The whispering of trees had always comforted Kera when she fell asleep. Now they were gone, replaced by the harsh sounds of crickets and nothingness from the fields around her. Carriages make crappy beds, her mother's friend, Jessie, always told her. No one knew how Jessie knew this; she'd never left the safety and seclusion of the forest, buried deep within the mountains. If only she could be back, or even in her grandmother's dratted city, because then at least she would know where she was, at home. Home… Tears trickled down her face. Kera remembered she had no home.
(A/N: This next blurb is all in Romanian)
"But mother, why are you going? I know you must see this Dumbledore person, but is there a reason I cannot come along? Why must I stay here?" Kera asked her mother as she watched her throw a few things hastily into a suitcase. Her mother was due to leave in the quarter hour to meet with the great English wizard, but she had been held back by an emergency in the horse fields. Apparently, from what Jessie, the horse manager, said, Foxfire and Mange were at it again, and this time Foxfire had been using, the usual, a hot and fiery blast on Mange, who replied with some sort of electric shock. The norm when you raised mythical horses in a forest that hummed with magic, especially during the mating season.
Katriona stopped for a moment to look at her misfit daughter, the almost exact mirror of herself. Kera had been wandering up through the trees again, she realized. There a few scattered leaves in her daughter's elbow lengthened, dark black-brown, every-which-way hair, as on her scraggly brown tunic shirt and jeans. Seeing that her fifteen-year-old gray, catlike eyes were over bright with tears, Katriona pulled her child into a warm embrace. Despite the time, there was always a chance for another couple of hugs for her only child, especially when only one parent was alive to give them to her. "Don't worry, Kera, my darling pearl. Your grandmother will take care of you. You will be fine in the city. After all, it's still in the forest."
"It's not the same," Kera muttered. "There aren't as many trees, and I always end up embarrassing grandmother with my un-ladylike behaviors. She called me an unruly beast-nymph last time; don't you remember?
"I know, but would you rather I sent you to live at a Muggle boarding school?" Kera flinched at this. Despite the soft texture of her mother's Romanian speech cushioning the sound, the words were still horrid. "Besides, you know your father's mother is your only living relative," she reminded her child, with the slightest stirrings of guilt. But, what her child didn't know couldn't hurt her. Besides, as cruel and upright as her mother-in-law was, she still did her best to relax in the presence of her grandchild.
"She doesn't even like us," Kera muttered; mistaking the spasms on her mother's face as grief for her father, who died long before she was born. "She blames you, for dad's death, saying you turned him against his brother, made both of them that way." There was no need to say the brother's name, no one else in the Wizarding world ever did. Curse Voldemort.
But her mother would not be dissuaded. Kera was going to Elitch, away from the Muggles, to stay with her grandmother, one of the city's chief matriarchs. Protesting wouldn't get her anywhere. "You'd better get used to not being taken seriously, or as an adult," Katriona informed her daughter as she lit a fire with the brand of hand sorcery their people, the Sagi of the forest, were famous for, and took a pinch of green floo powder. "She doesn't hold with such things. In fact, most Sagi in the city don't. I know you may not understand, but always remember deary; you are a Carutasu, a daughter of lighter days, and you will always find you way in the darkness."
Then, she had left Kera alone in their silent house, to finish packing.
The carriage Kera had found herself in bumped slowly to a halt. "Get out," said the drawling voice of Lucius Malfoy.
She slowly stood, legs trembling at the sudden movement after so many hours of immobility, and promptly fell. Landing hard on her side, she gave a hateful glare at Malfoy. Impatience rising, he waved and two black cloaked men came forward and pulled her out roughly, without any of the fears that they would have once had. The girl had no wand, and her hands, the source of her regular spell casting, were impaled on two long, iron spikes, caked in blood; her dear grandmother's.
It had been an easy journey since then. There was no way she could use her hands, or arms, in any way, although the idiot goons weren't really sure why. Not that they cared to know the particulars. As long as the girl kept up staring blankly at the woods at her side, and refuse to talk or open her mouth except to scream. So what if they had to pry apart her jaw in a few days so she could be force fed? The other people that had been brought back the first time had killed themselves, much to the master's displeasure. At least she couldn't.
They led her over to a small, dank, wood shed and pushed her roughly inside. Hearing the thump of her loosely bound body, Malfoy drew closer to make sure she wouldn't do anything stupid. No use in getting so far only to fail now. The master drew close, after all. She shouted at them in some rough, guttural, strange language, showing she was quite alright, and they paid her no heed. Malfoy came over and said coolly, "Shut up, or the next stake will go into your throat."
Kera stopped and stared at him, head cocked. Amazing how animalistic those stupid brutes in the forest could be. Then, with all the halting pain of her condition, she said one word. "Why?"
Malfoy was taken aback. He had been sure that girl spoke no English, yet he was just as confident she had just asked him something. Knowing that he didn't have a memory lapse, and had never spoken Romanian nor heard it much used in his life, he didn't understand. Maybe 'why' was brutal insult in her tongue, and she'd been debating this whole time whether or not to use it. Pulling on a mask of indifference, he stared at his tall, weedy captive and replied, "Why what, you worm?"
Her English, if it truly was that, was slow, sputtering, like someone using the words for the first time. Who knew; from he'd been told she probably was. "Why you do it?" she stared back, sadly. "Why you kill? Why you take me from home?" Here she looked about, as if hoping she might be wrong. Continuing, "Why you so, ugly?"
"Ugly?" he hissed.
"Ugly," she nodded. "Ugly on in of self. Not, nice. Other of nice." Clearly, the girl thought that he was the stupid one not to know this. After all, it was his language she was speaking, not her own, and she was doing her best to learn her way around.
Malfoy felt his face burn, but wasn't going to let it master him. To be thought of stupid, by someone who could barely speak. He raised his wand, about to curse the wench, when he saw her recoil and crawl to the back of the shed in the dim light. From there he saw two strangely familiar eyes, though coming from the child, looking even to her enemy for comfort as she tried to bury herself deeply into the meager straw at her feet. "Bad one," she whispered. Malfoy stared at her as she began to tremble so violently that a few mild specks of dust rose up around her.
The 'Bad One'; source of almost all current evil and pain in the world. He, even in the past fifteen years of his demise, had risen beyond the rank of a mere boogie man or spook. Even when an adult of the sorcerer's race know as the Sagi's spoke his name, it was with a giant tremor of unadulterated fear. They called him 'Trina', which was an old name that meant 'he who swallows the sun', because that was what he did. When he was in his power, he came recruiting once, and the elders talked about it like it was the end of the world. Everyone lost a son or daughter to the fight; Voldemort only managed to steal one or two for his 'cause'. For a child, even if she was a teenager, with so little experience of the outside world, it was downright terrifying to a deathly point.
"Now, Malfoy, don't tell me you were thinking of harming our guest," said a high, cold voice behind him. The wind blew, and he could hear the light swish of a long cloak.
Flinging himself down in front of the man, Malfoy said, "No master. I would never do such a thing." He kept his eyes on his master's shoes, not wanting to look into his red, cat pupil eyes.
"Of course you wouldn't," said Voldemort. "Now get up, Malfoy." Malfoy got up, at Voldemort's quiet command, and bolted the shed door, leaving Kera in the darkness. She could just hear, in her slowly growing knowledge of the English language, The Dark One saying. "I don't want to see anyone even thinking of laying a hand on that girl, without my say so, understand?" His voice became, if possible, more cold. "Little Kera can be more useful than you think. Much more useful."
'He knows my name,' Kera thought. Crawling to a corner with straw, she curled up, trying to nurse her wounded hands and magic, and block out the screams coming from Malfoy's punishment.