The air was heavy and suffocating, clinging to the body like an invisible shroud. An older boy sat on the compacted soil in front of the house, staring into the tree crowns around him. His little sister was watching large butterflies that landed on the blooming bush by the house.
"They're beautiful! Come here!" she called to him, but the boy only sneered and refused to move. The oppressive heat enveloping the landscape seemed to reflect his own mood. The prospect of spending the next two months here in the Arali Swamps was a torment for him. He had tried in vain to persuade his mother to stay with them in Rovisk, the capital of the kingdom – but no, she had her way. She insisted it would be good for them to be with their father. That they would get to know his work. He argued that he needed to attend his apprenticeship in the carpenter's workshop and that he certainly did not want to be a soldier like his father, but it was futile. His mother practically dragged him onto the ship with his sister, and they sailed to the other continent to a small, remote border fort in the swamps.
"Damn it," he growled, tearing a clump of fresh green grass. Even the grass irritated him with how different it was from the dry and parched grass of the capital. He angrily began to tear it into small pieces, pouring all his desperation into the gesture.
"What are you doing?" a soft child's voice asked. His sister stood beside him, watching him with the curious gaze of a six-year-old. In her hand, she held an old piece of cloth sewn into a doll – her favorite toy that their mother had made for her during the sea voyage.
"I'm dying," he snapped.
"What does that mean?"
"It means I'm bored here and want to leave." He tried to put enough venom in his voice to deter his sister from asking more questions. It didn’t work. The girl was about to ask another question when their mother’s voice interrupted her.
"Then do something!"
Their mother emerged from the small wooden house clinging to the wall of the stone fort. She was a tall and brisk woman, her hands white with flour, which she was dusting off her apron. He thought that he didn't really know her any other way – always with white hands and flour dust in her hair.
"You whine worse than your sister!"
"It's too hot to do anything!" he tried to protest. They had been arguing like this for months.
"It wasn't much cooler in Rovisk!" his mother retorted.
"But there you could hide in the cellar or go to the beach!"
"Enough!" came the deep voice of his father, who emerged from the house. His presence was like a sudden shadow that interrupted their argument, and the boy fell silent in shame.
"Is this how you argue with your mother who sacrificed so much for you?!"
"I'm sorry," the boy mumbled, glaring at the torn grass on the ground as if wishing to harm it further. He despised his mother, ashamed of her flour-dusted hands, dark circles under her eyes, and belly stretched from repeated pregnancies and miscarriages. But he feared his father.
The little girl clutched her rag doll to her chest and lowered her head, not liking it when her brother argued with their mother. They quarreled too often...
The man sighed, and the lines on his face suddenly seemed deeper. He put his arm around his wife’s shoulders.
"I'll take them on a walk around the area," he murmured into her hair, giving her a quick kiss. "Come on, get up," he said wearily but firmly, nudging his son with his foot.
The boy reluctantly got up from the ground and watched his father, who brought two belts with swords from the house.
"Do I have to?" he asked, despair in his voice as he fastened the belt.
His father gave him a thoughtful look. "Yes, you must. The swamps are full of various creatures. And after all, you are the son of the border guard commander."
"And will I get a sword too?" the little girl asked.
"Not a cha-," her mother began.
"You will," her father interrupted his wife. He picked a branch from the bush by the house, stripped it of leaves, and handed it to the girl. "This is a sword for little girls."
The boy began to smirk mockingly, but the girl didn’t catch the sarcasm in her father’s voice. She took the branch happily and started waving it in front of her.
"Let's go!" the father commanded and headed toward the edge of the clearing where the small border fort with their house stood.
The girl followed with quick, small steps.
They plunged into the shadow of the cypresses, but the air remained just as heavy and stifling. All around, a multitude of sounds filled the air – the buzzing of invisible insects, the splashing of water, the chirping of birds. The father led them along a narrow, barely discernible path that wound between the trees and sometimes completely disappeared. They had to carefully step on the raised clumps of grass to avoid sinking into the mud. Sometimes the path took them past small pools with dark brown water or covered with water ferns. In one of them, the boy noticed rotting wood that looked like a decaying hand of a dead man. Disgusted by his own imagination, he tore his eyes away from the pool and focused on the path underfoot.
They walked in silence for a long time, even the girl just stared wide-eyed. Suddenly, her foot slipped on a slippery clump, and she lost her balance, sliding her leg into the mud with a cry. Startled, she dropped the stick and the doll to grab onto the surrounding plants. Her father quickly jumped to her side and pulled her back onto the path with his strong arms.
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"Careful, every mistake here is punished," he said calmly. "In some places, the water is only a few centimeters deep, but in others, you can sink a meter deep. Light doesn’t penetrate the water, it’s brown and murky, you never know how deep it is. We’ve lost a few people here because of that."
The girl sobbed, nodded, and grabbed her father’s hand to be led.
The boy rolled his eyes – he didn’t like his sister, she always wanted someone’s attention. But he didn’t want to start another argument in front of his father, so he continued walking and only asked, "How could soldiers get lost here? There’s nothing here but mud."
"They either drowned or were eaten by predators. In some areas, there are quite unpleasant creatures here – poisonous snakes, aggressive water birds, nocturnal lynxes..."
The boy looked worried. "So why do people want this land so much?"
"Because of the mud," his father replied, with a tone in his voice that could be considered mocking.
"Is it magic mud?" the girl asked.
Her father laughed, but it was a joyless laugh. "Well, almost. It’s an excellent resource. The Union is expanding too much, the fields are exhausted. This mud is said to make the land so fertile that it can feed many more mouths."
"So it is magic!" she insisted. "One day, I’ll be magical too. Right, daddy? I’ll be able to do magic?"
"Oh, you sure will," her brother smirked.
"Magic isn’t for girls like you," her father replied simply.
After a while, he stopped and showed them a nondescript moss-covered stone. "Do you see that?"
"Is it a stone?"
"What else would it be, you silly," her brother nudged her in the back.
"Leave her alone," their father admonished him. "There aren’t many stones in this swamp. This is an old milestone placed here by the Elders." He bent down, tore the moss off the stone, and cleaned it. He tapped his finger on a carved circle with other symbols the boy didn’t recognize. Despite the heat, a chill ran down his spine at the sight of the circle. This symbol evoked different feelings in people, but none were pleasant – only fear, hatred, disgust, contempt. The boy had seen men in Rovisk beating small children because they had drawn a circle in the street dust during a game. It was the symbol of the Elders, and people never used it.
"It marks an unused path to the northern hills and the crossing to the territory of the Elders. Each stone has a mark indicating how far one is from the crossing. From here, it's estimated to be about twenty kilometers."
"That’s not far," the boy murmured, shivering. "Don’t the Elders mind that the Union has come so close to their territory?"
His father frowned. "They do. That’s why we are here as the border guard. But the Elders don’t use the Arali Swamps for anything, so no serious conflict is expected. Excavation will start, and in two months, when everything settles down, we’ll return to Rovisk."
The boy’s relief was visible. "That’s good."
"Are you so eager to go home?" his father laughed.
"He has a girl there," the girl said with childish sincerity.
Her brother nudged her again, this time harder, making her gasp. "You be quiet, you know nothing!"
Their father only smiled. Then he looked back at the carved circle, frowned, and shook his head. "Come on, let's go back. I think that's enough for the first day. Tomorrow I'll take you to the camp where the excavation is planned."
"Really? And can I take some magic mud too?"
She didn’t get an answer. Some parents dismiss their children’s questions with just a smile.
They returned along the path, and the cypresses gradually gave way as they approached the clearing. At the edge of the clearing, their father paused.
"Someone has arrived?"
Several saddled horses stood by the house, but no one was in sight.
"Daddy? Are those your soldiers' horses?"
"Yes," he confirmed, frowning as he observed the symbols embroidered on the saddles. "But they weren’t supposed to report until tomorrow."
As they approached the house, the girl suddenly screamed in surprise and fear. "Shasha!"
"What?" her father asked, irritated. It was clear his thoughts were on the unexpected visitors and not on a child’s whim.
"I lost Shasha!" the girl ran back to the path between the cypresses without thinking.
"Who?"
"The doll," the boy explained. "I’ll bring her back," he added reluctantly and turned after his sister.
Their father only nodded absently and turned back to the house, from which several soldiers emerged.
The little girl was already by the first cypresses, and the boy ran to catch up with her. But suddenly they heard shouts and the clash of steel behind them. They turned and saw with horror as one of the soldiers plunged his sword into their father’s stomach.
The boy reacted instantly, grabbing his sister and turning her away from the house. "Run!"
But she remained frozen in fear. He grabbed her hand and dragged her away between the trees.
Suddenly, there was a whistling sound, and the boy felt a sharp pain. He fell into the muddy ground, pulling his sister down with him. An arrow protruded from his throat, and he gurgled blood, desperate thoughts racing through his mind, quickly replaced by darkness.
Another arrow embedded itself in the ground right next to the girl. Its soft whistle snapped her out of her shock. Her heart pounded, her eyes wide with fear. Her brother’s hand, still holding hers, twitched. She freed herself from his grip, turned away from the house, and started running. The soft ground slowed her down, with each step sinking deeper, as if the mud wanted to hold her back. Eventually, it saved her – her foot got stuck in it, she fell, and another arrow whizzed past her head. She heard angry shouts from the house.
"Damn it, can’t you hit anything?"
She freed her foot, but her shoe remained in the mud. Her heart pounded even faster, but she stumbled on.
"She’ll die out there anyway! We all know what lives here!"
Grown cypresses, with their roots like fingers reaching for her, were all around. Mud was replaced by water. They had stopped shooting, but she still heard their arguing voices. She waded through the muddy water, helping herself with half-rotten branches that lay decaying in the swamp. Her eyes were fixed on a raised bank a few meters ahead. She managed to reach it, climb up the slippery plants out of the water, and continued stumbling on. The soft mud squelched under her feet with every step, but she felt she was no longer sinking. She couldn’t hear the voices anymore but was too scared to stop.
Suddenly, she tripped and fell. Her toes throbbed painfully from a strong impact. She looked and saw it was a stone covered with lichen, but the carved circle symbol was visible. She looked around and realized she was on solid clumps of grass that were different from the surrounding swamp.
The old path.
She followed it. Her father’s words echoed in her mind: The path leads to the hills and the crossing to the territory of the Elders.
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