AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Arie’s eyes jerked over to the speaker and saw the cruel smile that stretched wide on Margot’s face, taking the place of her feigned look of horror. Her words broke the spell. People immediately began to cry out against Arie, demanding her removal from the sanctuary before ill luck and Ragoru descended upon them. In vain, Arie searched the crowd and saw not one friendly face among them. The merchants frowned at the disturbance but continued to press their wares. But people she’d known all her life, even those who had been kind to her mother, looked at her with horror and dread, making signs to ward away evil.
“Joshu?” she said quietly, looking over at him. He curled his lip and pulled away from her, making the sign with his fingers. He took his mother’s arm in his and pushed past her, his eyes narrowed in contempt, but his face softened when tears sprung to her eyes.
“You’d best leave, Arie. I say this as one who once called you friend. Leave quickly before the village takes it into their head to forcibly remove you.”
Arie swallowed, staring wide-eyed at him, and nodded her head. Gathering her skirts in hand, she pushed away through the crowd and fled through the village to her sad little cottage at the outer edge of its walled off perimeter. Yanking the door open, she retreated into the cool interior and pulled down a burlap bag. She knew she wouldn’t have much time. Ever since she was old enough to understand, her mother had prepared her for this eventuality. She had to hurry. The village council would not let her take anything they deemed remotely of value.
Now she was almost glad that the dogs ate the old nanny goat. Although the loss of the stubborn old thing had saddened her, she was glad the goat was one thing they couldn’t take away from her.
With great care, she wrapped her mother’s books, one a tome on medicinal herbs and the other a bold pirate romance with faded lettering from frequent touches on its pages. She wrapped both in her extra change of clothing and set them at the bottom of the bag, on top of the thick blanket she put in there. She made her way into the cellar and packed the rest of her dried meat and the loaf of bread she’d made that morning for her supper. Flint and steel joined her supplies, along with an old metal canteen bottle for water that had belonged to her father.
She scoured the cellar for any supplies that had been left down there over the years. She even packed several jars of her homemade salves and ointments to ease different kinds of burns, venoms, and toxins. She wasn’t going to go out unprepared. As she put a full pouch of her momma’s herbal blend for cleansing wounds, a gleam of fiery gold caught her eye.
High on a shelf sat the last jar of wild honey. Arie chewed her lip. If she was caught with it, she would be punished. Honey was considered liquid gold. It was an extreme luxury, the only bit of wealth her family ever had. Her father had a way with bees, and he’d taught her mother how to harvest the honey. Arie picked up the jar and turned it in her hands, and before she allowed herself to think any further about it, she tucked it deep into her bag.
At that moment, a seditious thought began to burn in her mind. She looked around the cellar, noting the bags of potatoes, the stored vegetables, and the bunches of dried herbs. Her entire summer of work harvested with the arrival of autumn. It was all the wealth she had. Every bit of it had belonged to her family and no one else.
She would be damned if she left one thing for the council to fatten themselves upon.
Arie rushed outside and filled her skirt pockets with chips from the woodpile and carried as many logs as she could down into the cellar. She piled the wood at the far end, sending fat-bodied spiders scattering, and stuffed the woodchips between two logs. The cellar ran underneath the house. Any fire started there would spread and consume the cottage.
She pulled out her flint and steel and struck them together until a spark landed on the kindling. Leaning over the kindling, she blew on the crackling ember so that it brightened and grew as she added more fuel. To her surprise, the flames caught faster than she’d expected and flared up. Scrambling backward, Arie picked up her sack and smiled.
“Bye, Momma. I am going to carve out a better future for myself, the kind you’d want me to have, instead of withering away here.”
Walking quickly, she slipped out her door and made her way to the gated entrance of the walls. The sentry there stiffened as she neared, his expression growing wary and he eyed her hood. Apparently, word had spread quickly. She touched a finger to her forehead respectfully, and his expression became even more strained.
Her heart sank. He was going to search her.
His lips parted to speak and give the order she definitely didn’t want to hear when an alarm rang out through the village, drawing the sentry up short. His eyes widened, he spun away from her to rush toward the village. From where she stood, Arie could just barely make out people scrambling down the path with wet blankets and shirts. No doubt in a vain attempt to beat out the flames consuming her cottage. Arie watched, her lips twisted in grim amusement. By now, the fire was out of control. They had no hope of stopping it. Without further hesitation, she turned away and passed through the gate. A few steps, and her feet sank into tall grass and wildflowers. Several steps more and she disappeared into the forest.
The moment she stepped outside the walls, the trees surrounded her on all sides like a safe haven. Despite the dangers that she knew inhabited the wild places, Arie felt freer than she ever had in her life. Singing softly to herself, Arie stepped in a lively manner, picking her way through thick bushes and watching for the signs of carnivorous plants and predators. There was no alternate path to stick to for safely arriving at her grandmother’s house, outside of the roughly carved out merchant’s trail, but that wasn’t going to deter her.
As she proceeded down the deeply rutted path, her steps grew quicker as the reality of her situation descended upon her. She’d set her property on fire. The village would have nothing left to claim for their own profit, and the council would be enraged. She wouldn’t be surprised if they sent someone after her—perhaps even that terrible huntsman. He certainly wouldn’t balk at taking payment and retrieving her for punishment.
Her blood ran cold, and she let her fear give her feet wings.
Chapter
Three
The smoke lingered in the air, gloomy yet purifying. Arie could still detect traces of it around her, carried far into the woods by a light breeze. It seemed to both pursue and expel her, desiring to cling to her but chasing her into the dark grip of the woods like a wolf of bygone times stalking its prey. Yet unlike the wolf, the illusion of pursuit faded with the smoke the further she went, and the villagers would dare not enter the woods near the settlement.
She had run in a blind panic, darting through brush, her eyes tearing at the sting of bramble and branches. She didn’t really see anything. She was consciously aware of very little except her instinct to listen for pursuit, ready to run like a frightened animal. The realization that no one was giving chase burrowed into her brain through all the panic until her limbs slowed and, panting heavily, she leaned against a tree and looked around.
The first thing she noticed was how ominously dark the forest was. Trees twisted with age leaned heavily and seemed to groan with the weight of their years. The remains of fallen trees rested at odd angles or flat upon the ground, almost disappearing under the cover of lichen and spongy moss. Arie turned and shrieked when she came face to face with a fat spider hanging in a web spun between the two trees nearest her. Stumbling back from it, she tried to rein in her panicked gulps of breath as she forced herself to take a measured look around. There appeared to be game trails, or perhaps paths cut by the merchants in their regular passage to and from the village. Adjusting her bag, she set out along them, making her way deeper into the woods.
Here and there, sunlight pierced through the thick foliage in yellow beams, illuminating the forest floor. It was eerily quiet, all the animals likely frightened by a human crashing through the woods. The only sounds were the sharp creaks and cracks of the trees, as if they were muttering to each other about the intruder. A flock of birds flew off a nearby tree in a thick mass just feet away from her, their wings a cacophony that made her jump back, heart hammering. Ever so slowly, the shrill birdsong gradually began to pick up.
Her eyes on the trail beneath her feet, Arie recalled an old tale her mother used to tell her when she was small. A story of a little girl in a big forest, and a fierce wolf. It was a little too close for comfort at that moment, even if she did not possess a red hooded cape. But no one in their right mind would after the Ragoru came to Earth.
Pulling her hood down a little more, Arie paced forward, keeping her feet firmly on route. Logic suggested that it was the safest way through the woods. None of the predatory plants would be permitted to grow along it by the merchants who trekked through the area. She would only have to worry about what ran on two legs or four. Even then, most creatures stayed away out of habit from anything that smelled of humans. She suspected it wasn’t too different for the Ragoru, since no one had sighted one in many years. The way she figured it, they weren’t likely to come near an established route any more than they would a settlement, especially not with huntsmen about looking to peg a Ragoru pelt on their walls.
“Don’t wander from the path,” she said to herself with a weak smile. “I don’t want to get eaten by a wolf, after all.”
She tried to laugh at her own joke, but it fell flat even to her own ears. Unfortunately, it provided just the right fuel for her vivid imagination to conjure images of a terrible Ragoru tearing at the meat of her body, blood dripping down its muzzle. Arie’s stomach pitched violently and acid surged up her throat.
“That’s just great, Arie,” she muttered, “scare the hell out of yourself. I don’t need a Ragoru to kill me. My imagination will do a fine job scaring me to death.”
