A Tale Of Time

Five

                                                                                                                                                                Age of Ayznver

                                                                                                                                                                Year 750B

                                                                                    ARIANA

AS SOON as the rest of the soldiers left, the bravery that I put up, the front that had shielded me crumpled so completely that it was too difficult to stand. I slumped to the floor. It was easy to be strong in front of others but when the haters were gone and the only thing left was me and my own thoughts, the idea that those who were a constant fixture in my life, be it friend or foe, may not return the same way, in the same number scared me. It made me miserable. That I must send men who did not know who I was to where they would die for me. While I sat here, praying to gods that may never answer, for their speedy and victorious return.

I cursed my gender and station in moments like those.

A soft, gentle hand touched my shoulder. Vanessa was not a friend, not like what Rook was to me, but it was somehow important to me to have someone who understood me, the sacrifice I bore because of my birth and the silence I suffered and would continue to suffer until the war was over and I was reinstated.

So I pulled her down to the forest floor, to where I sat and cried on her shoulder, letting her see the momentary weakness in me. She held me without speaking and I was grateful. Platitudes were nonsensical now, after all.

She patted my dark hair, "The gods will bring them home safe."

I frowned in her arms and pulled away, my well-deserved anger against the gods raging in my chest. I didn't want to hear about non-existent gods and their hands in our fate.

She didn't notice my discomfort, "All we have to do is remain prayerful and devout. The war gods will bring us victory and-"

"There are no gods!"

I didn't mean to blurt those words out and I knew how offended Vanessa would be. But I couldn't keep on taking those excuses. The gods had been remarkably absent all my life; I wouldn't start believing in them now.

Vanessa, as expected, shifted with discomfort, "I understand your impatience, Princess. But blasphemy is the fastest way to lose favor and-"

"Well I've already lost favor so I might as well say what I think!" I was so angry. At the gods, at her, at the Rebels and at myself. The world and their gods could burn for all I cared. It was easier to think that way than to accept the fragility of life. The way it flitted by like the seasons. "My adopted parents were devout too. They didn't deserve the lot they were given."

"The gods work in mysterious ways-"

"That's just an excuse priests use to keep people coming. They have to make a living somehow and the sacrifices are very extravagant most days-"

"Princess!"

Her cry jolted me from my tirade. Her eyes were wide with fear and discomfort. And her voice dropped to a quiet whisper, "With all due respect, please do not insult my religion before me. I serve the gods before the Crown and I don't want to do anything that might-"

Her eyes bugged out at her imprudence and she bowed to me, muttering apologies. I wondered how it felt to be so devoted to an entity that you would defy royalty.

I almost envied her.

I touched her arm and she flinched. It hurt. Did she think I would hurt her? Did she really see me that way? I smiled at her when she looked up through her long lashes, "It's okay, I provoked you. I won't say another word against your beliefs."

Vanessa gave me a shy but surprised smile. I guessed that royalty should be stricter, but I couldn't do it. It was alien to be hard on others.

We sat in uncomfortable silence, our fight lingering in the air like a bad stench. I wanted it gone but I wasn't so social as to engage in small talk with her.

"Tell me about your adopted parents."

I frowned. I was grateful that she'd tried to bridge the gap but she'd done it with the worst possible topic. Already the air of pain that assailed me whenever I remembered them was had begun to crush my chest, burning my heart to cinders.

"Princess?" She asked when I didn't speak, "If it's uncomfortable-"

"It's okay," I cut in. I wanted to talk about it. It was just...hard. So I called on the memories, the happy ones first, the planes of golden grass that surrounded our Southern Helirean home. And I smiled, "I lived with the Hales for as long as I could remember. My father... their father was Philip. Philip Hale was a... he was a tall man and he had a small farm beside our little house where he kept his cows and chickens."

"It seems quaint."

"It was. I was assigned to the animals because it was just right for me. I was the weakest kid, after all. And my mother... Anna-Marie Hale? She was a slave driver!" I laughed weakly, "She would wake us at the c***k of dawn and make us clean up the whole house. The wooden floors would be sparkling before we went to play in the grass."

"You had siblings?"

I nodded, my mood plummeting and eyes prickling, "Adela and Aaron. They... they didn't like me much. Now that I think about it, they didn't like me at all. Adela always said spiteful things and Aaron would tear my clothes or cut my hair in the night. I guess I was an intrusion into their picture perfect lives."

Vanessa was silent now with the news of what I'd gone through. Of the barest sliver of my harrowing childhood.

"One day in particular stands out. Aaron had locked me out of the house all night and I as was screaming. Anna Marie came out." I could see it, the memories like moving pictures before me, "She told me to stop shouting and leave. That I wasn't her child. I think she was drunk; she'd gone to town for a party the night before. But nothing was the same after that. I knew I didn't belong in that quaint little house."

"What did you do?"

"I ran." I huffed, self-depreciatingly, "Into the forest, this familiar forest and I spent hours and hours there with-"

I stopped. 

There were different types of pain. The dull kind, the kind that faded quickly, the one that was so sharp and cruel that you couldn't breathe from it and the kind that stayed forever, like an extension of yourself.

The latter was the type I had when I thought of Vael Erlich.

The boy in the forest.

"With?"

I turned sharply to her, the daze I'd slipped into vanishing in an instant, "What?"

"With what?"

"With the animals and my own thoughts. I spent time with the animals and my thoughts."

Now I'd thought of Vael, I couldn't stop. He was there; dark green eyes and a crooked smile. I wondered how I could still remember every detail after six years. How everything he'd ever said could be crystal in my mind.

No, I had to stop.

Or I would kill myself with missing him.

"I was coming out of the forest one morning," The morning Vael had disappeared, "When I saw the Rebels. Big brutes of men that laid waste to the picture perfect family. Anna-Marie was beheaded, Aaron and Philip hung by the barn naked and whipped and Adela-" My voice caught at the nightmarish memory, "Adela was r***d and left for the world to see. She slit her own wrists because she could not bear the pain. And they were dead... because I interfered, because I came to live with them."

If I hadn't, Philip would be at his farm milking the cows and Aaron would be chopping the wood. Anna-Marie would be cleaning her little cottage and Adela... pretty Adela would be dancing in the summer wind.

Sometimes I wondered if they cursed my name to their deaths.

Vanessa gasped and tears glistened on her lashes, "How did you-"

"I ran." I said, voice hoarse. This memory too, was vivid, "I ran as fast as I could. Because I couldn't look anymore, because  I wasn't brave enough to die with them. Clayton found me hours later. He knew who I was immediately and brought me to the camp."

Silence again.

This time it was the stunned type. Like we couldn't tell what to say or how to act. Any joviality between us was shattered now and for once I was grateful.

Memories were so painful to relive that-

Rustling leaves alerted us.

Vanessa and I rose together, staring at the edge of the forest from where the noise had come. I tried to rationalize things. It could've been an animal. It could've been a soldier who had forgotten his shoes. It could've been anything! We were being paranoid. There was absolutely no reason why my heart would pound with fear of death, of capture... of loss.

I took a step back.

Two men emerged from the thicket. Both were similar looking: bald heads and hawk like noses with the most burly arms and bodies. They were hardened; there was the tell-tale bloodthirsty glint in their eyes. Like they'd spent their formative years in the dungeons.

The one on the left smiled, "Who's the princess?"

Vanessa and I shared glances. By custom, she should take the fall for me. I knew that. She knew that. But the wild look in her eyes told me how much she wanted to live, how much she wished I would spare her. And in truth what was the point of giving her up to them? What was the guarantee that they wouldn't just drag us both away? We would both die.

So I stood with nothing to lose but another precious life, one of the thousands I could save and said, "It is I. And who are you?"

They looked at each other like they couldn't believe that I'd be asking them to have manners. And then they lunged for me.

THE FOREST remembered me.

It remembered the little girl who raced into its embrace when she was rejected by her family. It remembered the girl that traversed it, running after a boy that could never be hers. It aided a princess who had her life to save.

"You can run, little princess, but it won't change a thing!"

It was true. Vael had taught me to read the breaths behind me to estimate location, he'd taught me trust my instincts when running in the forest, he'd showed me how to slide between two trees that were so close by each other, it looked like they shared the same trunk.

But those men weren't greenhorns, they'd overpower me sooner or later.

I took a sharp turn and sliced the poplin material of my shirt. A dull sting burned down my arm but I didn't stop. If I did, I wouldn't be able to continue.

Adrenaline pumped through me till I was nothing but wind and instinct. I didn't know the end from the beginning or how I would escape. I didn't know how Vanessa fared or how bad the growing burn on my arm was.

All I knew was the sound of their shouts and grunts as I got farther and farther...

The littlest things bring Man's downfall. It was something Philip Hale was fond of saying. In retrospect I probably shouldn't have insulted the gods because whether or not they truly existed, fate was like a manipulative woman. She took and she gave at her own time. It was a root, of one of the smaller trees. It was a single wrong move, a twist of foot and I was falling... down the sloping forest floor and I was rolling and rolling and rolling, faster and faster till I was dizzy and the world was in circles.

Then I crashed into a tree.

And the world was black.