Paper (2 page)

“
So…” she takes a breath,
“So where did the scar g–”

Ralic spits out his wine, shares a
quick glance with his father, and both look at Tenay with pointed,
alert gazes. “What scar, dearest?” he says in a tone she’s never
heard from him.

“
When you…when you were
leaving for the wood, I peeked over the wall and saw you trip. You
fell onto a rock and gashed your fa–”

“
Nonsense!” the older Ralic
says with a slap on the table as he nudges his wife, a woman that
has no difficulty in displaying her misery every day–Tenay thinks
now she sees why. As Ralic delivers a long, eloquent sentence
insulting her intelligence Tenay stares at nothing, in particular,
wide-eyed and calculating. She knows.

Tenay turns to her husband, “Brat?” she
says. The older Ralic’s wife starts shaking her head with a
horrified stare, and quickly gets up from her chair and
leaves.

The young hero looks to his wife.
“Well, that’s rude. No need to call me a brat,” he says with a
grin.

She nods to herself and focuses on his
eyes. “You’re not really Ralic, are you?”

He shakes his head. “Of course I am,
you delusiona–”

“
You’re not him. Ralic would
have a scar, and you don’t. What did you do to him?” she says with
a calm, but pointed tone. The two Ralics exchange knowing glances
and turn back to her equipped with belittling grins.

“
You won’t be getting him
back. You should just play along,” the young hero says to his
wife.

“…
Yeah?”

“
Yeah. If you don’t play
along I’ll just have you killed–how’s that?” he says, leaning into
her. Tenay’s father, the blacksmith, has unusually good hearing,
rendered sensitive from all the years listening for his daughter’s
voice over the clank of his hammer. He’s never listened in on the
conversation at the great table of the hero, but he cannot help
himself when she’s up there. He knows too, and his old head starts
churning.

“
What will you do, kill me
in front of everyone?” she asks, her gaze searching for a
solution.

“
No, I’d just make everyone
kill you for me,” Ralic answers, motioning his head
towards the crowds surrounding them. “So, what will you
do?”

Tenay takes a deep breath, and thrusts
the cutting knife in her right hand into Ralic’s side–out of sight
from everyone except her father, who as the “bearer of destiny” is
held to stand near and to the side of the table. Ralic’s grin
widens and he begins shaking his head as if receiving an ignorant
answer from a child, waiting to be corrected.

“
Looks as though your mind’s
made up. So be it.” Ralic takes a gulp of wine, picks himself up,
the knife slipping out with a faint tearing sound, and his face
instantly becomes grim with terror as he holds the wine–covered
knife in his hand.

“
How could you?!” he shouts,
stumbling from his chair. Everyone’s eyes are on him as Tenay looks
over to her father, who spotted the stabbing from the side of his
gaze. “This, you evil woman! I have been fooled! How, on
this, my greatest day, I should find out your deception.
You stabbed me! Overlord worshipper!” Ralic accuses as he
holds his side in mock pain. The knife slips from his hand, and the
crowd riles the second the blade hits the ground, proving his ruse
with weak, but sufficient evidence. The men, women, and children
rise to destroy the attacker just when the blacksmith calls
out.

“
It’s witchery, girl!
Remember what your mother said!” he calls as the people scramble up
onto the stage. In a single blink of the mind, Tenay remembers the
stories of the witch man of the wood, who tricks entire towns and
takes their things with his paper people. As quickly as she
delivered the knife to Ralic’s side, she takes one of the torches
near the table and pushes it into Ralic’s front, too caught up in
acting to retaliate.

Just as myriad hands reach for her,
they see Ralic burst and curl in painless flame. His body does not
offer resistance like the skin of man–but accepts it, ashing away
eagerly like paper. He does not realize what is happening until his
entire backside is gone. He gets to his feet, a flimsy, lanky
abomination of paper and person, and speaks to Tenay.

“
You’ll never win,” and he
burns away.

Tenay is released just as quickly as
the older Ralic is constrained and burnt himself by the townsfolk.
There is sorrow, anger, weeping, and talk of vengeance. The men
grab for torches, tools and weapons, and the blacksmith points the
way off to the wood. Yet, there is something inside Tenay that
tells her this is not done; there’s something more to this. She
goes by the mayor’s home as the men rush off to the overlord’s
keep. Before she gets to the door; however, she is stopped by the
wife of Ralic the Eleventh.

“
There’s something you must
know,” she says, her dark crow’s feet scrunching into
themselves.

“
Wh–what?” Tenay stops
shortly, glancing between the old woman and the sortie of men
passing through the gates.

“
There was a story my
grandmother had told me, and now I can tell it. You must
listen.”

Tenay’s the sort to respect her elders,
so she stops and listens.

III

Ralic the Twelfth awakens to find
himself in darkness and misery. He’s unsure how that copy of
himself beat him so flawlessly, but his defeat was absolute and
instant. Now he finds himself chained in darkness, only enough
light from above to see across the black–stone floors to the other
cell, containing the bearded, ugly man who was at the table with
the overlord and his sword of destiny, glinting tauntingly in the
middle of the two cells.

“
Let me out, you fool! I’m
not done with you yet!” Ralic screams in the dark.

The old man across from him sighs with
years of sorrow on his breath. “It’ll never answer. Get used to
it.”

Ralic jerks in lively frustration,
exerting every fiber against his chains. “And who are you to tell
me? I bet you’re one of those forest men!”

“
I’m definitely no one you’d
care about; I didn’t care about the old man in the cell across from
me either.”

Ralic squints at the man as a chill
runs down his young spine. “What do you mean? Who are
you?”

“
Ralic’s my name. I suppose
you’re the Twelfth. I left before you were even born.” The old man
stares forward into his son, relishing the moment. Ralic the
Twelfth stares upon his father, the Eleventh and realizes his
situation fully. He’s silent, wide–eyed and tearing.

“…
Father?”

“
Yes.”

Here, the young man begins to weep just
as a group of twenty men reach the front gates, Tenay not far
behind.

“
Search the place! Find the
real Ralic and kill the overlord!” the great blacksmith cries, his
beard drenched with the dark rain as they press into the fortress.
They find the great door with great beasts and burst into the large
room.

In the middle of the
extravagantly–carved room is a long table with the overlord sitting
in the middle sipping its tea, and ten rather imposing paper
figures on both sides of it.

The dark lord takes a stand and
applauds the men armed with swords, bows, tools, and
torches.

“
Well! I must say this has
been an eventful day. No one’s figured it out in roughly one
hundred years. Oh, but of course you will all kill me easily, why,
how could I beat twenty men? Oh! And look, you thought to make
and bring torches! The last time they didn’t even think to do that.
I suppose only during a festival you’re allowed to make those,
aren’t you? As per command of your Mayor. How very lucky–and what’s
better, once you all kill me and free the prisoners, you’ll return
to town, victorious, heroes in your own rights; stronger, smarter,
kinder, more handsome–” as the overlord goes down the list, it
begins moving its right hand through the air, causing each of the
twenty paper figures to take a slow, defiant stand, and take on
features identical to the armed men, but slightly better in every
way.

The men exchange glances and gasps of
disbelief as the doppelgängers take to their feet.

“
Why, my chances are so low
it brings me to ask myself: ‘whatever shall I do?’” the Overlord
says in a tone of mock concern, taunting the men as it sends the
paper soldiers forward.

Below, a sharp–browed Tenay finally
reaches the steps to the keep, the burden of her child to arrive in
five months slowing her progress considerably. She enters the keep
with a charcoal ember–match, capable of striking a flame in but a
second. She rises the steps to the great door, hears the battle
inside, and passes by. She searches long halls and lavish rooms
until she notes the sound of weeping down a long spiral staircase.
Tenay follows the sound into the dungeon, dimly lit by a skylight
above. She finds the sword, and two miserable, chained up
men.

“
T–…No, you’re not her,
don’t lie to me, Overlord!”

“
It’s me, Ralic,” she says,
picking up the broadsword and tucking it under her right
arm.

Ralic the Twelfth shakes his head
wildly. “No, I’ll never see her again. The fake me’s probably back
at the town…and the two…no, I beg of you, it isn’t
fair!”

Tenay nods sarcastically. “Life’s hard,
hero brat. It’s me, your wife. I spotted you get cut on that rock,
so I figured the Ralic that returned wasn’t the real
you.”

Ralic’s eyes flash with hope just as
the older Ralic’s brow furrows.

“
You…You saw th–”

“
Truly, if you are her, then
surely you can withstand a flame, and prove you are not of paper,”
the older Ralic cuts in.

Tenay pauses, and then from its
protective jar, she presses the red ember into her hand for several
seconds. She doesn’t so much as flinch as the ember does nothing to
her hand and the older Ralic nods.

“
Boy, this is your wife, she
has come to save us,” he says with a certain nod. She grasps the
ember and by pressing it against the bars they light into fire long
enough for its papery illusion to blaze away allowing her to open
the cells; she then uses the ember to ignite their chains, showing
away their illusion as well.

“
Alright, let’s get out of
here!” Ralic shouts, turning to the stairway.

“
Can’t yet, we gotta kill
the Overlord.”

Ralic draws back. “Wh–what?”

“
I talked with the fake
mayor’s wife.”

“
Mom?”

“
Yeah, she told me to melt
the Sword of Destiny.”

“
Are you serious? We can’t
melt our only defense against the Overlord!”

Tenay squints. “We don’t have time.
Please, Brat, trust me.”

“
No!” Ralic stands
resolute.

Tenay shakes her head, her brows raised
and her expression bland with disappointment, “Then I’m going
myself, see ya, hero,” she says, turning away to the stairs but
going further down the hall to find the forge. The younger Ralic
grits his teeth watching her leave, and takes a deep
breath.

“
Okay, I’m coming with you!”
He catches up, and Tenay smiles the moment they are shoulder to
shoulder. The older Ralic shows more hesitance at first but is
elated to walk out from the dungeon on his own accord, the first
time in roughly twenty years–he follows them.

They start down the halls, and Ralic
the Eleventh speaks. “So, what do we do?”

Tenay peeks into doorway after doorway.
“She told me to find the forge that made the sword. She said it was
here,” she says over the sounds of men fighting and steel clashing
rooms away.

“
The Overlord made
the sword? That doesn’t make any sense,” Ralic the Twelfth says,
just as the three spot a large, black furnace in a long
room.

“
This must be it,” Tenay
says just as footsteps rage down the hall. Ralic steps back to the
door.

“
Smith’s girl.”

“
Brat.”

“
I’m off to be the hero. See
ya,” he says, ready to defend her and the sword.

“
Don’t get killed, dork,”
Tenay says before the two Ralics turn to meet precise paper copies
of the three of them. The Ralics slam the door to the forge shut
behind them, leaving Tenay to her work.

The matter is simple enough. As
outlandish a character the Overlord is, its forge is still
intuitive to a smith’s daughter like Tenay. She uses the charcoal
and ignites the forge, billowing it to a hellish heat as the sword
leans near, awaiting its destruction. Just as the two Ralics meet
hands with their paper superiors, Tenay plunges the blade into the
heat of the forge, her skin and hair singeing from the bellowing
heat, but the temperature doesn’t hurt her, just as it doesn’t hurt
anyone from the village–they can feel fire, but not be hurt by
it.

Elsewhere, she can hear a deep,
powerful voice screaming in agony as if burning to death. With a
vindictive, pleased smile, she tosses the blade into the forge
entirely. The sword, composed of a magic paper, blazes away with
the dying screams of the Overlord, its tricks finally put to naught
centuries since their conception. The Overlord had bonded its soul
to an eternal object, something prized and treasured by everyone
who saw it–something that not a soul would dare meltdown in a
forge. Tenay nods stoically; the Overlord was pretty smart, but she
knows all tricks have their end eventually. Gradually, she hears
the Overlord’s screams turn into laughs.