The Warden

This story was originally written for the NYC Midnight Short Story Contest with a prompt of Fairy tale/a due date/a warden

The tower was empty when soldiers from the First Realm brought the maiden. The Warden wasn’t surprised to see them, per se, but she was surprised at their number. There were just two soldiers accompanying the dirty maiden chained to a horse, which was odd because prisoners would usually arrive with a company of guards, maybe even a wizard or two. It was quite a journey to get to her tower, stranded in the great forest known as the Eighth Realm, but the Warden kept her prisoners safe until it came time for them to be released or executed, and she didn’t much care which.
     One of the soldiers dismounted and brought her a letter from the king requesting that she keep the maiden “safe and out of the way” until he had time to arrange a public burning.
      “I’ll take her,” the Warden told the guard, who dutifully dumped the maiden off her horse and dragged her over, handing her chains to the Warden.
       The soldiers left with as little fanfare as when they arrived.
     The Warden looked the maiden over. She was skinny, just on the edge of too skinny, which meant that she’d probably been well-fed before this ordeal. Her clothes were simple, underneath all the dirt and wear, and her hair sprung from her head in wiry, untamed curls. Her nose was best described as aristocratic and her eyes were hollow. She had no magic, the Warden could tell, nor did she move like someone skilled in combat.
       “You needn’t study me like some sort of worm.” The maiden’s eyes might be hollow, but she still had some fire left. “You’re being paid to jail me, so please.” She motioned toward the tower door.
        The Warden shrugged and led the maiden to her new home on the tower’s third floor.
     The soldiers hadn’t left the keys to the chains that encircled the maiden’s wrists and ankles, but The Warden didn’t need them. She simply spoke a word and they clanged to the floor.
       Sometimes prisoners would try to run, in the moments between losing their chains and entering their cell, but the maiden calmly stepped into the round, stone room. She looked around and then nodded, like she was a guest and had measured the room to be up to her standards.
       She looked back at the Warden. “You’ll feed me, I suppose?” She looked like she hadn’t eaten in days.
       “Twice a day.” The Warden nodded.
       “Then I’ll see you this evening.”
      The Warden had never been dismissed by a prisoner before. Every now and again, one of her prisoners would attempt to befriend her by asking if this or that story about her was true. But the Warden wasn’t the guardian of the tower because she made friends easily and their attempts were usually met with a blank stare or the occasional smirk before she moved on.

     The maiden had been at the tower a week when she had her first nightmare. Perhaps she had them every night but never made a sound. Either way, she woke the Warden with her screams.
     The Warden never opened a cell door except to put a prisoner in or let one out. But watching the maiden thrash on her small cot and scream in terror and pain was difficult even for the Warden’s relatively hard heart. She didn’t know what the maiden had done to deserve the Tower, she might never know, but she saw a strength and grace in the maiden that was at odds with her tattered and torn appearance.
     Strength and grace were not usually what the Warden saw in her prisoners.
     A memory came to her then, from her childhood, of her mother holding her as she cried from a nightmare, rocking her and singing a lullaby.
     “Shhh, it’s okay.” The Warden’s voice was low and gravelly as she spoke through the cell door, not very soothing, but the noise seemed to quiet the maiden. “You’re okay. You’re safe here. Nothing can hurt you while I stand guard.”
     This was true. It was said that once, when guarding a political prisoner from the Fifth Realm, she'd taken on seven men from the Third Realm sent to kill him. It was also true, though, that the Warden would hand the maiden over the second the soldiers came back for her, but for the moment she was in one of the safest places in the Seven Realms.
     “Shhh, everything is fine. Nothing can hurt you. You’re okay.”
     The Warden kept up her murmuring and the maiden’s struggling calmed, her screams became whimpers. Finally, her eyes opened.
     “Look at me,” the Warden’s voice was still low, still gravelly, but it had a sing song quality to it. “Yes, that’s right, look at me. You're safe, here and now. Look at me, nothing can hurt you.”
     The maiden let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “It's too quiet in this tower,” the maiden said into the silence when the Warden stopped her soothing.
     She didn’t respond, simply stood and returned to her rooms, but after that night there were crickets in the tower, where there never had been before.

        It became obvious about a month later that the maiden was pregnant.
     It seemed likely that the maiden’s pregnancy had something to do with her imprisonment, and her continued nightmares. The Warden didn’t know, would probably never know. She and the maiden never truly spoke, beyond the comforting words the Warden growled through the door at her while the maiden screamed and shivered from her nightmares. The Warden knew not to get too close to her prisoners.
     The Warden knew not to get too close to her prisoners, and yet…
     As the maidens due date came closer and closer, the Warden found herself making sure the maiden had more food. The straw cot on the floor was suddenly stuffed much fatter and the thin blankets replaced with thick, warm quilts. Baths became more frequent. And one day the window in the maiden’s room widened, by magic, so that she got twice as much sunlight.
     And still at least once a week the Warden knelt outside the maiden’s room and said, “Look at me, look only at me, You're safe here. Nothing can hurt you.”
 
     It began at midnight and ended at midday, the hours in between full of sweating and screaming and soothing and blood. Water and wet clothes flew through the air with her magic, and her voice was a constant background hum against the maiden’s screams.
     After all the particulars of afterbirth were taken care of, and the babe was washed and wrapped by magic, he was returned to his mother. The maiden laughed, tears running down her face, as she looked into the eyes of her child. And then she looked at the Warden, who looked just as wrung out and tired as she was, and she smiled.
     “You’ll be a good mother to him, won’t you?” She asked.
     The Warden started. She’d never thought beyond the maiden’s birthing, never thought what they would do with the babe. “I can’t…this is not the place for a child…”
     “Then make it one,” the maiden insisted. She stood then, struggling for a moment, still weak from her ordeal. For the first time since she’d been put in, she approached the Warden at the cell door. There was a small slot at the bottom of the door, which was how the Warden gave the maiden her meals and got other supplies into the room. To her shock, it was also just big enough for a newborn baby to be put through.
     “Take him,” the maiden’s voice was strangled by her tears, “I'm for the fire, and that’s no place for him to go.”
     The Warden took the child with trembling hands. He stirred a little and she froze, but he settled again, his lips pursing as he nursed in his sleep. The maiden stood and moved back to her cot, determinedly not looking at the Warden or her son. She needed time alone and so the Warden took the babe and quietly slipped away.

     Soldiers came for the maiden a week later.
     They were surprised when the Warden led her out, chained once more, looking fresh, clean and healthy. They looked at each other uneasily and then at the Warden. One of them tried to ask about the child without specifically saying the words, and the Warden simply smiled and assured them all was well and they could take their prisoner. They looked at each other once more, but they knew better than to test the Warden. It was said that instead of a steed, she rode a great dragon to patrol the forest around her tower.
     As soon as the soldiers left to journey to the First Realm the Warden wrapped up the baby and began a journey of her own. She went deeper into the great forest, to a small cabin forgotten by all but the oldest of villagers. The Witch had once been a story that trembled on people’s lips, as the Warden was now, but that was a long time ago. The Witch had retired.
     The Warden was thinking it might be time to retire herself.
     “You know, they once said I stole babies,” the Warden’s mother smiled wryly at her as she held her grandson, “but I never kept them.”
     “I didn’t steal him,” the Warden responded without answering the question her mother was asking. Instead she wrapped herself in a cloak and took her mother’s fastest horse, leaving the baby behind.
     The Warden arrived in the capital of the First Realm on the day they were set to burn the maiden. She pushed her way through to the front of the crowd, people springing out of her way, though they didn’t quite know why. No one knew her, knew to put her face to the stories they heard. There was one story said that she guarded the Monster of Nobai for a full year and was immune to the power of his voice, a power that had killed the greatest wizard of the Second Realm But here she was just a woman.
     The maiden was already tied to the stake and standing on a pile of wood, just waiting for the torch to be thrown. She was filthy and tattered again. The king glowered at her from his seat atop the noble’s dais. He motioned the captain of the guard to light the torch and the maiden, brave though she was, began to silently cry.
     “Look at me,” the Warden spoke no louder than she had, those nights when she comforted the maiden, but somehow the maiden heard her across the distance. She looked at the Warden in shock, forgetting to cry even as flames began to lick at the logs she stood on. “Look only at me. Nothing can hurt you while I'm  here.”
And with a deep breath, the Warden transformed into a dragon, took the maiden in her claws, and flew away.


     The stories of the Warden continued to circulate long after she disappeared from the tower. Some said She'd been finally defeated by men of the Third Realm in retaliation. Some declared she’d decided to leave guarding and become a pirate. And some swore she just got on her dragon and flew away.
But the Warden never heard those stories. She had better things to do.