I am here to tell you Maebeth's story.
You probably know most of what I can already tell you. So set in your mind the idea of a primitive period in time, where swords and knives and fighting for your life was common. Imagine a farming village with women, children, and men not trained for battle. Imagine them needing a hero to save their lives and that hero was destined to be Maebeth, because she was the one who was taken on a journey from out of her own common life and forced to live and learn to survive by her strength and her wits until she was ready to receive the burden of her destiny. That burden, rather than that destiny, is what this story is about.
Her destiny was the sword of power that would make of her a mighty hero who could save the people who could not save themselves. The sword was the easy part of the story. All she had to do was survive the journey to reach it and take it. The burden of that destiny, however, was the true challenge, and the one this story is about.
So now you have in mind a village of people in need of a hero and a fierce force of violent men about to overcome them. In between them stands a woman with the sword of power. I will not take you through the battle, but know that a battle was fought and we begin the story now, with the last stroke of her bloodied sword on upward slice, cutting clean and razor sharp through flesh and into bone and through the bone to take the last life of the dangerous foe.
Now you might think the villagers would come to cheer and praise their hero, and that is what they did, but in the moments between that last death and their arrival to celebrate her victory, Maebeth faced her challenge. In her body at that moment her sinew and flesh vibrated with total experience and she knew the future it foretold—the history that would be made, the drama that would be played out on the small stage of her life, and she knew she would have none of it. She knew the way of the sword was not her way. She knew the way of the warrior was a dead end. Nothing would come of it but death to many who would be held to deserve it, and life to a few who had not earned it. If she followed the Way of the Sword, as her destiny demanded, the rest of her life would be spent heroically alone, given in sacrifice to others she had no love for. They would always be strangers she would briefly come to know and in them she would find some goodness, some wisdom, some kindness, some truth, and establish them as worthy to defend, even if, in truth, they had no worth. For all men have worth, if the conditions allow it to come forth.
The problem, as she saw it, as the feeling of the sword cutting through flesh and bone filled her, was that the men she had just slaughtered by their own choice of attack, were no different from any other men, save for their choice to attack and kill at will. And it was this that separated them from the people of the village and nothing more. Was that enough, she asked herself? Was that enough of a difference? Was she willing to stand between them for the rest of her life? Was she willing to be the difference between those who would attack and those who would not defend themselves?
That was the burden of a hero, to give up one's life to kill for others, to defend the helpless, who had no business being helpless in this world. It's a child's dream, you know, to have someone to protect you, to take care of you, and it was an adult's delusion to believe there would be someone, some hero, some protector, some fool, some one who would do for them what they would not do for themselves. And here she was that one and she knew she was not willing to kill or die from them, regardless of the heroics, regardless of the honor, regardless of the sword of power or its destiny written upon her soul.
She wiped the blood from the blade on the clothing of the dead man, and heard the people coming forth from the village behind her, and she turned to face them with a look and determination that caused them to stop and stare at her like uncomprehending sheep. This they knew, by their own animal instinct, was not their savior facing them, but a force of dread reckoning about to call them to account for their own indecency. She looked at them with contempt, a hard look with a hard heart behind it, with anger and resentment held like a lash ready to be unfurled upon them.
She threw the sword at their feet and said clearly, "That's how it's done. Now do it for yourselves or die." And with that, she walked away, caught up the reins of an abandoned horse, swung aboard and rode away. Their burden would not be her burden; their lives would not be hers to take care of; and no more deaths than those laid out in the field would be dealt by her. No pride, no power, no guilt, no shame, no fear, would drive her to relive that moment when the bone and the sword became one and she became the maker of that man's death. It was too much power, too much desire, too much drama, too much pleasure, too much need, and too much desperation for her to ever want to carry in her body again. Perhaps not even to save her own life, for what would she have as an end result but another dead man at her feet and the continuation of her life to live in this world that was not worthy of being lived in?
