Amelia

Chapter 2

               When I awoke, everything was strange. The feeling in my head was different, like I had to make more of an effort to think than I ever had before, and when I tried to look around my eyes hurt as if I had them crossed for too long. After blinking I noticed the man standing in front of me. It was the captain of the group of soldiers who entered our cottage and he was staring at me with a mix of terror and sorrow spilled over his features. Then he walked quickly away without saying a word. I will always be perplexed by this moment

               Shortly after that his men approached me, lifted me off the ground and started binding my hands together. I screamed defensive arguments against them but they just finished their work and put me back down against a tree. I looked around for the first time and recognized I was within a part of the forbidden forest. The men I saw were sweaty and exhausted as if they had just run for their lives but I did not noticed anyone wounded.

               “What happened!? What do you want with me!?” I shouted. We girls heard stories of the obedient, non-magic women of the towns, weak and loyal to men. I didn’t want them to think they could just tie me up and take me wherever they pleased. I wasn’t that kind of woman.

               No one answered. A few of the men walked close by with some supplies, and I caught the eye of one of the younger men but they all looked quickly away. They just went about their business.

                I attempted to stand up, using the tree as leverage since my hands were tied. Regardless of the scrapping bark I made it up, but not a few steps away did I make it when a couple men got up and pushed me back into the tree.

               “Now, milady, you best not be runnin off.” The fat man spoke with food still in his mouth, making it hard to find him intimidating. “We’ll tie you to this tree if we have to, or else the Witch’ll come out and bring ya right back.”

               “The witch... will what?” I asked. Did he say, come out?

               “Yeeh,” The other man said, who hadn’t brushed his teeth in what looked like months, “She’ll come out, ya know, and take you ovah like she did before.”

               She took me over? My head got heavier with that feeling from before. When I focused on the possibility, I could almost feel it. Something else is in my head, thinking with my brain, and making it just a little harder for me to clear my thoughts. It suddenly made sense to me, why she brought me into that room when she was so close to dying and why these men were bringing me away. It’s how she’s been living for so long and become so powerful. Svetlana is trying to posses my body... but why couldn’t she finish the job? Why am I still alive?

               “Should we tie her up, Glen?” The smaller one asked another man, it was the second shiny-armored man from earlier in Svetlana’s room.

               “Yes, she probably doesn’t believe us. I expect she’ll try to run away again.” Glen didn’t speak with the distasteful drawl of the two men in front of me, and his ability to give orders lead me to assume he possessed some higher rank.

               Fat and Filthy, as these men were in my mind, proceeded to tie me to the base of the tree and leave me there. Glen was still sitting with others nearby around a developing campfire.

               I knew things about this forest that would have these boys peeing in their tunics, and I wasn’t afraid to use it to my advantage. “Glen? Is that your name?” I asked.

               He turned his head slightly and looked down in my direction.

               “Yes, you!” I said.