I said, “We can talk about that later and I’ll do whatever you want me to do to make it up to you.”
She smiled and said, “But I have to tell the story first, don’t I? It will be a relief. Mark, you’re right, I was born before the Green Horde Insanity took over the world and caused the Fall of Time. But, if I tell you, you might think… differently of me. You love me now, but you don’t know what I was… before.” She started to cry again. “Mark, I was a monster!” and she cried harder.
This time, I did try to comfort her. “Shush, my princess. Sashar, my little pixie lover, I don’t know what you were, but now you are my beautiful, kind, fun, wonderful mate. Past things fade and people can change. Trust me to hear the story. Tell me as if it happened to someone else.”
She sobbed a bit more and then calmed herself and launched into her history.
“I was born about 40 years before the start of the wars with the Tharks. In the city of Gathol. My parents were merchants. We were OK financially, but not rich. For some reason, after I came of age, I failed to attract a mate. It wasn’t unusual. We live a long time and in those days if a girl reached a hundred years and was still unmated, it wasn’t a big deal.
In the beginning, we heard of the wars, but we never expected them to come all the way to Gathol. Certainly the Tharks would come to their senses and the navies of The Warlord would quell the uprising and all would be as it was. When the hordes did attack Gathol, I was away, trading for my family’s business. When I came close to the city, it was surrounded by the green men, and the gates were locked and there was no way for me to get within miles of the wall. There were 40 people in my party.
We fled into the wilderness before we were discovered. When we held a meeting to discuss what we could do, some wanted to run for a nearby city, others to a city in the other direction. There was no real leader among us and we acted like a mob of our own. Some argued that all cities would be just as bad or worse off than Gathol. If they’d attacked Gathol, then the other cities would have fallen already. We were all terrified, and some wouldn’t listen to reason at all. In the morning, when we woke up, some had already left, supposedly to go to one city or another, and almost certainly to their deaths.
Some of us decided that our best bet was to go farther into the wilderness and hide and wait for the wars to end before we tried to go back to civilization. I hated the thought of leaving my family trapped in Gathol, but we still thought that the navies would eventually drive the mad Tharks away or exterminate them. We figured that if we could exist three or four months at most in the wilderness, that we would be able to return and see our families again.
It didn’t turn out that way. The first few weeks were relatively bearable, but hard. We couldn’t go anywhere near a habitable village, or even a good source of water. We existed on moss berries and the food we had with us. Twice we were attacked by other desperate groups who tried to take our food.
I don’t blame them for that. But for the other things I’ll never forgive them. Both times we fought them off. Both sides fought like animals. People were killed on both sides, but when our group won, and the survivors of the attackers knelt in defeat, the man in our group who had taken leadership swiftly murdered them as the rest of us watched in horror. He claimed that it was necessary; that if they lived, that they would attack us again out of vengeance for us killing their family members and friends. The first died without knowing what was about to happen. The others begged for their lives. When the third died, the last two tried to run… and several of our party chased them and struck them down.
The second encounter was even more ruthless. I don’t even know if they meant us harm. They called to us and approached and asked if we had food or water, and our group fell on them and killed them. They were already weak with hunger and thirst and they died quickly.
Mark, it sickened me. I didn’t know how to fight, and in the first encounter, I just did my best to beat against the enemy with a wooden board. In the second encounter, I just stared and didn’t do anything. When it was over, the leader walked up to me and hit me so hard that I passed out.
For several more months we wandered on the moss. After the day that he hit me, I never spoke. Every moment that I was awake, I thought about how I should leave. Even if I died in the wilderness it would be better than living with these merciless brutes. And the ‘leader’ was a friend of my father’s! His partner in business!
But, I wanted to live. I didn’t want to run away and die, but I didn’t want to stay and live every day as if I were already dead. They say that it was an insanity the caused the Tharks to rebel against the Warlord, and an insanity that eventually caused the men of Barsoom to turn against each other. It seemed to be an insanity that had taken hold of my former friends, and an insanity that finally took hold of me as well.
From the day that man hit me, and the day I stopped talking, he and the rest treated me very badly. I barely got food. Mostly only what I could steal or scavenge from any garbage that the group discarded. I was a walking dead woman. But I didn’t have the courage to die, so I kept living.
One day, when we’d been in the wilderness for maybe a year, that awful fiend grabbed me by the arm, and getting very close to my face said, ‘You worthless beast! I’ll make you worth something! I’ll take you as my mate and at least you’ll feed me. Why should I starve when you can keep me alive!’ and he put his arms around me and lifted me up and forced me toward his hateful lips.
Mark, I was a monster! Without thinking, I took my hands and put my fingers around his ears… and I shoved my thumbs into his eyes, and I pushed them in until I couldn’t push them any farther. He probably screamed, I don’t know. He relaxed his grip on me and as I slipped from his arms, I grabbed him and… and Mark, I bit his throat out with my teeth! I remember watching as he stumbled, blinded and blood spurting from his neck as his blood ran down my face and chest. I watched as he died. And I didn’t care. I didn’t look at anyone and no one attacked me. When he was dead, I took his knife and his water and I walked away.
I walked for days. I found moss berries for water and I walked. I have no idea what direction I was going in. I just walked. After a while, I spotted ruins and I walked to them. I don’t even remember them. There was a spring and a small wood nearby and somehow I found food and water. Mark, I don’t even remember how I survived; I was like an animal. I stayed in that place for at least six years. I never spoke and I don’t know what I ate. I don’t know if others ever came and I don’t know if I killed any of them if they did. The insanity had taken me as well.
The wars started a year or two before I went into the wilderness. I was with that horrid band for about a year, and I was in the ruins for maybe six. I had no way of knowing how long, but afterward, I figured that it must have been about that long.
After six years, alone and insane, one day, I began walking again. Eventually I came to a very small village. The people took me for a mute and had pity on me and gave me water and something to eat. For three months, I slept outside the village and when I was hungry I would come to them and they would give me something. As time went by, I came every day to get water and food, and after another month, I began to sleep in the village square at night.
They were kind people and even the children didn’t torment me. After a while I began to regain some of my humanity and started looking for small ways that I could be useful and repay their kindness. I couldn’t bring myself to speak to them because I was so ashamed of what I had become, but I tried to do what I could. When a vendor in the market had garbage to be thrown out, I would take it and throw it away for them. I began cleaning the village at night. Later, I would offer to carry messages or packages and did whatever I could to be part of life again.