Chapter 14
1172 Words
Nobody was coming to visit me anymore. The walls of my new home were covered by strange plants, which made the place look like it was a desert. The smell of rotten flesh permeated the entire house, making it impossible to breathe properly. Even worse, there wasn't enough space between the walls of the orphanage and the fences so that animals were constantly entering and escaping in my garden.
I don't remember when it happened, but I fell asleep, without knowing that it was already late night. When I awoke the sun was shining brightly through the window, but no one was there. When I got up from my bed and went looking around, the whole castle was deserted. I asked around and found the person responsible: a servant was washing the dishes, and she said that my parents had gone to the village for a while. Although I was sad about being alone, I managed to hide myself in a corner of the kitchen. I wanted to spend as little time in this wretched house as possible. I wanted to leave this place, which was filled with the scents of rotting flesh and the stench of animal fur, forever! The sun continued shining outside, and the heat was still quite unbearable. A couple of hours later, I was finally allowed to leave the kitchen. As I stepped outside, I found myself in a large courtyard. On one side of the courtyard there were two big white statues of lions, while on the other side a small pond was located. These two statues belonged to the lions that surrounded the castle. I had never seen them in the daytime before. They seemed to be sleeping peacefully, as if nothing unusual had just happened a few days ago. But, when I looked closer, I noticed one of the sculptures wasn't moving; instead it was slowly turning its head sideways as if it were staring at something behind me. All of a sudden, a cold breeze blew from all around me, and I felt the temperature dropping. I instinctively pulled my hoodie further down on my head, but it barely seemed to change anything. My eyes began to search every inch of the courtyard in order to find out what had made this strange wind, but there was no one there. Only the lions were still lying calmly at their posts, staring straight ahead as if they didn't care at all about the weather. When I stood still for a moment and stared closely at them, I realized that they weren't real lions at all. They were just painted wooden statues. But why was their mouths open, as if someone was saying "Look here!"? Could they really have been talking? I tried listening carefully to what they were saying, but I couldn' hear anything from inside their mouths. I took a step towards them and moved my face nearer to theirs. They were indeed speaking, and each word they spoke was more clear than the last.
"Look here," said one of the two lion statues. "There is a girl who's hiding somewhere in the shadows."
As soon as those words escaped its mouth, the other statue suddenly jumped up and turned around. Then, all of a sudden, both of its heads started shaking furiously as if somebody was knocking at the door. That's when I realized that the doors to the palace hadn't been opened. This meant that whoever the girl was, she was still inside, and I could probably still save her. Since she couldn't escape from the rooms she was in, she had no way of escaping from me either. I turned around and ran as fast as I could. I arrived at the entrance of the palace just as the guards came rushing down the corridor towards me. The moment they noticed that it was me who had arrived, they stopped chasing me and greeted me with an "Elder Brother". It always amazed me whenever people treated me like a child, which made me angry whenever they addressed me in such a manner. After they greeted me, they asked me what I needed, and as soon as I answered with "a sword" they brought me the sword that I had been carrying around with me yesterday. I quickly put the sword on, and then we headed into the inner part of the palace. I followed the guards into a huge hall, which led to another courtyard with tall columns. In the middle of this courtyard were two thrones. On top of each throne there hung a painting, one of which was of two women, one with blond hair and the other with black hair. The paintings were so beautiful that it made me wonder why the artists had thought that it was necessary to use them to make such beautiful paintings. From this room there were several corridors leading to different rooms, and I could hear loud sounds coming from them. One was screaming, while the others were laughing. Suddenly, they fell quiet when I passed through. Their faces suddenly became deadly serious and they stood up. I approached them and bowed to them. When I raised my head I saw that one of them was the man whom I had attacked in the forest. His face had been badly cut, but it didn't affect him much. Instead, he looked at me suspiciously, and I guessed that he wasn't used to people having respect towards him. I looked at him and asked:
"Do you know which way the princess has gone?"
The old man replied to my question:
"The first direction that she has gone. Why are you asking?"
And before I could answer him, the guard behind me interrupted:
"Master, it doesn't seem good that Master wants us to help that girl."
"That isn't possible," the man answered angrily. "We need to follow orders. If it weren't for our king telling us not to kill anyone, we would have done it already. We will continue following his order even if he himself is not there." And without waiting for any of the men to reply, he grabbed my arm tightly, and forced me into one of the corridors before leading me down a few more flights of stairs. The noises that I had heard before began getting louder, and I could feel myself starting to get anxious. At least three or four girls had appeared on these corridors and started shouting my name loudly: "Zoey!" and "Auntie Em!". The old man let go of my arm and walked along in front of me. After I had reached the end of the corridor and had come across the door of the princess's bedroom, the guards stopped me once again, and I heard the sound of footsteps approaching the door from behind.
I stood in front of the door, holding onto the handle of the sword tightly. As the door opened, a voice rang out in front of me:
"Are you Zoey?"
- Writer
