The Caged Bird (Under Reconstruction... Not for reading)

02.

The wheels underneath the large carriage I sit in creak and groan as we ride down the High Road, and I keep my body angled toward the window. Beyond the luxurious glass lays the land I have grown to love so fiercely. This is the country I hope to one day save from itself.

Women work in those fields, men in the mines beyond. Children frolic amidst the waste of their neighbors.

I remember that life. I had loved it, and hated it, because a part of me had always known that it wasn't for me. My days before begging in the streets of each nearby village are a blur. I remember cracked stone and thorns laid on my head with gentle, sweet hands.

But I do not remember faces.

My demons purr as I clench one fist in anger.

I have spent years speaking to anyone who would listen. I had begged for any scrap of information my simple memories might glean, and had returned to Dallworth each time with empty hands and tearstained cheeks.

There was nothing.

Either I had lived too far away for any of the townsfolk to recognize my story, or the flames that haunt my memories had not been eventful enough for them to notice.

Whatever monsters had ended that happy time in my past had left it as nothing more than ash and dust. There was no sign of those gentle hands.

Lord Shilton, a monster in his own right, huffs from behind me as I ignore yet another of his questions.

The sound is the only warning I get.

A cold hand grabs my shoulder roughly, turning me from the window and the fading sun beyond it.

"You will listen to me when I am speaking," the croak of his voice causes me to clench my fists and I take a slow breath.

"Yes, my Lord."

The trained response leaves my lips before I think on it and one hand slams into the window beside my head as he grips my chin with the other and forces me to look to him. His cold blue eyes take me in in a long second and through the thick graying beard that covers most of his face his grimaces.

"Father," he corrects me, and I struggle to nod as he keeps his grip on my face.

"I'm your father, girl, for all intents and purposes."

I nod quickly, my gaze taking in the wooden flooring of the carriage as its sway forces him to lean even closer toward me. This close I can see the flecks of brown in those blue eyes, like murky water, and the thin wrinkles that line them in a way that makes him look forever angry.

Lord Shilton was a man to be feared, though there was not much to him. He had little muscle, as he always had others do anything physical for him. But he held his shoulders back with a surety that comes only after years of success, and the ruthless gleam in his eye cut to the very core of anyone who turned it to. I had always imagined that without the beard Lord Shilton might look like an enraged rat, but as I look into his eyes, taking in the cold blue-brown and the veins that run across them, I recognize the monster beneath.

The same monster that had plotted to use me for his own gain, bruising both my body and my mind these past ten years.

Those eyes are hard and unforgiving, and I soon find myself struggling to answer.

"Yes... father," though the words feel awkward on my tongue. It is as though the organ has swelled up in these few seconds, and it's almost impossible to get the word around it.

Lord Shilton stares at me for a moment longer, determining whether I mean it or not, and when he finally decides my answer is acceptable he drops his grip on my face and sits back, shifting until he is comfortable in his plush seat.