#poor jo

She did.

They didn’t know how his smile never sat straight or that he knew where to find the best berries or that he was kind. They’ll spout some ancient poem about heroism, sing praises for how his sword (rusted, flimsy, dull) is the one that pierced the Drowned, but only after the algae had taken root in his lungs.

If he had a proper sword, one polished sharp, he could have killed the thing faster.

She doesn’t want to go to the funeral and see the blacksmith who refused to accept the promise of the Drowned’s corpse in return for a flimsy iron blsde. He wanted silver shillings and shillings were something he couldn’t offer. So he took the sword too broken and rusted to be salvaged and went off alone. Or, almost alone.

He’d pressed a cold kiss to her cheek and promised to return by sunset.

She’d waited, watching the treeline until the sun sat firmly behind them, the last dregs of daylight. She wandered into the woods with a pink-red sky above her and she found the battle. She found him.

He was not dead, though that is not what she will her mother later.

What she tells people later is true but not complete. Things are different in the moment. In the moment, the Drowned is twitching  and dying and he is choking on his own lungs swelling in his chest. Dying too. In the moment, she takes his sword and she delivers the blow that stills the beast. In the moment, she arrives too soon and it is still not soon enough.

Later, she lays the sword by his hand and wonders what he would say if he was able to breathe. Later, she leaves the woods with a wet hem and muddy boots. Later, she tells everyone that he was one to do the deed, that she had found him too late to do anything.

Later, she doesn’t arrive in time.

She is annoyed by everyone. How they presume to know him. How they leapt to their conclusions from her barren truth (and she wanted them to, didn’t want to ruin herself by admitting it, but it still grates how they assumed).

They did not know how he promised to marry her, knees in the mud, bags under his eyes, hands warm in her own, so so tired but so happy at the thought of their union.

Her fingers brush the strand of tin woven around her neck, a birthday gift he’d had to steal to get. It never sat straight and dug into the nape of her neck something fierce, but she loved it. It was from him.

The last gift he’d ever give her, now.

The others sit in a small box beneath her bed -- the husks of dried flowers and bits of smoothed glass from liqueur bottles. Tiny pieces of treasure he squirreled away for her like a dragon’s hoard. All things he didn’t pay half a shilling for. 

All things that she loved deeply. Like him.

Her mother’s steps clunk closer and stop at the door. “Joanna? Are you coming?”

She looks at her mother and wonders how to say her feelings -- how is she supposed to go to the funeral of her beloved (her future betrothed as soon as he saved enough for a real ring because it was something he insisted upon despite his utter lack of wealth) and not weep? How is she supposed to smile as she speaks of the heroism he didn’t need to act out and could’ve lived through, if only someone had offered a hand?

How is she supposed to sing his praises when she only wishes to mourn his loss?

“Is it starting? she asks instead of answering. She’s been avoiding the question for days, dreading what her answer would be. Either way, she has to lose something after she’s already lost too much.

“Soon enough. We must leave now if we aren’t to miss it.”

It’s starting and she still doesn’t know if she’s going. She laughs a little, internally, and knows what she must do. Pain lies before her either way -- of missing his funeral or smiling through it.

Her path is filled with thorns now, constantly pricking at her arms and legs and catching in her dress. She’ll crawl for a while, her blood marking the point where he stopped cutting the path free for her at the price of his own hands. The point where it narrows to where only one can walk. He’d let her walk in the middle of the widened path, just so she wouldn’t get nicked, even if he’d cut away the longer branches, the smaller ones still poked through.

She takes a deep breath and examines her reflection again. She looks unremarkable. Forgettable. If she shed a few tears in the midst of the crowd, maybe no one would pay enough attention to notice.

Slowly, she blinks and steels her heart again, turning to her mother.

Walking up to her, she links their arms together, elbows bumping into the other. “Off we go then,” she smiles, forced. “We wouldn’t want to be late.”