The shadows calling
The long winding road and surrounding forest was held tightly by winters cold grip, the grass around me bled with snow and hardened blue frost. The way ahead was blocked by a great fallen oak tree, its arms splayed along the frost over pathway like it was reaching out for help.
"Stop!" shouted my Father to the rest of the travelling troupe on their wagons in urgency.
"This is going to add an extra few hours onto the nearest town, curses!
"Honey" said my mother in a sweet, warm motherly voice
"Could you go and find some sage for us?" I had always enjoyed going off into the wilderness on my own, running errands for people. Being alone with my thoughts. It was safer that way, because weird things always happened when I was around other people, or , perhaps, I'm just extremely unlucky to be around.
I made my way out of the dimly lit, well furnished oak wagon. The rooms were spacey, as they need to be, because we were performers, we needed a lot of space for our performing equipment, all different shapes and sizes, colours and materials neatly packed around the room like a jigsaw piece to a puzzle. This particular wagon was lined in red linen silk, with a red felt couch on either side, and a curiously large mirror bearing above the middles of either couch. I stepped down, the familiar tickle of wet green bladed grass gently overwhelmed my shoeless feet. Sounds of laughing and cheering of drunk men telling each other stories, and of women laughing as their male friends began to dance around a rather large burning, blazing orange fire rang in my ears, and the strong smell of smoke lingered in my nose sticking like glue, whilst the light flickering shadows expanded across the white grass and frozen dirt and large shadow figures danced. It was a rather homely atmosphere, after all, I had grown up travelling in the troupe my whole life.
I walked away quite slowly, I wanted to savour this atmosphere, and thank God I did. I had gathered a whole armful of this dull, poignant green sage. I thought my parents would be proud of how much I had gathered, and they probably would have been. I began to make my way back to the life filled camp, only, it wasn't life filled anymore. As I got nearer to the camp I found it really quite strange, I couldn't hear the consistent shouting and laughing, I couldn't smell the burning of meat over a fire, instead, I heard a dull void of nothing but a dim fie crackling and the smell of burned, singed hair. I got closer, and as I got slower the shadows of distance unravelled and revealed strewn bodies hanging over the now lifeless wagons like broken dolls, steam rising from the bodies in the cold winter fog. The bodies were painted with a dim flickering light coming from a camp-fire around ten metres away from where I was stood. The shock hit me like an unexpected slap to the face. I didn't know how to react. I felt like crying but no tears came of it. I felt like screaming but no voice escaped my mouth. I tried not to think about it. I tried not to think about how my parents probably lay upon these slain innocent, friendly people I grew up with. I had hoped they died together hand in hand. I had hoped that while I went away picking for sage that they spent their final moments oblivious to their impending doom, in each others arms, gazing into one another's souls sharing their love like they had always done, even while I was around, focusing only on each other. I hoped. But of course this is life and not a fairy tale, and my irrational but truthful mind tells me that they probably spent their last moments screaming their souls to the abyss with glazed wet eyes of desperation.
I looked up from the mass of limp bodies, trying to make sense of what was happening through my blurred eyes, my brain wasn't functioning properly. It felt as if a giant piece of me had been severed from my hopeless cavern of a soul. My mind was a numb void. It felt as if my parents had been consistently telling me over 500 different things to do in the space of 5 seconds, only this time it was my brain spewing out commands and questions to me.
I heard a faint but certain strong and deep voice talking. I guess at the time I thought they were survivors. I guess they were survivors in the sense that when knights finish assaulting a castle the remaining were survivors. Just because they are survivors, though, doesn't mean they are good people. My primal instinct was to run towards them and for once I followed that instinct, and that once will never be repeated by me again. I am led to danger like a magnet. I ran straight to where the whispering voices dancing around me in the air trailed towards. A group of men. But something was off. They seemed content. I'm not sure if it was the ashen smoke that had altered their eyes creating a cloudy black veil over them or their eyes were just empty black orbs normally. They were now staring at me, what little conversation they had was hushed down to dim silence. Bloodied crimson swords in hand, their grip tightened as if gravity had suddenly become stronger like they'd drop their swords if they weren't this tightly gripped.
"You left one, Cinder." Said the shadow cloaked man mockingly, standing off in the corner of the fire light.
"Well, why don't you go kill him then instead of waiting for me to do it, I can't do everything you know." Snarled Cinder in reply.
The air felt tight all of a sudden, like we were in a vacuumed area of space, the air felt too thick to breathe. The fire light seemed to redirect all onto the shadow cloaked man, lighting him up like it was almost the afternoon, attracting everyone's attention along with it.
"Cinder, you know what I can do to you." His voice echoed in my ears, sounding much more severe than the whispers before. "Now, deal with the kid, I have business elsewhere." The shadow cloaked man veiled his hood upon his dark head, and as the silk veil touched his head he evaporated into a thin, dark mist.
The men looked at me. It was tense. Silence drowned my ears. Who I assumed was Cinder began to wipe his bloodied sword on his dark black leather pants, creating a smeared dark crimson palette of blood on the trousers. Cinder let out a sigh. A sigh that told me everything. A sigh that told me he has done this before with ease, that it's just another simple job like me picking for sage everyday. He began to slowly stride towards me, my heart desperately pumping more blood than it needed to, I could almost feel my heart clapping against my body in a violent manner. His steel, blood smudged sword began to rise into a swinging position, his feet twisted into some sort of stance. He smirked.
And what was I doing? Just standing there, staring death in its eyes? Then, when all hope was lost, when I knew that this would be the end of me, that there would be no great tales to be told about me because I was murdered by a group of savage, blood thirsty men, I became angry. It felt as if fire was now coursing through my veins and my facial expression matched the pain. I was angry. I was furious. My parents and friends that were like family to me were just slaughtered like pigs. I felt growing heat in my right hand, like I had stepped closer to the crackling fire, only, I hadn't. By the time I had finished realising my hand wasn't on fire, Cinder had begun to plunge his sword over head into me. I did what any child would do. I raised my right hand in front of my face, eyes closed, body in a weak fetal position and hoped that only my would be severed from the blow. In an instant I felt a sharp stinging sensation in my hand. Only, my hand was still there, intact and undamaged, in fact, the only pain I felt there fell upon me like a rubber band to my skin. I quickly observed my hand bringing it into view of my eyes, it was unscathed. What had just happened? I had only assumed it was from my anger, so I purposely worked myself up, made myself furiously, severely angry. This time it felt like a blazing fire had combusted inside of me, I opened my mouth on pain, just like Cinders mouth was open from amazement that my hand was still there and not hanging from threads of flesh. When I screamed in pain, glorious burning fires came from within my mouth, the fires spread around me, and Cinder was screaming in agony as he held his scorched, now ash black face, blood slipping down his face like tears.
I smirked as Cinder was now laying motionless on the floor, and his accomplice further back, stuck to the ground like his feet were nailed into the ice path. I stepped forward, this time raising my hand in a circular motion above my head, once again feeling fire stream along my veins. I flung my hand towards him like I was throwing a rock as far as I could into a lake like I did with my Father. A great burning ball of molten rock hurled towards this man and in an instant he was thrown back like a great gust of wind had jolted him backwards, he was now laying among the many dead corpses of innocent people he himself had slain. Silence had once again returned to my ears, filling the void. I breathed in slowly, fire painted the two charred bodies.
I fell to my knees. My throat ached from screaming. My eyes sored. My arms tightened. I began to quietly sob in my frail bloodied hands. My head occasionally slipped through my hands from the wetness of the blood. I was a mess. My cries were unheard. The commotion was unheard. I was alone.