Deleted Scene: Past life memory (Mairead)

1300 words, 4 minute read.

Fir Moon 3, 3756
Caspora City, Caspora
(222 years ago)

The constable and his crew didn’t knock this time. Some fought them off, weapons already at hand in the case of a raid, while the more vulnerable escaped through the back. Or tried to. Later I would learn that hardly anyone escaped, but in the moment I was intent on giving them all the time I could.

They were more prepared than we were. Which was odd, because we all agreed that the cops in Caspora City were useless at gathering intelligence and would never find our main meeting place by the docks. It was the back room of a fishing shack whose roof was caving in, and which often flooded when the moon was full. We didn’t mind getting our feet wet if it meant we could talk away from spying ears.

There must have been a spy, though. That was the only thing that could explain why they knew to go for me and [NAME] and [NAME] first, five cops a piece to beat us into submission and then into shackles. The iron was so cold, it burned.

When they took us outside, I understood.

[Mairead Moonsea] was standing on the docks, in full court regalia, watching with smug satisfaction as we were pushed to kneel in front of em. The Head Librarian’s eldest child was familiar to me, given that eir sibling was my spouse. [Aeronwy] was out to sea at the moment on a diplomatic trip. Initially I was relieved; now I realized it must have been planned that way.

“Is this them?” the constable said, giving [NAME] a rough shove with eir foot. “The rebellion leaders you said have infiltrated the Library?”

“And infiltrated my own family,” said [Mairead], looking straight at me.

“Family doesn’t treat each other this way,” I said. My whole body was hot with rage and frozen with fear at the same time. It was winter, and the docks were slick with ice.

[Mairead]’s eyes flashed. “You’re not family. You’re a foreigner who tricked my favorite sibling into joining you and this utterly ridiculous rebellion against the sovereignty of the Head Librarianship. You lured em into committing treason, and for what? A country that isn’t even your own?”

“I am a Casporan citizen,” I said, annunciating each word. I still carried an accent after more than a decade learning the language, but that had never made me unwelcome in revolutionary circles. “I made sure to become one once I saw how wonderful this country could be, if it was out from the hands of tyranny.”

[NAME] and [NAME] hung their heads beside me. If they blamed me for our capture, I understood. I hadn’t married [Aeronwy] in order to gain connections to the current royal family, but we had used those connections once we had them. It was a precarious relationship to nurture, and on occasion I had been accused of being a possible double agent or a plant.

“Not anymore,” [Mairead] said. “Consider yourself lucky. You’re only being deported; your two friends here will be taken in for questioning and imprisoned for their treasonous actions.”

All the heat drained out of me in an instant. “Deported?”

“Yes. Back to [COUNTRY]. I understand you left because you were a troublemaker there, too,” [Mairead] said, clearly enjoying emself. “The [COUNTRY] officials will do with you what they like.”

I didn’t care what the [COUNTRY] government did to me. I cared that I would have absolutely no way to help [NAME], [NAME], or any of the thousands of others who we’d been fighting for these past twelve years. People who wanted a say in their governance, and freedom to believe as they wished, rather than lorded over by a single person who claimed to be the Author of the Universe’s representative on Earth.

I cared that it meant I would likely never see [Aeronwy] again in this lifetime.

“What about [Aeronwy]?” I said, and I could hear the tremor in my voice.

“[Aeronwy] will be sent to the Temple of Astra to become a nun,” [Mairead] replied, “free of your revolting influence. It utterly disgusts me to know how deeply you got your poison into em, that you would turn em against our own Ren and everything our family stands for.”

“Your family stands for censorship and murder and oppression in the name of making yourselves inordinately powerful,” I say. I can’t tell if my body is shaking from fear or from cold; both are equally strong, numbing my body and my soul. “[Aeronwy] realized that was wrong and swore to atone by helping us.”

[Mairead] glares at me for one moment longer, then gestures to the constable. “Take those two to the Library for holding. Put this one on the boat.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that they would have the boat already waiting. My shivering stopped as I froze solid, and the chief constable emself yanked me to my feet. It took several cops to move [NAME] and [NAME], who seemed to have recovered their fighting spirit. [NAME] elbowed one cop in the eye, and [NAME] turned and spat right on [Mairead]’s richly embroidered dress.

[Mairead], to eir credit, didn’t flinch or recoil. E simply wiped the spot off with a handkerchief before winding up and giving [NAME] a hard blow to the temple. [NAME] slumped, semi-conscious, and had to be carried away by a pair of snickering cops.

“Why are all traitors so nasty and uncouth?” e said, following the constable and me down the dock. “You were never like that. That’s why I didn’t suspect you at first.”

“No, you didn’t suspect me because you and [HEAD LIBRARIAN] and all the other Authorist pieces of shit think that everything that happens in life has already been written, and that as the Protagonists, you can never lose,” I said.

[Mairead] wasn’t bothered by being spat upon, but the insult to eir religion made em draw in a sharp breath, lips curling back in disgust. [Aeronwy] would never have made a face like that. The two of them, only a year apart in age, looked so much alike. Long black hair which when released from its braids flows just like silk thread. Skin the color of warm earth. Green eyes like spring leaves.

I couldn’t believe I’d never see em again. The thought filled me with despair, and I suspect [Mairead] knew that.

The three of us paused beside the gangplank that connects the dock with the ship that, I suspected, would take me to a larger vessel at the mouth of the Sound, one of the impressive tallships that could sail across oceans and around continents, connecting the wide world. It was on one of these ships that [Aeronwy] sailed to [COUNTRY], where I was born, and where the liberty of the people was also under threat, there by a monarchy of blood rather than of ink and paper.

I’d left with em, lovestruck and needing to escape what was promised to be a painful death for my ‘crimes.’ Now I would be returning there on my own, likely to the same fate I thought I had escaped all those years ago.

But I didn’t believe in a fate that could not be changed. Immovable fate was for people like [Mairead], who thought they were born to a destiny greater than those of the people who kept their precious palace within the Eternal Library clean, or the people who cooked their food, or the people who worshiped the goddex of the volcano and had been doing so long before Scriptivism wrote its first word with berry ink on birch bark paper.

I knew that when I wrenched myself from the constable’s grasp and slammed into [Mairead], knocking us both into the freezing, murky waters of the Sound, that there was a good chance I would drown. My arms were locked behind my back in irons, and [Mairead] did eir best to claw and drag me down into the depths.

After all I had been through, the look on eir face alone was worth it.