ONE

 

…Blank and unseeing, her eyes stung. Inspired by both grief and terror, her mind was awash with hollow nothingness. Even the simple act of breathing seemed all but impossible as she stood in the sleety rain. She knew it was cold but she hardly felt it as the flames from the pyre she stood before warmed her. She cared not to think of the body that burned. The body that now rested so peacefully amidst the roaring destruction that engulfed it.

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Inhaling deeply, she tried to pull back her thoughts before they began to cascade. She could not afford the distraction of contemplation to cloud her instincts. Raw and primal, she marveled at the way she felt nothing, but seemed to sense everything, with cool detachment.

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‘Veah?’

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She had perceived her brother’s approach and was somehow aware of his hand before it came to rest upon her shoulder. His action brought a soft, sad smile to her lips as she rested her cheek against his warm, but rain-soaked skin.

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‘It’s time to leave.’

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‘Just a few more moments,’ she bargained, her voice hollow to her own ears.

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‘Vei, he’s expecting us.’

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Swallowing, Veah turned to study the young man that had come to fetch her home. He was taller than her by far and his fair hair stood in contrast to her own that was almost a match for the ruddy, orange flames they watched. His dark eyes were the only thing that made her think they were related and in them she saw her mother. Glancing once more at the flames, she knew he was right. It was time to go.

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The notion of home seemed somehow skewed to her now and she reluctantly removed her eyes from the pyre as her brother led her away from the clearing. Without her mother, how could she ever think of that rundown little shack as home again? …

 

 

Waking quickly, Veah’s eyes remained closed. Inhaling, she raised her hand to wipe away the tears before she squeezed her eyes together tightly, her hand coming to rest on her forehead. Mornings were the worst. It took time for her dreams to leave her and, depending on the memory featured within those dreams, she often found herself braced against the day before she even opened her eyes.

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Far from her worst memory, burning her mother’s body was one that featured most regularly in her dreams. Sometimes it heralded the beginning of the nightmare that followed, other times it was the bitter ending to the nightmare that preceded it. Fortune was with her this day. Having avoided both what came before and what would come after, having only witnessed the pyre, she felt as light as was possible given the circumstances.

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Through parted lashes, she noticed the sky was blue beyond the trees’ thick canopies. It was late spring and the dense woods had protected her against the worst of the colder seasons. It was different from home, so much more different than she could have ever imagined when she secluded herself there, but different was what she had needed. Without it she never would have found the will to carry on.

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The first eight moons had been the worst. For six of them she had been trapped, unable to let go of her past and the traumas she had endured, but once she was able to accept that part of her life was over she’d come to see that there were many more things in the world that could be her undoing. She’d not realized it would be so dangerous, but as the last two of those eight moons passed, she became familiar with her new perils—particularly the many creatures both within and around those woods that wished to eat her. Wolves and large cats that she’d rarely caught glimpses of in the plains beyond her sanctuary haunted those woods and just knowing they were out there, potentially stalking her had caused her many sleepless nights. She couldn’t deny she missed the cool crisp air of the mountains that had flanked the eastern borders of her homelands in Arraville, but the flat, unoccupied patch of trees on the edge of an abandoned farming district in central Lanacoby had come to serve her well. Hidden in plain sight, no one had thought to look for her there.

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Rising to her feet, she tended her small fire and cast her eyes to the trees that surrounded the small clearing where she had camped. The clean scent of pine and cedar filled her senses and she inhaled deeply as calm washed over her. She was alone. She was safe. The large cats that ranged the flatlands in search of stray, forgotten cattle were not commonly found in the dense thicket, but she had spied one in the trees not more than a moon past. Two cubs in tow, the mother seemed disinterested in her; perhaps she’d already eaten, or perhaps she’d not detected Veah’s presence at all. The air had been still, it may have been the only thing that had saved her life that day.

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Stoking the flame in anticipation of her morning meal, Veah stood, straightening as she stretched her back. Worn out before she’d seen even nineteen summers, she wondered how much life she had left in her. She felt old and so very, very tired. Ill used and overworked; every day of her youth had been a trial of one sort or another. Pulling her mind back from the self-pitying thoughts that threatened to dominate her, she refocused on her day; beginning with breakfast.

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Moving towards the small stream she had camped beside, she reached into the water and splashed it up her arms and onto her face. It was cold. Running down from the mountains she had once lived in the shadow of, she felt the connection to her homeland present in that water as she washed the sleep and dreams from her eyes. Pulling her long, fiery, red hair over her shoulder, she remembered how many times she’d wished for a blade so that she might cut the curly masses to avoid being recognized but she had possessed no such tool. Instead she had braided and twisted the lengthy coils, pulling the hood of her cloak up to hide the tell-tale trait as she moved across the land in search of safe harbor. It had not been released for more than a moment while she ran, but since landing deep within that small, heavily wooded area, she had set her curls, whose density offered her comfort through the chillier moons, free.

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Spying movement in the water, Veah’s keen, dark eyes settled on the fish that skimmed the rocks at the bottom of the shallows, searching for his own morning meal. With lightning fast reflexes, she shot out her hand in a manner that had taken a moon and more to master, and she plucked the creature from the water, her fingernails biting into its slippery skin as it wriggled, desperate to get away.

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Distracted by her catch, Veah’s thoughts wandered. She had changed much since leaving Arraville. Isolation had seen her become capable in a way that she never would have contemplated and she marveled at her independence—but she also missed her brothers. Almost two years had passed since she’d seen them and not a day went by that she didn’t fear for them. She had fled, they had not. All she could do was hope that her actions hadn’t caused them any undue trouble.

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Things had been so complicated then! Had she the presence of mind that she now possessed she would have brought them with her, but she’d been in such a hurry to leave.

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Fleeing was easy. There were more reasons to abandon her home than there were to stay, but her decision to head south had not been her own. With her pursuers pressing her onward, she’d not even hesitated long enough to consider her destination. All she could think of was staying ahead of them. Harassed and harangued from the southern border of Arraville, she had moved south until she came upon the Lake of Falls. Larger than she could have ever imagined, she followed the edge of the water, searching for a way to evade her pursuers. Looking back she had no idea how she had made it so far from home all alone when she’d possessed so few survival skills, but she had been desperate.

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A small fishing boat had carried her from the Lake. It had been the only way she had made it free of those who searched for her. The man who owned the boat had taken pity on her. A young woman of just seventeen summers at the time and she knew she had appeared waiflike, fragile and pitifully uneducated. It was humiliating for her to be viewed as such a weak creature but she now understood that if she had appeared to him strong and capable, it would have been unlikely he would have offered her passage.

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She smiled fondly at the thought of him. She had been so wary at the time and were it not for her desperation she never would have trusted him. Without that urgent need, she could not have permitted herself to set foot in his tiny little boat. After several days travelling across the lake and then down the River of Imogen Veah learned that his grandfatherly nature had been responsible for his sympathetic ways. Living off the fish they caught, he taught her how to handle the creatures that she had been so fearful of in her youth. Their slimy, yet rough, skin had always offered a contradiction that her female sensibilities never wished to entertain, but under the old man’s guidance—and insistence—she came to understand that there was nothing at all unnatural about the water-dwelling food source, and her appetite for their tender flesh was sparked. He had asked nothing of her and given her so much… she would forever be thankful for his timely appearance in her life.

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Frowning, she realized she could hardly recall his appearance. Sleep deprived and consumed by grief and guilt, she had been in no state to retain any details as she fled, but she could recall his eyes. Weathered—and such an impossibly pale shade of blue—they seemed to contain a youthful mirth, even when he was at his most serious. Shaking away the memory, she realized it may not have been accurate. Skewed by her circumstances, she knew she how unlikely it was that she might recognize him should she come upon him again and she sighed. She would have liked to thank him one day.

Distracted by her memories, Veah skewered her fish over the flames before returning to the water’s edge to drink. Never far from one of the many streams that deviated from the fingers of The Imogen River, she drank freely whenever she chose. She had no need of a water skin, or mug, as she cupped her hands and brought the liquid to her lips. Troublesome only in the winter when the water was too cold for her to hold for long, she had managed well enough so far. She didn’t have the resources to do things any other way.

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She remembered the feel of blankets, as opposed to the furs of the animals she had snared for her meals when the rivers crusted over with ice and the fish disappeared in the deepening winter, but such memories were dimming with every passing day as her woodland life overshadowed all that had come before it. It was strange—to slowly lose all that she had once been and remain so unbothered by it—but so little from her past had been worth holding on to.

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Licked by the flames, the skin of the fish had become brittle and it flaked away exposing the tender, white flesh within. The smell of it made Veah’s mouth water. Removing the stick from the flames, she blew on the fish to help cool it before peeling the flesh from the bones, popping pieces into her mouth while it steamed.

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Almost done with her breakfast, she heard an unexpected sound. Unlike the usual rustling of leaves or broken twigs as the deer, rabbits and birds picked their way amongst the deadfall, she heard metal clinking against metal and she frowned. It was out of place. The only thing able to make such a sound was a person but even she—the only person in the area—possessed no steel implements.

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Wide eyed, she rose from her sitting position to a crouch, ready to abandon her camp should the source of the noise draw closer.

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Muted voices came to her next. Soft at first as they spoke quietly; the sound grew louder upon approach. Veah took cover behind the thick bole of a yew tree. Breathing slowly and lightly, metering her intake of air to allow her to hear every passing sound, she waited.

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‘Do you think we lost ‘im?’ She heard one man ask of his companion. His voice was naturally deep but his pitch sounded too high, too panicked and afraid.

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‘I bloody well ‘ope so!’ said another, also male. Breathing heavily as they drew nearer to her, Veah noticed that the clinking sound was created when their armor collided. One was supporting the other. He must have been injured.

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