BEFORE
1
- ALANIS -
L aughter follows me as I head outside for the lunch break. Taunting yells draw closer as I settle against the giant oak tree just outside the red schoolhouse. I close my eyes briefly, breathing in the smell of freshly bloomed flowers and the scent of damp soil. I pull out my journal, doodling on the pages, trying to escape to my own little world, but the bullies won’t let me. The journal is ripped from my hands, a familiar blond holding it between her fingers like it is infected with a disease.
“What’s the freak drawing today?” she teases.
Quickly standing, I face her and the entourage that follows. “Please give me back my journal.”
My voice is soft, barely above a whisper. These girls are mean and I try not to show I’m scared, but their rumors do frighten me. They could get me killed, not to mention everyone I love.
This world is made of five realms, the one I call home being the Caselian Realm. It is run by a government that has made sure powerful magic does not overpower those in charge. The Fae and Witches are banned from ever entering, their powers deemed too great and a detriment to humans. The government allows the occasional Elf, mostly for their talent in healing remedies. For the past year the government has become stricter, new laws passing every week that limits the freedom of its people.
My father is friends with some who live closer to the capital, and they say it’s much worse there. The people in power have begun to use force to gain control over its citizens, and if you don’t comply you will be executed. They’ve even assigned sentries to every region to make sure people are not rebelling. Little do they know that rebels are everywhere, hiding and biding their time.
“Oh look, more witch symbols. Maybe we should turn this in to the sentries, what do you think, girls?”
Claire’s threat creates a pounding in my head, my heartbeat racing so fast that a humming sound echoes in my ears. “Give it back.” I attempt to be stronger, but they merely laugh. Anger boils my blood, a tingling sensation growing within, building inside my chest until it feels heavy and suffocating. Claire flips through the pages, ripping one down the center.
“Oops.” She shrugs with a smirk glued to her face.
I don’t even know what is on the page, but it’s the tipping point for me. I lunge towards her, grabbing the journal as I push her backwards. My anger and exhaustion of constantly being picked on is no longer able to be controlled.
Claire falls backward, landing with a thud. Her wrist snaps at an odd angle as she tries to catch herself, and her screams pierce the air and her posse gasps, but all I can see is the singed edge of her sleeve as if it was burned. The shirt is singed and frayed right where I pushed her. Clasping the journal to my chest, I race back towards the schoolhouse. Opening the bright white door, I head down the hall, hoping to find my best friend Elizabeth somewhere close by.
When she isn’t inside the tiny classroom reading, I head out the back. The sound of the trickling stream that borders the schoolyard greets me. The gentle breeze tickling my skin, calming my racing heart. Elizabeth stands with her back to me, talking with another classmate at the edge of the water. I walk down the slight slope, my shoes sinking into the mud on the bank of the stream. The girl talking with Elizabeth tenses when she hears my shoes squelch into the damp ground and quickly leaves, avoiding eye contact with me.
Liz turns towards me, her face taut and eyes expressionless. The look reminds me of my mother. She has never been super affectionate with me; I always thought it was because I wasn’t truly hers. My father found me when I was just a baby and insisted on giving me a good home. I don’t believe my mother truly wanted another child, but took me in because it was what my father wanted. Since I turned eighteen my mother started to grow more distant, her stares no longer emotionless but almost scared.
Now in my twentieth year she can hardly stand the sight of me. My parents started me in school later than others due to my ‘unstable emotions’ as my mother called them. Being the oldest one in my class definitely doesn’t help anything, but luckily I’m in my final year.
“Liz, you’ll never believe what just happened.” I plan to vent to my best friend, but she cuts me off.
“Oh, I heard all about what just happened. You broke Claire’s wrist, Alanis. What were you thinking?”
Her scolding voice grates on my already frayed nerves. “She was tormenting me again. Threatening me,” I gasp, trying to defend myself.
“There’s whispers that you burned her…” She glances around to see if there is anyone nearby. “With magic.”
I gulp, my eyes widening. “I don’t. I didn’t—” I’m stumbling over my words, my panic seizing me in a chokehold.
“Alanis, I can’t do this. There’s too many rumors.” Tears build in her eyes. “I’m sorry, but we can’t be friends anymore. It’s too dangerous.”
I watch as my best friend walks away from me. The only friend I’ve ever had besides my brother, Elion.
I don’t stay for the remainder of the school day. Instead I head home, finding Elion working in the cornfield with my father.
“What’s up, pumpkin?” my father asks, concern evident on his face as to why I’m home early.
“Wasn’t feeling well. I’m going to head inside and see if Mom needs help.”
I walk the short distance from the field to the house. The white brick is tinged a light brown from dirt and dust. I step onto the front porch, the board on the top step squeaking beneath my foot, alerting my mother to my presence. Her brown hair whips across her face until the breeze dies down, her gaze cool and assessing.
“Do you need any help?” I ask.
She purses her lips but hands me the watering can she had been holding. “Finish with the flowers out here.”
After watering the flowers in the windowsills, I sit on the porch swing for a while, basking in the now late afternoon sun. The wind whisks away the sweat accumulating at my hairline.
Elion joins me when he’s finished in the field, his face full of worry. “What happened?”
He knows me better than anyone. He also knows I am a target at school for the bullies. Especially now that he graduated and isn’t there to protect me. I can feel the tears building, but I don’t want to cry. Luckily my mother calls us to dinner, putting this conversation on hold.
For now.
The smell of chicken wafts out of the kitchen and my stomach grumbles. The table is set with our mismatched plates, some a cream color and others a light blue, some cracked and glued back together. The daisy’s I picked earlier in the week sit in the center, looking a tad withered.
Dinner is a quiet affair, my brother and father exhausted from working in the cornfield all day and my mother refusing to even look at me, let alone talk to me. It’s an awful feeling knowing your mother hates you, but not knowing why.
“Make sure you have your emergency satchels packed,” my father says. “Your uncle sent a letter saying the uprisings are growing worse. We may be evacuating sooner rather than later. He sent me the location of the closest rebel group. They move around a lot, but at least we have a general location to start if it were to happen.”
My stomach turns at the thought of leaving home. The realm on the brink of an internal war. I push my food around with my fork, but don’t attempt to eat anymore. No one speaks the rest of dinner, everyone lost in their own thoughts and worries.
After dinner, when I should be getting ready for bed, I instead creep down the stairs for a snack, pausing at the bottom when I hear my parents talking while my mother washes the dishes and my father dries them.
“Tiernan, this is serious,” my mother hisses. “She can’t be here any longer.”
My father grunts. “She is our daughter, Matilda. We can’t just abandon her.”
My mother’s harsh laugh makes my heart seize inside my chest. “Her teacher sent a note. You heard what happened. The rumors. If the government gets even a hint of this, we will all be dead.”
Tears line my eyes and I run from the house, my feet carrying me through the cornfield. Once I’m deep within the stalks, I collapse to my knees. I listen to the sound of crickets chirping, my fingers running over the dirt beneath me. This is the place I go to disappear. The corn hides me from sight, giving me a sense of freedom I long for. It’s hours later when my tears have ceased that I brush the dirt from my legs and start walking back home, to the place I am not wanted.
Off in the distance a horse whinnies. I turn towards the noise, noticing a group of sentries heading this way. Their silver armor glinting in the fading evening sun, the helmets they wear only offering a small glimpse of their eyes.
What I have feared for months is finally happening. The rumors and whispers have found their way to the government soldiers and now they’re coming for me. For my family. My heartbeat skyrockets as I race up the stairs, flying through the front door and right into my brother.
“What the hell, Lani?” He is annoyed but quickly changes as he takes in the stark fear on my face.
“They’re coming for me,” I spit out right as my mother and father step into the hallway. My mother’s eyes shutter, but my father doesn’t hesitate. He tears open the hall closet for our emergency bags, giving one each to us, and ushers us out the back door. I don’t dare turn back, too scared to see if the sentries have caught up. After a few hours my muscles finally relax, the cool night air kissing my sweaty skin. Elion holds my hand tightly, never letting go, like we’re children running through cornfields again. My father checks on me every now and then. But my mother won’t even acknowledge me.
We spend weeks walking and camping at random spots before we finally find the group of rebels my uncle told Father about. The rebels are fighting the government for its betrayal. Those in power have begun attacking the citizens when they don’t fall in line with their beliefs and rules. The head of this rebel group informed us that they even started bombing food sources, and soon they fear they will turn to outright killing mass numbers of people until all that remains are those who do as they are told.
At first Elion and I believed they were being overly paranoid, but now months and multiple campsites later, we see the truth. The government threw our entire world into a famine, plagued by disease and distrust.
We slowly settle into the new normal. Elion and my father constantly leave on scouting missions. My mother and I help with healing the injured, and she only speaks to me when absolutely necessary. I know she blames me for what has happened, though she won’t say it. Sometimes when Elion is home, we search for food and water in the surrounding woods near our camp. Resources are a scarcity with the government wiping out farms and forests.
A few injured rebels lay on cots in enormous white healing tents, my mother scurrying about. I thought the impending doom of the world would warm her to me, make her see how important family is. But if anything, she has only grown colder. I guess I can’t blame her. It’s because of me we were forced from our home.
“Alanis, tend to bed five. Make yourself useful for once,” she berates me.
Setting the last folded bandage into a box, I walk to the soldier whose abdomen is gaping open, pain etched across every line of his face. His lips are pale, breaths shallow. I’ve seen wounds like this since joining this rebel group, not many make it through.
Just another casualty of war.
Sadness pours through me, knowing that I don’t have the medical skills to fix this and our only real doctor is busy with another wounded rebel. There are too many to keep up with, beds filling as quickly as they empty.
The blood seeps between my fingers as I press my hands to his wound and try to think of a plan. If only I could find a way to stop the bleeding, I could buy him more time until the doctor is available. Each passing second the man slowly slips away. I can sense death looming around us, everywhere you look.
A woman bursts through the tent carrying a newborn and her cries rip me to shreds. “Oh my Gods. Lenny!”
She’s screaming a name, tears coursing down her face as she races towards me. I pray to any Gods who are listening that this man whose stomach I’m holding together isn’t the man she cries for. That the man dying in front of me is not her husband, the father of her infant child.
Unfortunately, the Gods never seem to listen. The woman falls to her knees, grasping the man’s hand. “Please, you have to save him!”
She’s crying and screaming. I watch the man gingerly cup her face, then his son’s, love shining in his gaze.
A pang shoots straight into my heart, the sadness so overwhelming that the room around me dims and a tingle starts in my fingertips. I glance down, shocked at the light blue light emanating from the tips of my fingers.
The woman gasps, eyes wide. Ice slowly trickles out onto the man’s injury, freezing his blood and effectively cauterizing the wound. It takes only seconds.
Joy fills my veins that this man now has a fighting chance until the doctor can tend to him, but dread quickly follows.
I stare at my hands, fear slithering along my spine like a snake. My eyes begin to burn, a sure sign tears are soon to follow.
Illegal magic. It wasn’t a weird coincidence at the school house.
Whipping my head towards the woman, I prepare for the worst. She’s staring at me, mouth open in shock. When our eyes meet, she reaches forward, grabbing my hand and causing me to flinch back. This doesn’t deter her; she holds on tighter and whispers so low I almost miss it.
“Thank you…” Tears stream down her face. “Thank you for saving him. We won’t tell a soul.”
The air whooshes from my body, relief overtaking the panic. I nod and quietly slip out of the medical tent.
What the hell was that? How am I going to explain this to the doctor? Oh Gods, how am I going to tell my mom that we have to leave again because of me? What if the sentries find out and I’m putting everyone I love at risk again?
The panic builds and my eyesight blurs. I’m gasping for breath, kneeling behind the tent, when Elion finds me. His gaze floats over me and then behind me at the rebels coming back to camp from the forest. “Come on, sis. Let’s take a walk and find some food.”
Grumbling, I follow him to the treeline about ten feet from where we stand at the back of the medical tent. The last time we went out, we ended up sorely disappointed, but I am thankful for distraction.
I walk further into the woods no longer sure where exactly we are, but knowing we are in a different territory than the one we lived in. We’re far enough in the woods that the camp in just a speck in the distance. The bombs have done a number on livestock and crops, and resources are dwindling. Soon the camp will have to pack up and move somewhere new, hopefully somewhere with more life-sustaining food and herbs.
We have been here for a little over a month, hoping and praying the world would find peace.
It’s only worsened.
An explosion rocks the ground.
The tremors in the earth are so strong that I’m forced to hold onto a tree to stay upright, the bark of the trunk scraping the palm of my hand. Elion comes racing towards me, having gone up ahead to search for fresh water.
“Are you all right?”
I read his lips, unable to hear his actual words over the ringing and the sound of my own erratic heart.
Smoke catches my attention in the distance.
My heart plummets.
“No…it can’t be.”
We take off running, praying that our assumptions are wrong.
I’m out of breath by the time we get back to camp. The smoke slowly rising, but still thick making it difficult to see.
Our camp should be here. Confusion wars with terror. Elion is yelling at me, but my hearing still isn’t recovered fully. My body is moving, but I don’t think my brain is processing what I’m seeing.
Bodies charred and unidentifiable. The smell of smoke and burning flesh permeate the air.
I gag, trying to ward off the stench. My knees buckle as I throw up what little I’ve eaten today. We were just here. If Elion hadn’t insisted we look for food, we would have been here.
Wiping my mouth, I walk to where our family’s tent was, kicking through the pile of ash. My toe catches on something. I pull my sleeve over my hand and gingerly pick up the item I kicked.
A silver ring.
My father’s ring that has been passed down through generations. The one he never took off. I clasp the heirloom to my chest, tears blurring my vision. Elion comes to stand next to me, placing a hand on my shoulder in comfort.
Seconds. Seconds was all it took for the bomb to destroy everything. A shout in the distance has Elion turning towards the trail about fifty feet away that leads through the brush and out onto the main road. The roads now occupied by sentries seeking out rebel groups to eradicate.
“Lani, we can’t stay here. We need to go.”
I glance to where the medical tent once stood. The man I just saved and his poor family.
Gone in an instant.
My mother…gone.
I question my sanity when I mourn the injured rebel and his family more than my own mother.
Maybe I’m losing my mind.
I turn to Elion, in awe at his sheer strength to go on after losing so much. “Where? Where do we go?”
He looks up to the sky, as if searching for an answer. “Some of the men mentioned ships going to other realms. They got their wives and kids out. There is nothing left for us here.”
I swallow hard, anxiety pulsing in my ribs. I hardly fit in here, a place I’ve lived my entire life. I can only imagine how bad it will be somewhere foreign and new.
I can’t help but grieve for the families who will never see their husbands and fathers again. That kind of pain is the type to stay with you forever.
I follow Elion in a daze, lost in my thoughts and heartache. Elion won’t allow me to comfort him, he’s too stubborn. He has always refused to show emotions.
The trek to the ships takes over a week. The only port in this territory is guarded heavily by sentries, so we’re forced to find a captain who has a smaller ship and can dock near the cliffs where the water is rougher. The wood on the ship is worn, the paint faded, making it hard to tell if it is black or a strange shade of purple. The crashing of waves against the rocks below does little to calm my nerves. Others like us stand on the rocky ground below, and Elion and I crawl down the hill to get to the hidden ship. We watch as people are loaded on, and I send a quick prayer to the Gods that there is enough room for us. When the captain waves us on, I almost fall to my knees in gratitude.
“Come on, let’s get you settled.” The older man says, his beard white as snow.
“Why are you doing this? Helping so many people for nothing, when it could get you killed?” Elion asks.
The man smiles, his eyes crinkling in the corner. “All life has value and should be cherished. I lost my entire family to this war and if I can stop others from feeling that same pain, then I will die a happy man.”
We’re each assigned a canopy, and Elion and I get settled for the journey. The captain will stop at the four other realms and we may disembark at any of our choosing. Later that night, I’m staring at Elion as he watches the waves lap against the hull of the ship.
And for the first time in my life, I watch my older brother break. Tears shimmer in the moonlight as they cascade down his face. One would miss it if they weren’t looking close enough. His shoulders tremble with silent sobs.
I bite my lip to ward off the oncoming tears. I go to him, and for once he doesn’t hide his feelings to protect me. He lets me see them.
Each and every splinter of his broken heart.
I wrap my arms around him, squeezing as tightly as I can, as if that alone could glue him back together.
“They’re gone. They’re really gone.”
I don’t bother answering. It’s not really a question.
I just hold him to let him know I am here. That even though our parents are gone, he still has me.
“No matter what this life throws at us, you will always have me,” I whisper. And I swear in that moment he squeezes me tighter, and I think maybe, for once in our lives, my big brother will lean on me for support.
The first time we made berth at a new realm, Elion thought it was perfect. Waves crashed against the nearby shore, the smell of salt wafted off the cerulean blue water, but something gave me pause. It was like my body didn’t like the idea of departing yet, a tugging sensation holding me back as I moved close to the portside entryway, the gangplank lowered to the pier.
Elion was crestfallen, but he was open to the idea of seeing what the other realms held. The second stop wasn’t promising. Elion surveyed the land with a scrutinizing gaze, his lips pursed. A darkness seemed to cling to every hill and mountaintop, neither of us thrilled with the idea of disembarking into this harsh, barren land. We couldn’t even see a city. Nothing more than this little fishing village. No one else disembarked here, either.
We were both losing hope and I apologized to Elion several times that we didn’t stay at the first stop. He just waved off my concerns. But when the captain docked in the Primal Realm, I just knew. This was where I was meant to be. That tugging sensation was back, encouraging me to follow.
“Elion, this is it. I feel a…pull, like a tether is tied to me and leading me here. I think it’s a sign,” I whisper in awe. The trees scattered throughout the harbor are covered in multiple different colored leaves, and a cool breeze brings with it the smell of something sweet. Citizens ambled about in the harbor, soldiers of the crown standing near the bottom of the gangplank, helping newcomers find their way. A male grabs my attention, standing a few steps from the dock, his piercing green eyes seemingly staring into my soul. Goosebumps break out across my skin and I avert my eyes, a blush rising to my cheeks.
“Are you sure? The first stop was warmer,” Elion mumbles.
A sharp sensation pulls me forward toward the gangplank. “This is it. This is where we are supposed to be.”