Prologue
Her shawl was embroidered with the figures of men and women with animal faces, she would dance and sing in the fire light. The shawl that was wrapped around her shoulders would flutter in the evening breeze. She looked ethereal, otherworldly, cheeks blushing and beads of sweat on her brow, on that damp tree stump I sat and watched in silent amazement and was transported to a different time and place. A place full of magic and ancient wisdom, she would say; “I’m no God child, I’m just their servant”, but to me she shone brighter than any star in the sky, filled with more wisdom than any book and free like the wind and rain. And in that moment I thought, I wanted to be just like her.
That was a memory I held dear to my heart, although after many years of time having passed the details were beginning to become fuzzy. I now struggled to picture her blushing cheeks, or how the sweat collected on her brow when she danced Or even what the faces of the men looked like on her shawl. It had been a very long time since I had seen her and even longer since she had looked the way that I wanted to remember her looking. The last two times I had seen her were not the image I wanted to remember, but sadly they were burnt into my retinas and would haunt me for the rest of my life. This story is about the sacrifice of an extraordinary life. A life filled with mystery and magic. Despite how much time passes I had promised myself that I would never forget the sound of her voice, or the way she moved so gracefully across the ground, or how her shawl blew gently in the breeze behind her, alongside her brown flowing hair. The length of her hair had been missing on the day she was killed, a further sacrifice she had made for a village of people who hadn’t deserved it, although she didn’t see it that way. Perhaps it was bitterness that caused me to still believe this, I was bitter she wasn’t here, that she had left me far sooner than she should have.
As I looked back on our memories I realised I knew very little about her. I wish daily that I had asked more questions and dug deeper into the life of the most extraordinary woman I had ever met. There were so many things I wanted to say to her, to ask her. But I didn’t and now I regret it wholeheartedly. Sometimes I would even wish that they had killed me too. I should have demanded they tie me with her, and so many times I wished I had jumped on the fire with her, our souls leaving the earth together. But instead I’m alive, making a living by using the skills she had taught me. But it wasn’t enough, nothing I did ever felt like enough.
So I have decided to leave everything behind, I packed a few small items in a dingy old bag and I went in search of finding people half as amazing as she was. Like-minded people who would understand me and appreciate me for who I was, not who I had to pretend to be.
