1 Merej
1 Merej
The messenger came to Taultri’s central plaza to declare that a wikk was to be hanged in
the capitol.
He stood out among the farmers like a single stalk of corn in a field of barley: tall, seated
atop his tawny horse, and with a sheaf of yellow hair beneath a shaded hat. His cheeks were red
from riding through the prairies, where no trees stood to lessen the sun’s heat, and his inner
thumbs had rubbed raw from gripping the reigns. His eyes flitted nervously around the plaza as
farmers, dirty from half a day’s work, stared in shock. They were the barley, the tough, the
brown-skinned, the trodden-on.
A wikk had not been found in nearly two years, and last time, the messenger had given
the traditional spiel. This messenger, however, did not. He paused first, embarrassed by the crack
in his voice that betrayed his youth—he wished he sounded strong, when delivering such
dramatic news—and then said, “A member of your township has been selected for jury duty.”
Jury duty. Shoulders relaxed. Some farmers leaned together and began to whisper,
guessing who may be blessed—or inconvenienced—by a trip to the capitol. Weathered farmers
with sun-lined faces stood grimly. A young mother bounced a toddler on her hip, wondering if
she should remove herself, if her boy was old enough to understand. The boy asked loudly what
a wikk was, and his mother shushed him. Energized young men prayed for their names to be
called, eager to see the city and eager to see a wikk meet her fate, but the jury was carefully
selected, and it was not always those who wanted it most who were chosen. Sometimes, it was
those who wanted it least.
The messenger had read the name as he rode into town, but as he tried to retrieve it, he
could not recall anything but it being a plain, and dully common, woman’s name. Nerej? No—
that was the name of the wikk to be hanged. The juror’s name was similar…
The farmers all stared. With another pang of embarrassment, the messenger reached into
his pocket and grasped the note, the original message, to remind himself of the name. The paper
stuck to his sweaty palms as he unfolded it.
“Merej Ross,” he read aloud, and the eager young men wilted. Others solemnly averted
their gazes. “Is Goody Ross here?”
“Ha!” said a teen boy. “No.”
An older man flicked the boy’s temple and muttered, “Have respect.” In a louder voice,
he said, “Merej keeps to herself in the midday.”
Ah. A young woman ought to be caring for the town at midday, helping with food and
watching over children. A young woman who kept to herself was an empty vessel for sin, a wikk
minus the magic. Vej, the great goddess, wanted all women to be such lonesome, spiteful
creatures. The messenger thought to himself that this Merej Ross was being warned off a path
that she may yet take, and he allowed a half-second of sympathy before stifling the feeling.
The messenger was half-right in his conclusion: Merej Ross had been chosen for jury
duty as a warning. The Holy Council of the Zâv chose their jurors carefully, and often brought in
young women who showed warning signs of falling to Vej’s influences.
The farmers of Taultri, believing that jurors were selected randomly, only knew the other
half of the picture. Young men grumbled about how unfair it was for Merej of all people to
attend the execution of a wikk. Others only felt sorry for the girl. They remembered how, on a
summer evening, the girl’s grandmother had been chained in the centre of the plaza. None had
ever seen Merej before she came to beg for the life of the old wikk who had kept her hidden
inside, jealous of the young girl’s beauty.
What strange and wicked things that Vej would bring women to do. The girl wasn’t even
particularly beautiful, yet the grandmother hid her away from all eyes. Firraj Koranerrof, the
Chief’s nephew, had been good friends with the quiet lad who worked a barley field on the
outskirts of Taultri, and when the lad never came to town one week, Firraj went looking. He
peeked through the windows of his friend’s cabin, only to see an unfamiliar girl, a girl who
looked so very much like his friend that she must have been his sister—yet, no sister had ever
been seen outdoors. Firraj, worried for the girl’s safety, reported the oddity. Her grandmother
was chained and dragged to trial, and the girl was freed, but her brother was never seen again.
Only Merej and Firraj knew the truth, and Firraj knew it too late.
“Where can I find her?” asked the messenger. “My duty is to deliver her summons
directly.”
Firraj Koranerrof, the only friend of the young woman, stepped forward. All knew where
Merej would be—she frequented nowhere else—but they let him speak.
“She’ll be at Mr. Lenerrof’s shop,” said Firraj. He, unlike some of the other young men,
was not envious of Merej’s summons.
The messenger glanced over Firraj’s muscular arms, and he thanked the sunburn for
hiding the flush in his cheeks. That man had a voice for dramatic declarations. He, like the other
Iden who populated the prairies, had brown skin and a broad nose. His dark hair grew past his
shoulders—a style common for men in the prairies, but never worn in the capitol. Most Zav men,
like the messenger, kept their hair short, but the messenger had a secret fondness for long hair on
a man, and wished he could grow his out.
He shook his head. He was too new to this job to be unfocused.
“Bring me to Miss Ross,” he commanded.
Merej Ross was, indeed, as alone as one could be in Taultri without hiding oneself among
the corn stalks. Mr. Lenerrof’s shop was one of a dozen wood-and-stone buildings that formed
the little town of Taultri, but Mr. Lenerrof had what few farm towns had: books. Six shelves of
books, maps, and paper supplies; leather-bound books, cloth-bound books, and scrolls; heavy
atlases, well-worn diaries of explorers, and books of fairytales with charcoal drawings. As the
summer barley crop neared its harvest, Merej stole away in the quiet corner of Mr. Lenerrof’s
shop, knowing she would soon face long days of work with no time for reading. She owned only
two books herself, but Mr. Lenerrof was kind, and let her read without buying.
Today, Merej was curled on a pile of linen with a book in her lap. She’d splashed water
on her face to wash off the sweat, and tied back her dirty curls with twine. She’d said hello to
Mr. Lenerrof and picked out one of her favourites, a book titled Landscapes of the Zav Union.
Drawings of maps, cities, and landscapes filled its pages. Merej never needed to leave Taultri, or
even the shop, when this one book could show her anywhere in the Union.
In the northwest, broad-leafed trees sat on rolling hills, and bears with round snouts and
thick paws caught salmon as they jumped up waterfalls. The jungles of the southwest had lush
plants and many-toothed alligators drifting through murky river water, and a cloudless sky
stretched over the sand dunes and salt flats of the continent’s centre. The book even had a couple
sketches of the tropical Lokkharo islands, where colourful reefs wavered beneath crystalline
water, and the walled castle of A’abad, where tiled domes rose where desert, mountain, and
savanna met.
Merej traced her fingers over a sketch of J’Hîf, the capitol city, with its tall stone
buildings and horse-drawn carriages. Pretty Zav women with pinned-up braids and parasols
ambled along the road. Their lashes were darkened, their faces powdered; their long skirts trailed
just above the cobblestones. Girls like them were upper-class, the daughters, wives, and sisters of
the Zâv—a world away from Merej and her calloused hands.
“Ah, Firraj.” Merej looked up from her book as Mr. Lenerrof, seated out of sight at his
desk by the front, greeted a familiar name. Merej didn’t bother standing. Firraj would come to
her.
When he did, though, he had another boy with him: an adolescent clutching a messenger
bag, with the pale skin and blond hair characteristic of the Zav.
Merej closed her book.
“Miss Ross.” The messenger took off his hat: a sure sign of trouble. Merej wanted no part
in news that required a hat to come off. “The Zâv Council summons you for jury duty to witness
the executionof Nerej Valerrof.”
Jury duty. For a wikk. The name, in other contexts, would mean listening in the court and
passing judgement, but in the persecution of a wikk, acquittal was not even considered.
Merej tried to smile politely. “How… interesting.”
The messenger, picking up on Merej’s reluctance, misinterpreted it as a feeling of
inconvenience and said: “It’s a week’s travel each way, miss, but the Council provides the
carriage and covers all costs. Consider it an all-expenses-paid trip to J’Hîf. Farm folks like you
must not travel much.”
Merej clutched her book. “Not much.”
Merej and the messenger, both unsure of their conversational abilities, stared at each
other until Firraj clapped the boy on the shoulder and said, “Got a letter for her?”
“Ah! Of course,” said the messenger, fumbling with his bag. “You sign at the bottom—I
rip it in two—you keep the half with the information, and I take your signature back to prove you
got the summons. You can write your name, goodwife?”
Merej nodded.
“Good, good,” said the messenger as he produced the letter and handed it over. “S’more
difficult when they can’t write—sign on that line there, miss—but I see you’re a cultured little
town here—not too far from the capitol compared to some other places.”
As he yapped on, Merej skimmed the letter. Miss Merej Ross, it read. The Holy Council
of the Zâv summons you for jury duty at the hanging of Nerej Valerrof. We stand in Holy unity
against the sinful wiles of Vej that drive corruptible men and women to stray from the light of
Zâvaj—et cetera. Merej skipped past the religious prose. The letter confirmed what the
messenger had said, that a carriage would be sent to Taultri to bring her to J’Hîf. A week’s travel
each way. A board room with meals compris. She had three weeks to find someone to tend to her
grain during her absence.
May we find purity in the light of Zâvaj.
Merej wondered if any of the Zâv truly knew or agreed on the meaning of this phrase.
“Ink?” she asked.
“Ah! Yes.” The messenger pulled a quill and ink vial from his bag. Simple, undecorated,
but good quality. Black ink, brown quill. Merej signed away, looped her J. The cursive letter
dangled like a noose at the bottom of the parchment: ink condemning Merej as surely as rope
condemned Miss Valerrof. She ignored her creeping dread and handed the letter back to the
messenger, who ripped her signature from the parchment and handed back the larger portion.
“Readable little signature,” the messenger endorsed. “I couldn’t write myself ‘til my
uncle taught me—sturdy man, may he rest in the light of Zâvaj—but it changed my life. Pretty
little signature, and all these books—if you have a brother just like you, miss, he could be a
messenger. S’a great job.”
Merej averted her eyes.
Firraj’s hand clamped down again on the messenger’s shoulder. “If you’re staying the
night, I could show you good board. We’re small, but friendly.”
The messenger looked up at Firraj with big eyes. “Oh, well—I s’pose we’ve only a few
hours until sundown—and this sure is a pretty little farm town—”
“Tell you what,” Firraj said. “You head back to the main square, get acquainted with it,
and I’ll meet you there.”
The messenger’s head bobbed, and he backed out of the stacks, clutching his messenger
satchel. “Goody Ross. Mr. Lenerrof.”
As he left, Merej overheard Mr. Lenerrof say “Come back anytime, kid, especially if
you’re bringing books from other towns. I’ll buy.”
Merej trailed her thumb over the spine of Landscapes of the Zav Union, wishing the
whole Union were landscapes and nothing else. That was purity, when rivers were the only lines
drawn in the land.
Firraj crossed his thick arms.
Merej let the book fall open in her hand, and her eyes found a text-heavy page on the
geography of the north desert. A drawing of a rocky butte stood on the right page. She scanned
the page as an excuse to avoid Firraj’s eyes.
“No reaction to this?” Firraj said in a low voice. “Merej—”
“No reaction.” Merej flipped the page, not reading. Her heart had picked up its pace ever
since she signed her name into a noose, and it wouldn’t slow. “At least the messenger is too
smitten with your muscles to notice Taultri’s sins.”
“He’s not—”
“You’re the nephew of the Chief, Firraj, and you look the part. That boy has all the lank
of grass in spring; the riding hasn’t shown in his shoulders, so he must be new at his job. Impress
him with your masculinity, and he’ll go to J’Hîf with a glowing review of Taultri.”
Firraj frowned as if sifting through Merej’s flat delivery for any hint of mockery.
“This is serious,” he said. “We both know why the Zâv want an audience each time a
wikk is executed.”
“Yes,” said Merej. “They want to invigorate the zealous and frighten the sympathetic,
and I am no zealot.”
“Hush!” Firraj hissed. “Someone could overhear your heresy.”
Merej jutted her chin out and called louder, “Mr. Lenerrof? Are you aware that the Zâv
are utter zealots?”
“Ha!” came the response. “So is my mother-in-law.”
Firraj was less amused. He tugged at a strand of hair, arms still folded around each other.
The masculine confidence that so enraptured the messenger was falling.
“This is serious,” he repeated, the nerves creeping into his voice. “Your grandmother was
a wikk, Merej. The Zâv will be suspicious of you, they—what if something happens to you? I
won’t be there.”
This was the hidden layer of Firraj, the one that worried and fretted and felt responsible
for everyone’s well-being: the opposite of Merej, who took care of herself and only herself. She
laid her book on the floor, stood, and slid her hands over where Firraj’s shoulders met his neck.
His brows scrunched in worry, and his dark eyes met hers without any of her hesitance.
“Nothing will happen to me,” Merej said with an acted certainty. “I will walk along the
cobblestone roads of J’Hîf, eyeing the pretty Zav women with envy, and no one will look twice
at another Iden farmer with calloused hands. I’ll bring all my spare money and buy myself a
ribbon for my hair, or maybe even a book.”
“A book, yes,” said Firraj. “But the Zâv mistrust women who read—especially unmarried
women who live alone, reading away all their spare time.”
Merej sighed and picked her book off the floor. He was right, but why did it have to be
so? She had nothing against Zâv. She simply wanted to be left alone. Did that make her
susceptible to corruption?
What did it mean, to be corrupted? To be pure? Did the Holy Council even know?
She started to walk away from him, and he followed her between the stacks.
“Well, I won’t stop reading,” Merej said, miffed. “And I can’t marry. So perhaps they
will always be a little suspicious of me—but books are not wikkaf.”
“You could marry.”
“Marry? Ha! What did I just tell you? I can’t marry.”
Firraj’s hand landed on her arm. “I could marry you.”
Merej whirled around.
They’d reached the front of the shop just as Firraj spoke, and Mr. Lenerrof raised his
eyebrows. Firraj glanced towards him and shrank back in embarrassment. Merej grabbed his
collar and led him—not too kindly—back into the stacks.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she hissed. “What is that, a proposal?”
“No—”
“Good. Your uncle is the Chief, Firraj—what happens if your cousins perish young?
You’d be the Chief. You need to marry a woman who can bear you children. Marrying me—
we’d be inseurgen and be separated.”
Firraj made no further argument. Merej’s heart, despite her better sense, sank: not
because she wanted to marry him, but because of that same old insecurity that clinged to her all
the time. A woman who can bear you children. To the Zav, a woman’s ability to bear children
was all her worth. If she couldn’t provide for her husband, the couple would be deemed
inseurgen: the woman disgraced, the man free to marry another. Sometimes, patterns later
showed the man to be the infertile one, but by then his first wife would be too old to be desirable.
To Zav women, bearing children was everything. To Merej, it was a little less than
everything. Just a little.
“I only meant…” Firraj hesitated. “If it would keep you safe, if it would keep your secret.
I’m the only one who knows, Merej, and I would never tell—not ever. If it would keep you
safe.”
“That’s very kind,” Merej said curtly. “But I am safe as can be. No one will care about a
Taultri spinster.”
Firraj nodded, unconvinced. He deserved more than what Merej could give him. And
maybe, just maybe, Merej deserved more than safety.
“Besides,” Merej continued. “I didn’t see a soul outside my family until I was fourteen,
didn’t I? No one doubts my asocial nature.”
She turned to walk away, cutting off her speech before she could grow more agitated, and
Firraj said: “Will you be alright?”
“As alright as I can be,” she replied. “Go meet your messenger.”
She retreated back to her linen seat in the corner, listening as Firraj left. The two old
friends, now separated, returned to who they were without the other: the man assured, born to
lead; the woman quiet and plain, born to write hidden essays in the margins.
Merej glared down at the Zâv’s letter. Curse it! Curse all of them—every last zealot. Vej
could corrupt all their souls, if it meant they would leave her alone. Her own cries and yells
echoed in the recesses of her mind—bare feet racing miles over the dusty prairie road—summer
sky reaching to the horizon—dirtied feet, dirtied hem. Her grandmother stood in the middle of
the plaza, chained to a post. She never cried, never begged. Merej begged enough for the both of
them.
“Boy troubles?”
Merej looked up, startled, to see Mr. Lenerrof wiggling his eyebrows.
“All boys are trouble,” she said curtly. “You’d have to specify.”
Mr. Lenerrof snorted a laugh. “Firraj—”
“Is a friend,” Merej interrupted. “And a fool. I have more important problems, anyway.”
Mr. Lenerrof nodded to the letter in her hand. “How does that feel?”
“How do you think?”
Merej folded the parchment in half, hiding away its nauseating zeal. Mr. Lenerrof’s eyes
were sympathetic.
“It’s frightening,” he said, “knowing that anyone could hold such darkness within them.
Your grandmother was the best of us. But we keep on trusting, don’t we? The risk is worth it.”
“I should go.” Merej averted her eyes and held out Landscapes of the Zav Union. “Your
book—”
“Keep it,” said Mr. Lenerrof. “You’re the only one who touches it. When you get back,
you can repay me with a story of the city. Tell me how the dames wander the streets, how the
artisans call out their fares. I’ve been to J’Hîf only once, and I’ll likely never return. You read
my stories—repay me with a story of your own.”
Merej listened. Nodded. Clutched the book—her book—closer to her chest.
She could repay him now, with a story he would never forget. The story of a child
growing in an unfamiliar body, who gazed wistfully at a sketch of Zav women with frills on their
skirts and ribbons in their hair and powder on their cheeks. A child who felt insane. A child who
went to war with puberty and lost. A child who cried, a grandmother who listened. A child who
got a second chance. Then, a young boy who peeked through the windows and saw a girl where
he expected to see a boy.
The secret had to come out somehow, in some way. Only Merej and Firraj knew the
truth, now, and Firraj knew it too late.
Merej was no wikk, but she held her grandmother’s wikkaf in the curve of her thighs and
the shape of her breasts. She was no longer a child, and no longer felt disillusioned by the
dysphoria in her mind. She felt lonely, and unsure, and anguished, but… at peace. Her mind and
body fought no longer. Her grandmother had given her that. Wikkaf had given her that.
Whatever Nerej Valerrof had done, whatever wikkaf had brought her to the gallows—
Merej doubted the wickedness of the act. Maybe that made her a sinner, too.
Only Miss Valerrof knew the truth. It would swing with the noose.