One night, I was walking along the road, weary of any people I might meet. I was exhausted from stumbling over fields and through wilderness; using the road was easier. I could go on without having to concentrate on where I stepped. The repetitive movement of setting one foot in front of the other had become my lullaby, and my thoughts were flying freely. I could see me sitting at the evening table with my gran, eating simple but filling food. There would be a candle between us, flickering softly in the draft. Gran always left the windows and the door open, she liked to feel the evening wind on her face, as did I. There was no one living close by, no one who would disturb our togetherness. We didn’t need anyone else. Then, the scene changed. I was sitting in the stable, next to the warm body of Ilona, my favourite goat. The other goats were eating all day, avoiding us humans if they could, resenting the times we milked them. Ilona was different. She would lie next to me, breathing softly, listening to the stories I told her. They were simple tales that I made up, of princes and queens, of wild animals and mythical creatures. Others were stories my Gran had told me, and I repeated them when leaning on Ilona’s warm and comfortable side. Sometimes, when she looked at me from beneath her large eyelashes, I almost thought she understood every word I told her. When I had quarrelled with gran, I would go to Ilona to tell her of the chores I did not want to do, or of the hated salad Gran made me eat. Back then, my problems were simple, a child’s complaints in a perfect world. Thinking of Ilona made me smile. Oh, how I longed to be close to her, sitting in the straw in gran’s small stable, breathing in her motherly smell. I had not appreciated the simple, happy life my gran had provided for me. Now that I was alone, everything that had been seemed like a life another had lived. I was a different person now, yet I still yearned for the version of the past that still spooked my mind.
Caught up in the shadows of the past, I fell asleep.
Voices woke me. Before I could even open my eyes, strong hands pulled me up roughly and put me on my own two feet. They wouldn’t carry me. I sank down to the ground again, looking up at the grim faces of two men. My heart sank. They had found me. It had all been for nothing.
I was bound and gagged once again. My cheeks hurt, I felt bruising creep over my skin. When the men had found me, they had bound my hands with rough rope, then dragged me along, not caring for my exhausted state. When I sank to the ground, they only slapped me in the face and shouted that I was solely responsible for how they were treating me now. I had killed one of their own. I had been a simple prisoner before, now I was their enemy. They dragged me on, using the rope around my hands as a leash. Halfway to the camp where I had made my escape, we stopped. I sank to the ground where I stood, sinking into a deep state of unconsciousness. When they woke me with a slap on my cheek, it felt like only an hour had passed since we had arrived in the clearing. There was a man on a horse standing by the two men that had found me, arguing loudly. When I tried to sit up, my muscles were screaming with pain. Rough hands pulled me to my feet. My chin touched my chest, my knees threatened to buckle. Exhaustion was all I could feel.
My throat was burning from thirst, but when I begged them for water, they only laughed. The man jumped down from his horse in one fluid motion, then walked towards me. I did not see his face, but I recognised his gait. The sorcerer was back. The urge to run filled my mind, yet I did not have the energy. I stood there, only half conscious, waiting for them to do with my body as to how they saw fit. I could no longer move.
The sorcerer lifted my face with one hand, then spat at me. “You have cost us enough time already. Bind her on the horse, we are late! And once we’re back at the keep, you’ll pay for letting her escape!”. The other two men came and I was lifted onto the horse and secured with ropes behind the saddle, my legs hanging to one side, my upper body on the other. The sorcerer jumped up in front of me, and on we went. With every step the horse took, the ropes that secured me cut into my belly. Yet I was numbed to the pain. Parting from my body, my mind flew freely up into the sky.
4
Free Cities
There are six cities that make up the Free Cities, namely Port Royal and Ritteltown to the east, Soledon to the north, Gooseburgh to the south and Allembach to the west. The sixth city is the Citadel, an island dwelling built on an extinct volcano. The Citadel can only be reached by cable car from Soledon and Gooseburgh, and due to this safe and almost impregnable position, the parliament that governs all six cities is seated here.
Each of the five cities surrounding the Citadel specialises in one or more trades, and goods and services are freely exchanged between the towns. Allembach is the city of artists and craftsmen, and in the winter, it plays host to multiple travelling families that enrich the city with their multitude of songs and shows. Gooseburgh is the domicile of the military. Its position close to the border of the Free Cities makes it an ideal place for securing the lasting defence of the cities’ union. Ritteltown is built on a thin tongue of land reaching far into the Boiling Sea. It trades in learning and knowledge, and its library is the largest on the continent. To the north, Port Royal is built on a similar headland. Thanks to its harbour, the port town has built its wealth by trading with places such as Colkirk or Silverhaven. Lastly, Soledon is home of the manufacturing industry and known for its superb smithies.
It is said that the Free Cities were once part of a larger empire, encompassing places as far away as Moon Island and Silverhaven. If that was indeed so, the land this empire was built on has since been swallowed by the rising sea.
- An Introduction to the Geography of the Continent, Sir Tom Delavell
I woke to the sound of dripping water. My head hurt. When I tried to sit up, lightning exploded before my eyes. I sank down onto the cold stone floor. How had I got here? The past was a scrambled pile of puzzle pieces. I had tried to flee. I had used a tree for energy. And… I had killed a man. I recoiled from this thought. I was no killer. Was I? If I had not planned it, did it still count as murder? Or was it murder because I had taken the chance that someone could come to harm? My head ached, which made thinking coherent thoughts difficult. My body was heavy, my limbs frozen to the ground. I was in no condition to think. I stopped keeping the waves of tiredness away from me and they crashed into me until I was swept away.
I opened my eyes. It was almost pitch black, wherever I was, and I was lying on something wet. I sat up, and a small wave of nausea washed over me. I swallowed hard and took a moment to settle my stomach. I was sitting on a wet stone bench, roughly carved into shiny black rock. My feet didn’t reach the ground. There was water dripping down from somewhere. I felt small trickles of water run over my back as I leant back against the stone wall. My clothes were damp and wet on some parts. I crossed my arms in front of my chest as I shivered in the cold air that moved all around me. There was a cool draft coming from somewhere.
Carefully, I tried to stand up. Out of the darkness, I saw thick metal bars appear in front of me. I stood and grasped two bars in my bare hands. I was a captive, with no way of escape. The cold metal only reinforced this truth. My fate was at the mercy of another, whoever that was. Never had I felt so helpless before. For want of anything else to do, I lay down again on the bench, trying to avoid touching the wet wall as I curled into a ball. Tears came into my eyes as I thought of the hopelessness of my situation. No longer was I Eona, the acrobat, the respected member of the Ghorres family. I was back in my old role. The girl without a home, without a family. The girl that had no words.
I was as thin as a skeleton when they found me, lying in a ditch next to the road. Other people had passed before, but none had noticed me. I was a pitiful thing, all skin and bones. My eyes were big in my haggard face. I hadn’t had food in days, and the water I had drunk the day before had come from a muddy puddle. While I was lying there, something happened to me. I left my body lying on the roadside and drifted away, slowly looking back over the corpse-like girl I had become. After days of hunger and starvation, I was suddenly free of pain and de
spair. I was free, flying away into the dawn.
They later told me that it was Mara who found me. She took my light little body and carried it into her vardo. There she held a wet cloth at my lips, and with each drop that reached my mouth, I was pulled back into life again. She fed me warm broth and rich porridge, but as often as not my stomach would spill out the food as soon as I had swallowed it. She lay me down in her own bed and covered me with a quilted blanket she had made herself. The other travellers told her that there was little chance of my survival. She nodded and went back to work. Often, she would sit by my bed and talk of days long past and stories often told, as much to herself as to me. As easily as I had let go of life the night she had found me, as hard I clung to it now. Mara instilled a will to live into me that was as fiery as her own.
Once I got stronger, she would sit me down next to her on the driver’s seat, safely wrapped in a blanket. From that time, I remember the smell of horse all around me, the soft cushions she had embroidered, the simple sounds of the vardo moving through the landscape.
Sometimes, Mara would ask me questions, where I came from, where my parents were, but I never answered. Ever since I had left my body for a few precious moments, the sensations of life were overpowering to me. Every passing touch overwhelmed my senses, leaving me powerless to react. And whenever I saw Mara’s kind face, I thought of my grandmother. Gran, whom I had loved so fiercely, but who had left me alone nonetheless. Who had cared for me all my life, who had shown me how to walk, who had taught me my first words. Maybe that was part of the reason for me not speaking. The only person I had ever spoken to before everything fell apart was my gran. There were no houses around ours, no other children to play with. Sometimes a travelling salesman would knock on our door, but then I hid and gran did all the talking. We had chickens in our yard and goats that gave us fresh warm milk every morning. From time to time, gran would venture into the nearest village, almost half a day’s walk, but I always stayed at home. She didn’t want to lose me, gran said. But in the end, it was me who lost her. She’d had a cough all winter. It would go away on its own, she said, but it didn’t. I held her hand when she was having coughing fits, and when it got worse and she was coughing up blood, I wiped her mouth afterwards. One morning, I found her lying still in her bed. There was a tiny smile on her lips. She looked at peace. I lay down beside her, like I did every morning, and fell asleep. When I awoke, her body had grown cold. Still, I stayed. I didn’t know what else to do.
The next day, she had changed so much that I got frightened. I had not cried over her death, as I still waited for her to get up when she was feeling better. But when I saw her sunken cheeks and splotchy skin, even at this young age I knew that she would not get up ever again. I packed some cheese and bread into my little backpack, and added a bottle of water mixed with elderflower syrup, just as I would if I went for a walk with gran in the summer. I took my small walking stick that I had carved the autumn before, stepped outside and locked the door. Until now, nothing had been different from a usual day. But now that I stood on the doorstep, it suddenly came over me, the despair over the fact that nothing would ever be the same again. I took a deep breath, and bravely willed the tears away. I would manage on my own. After all, I had already seen five winters.
Shouldering my backpack, I took one step, and then another, walking away from the house where I had grown up. I didn’t look back.
I didn’t know how many days passed. In my cell, it was always night. I lay on the hard stone bench all day, looking up at the dripping ceiling. Sometimes, I was brought simple bread and water and my waste bucket was taken away, only to be brought back emptied soon after. The first time someone approached the bars of my confinement was some time after I had been brought in. I had tried to still my thirst by collecting the water from the trickles that slowly flowed down the walls of my cell, but the water tasted foul and it was hard to get enough of it to even make just one sip. My hair was hanging down in tangled and dirty grey strands; the black dye had mostly faded.
The first thing I heard was the clattering of keys in the distance, then the sound of heavy footsteps was coming closer and closer. I moved back as far as possible, pressing my back against the wet stone wall. A dark figure walked past my cell, holding only a small torch whose flickering light threw wild shadows at the walls. There was some noise coming from further down the corridor, the sound of an inhuman hissing that was echoed back and forth through the cave. I heard him put down a metal thing down on the floor, then his footsteps turned and came back towards my cell. The figure stopped in front of my cell. It was wearing a hood that cast a shadow over the man’s face. From a bag, he drew a bottle of water and half a lump of bread and carelessly threw them through the metal bars. The bread landed in the middle of a dirty puddle.
Pressed to the cold wall, I waited until the man had gone again. Then I jumped and grabbed the bread, stuffing it into my mouth, careless of its mouldy texture.
Every day or so, this process repeated itself. It was my only indication of how slowly time passed. I grew accustomed to the dark, yet the wet air in my cell was making my bones ache. Soon, I was coughing whenever I got up, and with every breath I took, the wheezing of my lungs got louder. With every day, I lost more weight. My ribs became so pronounced that it hurt to lie on my side. On good days, I made simple stretching exercises or stood on my hands for a bit, more for the memory of better days than for staying agile.
But soon, I had no strength left for unnecessary movements. I would lie on the cold stone bench all day, willing my mind to fly away. But my sleep was light, I rarely dreamed, and if I did, it was of the travelling people that had become my family. It was too painful to think of them, to think of my old life. There was a wound deep within me, the scar of all my losses. Old Mara had mended the first scars long ago, but now there were new wounds that would not close. Once again, I had lost everything. I was nothing without other people around me.
I heard his footsteps coming down the stone corridor. I didn’t bother to open my eyes. He would bring food and water, something I yearned for, but eating only prolonged my suffering. I would die here, there was no question about that. They would throw away my corpse, and I would be gone, erased from the earth in a tiny moment. I could either continue to wait to die, or I could hurry the process by not eating and drinking any longer. My body already hurt in every place possible, and the pain of hunger would not make any difference about that.
The man paused in front of my cell. I awaited the familiar sound of the bread hitting the ground, but I waited in vain. Had they decided to starve me now, just as I had made the same decision?
“Get up,” a low voice growled. It was the first time I heard the man’s voice. It was raspy and sounded like it was rarely used. I stayed lying on the bench, too weak to lift my body from the wet ground. I heard the turn of a key, and with a penetrating creak, the door to my cell opened. He entered and took one step to stand bent over my bench. “You breathe, you alive,” he said simply. I slowly opened my eyes. Even this simple movement was almost too difficult to manage. Over me, a round face stared at me. His blue eyes were small and sunken deep beneath a thick brow. He had no beard and his bald head reflected the light of his torch. He looked like an overgrown infant, with his pouty lips and puffed out cheeks.
I closed my eyes again, weary with the effort of holding them open. My mind drifted away, ignoring the man standing bent over me. From a distance, I felt two strong arms lifting me from my stone bed and carrying me away. My head was lying on his arm, my unkempt hair flowing down, almost touching the ground. It had grown since I had been put in this dungeon, and I knew that the white of the roots would stand in sharp contrast from the black I had dyed my hair before we came to Ashenfields. Like a child held in its mother’s arms, the man carried me away from my cell. The rocking motion made me nauseated, but there was nothing in my stomach in the first place.
We went through endless corridors, passing doors, some open, some clos
ed. At some point, we exited the cave system and were suddenly standing under the warming autumn sun. My eyes, not used to light anymore, burned, but I opened them anyway, blinking at the bright blue sky. We were traversing a courtyard of sorts, high buildings surrounding us. The man who was carrying me did not stop anywhere, except to open some doors and shut others. Soon, we were in a labyrinth of rooms, some big, some tiny. The whole place looked like a child had built it from bricks, not caring about everything being the same size and shape. After walking through a corridor that had a ceiling made from blue velvet, we entered a staircase, going up and up a flight of winding stairs, until we reached a round chamber. There were few windows, more resembling arrow slits than windows.
I was roughly put down on the floor. A soft carpet welcomed me, and I thankfully lay down on it. Here I could sleep.
“Sit her down over here,” a new voice said, emanating power and authority. Once again, I was picked up and moved around. This time, I was carefully lowered onto a large armchair. I leant against its soft backrest. I had not felt anything this comfortable in a long time. The comfort of my new surroundings made me tired, I started to drift off, my mind separating in thousands of threads. Keeping myself together was so difficult, I longed to just let go.
Don’t. Please, don’t.
I paid no heed to the words that somehow drifted towards me. I broke away, floating. I was a child again, running barefoot over grasslands, no, I was ancient, white hair framing my face, I was standing on the right side of a golden throne, holding up a crown, and then again I was running, this time over snowy fields, chasing a dark figure that fled from me, and while I was running, there was the sound of wings over me, then I was pushed to the ground, and suddenly I was a human no longer, claws were sprouting from my fingertips, I was jumping up, flying through the air, softly landing on crimson paws, I was -
Heart of Time (Ruined Heart Series Book 1) Page 5