Chapter 25 Alfrie
Chapter twenty-five
Alfrie
The rising sun burns my eyelids, and I wake to my mother singing as she makes breakfast for me and my sister.
My father rustles around outside of our small hut he built with his bare hands, and the lingering billows of smoke of surrounding firepits fill my nostrils.
My mother asks me to help my father with whatever project he’s working on that morning, and I obey, pulling open the leather flap door.
The silence is odd. And so is the emptiness of the nearby huts and dirt paths that wind their way through our village.
Even my father’s rustling with his tools ceases and he meets me at the door of our hut with a hammer in hand, squinting in the distance as if he senses something foul in the air.
Not a minute later, the thundering echo of dozens of hooves beating heavily over the ground smothers the silence.
And there’s a scream from somewhere on the other side of the village. Then another scream. And another.
Then…chaos.
My father yanks me by the arm and throws me backward through the flap of our hut where my mother is already huddled up and crying in the corner, holding my little sister tightly to her chest. The hoof beats draw closer and the sound of steel-on-steel rings through the air.
I want to see what’s going on. I want to help my father.
I crawl back through the doorway, fighting off my mother’s grip around my ankle and ignoring her pleas for me to stay inside.
As soon as sunlight hits my eyes, I’m met with two soldiers, black armor covering every inch of them except for their eyes that are black as night and just as empty. Unseelie.
They’re standing menacingly over my father who is on his hands and knees in the dirt. One of the soldiers raises his sword high above his head and before I can even cry out, it comes down swiftly on my father’s neck.
I fall to my knees. I can’t breathe. I can’t scream. I just stare in horror as my father’s head rolls unnaturally in the dirt and away from his lifeless body. The soldiers notice me and one of them reaches for my arm and drags me over to them. I don’t fight them. Not at first.
My mother’s wails from behind me pull me from my state of shock. I turn my head only to see more horses and more soldiers lighting the thatched roofs of the village huts ablaze with their torches.
I can’t move. Can’t do anything but watch as my mother and sister are pushed back into our hut, two soldiers following.
My mother is screaming, and my sister is crying.
Soon, the crying stops, and the sounds of my mother’s screams grow louder from inside of the hut.
I scramble to get to them, but the hut is already engulfed in flames.
The soldiers who had assaulted her are already fleeing the hut, barricading my mother inside.
I grab the hammer from the ground next to my father’s headless body and run to the soldiers standing outside the flap with their swords, waiting to kill anyone who tries to escape out of the flaming hut.
The next bit’s a blur.
I take off running, hammer held high above my head, snarling with bared teeth.
I’m like a feral animal. Thinking only of blood and vengeance.
My body takes over and I shift for the first time.
My limbs elongate painfully, causing me to trip and roll on the ground as my spine cracks and lengthens.
I’m not aware of what shape my body chooses.
Everything is a blur of fur and teeth and claws.
I go from catching my breath on my hands and knees to growling through massive canines on four paws, stalking my prey through narrowed green and feline eyes.
The soldiers back away slowly, fear illuminating their black eyes as I prowl closer. Some even shift into their own forms but still retreat at the sight of me. Maybe they can see the rawness of my rage in my eyes and know I hunger for their deaths over anything else in that moment.
I roar in pain and desperation as they scatter away and into the woods.
I’m not fully prepared and don’t have an image to hold onto as I don’t even know what shape my body has chosen.
I transform back into my true form, writhing on the ground.
A form wrought from emotion is nearly impossible to recall or to latch onto and I’m left panting, sweat rolling off of my forehead and I fall onto my stomach in the dirt.
The chaos and screaming that rang throughout the village is no more.
The only sound is the crackling of flames as they swallow my entire world right in front of me.
I pick myself up from the ground and tears blend with the sweat rolling from my face as I gaze at the dozens of bonfires that once were huts.
Homes. Bodies are strewn along the paths, either bloodied and headless or covered with soot and ash.
I whip my head to my right to assess my own hut.
Black smoke pours from the thatched roof and orange bursts of flames threaten to beat me to my mother.
Without thinking I race inside the hut, coughing and choking on the blanket of smoke filling the small space.
My mother lies in a heap on the floor, her skirts pulled up around her waist. She isn’t moving, but she’s still breathing.
My sister is motionless in the corner, facedown and bloody, a bright green liquid pooling around her small body.
I force myself to look away and I grab my mother by the wrists, struggling and holding my breath as I pull her limp body out of the hut.
My lungs burn but I keep dragging her through the dirt and out into the air.
I fix and smooth her skirts down and push her mussed hair from her forehead, lowering my face to her nose and mouth listening for signs of life.
Her eyes are glazed over, and she vacantly stares past me and up to the sky.
Tears sting my eyes, and I lift her upper body into my arms, her charred skin sloughing off and sliding through my fingers in chunks as I pull her to my chest.
I drop her body into the dirt and blink in terror when I glance down at my soiled hands.
In my periphery, a soldier stalks toward me.
He’s unmasked and unglamoured, and his hideous features etch themselves into the deepest parts of my soul.
His onyx eyes bore into me and tears stream down my face at the sight of his grotesque face, wrinkled with hatred and dark magic.
I tremble in fear but can’t run or even move.
His monstrous lips curl over his fangs in a snarl and large hands with jagged claws reach for me.
My world spirals out of control and my vision blurs, and before he grabs me, I collapse in a heap next to my dead mother. My eyes roll into the back of my head and I surrender to the blackness, waiting for the end. I lose consciousness just as more hooves and soldiers’ boots approach.
They belong to a king. King Hardin and his young son, Prince Leer. They pull me from the ground, still clutching onto a piece of my mother’s skin, and I’m whisked off to Lanray.
My stomach roils and I jump up quickly from my cot and run to the basin, retching at the memory of my mother’s sloughing skin on my hands…
in my nails. I heave again, the taste of bile reminding me why I continuously force the memory from my brain every minute of every day.
I brace my hands against the table, my eyes wet with tears.
I have to pull myself together.
I never asked Leer why he begged his father to rescue me that day. And I never will. I survived, but no one else did. I heard and smelled only death that day. The males I followed earlier to the kitchens are wrong. They have to be.
Yet, I can’t stop thinking about the possibility that someone from my village managed to escape the attack so many years ago. I’ve been distracted all day wondering. Hoping. Then proceeding to get angry with myself for believing, even for a moment, that it could be possible.
I learned a long time ago that hoping is for fools.
I rinse out my mouth and wipe my face, then stand in front of the small square window next to the bed.
I can just barely make out the border to the Woodlands from this side of the castle and a part of me wants to know for sure.
Needs to know. I throw on a shirt and boots and blow out the candle that lights my room before slipping silently out the door.
This is ridiculous. The Woodlands between Masseda and Lanray are gargantuan.
There’s no feasible way to locate a village that has kept itself hidden for the last ten years.
Not in one night anyway. But here I am, traipsing along the dark wooded paths toward the tree line armed with only a torch and a blade I borrowed from the soldiers’ barracks.
I don’t even know what I’m searching for.
But I know I heard them in the courtyard. Voices. Whispers of the past beckoning me. I have to do this. Even if the only thing I uncover is my own insanity. I hold my chin higher and step toward the blackness of the Woodlands.
Footsteps charge me from behind and I whirl around, clutching the blade, ready to fight. I exhale, lowering my weapon. “Leer? What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?” My voice shakes and my hand quivers around the hilt of the knife in my sweaty palms.
Leer holds a lantern with one hand and the other rests on the pommel of the sword at his waist. It takes him a moment to register it’s me standing in front of him.
After a beat, he releases the pommel. “There you are. I saw you leave the palace and wander toward the Woodlands alone. Are you insane? There was an attack out here only yesterday. What are you even doing awake at this hour?”
I consider telling him about the rumor I heard that morning.
About the voices that called me—how I thought it was a good idea to search aimlessly in the forest by myself for what could only be described as a fantasy.
But worry creases his forehead and dark circles hang heavy below his eyes, so, I don’t admit to what I’m doing.
I shrug. “I read about a flower that only blooms at night—it’s good for, um, insomnia.
” I maintain eye contact, willing him to believe my lame story.
He regards me and my tale for a second, and I nearly expect him to call me out on it. His expression softens, and he gives me the pitying smile I loathe. “Have you been having the nightmares again?”
I’m surprised he remembers. When I was first brought to Lanray, the day of my family’s slaughter replayed over and over in my mind every time I closed my eyes. I didn’t sleep for days. Leer and Hardin said they were nightmares. I simply call them memories.
Leer doesn’t wait for a response and jerks his chin toward the palace. “Come on. Let’s get away from the woods before we’re supper for a lucky troll.”
I follow, staying one step behind. My ears perk and the soft whispers of voices float around me, begging me to turn back. I stop and glance back into the darkness. But there’s nothing there. Just a remnant of hope I should have let go of a long time ago.