Author's Note:
Only three characters in this chapter belong to me. Mejai, Mejia, and Somali. The rest, the one's you are familiar with belong to Tamora Pierce!! If you see any mistakes with the characters descriptions please tell me. Review, please.
Chapter 2: A Strange Dream"Open the door!" came a gruff voice. Causing the little girl who lay asleep in her bed burst into wakefulness. "We have presents for you, little girl." And the man banged on the door again.
She was lying on her bed, in the middle of her pink painted pink room. Her bed was on the wall farthest away from the door, her headboard underneath the only window, now throwing light starlight into the room and red moonlight. On the wall by the door was her dresser her grandpa had given her to mark there move here, it was painted a pink to match the room, besides the knobs, which were shaped like roses and painted white. On the floor, in the shape of a daisy, was a thick pink rug. On the walls were drawings she had done on thick parchment, after her daily lessons.How did she get here? The last thing she remembered was falling asleep in her Daddy's arms, her Mommy singing her a lullaby. How did she get in her room? Daddy, with his strong arms must have carried her in. She loved it when he carried her. She wished she had been awake to enjoy it.
Another crash came from the other room. "Daddy!" she called. She heard her Mommy scream and start to cry. "Mommy!" she jumped up and out of the bed and ran to the door. She twisted the doorknob this way and that trying to open it, but no matter how hard she pulled, it wouldn't open. "Let me out! Mommy! Daddy!" The only answerers were more crashes and her Mommy screaming and crying louder than ever. Something must be wrong with Daddy, because Mommy never cries. "Daddy what's wrong? Mommy is Daddy ok?" the little girl sank to the floor crying.
"Let's leave. We can't get into the other room." The gruff voice came again.
"What about her?" came a sleazy voice, there came a thump and a moan from her mother.
"Mommy!" the little girl cried again. "Where's Daddy?"
"Just kill her," the gruff man yelled over the little girl's screams, "take that ring off of her finger. It looks…"
"No!" the woman shouted. The ring came fling under the door, rolling to a stop at the little girl's feet.
It was the ring her Daddy had given her, the year she was born. It was a gold band with pretty stones on it of many different colors. It was probably expensive.
"Blast down that door with the jelly. I want that ring! And while you're in there grab the little girl."
"Run, baby. Run!" the woman screamed. "We'll come…" and with a gurgle the woman's voice died.
"Annoying bird," the man muttered as he clumped over to the door. "Well, what are you waiting for? Get the jelly!"
The little girl clutched her Mommy's ring to her chest. She was scared, oh so scared. So, scared she was that she was shaking like a leave. Her mind was clouded; she knew her parents were dead.
"Baby girl listen to me," came her father's voice.
"Daddy? She whispered, beginning to cry when she realized the voice was coming from her memories, but she decided to listen to the voice any way.
"If we are ever attacked go under the rug. There is a secret passageway that will bring you to safety. Someone will come and get you when the danger has passed."
"I'll do it Daddy." She whispered.
"Hand me that!" came the voice once more.
Quickly the girl stood up and rushed to the rug, only stopping once to pick up a beaten porcelain doll, the one her grandpa had given to her, and to drop her mother's ring into the doll's secret compartment next to a small box. She picked up the rug and with it came a trap door. Someone who didn't know it was there wouldn't be able to open it. Those men won't be able to.
She jumped into the hole, letting the trapdoor fall back into place behind her. She ran down the stairs in complete darkness, but she didn't mind, she wasn't afraid of the dark, it was those men who frightened her beyond believe. Hours and hours passed by, with the end of each hour her eyes sagged lower and lower. Finally, she had reached the end. With the last of her strength the little girl climbed out. She collapsed by the side of a main road. Exhausted, but happy.
"Little one?" came a man's voice, gently. She looked up; fearful the men had caughtened up to her. There was a tall blue-eyed, blond-haired man. "Are you alright?" she slowly, and cautiously nodded. "Where are your parents?"
His words broke her down. Running into his arms she screamed, "They killed them! The bad men killed MamaPapa!"
"Sush, now little one. I will care for you. I promise." And the man scooped her into his arms and carried her, like her Daddy use to, to his party. The guards closed around them. "My love," he said to petite light brown haired woman with eyes to match, "the gods have blessed us with another child, to make up for the one we lost."
The woman started to cry making her already puffy face even puffer. She took the child from her husband's arms. "We have been blessed, 'tis true." She turned the little girl's face to each side, inspecting her. "We have both been through a lot," she pulled the girl closer, "but with each other's help we can forget the pain bad men had bestowed upon us." The little girl wrapped her arms around the woman and began to cry.
"What is your name?" the man asked her when her cries dyed away. She refused to answer. "Well, we must call you something."
"Sandrilene," the woman said, "after my grandmother."
"Sandrilene it is, then."
"Sandry!" came a little girl's voice. The little girl shook her. "Mamma Sandry! Wake up!"
"I'm up," Sandry muttered groggily.
"Open your eyes," the girl demanded.
"Mejai!" Sandry said sitting up in her bed and glaring at the tussled dark brown headed, hazel eyed girl, with eastern skin tone, one of the twins that she had come to love in the past four years. "I am up!" and she jumped out of the bed before the girl could demand that. "Now, what do you want?"
"Braid my hair," and she pushed her brush in Sandry's hands, "please Mamma Sandry?" Mamma Sandry, it was a pet name the kids… her kids, had given to her.
Almost nine years ago, after she had come back from Namorn, she had wanted to do something with her life, something useful. For a few months she played around with the idea of starting up a school. But she didn't want to go to far from her Uncle. So she started to ask around about property around Summersea, surely she could find some place nearby and she did. It was equal distance from Winding Circle and Summersea. There were only two problem: one, the road had been washed away in a flood years ago and two, the house was practically nonexistent. But of course she wouldn't give up there.
She had gone to Winding Circle's carpentry shops, she convinced them to take a look at the place. They had told her that it could be made livable again in, maybe, a year's time if she found some good carpentry mages and stone mages. They were too busy at Winding Circle to help themselves. Almost out of ideas she went to Moonstream, head dedicate of Winding Circle, who helped her by taking her to some of the greatest mages in that area who was then, currently, living in Summersea. In a fortnight the work had started.
At first she had kept her idea a secret from Daja, Briar, and Tris. Sandry didn't want them to think she had gone mad. Though, maybe, she had. But then they had started to worry about her. She was always up late working on a "project" and when she actually made plans to eat dinner or midday with them, it was, normally, cancelled. They thought she might be in trouble, debt, or in love, and didn't want their interferences. When they found out what she was really up to they scolded her for not telling them sooner and up and joined in. In a year's time 'The Circle School' was open. Orphans were chosen and sent. But in a few years other kids from merchants and nobles had begun to bring their children here. The four were more than happy to take them.
Any mages, after learning the basics were sent to Winding Circle for training, except for the few that were chosen by a mage that worked at the school, or were visiting.
Every once in a while a young couple, not being able to have a child of their own, would come and adopt a child, but normally, the majority of the kids stay till they are eighteen or nineteen.
Mejai and Mejia, the twin six year olds, Sandry had found four years ago, clinging to their parents blue poxed riddled bodies in Hajra (Briar and Sandry had gone there to deliver the cure) were now her foster daughters, she had adopted them, because she thought she would never have children of her own and she still believed it. Mejai, the one whose hair she was braiding was a thread mage and her student. Her twin sister was a plant mage and Briar's student.
"Dutchess?" and in came no other then Briar Moss, her older brother and her best friend. He had creamy colored skin, telling of his eastern descent, dark curly hair cropped close to his head, and gray-green eyes, plus he was a little over six feet. His looks made most girls melt in their tracks. She wasn't among them. "Your already up?"
"Hi, Papa Briar!" Mejai said her eyes twinkling. Briar and Sandry both knew that the kids hoped they would fall in love and marry. Hadn't happened yet and it never will.
"Hey Mej'." He called Mejai, Mej' and Mejia, Meji'. Sandry finished up the girl's braids. "Go get dress, you don't want to get a penalty." The little girl squeaked and ran from the room his eyes sparkled. "You better get dressed, too! The kids would love to give you a penalty."
"They wouldn't give their Mama Sandry a penalty." Sandry said beginning to brush her hair.
"I thought that they would never give me one, but they did." He came over and towered above her. He took the brush from my hands. "You really should get a hair cut." He said brushing Sandry's long light brown hair.
"It's nice long." She countered.
"It's beautiful if you let it down, but you don't."
"It's my hair and I'll do what ever I want with it." Sandry said, her cornflower blue eyes flashing dangerously. "Besides, it's not easy to teach or work with it down and always getting in my way." He twisted her hair into a coronet.
"What's wrong?" he asked as he pinned it in place.
"Huh?"
"You seem distracted and you, who is normally up before dawn, have been waking up late. You've been distracted this past year."
"Year?" she asked. "I have not been distracted for a whole year!"
"Yes, more and more with each passing month. I don't think it'll get better, kid."
"I'm not a "kid" anymore," he gave her a wicked smile, dropped a kiss on her forehead and left the room, "and I have not been distracted!" a scene from her very vivid dream flashed through her head. "Ok, something is going on, but the problem is I don't know what. And it doesn't help that I'm talking to myself." She slipped out of her nightgown 'till the only thing she was in was her breast band and loincloth. She went over to her wardrobe and pulled out a plain blue dress with little embroidery and none of the usual lace. As she began to walk out the room she pulled the dress over her head. Not need to give the teen-age boys the joy of seeing their first half naked woman; at least she hoped their first.
Little children pushed past her, pushing and shoving to get down the stairs and into the dining room. The girls from the ages of two till twelve were Sandry's as the boys from that age range were Briar's. That is the reason why we got the pet names Mama Sandry and Papa Briar. Tris had the teenage girls and Daja had the boys, they were the "Aunts". Not the ones you go to for comfort, but the ones you go to for advice. They were great at keeping teenage hormones under control.
"Mama Sandry," came voices from every direction as the teens came down the stairs from the forth (Daja's) and the fifth (Tris's) floors.
"Hey…" Sandry called out to the kids she had known for years, smiling to the ones who have been here a month or less. They, who had seen some things that would make most people cringe, gave unsure smiles back, they weren't sure if this was really happening, that they were really off the streets.
Tris, a fiery red head and sharp, piercing gray eyes wearing brass-rimmed glasses, followed her charges, barking Rosethorn like, one of the four's foster mothers. "Somali pick up those feet!" Tris shouted especially at her student for wind magic, who kept tripping over her to long robe. Sandry made a mental note to adjust the hem in a day or two. "Hey, Sandry!" she called, causing Sandry to jump afraid to be the next turned on. "What are you afraid I'll bite?" she asked, coming to stand by her friend. Sandry gave her a weary smile. "Sandry you look exhausted. What's…?"
Sandry laughed. "I have already heard this from Briar and I'll probably hear it from Daja and from Lark, Rosethorn, and Uncle who are visiting later today, around midday break."
"But is something wrong?"
"I don't know. When I sleep I feel like I wasn't sleeping, but running around in circles like Little Bear does when Glaki feeds him chocolate." Glaki was Tris's… well Tris saved her from either being put out on the streets or pushed from foster home from foster home and Little Bear was the dog Sandry had saved from those merchant boys, it was when the four of them truly started to become friends. "When I don't sleep something pulls me. I feel this strange presence pulling me. It gets stronger with each and every day." Sandry started to cry. "It wants me Tris." She tapped her chest. "Something in here." The children looked at her, tears filling their eyes as well, they wanted to comfort the woman who cared so much for them when no one before her had. Some of them even moved forward to do just that, but a glare from "Aunt Tris" sent them scurrying back down the stairs and into the dining room for breakfast.
"Come on Sandry," Tris said putting her arm around her and pulling her away from the kids and back into her bedroom. She sent a mental message to Daja and Briar to come to Sandry's room and help her comfort her. Let Pasco, Evvy, and the other mages in charge handle the children.
In a few moments time all four of them were cluttered in Sandry's room, Briar sitting in the middle of the bed with Sandry weeping into his lap. Tris sat on the edge of the bed rubbing Sandry's back as she cried. Daja, a chocolate skinned trader with black hair braided close to her head, leaned against the closed door, twirling her staff around and around in anger.
"It's just a dream, Dutchess," Briar consoled her, "nothing but a dream."
"You weren't there!" Sandry said, trembling. "It was horrible, so real, it wasn't," she shouted, then she continued her sentence in a voice so low you had to strain just to hear, "it wasn't a dream."
He pushed the hair that was falling into her face back. "Of course it was and even if it wasn't, it wouldn't matter."
"I feel something calling out to me, every night as I sleep. That… dream gets clearer and clearer every night! I heard people die! Briar, I heard… I heard my parents, the people who raised me, give me the name Sandrilene after I refused to give them my name!"
"You're just feeling guilty about something, "Daja said, finally putting her input on things, "when we find out what, you can clear your conscience and be free."
"I'm not feeling guilty," Sandry said, putting her feet onto the floor and standing up. "Something is calling to me and I'm going to find out what." She must find that doll, the doll she called Sasha all of her life, the doll her parents had taken away from her when she was eight, because she wouldn't eat her vegetables. It must be somewhere here or at the citadel, the places were all the remaining things of her parents were and if need be she would write to her cousin up north. He might know where it is. "I need the key Daja!" Daja, half stunned by Sandry's sudden change in moods, didn't move.
Sandry used a little of her thread magic and called the key, which was on an orange ribbon, to her. She left the room, went down the stairs, almost falling on the waxed floor, but she did a turn that Skyfire taught her to save herself, and into a side hallway. At the left side of the hall, the last door there was a 'Forbidden Area; Stay away children' orange sign. Daja's area charge, her forge was down there. As Sandry got closer to the door she slide again, this time barely able to do the turn and save herself.
Sandry put the key in the door and began to turn it, but a dirt streaked hand covered hers, stopping her.
"Briar!" she practically shouted turning towards him. "What do you think you're doing?" it wasn't Briar it was Rosethorn. "Rosethorn? Oh, man I'm sorry I yelled at you. Briar…"
She just shrugged her shoulders. "It's your house, but I had looked down the hallway and saw you standing here, barely moving."
"What? I was just about to go down into the basement. What time is it? You're early. You weren't supposed to here till midday." Sandry was rambling and she knew it, she had just become extremely dizzy.
"It's almost midday now."
"It was only breakfast when I came down!" and Sandry collapsed in exhaustion.