Blood Rose

Chapter 6: Rouge

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God

 –Corrie Ten Boom

Time was running out, the sun had started to send little rays over the horizon. Street lamps were being blown out and people had started turning on their morning lanterns. The morning was alive. One sound, in particular, gave her an idea-the roar of someone ready for breakfast. Sneaking by shadows Persephone grabbed a couple of rabbits that were hanging on a nearby home that hadn't yet woken.

Persephone caught herself from falling several times ducking from tree to tree till she came face to face with a white grizzly bear with blood-red eyes that darted around it's tall stone cage- with a single iron gate. "Mishka!" Persephone waved a limp rabbit and tossed it inside. The mighty bear tilted her head and licked her lips, it's massive figure clamored over to the food. The gate made a loud squeak as Persephone pried it open after picking the lock with a hair pin. Panicked- she looked around to see if anyone was approaching her but only Mishka seemed to notice and was now making her way towards the princess's neck to get the other rabbit.

Persephone stiffened as Mishka's lips gently grazed her throat but then stroked the bear's face.

"You wanna be free girl?" Persephone whispered. She could never have imagined that Mishka would have done what she did that day, but with one hard nudge with the bear's nose, Persephone was flipped onto Mishka's back. She held on for dear life as Mishka moved with an unimaginable amount of grace and speed into the surrounding forest.

The bear collapsed as soon as they hit the forest on the edge of the kingdom's vast lotus fields, lapping up water with greedy slurps.

"Atta girl! I wish I had grabbed more rabbits." Persephone sighed, sitting down against a boulder. She marveled at Mishka, who'd been kept in that cage for years, only to come out on parade for festivals. Other than that this bear was what her father called a sport.

"I must be crazy," she twirled another knotty strand of hair and bit her bottom lip, remembering the fearsome beast Mishka was when she walked through the town snapping at everyone who came too close, "I guess if I'm going to die at least I will have died nobly and my body won't rot in the flowers. Or maybe it will."

"The book." the same disembodied whispers from the stables filled the air, Mishka's ears twitched and she looked up at Persephone before going back to quench her thirst.

Persephone's hand ran over the latch on the knapsack, through all the material it still felt as though a warm pulse was inside.

Focus, I've got to focus. It's all in my head, books aren't alive. Persephone then yelped as the book seemed to move beneath the latch. She threw it down, bag and all. Mishka stopped lapping and looked out past the fields and the kingdom- to something Persephone could not see beyond the bay. Her heart was beating too fast to care to look or she might have noticed a purple gloom growing in the distance.

"What on earth is in there?!" Persephone yelled and attempted to shake all thoughts of living books out of her mind.

It's got to be the stress. It's just a mouse, must have snuck in when I put it down, yeah. Yeah! A Mouse. I can do this; I've got to find the cure!

Ancient Gods and Goddesses, what a plain looking book. She thought biting her bottom lip.

This time the book didn't feel alive when she picked it up and began pacing as she read. Maybe it had just been her imagination and a tad bit of delirium, after all, she hadn't slept well.

The leather was remarkably soft and had subtle aromas of smoked meat and fall leaves; each page adorned in intricate hand drawings of things Persephone had never seen nor heard of- mermaids, spirit guardians, illuminites, gem eaters, sorcerers?