Eighteen year old Ayan has spent the whole of his life living as a prisoner in his own home. Then suddenly, without warning, he is ripped from his quiet cottage in Glenmore forest, Scotland and thrown into the hands of the Infamous Rainbow regiment...
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~21 Days until the Autumn Equinox~
"You know the drill Ayan. I will be back by nightfall. Do not go further than the garden, do not talk to anyone and do not, under any circumstance, enter the attic rooms. I will know if you do," he said. My father's voice always shifted more heavily in to a Nigerian accent when he ordered me about.
I stood in our small kitchen, my back pressed against the cold sink, watching him stomp around our cottage.
He began shoving items into a brown leather knapsack and y nose wrinkled in disgust at the material. I hated the killing of animals for materialistic means, it was just so unnecessary. To be completely honest, the killing of animals in general disgusted me - which was why I was vegetarian.
"Are you listening to me Ayan? What did I just say?" He fixed his strange eyes on me, glaring. One green iris and one black.
"You said that I'm not to leave the garden or talk to anyone I see or enter the attic rooms. I know father, same as always," I said monotonously.
I always had to be careful to keep my tone neutral when I spoke to my father, despite the fact that animosity always bubbled through my veins whenever I was near him.
What was the point of telling me not to leave the garden anyway? He knew that I physically couldn't. I'd lost count of all the times I've tried.
For the entire first eighteen years of my life I had only seen the four small walls of our cottage and the tiny patch of farming land that surrounded it. The dense leafy forest that bordered the land only served to mock my house bound status and the stormy Scottish sky above only served to taunt and tease me with the prospect of freedom and a life I had yet to live
I felt like I was trapped inside a bubble; forced to experience the outside world through blurry cottage windows and distant buzzing sounds.
There was a ring of stones surrounding the perimeter of the cottage that marked the end of our land and the beginning of the forest and as soon as I could form the words, I had bombarded my father with a million questions about them.
Why were the stones there? Who put them there? Why couldn't I touch them?
And the most important question of them all Why could he leave and I couldn't?
My questions were always met with angry lectures, the majority of them centring around how the outside world was a dangerous place and I was better off staying at home. I was told to mind my own business and although I eventually stopped asking about the mysterious placement of these stones around our home, I never stopped thinking about them. In fact my curiosity grew tenfold.
This was unsurprising taking into consideration that whenever time I came within a couple of yards of the funny-looking rocks, my thoughts became muddled, my skull felt heavy and my limbs turned weak. I'd always end up stumbling back towards the cottage in a confused daze, all thoughts of escape forgotten.
