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Soldiers tell stories, and there were superstitions on the battlefield. Even to those accustomed to death, there was a harbinger they feared. Members of Cole’s army had been known to flee when they smelled the tang of juniper berries in the air; members of the resistance proclaimed it an omen of victory, but trembled nonetheless. Those who did not flee would see a woman striding through the battlefields, and any weapons that aimed upon her would crackle with electricity and melt in their weilder’s hands. And those who remained even after that said that the air itself began to sing around her, carrying the voices of the recently slain.
There were those who called her Mistress Death, the carrier of souls to the underworld. And there were those who called her Mistress Juniper, and told the strangest tale.
One upon a time, there was a cruel spymistress who served King Cole and his court. She had two children, and was so cruel a mother as to turn them over to Geppetto to make them more useful to her. They were to serve her in her war of espionage, and so she had the mad doctor fit them with cybernetics that allowed them to communicate with each other telepathically. She came to regret this decision- not because it had caused such pain to the young ones, but because their silent conversations allowed them an escape.
The son’s name, like that of his mother, is not stated in the tale. The daughter’s true name has been forgotten as well, but tellers of the tale call her Juniper. Although Juniper had no taste for her mother’s work, she took to her lessons well, and surpassed each task set to her. Her brother, on the other hand, could not do as his mother demanded of him. Perhaps he was rebellious, or perhaps he was simply a frightened child. His mother would have simply cast him aside and forgotten him, but for the bond he had with his sister. It was not a bond she approved of. It was a way for her heiress apparent to always have a friend by her side whom she cared about far more than her missions, and that would never do.
One day, Juniper called out to her brother, but the response she got was static. She looked all over the estate, and at last found him on the edge of the garden, fallen and unmoving. She cried out, and her mother came to her.
“You have killed him,” she said. “He was weak, and could not take the strain of you speaking to him over that machinery. I shall hide the body, and we shall never speak of this again.”
The girl ran from her mother into the forest. If she really did kill her brother, she would hang from the juniper tree. But before she could do herself any harm, something very strange occurred. It was her brother’s voice- it had returned, despite the fact that his body was being unceremoniously disposed of. It sounded closer to her than it ever had before as it spoke a single sentence.
“You did not kill me.”
Juniper clutched at her head, as if to find the place within it where her brother’s soul had hidden itself. Beg as she might, she could not make him speak again. Nevertheless, that one sentence had given her back the will to live. She had not killed the only person who had ever loved her.
She next heard him speak at dinner, but this time his words were less reassuring- or so we must assume.
Her mother sat at one end of the banquet table, Juniper at the other. The servants passed out bowls of stew, red with the meat her mother loved so well. Our heroine was far too overwrought to feel hunger, but so as not to draw her mother’s criticism, she brought a spoonful of the stew up to her lips.
And then she heard her brother speak. Thankfully, she heard him tell her what meat filled the stew before she had a chance to taste it.
Juniper screamed. She screamed and screamed and screamed, and no amount of commands by her mother or attendance by the servants could stop her. The cybernetics in her head should not have been able to affect any ordinary electronics, but they burned and heated beyond anything they were built for. Lighting clapped through the room, every light installed in the manor bursting open, and through it all Juniper kept screaming. She only stopped when she saw the charred remains of her mother upon the floor.
Survivors of the catastrophe never found the girl’s body. But if the stories are true, soldiers in the midst of battle may see her striding past, paying no heed to anyone living but leading a train of whispering ghosts in her wake. Those who have the courage to listen instead of run have even reported that she sings.
They say she sings in two voices, one high and one deep, in harmony.
I carry my brother beside me
He rides in the depths of my heart
He called out to me by the juniper tree
And now we are never apart
Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my brother to me, to me
Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my brother to me
So all you poor souls, heed my story
The ghosts shall remember your sin
I carry the dead with me always
They speak of your crimes on the wind
Follow, follow, oh follow the dead now with me, with me
Follow, follow, oh follow the dead now with me
miralines Mon 28 Apr 2025 06:38AM UTC
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