The Return

Story by: Ashley Leckwold
Photography by: Kat O'Connor
Maya: Jennifer Mickelson
Joan: Lauren Fisher
Costumes: Diane Hamm
Thanks to: David Torrey, location; Benjamin Sangraal, vintage rifle.

“Miss Maya?”

Maya could hear Joan’s voice speaking to her. She knew that one of her family’s guardians was only a few feet behind her, but it sounded so far away in her head. She didn’t look back at her, instead keeping her focus on the sky filled with ash and smoke. “Where did they come from?”

She heard a soft thud hit the ground and she knew that Joan had assumed her usual position. Feet spread apart, eyes set forward, and her rifle ready. “Not sure. Mam assumed that they had snuck through the northern border of Cydonia and made their way to the Meadow from there. Why though? Why burn the Meadow?”

Maya finally took her eyes off the sky and looked over the land. As far as she could see, there was nothing but blackened grass, gray soot and the skeletal remains of her former home and the trees that lined along the backside. There were other homes in the Meadow and she knew they had met the same fate. “Cornith has not taken the War well.”

This had started three years ago, but it felt like so much longer. Cornith had been pushing into the neighboring region of Anzia and their troops had taken several of the border towns by force. As the stories of brutality trickled into other regions, The Council of Anzia finally called to other regions for help. Send your best, the proclamation had said, but Maya’s father scoffed at that notion. “At this point, they need anyone they can get.” She asked him why, but he just directed her to the shelf of family journals in the house library. “Your Great Grandfather should answer all of your questions.”

And after spending an afternoon pouring over his war journals, they were.

Within the pages of those journals, the horrors of the land war from 80 years before were clearly spelled out. How the Cornith army had taken half of Anzia in a proclamation of Divine Right and were beating, torturing, raping and killing the people in the towns that could not defend themselves. The one that was the tipping point for her was the entry on how her Great Grandfather’s regiment had found the bodies of five men and women who had tried to lead a revolt against the army hanging from a tree in the middle of the town.

It was then she knew that she had to do something. Who knows if they were doing the same things now, but she didn’t want to sit by, do nothing and go on about how it was all such a shame.

She took the journals to her father and simply told him, “I’m joining the Knighthood.”

The Knighthood was Cydonia’s calvary unit. It was small, but renowned. As long as Cydonia had existed, the Knighthood had existed and every family in the Meadow had at least one member of their family that had been a member of the Knighthood. Maya would be the second for the Walkett family. She knew she could contribute too. Since she was a little girl, Joan’s mother had been training her to shoot. And ever since she was a teenager, she had been training her to shoot while riding a horse. She was almost as good as Joan at this point in her life.

Almost. There was a reason the Harns had been protecting the Walkett family for generations: they almost never missed.

Her family protested, but they knew that she wouldn’t budge. When she left, she refused to say goodbye. “I’ll come back. I promise. No matter what happens, I’ll find my way home.”

That was three years ago. She was nineteen. In those three years, she had seen much worse than what her great grandfather had described. She had lost friends, fought without sleep, been injured multiple times and had caught herself crying too many times to count. What kept her going were the letters Joan would send her on behalf of the family. Every time she read about her father and his new horses, her mother gathering the history of the families in the Meadow and her younger sister Mia finding new ways to drive her parents crazy, she felt a little closer to home and that she could actually keep her promise.

When Cornith had been forced into surrender, she had cried tears of joy for the first time in three years. She was twenty-two, she had made it through the war alive, and she was going home.

She had not expected this at all. No one did. Some of the Cornith army had taken their revenge for their loss. Maya had a feeling Cydonia wasn’t the only place in flames.

She turned to Joan. “You said they escaped, right?”

Joan nodded, pushing her hat up and looking Maya straight in the eye. “Your parents released the horses and managed to save the family journals before the fire took the house. Mam is taking them through the valley towards the ocean. Told me to stay here and wait for you.”

Maya stuck her hands in the pockets of her coat and looked towards the ground. She imagined the meadow burning bright orange as Joan’s mother rushed to get the rest of her family to safety. That image frightened her. “How long ago was this?”

“‘Bout two days ago.”

Maya looked back up at Joan. She could see that she was worried. Worried about her own mother and worried about Maya’s family. Despite what their position should have been, the Walketts and the Harns had been the same family for as long as anyone could remember. Joan had never been just a family guardian to Maya. She was an older sister. “Well, I didn’t come this far to give up. I have to keep my promises. Maybe if we leave now...”

Joan cut her off with a stern look that looked less like Joan and more like Mam Harn. At least to Maya anyway. “If you’re thinking about going through that valley, Maya, you need to step back. It’s dangerous out there, especially with the Cornith army around.”

“You really think that scares me anymore, Joan?”

“I think it does,” she said flatly. “Fighting a war is different than facing an army by yourself. We should wait.”

“For what?” asked Maya, her voice growing sharper by the second. “If we wait around, Cornith will probably come back through looking for survivors to take as prisoners and we’ll just end up worrying our families more. We need to leave and try to catch up with them.”

Joan paused, her face softening. “Well, what if...what if Cornith or the others in the valley...?”

“Don’t think about that right now,” Maya said, putting her hand on Joan’s shoulder. “Right now, we need to think about finding horses and a way into the valley.”

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