrassed to admit that she felt betrayed by her gender, but Sir Kenneth smiled kindly at her, taking one of her small hands in both of his in a fatherly gesture that made Jez’s heart fill with emotions for the first time in a long while.
“Of course you can, Jez,” he said kindly, “and when you’re ready, I’m sure you’ll make a fine young lady.”
“Thank you,” she squeaked, and she took the knight by surprise when she threw her small, frail, and chilled arms around his neck. “Thank you, Sir Kenny.”
The splutters of the dying man faded away, to be replaced with fresh screams and the wailing of a toddler. Hearing someone younger than her, the child perked her head up slightly, crawling to where she could see between the boards of the poorly carpentered stall, but regretted it. Nearly screaming, she wrenched her gaze away from the scene of a husband laying dead on the ground, his throat slit, with his wife laying over him with an arrow in her back. Her dead hand was still clasped around the small hand of her toddler son, whose head lay four feet from his small, frail, malnourished body.
Unable to help herself, the small girl retched. An instant after she had finished, a hand grabbed her by the hair and pulled her out in the open. Assaulting her sense of smell were the metallic scent of blood and sweat, and as soon as she was dropped, inches from the toddler’s severed head, she let her stomach empty itself on the ground. She was sobbing as she vomited, tears streaking down her cheeks as she tried her hardest to ignore the head slightly to her right, or the dead family of three behind her.
When nothing more would force its way through her throat and out her mouth, she was yanked up by the hair and examined by the grimy, sweaty, dirty man. The leather armour he wore clearly showed that he was no soldier. A bandit, more likely, or a mercenary hired by a band of slave traders.
“She’s about the right age, ain’t she?” he asked a companion in a gruff tone, shaking the girl by the hair he held in his fist. She made the mistake of opening her hazel eyes and spotted a mother with six arrows in her back, her newborn rolled out of her grasp and crushed by the hooves of a slightly untamed horse. Something in her broke then, and any thought of struggling left the young girl’s mind.
“Yeah, that she is,” the other one told the first, leering down at the child.
“Should I take ‘er to the others?” the first one asked, shaking her by the hair again.
“Chain ‘er up with ‘em,” the second nodded, “and we’ll find something to do with ‘er.”
The young girl would not remember anything but the sinking feeling in her heart, knowing that she was alone in the world, with her parents and younger sister and cousins gone. She knew with startling clarity that she was alone, empty, and perhaps about to die. Her heart raced with fear, threatening to leap from her chest, but her young mind worked slowly, calmly, and rationally for one of her age. Though fear and uncertainty would have clouded all her senses if she let her heart get in the way, she focused on the rationality of the situation as she was dragged over to a line of other children, varying from five years old to around twelve or thirteen, all chained together by the ankles.
They were all still alive, she told herself. She and the six other children she recognized from her village. There were others chained with the group, looking worn and with agitated red skin underneath the cuffs on their ankles that showed they had been treated like this for at least several days. At least one girl, about nine by the look of her, seemed ready to collapse, and was probably helped along by the boys, about eleven and twelve, who walked in front of and behind her.
Even as young as she was, the girl could feel and see the despair and desperation, the fearfulness and fright that radiated from her companions. The boy next to her, who seemed younger than she, was trembling, his eyes wide and staring at who the girl knew was his mother. She lay in a puddle of her own blood about ten feet away from the line of children, her mouth open in a forever silent scream, and she had fallen with her arm outstretched toward her son.
Knowing it wouldn’t do much to help, the young girl placed her hand on his arm, and he jumped as though branded with a hot iron, turning to her with blank and emotionless eyes. She remembered later that she felt unnerved when he looked at her like that, as though there was no possible way any of the children in their situation could ever find happiness.
*
For weeks after the brutal massacre of her village, the young girl, one of eleven children from her village who had been found, and the other twenty-seven children stumbled along in their line, trying not to trip for fear that they would bring the whole chain falling. The frail girl who had fallen and had others trip over her had been brutally whipped in front of all of the other children. Then she had been returned to her spot in line, forced to continue walking, where the eldest boy in the group, who was found to be fourteen, nearly - and would’ve - carried her, if only the chains dangling wouldn’t have tripped him up.
Weakened and thinned beyond recognition, the band of children were forced to walk day after day, their only hope being that some rich, kind person would buy them from these slave traders soon and feed them up and care for them…take them in as though they were actual people. The children all hoped and prayed for their saviours. To come and to hold them and shush them and tuck them in at night and tell them everything would be okay…but the notion was utterly unlikely.
At the tender age of seven, the girl knew enough about human nature to know that people didn’t often step in for those they didn’t know, and sometimes not even for those they did know. They preferred to keep their own necks safe, clean, to stay out of harm’s way and let the atrocity of herding or selling human children like chattel go on unhindered. If some weak, frail, ten year old girl were sold to an old, lecherous lord and he abused her and used her and raped her, who would care but the girl herself and others just like her? Who would even understand what was going on behind the scenes, behind closed curtains and locked doors, when the candles burn dimly or not at all in the house of a rich man?
And who would care, consequently, if the child were impregnated? Or, yet, who would know? The answer is that no one would. They would be to preoccupied with their own affairs that they wouldn’t be bothered with the chatter and gossip of servants, or they wouldn’t care that a wealthy lord raped a ten year old nightly, because he had, after all, bought the wretch off the streets. But no one would know if she was pregnant, for she’d have an impromptu, brutal abortion, or a forced sort of miscarriage, which could result in her death for which the lord of the house would say she fell ill and there was nothing he or his personal physician could do to save her - and who would know he lied? Who would believe that he had lied, or even care if he had? Surely not all those who benefited from his lies and deceitfulness, and he could just buy another wench from the next slave caravan that came through, for who would know the difference? One wretch changes to another, and no one would even notice the absence of the first.
It was nearly as bad for the boys. Taken to work on plantations, on farms, in mills, where they could die of heatstroke or in a tragic accident. Where one slip-up or argument with the wrong person could end up in the boy’s discovered body, strangled in bed or hanging from the tree by his room. Not learning quick enough how to deal with the plants he tended properly could have him killed or whipped. If he spoke wrongly to his superiors, it would be the whip, or maybe the stocks, where he would be laughed at and humiliated publicly. And if the boy happened to be young, unable to lift the heavy loads he was forced to attempt to move, it would be his fault. There really would be nothing he could do about it, but the boy would be whipped and abused and perhaps, purposely incapacitated so that he can just be killed so his owners could be rid of him.
This was not the life for such young children, but maybe what made it worse was that the seven year old girl knew all of these things. She knew what could happen to any one of them, at any time. She knew that the next village she came to could be where she met her end, where her companions were separated from her, or where she was sold to be used in the most heinous, godforsaken ways imaginable. And she knew it all. The consequences, the hardships, the unfairness and the inequality that she, as a captured child turned into a slave, would face.
She lived for two years with this fear, some of her comrades disappearing, either sold or dead, only to be replaced by two or three more. Even so, the group dwindled, then swelled, then dwindled, until she remained the only one from the original group she had been unwillingly inducted into. The traders were often overheard contemplating on why she had not been sold, or why they didn’t just kill her to end it. They never did follow up on the threat to kill her, but she was still mildly surprised each morning she awoke. She had always expected to wake up with a knife in her chest - or rather, not wake up at all because there was a knife in her chest.
She was nearing ten, still at the young age of nine, when the first time any of her faint, childish hopes came true.
That night, the slave traders and their mercenary guards were all either murdered or captured by a company of the king’s men. The night would be stuck in the girl’s head for a very, very long time.
It all started with the blare of a horn, and all of the adults went rigid. They knew what they were doing was forbidden in this area, which is why they had tried to skirt the edges of the capital, but it appeared they’d taken the group too close. Moments after the horn sounded, the thunder of hooves was heard, and then a group of about twenty-three men, in gleaming armour, burst into the small clearing. They didn’t wear their helmets, as though they feared nothing in the world less than these crude men who reveled in the prospect of selling innocent children. Swords raised, they let out shouts.
“You are breaking the laws that the King has set upon his lands!” a stern, smooth voice said loudly. Even to the girl’s nine year old ears, it sounded as though his voice were liquid honey normally, but he was so firm in what he said that she wouldn’t have dared disobey anything he told her to do. “You break the laws our King has set. Do not pretend you do not know.”
Following this statement, there was a quick scuffle, ending with twelve of the men captured and three dead. At the time, there were only seventeen children, as winter was upon them and had taken several. In the fray, one of the mercenaries had taken a younger girl hostage, holding his blade to her neck with an ugly, bloodthirsty smile. It was this that caused every single one of the king’s men to freeze, not doing anything but guarding their captives. The five year old whimpered as blood trickled down her thin neck, the warmth probably burning her near-freezing skin. The rest of the children, who were freed from their chains and cowering back behind the men in armour, stared with fear at the youngest of their group. Only the nine year old girl who had been fascinated by the king’s company had not hidden behind them, and stood behind a tree that was behind the mercenary threatening the younger girl.
Perhaps it was a very foolish thing to do, but she felt she had to prove herself. To prove that she was not as useless as these slave traders thought she was, and that she was worth something. She had seen enough pain and suffering that picking up the rock that her bare foot was pressing down upon uncomfortably was almost second nature. Unseen, even by the hawk like gazes of all but the main soldier, she crept out of her hiding spot and behind the mercenary. She was lucky she was tall for her age, and that the man was short, for it allowed her the perfect opportunity to slam the rock into the nerve in the back of his neck, causing him to crumple. In a move faster than would be thought possible for a girl her age, she grabbed his arm and whipped it straight out to the right, taking it cleanly away from the five year old’s tender neck and letting it drop from his nerveless fingers.
Immediately, the king’s men surged into motion, three figures leaping from their horses and rushing toward the two girls, the five year old sobbing unrestrainedly into the nine year old’s tunic. The nine year old didn’t much look like the girl she was - her hair had been cropped recently from lice, and in the hope to get her sold they had taken her raggedy smock and exchanged it for the equally ratty tunic and breeches of a boy that had died.
The two men with red tunics that showed they were practiced in the use of medicines took the smaller girl aside, while the leader of the group of soldiers knelt in front of the nine year old.
“You were very brave tonight,” he said softly, placing comforting hands on either of her shoulders. “You may not be a boy, as you seem to be and are dressed, but you were very, very brave. There aren’t many who would risk that much. You should be proud of yourself.”
She nodded mutely, gazing into the sandy-haired man’s blue eyes.
“May I ask your name?” he asked kindly, smiling at her and removing one hand from her shoulder. “I am Sir Kenneth.”
“Jezebel.” the girl whispered, saying her name for the first time in a long time.
“I think it’s safer for you right now if we keep up the look of a boy, okay? So, until we get back to the city, I’ll call you Jez.”
“Can I stay Jez longer than that…?” she asked tentatively. “It…it feels more comfortable right now than being a girl.”
She said this softly, as though embarrassed to admit that she felt betrayed by her gender, but Sir Kenneth smiled kindly at her, taking one of her small hands in both of his in a fatherly gesture that made Jez’s heart fill with emotions for the first time in a long while.
“Of course you can, Jez,” he said kindly, “and when you’re ready, I’m sure you’ll make a fine young lady.”
“Thank you,” she squeaked, and she took the knight by surprise when she threw her small, frail, and chilled arms around his neck. “Thank you, Sir Kenny.”
♠ ♠ ♠
Okay, this is a new approach for me. I apologize if any of the scenes make you squeamish or anything, because I pretty much disgusted myself writing about the toddler and the baby, but I wanted to get the point across that the slave traders were brutal, uncaring men and only cared for the profit. They couldn't be bothered with adults, who would try to revolt, or babies who needed fed and needed attention constantly. This was to get you to hate slave traders with every fiber of your being. Did it work?This is just a prologue, to give a few hints at why Jezebel becomes "Jez".
This story is an on-the-side project that I started due to my writer's block of my other stories - a few of which I may delete and come back to at a later time, right now I'm unsure. Do to the on-the-side-ness of this story, updates may be few and far between, but I promise I'll stick to it because this story actually has me hooked on writing it.
Thank you for reading, very much. I appreciate it.
<333 Amanda
(For new readers of my stories, I always put <333 to show that I really appreciate you guys. XD)