"You give up your future, lose your dream, and are stained with despair, yet at the same time you shake off your past, fight reality, and never lose your nobility." --Black Butler
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A/N (again): For those of you who skipped the author note, important note, and/or prologue, y'all may want to go read 'em. They're important. Especially the one labeled "Important."
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Red.
Why is everything red?
But then, the red turns to orange. The orange turns to yellow. The yellow turns to...
Red.
Dark red. A crimson bloodstain splattered across mahogany floor.
The red is no longer just red. It is everything. It's is many changing colors, flickering all around. It's sparks popping off the flames that lick the walls.
The red turns darker. It's no longer red.
It is deep brown locks of hair, spread out around a ball.
No. The "ball" is a head.
A head. A face. The head has a face. Dark brown eyes, open and glassy in death. Blood flecks mark on snow white skin.
But the head isn't a head anymore.
The head is a ball.
It's a small, black ball, no bigger than a little finger.
Hurling towards my face.
The flames aren't flames. The flames have become dead soldiers, lying unmoving on a battlefield. All are dead. Husbands, sons.
Brothers.
"I'll be gone one year. One year only, then I get a break."
A smooth, deep voice. It's familiar. Comforting.
"Zara, it'll only be one yea--"
And it is silenced forever by the stray black ball.
Everything is red. The only words are the ones last spoken that echo through the silence.
One year.
*****
My eyes sprang open. The remnants of the dream still echoed in my mind.
One year.
"Oh, ga--" I mumbled. My knees found their way to my chest. I pulled them close to me, trying to draw comfort from something.
Apparently, my knees were "comfort."
Everything echoed loudly in my head, reminding me of the scene I had endured all night.
One year.
I gasped and buried my face in my hands. Why do I have to be reminded? Why now?
Why at all?
The face--which I never saw in my dream, but was all too real to me-- surfaced to the top of my mind.
Green eyes. Tan hair. Permanent smile lines etched across the bottom of his face.
Joshua.
I could still hear his promise when he left.
"It'll only be one year, Zara. I'll be home before you know it."
That single year had morphed into a letter.
No good things come from letters.
In my case, it meant that my brother was gone.
One year.
One year since I was forced into the reality of being alone.
The days that we were together were still fresh in my memory. I could hear his laugh. I could hear his voice. I could see him as if he were standing in front of me.
But that was something that he wasn't going to do again.
Through unshed tears, I smiled, still sitting on my cot. Images of the baker's face when we "accidentally" made his display in his front window spell out some--well--some unkind words danced across my mind.
The threatening tear finally fell down my cheek. I pinched my leg hard, feeling the pain race up my thigh.
Stop whining, girl. If you start crying now, you will never stop.
Joshua told me before he left for the war to not mourn over him, to be strong. He knew as well as I did that it could only go poorly.
So, strong I was.
While my father went to the tavern and drowned himself in drink every morning, I was the one who had to work night hours at the pub to hold the money collectors. I was the one one who had to convince the king's knights that my miserable father was too sick to go to war.
And while the "too sick" part was true in ways, it still didn't satisfy the knights enough to never come back.
"Hey!"
I jumped, startled by the shout. The pallet below me crunched as I got up and went over to the thin, ragged curtain that covered the window. The white sheet that did little for privacy slipped between my fingers. I moved it about an inch away from the wall and peeked out.
Three boys, no older than eight, rushed out of the bread shop across the street in a ruckus. Th eldest of the three clutched a basket of rolls to his chest. The old baker was not far behind them, waving his years-old roller in the air like a war club.
I let the small curtain go, feeling a tiny grin flit across my face. The baker would eventually catch the boys like he always managed to do. He'd scold them so much that they would be to the point of begging forgiveness, then let them go with the food they had stolen.
Truth be told, the baker didn't mind the fuss. He, too, once had children. Children that, as soon as they were old enough, were carted off to war.
Children that were killed within one week of getting to the battlefield.
That was the one thing almost everybody in my village had in common. Loss.
I turned away from the window and spied my brown dress hanging on a rack across the room. I walked across the dirt-covered rugs that covered the ground and grabbed the clothes. Carefully, I dug through my pocket, fishing for my mother's necklace.
I pulled it out and stared at it, tracing my fingers over the cross shape longingly.
How weird is it that one thing can hold so many memories?
Sighing, I slipped it onto my neck, then started to move around the room. I went to each window, pulling the curtain over the small latch that held it down, then locked the door of the one-room house.
The key paused in the keyhole and let out an almost inaudible click.
A click.
The click of a knife entering its sheath.
The necklace that I had on suddenly felt like an unwelcome weight around my neck.
Don't think about it, Zara.
I pulled the drab brown dress over my head, being careful to tuck the necklace underneath the dress so that it wouldn't be seen. The necklace itself wasn't worth a lot of money, but if someone were to notice it, it could easily have been stolen by those who would sell it at an exaggerated price.
A slick string touched my fingers as I dug through my pockets again. I pulled it out and let it fall to my pallet. With a lock of hair in my hand, I ran my fingers through the mess at the back of my head. The knots in it were bad enough, but the curls tangled it up even more than it should've been.
A quick glance in the shard of mirror hung up against the wall was all I needed to see if I was presentable.
I dreaded the fact that I even wanted to look.
A girl glared back at me, her arched nose smudged with dirt, face thin and pale with hunger, and chocolate brown curls wild. I looked away quickly. My dislike for mirrors was inherited from my mother. She would always say that "Mirrors just show what's on the outside. You can never judge anyone based on their appearance."
I ducked down to the pallet and swept up the ribbon. I literally had to wrestle my hair into something that even resembled looking like it was tied back.
"Child? Zara?"
"Oh no," I sighed. It was my father. I liked to be gone from the house before he showed up, drunk after many hours at the pub. It had been easier when Joshua helped me avoid him, but after he left I was forced to see my father more frequently.
There was one day I had mustered up the courage to ask the girl I worked with about him before we swapped shifts, and she had just shaken her head with a look of pity in her blue eyes.
Get really good feelings from that, right?
Often, Joshua and I schemed to run away from our father and the town, but something always held us back. I suppose it was the love that we once felt for our dad, and the remembrance of love that we knew he once felt for us.
I didn't even know if that love still existed.
Let's go face the beast.
I opened the door, squinting in the late afternoon sunlight. My father stood across the street, yelling at the baker for some unknown reason. His arms waved around in the air like a wind-up toy preparing to take off. Honestly, it was a minor miracle that he managed to get from the tavern--which was all the way down the street--to the front of the baker's shop.
"Baupa!" I hollered. I closed the door just enough so it would appear closed, but there was a small crack of air wide enough for me to open it with my foot. With that done, I scuttled across the dirt road. "Baupa, come here. Leave him alone."
The baker gazed at me in relief, his gray eyes thanking me silently. I met him with a small nod and grabbed my father's arm. He resisted momentarily, but allowed me to put it around my shoulder. A low mumble of some unintelligible word escaped Baupa's lips while he tried to pull away.
A putrid stench wafted into my nostrils. Unable to hold it back, I gagged, thanking my lucky stars that the baker had entered his house again. The walk across the street, which should have taken mere seconds, seemed to take forever and a day. I half-carried, half-dragged my father to the house, pulling him toward me when he started to walk away.
"Baupa, you're home early today." I tried to sound less aggravated than I actually was, but I don't think it worked.
His clouded eyes met mine, then slid out of focus. "Konechno, I'm home early! Those--"
Another something I couldn't quite catch came tumbling out of his mouth in the midst of his slurred words, but I don't think I wanted to know anyway.
Once we got to the door, I flicked it open with my foot. We walked into the house--no--I walked into the house, he stumbled into the house and plopped his round body onto the pallet. Baupa's back straightened after he sat for a minute, and his green eyes locked mine for a moment until they slid out of focus and he began his ranting again.
"I paid them all I got, I did! Then they told me to get out 'cause I didn't have enough!"
The rest of his fuss was so slurred and mumbled that I couldn't understand anything else.
Wait a second...
The realization of what he had just said hit me like a runaway horse. Frantically digging through the second pocket on my dress, I looked for the few silver coins I kept stashed there in case of emergency.
They were gone.
All of my aggravation and annoyance came out at once, a big tidal wave directed at my father.
"You did what?" I screamed. "Baupa, that was everything we had! Those coins were all the money that we had left to live on until the end of this month!"
Everything I was saying came out before I could think.
"That's all you do! You don't care what happens to us, you're so busy burying yourself in the bottom of the first bottle you can get your hands on! You would think, that since it's just you and me, you would try to dig yourself out, but no! Ever since Mom di--"
Next thing I knew I was on the floor, my cheek stinging.
Did he just hit me?
Never before had he struck me in one of his fits. He would just yell or throw up. Maybe break some glass.
Never strike.
Baupa's rough hand seized my arm and hoisted me off the floor. His gray eyes blazed like a fire in rage, fueled on by the alcohol in his system. He shoved me backwards, hard, pinning me against the wall.
"Don't talk about your mother," he whispered into my ear. The grip on my arm vanished and my father plopped himself down onto the pallet, his white hair falling on front of his face and covering his eyes. I watched a tear fall down his face.
I stood in place for a moment, feeling like I needed to say something. Finally, I gave up and shook my head, then walked toward the door.
"Poka, Baupa," I whispered, not even knowing if he heard me.
He doesn't care, Zara. Just leave.
So, I did.
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This chapter is dedicated to KelseyCheney, who catches my horrible fat-fingered typos.
Translations
Konechno= Of course
Poka= Bye
*****
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Conversation Starter: Now that she's left the house for the day, were do you think she'll go?
Pronuciation: Zara= Zahr (rhymes with car) - uh. Zahr-uh.