Death hung heavy in the air, the oppressive morbidity weighing on the soul in stark contrast to the beautiful, clear blue skies, the days beginning to cool pleasantly as harvest season loomed. Countless lives had met their end in this wretched place, leaving the very land twisted and deformed, flora warped and gnarled and almost unrecognisable. No grass grew here, no flowers bloomed, there was only the wide expanse of deeply rutted, loose dirt and the gallows.
The gallows hadn't been replaced in years and creaked and moaned as the King's Guard, clad in their usual cobalt armour, ushered the condemned up the rickety, wooden stairs, barely able to withstand the weight upon them. The condemned, faces concealed by tattered hessian bags pulled tight at the neck by old, mattered rope filed up, silent as the death that awaited them. The crowd swelled in size as the rear guard forced the last of the city’s inhabitants into the clearing, pushing them to encircle the gallows tightly, fear permeating like a fog hanging in the air.
As Willow was buffeted down the narrow path to the hanging grounds, she wondered who was going to be standing up that day. The last hanging had been only a few months earlier. The bodies had barely reached an 'acceptable' state of decay for removal. Willow sighed deeply, trying to block the memory from her mind: she'd lost a good friend that day because her brother had joined the Resistance. Willow didn't know if Dakota had herself joined up, but her brother had been awfully loud about recruitment. And it had got his whole family executed. But then, Willow reasoned, that's how it has always been. Everyone knew the penalty for treason and if they were still foolish enough to endanger their entire family then... it meant more food for other's come winter.
Every person in the city was required to attend the executions held by the King. It was the only time the city truly stopped, although there were always a morbid few who revelled in this inconceivable excuse for justice. Willow had heard in whispered conversations her whole life that things had been different once, but that was long before anyone now remembered. Willow saw little reason to dwell on it; this was all she had ever known and while it certainly wasn't the easiest existence, she had made her peace with her lot in life. She knew many others in the city were not so fortunate as she. At least she had a home. Many people in the cities lived in ramshackle shanty's, held together by loose nails and determination; poverty was a harsh reality for many, especially since there was only so much work available. Only those who had lived in the city before the King rose lived well, although they tried to employ as many of the populace as they could reasonably afford. If you were sick, or disabled and unable to work however, there was often no work and those who couldn't work starved. Starvation too was an uncomfortable reality in the city. Since the King only allowed the people to expand a certain distance outside of the city, there was limited farming space, definitely not enough space to properly feed the entire populace. It was not unusual to stumble across a former beggar, curled in the street, long dead and feeding maggots.
Feeling pressure on her shoulder, she looked to Richard, cropped greying hair bright in the sunlight, her father. “Stop getting distracted. You don’t want to join the poor bastards up there.”
Willow nodded, a quick bob of the head, nervously tucking a lock of brown hair behind her ear. She refocused her eyes on the Guards strangely curled, armoured hands moving to unfurl a tightly rolled, abused and scrappy sheet of parchment and began to list off the crimes of the damned, removing the hoods as he listed the individual's crime. Being so far back, she couldn't make out the full list of their crimes but heard enough to understand that their charges included treason and harbouring those of unclean birth. Willow wondered just what 'unclean birth' meant. Over the years many had been accused of such things and the definition rarely remained consistent. Was it a magic user? Was it a Traitor against the King?
As they moved down the line, Willow recognised several of the faces. That brunette with the scar over his eye and the split lip was a friend’s uncle, the blonde girl with one eye bruised shut flinching in fear was another friend’s sister; the woman tanned dark and wrinkled with blood dripping down her temple was one of the local washerwomen and beside her stood her proud husband, shoulders pinched, and nose broken. Second to last was someone Willow was intimately familiar, a man named Dickson, long brown hair mattered around his waist, clinging to a nasty cut in his brow, dark eyes still glazed from the blow. He'd owned one of the neighbouring farms, primarily a smokehouse and Willow's father had often traded fresh meat with both him and his father before him. His wife and both of his adult children stood beside him on the dais, sporting various wounds and bruises of their own. Someone would have to collect the young child left behind as soon as this sorry business was over.
In front of her and to the right, Willow noticed a grey mess of tightly curled hair and realised it was Dickson's mother, Bea; silent tears cascading down her face, her shoulders heaving and body shuddering with her grief, barely holding herself in check. She knew better than to interrupt the proceedings with her sorrow, however. Someone had to look after the infant after all; the poor child was an infant and had been left unattended for at least a full day.
The last in line Willow had thought to be a man but hadn't been able to glean any other information with the cloth over their face. Now, as their faces were uncovered, Willow realised that it was no man but rather a tall, broad female Elf. As the guard sputtered on about the evils of those of inhuman birth, the disease and famine they brought, Willow took the time to study her. She had never seen any of the Eldzha, let alone an elf. Seeing any of them was a rarity these days.
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It was said, in the privacy of closed rooms, that people had traded with the Eldzha and lived side by side with the other races once; but since the King had risen in power they had gradually disappeared. The common thought was that they had been hunted to extinction by the King. Yet here was living proof to the contrary. Willow couldn't help wondering just how many of the other races remained after all this time of relentless persecution. Surely their numbers were at least diminished. This elf's presence suggested that at the very least some of the elf's has survived, but what of the others? What was left of them?
The elf would have towered over any man Willow knew. By human standards she would not have been considered a great beauty, being a little too long in the face, her eyes slanted and a startling green that matched her hair. She stared over the crowd, unseeing as if dazed.
Willow tried not to feel sorry for her. There was no point in trying to explain away what The King did, yet Willow knew it was not her species fault that the King hated her kind.
The Guards, faces hidden by heavy, metal helmets, nudged each person to a noose as Willow tried to ready herself for the finale. No matter how many times she saw a hanging, she never grew accustomed to seeing people she knew, many she had known her whole life, in their final moments. Willow returned her attention to the elf, the pale green skin too foreign to be ignored long.
Willow watched as she stepped forward and had her greying, tattered rope secured around her slim throat. It was a shame really, Willow considered, we could learn so much from her people.
The crowd shifted, collectively preparing itself for the sight to come. No soul dared make a sound or take their eyes from the scene, too scared of joining the condemned in their accursed fate. Some clasped hands secretively, other clenched clothing in bruised fists. No one was ever prepared for the loud clang that would mark the end for those they had known and loved. As one, the crowd jumped as the gong sounded and the Guards moved to their positions, gaits heavy and hands rigidly held at their sides as they awaited some unheard final order.
Suddenly, for just a split second, the elf's eyes, pupils over-dilated in fear, seemed to meet Willow's wide green ones before the trapdoor swung open and she fell. The elf was lucky. With a sickening crack that seemed to vibrate off the nearby trees, her neck snapped before she could suffer any further. Her body bounced limply with the momentum of the fall, arms moving loosely like some grotesque marionette, the empty vessel still twitching in its last moments
Dickson was not so fortunate, and Willow was forced to watch as he flailed, eyes bulging out of their sockets and mouth wide, desperately gasping for one last breath. It seemed an age before finally, he violently succumbed to asphyxiation, body finally going limp. The bodies would hang for the next handful of months as an unforgettable reminder. In the summer months the bloated, rotting corpses would permeate the city. Many would fall sick just entering the urban centre. The families wouldn't be permitted to retrieve the body and therefore were unable to perform the funeral rites. There would be nowhere to remember those who had been lost and it was perhaps the hardest part for the families involved: they were expected to continue their lives as if nothing had happened.
Willow'd had an older brother, Brendan, who had suffered this fate. She had been only ten when it had happened. She had been forced to attend his hanging; it was a day she could never forget. She'd had nightmares in which his flailing, flaccid corpse had chased her, screaming in a garbled, hoarse voice that it was her fault he'd died for years after the fact. In those days the rebellion had been but a tiny bud, growing, but more a nuisance to the people then the King. Many had hung in those days.
Not long after her brothers' death, the King had started executing entire families for the crimes of one member. It was how she was able to make peace with the regime. More lives were at stake than her own.
As Dickson finally passed, the guards began closing in around the front of the crowd, shoving people to move and vacate the area, to return to the city. Willow joined the throng of people, the only sound the scrapping of worn shoes against sandy dirt and rock, making their way down the tree-lined path, freshly fallen leaves crunching underfoot, the orange and red serving as a severe separation between the two locations.
As she passed, Willow subtly took Bea's hand in quiet support. They were soon joined by Willow's oldest childhood friend, Olivia, and her husband Elijah. Olivia had taken Willow's hand, dark hair in disarray and body still shaking; Willow gave it a gentle squeeze, sending a look of compassion toward her white-faced husband, who was clinging to Olivia's other hand for dear life.
Willow nodded to her fiancé, James, as she passed his family, who reached a tanned hand out to touch her arm gently as she moved passed. She smiled softly back as she passed.
Willow was unable to truly comfort the people around her, any sign of it could put her next on the rope. The King had long since made it clear that such events were not a place to mourn but to rejoice the passing of someone who held their way of life in such contempt. Willow could only gently guide them down the wooded pathway with the masses.
Bea seemed to be maintaining her composure a little better than Olivia. Bea's shoulders were bent and gait dragging, the grip on Willow's hand surprisingly tight for a woman who appeared so frail. It was her way of both anchoring herself in reality and thanking Willow the only way she could at that moment for her comfort and support. Willow had known Bea her whole life, having been babysat by her; Bea’s older grandchildren had indulgently played with her as a young child.
Olivia, on the other hand, seemed oblivious to the world, relying heavily on Willow to guide her and Elijah through the crowd of her neighbours. Olivia's uncle had been the only family she'd had in the last eight years, apart from her husband. It was he who had walked her down the aisle to hand her to Elijah on her wedding day two years prior. Elijah had lost his elder sister and her family that day and Willow's heart ached for both of them. Olivia stumbled frequently, held up only by Willow and Elijah's hand in hers. She did not see the world.