The Kind Of Cold Fire Won't Cure

Chapter One

  Dova knew the mountain ridges before she knew she was something wild, before she knew that when the people of the country saw her they didn't see a girl, they saw some sort of animal that would snatch up their children and gobble up their toes. She knew the ways the cliffs dipped and dropped as well as the familiar smell of her mother's skin after washing day. She knew the animals that stalked the valleys in the same vividity she knew of the gnawing of hunger at her insides during the middle of winter when they ran out of food for the children. Dova knew all this and yet she could tell the people in their cozy little villages thought she was dumber than a fresh born babe. Dova tried not to think of that but in the quiet of the night or while she scrubbed the mountain from her clothes before going down to the villages to trade she couldn't help the trails her mind followed.

  "Dova!" Her father's voice echoed across the cliffs and valleys like a war horn on marching day. Dova got up from the secluded cliff she discovered while watching the men hunt the goats that bounded up the mountain in long strides in the Spring. She brushed herself off and rubbed the mud from her face and took the twigs she used to camouflage her wild hair.

  "Coming Father!" she responded ask she called the mountain's side to get back to their makeshift village. She climbed as sure as she walked and swam, it was just another way to move for the clans of Callen. She grunted as she hauled herself but up over the ledge, "Father? What is it?"

  Dova's father nearly never looked scared, the joke that sprouted from this is that the only time he had a look of pure terror is when his little girl was born, he was scared now. His dark eyebrows knitted together like a fat caterpillar sitting on his forehead. His arms decorated with dirt and scars were crossed over his chest and he stood like he could stop the news he had from hurting her if he could fight it away himself. "Dova.." his deep voice held a darkness to it, "the council has just gotten word from the Emperor and are now calling a meeting to see how we are going to respond."

  Dova wrapped the fur around her shoulders tighter, "did they tell you what the letter said?"

  Dova's father shook his held slowly, "I only know that it is serious to call a meeting requiring the whole clan." He let his hands fall back into his sides, "that has only happened three times before in the history of the Callen clans."

  Dova began to understand, "do you think they are debating a revolt?" The three letters of the King each time made the mountain men wonder if they wanted to be under the rule of the Emperor. 

  Her father's eyes darkened, "if they are we must flee, there is no way our people could survive such a thing."

  Dova rubbed her arms in an effort to rid her body of the gooseflesh that crept onto her skin, "surely the elders know this," she insisted.

  Dova's mother walked by and smacked her husband's arm, "Quite scaring the girl, the elders are in power for a purpose, they will not lead us into something we cannot conquer." She looked at Dova, "the meeting is at sundown, get dressed, with all the men there you must look like a woman of this village." She glanced at Dova's hair, "I'll send your aunt into the bathhouse to tame that head of yours." She said before walking away in the direction of her aunt's tent.

  Dova sighed, the worry receding like darkness at dawn, "I must go; try not to scare the children, father," she kissed him on the cheek and strided off to the spring her people made into a bathhouse, the underground lava chambers heated the water to a comfortable heat even in the dead of winter. She stripped, not worrying about who might be looking, privacy was important to the people of village, they would not disturb hers.