Meeting of the Goddess

We found her in her orchard, there amongst the trees. Her face reflected every song we ever sang for the loves we longed for at home. She is the reason we go to war. Every inch of her body spoke of love and warmth and home and hearth. Even as we cut her down and removed the rope from around her neck, we know we were looking into the face of everything we left behind.

The trees had been plicked free of any fruit, except for her. There were no chickens or eggs to be found in the cages.

Cows and horses had been slaughtered and what meat wasn’t carried away was left to rot in the fields.

We had hoped to find sme fresh food, perhaps a jug of milk or a round of cheese, or even an errant bottle of wine that had rolled under a bed, but the house had been stripped bare. The charred bed and smoke damaged walls gave evidence of an attempt to burn away crimes committed on this tiny farms.

She had been kept for days, if we understood the comparison of the state of decay of the animals in the field to the state of her body. I tried to look past the bruising and blood to find the beauty beneath.

I saw my wife reflecting back when I studied her face. The color of her eyes and tone of her skin lacked my wife’s fair coloring, but she was a woman. A mother. A wife. A child. And she had fought. Her hands were broken and bloody, showing where she had scratched at her aggressors. Her arms and legs were covered with bruises and the blood of the violence done upon her.

Her children were hidden in the barn, buried beneath a pile of hay. We don’t know how long they wre there. I placed the infant in her mother’s arms before we buried them. The boy is too young to be conscripted into the army. And even if we tried to make a solider of him there is an emptiness in his eyes.

He is too young to remember the trauma here. Or, perhaps he’s not. Perhaps he will remember the death of those who were central to hi youth.

He sits now on top of the crates carrying our supplies eating an apple. His jaw barely moves up and down as he chews. There is no color in his hollow cheeks, even though we have given him enough food to fill his hollow belly many times over.

There is much debate in the ranks about what to do about the child. Even before we left the farm there were arguments. Many wanted to leave him behind After all, despite his youth, he was still a child of the enemy. A child has no sense of danger. Someone would have to stay beside him if we found ourselves in battle. Who would be willing to stay and protect a child of the enemy while his brother’s in arm was being strafed by enemy fire?

Perhaps, when we finished our march and set up our encampment we can turn him over to the women who inevitably fall in behind the lines. Their cold arms and silent hearts echo the pains of this war. Some carry disease and we know others are there to try to pry secrets from the lips of men who surrender to their inadequate seductions.

The women are a hollow echo of the life we left behind. They give warmth and hope and the possibility of finding just a moment of forgetfulness. Maybe one of them would be willing to take this child to replace the one they lost to famine, or disease, or cross-fire. Or maybe they will take this child and hewill suffer the same fate as the missing children of the city.

I look into the dark eyes of this child and I imagine the light colored eyes of my young one, still safe at home. Safe until the war comes to my shore.

I must fight this war to save all the children on all the shores.

It is my duty as a father, as a son, as a follower of all that is holy.

And I am left to wonder if it was soldiers on our side or the other who destroyed the women.