by B K Suitter
Tanner was thin and short, but wiry and brave. He had thick brown hair that grew down to his large dark eyes and a small nose peeked out from an innocent face. He wore blue trousers that were covered in mud and stained green from scrambling on his knees through the brush, and his thin black shirt was torn from reaching tree limbs that had grabbed at him when he ran away. His favorite sandals were lost somewhere in the forest and his feet hurt as sharp rocks and long thorns cut into them.
Tanner ran until the darkness fell upon the Timberlands and he was forced to walk with cautious steps up the forest trail. He shivered as he ambled on and he wrapped himself up in his own arms in a feeble attempt to ward off the chill. He was tripped up by a long leafy vine, but he caught himself and staggered onward, reaching out to the darkness to keep from running into trees or their lower branches.
Tanner crept through the inky forest for quite some time before he spotted a light in the distance. Slowly, he worked his way towards what seemed to be a small campfire. The boy could smell the smoke and feel its warmth and his senses responded as he was cold to the bone. He came to the edge of the small clearing and surveyed the scene while hiding in the dark shadows.
The forest floor was swept clear of all leaves and debris. There were long cut logs placed about the outer edge of the campfire, and on one of those sat a small girl. She appeared to be of his same age with long dark hair and soft, trusting, blue eyes. Her face was round, and her thin nose and thick red lips gave her the look of someone older, yet she was undoubtedly a young girl. She wore a simple white nightshirt that was long to her knees and her feet were bare.
Tanner found himself entering the clearing and moving right up to the small girl. She was more beautiful than any girl he had ever met. In a strange way, she reminded him of his mother. The way she looked at him made him feel like everything would be all right.
“You poor thing, are you lost?” the small girl asked. “Why don’t you sit down and warm yourself by the fire.”
The girl’s tiny voice seemed to echo inside the small boy’s head. Tanner wanted to speak but found himself speechless. He simply sat down on a small log and stared at the girl. Tanner was no longer cold and tired, but his head swam in confusion.
“Your feet look horrible,” the young girl said. “Do they hurt?”
Tanner nodded his head but remained silent.
The girl reached down and picked up a small bag from off the ground and then slowly kneeled down next to the boy. With the gentlest of hands, she took one of his feet and inspected the bottom.
“Oh dear,” the little girl said, and she carefully put the foot back down and lifted the other foot. “Oh my,” she said, placing the foot across her lap as she reached into her bag and pulled out a clean white rag. She reached down again and pulled out a small bottle, unscrewed the lid, and poured a clear liquid onto the cloth. The girl then cleaned the boy’s wounded feet and carefully wrapped them with white bandages. She spoke kind words and made the boy feel almost happy and not so alone.
“My name is Mara and I live in the town just to the south. My parents will be along shortly. Let’s just lay back against the log and rest until they get here.” The boy found her words to be intoxicating and he moved off the log to lie down next to her. She continued to speak to him, but the boy surrendered to his exhaustion and fell asleep.
***************
The day was warm and the sun shown brightly. The crystal blue waters of the Arani River swept slowly under a long arching bridge made of cobblestones and thick solid beams of oak from the Timberlands. The wide bridge known as Drin Crossing connected the outer quarter, which consisted of rows of tightly packed houses, to the inner part of the city where merchants sold their wares.
Tanner sat on the edge of the bridge at its apex and dangled his legs high above the smooth water. His hands grasped a wooden pole with a long fishing line attached that dropped into the deep waters and tempted fish with a worm on a hook.
Next to the boy sat the small girl, Mara. She looked down into the clear waters as Tanner slowly moved the pole back and forth to bait a fish. Her long dark hair caught a gust of wind and it blew across her face and made her laugh. She pulled it back and watched as the boy stayed somber and simply stared down into the flowing waters that dragged below him.
“Why so sad?” Mara asked.
“I think something has happened to my father,” Tanner said as he stared into the blue waters of the Arani River. He used to sit on this very bridge every day after school and fish the waters. He would always bring home a catch for him and his mother. He would clean the fish and prepare it for his mother to cook, and she would always say, “You are the real man of this house.” His father was a soldier and never around. That was when he lived in Arani City – before his mother died.
“Why do you think that?” Mara asked.
The boy thought for a moment. He couldn’t remember what had happened to his dad, maybe he never knew.
“Why don’t you come with me?” Mara said with a hint of a smile. “On the way, we can look for your father. I’m sure we can find him.” Tanner would not look up from the waters. Their reflection was on the surface, but a woman sat next to him, not Mara. He stared into the river and the woman stared back and she spoke to him, her voice sweet but cold.
“Would you like to be special? Would you really like to fly?” Tanner wanted that more than anything, now that his mom was gone. He had no love for his father and had blamed the man for his mother’s death, even though he knew it was not true. She had simply gotten sick. He just wanted to fly away now. Tanner looked up from the river and finally put his eyes on the small girl.
“I can make you special,” Mara laughed, and she reached out a tiny finger and touched the boy’s nose. A flare of light sparked off her touch and Tanner felt as if he was beginning to float. He rose from off the ground, dropping his fishing pole into the waters and lifting both arms out as if to fly. He was so happy, but only for a moment as he woke from his dream and found thick hands wrapped about each arm. He was being dragged away by the soldiers he had run from earlier. He shook violently, trying to break free from their grasp. The two soldiers just laughed as they took him away.
“I don’t want the boy harmed. Put him in an empty cage and bring him with us,” said General Kneeamara.
“Yes, General,” said the soldier, and he moved off to follow the others.
“It seems you have found another pet,” said Sergeant Semik.
General Kneeamara stared hard at the ugly man. Her flowing black hair draped long over strong shoulders, and her sparkling blue eyes burned with hatred. She was tall and athletic and dressed in leather armor with a short sword on her left hip, but her mind was her deadliest weapon, and it was cold and cunning.
“Head back, Sergeant,” Kneeamara replied in an icy tone, and she moved past Semik with a driving shoulder and knocked him sideways.
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“Yamen the Darkhorse fought with skill and bravery unmatched in all the Southern Kingdom. He raced through the maze of hallways in Castle Lamourne, killing all the Dishoni warriors that stood in his path. He made his way up long circling staircases with his shield, driving the enemy back and pushing them over the railing to their certain doom. His sword flashed like lightning and only glimpses of the shiny steel could be seen as Yamen cut his way through the men that dared stand against him, leaving a curtain of blood for the rest of the Queen’s Guard to run through.”
“Michael, please, don’t you think that’s a little much?” Evaylia asked, giving him a strong look of disapproval.
“Be quiet, Evaylia,” hushed little Tris, a small girl of ten summers. “This is the best part.”
Michael smiled to his girlfriend and she rolled her eyes back at him and simply shook her head. His little sister, Tristania, urged him on to finish the tale.
“Yamen the Darkhorse and his large group of Queen’s Guard decorated the cold stone hallways with Dishoni body parts,
” and Michael winked at Evaylia, who threw back a sneer of disgust. “But alas, when the day was finally won and Castle Lamourne cleared of all the Western invaders, Queen Aliha was nowhere to be found.”
“But King Uriah was safe, the cowardly fool. What kind of king abandons his queen while his castle is under siege?” Tris spat the same words every time her brother told the story.
“The queen had just given birth to Prince Hadias, she could not be moved,” Michael replied.
“He shouldn’t have left her alone,” his sister shot back. “A real king would have stayed to protect her!”
“But he was the king,” Michael countered.
“So!” Both Tris and Evaylia shot back.
“Would you have left me to be abducted by the Dishoni savages?” Evaylia continued with a questioning glare.
“The Dishoni are not savages, and no, I would have fought by your side until they captured you. Then I would have run,” and Michael laughed as he put up his hands to block the fist full of dirt that was hurled his way by Evaylia. Tris laughed even harder and clapped her small hands as the older girl then dove forward and tackled the boy off the log he was sitting on. The two wrestled in the dirt for a moment and little Tris cheered on Evaylia, until they stopped and started kissing.
“Ok, now you’re grossing me out,” and the small girl turned away and moved to the other side of the small forest clearing and sat down on a log next to her other brother, Jase.
“They really know how to ruin a perfectly good evening,” Tris said, but her brother spoke not a word. He just stared into the campfire while sitting on the log.
The two brothers, their little sister, and Evaylia were all spending the night in the forest far from the frontier town that was their home. The small campsite had blankets laid out all around a campfire and there were logs that circled the area to sit on. The four spent many warm nights there, staying up late and telling stories until the break of dawn.
Michael was tall and muscular with thick brown hair that grew down to his shoulders. He was handsome like his father with a strong jaw and quick smile and dark brown eyes that could steal a girl’s heart. He was confident and charismatic, raised by his father who was head of the town council and considered the leader of the logging community. Michael would be eighteen summers old come dawn, a man grown and ready to start working the forest with the other loggers.
Evaylia climbed off her boyfriend, stood up and reached out a strong but delicate hand. Michael took the offer and as the girl pulled him to his feet, she let go and watched him fall back to the ground. She then turned away and walked into the circle to join Tris and Jase, leaving Michael to watch as she strode with confidence away from him. Evaylia was just short of six feet, making her almost as tall as Michael. She was not skinny, nor was she fat. She was thick and strong, well built for a frontier’s woman of nineteen summers. Evaylia had sharp features with great bone structure, her long curly red hair decorating an oval face with beautiful green eyes and full red lips. She sat down next to Tris on a log and watched as Michael brushed the dirt from his backside.
“Oh, your brother is dirty, Tris. Look how he pats himself clean. What is it you call him?” Evaylia smiled and winked at the small girl.
“He’s a Southern Princess!” Tris cried out and the two girls burst into laughter. Jase continued to stare into the flames, quiet and unblinking.
“Funny girl, my sister is,” Michael replied dryly, and he quickly scooped up a handful of dirt and pretended to cast it their way. He was disappointed when neither girl flinched, their looks daring him to make the throw. Michael just shook his head as he opened his hand and let the dirt fall away.
“Your influence on my sister is becoming a bore,” Michael said to Evaylia.
“Why, because you can’t tease me anymore?” remarked Tris as her brother sat down next to his girlfriend.
“Exactly,” Michael replied, thinking that Tris was maturing faster than he expected, mostly due to the sway that Evaylia had on her. He had been seeing Evaylia since her and her uncle moved to the small town two months earlier. It was love at first sight, he would tell her, and it was true. When he saw her on the first day she rode into town with her uncle, he was mesmerized and immediately introduced himself in his most charming way. Evaylia played hard-to-get for a while, even flirting with some of the other boys, but she admitted later she had been smitten by his charm that first day and had not stopped thinking about him.
Now it seemed Tris was adopting Evaylia’s personality, her strong will and dominating characteristics, which Michael loved in his girlfriend, but not so much in his little sister. He wanted her to stay cute and innocent and not carry so much attitude. Tris had thick brown hair that was long and curly, and it fell around a small round face with soft dark eyes and thin lips that would pout when discouraged. When the small girl smiled, she could light up the darkest room, and her laugh could bring joy to the saddest of men.
As Michael thought about all that was Tris, he couldn’t help but look over to his older brother Jase and feel his heart deflate. The man of twenty-seven summers had spent most of his life in a state where his mind was lost in a void. It was hard to describe, hard to explain, and impossible to understand. Jase looked to be normal and had the same features that Michael shared with his father. He had a strong jaw, long nose, and haunted brown eyes, and his brown hair was kept short. He was tall like his brother, but much leaner, and he always sat or moved about in a state of comatose. He never spoke a word to anyone, and his eyes only registered the absence of thought.
Michael had not been born yet when the incident occurred. Jase was seven and playing in the forest with three of his young friends. They were down at Settlers Pond swimming in the warm waters on a hot summer day. The small group had found a dying frog and began passing it around, each boy taking a turn holding the blue frog that had red stripes. They stroked the slimy skin with their tiny fingers and dared one another to kiss its bright colored back. When they were done, they put the frog on a lily pad and pushed it around the pond as if on a boat. Later that night, they told their parents of the adventures they all had at Settlers Pond.
Within two days, Jase’s three friends were dead, and he lay in a coma with an extremely high temperature. Apparently, the frog they were playing with was an adder frog, one of the most poisonous animals in the forest.
It was by pure luck, or the will of Carami, that two healers were passing through the frontier town a few days later. The men were told of the incident and hurried to the small house to find Jase burning up and in an unconcious state. The two healers constructed a small med tent and the boy was carried inside. The healer that was an old man insisted on being alone with the boy while the other healer, a man of middle age, sat outside with Jase’s mother and father.
Soon, the old man came back out of the tent with a smile on his face. The boy who was near to death was seemingly cured and taken back into the house to rest. The two healers left soon after with reasons of being needed elsewhere, although Jase’s father, Fedor, begged the two to stay so he might thank the men with a fine dinner.
Jase was cured and indeed alive but was never the same. He could not speak, or would not, it was never known which because the boy’s mind was lost to darkness. Jase was taken to many cities, looked at by the finest of healers, but they had no cure to give and no explanation to offer.
Fedor and his wife raised the boy the best they could and many years after Michael was born, his father told him of the sad story of how his brother came to be the way he was. He told him of the poisonous frog and of the death of his friends and of the healers that mysteriously showed up and cured Jase. He told Michael of the tent that Jase had been taken into and how a soft glow escaped from underneath while the boy was being healed. In a moment of despair his father admitted to wishing that Jase had died because of the life he was forced to live. Fedor told him that he was plagued with dreams of Jase coming to him in the middle of the night and talking to him
while he slept.
Michael vaguely remembered a similar dream when he was ten summers old. As he slept, Jase put a comforting hand on him which stirred him to wake. Although Michael knew he was still asleep, he felt that it was more than a dream. It was so surreal how his brother told him he was ok and that he needed him to watch after his body while he was away. Michael recalled waking from his sleep and immediately going over to check on his brother who slept soundlessly with his eyes open in his own bed on the other side of the room. That was the only time he had ever dreamt of his brother, until last night when Jase came to him in his sleep.
“They are coming,” Jase had told him.
“What are you thinking about?” Evaylia asked Michael as they both stretched out on a comfortable blanket that was spread out before the small campfire. Tristania had fallen asleep and Jase just laid there staring at the fire on a thick blanket of fur. It was quite early in the morning, a sliver of a moon hanging lazily in the sky above them, and Michael still pondered the riddle that was Jase.
“I’m thinking of you,” Michael lied and Evaylia just smirked to let him know she knew it.
“It’s ok, you don’t have to tell me. I am curious as to what weighs so heavy on your mind, but I’ll wait until you’re ready to tell me,” Evaylia then kissed Michael as they lay on the thick blanket in each other’s arms and resigned to fall asleep. Michael stretched out for quite some time until he too dozed off.
“Michael, wake up,” Jase shook his brother until he opened his eyes. “I need to show you something.”
Michael stood up from his blanket and looked down to see himself asleep with Evaylia in his arms. Tris was still asleep on her blanket and Jase was laying on his back with his eyes wide open, staring at him. A cold chill rocked Michael and he stirred in his sleep, causing Evaylia to become restless.
