Things Unseen: (An epic fantasy adventure series) (The Caris Chronicles Book 1)

by Melina Grace

  MELINA GRACE

  Things Unseen

  Copyright © Melina Grace 2013

  Melina Grace asserts the moral right to

  Be identified as the author of this work

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

  The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

  the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

  actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

  entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

  in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

  permission of Melina Grace.

  To Mal, the love of my life

  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

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Caris paused from her work to wipe the sweat from her brow and stretch her back. Though only sixteen, bending over hoeing the ground all day was enough to make her feel like a thirty five year old mother of five.

  A shiver ran down her spine, despite the dry heat beating against her. Caris looked around at the eerily still landscape. Nothing moved. She shook the unfamiliar feeling away. Why would anything be moving on such a hot day?

  She bent back to her work. Tomorrow the men would be coming through with the horses and ploughs and if she didn’t get the last of these rocweeds out, equipment would be broken. She turned away from the trees and laughing creek that almost seemed to be calling her name.

  Caris wondered at not being able to hear any of the children playing down there. On such a hot day, they always ended up in the shade of the trees, splashing in the water. They must have found a bindoo at the ravine, she mused. The cute playful animals would lead the kids on a merry chase for hours, until exhausted the children would give up. Then it would come back to sniff at them curiously and accept biscuits and the occasional pat.

  Apart from the gurgle of the stream, the world seemed too quiet. Usually, Caris enjoyed the solitude working her family’s small field afforded her, but today without knowing why, she wished some of the young men were working in her neighbour’s field. Repetitively she dug the hoe into the ground, wedging it under large hard rocweeds that had grown up in the last year, pulling them up, and then stooping over to put them into one of the big brown bags that they would later burn whole. Not that that will get rid of half the seeds, she thought grimly.

  With little chance of ever marrying and having children, Caris dreaded the tedium of many years to come working this field on her own. No brothers meant there would be no nephews or nieces to inherit her job. Her three older sisters had all married and moved to their husband’s large properties. Her younger sister’s skill with a needle earned the family too much money for her to ever be spared to work the field, and with her blonde curls and blue eyes, matching all the other girls in the village, it would likely only be a couple of years before Cherri married.

  Caris tried to think of something else and not continue the obvious direction of her thoughts. Too often, she found herself dwelling on the fact that her work in the field was superfluous. With three daughters well married, another likely to follow, and no brothers to set aside a bride price for, her parents would be comfortable for the rest of their lives. Caris knew they were quite content to provide for her as well, having long ago given up any hope of her ever marrying. There would probably even be enough to carry Caris into her old age if she didn’t wish to live with one of her sisters.

  Not marrying wasn’t distressing to Caris, well not much. She too had long ago given up the idea. She didn’t remember anyone ever exclaiming over her cuteness the way the adults did over Cherri, though she was only two years older than her, or the way they did over most of the young girls in the village. Instead, people would shake their heads and say, “so much like her aunt”. It wasn’t until she was ten though, sitting outside their house in the shade one afternoon that she realised how different she was.

  Her eldest sister had just married, the celebrations were over, Jani had gone to her new husband’s home. Her sisters had gone down to the creek. Caris and Dilna had fought again. She no longer remembered what about, that argument had been swallowed up in what followed.

  Refusing to go anywhere with Dilna, Caris had opted to sit in the shade of the house. Her parents were inside still celebrating. Caris, quickly forgetting her anger, sat happily listening to her parent’s cheerful conversation. They talked for quite a while about their joy in seeing their daughter married to such a worthy young man who was obviously very much in love with their Jani. Eventually they moved on to their excitement over the bride price they had received that very day. Suddenly sobering, she heard her mother ask her father if they might put some aside to induce a family with too many sons to marry one of them to Caris.

  “NO!” her father replied angrily. “I will not have her humiliated so! My sister never married and she was perfectly content to look after my parents into their old age and then to help look after our younger sister’s children when they were small.”

  “She was lonely!” Caris’ mother exclaimed.

  “She had the best sense of humour of anyone I’ve ever met. You yourself couldn’t finish a meal for all the laughing she had us doing.”

  “And yet, she was sad,” her mum replied quietly.

  “I don’t care how ugly my daughter is! If a man can’t see her true worth, I won’t pay him to do so!”

  Caris sat in shocked silence; all was quiet inside the house now. Finally, fearing her sister’s return and the expectation of more merrymaking, she picked herself up and walked away. Their field had never felt so long. Caris could feel her parent’s eyes boring into her back as she forced herself to walk the length of it. She wished there had been some way of avoiding their knowledge that she had overheard them, but there was no unobservable retreat from their house.

  Finally reaching a dip in the ground that would take her out of their sight, Caris allowed herself to run. Wishing to avoid her sisters, she headed up to the caves. Sobbing, she stumbled up the rocky terrain.

  By the time she reached the caves, her tears were spent. The cool dark isolation suited her mood; she sat inside, hurting, until dusk.

  As the light began to fade, Caris moved outside to sit on a boulder and watch the colour drain from the world. The starkness of the surrounding countryside spoke to the barrenness she felt inside.

  She watched as everything turned black and then the stars came out, one by one, every star in isolation, until finally there was a blanket of them across the sky. At some point that night, Caris found peace with herself and with the knowledge she would never marry. She didn’t reason it out, it just seeped into her.

  Nobody berated her for returnin
g home so late. Her sisters and mother had all gone to bed after an extended night of reliving the wedding. Her dad, alone, sat up waiting for her. His eyes met hers as she walked in the door and though she looked away quickly, she could see the pain in them. Pain at having hurt her, and for all the hurt he believed Caris would experience in the future. She escaped to her room without waiting to hear what he would say. Nobody ever spoke about it after that.

  Caris was too used to the idea now of not marrying to let it bother her much. A new feeling had entered her in the last 6 months. At first, she had hoped the boredom would pass after a day, a week, a couple of weeks. It had not passed, however. She knew that if her parents needed her to work the farm to provide for them, she could happily do it for years to come. But they didn’t.

  She had even been denied the privilege of being the youngest. When her parents became too old to care for themselves, they would go to live with Cherri. Many parents moved in with their youngest daughter as soon as she had her first child so they could help out. Caris suspected her parents would put that off for her sake though, and she knew Cherri, with her generous nature, would never resent her for it. She supposed she could always go with them, it would not be so bad helping to care for her nephews and nieces, and she loved Cherri dearly. Why can I not be content with that? She asked herself. The answer burst from her lips unbidden, “Because I would not be needed!”

  “Enough!” she said to herself, pushing the useless thoughts from her mind. There was no answer to appease her discontent. Forcing herself to focus on her work, Caris once again became aware of the silence around her, which was becoming oppressive. The heat, now stifling, even in the open field, made her consider taking a break and enlisting her father’s help to finish later when it had cooled.

  “Where are those children?” She exclaimed.

  Dropping her hoe next to the bags of rocweeds, Caris began walking down to the creek.

  It was then she heard the first scream. It came from the south side of the village, closest to the ravine. Before she could run two steps to help, more people started screaming. Stopped in her tracks, Caris stared toward the end of the village she knew she could not save. “Derks,” she whispered. Mum and dad, was her immediate thought.

  Caris ran toward her house. She burst in the back door yelling “Mum, dad!” They weren’t inside. Quickly she grabbed her bow and quiver full of arrows. Within seconds, she was at the front door. “Mum, dad!”

  She saw them, with Cheri, emerging from the house opposite, terror all over their faces. “Cheri, mum, dad, quick! Run!” Already she could see the derks pounding up the street. They ran upright on two legs and were human in shape, but half again as tall as a large man and as wide as two strong men combined.

  Twice as fast as any human, the only thing slowing the hideous creatures, were the people they kept stopping to feast on. The street was full of screams cut off. The derks with huge claws and foot wide mouths fed savagely and quickly, leaving very little behind.

  Seeing that her family had started running toward her, Caris ran round the back of the house to grab the ladder. Derks were fast, strong, and big, but they were not good climbers. With heads too big to tilt far enough to see their feet and huge claws making their hands somewhat clumsy, they usually gave up on ladders in frustration and headed on to find easier prey. Bringing the ladder back around to the front of the house to make it quicker for her family, Caris saw Cherri stumble in the middle of the road.

  “Run!” she screamed.

  The derks were only thirty paces away.

  There wasn’t time, she realised, swallowing a sob. Her mother, not noticing Cherri’s fall, kept running. But her father stopped to help. Caris scrambled up the ladder, moved to the side and swung her bow and an arrow from her back. Subconsciously, she noticed arrows flying from a couple of rooftops and a few men hacking into the hideous creatures with swords. Janen was only twenty paces away. Too far! She cried inwardly.

  She ignored the screams of Cherri and her dad as the derks fell on them. Her mother was only a few paces from the ladder when the first one caught up with her. Caris had her arrow knocked. She took aim.

  “Caris!” her mum screamed. The creature’s mouth closed around her middle, severing her in two.

  The next half hour passed in a blur for Caris. Looking back, she could never remember much of what happened. Hysterical crying seemed to have been a large part of it. She remembered Janen, with his strong arms wrapped around her, holding her together, rocking her like a baby, his bloody sword lying beside him. However, at some point she must have done some shooting too, because there were fifteen of her solid arrows sticking out of as many dead derk eyes on the dirt road, in front of her house, afterwards.

  The sound of a bugle blaring, announcing the arrival of The King’s Horse, came too late for the small village of Zareth. Astride magnificent horses, the handsome men and confident women in their perfect uniforms, charged in, killing derks as the monsters fled before them.

  Once the derks had cleared the village, the soldiers gave up the chase, having only killed about thirty between them. There seemed to Caris a terrible incongruence between the splendour of these “heroes” and the carnage of her people, who had left behind only blood and small body parts; the derks having eaten even their heads, leaving no way to identify their victims by a foot here or a hand there.

  Caris stared up the length of her village along the path the derks had rampaged. “I guess anyone who’s not alive is dead,” she mumbled to Janen who was still by her side on the roof. He looked at her with concern but with one eyebrow raised. Realising the absurdity of her statement, a giggle escaped her. Janen smiled. Knowing the inappropriateness of their mirth just seemed to make it funnier and their tension erupted out of them in laughter. Some of the few surviving villagers looked at them in reproach.

  Surprisingly, it was the soldiers, who glanced their way in understanding before looking away. Finally, Caris forced herself to stop laughing before she broke into hysterical sobs again. For some reason she didn’t want to fall to pieces in front of these perfectly polished strangers. And there was another reason, the reproach in the villagers eyes, she saw, was directed more toward her than Janen. It was not merely because of her laughter that they looked at her that way but because of her failure to save her mum. The shame, she had been trying to suppress, came surging up engulfing her. She had a clean shot at that derk but she froze! She climbed down the ladder, distancing herself from Janen. He had seen. She had seen him fighting his way through the derks yelling her name; he couldn’t have failed to see.

  Caris ran behind her house. She had to get out of sight of those people. She could see the abhorrence in their eyes. Because of her, her mum was dead! She had to go somewhere, but where?

  Without further thought, she began to run toward the ravine. She knew she shouldn’t leave the village; there were things that needed doing and it wasn’t safe to stray with derks around, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t face working alongside people who would now no longer even pity her. The one thing Caris had ever excelled in, that had shown that she had value, was her skill with the bow, but even in that, she was worthless. Even in that, she had failed to be of any use when it counted.

  She ran recklessly, not even looking out for derks on the horizon, her own safety mattered little to her now. She had to find the children, even though she knew that, like the soldiers, she would be too late. The derks had come from the direction of the ravine.

  Her sides ached and her breath came in small gasps but she forced herself to run faster until she reached the gorge. Caris stopped before the edge, fearing what she would see. She took a deep breath and slowly walked to the beginning of the downward sloping path.

  Stopping at the bottom, she forced herself to raise her eyes and scan the ravine. She didn’t have to look far before she saw blood. The evidence of derks and children was plain, even if she hadn’t been expecting to find it. Veering off the path, Caris forced hersel
f to head straight for the carnage. Maybe a child escaped and is wedged in a hole somewhere, too scared to come out.

  When she reached the first small hand, her feet stopped of their own volition. Caris stared numbly at the tiny fingers. They were so perfect, not a drop of blood on them. Her gaze narrowed so they filled her vision. She imagined them playing tilly-too, with pebbles in the dirt, with the other children. She stared mindlessly until a persistent fly brought her to herself. “I wonder whose fingers they were?”

  Caris lifted her gaze and scanned the surrounding rocks, trying to see into the dark spaces underneath. Finally, she found the nerve to call out “Hello. Is anyone here? It’s me, Caris.” There was no reply. The words felt so wrong, as if she was calling at someone’s door. Still, she forced herself to keep calling as she did a wide circle around the area of destruction.

  After an hour, far longer than was necessary, Caris admitted to herself what she had known all along. There were no survivors. As the last of the adrenalin drained from her body, Caris dragged herself mindlessly back to the place that was no longer home.

  ****

  A large claw descended toward Janen’s face. He leapt back, raising his sword and cleaving the wrist from its arm. The derk roared. Janen jumped. He hadn’t thought he could get more terrified, but the sound rang against him, making his legs weak.

  He stepped forward and plunged his sword through the beast’s midsection. The derk began to collapse before Janen had even thought to pull his sword free.

  Another derk was pounding toward him. With shaking limbs, Janen used two hands to clasp the hilt of his sword and pull.

  It came free and he swung on his heal slicing into the advancing derk. His sword cut into the beast’s side but its momentum carried it forward and sharp claws slashed at Janen. He jumped out of the way and spun to meet another derk who had thought to attack him from behind. He managed to deliver a killing blow, and with a grim smile, turned to meet another foe.