Bread or Below

Her black hair under the troubadour hat sent the green boater bobbing up and down. In her golden eyes their shined indignation harsher and fiercer than the July sun. Blood seeped through the fabric of her doublet—a jagged wound from the carriage wheel that had shattered her ribs, her breaths shallow, her vision flickering.

Her head was lifted solemnly to the transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient being in front of her, who looked down at her with such gentle kindness her spirit bridled up and boiled over. Her fingers gripped the edges of her loose-fitting doublet, and she traced the seams with the pad of her index finger.

“You straddle the threshold,” the being murmured, voice honeyed, “yet cling to a life already lost. Why choose suffering?”

Only rage and disappointment could she feel now; she felt as if she had been cheated of something that she had been looking forward to all her life, only to find that it was a cardboard drawing placed far away.

“No,” she refuted, her voice ringing clear and sharp, “I refuse to understand that I will have to throw away who I was to progress to who I will be.”

It was rather a long sentence, and she was vaguely impressed by how she had said it without a grammar mistake.

“You lived a wandering life, my child,” the soft voice from above whispered into her mind, “And now you will rest within the halls of shepherds and warm grass, where mead tumbles down the plain in rivers, where white bread is plentiful and warm.”

She quirked her eyebrows in a mocking laugh, “Is all you’re offering me bread? How unimaginative. Surely you know that I came once from a great family and that I have tasted foods beyond possibly what you could give me, and so will not be swayed by your meagre offerings.”

There was a slight movement of wind around her; the being sighed, “I am offering you a life of happiness and prosperity, offering you a life of peace and health, a place to sit down and enjoy who you are without knowing who you were.”

She shook her head, eyes wide and feet planted in a firm stance, planting the toes of her worn leather boots into the soft ground, “I will live better with the knowledge of who I was before I accept who I will become.”

There was a slight movement of sunlight around her; the being chuckled, “Enough of our discussions of ‘was’ and ‘will’, consider again who you are now. Shunned, laughed at, disrespected, misunderstood, rejected… Do you feel satisfied by this? Do you feel satisfied by the bigotry of those around you? Under my… appointment, you will be able to wipe out their dissatisfaction and make them cultured and educated.”

She stopped in her contradictions for a second. She had to admit this did hit a frail nerve, but the more she thought about it the more problems there were.

She took up her pen.

“Let me write your story,” she demanded, “Who are you?”

And with the frantic but elegant scribble of her pen, she drew up a picture of the being in front of her with words.

“You wish me to be under your command. You want my brilliance, you want my way with words, you want my servitude. You wish me to wipe out my dissatisfaction. You wish me to lose my memory.”

As she spoke, the wind around her fluttered, her troubadour cape flapping and snapping, “You wish me to use my way with words under your command, without the harness of my conscience and my goodness – you wish me to kill for you, to kill with words, to prove to the public that the pen is greater than the sword but in such a bloody way that it shall intimidate rather than prove.”

She flicked her head upwards, turning her molten gold eyes up to the glowering man in a white chiton in front of her, “I will not go to what is Above and bow under your command. If it means I can keep my wit, I will willingly trudge into the realms below.”

A shadow rippled at the edge of her fading sight—a figure stepped forward, silent as dusk. His cloak pooled like spilt ink, embroidered with silver pomegranates. A crown of obsidian sat askew on jet-black hair, his smile not kind, but encouraging.

“Elysium offers bread and mead,” she spat to the bright being, his glower dark, her knees buckling as she forced herself upright, “but I’ve hungered for more than bread all my life. You’d have me scrub my soul blank to please your court.”

The shadowed man laughed—a sound like coal crumbling in a hearth.“Down below, then?” He extended a hand, rings glinting like serpent eyes. “No fields of grass. No lies. I promise.”

“Keep your bread,” she said to the radiant one, teeth bared as she grinned. “I’ll take the darkness.”

The shadowed figure’s smile deepened. He matched her stride as she lurched forward, his cloak billowing into smoke around them.

She took a last look at the sun above her head and the grass below her feet and walked into the smoke.