Dissever

by Ward, Tracey

  Dissever

  By Tracey Ward

  Dissever

  By Tracey Ward

  Text Copyright © 2014 Tracey Ward

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover image by Tracey Ward

  Cover Photography by Cathleen Tarawhiti

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, except as used in book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, events or incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to places or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  Part One - Annabel Lee

  It was many and many a year ago,

  In a kingdom by the sea,

  That a maiden there lived whom you may know

  By the name of Annabel Lee;

  And this maiden she lived with no other thought

  Than to love and be loved by me.

  I was a child and she was a child,

  In this kingdom by the sea,

  But we loved with a love that was more than love

  I and my Annabel Lee—

  With a love that the winged seraphs in Heaven

  Coveted her and me.

  From “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allen Poe

  Chapter One

  When I met Roarke, I was deep in hiding. I hid a lot as a child. I wasn’t disobedient, not really, but I was trouble. Some would argue I still am to this day, Ro being the loudest. But that day, that incident, that moment of hiding – it wasn’t my fault. I know all children say that, believing firmly that they are blameless victims, but that time I happened to be right. About being blameless, not a victim. Don’t ever call me that.

  I was eight years old with long blond curls and eager green eyes. As a child I was short and a little stout. Pudgy, if you asked my father. Did it hurt to be called a pudgy piglet by my own father? Yes, of course it did, but not as much as other things. Pain is relative.

  He was looking for me that afternoon. While I knew it was delaying the inevitable, I ran to the gardens to hide. Tucked behind the castle’s kitchen, nearly forgotten at the base of the back tower, lay a small yet impossible maze. Although I’d spent countless hours inside of it, I’d never reached the center. My mother insisted she hadn’t either, though she lived her entire life inside the castle. In fact, she didn’t know anyone who had defeated the maze. That fact, that mystery begging to be solved, was more than I could stand. Other’s abandoned it, forgot about it. They resented it for being impossible to defeat. Too incredible to understand. I saw it as another lonely child begging to be played with. And so I did. Endlessly.

  That day I made my way quickly through the weaving paths of stark white stone, the sound of my hurried breathing and the crunch under my feet filling my ears. I constantly checked over my shoulder, peeked around every corner before turning it, always convinced my father would materialize out of nowhere to snatch me up. The scent of salt from the sea filled my nose and throat as I ran, the spray of the waves crashing against the jagged rocks of The Shallows and rising around the island in a constant shroud that I could feel in my clothes, on my skin, in my breath. It kept us hidden from the rest of the world. We were protected. Confined.

  I rounded a corner I thought I knew. I was counting the turns, running through the map I had in my head of the sections of the maze that I had been through over and over again, but what I found stunned me. Instead of the small alcove full of soft green grass with a white marble bench, I entered an orchard.

  It was too large to be part of the maze, to be encompassed inside the towering green hedges. Rows on rows of trees spread out before me, each of them perfect golden yellows, greens and browns at the end of their season. The lines were impossibly straight, too perfect to be natural, but there they were. Straight as arrows running on and on forever into the infinity beyond my sight. It smelled of sweet fruit, cut hay and freshly churned earth. It felt like warm sunshine and it was then that I realized I couldn’t see, hear or smell the ocean at all.

  “Hello.”

  I whipped around, startled nearly to screaming. Tucked in a corner of the hedges was a boy. Even though he was sitting, I could tell he was taller than I was. Probably a couple years older as well. His hair was dark and unruly, his skin caramel perfection that glowed in the scattered sunlight, but it was his eyes that stopped me. That ruined me forever. They were a brilliant blue, the color of cornflower.

  I knew then, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was one of them. One of the Outsiders.

  “Hello,” I replied hesitantly, my eyes roaming the orchard. As far as I could tell, we were completely alone. I was rarely allowed to be alone with anyone, but I was never to be alone with a boy. And I absolutely, positively was never to be even in a crowded room with an Outsider. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be here.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not allowed.”

  “Says who?”

  “Well, I—“ I stuttered, not sure who would be first in line to scold me for being here. My mother, my father, the Prince, the King. The head cook would want in on the yelling, I was sure. “I don’t know exactly.”

  “Do you even know where you are?”

  “No,” I admitted reluctantly.

  He smirked at me. It was irritating, smug and charming “Then how do you know you’re not allowed here?”

  I fought the urge to smile at him, choosing to glare at him instead. “I guess I don’t know. Is this part of the maze?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Either it is or it isn’t.”

  “You’re part of the maze right now, but not always. Only sometimes.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are,” he replied calmly. “You weren’t before, but you are now and later you won’t be again.”

  “Is that a riddle?”

  He shrugged silently in reply.

  “You’re a bit of a know-it-all, aren’t you?” I asked him hotly.

  “Maybe, but at least I know where I am.”

  I glared at him again.

  It was then, as I was shooting daggers at his face with my eyes, that I noticed several small gleaming figures scattered in the grass in front of him. I took a hesitant step toward him, drawn in by the sight of them.

  He noticed my attention.

  “Here,” he said amiably, holding out one of the figures to me. “Do you want to see it?”

  “Can I?”

  “Sure. Sit down, come play.”

  He said it so easily. So simply, as though asking me to sit on the ground and play was something that happened to me every single day. I promise you, it did not. Other children were afraid of me because they were afraid of my father. I was never allowed to get dirty or hurt or tired, so I was a terrible playmate. But I didn’t want to be. I wanted to run and have fun with the other children of the castle. I wanted to be just another child being too loud in the corridors or leaving toys scattered in their room for their mother to step on and curse the day they wer
e born. But I wasn’t and I never would be, because I was—

  “What’s your name?” the boy asked me.

  I hesitated, not wanting the weight of my name to make him change his mind about playing with me. I didn’t want him to fear me.

  Finally, I answered softly, “Anna.”

  “Do you want to play, Anna? I’m waiting for my mum, but she’ll take awhile. We have plenty of time. Do you like tarts?”

  I frowned, confused by the sudden change of subject. “Do I like tarts? Like the desert?”

  “Yeah. I hate them,” he said, producing a small white box from beside him on the grass. He held it up to me, the blue ribbon around it fluttering in the breeze. It was cornflower blue, like his eyes. “Do you want it?”

  I shook my head hard. “I shouldn’t. I’m not supposed to have sweets.”

  “Why not?”

  “My father says they’re bad for me. That they’ll ruin me.”

  “Oh.” He looked completely confused by the idea of being ruined by a pastry. “That’s alright then. I’ll do something with it.”

  “Why do you have it if you don’t even like them?”

  He shrugged. “My mum gave it to me this morning. Said it was a present. But it’s wild-berry and I can’t stand wild-berry anything.”

  My eyes lit up while my mouth flooded with longing. “Wild-berry is my favorite,” I mumbled.

  “Then you should take it,” he insisted, holding it out to me again. “You’ll like it. My mum’s a great cook. Best in the village.”

  I’d never eaten anything from the Outsider’s village. Their wares were everywhere in the city surrounding the castle. The castle kitchen even took deliveries of baked goods, meats and ciders from them, but my father had always been very clear that I was to have nothing to do with any of it.

  And yet I took that package. I knew there’d be hell to pay if my father ever found out, but at that moment I couldn’t have cared. There was something magical about this place. This orchard tucked in the corner of nowhere beneath a glowing yellow sun that promised never to tell your secrets.

  Did I say before that I wasn’t a disobedient child? That may have been an exaggeration. Let’s say instead that I wasn’t an intentionally disobedient child. But if the opportunity presented itself…

  “Thank you,” I said, lightly trailing the soft cotton ribbon through my fingertips.

  “You’re welcome. So, do you want to play with me or no?”

  I smiled at his gruffness. “Yes, please.”

  But when I went to sit down, I hesitated. The shining silk fabric of my purple dress winked in the sunlight, mocking me.

  “What’s wrong now?”

  “I can’t—My dress, it will—I shouldn’t,” I stuttered again, feeling stupid.

  “No worries.” The boy rose up on his knees as he removed his simple gray coat. He laid it out on the grass across from himself and sat back down, gesturing for me to do the same. “Sit there. I’ve seen my da do that for my mum loads of times.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “What do you want to play?” he asked, getting straight down to business dividing his small, wooden figures between us evenly. “Sailors and pirates, highwaymen and cat burglars, knights and sword-fighters? I’ll warn you now,” he told me seriously, pointing a figure of a man with a sword at me, “I’ll not play princes and princesses.”

  I scowled at him, offended. “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “Good.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not what?” he asked absently. He was back to dividing again.

  “Why won’t you play princes and princesses?”

  “Because we’re pretending,” he answered simply. “Let’s play sailors and pirates, yeah?”

  I grinned, feeling excited. “Yes, please.”

  For what felt like years, the boy and I played there in the grass beside the orchard together. No matter how long it was, ten years or ten minutes, it was the best time of my entire life. He didn’t care who I was or who I was going to be. He didn’t care who my father was or what he could do to him if he found us here together. In fairness, it was because he didn’t know, but it didn’t change the fact that the anonymity felt wonderful. I felt like a child for the first time in my life. I managed to completely forget myself, to become absorbed in the games we played. In the sound of his voice, the melody of his laugh.

  “You’re pretty,” he said suddenly.

  I realized I had been staring at his face, memorizing it. I had no illusions I’d ever see him again. I wanted to bottle this time and carry the memory of it, of him, with me forever. But now he was staring at my face too and I felt myself blush.

  “My father says I’m a piglet,” I muttered, looking away.

  “You make a very pretty piglet.”

  I snorted a laugh, looking up to find him smiling at me, his blue eyes laughing.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Roarke. But all of my friends call me Ro.”

  “May I call you Ro?”

  “Yeah, ‘course,” he said, his smile widening. “You’re my friend, aren’t you?”

  And I was. And he was mine. A true to the bone friend who thought I was pretty and played fantastic games with me as though I was nothing fragile and nothing special. Nothing other than Anna, which was all I ever wanted to be. It was the first friendship I’d ever had and it would prove to be the only one that would ever truly matter.

  That moment hidden in the sun dappled orchard beneath a perfect azure sky, that was the first time I fell in love with him. It would happen again many more times over the years. Sometimes more than once a day, in degrees and frequency too great to recall, but this particular one, this first one, I will remember forever. And forever, I now know, is a very long time.

  “I thought I heard another voice in here.”

  I spun around to the entrance of the orchard, stunned to find a woman standing there. I hadn’t heard a sound on the rocks, although I may have been distracted by Roarke. She was clearly his mother. She had his dark hair, caramel skin, and while her eyes were greener than his, they were equally startling. She was beautiful and exotic, just like he was.

  “Please don’t tell anyone you saw me here,” I said hurriedly, standing up abruptly. I accidentally stepped on Roarke’s coat in my rush. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to. I hope it won’t stain.”

  “It’s fine,” the woman said, coming closer.

  “I really should go,” I mumbled, curtseying to her awkwardly. “I’m sorry for intruding.”

  The woman laughed lightly. “You didn’t intrude. What’s your name, dear?”

  “Ann—Annabel Lee.”

  She looked me up and down slowly, her eyes smiling.

  “So you’re Annabel Lee,” she mused to herself.

  I flinched, the sharp sting of my anonymity lost piercing my gut.

  Her eyes flicked down to the ribbon clenched tightly in my small, tense hand. She smiled. “I see you found someone to give your present to.”

  “She likes wild-berry,” Roarke said defensively, standing up behind me. I noticed then how very tall he was. How broad his young shoulders already were. “I can’t stand it. It was a lousy present.”

  “I told you it was a present but I never said it was for you.”

  “Oh,” Roarke grumbled. Then he tapped my bare arm lightly, his fingers large and warm on my skin. “Do you want to play next week? I can bring my figures again.”

  I looked to his mother, sure she’d say no. Knowing who I was, it changed things. It made knowing me dangerous. Playing with me, that was suicide. But she shocked me when she smiled openly, shrugging her shoulders.

  “It’s up to you.”

  “I would love to, but…” I should have said I couldn’t do it. That my father would never allow it. That it could mean jail or death or worse for them if he ever discovered me here. But how would he? I didn’t even know how I’d gotten here, how could he? “I don’t know how to
get back here. I’ve never been to this part of the maze before.”

  “That’s because it’s not always open,” the woman replied.

  “Told you,” Roarke said.

  “Know it all,” I hissed at him.

  “We can get you here,” the woman told me. “If you’d like to.”

  “I’d love to.”

  “Then we’ll see you in a week.”

  I was horrified when tears sprang to my eyes. They rolled down my cheeks uncontrollably as I tried my hardest to pull them back in. My breath hiccupped in my throat as I struggled to control myself, but I couldn’t. Despite her words, I was perfectly certain that I’d never see either one of them again.

  I felt Roarke’s hand on my shoulder, light but strong. Kind and reassuring. It made me weep harder, burying my face in my hands. His mother surrounded me with her arms. With her scent like cinnamon and a low cooing sound that I felt all the way to the blood in my veins. I calmed almost instantly in her arms, my face pressed against her soft, dark hair.

  “That’s alright. You’re alright.”

  “I have to go,” I mumbled, sniffing and swiping at my cheeks to clear them. I felt the hot burn of embarrassment on my face. I was dying to leave, to hide my pitiful weeping eyes. I didn’t want Ro to remember me as a crier.

  The woman lifted my chin with her fingertips, her green eyes dancing with flecks of gold caught in the sunlight. I stared at her, entranced as she gently took the ribbon from my hand.

  “Chin up, dear one,” she told me tenderly, tying the ribbon in my hair. “There’s a long road ahead and this is only the beginning.”

  Chapter Two

  I was meant to marry the Prince. He knew it, I knew it, and my father definitely knew it. The whole damned kingdom knew it. But as much as I didn’t want it, I was my father’s daughter, his property as much as his horses. If he wanted to barter me for a bigger and better title, better even than the one he bought by marrying my mother, then that was his Saints given right. He was a notorious social climber, made acceptable to the wealthy only by the fact that he was so insanely good at it. He was terribly handsome and eerily charming when he wanted to be. I think it got to the point where they firmly believed that he’d been born to the wrong station. That taking him in amongst themselves was a restoration of the natural order.