Chapter 20: Flag

Siannon’s realization that her grief had caused her to shut out her children from sharing their own sadness with her distressed her. She wanted to walk through the castle and reflect upon this epiphany, but when she exited the bedroom, she found herself inside a large enclosure with armored knights running around like madmen.

She was back in the melee, the first event in the warrior’s tournament of the annual Festival of Weylin, which she won at eighteen and at which she met Dylan, where they fell in love. The event was a free-for-all in which 100 entrants had to capture 50 flags and escape to move on.

Siannon assumed she was still invisible and immaterial until a pack of young knights ran at her and knocked her into the dirt. The crowd on either side of the melee enclosure laughed, most convinced from the outset that a woman had no place in the tournament.

“Am I eighteen again?” she thought. “Only one way to find out.”

She ran at top speed away from the mass of men struggling to scale the rope nets of the enclosure. She climbed to the top and pulled herself along the top until she reached the flag, just beyond the outstretched hands of the other combatants. She reversed her course, dropped to the ground, and scurried out the exit at the end of the enclosure. The crowd roared its approval, and she felt as exhilarated as she did all those years ago.