She was running. Running for her life. No matter what she did, she couldn't shake off her pursuer. She didn't understand how it had happened; she just knew that now she was Karse's most wanted criminal. The entire country was after her it seemed. They all wanted to send her to the fires. She tried no t to think about it, but her memories kept haunting her.
It had all started when they moved. She hadn't wanted to leave her friends or her home, but her parents forced her to. Work had been scarce of late and her parents had found some in the city. They'd found well paid jobs and they weren't going to allow her to ruin it for them.
They moved to Sunholm and she was sent to school. An expensive school as her parents insisted on reminding her.
There would never have been a problem if she had been able to fit in. But she didn't. She was always the odd one out, and had never been able to make friends very easily. Then the bullying began.
Some of the older boys started stalking her she was used to male attention. She had always been strikingly beautiful and looked older than she really was. Her tormenters were liberal with their catcalls and degrading comments, making quite clear what they wanted from her.
She tried to tell her parents, she tried to make them understand how scared she was. But her parents didn't believe her. They called her a liar, and even her brother who she was close to, doubted her.
"It's no surprise that nobody believed me," she thought bitterly. "After all, it's inconceivable that families like t hose would raise children who were less than perfect. And in such a fine school such unacceptable behaviour couldn't go unnoticed."
But it had. And everyone was going to know the truth now after what had happened. After what she'd done. She was determined to stop thinking about it. She had more immediate concerns, like how she was going to evade her pursuer.
She was going to have to lose him soon. He'd only been tracking her for about a quarter of an hour, but she was exhausted. She'd been travelling since sunset and there was only an hour till dawn. False dawn was already lighting the sky, and come daylight she would be easy prey.
"I'll need to find somewhere to hide until nightfall," she thought. I'm too tired to go on any farther and I'll become an easy target during the day."
This wasn't going to be as easy as it sounded. She was in the country and the area she was fleeing through was grazing land that didn't offer much cover. Certainly not anything which could keep her hidden all day.
As she searched for a hiding place her thoughts returned to the events which had put her in this situation.
After telling her parents what had been happening, things got worse. Her humiliation grew more frequent, and more public. She became desperate, and in an attempt to avoid her stalkers, she would arrive at school before everybody else, and hide in a classroom. She would hide in a classroom again after school, and wait until everyone else had gone home. And this did work. She did manage to avoid her tormenters.
For a while.
It didn't take her tormenters long to work out what she was doing. They claimed that the teachers knew everything that went on, and didn't care what the students did. They treated like a criminal rather than a schoolgirl who was tired of being hurt.
She was jolted from her thoughts by the realisation that her pursuer had disappeared. But that didn't mean that she had lost him.
"He could be on the other side of that hill, or in that gully behind those bushes." She thought. How she wished she could stop. Her legs were shaking, and her knees felt like they were going to give way. Pain shot up her side from a muscle she had pulled the night before, and her lungs felt like they would explode.
"But I can't stop. I dare not stop. If I can just find somewhere to hide for the day, tomorrow night I'll be over the border and safe."
She tripped and cursed. She rolled over to she what she had tripped over, and couldn't believe her luck. She'd tripped over the overgrown entrance to an abandoned burrow.
"Something big must have lived here." She thought. "It might be a tight squeeze, but no-one will think of looking here. They might not even see it."
She crawled in and fell asleep. But her dreams were haunted by memories. Her tormenters had ambushed her and dragged her into a classroom where they had made all kinds of wild accusations. They said she had been leading them on, and that if she could, she would seduce them all, one by one. They called her a slut and claimed that she was after them for their money because her family didn't have any of their own, and that she was trying to 'reach above her station.'
She was shocked. What had she ever done to give them that impression? If anything she had been trying to avoid them ever since she'd arrived at the school.
But they claimed she would get them interested, and then 'pretend' to ignore them. The leader claimed that she was just playing hard to get.
"You have been trying to destroy the order established here ever since you arrived. You have been distracting the boys from their studies, and from more deserving people. You have been trying to create chaos, and for that, you deserve the punishment we are about to give you."
With that, two of the ringleaders stodges grabbed hold of her.
She woke with a start a barely managed to keep from screaming. No, she couldn't think about that. It was too traumatic and it was the reason she was in this situation. If only she could get across the border. If she could make it to Valdemar, where no one knew her, she could leave her old life behind. She could make a fresh start; she could take on a new identity. She could become a different person.
She dozed fitfully throughout the day. She didn't get any proper sleep: she was far too anxious for that. She woke just as the sun started to set. She could wait no longer. She was going to make a run for it. If she left now, she could make it across the border by sunrise.
She crawled out of her burrow and started to run. She tried to fight the memories, but was unsuccessful.
After the boys had grabbed her she had struggled, but it was futile. They had only strengthened their hold. She stopped struggling and the boy on her left loosened his grip. It was only for a second, but it was all she needed to break free. She made a run for the door, but the ringleader intercepted her. He grabbed her by the waist, and dragged her back to his accomplices.
"Here" he scolded. "This time don't let go of her. We're here to teach her a lesson."
The boy responsible for letting her escape nodded. The pair of them pulled her over and pinned her to the floor.
She blinked back tears, and forced the memories to recede with the moisture. Suddenly she had the feeling that someone was watching her. She looked around but saw no one.
There was a bright white horse in the next field. She became suspicious when she realised the horse wore a saddle and bridle. A horse of that good quality would not be let loose this far from habitation. And no horse would be let out with a saddle or bridle. Its owner must be somewhere near.
After that she became much more wary. She kept running, but no one appeared. The horse followed her. The further she travelled the closer the horse came.
She stopped by a river to rest and to quench her thirst when the horse walked straight up to her. It was a magnificent beast, with unusual bright blue eyes. She reached up to pat its nose and it sniffed her hand.
She was just considering whether she should try mounting the animal, when she heard something behind her. She turned and was a man on a black horse amongst the trees to her left. She froze in shock and the man saw her. Just as the man spurred his horse into movement, she was overcome by an uncontrollable urge to mount the white beast. As she did this the man on the black horse drew nearer. As soon as she was seated the white horse galloped away. The country born and bred girl could not believe the speed with which this animal could gather. It seemed to swallow the distance.
"If I fell of at this speed it would surely kill me." She thought. But she wasn't afraid. Somehow she knew she wasn't going to fall. And somehow this horse seemed to know which direction to go. At this rate she would be over the border within an hour. She sighed with relief.
As she relaxed, the memories returned. The boys had pinned her to the floor. The ringleader moved towards her. As he removed his breaches, and she realised what was about to happen, fear and something else began to build in her chest.
As he tried to force himself on her, she started to cry. Then something inside her broke. She felt the pressure explode from inside her, and her attacker was thrown through the air across the room. His body struck the wall with the sickening crack of his neck snapping and his skull caving in.
The two boys who had been holding her down looked at her in terror, and fled from the room.
The girl curled up into a ball and cried in shock, which was how she was found an hour later when the Karsite priests came to drag her off to the fires.
The girl burst into tears as her pursuer disappeared into the distance. The horse started to slow, but the girl didn't notice. All she could think about was how she could never tell any one who she was, or what she'd done. She didn't want to go through any of that ever again. The priests had tortured her to make an example of her, and to find out exactly what she had done to her attacker. But she didn't know, so she couldn't tell them. She'd almost given up hope, when on the night before she was to be sent to the fires, the guard outside the building where was being kept in fell asleep. She squeezed out the window and ran. She had been running since. And didn't intend to ever go back.
She was just thinking this, when a man in white appeared from the woods ahead, and to her horror, the horse waled straight towards him. The horse stood in front of the man and the girl was about to jump off and run, when she suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of calm.
"Don't run." The stranger pleaded as he reached out and offered her his hand.
She nodded, accepted his hand and allowed him to help her off the horse.
"You're safe now, you're in Valdemar." He informed her. "No one is going to hurt you now. I'm herald Ivan. What's you're name?"
Her spirits soared when she realised she was no longer in Karse. She was in a new country; she could have a new life. And she knew exactly how she would start it.
"My name is Rebecca."
With a new name.