I had no alternative but to carry out my mother’s dying wish. I was only one month off my eighteenth birthday when she revealed the secret she’d kept from my grandparents, my father, my uncles, aunts, and friends.
And from me.
Until her last few hours.
Prior to that, I’d spent days sitting at her bedside, painfully aware of the inevitable outcome and fearing it was the abominable plague that had stricken our beloved city of Stratholme, which stemmed from infected grain.
It was a grim time around then. I recall how the gristmills serving our city had closed because they could not identify which grain was pure and which was not, and so the millers suddenly found themselves out of work.
The knock-on effect spread rapidly, like ripples in a pond after a stone hits the water. With no flour available, bakeries and eateries shut their doors too. People quickly became afraid to eat anything, fearing that even the meat and fish were somehow infected. As a result, many suffered from starvation and malnutrition—a long, agonising death awaited them.
But worse was yet to come. Initially, the people were unaware of how and with what the grain became infected. They believed it was down to an ordinary taint, such as weevils and borers or some fungal infection and had tried everything to eradicate the pestilence. But their efforts had been in vain—pointless.
No bug or spore had caused the ruin.
It was dark magic.
And they hadn’t realised the damage was already done. The grain had been on our doorsteps for weeks before the rumours and whispers started. So, staple foodstuffs such as bread, pastry, and buns, had already been sold to the people. Thus, the gruesome plague had already taken root within the populace.
Its consumption was all it took, resulting in sickness, which rapidly evolved into a voracious and torturous fever, lasting sometimes around a week. Death was looked upon as a blessed release. Or so we thought.
My father had been fixing our wagon; something he’d been putting off doing for a while, but now he worked fastidiously as if there was no time to spare. Admirably, he tried not to panic my mother and me, but the time came for him to sit us down and tell us his plan.
As a former soldier of the Argent Crusade, he was privy to certain information, thanks to colleagues who still served. When he told us what he’d learned, my mother folded, utterly distraught.
Arthas, Prince of Lordaeron, son of our beloved monarch, King Terenas, had ordered a cull on the city to stop the spread of the plague.
I argued with my father that his former colleagues must be mistaken. The prince would not betray his people or slaughter innocents—he was a good, kind man and a promising king-to-be when his time came.
But my father told me to be quiet, to stop being so naïve. “You think like a child, Klara!” he said, trying to keep a tremor from his voice. “Some men have now deserted their ranks because they cannot bring themselves to commit such a harsh judgment. Others have decided to remain loyal to Uther, the Lightbringer, and move away from this—madness—that Arthas demands.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Why would one as noble as the prince suddenly cast such cruel aspersions? I continued trying to reason with my father, my disbelief in his claims straining our relationship. And I pushed him too far.
“You have no clue what nobles are capable of, girl! Neither do you have experience of the horrors already visited upon Azeroth: upon Stratholme!”
I looked blankly at him. What was he talking about?
With a heavy sigh, he explained. “Within our fair city, vile, decaying, carnivorous creatures roam. At this very moment, they creep around in darkened alleys and hide in the sewers. They were once people we knew! The more people that die, the more will rise as these abhorrent beings.”
I looked at my mother, who in turn, stared in disbelief at my father. He took her hands in his, rubbing the backs of her hands with his thumbs. Tender. Reassuring.
“I fear worse is still to come. Therefore, we must depart tonight if we are to be spared the justice of Arthas Menethil.”
With tears in her eyes, my mother nodded. Then gruffly, my father ordered me to start helping with packing, and that was the end of the conversation.
And so, we waited until the moon was high. After hearing my father’s words earlier that day, I indeed sensed the nervous paranoia stealing its way through the city streets. I imagined it derailing even the most practical and steadfast of minds. And I recall feeling the fear, the creeping darkness that loomed over my hometown—the uncertainty that had grown by the week, the day, the hour. It clung to everyone like a second skin.
We left our home and friends behind. I knew my mother’s heart was breaking, she had put so much love into our home and made many friends, as had I. But our reality had been carved by the fates, and fearful though we were, we knew my father would not have moved us away needlessly or without sound reason.
Mulling over what my father had revealed earlier, an unsettling thought filled my mind. Were we infected? To the best of my knowledge, we were not. The flour my mother had used had not been milled from the tainted batches of grain, so, I assumed we were all safe. But the fear was still prevalent.
To ensure we weren’t caught on the road by Arthas’ soldiers, we lay low for a while, secreted in the hills bordering the elven lands to the north. In hindsight, we were at as much risk of being killed by the warring trolls and elves as we were by our own people. Some elves who had been patrolling their borders had indeed threatened us. Their warlike cries and shouts caused my mother and me to quake; they sounded like animals. And the things they said they would do to us… We would move along a few clicks, yet, we had no choice but to hide in areas which, according to my father, would be relatively safe from Lordaeron’s military.
It was with a heavy heart I rode in that covered wagon. I tried to shut out the screams I heard ricocheting off the surrounding hills in the early hours. The screams of friends and neighbours; the sounds of death as the prince and his army tore through the city, killing everyone. Even those who had not turned. Were still human. Men, women and children. All once loyal and faithful to the Monarchy.
I remember crying nonstop for several hours—tears for Prince Arthas; for the heinous act he’d committed. Tears for those who died. And tears for myself, my mother and my father, for our lives being turned upside down in a way we had never imagined possible. I so desperately wanted it to be just a bad dream—to wake up and find we were simply going on something as simple as a family outing. Alas, my father’s words had come true.
Eventually, we made our way to Lakeshire, some one thousand clicks south of Stratholme, where most of my mother’s family was based. We didn’t tell them we’d fled in fear from our city; we merely implied we wanted to set up a home somewhere closer to family. They generously afforded us a small property on their land.
For a short while, we felt safe. The news of events in the north had not been heard within the boundaries of our new hometown. But shortly after, my mother became unwell. I remember the fear in my father’s eyes—dreading the day my uncles and aunts would send us on our way because they thought we’d brought death into their lands, their town, their homes.
And as news filtered through the land about Arthas and the Culling of Stratholme, so we did indeed find ourselves without shelter in a matter of days. We were shunned, rejected. Banished. I guess were lucky to escape a second time with our lives.
We moved deeper into the hills, wondering what and where we could live. Then we came across a small clearing with an old, abandoned cottage. As far as we could tell, no one lived nearby except some wildlife, so we worked to make it habitable and homely.
My father was like a different man then: distant, sometimes abrupt and inclined to sit outside, preferring his own company in the evening. Being shunned by our family had been the ultimate rejection and I guess he was trying to shield us from his concerns. We had to be completely self-sufficient, for we couldn’t risk people knowing from whence we came. My father was adamant we kept a very low profile, at least until it was clear that we were uninfected. The truth was, we really didn’t know how long that would be, if there was an incubation period, and for how long.
Our fears escalated when my mother’s health took a turn for the worse.
It was brutal and rapid. I watched as her body became emaciated; her mind lost to memories of old. Memories she had never shared. As father hunted and foraged, I stayed at her bedside, wiping her fevered brow, gently cleansing her dry and cracked skin, and listening to her delirious whispers.
That was when she revealed the secret. Gripped by an almost divine-like clarity, she looked at me with sorrowful yet tender eyes. In a hoarse, ragged voice, she told me everything. Then she asked, “Tell me, how do you feel now that you know this?”
I’d sat silently throughout, unable to find words in response. I felt…nothing, to begin with. But then questions started to form in my mind—who was this woman, really? This person - who called herself my mother, wife to my father, and sibling to my aunts and uncles.
How could she keep this to herself for this long? Especially from me? Did she think I would love her less? Revile her, perhaps?
Who was I to judge anyone in such matters? I was but a slip of a girl with next to no life experience, who dreamed of becoming a mage more than learning the ways of being a wife or a mother.
Then I became upset, which escalated to anger. I felt betrayed, and suddenly – empty. As if part of me had been erased, or to be more accurate, non-existent. But it wasn’t the truth that hurt me. It was the fact she’d never let me in, never trusted me enough to bear her soul while it mattered. When I could have done something to make everything all right for her. And I would have - even if it exacted a great deal of pain and disappointment for myself. My mother was everything to me, my entire world, and I’d have travelled to the ends of Azeroth to do whatever would make her eternally happy.
“I’m sorry,” she wheezed. Tentatively, she reached under her pillow, drawing out a small locket on a chain. She placed it in my hand, folding my fingers over the tiny trinket. “For you,” she whispered. “I leave you with this parting gift and the hope you may cherish it as much as I did.”
I stared blankly at the chain which dangled from my fist. Then I looked back at my mother; and her eyes, full of love, made my anger dissipate instantly. Realising how distraught she was by my lack of reaction, I felt awful. In that instant, I knew without doubt how much she loved me. And whatever reasons she had for keeping this secret to herself, well, that was her business. She’d supported me in everything I did from the time I was an infant, including taking me seriously when I announced my decision (at the tender age of seven) to become a mage - even though my father hotly protested. If anything, her confession made me even more determined to follow my dreams, as a tribute to her memory.
She didn’t become what others had turned into with the infected grain. Thankfully, - if that’s at all appropriate - it was not the plague which ailed her but another sickness for which we had no cure. She died peacefully enough, uttering how she hoped one day, I would be blessed to find love like she had, and perhaps bear a daughter who would be equally as fortunate. She said she believed I would make good choices and gave me her blessing for the future. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I had no such plans for myself. That would have been too cruel.
And finally, at that crucial moment, she swore me to secrecy. No one else was to know. No one.
Except for one person.
Vielen Dank für das Lesen!
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