Seven Sisters (Lughnasa 2018)

Seven Sisters (Lughnasa 2018) - a reading (on Google Drive)

As snowmelt trickles into the cisterns high in the mountains, a once noble line plots retaliation against a long-standing familial slight. In a square tower built onto a narrow ledge set against the cliffs, seven sisters use that ancient grievance to whet their vengeance. Each had sworn an oath to her mother, as she had sworn to her mother before, to exact not mere retribution but a watershed transformation to end the judicially sanctioned kidnappings, enslavements, heresy and flight. They have well-worn reputations as warriors, witches and ingénues. Older, wiser men tell them they cannot succeed. They aren’t strong enough, aren’t skilled enough, aren’t aggressive enough. Aren’t ruthless enough. In the way of all youth, the sisters do not believe them. They nurse their righteous hatred like an ill-begotten child.

Where the air is clear and untainted, priests perform divergent rituals, one to steal a glimpse of heaven's mirror, the other to enslave it. Conflicting visions emerge, ones that have to be rolled and hammered in the furnace of a conclave before the old, wise men will concede their blessing. Even from beyond the bricked up chamber, the sisters leave nothing to chance. Favors are recalled, debts repaid, barters exchanged, bribes expended, blackmails extorted. Slowly, reluctantly, their blade is beaten into shape. Each layer presses closely to the next, iteration after iteration with only small variances between, until a strong, supple weapon has been crafted. Once the old, wise men are set free, carefully tailored messages flow into the valleys, each meant to resonate with a different faction of the powerless and oppressed. The time has come. This earth is yours to inherit. God wills it.

Women gather, called by complementary visions, armed and armored to sweep downhill from their strongholds to reclaim the fertile fields below. They give over the care of their infants and toddling children to the purple clad aunties and grandmothers in the refuges. The sisters train these young women for their yearslong mission. They wed them to their weapons, some borrowed, some blued, some newly founded, some extracted from ancient Eden. By the end of spring, the sisters deem them worthy. They march on the provincial capital, bypassing its townships and outposts. They neither bind their gender nor reveal it, except perhaps in the ponytails bobbing at their backs like the pennons of their cause. They do not attack, lay siege or even announce their intentions. They use the strength and condescension of the garrison against itself. They infiltrate by night, weak, desperate, unguarded and alone. By morning, the city kneels at their feet after a mostly bloodless coup. The sightless eyes of the worst oppressors peer out above the gates. The more pragmatic get co-opted or conscripted. The sisters know some bide their time while others await the dice to fully come to rest. They find a place for both within their Reconquista.

Too few to enforce their claim by steel alone, the sisters court each new city through a combination of divine blessings and treachery into relinquishing the chastity of its gates. They do not use the same ruse twice. In one they foment an internal uprising through targeted assassination. In another, they bribe the burghers with promises of free trade or other wiles. In a third, they simply slit the throats of the watchmen and gatekeepers, and replace them with their own. While not a preference, they shy away from neither blood nor pain. The Righteous brand them Lunatics. The sisters turn that name to their advantage. They commission musicians to compose the Ballad of Diana, the huntress with her bow. They have it sung in speakeasies and backroom bars until it is whistled and hummed in back alleys like an anthem. Throughout the lowlands, Diana’s light becomes an ill omen, an unwarded evil eye. Her sibylline faces become known by different names. Wolf moon, huntress moon, blood moon, each representing another city fallen into the sisters orbit through their ever-shifting tactics.

Soon, their reputation alone unlocks the granaries and armories needed to transform a forgotten res publica into a puebla empire backed by mountains and the sky. Belatedly, the Righteous awaken to the threat. They enact a scorched-earth policy, burning their own harvest to starve out the rebellion. They cobble together confederacies and covenants based on interlocking Machiavellian interests and self-serving lies. When the sisters push, they give ground, only to strike back along their well exposed flanks. Vulnerable, the sisters are forced to retrench until they occupy only their initial three conquests. The first snow sees them watching warily from behind their walls, sharpening their weapons, plotting their spring campaign. In the darkness of the new year’s first new moon, the Righteous send their black balaclava-clad commandos on a lightning raid against the aunties and infants in the mountain strongholds. The histories do not record their intent only their execution. Soldiers on leave reacquainting themselves with their children repulse the raids in eight pueblas with heavy losses. In the ninth, a slaughter of the innocents of biblical proportions ensues. Among the martyred, the youngest sister dispatched in desperation to shore up the square tower’s defense. Her remaining siblings seize on the act as a Righteous Children’s Crusade. New elegies are commissioned, new requiems are sung. Grindstones hone fresh grievances until they glint like razors.

By spring, silver fills the treasuries, ploughshares overflow the forges, raw materials for new, untarnished conquests standing ready to be transmuted. Donations and bribes, some carried from farmsteads and townships begging for their protection, other smuggled from fallen cities desperate to be reclaimed. The sisters convene a war council. They lay out the map and study the web of interdependencies the Righteous have created. A plan emerges. The sisters begin seeding provisions throughout the passes and canyons. Their agents establish contact with prospective allies. The Righteous do not rest either. In an opening gambit just before the final frost, their provocateurs seize the weakest of the sisters’ cities from within. In response, its population rises, armed with castoff weapons and guerilla tactics. When the street fighting subsides three days later, the sisters have regained control. At the cost of the middle member of their sorority. A second loss does little to temper their resolve. Once again they call a conclave. This time, the old, wise men dare not brick themselves inside. They let the sisters enter. They let the sisters speak. The second sister’s rhetoric captivates the chamber. This year, the priests quickly bless their venture. They, too, have suffered loss. Fresh recruits stream to the mountain strongholds. None of the veteran cadres waiver. The tiny crosses overlooking the training ground reinforce the price of any failure.

After the depletions of winter and the destruction of the bulk of last year’s harvest, the Righteous press for a single, decisive battle. The sisters plan to give it to them. They gather their green army, backed by just enough veterans to form a core. The eldest three sisters lead them to the field, a prize too tempting for the Righteous to ignore. Once the unholy army marches out to meet them, the pueblas adopt Fabian tactics in the mountains and high passes, refusing battle while resupplying from their caches. Overeager, the Righteous pursue them farther and farther from their base. With the enemy forces fully engaged, the two youngest sisters lead the bulk of the veteran cadres to seize a keystone city along the Righteous supply route. Backed by silver from the treasury, the younger pair threaten to roll up their supply lines through barter, bribes and coercion. With their lines of communication threatened, the Righteous belatedly turn to secure their territory. The puebla army sets upon them from behind. Caught between hammer and anvil, the Righteous army first retreats then routs, leaving the province empty. One by one, a string of city-states falls into the sisters’ hands, pearls once connected by a twisted thread of alliances now deftly severed and unknotted.

For generations, no one dared challenge these women and their daughters in their pueblas backed by mountains and the sky. The sisters did not believe in some Righteous god. They did not believe in fate. They believed that any divinity worth naming helps those who help themselves, through force of will if necessary. They believed in the knowledge their mothers and grandmothers preserved. The knowledge that they could change the world if they set it in their minds.

Their names, carved into the living rock beneath the ruins of the square tower, still inspire a mixture of fear and awe in everyone who reads them. Those deeply chiseled names are all that remains on this earth of the seven sisters once they ascended from their mountains to the sky.

© 2018 Edward P. Morgan III