Chapter 1
715 Words
I’m not sleeping but I’m not opening my eyes. I can feel a beat drilling through my skull and causing my headache and a hideous taste in my mouth. And the smell. And strange noises. It doesn't sum up.
As far as I remember, I was trying to pass the street and something hit me. It was big and fast and I was knocked out. I should be in a hospital, recuperating from the accident, but there would be a scent of disinfectants and noises of medical equipment. Not smell of mud and stables. I know how stable smells because dad once managed to take me to summer horseriding camp. These were my best holidays ever. I was free and treated just like every teenager, I could fall from the horseback and no one was yelling and panicking. Mom was furious when she found out.
And the noises I hear, I can’t compare it to anything I know.
After a while, I decide to try to move my limbs. They are stiff, but this is stiffness after a deep sleep and they definitely don’t hurt. If they were broken after an accident, they should be hurting like hell. But I can move them freely. And I don’t feel anything attached to my body. No needles or pulse oximeter. I have some experience with hospitals, I’ve been there several times, mostly when mom panicked after some minor accidents.
I’m hungry. I mean really hungry as if I haven’t eaten for days. My stomach feels like it was stuck to my spine. That is the reason I decide to open my eyes. Yes, I'm all primitive instincts and needs and they are the reason I get up in the morning.
I’m expecting the overwhelming whiteness of a hospital room. Maybe some busy and tired nurses, mom dozing off on the chair. But to my surprise, everything is dirty dun colors. And the ceiling is uncommonly low.
A get an instant panic attack. Did they think I’m dead and they buried me alive? Am I in a coffin? No, there would be no light and sound underground. Enlightenment comes to me as I'm calming down. I’m in a tent. WHAT? A tent? How? Was I kidnapped? I’m not tied or gagged, but it doesn't have to mean anything. Maybe my captor is a lunatic, after all, he kidnapped a high school girl from a rather poor family and without special features.
I look at my body. Where are my clothes? I was wearing jeans and a purple shirt. And sneakers. And now I’m shoeless, in a grayish shirt made of some scratchy stuff and in some sort of leggings. They look like they were made of the same stuff as the tent.
I have no other choice, I have to get out from here. I find the boots that seem to fit me, they look like riding boots, only the soles are thicker. When I fold back the tent flap, I hear the trumpet signal. Like in the old war movies I used to watch with dad. But it isn’t the strangest thing around me. I’m in a medieval war camp. Only bigger, dirtier, more overcrowded, and looking far more realistic than those I know from the history festivals.
All I can see are ugly colored tents, horse carts, field kitchens, and soldiers. They are literally everywhere. And all is covered with dust and mud.
“Hey, grab your bowl or you’ll be late for breakfast.” Someone pats my shoulder. It’s a girl about my age, with sandy blonde hair put in a long braid and the bluest eyes I have ever seen. She smiles slightly, but I can see she is all tensed. “You wouldn’t like to fight the battle of Red Hills with an empty stomach,” she adds nervously.
Whatever is happening I'd better pretend to understand it. I quickly grab the bowl, there was one near the tent’s entrance, and go after her. The Red Hills? The battle? The bluest eyes. Suddenly something in my head clicks. It’s unbelievable, impossible, and probably ridiculous. But there is a way to find out.
“Alarana!” I shout and she turns at me with a question in her eyes.
Fuck. I’m in a book.
- Writer
