Chapter 14 #3
The puppeteer flounced them around the set, the king a controlling tyrant, the girl a mix of foolish, vain, and entitled.
The puppeteer brought on a dark figure with a gold crown, a mirror in one hand, a knife in the other. He laughed with menace as he stabbed the Day King. “I am the ruler now!”
The crowd clapped and laughed as my father’s puppet died a long, over-the-top death, declaring poetic language as he lay over the abundance of food like it was his deathbed. The girl just as overdramatic, crying over her father’s body.
Tears caught in my throat, bile swimming in my stomach. Was this how they saw us?
“You are so pretty.” The dark king held up the mirror, talking to it instead of the girl. “You are mine, you gorgeous thing you!”
The crowd laughed as he kissed the mirror, then finally turned to the girl. “I guess you’re pretty too.”
The crowd howled with amusement.
“You have magical blood, I hear. Powerful enough to heal the dying land!” The Night King took the girl.
“Kill her! Kill her!” everyone, including the kids, chanted out.
Why would they want me dead? I was the symbol that would save this land.
“No! No! I am too miraculous and above all others, right, Father?” The girl looked back at her dead father.
His body sat up. “Yes, Daughter.” Then collapsed back down dead again.
“See?” she retorted.
The crowd howled.
“You’re pretty.” The Night King laughed maniacally, lecherously feeling her up, while he drove a blade into my doll, stealing her crown. “But not as pretty as me.”
My figure squealed like a pig, the crowd chanting louder as the puppeteer spurted out red ribbon from a hole in the white dress, dying a dramatic demise next to the Day King.
The group whooped and clapped at our deaths as more red string pooled over the ground. The scene continued, but I couldn’t take any more.
Vomit burned up my throat as I sprinted away, my vision blurred with tears. I ran from the show, tears hiccuping in my throat. The glee the people expressed at my death. Portraying me as selfish, and simple, with no thoughts of my own. My father gluttonous, and tyrannical.
We were the villains here.
My feet carried me farther in my need to escape myself, to forget what I had just seen.
This was what people thought we were like?
It made no sense. My father grew extra food in the hothouses and sent it to other villages.
He was anything but greedy and he was always fair and just in his dealings with others.
And I wasn’t empty-minded and acted superior to others. Right? It wasn’t my fault this was the position I was given in life.
Gasping for air, I came to a stop at the edge of a ravine, the twilight lowering further in the sky. Bending over, I spat up bile, my heart heavy with anguish.
“Well, look what we have here.” A nasal voice jerked my head to the side. A lean man strolled toward me with a large nose, dressed in a worn brown tunic. Something about him seemed familiar, prickling at my anxiety.
“Such a pretty thing.” He licked his lips. Three more rough-looking men expanded out around me. My eyes darted to one with white hair peeking out from his threadbare wool hat. He was a Day Raven, yet his gaze held nothing but contempt for me, like he despised his own kind.
They cautiously encircled me, trying to capture a wild animal.
I shuffled back and gravel crumbled away under my heels, falling feet below, forcing me to scramble away from the drop.
“What is a stunning creature like you doing out here all alone?” Large Nose asked, holding the ego of someone in charge. His gaze crawled over me like spiders, trying to see what was behind my cloak.
“I-I w-w-wanna break this one in, Boss.” Another man on my right side stuttered awkwardly, like he was still learning words. He was tall and built, his flat, wide nose appearing to have been broken a dozen times, his face and hands a map of scars, broken bones, cuts, and bruises.
“You’re gonna stick to fighting, K?mpe,” the “Boss” replied.
“I get to break in all merchandise before selling them.” He moved in closer, yanking the hood from my head, my long hair tumbling down.
“A Day Raven. You are valuable in these parts. You will fetch me a high price at auction, won’t you?
You have something very high-born about you; a quality an owner will have fun beating out. ”
The notion of where I had seen him before finally clicked in, turning my blood cold.
He was the man selling thralls on the side of the road when we came into town.
“I’ll have fun sampling first. Test her skills.
” He leered, snapping his fingers. “Put her in the wagon.” He turned around and started walking toward a cart and horse hidden in the shadow of the trees.
I hadn’t even realized until now how quiet it was; there were no people or buildings.
I was on the outskirts of the town. Alone.
The three burly men stepped for me.
I scampered back, the edge of the drop decaying under me, swinging my arms to stay steady. They pounced, grabbing for me.
My training took over.
“No!” I shouted. I swung out, punching one of them in the face, doubling him back. I bolted forward, zipping through an opening between the attackers, my hair fluttering by them like rope.
Pain snapped my head back as a hand wrapped in my tresses, easily yanking me back. In practice I had always tucked it up into a tight braid, never thinking an attack on me would come when I wasn’t battle-ready. I’d never considered my hair as a weakness.
K?mpe’s hands gripped my shoulders, drawing me to him. Yanric would tell me when I complained about having no weapon and several fighters coming for me: “Sometimes a bird has to fly against the wind.”
Using him as leverage, I slammed my heel into his foot, ramming my head forward into his flat nose.
I heard the pop, the crack of cartilage as pain exploded across my skull, feeling like it hit a brick.
His grip on me never faltered, holding me tighter as my legs bowed under the pain, my vision blurring.
A loud laugh clipped the air.
“Did you think that would work?” the Boss said from the wagon. “K?mpe gets hit in the face and head countless times a night, he has no brain or feeling left in that skull.”
K?mpe chuckled along, oblivious to the blood dripping from his face, or the insult.
“But I love your spirit. Always more fun to housebreak.” Boss’s humor fell away. “Now stop wasting time and get her in the cart.”
The man I had punched moved in, wrapping my already sore wrists together. Vomit sizzled the back of my throat, my body freezing in panic and fear, not able to fight my way free. Panic attacks could hit me out of nowhere, rendering me useless in a fight.
The third man, the Day Raven, smirked contemptuously at me, a sinister glint in his eyes.
“Say goodnight, tispe.” A burlap bag dropped over my head before pressure slammed down on my head with a thud.
“Fuck, Hvit, don’t hurt the merchandise!”
Blackness took me before I even felt pain.