Granny-Old Bones and Dark Musings
Granny, Old Bones and Disturbing Musings-Chapter 1
Granny watched the children playing in the dirt compound outside the slaves’ mud brick shacks one sunny day in the Land of Enslavement. They tumbled over each other, played with bone and goat skin rattles. How their papas somehow find time and resources to cobble together these toys in what little time at dusk they had before sleep is crazy! She mused. She laughed at the antics of two boys who splashed in the muddy puddles from last night’s rare rain. She smiled, enjoying listening to their one- and two-year-old babbling. She had been in charge of watching the little ones ever since she became too old to carry the water pails to the slaves working in the fields.
They were innocently unaware of the bellowing threats of the overseer coming from the fields across the river from the shacks. Granny cringed, somehow more aware than she ever had been to the cries of pain coming from grown men being beaten to the point of not being able to stand back up. Though, today she was too far away to see, the countless times she had seen it throughout her years as a slave paraded before her with crystal clarity, like never before. Men, women, and children dirty and drenched in their own sweat and blood trickling from whip marks. She gasped at the images of them cowering and trying to work as fast as their malnourished bodies would go.
She shook her head and tried to focus on the young babe in her arms with his black hair and button nose, but the images refused to be ignored. In another attempt, she closed her eyes, but this just increased the clarity of the images. She could see the tears of pain mingle with the sweat and mud on faces scrunched up in agony.
She stifled a cough. It had been nagging her for weeks. She shook her head and got up to walk around. Sometimes this helped her to get more energy. She couldn’t appear weak to the overseer who took sinister pleasure in coming over the bridge unannounced to check if she was doing her job and to push over an unsuspecting two-year-old. He would then burst into menacing laughter as the child wailed in fear.
The job of watching the children was the end of the road for her. Once she was too weak for even that…she trembled for…
Just then a trumpet blew. Granny looked up to see the herald coming in front of Prince Iniquity over the stone bridge. “Oy! There is going to come a time where I am going to get whipped for not getting up fast enough,” she muttered to herself and grimaced at the thought of her friend being whipped to an inch of her life because she hadn’t stood when Prince Iniquity came to inspect her work.
Prince Iniquity came riding over the bridge on his majestic dappled black and gray horse. Granny averted her eyes. “Stand up little ones. Our prince is here. Keep your eyes down!” she admonished.
“Slave woman, how old are you?” Prince Iniquity’s voice came out like nails on slate stone. Granny tensed her muscles so she wouldn’t cringe. What she couldn’t see with her eyes to the ground was Prince Iniquity with his hawk like nose in the air and his shoulder length blonde hair held in place with a bronze circlet with three rhombus shaped black diamonds, scanning the ragtag group of little ones.
“I have seen one hundred summers, your highness.” The baby in her arms started to fuss, so she bounced her arms up and down to settle him down.
“Are you still capable of watching the young ones? I cannot afford to lose future work force! What would happen if one of them got the fancy to run into the river? Would you be able to stop them?” Prince Iniquity fired off a whole bunch of questions, prodding his steed closer to her. Granny tensed her muscles to force herself not to back away, which would be deemed disrespectful.
“Maybe it is about time I threw you in the dungeon to rot with the rats and snakes! Haha! Haha! Haha!” Prince Iniquity threw his head back and laughed. His high pitched, cruel laughter ran down her spine. “You know with just one word. I can send you there. Oh, look up, here is the perfect demonstration for you.”
Granny took a deep breath and followed the command to look up. She held tight to the babe with trembling arms. Don’t drop the child! Don’t drop the child!
She watched as Prince Iniquity pointed to two men carrying another man between them. The man that was being carried screamed in agony and held his wounded arm. Prince Iniquity spoke one harsh guttural word. With that a black stream poured forth from the black diamonds, swirled around the men, and vanished. Granny dropped her jaw and her eyes got wide with horror. The men were gone, with nothing to show that they even existed. The toddlers screamed in terror running about.
“Haha! Haha! Haha! That could be you! Are you ready to join them in rotting with the rats and snakes? Look at me!”
With quaking knees, Granny obeyed. Prince Iniquity’s blue eyes pierced her with a wicked smile. “Well, are you ready?”
Before she could even form an answer, a thundering voice shook the sky. “Iniquity! Do NOT touch that woman!”
Prince Iniquity jerked his face up to the sky, narrowed his eyes, and scowled. “You are not the ruler of this land, I am!” he shouted and beat his chest with his fist.
A resounding laughter consumed the very atmosphere. “Iniquity, your tyrannical era will only last for a limited period. My decision is final. You WILL NOT touch that woman!”
The children stared up at the sky, pointing and prattling to one another about the “Beeeg Man.” The voice overpowered their dread of Prince Iniquity’s dark power with a joyful awe over this new wonder.
“Old crone, I will get you next time! Don’t think I won’t!” Prince Iniquity shoved his bony forefinger in her face. He prodded his steed into a gallop, laughing as he rode back over the bridge. The horse’s hooves clattered loudly against the stones.
She shivered at the thought of those cold dank walls. Her heart skipped several beats at the strong imaginary spiders crawling up her arms and legs. He prodded his steed into a gallop, laughing as he rode back over the bridge. The horse’s hooves clattered loudly against the stones.
She had never thought about what came at the end of life. She had always been strong. She laughed at people who asked her to think about what would happen when she was no longer useful as a slave to Prince Iniquity.
However, the past few weeks as she had fought this cough and felt the aches in her bones and muscles more, she started to think about it. And now Prince Iniquity’s threat…What a fool I have been! she mused to herself.
She moved the babe in her arms so she could stare at the tattoo on her arm. Unbidden by her, the memory flooded her mind. Tell me everything you find out about the villagers meeting to talk about the myth: King Holy One! Or if they are trying to hide the harvest! Prince Iniquity had hissed fifty years ago to her. She shook her head remembering how she had looked at her emaciated eighteen-year-old son working in the fields trying to scrape together a living for himself, her, and his pregnant bride. Her heart still raced in terror at the thought of not enough food for her grandchild soon to be born. I will see that you are well rewarded for any information you can give me about these King Holy One followers. Remember to betray me is death to your entire family! Haha! Haha! Haha! She cringed at the memory of the high-pitched cackling.
Oh sure, she had been well recompensed during the years that Prince Iniquity had used her as a spy. Then, when she got older and could not be as subtle as the younger spies, Prince Iniquity shoved her back into the fields with pails of water.
Suddenly her mind flashed back to the strangest events in her life in a disjointed whirlwind. Her mind’s eyes flew far away over the Desert of Choice to the contested border of the Land of Enslavement and the Land of Promise. A mountain range divided the two lands except at its furthest Western point where the small village sat.
She shuddered as the echoes of centuries of war cries filled her ears. She shook her head in amazement as she saw in her mind’s eye the small village surrounded by legions of Prince Iniquity’s men year after year right at harvest time. She could hear the cries of the villagers as their months of labor were stolen by the soldiers. She gripped her stomach remembering the hunger pains of a young girl, whose family barely had enough to survive the winter. She saw herself as a young woman in the fields watching the men of the village facing off with Prince Iniquity’s well-equipped soldiers with pitchforks and slingshots. Suddenly, a raging fire swept between Prince Iniquity’s men and the men of the village.
See my daughter, King Holy One is protecting us yet again! Her father had told her.
