Unspoken

by Celia Mcmahon

  Unspoken

  Celia Mcmahon

  Copyright © 2019 by Celia Mcmahon

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Edited by Loni Crittenden, Sarah Sabin, and Aimee Bounds

  Published by The Parliament House

  www.parliamenthousepress.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Izzy Needs Your Help!

  About the Author

  The Parliament House

  To the girls with fierce hearts, and stars in their eyes.

  Chapter 1

  My mother slipped the corset over my head and tightened the straps. She cinched and pulled until it laid, pressing my ribs together, snug enough to satisfy her. I finally let out a breath. Even though I grew up wearing these lousy pieces of fashion, it always felt as though I had to relearn how to breathe.

  “I'll do what I can,” she finally said.

  I sat down on the chair whose back I’d been gripping for the past ten minutes. I wanted to hunch, but I couldn’t. It was like my bones had been replaced with steel rods. I bit back a swear as my mother gathered up my hair and pinned it in a neat, tight knot on the crown of my head. She patted down the flyways, flashes of her bright red nails in my periphery. As blood red as her gown.

  She stood back to admire her handiwork. “There. I suppose that will be enough not to put the royal family in a state of embarrassment.”

  “You do know that I am able to dress myself,” I said to her, fighting the urge to shake my head like a wet dog and tease apart the hair that began to hurt my scalp.

  “As queen, you will never have to do anything on your own,” my mother replied, giving a soft smile to my reflection. As the current queen, it was her business to ensure that I was the picture of what the kingdom sees in their future. Granted, I fought tooth and nail throughout my seventeen-and-a-half years as princess of Stormwall.

  “Only as queen, though, right?” I said with a smirk.

  “Only as queen, but right now you must heed me and stop wearing that hideous makeup. Set on a proper color lip stain. The elders want to be pleased and amazed at your presence. Not terrified, reaching for their hearts. You are there to consecrate a temple, after all.”

  I forced back a smart retort. “Yes, ma'am,” I murmured instead.

  “Isabelle,” she warned.

  She twirled away and plucked my dress from my bed. I tried to look as bored as possible as I stood up and took it from her outstretched hands. This one, pale green chiffon layered with satin, had a bust that curved around each of my breasts and faded to a darker green at the very end of the skirt. The train, the color of an oak tree, attached to my shoulders. The pattern was so narrow that I not only had to determine how to breathe, but also how to walk.

  “My favorite,” my mother announced, clapping her hands. She rested her hands along the apron of her layered skirt and watched as I groaned my way into the dress. She smiled, which was an oddity for my mother because normally she took in the world with severe tolerance. Always the picture-perfect queen, lips pressed in a hard line, ready to rule even in her sleep. A woman may be forgotten. But a queen lives on forever. That is what she tried to teach me from birth. I listened and I nodded like any good princess would.

  Just because I listened did not mean I had to obey.

  “Your first public, ceremonial outing,” she said. “Are you nervous?”

  “No,” I lied. I wasn’t doing much, just standing there while someone else unlocked a door and opened it to the public for the first time. But for my mother, it held much more importance. It would show me standing on my own, as I one day I would stand as queen. She saw this ceremony as the first step to becoming queen. I saw it as more of a chance to escape.

  When she had taken me in for long enough, she gestured toward the pair of black leather button shoes and turned to leave, the ripples of her skirt's train trailing behind.

  “Be good,” she said, her tone hard. The weakness had passed, and her dark eyes hardened.

  As good as I can be in this torture device, I thought. How she’d been doing it for forty years was beyond me.

  “The elders look forward to seeing you.”

  They are going to be sorely disappointed. I curbed a snort.

  I watched her close the door to my chambers and then turned back to my reflection. My mother had always said green was my color and I didn’t disagree. Even my hair looked better than it had in a long time. That was when I noticed the small gold barrette she had placed at the base of the knot. Tilting my head, I saw the shape of a dragonfly. Pretty, I thought, admiring my entire look. And then I gave a tongue-in-cheek smirk. It was a pity it would be coming off the second I left this room.

  I set off for the servant entrance, which was the quickest route away from the castle. I could navigate the hall with my eyes closed, and I knew all the shortcuts which wouldn’t draw attention. In record time, I was through the walkway and stables, where I’d quickly changed my clothing into something much more comfortable: a loose gray tunic, fitted black trousers and my worn boots. I saddled my horse, drew my bow and quiver from their hiding place amongst the hay, and cut a path through the gates into the woods beyond.

  I rode my horse down King’s Road, hooves digging into the earth, the cool, wild air against my skin, down a hill where the cloudless blue sky turned from a small sliver centered in the trees. The cusp of winter brought on earlier sunsets and chilly nights with the promise of snow, making its way slowly from across the mountains. With autumn came the end of my seventeenth year—in five weeks to be exact—and soon enough, talk of marriage proposals would be more than just an afterthought in the plan for my future.

  They could dream. I heard my mother’s voice telling me to focus on my future, and saw the heated look on my father's face when I would come home covered in the blood of a pig or drenched from getting stuck out in the rain without my cloak. With a father like mine, it was normal to use fear to force me to comply with his wishes, and for him to make me feel wrong about the person I was. He’d taught me how easy it was to love someone and hate them at the same time.

  Days existed in their cramped way behind the walls of Stormwall. It wasn’t until my thirteenth year that my mother
allowed me past the castle gates and down into the towns which expanded the world of concrete, stone, and forest. I knew there was much more in Mirosa, the New Kingdom, but these places were as names on a map. Stormwall is Mirosa, my father would say. All power, forest, and armies nestled against the mountains in the north. Nothing and nobody else mattered.

  But I knew different. Lots of things mattered to me.

  I gently drew backward on the reins of my horse. Somewhere in the distance came the snort of an animal—the sound of a promising day. “This may be a good day yet.”

  I jumped down, lifted the blanket from my saddle, and revealed my bow and arrow. I let out a long breath. I’d forgotten what life outside the palace was like, and how my body relaxed instead of being taut as a bowstring.

  I felt free.

  I raised my eyebrows and threw the quiver onto my back, adjusting the strap across my chest. I stalked deeper into the trees, bow in hand. I didn’t have to hunt for my own food as others do. I didn’t have to skin it or cook it. I didn’t even have to ask for it. It's just always been there. My brother had taught me the way others do it. He’d taught me that every piece of a kill needed to be used.

  I touched the emerald necklace my brother, Henry, had given me before leaving for war, smoothing my fingertip over it. My strength always seemed to rise when I touched it, drawing my brother’s bravery from his last gift to me.

  I moved further, wiping a stray hair from my face. Out here, I could feel him better than behind the castle walls. Almost as if he were right beside me, ordering me to hold my arrow steady, to breathe, to count to three. Do or die, he'd say.

  “Do or die,” I whispered. I went down onto my belly and pushed myself through some thorny underbrush. I wore a mossy green calf-length tunic and brown fitted pants. With Henry’s old worn leather boots, I sported the perfect hunting attire. I trained my ears, held my breath, and peered over a small hill to a family of boar less than fifty feet off. A single large one and three babies. The large one's tusks gleamed in what sunlight the canopy of trees allowed. I pulled back my arrow, taking a deep breath, and counted to three just as Henry once instructed.

  One.

  The boar moved slightly, its belly fat and exposed.

  Two.

  Another deep breath. A lick of my lips and a steady hand.

  Three.

  I let my arrow fly and waited for that tell-tale wail—an animal scream and a scurrying of little boar hooves. I skipped to my feet, but before I could take a step, my ears pricked to the deep exhale of something large, silhouetted in a space between two large redwoods. A deer. And a buck at that, with more points than I could even begin to count. I drew another arrow and pulled back, my heart racing against my chest.

  The snapping of branches and leaves announced a visitor of the two-legged kind. I cringed as I watched the buck dart away, disappearing into the forest. My heart landed in my stomach like a brick. “You'd be a terrible hunter,” I said.

  An old man in a linen robe leaned against a tree, observing me with a quiet interest. Underneath all those white whiskers, I could see a faint smile painted on his lips.

  Did you get it, he signed, his fingers moving deftly at chest-level.

  I almost laughed. “Did I get it,” I said under my breath and made my way to the dead boar. The babies had scattered, probably to the group's other adults.

  My boar lay with my arrow in its midsection. Not young by any means, its tusks as long as my arms. Too astounded by their size, I almost failed to notice the slow rise and fall of the boar’s chest. Shaking my head, I plucked at the branch of my pants and unsheathed Henry's hunting knife. I stood at equal height with the old man and held out my hand, where the knife laid exposed in my palm. “Render it a go, Milke’?”

  Milke’ cocked his head quizzically. He smelled like tobacco and looked as though he’d weathered the worst this world could give him. I winked at him and closed my hand over the grip of the knife.

  “Their hearts sit low,” I said, more to myself than to my guest. I prepared my entry, holding the handle tight. I brought it down and out quickly, bringing with it a squishing, fleshy sound, like biting into a peach. Except peach juice isn’t red and tastes a little sweeter.

  In the time it took me to remove the tusks and tie the beast to my horse, the number of spectators began to grow as we moved through the forest toward their village. Though they were older, something radiated from them. In their silence, there was power. It was something I never understood.

  They were called the Voiceless, a people inflicted with a disease that attacked their vocal chords and rendered them mute. They say it was brought upon by infected birds or tainted water—something of that tragic manner. All I knew with certainty was that the Voiceless came from the Old Kingdom on the other side of the mountains and warred against my father. Once the disease had struck, they gave up their arms and a new age emerged—one of the old and the new coming together as one.

  A new world.

  Several hundred of the Voiceless came into my father’s land to live, having fled their war-torn country and settled under his rule. I felt sorry for them, these people who had their lives destroyed. But my father said the Old Kingdom was full of old magic and evil and that he’d saved them from such an existence. That he’d liberated them.

  The truth was a fragile thing.

  The Voiceless lived in severely rundown camps, like the one where I’d brought the boar. Most were elderly, plagued by brittle bones and shriveled lungs, and were unable to hunt for themselves. Some were younger, having been babes when the disease had struck. But the youth had mostly gone off and spread themselves across the great continent, taking jobs and living as citizens. Or they went back to the Old Kingdom. But nobody talked about those ones. Nobody talked about the Voiceless much at all. With no written history, I only knew what others had told me. Nothing more.

  “There’s talk of white mountain cat sightings.” I wiped the blood from the hunting knife on the saddle blanket and replaced it in its sheath. The men took the boar and lifted it onto a wooden table in the center of the small village.

  White cats are rare, Milke’ signed.

  “If you were younger, you’d accompany me, I’m sure,” I told him. “Maybe I’d even let you woo me.”

  If I were younger, I’d be out there fighting.

  I frowned at this. It was no secret that some of the Voiceless had formed their own small armies, wreaking havoc wherever they could. There were none here at Stormwall, but the stories made their way across the continent, from the smaller kingdoms and beyond.

  “I fear what would happen if enough of you got together,” I said in jest as the butchers hacked up the boar. They’d given me the tusks and I slipped them into my saddlebag, then returned to watching them cut the meat. Blood spilled down the side of the table and through the cracks. I watched the drip, drip, drip until something caught my eye.

  “Whatever could that be?”

  Milke’ tugged my arm as I began to move toward the large trunk of a tree. I turned to look at him.

  Don’t worry about that.

  Whenever people said that, it made me worry even more.

  I didn’t answer. I moved to the tree trunk and I swear the birds in the forest stopped chirping. I heard my own gasp as if it were thunder.

  Claw marks.

  They started higher than my head and stretched down to my knees. Deep grooves, five of them, carved deep enough into the wood to splinter it. I rounded the tree and cupped a hand to my mouth.

  “Why did you tell me not to worry?” I’d turned to face Milke’ but also came face to face with the dozens of the Voiceless. “What did this?”

  Mountain cat, a woman signed.

  Bear.

  I let out a shaky laugh. “Bear maybe, but…” I ran my fingers through the grooves. A bear would have the height, perhaps, but not the claws.

  From somewhere close, a man was shouting. Then another. Through the trees, I caught sight of bla
ck and yellow. Palace guards.

  I looked up at the sky to see where the sun was sitting and cursed under my breath. If the guards were here, that meant my mother had sent them, which meant…

  I nodded to Milke’ and signed that I’d be back before the boar ran out, then hugged him. I wanted to stay and investigate those claw marks, but I knew being caught would mean facing my mother’s wrath. I vowed to return soon.

  Then I fled on horseback, giving the palace guards a chase as I made for my castle in the wind.

  Chapter 2

  I made two stops before going home. First, at the stables, to drop off my horse. Second, through the back gardens to the cemetery, my sack of tusks on one shoulder. There, I said hello to Henry.

  The cemetery was open and covered in daisies, with a few scattered trees. The wind moaned through the gravestones, rustling the leaves of the trees that stood in this place. Days, weeks, years, decades went by outside of those gates, yet, behind them, nothing changed except the leaves on the trees. I’d spent long days here, unaware of my mortality—but that was before. Back when I was so sure that I would live forever.

  I took in the cool air and stepped carefully around the graves until I found it. A limestone marker engraved with his full name:

  Henry Yuel Rowan.