No Izzy Today, But... (Patreon)

Hey. Sorry, life got ahead of me and I didn't have time to finish a chapter of Izzy for this week. I do, however, have something I threw together one afternoon last week after listening to a bunch of Florence + The Machine. Points to anyone who guesses which song inspired this.

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They came for Marja after she'd finished with the last patient of the day. Most of her work was with the elders of their small community. It served only to stave off the inevitable ravages of time, but she enjoyed it. She liked most of the elders, and if she could spend her days keeping them comfortable then they were days well spent. But today Torvan, Falja’s son, had fallen badly running home from the fields. She’d spent the last quarter-bell straightening, wrapping, and healing his twisted ankle while enduring the odious woman's moralizing about Marja’s marital state.

In hindsight, the woman's smugness should have warned her. As it was, she was taken entirely by surprise when her parents, aunts, and uncles all came to the small hut she’d inherited when Dorden, the old Healer who’d taught her and helped her take the class, had retired two years before.

“Marja, it’s time,” her mother told her without preamble. “We’d hoped that you’d come to your senses on your own, but that doesn’t seem likely to happen, and you're not getting any younger. Your sister has a child already, for heavens’ sake!”

Marja just stared at the crowd of relatives blocking the door. She was too stunned and, frankly, terrified to speak. All she could think was, I know. I delivered her myself.

“Oh, don't be like that,” Aunt Saima said. Aunt Saima, who’d always been so kind, so cheerful. Even now she was smiling as she said, “This is not some terrible fate we’re delivering you to! I was scared, too, when my time came. But you’ll see. One day you'll look back and wonder why you ever made such a fuss.”

“Come now, Marri,” her father said, using the name he’d called her when she was a little girl. “Come along. It's for the best. You’ll see.”

“No.” Finally Marja found her voice. “Please, no! I’ve done everything you asked, everything expected of me, except this one thing! Please! Please just let me have this!”

“Marja! Really!” her mother snapped. “Stop being difficult! It’s time! Everything's arranged. The ceremony will be held at sunrise. You will be a bride, and you will be a mother, and that's that!”

Marja had done everything right. She’d done everything expected of a young woman. Everything but to accept a husband. She'd begged Dorden to teach her, since being a Healer was one of the few respectable professions for a spinster or a widow, but that had not protected her.

She had done everything to please her family, except one small thing. All she’d ever wanted in return was to live her own life. But they could not even let her have that.

By sunrise, she was to be married. 

By sunrise, she would have rebelled for the first three times in her life.

Marja's first rebellion came as she let them lead her away from the home she’d made for herself. At the fork to old Perka’s farm, where the forest lay close, she tried to run. She didn't get far; most of the men had classes of the body, and hers was of magic and the mind. They caught her easily and guarded her closely the rest of the way to the bridal hut. Her mother scolded her for embarrassing herself the whole time.

Marja's second rebellion came as she sat her vigil.

Morna the matchmaker came to talk to her after she'd had her supper. “Suren is a good man,” she said. “No less would do for a Healer. He’s clever, hardworking, and from a fine family. Tragically a widower at twenty-two summers. He was always kind to his first wife, but she died along with the child she tried to bring into the world.”

“He’ll have me because I'm a Healer?” Marja asked. They were the first words she'd spoken since being taken from her home.

“He’ll have you because you're a fine young woman, with a good reputation. His family will accept you because you're a Healer.”

“I see,” Marja said. She thought for a moment, came to a decision, then relinquished her class.

As the matchmaker realized what she'd done and her face fell, Marja found satisfaction in spite for the first time in her life.

“Oh, child,” Morna said. “Don’t be a fool! Don’t throw away everything you've worked for these past five years! Retake the class before it's too late!”

For the first time since Torvan had thanked her and left her home with his awful mother, Marja smiled. “No.”

The matchmaker sighed heavily. “It will make no difference. You’ll come to your senses before the next sunset or you won't, but you’ll be married at sunrise all the same.” With that, Morna rose, the knees that Marja had healed only the previous day creaking softly. “I truly hope you’ll come to your senses. The next closest Healer is hours away. Think of your community!”

When Marja didn't answer, the matchmaker shook her head and left. Outside something heavy shifted then thumped against the door.

“My community never once thought of me,” Marja whispered into the silence then slowly lay down on the narrow cot. She felt the absence of her magic like a missing tooth, but she didn't regret relinquishing her class. She'd taken it with the hope of being free. If she couldn't have that, the class meant nothing.

Marja’s third rebellion came when she awoke.

She hadn’t meant to sleep. Not because a bride-in-waiting was supposed to sit her vigil from sunset to sunrise, to bring good fortune to her marriage. She hadn’t meant to sleep because she still had some desperate hope that it would all turn out to be some misunderstanding, or a cruel joke, or that her parents would change their minds. But she slept, and she dreamt.

In her dreams she found herself fully aware, in what could only be her class space. She had never visited her class space in her dreams before, but she couldn’t see what else it might be. She was entirely lucid, sitting on her own bed in her own small hut, and on one of her two chairs at the table was herself, just as she was. The Healer she had made of herself, that had grown out of the Child and the Dutiful Daughter, was indifferent and listless and gray in the way that any unavailable class was.

“You can’t choose me again,” her Healer self told her. “I won’t let you. I was never right for you, and you never wanted me. You chose me out of desperation and to try and fit yourself into a mold that was never going to be your shape.

The door to her hut swung open, and her Healer self said, “It’s time to look outside.”

“I’m afraid,” Marja admitted.

“I know,” her Healer self said kindly. “You have much to be afraid of. If you want to live for yourself, you will have to face a lot of hardship that you’re not used to. But what option is there? Who are you, Marja?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never known.”

“Then what are you not? What can you never be?”

Marja thought and then said, “I am no mother, and I am no bride.”

“There you are. But whether you want it or not, that is all that is in your future if you stay on that bed, until you make yourself believe it enough to take a class that pleases them. Mother and wife: loved, dutiful, and dead.”

Slowly Marja rose to her feet. She looked at her Healer self, at the woman she’d taken refuge in. “Thank you,” she said with all the depth of emotion she could muster. “Thank you for giving me hope, even if it was never to be.”

Her Healer self smiled. “It was my pleasure. Just don’t forget me. Don’t abandon the skills you learned or the kindness and compassion. I was an act, but they were not. Those were always real. They were always yours.”

“I’ll remember,” Marja promised herself. Then she walked out the door.

The green outside thronged with variations of herself. Some excited and happy, some listless like the Healer. Most were gray, some few in full color. All were paths she might one day follow.

To one side, on the path that she had walked that evening to the bridal hut, stood the worst of them. They were the Bountiful Mothers and Farmwives and all other variations on those themes, and the misery on their faces told her what she had to look forward to if she ever followed that path. Every trade she’d ever heard of was represented among the indifferent ones. The happy ones, the ones she’d never allowed herself to look at because of how disappointed her mother would be, and how sad her father, talked animatedly among themselves. Some were Huntresses, some were Witches, some were simple Woodswomen. Some few lived rougher, more violent lives. All of them represented freedom and independence.

But all, miserable, indifferent, or cheerful, parted as one figure came striding up the road that led out of the village. She wore tough, worn but well cared for clothes, with a hatchet on her hip and a light pack casually slung over one shoulder. She was not excitedly animated like some, but radiated a calm confidence and inner strength that had Marja’s feet moving to meet her.

“Who are you?” Marja asked as they came close. “I don’t recognize you. How is that possible?”

“That’s no surprise,” the unfamiliar version of her said. “I’m a story from your childhood. One your great-nan used to tell you, before she passed, and one that your mother never liked her to talk about. I am the Changeling, and I am free. When I face an obstacle, I adapt, and I overcome. No bar or lock can hold me. No chain or censure. I go where I wish and do what I will. I am a mage, and a fighter, and a huntress and survivor, and if you dare, I will take you wherever you want.”

“But how? How is it possible that I can become you?”

“Because even if you’ve never let yourself accept it, you believe that you can — you’ve known magic, and you know the body. And because you know, deep inside, that you must. That’s all there is to it. I cannot be controlled, and that is what you want and what you need. Now, make your choice, and wake. Sunrise is almost upon you. Will you become me?”

Back in the bridal hut Marja opened her eyes. One thing had become clear to her: if she didn't want to be governed, she would have to become ungovernable.

“I accept,” she whispered into the darkness, and she felt new strength and strange new magic fill her as the ancient magic of the world swept through her. And so, she was a Changeling.

She had lost much. Her level was reduced to half of what it had been, for you could not change your class without sacrifice. But that was fine. She had worked hard in her doomed attempt to prove herself and had outstripped many five or even ten years her senior. She had the tools she needed to free herself and the instincts to use them, and that was enough.

When they opened the door to take her to her groom, she would get away from here. She would find a place, or no place in particular, to be herself. And there, she would find what that meant.

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Don't know if this will stop here, or if it might go somewhere. But I quite liked it as I wrote it, and I hope you do, too.