Creak woke with a yawn, her jaw popping. The cage had stopped in an open clearing surrounded by pine trees whose needles poked at the flawless blue sky. Pushing herself out of Vern's arms, she scrambled over to the bars in hope of getting a better look at her surroundings. Gripping the metal, which was covered in a thin layer of ice that made them slick beneath her blue tinted fingers, Creak shook. Having left the warmth of Vern's embrace, she found herself burning. The frost bite on her finger tips made her hands feel as if they were submerged in molten lava.
The same burning sensation tickled the tip of her nose and pinched at her ears. Tears formed behind Creak's eyes as she pressed her face against the frosty bars in an attempt to see the horses in front of the cage.
'Are they gone?' She wondered to herself.
She couldn't see the slave traders, her captors. She didn't hear the sound of voices. The only sounds were of a soft breeze brushing the pine trees and Vern's soft snoring.
"ɧơῳ Ɩơ۷ɛƖყ! ıʂŋ'ɬ ɬɧɛ ʂƙყ ʝųʂɬ ɬɧɛ ɱơʂɬ ცɛąųɬıʄųƖ ɬɧıŋɠ ყơų'۷ɛ ɛ۷ɛཞ ʂɛɛŋ!"
Creak gasped. 'Angel?'
"ƈơųƖɖ ıɬ ცɛ ąŋყơŋɛ ɛƖʂɛ?" Angel's singing voice brightened inside her head. Creak never thought she would be so relieved to hear her overly positive friend, but after spending a few day alone with Gorgos she came to realize a little bit of joy never hurt anyone.
"No!" Gorgos screamed it outrage. "You can't come back! We don't want you here!"
"ơɧ ɖơŋ'ɬ ცɛ ɬɧąɬ ῳąყ! ı ƙŋơῳ ყơų ɱıʂʂɛɖ ɱɛ."
"Sure." Gorgos drawled. "Just like the king misses his knights after they retire."
Creak snorted at her sarcastic words. The king doesn't care about anyone but himself, just like Gorgos. If she thought about it Creak was sure she could come up with hundreds of ways the two were alike.
'Okay. Calm down you two.' Creak said before they could start arguing with each other. 'We have more important things to think about. You know, like how are we going to get to the rebel kingdom now?'
"ơɧ! ı ƙŋơῳ! ῳɛ ɧą۷ɛ ɬơ ɠɛɬ ơųɬ ơʄ ɬɧıʂ ƈąɠɛ. ɬɧɛŋ ῳɛ ƈąŋ
ʝųʂɬ ῳąƖK ɬơῳąཞɖʂ ɬɧɛ ɱơųŋɬąıŋʂ ųŋɬıƖ ῳɛ ʄʝŋɖ ცąŋɛ."
"Great idea!" Gorgos mocked her squeal. "Let's have Creak just walk right through the bars and we'll be on our way. Just genius!"
Creak rubbed her temples. 'You know what? Forget I ever said anything. I'll think of a plan later with Vern. He'll at least try to contribute something helpful.'
Dispelling the voices in her head, Creak looked out at the pine forest. The needled trees glistened in the afternoon light. She had slept half the day away! Where was she now? And why had they stopped?
Creak sighed. She just wanted a break, but when you're a musician in a world without music, things like a vacation didn't exist.
Outside of her cage, she saw two bright blue song birds play tag. Fluttering around trees without so much as a single chirp. A bird's voice was like a song by itself and without music they had forgotten their own language. The sight and sound of silence brought tears to her eyes, but she pushed them back. She had made a promise to herself. No crying while she was away from her brother.
The birds fluttered closer to her cage and suddenly Creak had an idea. What if she could remind them of what it was like before their voices had been silenced?
Creak smiled. The slave traders were nowhere to be seen or heard. Vern was fast asleep. She was already wanted for treason and stuck in a cage on her way to be sold as a servant. What could a little singing do?
Looking out at the bluebirds who had lost their language, Creak sang to remind them.
Flotain lâst dôdgung; pinn pin tûsâwan sîd
Tôcnâwan to hordloca êower swêg nân n-ænnedîeglan hîwscipe
Hlêodrian, lîesan dôd fullgearwian âscîmian
Dærnian hit hêwid-bregdan Eden min
She wasn't even sure what the words she sang meant. All Creak knew was that her mother used to sing to her when she couldn't fall to sleep. Songs of a language she didn't understand... that was all she could remember from her early childhood.
Tears of frustration pushed against her eyes, but she blinked them back. 'No crying.' She told herself as the words continued to pour out of her. 'You're strong, fierce, and brave. It'll take more than remembering a messed up childhood to make you cry. You're better than this.'
Creak expected the voices in her head to respond, but all she got was silence. Not a sound in her head. Not a sound from the birds outside. 'Come on. You can do it.' She tried to send the birds her mental support.
Letting her voice grow strong for the last verse, Creak put everything she had into her voice. The grief and guilt of leaving her brother. The pain and fear of being trapped in a cage. Anticipation and horror at what her future might bring. All her emotions contributing to power behind the words she sang.
Wynasumnes sê fullwer of willa
Hêorehandfæstan orlege
Dugud reord wlite dugud trahtung
Forl–ætan ûs of pro ic singan wislic widerbreca æwicnes
She held the last word at a whisper until her voice faded out. Having finished the song, Creak couldn't help but think of Stans. If he had been with her he would have freaked out and yell at her in that concerned way of his. Warning her that it wasn't safe. Music was against the law. The king would kill her for such high treason.
"I should have listened." She mumbled spitefully. "Why didn't I listen?"
But she hadn't heeded her brother's warning and now here she was. Stuck in a cage in the middle of a pine forest freezing to death.
Clenching her teeth against oncoming tears, Creak pounded her forehead on the metal bars. She should have never thought it would be okay to break the king's law.
'I miss my brother.' She thought in misery as she slammed her head against the cage again and again.
'I even miss that disgusting, old barn!' Creak thought with another pound to the head.
'Why isn't this working?' She wondered in pain. 'I just want the darkness to embrace me.'
Another hit to the metal bars and Creak felt chilled, sticky blood drip down the side of her face. But she wouldn't stop now. She couldn't stop. The pain was a welcome distraction and knocking herself out was a pleasant idea that brought a bitter smile to her face.
"Oh great stars above! What are you doing?" Creak could barely hear Vern's alarmed voice through the pounding in her head.
Warm hands pulled her away from the icy bars, whose surface now dripped red. Creak groaned in pain as the wooden floor spun underneath her. Vern now held her shivering body against his steady one. He was saying something, but Creak couldn't hear him because it had worked. Her singing had worked!
She couldn't hear Vern because all she could focus on was the birds singing. Their voices, their way of communication restored. Their chirps full of joy and music. 'They remember!' Creak thought in a haze as her vision began to blur. Despite having physically bashed her own head in, Creak couldn't help but feel as if everything would be okay as the darkness consumed her.
* * *
Creak sat high above the ground in a tree of unrealistic proportions. Red wood, the same brownish red color of Vern's crazy curls, stretched ten feet wide under her feet. Ten feet! And she was just standing on one of the tree's many branches! Just the branches! The tree's trunk was ten times the size of the branches... maybe even more.
Walking along the branch, Creak imagined she was an ant up in a normal-sized tree. Pushing aside leafs as long as she was tall, Creak took a deep breath. The air felt thinner, but had a sweet, sugary taste to it.
She walked to the edge of the branch curious to see how high she really was and what she saw took her breath away. Creak wasn't normally scared of hights. They energized her in a way nothing else could. Just a slip away from death... but it wouldn't be a terrible way to go. You'd get to feel the air fall away all around you. Pushing at you like it didn't want you to go, but its efforts would be in vain. Once one falls there's no going back, so why not enjoy the free fall. Why not savior your final flight.
Creak looked down at the branches beneath her only going down about a mile before disappearing in a thick fog. She couldn't see a bottom, so how could she be sure there even was one.
A cold hand on her shoulder made her jump back from the edge and spin around. The elf in front of her took a step away and bent his neck to look at her. Bane... the elf in front of her was Bane.
"Am I dead?" Her voice quivered with the words. She had always thought about death, mostly because Gorgos constantly brought it up and with the king's knights hunting her... well she always felt like her death was just a step away.
"No you're not dead. At least not yet." Bane's singing voice was colder than she remembered from her last dream with him. A harsh disappointment that Creak knew was directed at her tainted his words. "You do something stupid like that again and you might not be so lucky. As it is you might not get out of this without a permanent brain disorder."
That made Creak snort. "If you haven't figured it out yet, I already have one of those." She looked around as if to make sure they were alone before looking him in the eye. "The voices."
She tried to say it with a serious face, but it only took a second before she broke into a crazed smile.
Bane, on the other hand was not smiling, his frown creating some very unflattering lines around his mouth. "You think this is some big joke?"
Creak shrugged off his glare. "You know what? Yeah I do. Right now my whole life is a joke. A sick and twisted joke."
Bane's eyes narrowed. "Fine. I didn't come here to argue with you. Take my hand."
He held out his perfect elf hand with it perfectly shaped fingers and beyond perfectly sculpted nails. Glaring at his wonderful, clean hand Creak felt an odd satisfaction when she placed her dirt covered, nail broken hand in his, contaminating his perfection with her imperfection. It would have been even more satisfactory if he'd shown some kind of disgust, but he stood as emotionless as humanly possibly. Or was it elfishly possible since he wasn't technically human?
Creak would have contemplated it longer if her world hadn't suddenly turned upside down.
* * *
Creak stood beside Bane as the spinning in her head subsided replacing the giant tree she had been on with an elegant room. The cold stone walls were brightened with oriental tapestries depicting numerous battles and coronations. Kings being crowded, victories being won from generations as old as time.
"What is this place?" Creak wondered in awe as she spun around to take in the soft, silk covered bed and great oak, floor-to-ceiling dresser.
"A genie's new prison." Bane whispered like they might be overheard, but by who?
"A prison!" Creak exclaimed. "If this a prison then I want to be arrested!"
For a second Creak imagined sleeping in a room as extravagant as the one she stood in right now. Laying on plush, silk covers instead of dirty, moldy straw. A real home! A place where she could always go and feel safe. Creak hadn't had something like that since she was five years old.
She moved to take a step, but was grabbed roughly from behind and stopped in her tracks.
"Are you crazy?" Bane exclaimed, his hands still squeezing her arms.
Shrugging out of his embrace, Creak took a step away from him. "Do not touch me." The anger in her voice surprised the both of them and Bane even managed a shameful blush.
An awkward silence passed between them before Creak cleared her throat and asked, "How is this a prison? For a place like this to be a prison it needs a prisoner. So where's the captive?"
Creak looked around the room, from the bed to the windowed balcony to the floor-to-ceiling wardrobe, but nothing appeared to have been in recent use. The bed was perfectly made, the window locked shut, even the wardrobe had a thin layer of dust over its handles.
"What you see here was this room a month ago," Bane clarified.
"Why a month ago? Can't you show me the 'now'? This room in our present time?" Creak pushed down her annoyance. It seemed as if Bane wasn't capable of giving her an honest answer. All he had for her were pieces of the past, memories that weren't hers.
Bane shook his head. "It doesn't work that way. I can't show you things in the present and I can't show you the future."
Creak pushed passed him, ignoring his weird warning from earlier, and began to pace back and forth.
"What's the point then!" She exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air to wave around the room. "What's the point of showing me an empty room from a month ago? I don't understand how this is relevant in my current situation."
Bane shrugged his shoulders in an annoyingly calm way, a gesture that made Creak's blood boil. "It isn't."
"What!" Creak rounded on him, standing on her tippy toes so he could see the fury in her eyes. "If this means nothing then why are we here!"
Bane rolled his eyes and gently pushed her off balance. "I never said this room has no meaning. I just said it's irrelevant to your current situation. That doesn't mean it won't be important later."
Creak stumbled back a few steps. "I want to go back! I need to go back now because if I don't get free then there won't be a later."
Bane nodded. "And if you continue to try to crack your head open on bars..."
He looked at her to finish the thought, but she waved him off. "Yeah, yeah. If I kill myself then there definitely won't be a later. I get it. Now can we please go back to the present."
"If you're sure you're ready." Bane questioned.
"Why would I want to stay here?" Creak asked in a sharp tone though she was genuinely curious.
"Oh you'll find out soon enough." Bane was toying with her. He had to be or else Creak would kill him for being such an jerk.
Just as she opened her mouth for a snide comeback, the world turned and darkness consumed her.