Revenge12 min read
My Retirement Was Quiet Until the Village Told My Legend
ButterPicks14 views
I learned early that keeping my hands busy kept my mouth safe.
Sitting under the same old tree at the village entrance, my knife-blunt fingers traced tiny curls on a scrap of wood while the sun baked the road. The woodpile at my feet was almost done—small pieces, little birds waiting to be born from my blade—and the chatter came like clockwork.
"Greta, here so early?" Joan called from the path, the red scarf at her throat bobbing. Her smile was all warmth and teeth.
I smiled back. "Aunt Joan, the craftsman must rise with the work."
She sat, the basket on her knees, and waved at the gathering that rushed like pigeons to a string of crumbs. They always came. The village gossip net was woven with patience and hunger; I had once been caught in nets that snapped bones.
"Have you heard?" Joan dropped her voice to something meant to be mysterious and perfectly loud. "They say Red Lotus has been in the news again."
"Red Lotus?" someone else hissed. "The killer? The one who left no traces?"
I chuckled inside. Red Lotus was my old name. It had been a long time since any name of mine mattered. I offered a simple, humble laugh and carved a wing into the wood.
"Red Lotus took down the whole Axe Gang last night!" Joan declared. "Bodies everywhere—no one left alive!"
"Dead?" A woman gasped.
"Yes. Red Lotus. Can you imagine?"
I let them go. I let them spin me into whatever phantom they wanted. For a village that measured life by how loudly they could whisper, rumors were fertilizer.
"Greta, you are so clever with your hands," Joan said, approving. "You look like you will go far."
"For a craftsman," I answered, all guileless. "Good work, steady hands."
They praised me until the sun climbed, then dispersed with stories heavier than the baskets on their arms. I stood, pocketed my small birds, and headed to the scrub beyond the village. I needed a scorpion for the last piece in my five-poison series.
The desert tasted of iron. Wind scrubbed at my face; sand creaked beneath my sandals. I had thought the desert would be empty. Instead I found a trickle of life: two human figures struggling against the wind.
"Brother, will it be there?" The girl, small and pale, gripped the boy's hand. Their clothing hung in the sand like flags.
"It will," he said. "We must keep moving."
I saw the thread of fate twisting around them—dark, heavy, pulsing—and it pulled at the place I had promised to forget: the world beyond my door.
"Don't move." The command was more habit than necessity. Sand seethed and parted and a thing rose: a sand-scarab the size of a man, armor like black slate, tail tipped with a bone-sharp barb. The desert had its guardians. So it had always been.
The boy braced, ready to do what boys do when they have nothing to lose: be brave.
"Go!" he shoved his sister and he fell into sand that swallowed him like a quick throat.
I moved without thinking. The tang of metal between my fingers felt right, and the sound of the small bell at my hairpin chimed as the dust stilled. The sand-scarab hesitated, confused by a woman in a red dress holding nothing but a handful of air and a steady stare.
"Lady—" the boy began, awed. "You—are you a goddess?"
"Try craftsman first," I said, and then I hooked the creature by the shoulder armor and tipped it like a stubborn bowl. It gurgled indignantly and then turned perfectly still.
The children wept and thanked me, calling me “immortal” and “sage” and whatever titles small people offered to giants. The boy's reverence uncoiled something in me that passed for softness.
"Please," he said, bowing all the way to the sand. "You saved our lives. We owe you—"
"Money," I said when the world grew practical again. "A handful of coin is easier to carry than long speeches."
He laughed and emptied a heavy pouch into my palm. The weight startled me; inside lay coins stamped with seals of old money. It was an offer too generous for strangers in the desert. I had always been poor at refusing things that shifted fate in my favor.
"This is too much," I said. "Take it back."
He shook his head and rose, breathless. "We will repay you in another life. For now, you have saved us."
They left the desert, rising and shrinking into the horizon as if pulled forward by a thread only they could see. I walked home with my scorpion and the warm weight of coin in my palm, the bell at my hairpin chiming like small laughter.
Back at the village, the tree at the entrance had an audience again. Joan and the others had shifted from gossiping about killers to gossiping about the desert hero who had arrived with stories and left with a hero's grace.
"Greta!" Joan said when she saw me. "You brought someone back! A miracle!"
"He saved us," the boy had called. "An immortal saved us."
I felt the eyes on me sharpen. I dug my heels into the path and tugged the hood of my cloak over my hair.
"Sit, sit," Joan insisted, and pushed me under the tree like a lively bird. "Tell us how you found them."
"Found a scorpion," I said, and they laughed and decided I was modest and humble. They did not notice the bell at my hairpin. They did not notice the way my eyes watched for ripples in the world.
I thought, for a heartbeat, of the life I had left—the contracts, the names, the blood that did not stain because it adapted to the things around it. I had hidden to stop the world turning my name into a weapon. Yet the world had continued to spin, weaving my legend into its cloth.
That night, I slept. The desert had given me more than a scorpion: it had given me a cat—a small, scrawny thing with eyes like smoked glass and a pace like a rumor. It fit in my arms like a heartbeat, and when I stroked its fur it purred like a bell.
"You're dead meat," Chatter, my sword's spirit, grumbled in my head. "You keep taking in strays while your house still smells like old contracts."
"It can stay," I told the cat aloud.
The cat blinked, and a ripple of something ancient slid like cold water under my skin. The bell at my hairpin chimed again.
It was only later that I realized the cat was not merely a cat.
He stretched on my lap, claws pressing into the fabric, and when the sun rose the next morning he shifted. Fur changed, muscles remade themselves, and for the briefest breath a man lay curled in the blanket—silver hair like spun moonlight, eyes that could rearrange a room's temperature.
He blinked, and for a moment we simply looked at each other: a woman who had given up a life of precision and a creature who had been training to be a god.
"Change back," I said. It was a habit of mine: orders. I kept the voice even.
He smiled like someone unbuttoning a careful suit. "Can't. Too much power for a cat." His grin sharpened into something almost like apology.
"You were supposed to be my dinner," I told him, and even I heard the amusement clink like glass.
He proclaimed, with a voice like soft bells and a threat like velvet: "Baylor Alvarez at your service."
"You're not a fish, and you are very oddly named," I said.
"Better than 'meal'," he replied.
He had once been a great creature, “a Yao ancestor,” or at least he liked that origin story. That he now rode in the shape of a cat and begged for fish made him a ridiculous legend in my home.
"Leave the pond alone," I warned him. "Those fish aren't for eating."
He pouted like a spoiled god. "I am a Yao. I desire fish."
I made him a bowl and he ate like the end of the world was near. The cat—Baylor—grew calm as the day warmed.
It did not last.
The village, however small and slow, had people who noticed change. A procession came because the desert had coughed up rumor and the rumor had a name—Greta the mysterious, they said. They had come to bow and to thank.
I did not like to be thanked. It called attention.
"Thank you, Lady," the elderly head of the clan said, tears like pearls on his cheeks. His voice trembled like wind on dry grass. "You saved our house."
I stood on my toes and looked at the paper he held—just a stroke, a mark, a painting in a hurry. It sang, humming in a way that made the hairs rise on my arms. Whoever left it intended for it to be found.
"Why would you leave this for us?" the boy Ellis asked.
"Consider it a gift," the elder said. "A chance."
They bowed again and again.
I fled.
Vanishing is an art my old life taught me well. I left an empty cup on the table and a canvas that burned with quiet light. I went home and locked my doors. But the world smells like rumor, and the rumor ran faster than my locks could hold it.
Joan saw me again. She had this way of wearing her appetite on her sleeve, both for fish and for attention.
"Greta, your father—" she began to say in a voice that wrapped around the word like a leash.
"Not him," I lied, and then changed my tone, because sometimes the truth is a lesson that gets people stomped.
She left satisfied. After she had gone, Chatter sighed. "You really envied him a name?"
"I envied it," I said, and that was the closest thing to confession I allowed myself.
My day's quiet unravelled into a new pattern: students. They came, like moths to a lamp. Not soldiers or merchants, but children who had been turned into blades of loyalty by hands far older than mine.
Elijah Muller—he arrived first, folded and polite and terrible. He had the vices of a man born to hunger but the patience of someone who had loved the dark. He brought news on a scroll: the rankings had been published and "Red Lotus" filled more spaces than there were words.
"You're everywhere," Elijah said, soft as smoke. "On lists, in hearts, on the mouths of men."
"Good lists burn fast," I told him. "They are warm, and then they ash."
He knelt. "We serve whatever name you carry."
I was not interested in followers. I was more interested in my bench, my wood, my scorpion, and in keeping all the headlines far away. But they were loyal in a way that keyed something in me I had kept wrapped and hidden: the habit of gathering. The habit of teaching. The habit of making.
"I will teach," I told them before I knew I meant it. "But not for glory."
They cheered like dogs and fell on their knees. I rolled my eyes. Chatter grumbled about hand-holding.
Ivan Cummings, the oldest, played the fox. He loved rules and hiding behind them.
"Drew?" I scolded at one point, "stop trying to steal the scorpions. They are not toys."
He laughed. "Old habits die slow."
The apprenticeship pulled me out of my retreat like a stubborn root. I shared wood, I shared blades, I shared meals. They shared their plans to carve the world—ridiculous, grand, fragile plans. I didn't mind until their plans asked me to take the stage I had fled.
Then came news of betrayal.
News traveled fast, and Dallas Ahmed was faster.
He had been a face that never changed: a rot that wore civility like a mask. The people called him the Worm; the name pleased him like a warm cloak.
He had betrayed his house—someone’s house; he had sold kin and secret and bed. He had broken a family, and then he swaggered back like a man who had won a game.
He walked into a courtyard where they had left their colors torn and their eyes empty. He trampled their honor with a grin and offered them a "chance."
"I can spare five," he said, smacking grease off his fingers, "if someone crawls under me. Crawl, and I might be merciful."
They spat and cursed and promised violence they had no breath for. One by one they turned away until one stepped forward—pride weighs strange things.
At the head of the yard stood Bella Khalil, whose breath had once been a spear. She was broken, but not silenced. She limped forward and spoke.
"No," she said.
Dallas laughed, vicious as a dog. "Then none."
She made a move, slow, like a woman who had planned her steps a thousand times. She feigned submission and then, while the traitor's guard thinned, she drew a hidden blade and slit his throat clean, quick as winter.
He died in a pool of his own making.
Then the night broke open.
A shape moved like shadow, and those with a hunger for blood answered to it. They came—heads low, teeth bright, ribbons of darkness stitched into bone. They rolled through the attackers like a tide and it was over before the screams had a chance to be loud.
They brought the traitor to the center of the yard. He was not yet dead. He whimpered like a vaporized thing.
"Please," he begged them, pleading the language of the small.
They made him stand. They made him look up. They were not doctors. They were not judges. They were more dangerous: they were artists of ruin.
At the head of that quiet storm stood Ramon Gray, a man with eyes like stone and a smile like a blade's edge. He took Dallas's face in his hands and made him look at the world.
"You will not die in silence," Ramon said.
The ritual was not about law; it was spectacle. It was theatre for the audience, a lesson for anyone who might think cruelty a good currency.
They bound Dallas in the center of the square. The people, opponents and victims and idle onlookers, crowded around as if to watch someone teach an unwieldy lesson to a child. Their faces changed as the scene unfolded: shock, then curiosity, then disgust, and finally—an ugly, burning satisfaction.
"Do you remember every betrayal?" someone shouted.
Dallas ranted and begged and swore he was misunderstood. "I was hungry! I had no choice!"
Ramon lifted a talisman, and it sang.
"They thought him clever," the talisman whispered, "but cleverness without conscience is a festering wound."
Ramon told him the story of the house he had betrayed in sharp syllables: the children's laughter, the mother's lullabies, the nights of negotiation that led to the sale. He drew them out like crimson threads and tugged.
Dallas's face moved through the stages of the damned: first arrogance, then denial, then a greedy, sputtering realization.
"No. No. It wasn't like that. I didn't—"
"Shut up," someone hissed. The crowd's hiss was a thin sound like dried grass in the wind. It became a chorus.
Ramon told them he had decided what the traitor should receive, and the young men poised with instruments of humiliation. Not the law—no court nor scribe—but a public anatomy of shame.
First, they stripped him of the trappings of the man who had stolen names and sells: his ring, his cloak, the token from the lord. Each item they took and held high so that every onlooker could see that the trappings were superficial.
Then came words, slow and sharp, that cut more than steel.
"You sold your blood for coin," they told him. "You thought you could buy life again. Look at you now—look at what you left behind."
They pulled him to his knees. He implored them to stop. His bravado curdled, a mess of honey and bile. He began to be unstitched as a man might unpick a frock, detail by shameful detail.
Ramon's verdict was public and theatrical. The crowd watched as the traitor was stripped of dignity, paraded, mocked, then made to live through the consequences of his own trades. They made him beg each person he had betrayed to look him in the face and say his price. He had to name his crimes. He had to see the memories he had sold. Each witness told him, in a voice that could have been a parent's or a sibling's, how his betrayal had hollowness made of love.
When the words finished, he was left broken, but not dead. Ramon carved his sentence into the air with a blade and then sealed it with a banishing sigil. "You will live to remember," Ramon said. "You will wake each night recalling every look and every name and every face, and you will never be free of the ledger you signed. That is your punishment—memory for every sin."
The crowd roared approval and flushed with a feeling like delayed justice.
Dallas collapsed, sobbing, not from pain alone but from the unraveling: his life held together by excuses fell away. He was alive, retained in a cage of recollection, forever seeing every person he'd harmed as if they stood at his elbow. It was, in a way, worse than death.
The people recorded it all with phones and notes and solemn faces. They photographed his shame. They took it as a lesson. They would never let the story be gentle.
When it was over, the onlookers dispersed, chattering like magpies. Some cheered, some shook their heads with hunger in their eyes, some simply left the scene with nothing but their hands in their pockets and the knowledge that justice here could be sharp and theatrical.
Elijah watched me, face pale as paper. Ivan watched too, eyes like steeples.
"It had to be done," I said, though inside I felt the weight of it all. There was delight in justice, but also a taste I could not wash from my tongue.
Ivan looked at me with a curious respect. "You grow legends even when you try not to," he said.
"I make tools," I replied. "And sometimes people use them." My voice was even. Chatter grumbled at my hypocrisy.
Days passed like stitches. The cat—Baylor—slept like a god and woke like a boy. The pupils learned wood, blade, and the old art of being invisible in plain sight. The village learned to fear and revere me in equal measure. The world turned, and my name was a spoke everyone could hang a lantern on.
I kept my little wooden scorpion on the shelf. It looked back at me with a face I had carved to be both beautiful and ugly, like fate.
When news came that the old house of Ellis had new allies, I felt the thread tighten. I had helped them in the desert; I had left them with gifts and a map. They, in turn, had been given the aid they'd needed—through violence and blood and the quiet turning of the world.
On a morning when the wind tasted like rain, Ellis and Estrella returned to the village. They knelt beneath my tree and bowed to me properly, the way people should for things both big and small.
"Lady Greta," Ellis said, voice rough with travel. "For what you did, our house will never forget."
"Keep that because it will make good stories," I told them. "And keep to your path."
Estella—Estrella—took my hand in both of theirs and held it like a supplication. "We will not forget."
I nodded and watched them leave. I had done enough to tilt the scales; that was all I intended. But the world is greedy.
One evening, when thunder winked like an old enemy's eye, Baylor transformed again—not fully, not enough to be a weapon, but enough. He wrapped himself against me like a cat and purred.
"You chose to spare me," he murmured.
"I chose to spare myself the noise," I answered. "You are not meat yet."
We slept. I woke to the sound of my own name said by dozens of voices, a sound like birds and like knives. The village had learned to worship and to be fearful at once. And that, more than any fight, made me want to hide.
"Greta," a child called one afternoon. "Tell us again how you met the sand-scorpion."
"Tell me again how you were Red Lotus!" Joan chimed.
I carved. I lied. I taught. I repaired. I watched the wooden scorpion on my shelf like a little sun, and when the dusk came the bell on my hairpin chimed the same soft note.
One quiet night, with rain on the roof and the cat asleep at my throat, I found myself thinking of endings and beginnings. I had declared a life of peace and ended up a woman with students, a cat who had once been a god, and a house full of small living things. I had left the world, and it had kept coming back.
Chatter hummed within the old sword, sharp with disdain but also a little fondness: "You are impossible."
"Keep watch," I told the weapon softly. "And carve, in case the world forgets you again."
I closed my eyes and slept, and the last sound that followed me into the dark was the little wooden scorpion clicking on the shelf as if it approved.
The End
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