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The house was old.
The morning was cold.
And the stories, told.
But never loud enough to reach ears that could help.
The man stood by the tree, a tree he’d been using to watch the home for over two weeks. The lone house surrounded by land and mist was eerie enough in itself. Woods at the back, river a mile away, the nearest road two miles, it was truly a home of nightmares. From the outside, it looked like a home he’d once known – with thin, dilapidated walls that never silenced the screams, the rot on the inside enveloped in the stone.
He saw the young boy at the window, early in the morning, his curious eyes trying to find something in the thick fog. He knew that if discovered, the boy would take a severe punishment. But the kid was brave, or maybe desperate. The man didn’t know.
He should probably feel bad about using him. He didn’t.
The man flicked on the lighter in his hand and raised it to signal the boy. He saw the little eyes notice his arm, quickly looking back to check if anyone was coming. Satisfied, the boy nodded twice. Two very slow, precise nods, just in case the man missed it. The man lowered his arm, getting the answer he’d come for.
Brave little shit had been more help than he’d hoped.
He watched as the kid went back to the room, away from the window, and hoped he didn’t die. That none of them died before they were found. That’d be such a waste.
Getting the answer he’d been rooting for, the man stepped back into the fog he’d come from, disappearing from sight.
They weren’t ready.
None of them.
“In the middle of the journey of our life
I found myself within a dark wood
where the straight way was lost.”
Dante Alighieri, Inferno
They were kissing.
Amara watched with wide eyes from behind the tree as Mr. Maroni’s son and the pretty girl with pink hair stood with their mouths joined. She had pink hair. Amara has never seen anyone with pink hair.
Tilting her little head to the side, she tried to see exactly what they were doing. She’d seen the heroes and heroines kiss in movies, but never in real life. Since her father wasn’t with them, she hadn’t seen him kiss her ma either.
Wait, were they eating each other’s lips?
Ew.
Nose wrinkling, Amara swiped her tongue over her lips just to test how it felt. Wet. Icky. Making a face, she kept watching, trying to understand with her tiny mind exactly why they were enjoying it so much. It wasn’t like she’d come to spy on them. Not at all. She’d just been walking in the woods (which she absolutely should not have been doing alone) when she’d come across a little shack. Curious, she had walked over to see it, and hidden behind a tree after seeing Mr. Maroni’s son and the girl.
The outside girl.
Amara was young but she knew the rules well enough to know that outsiders weren’t allowed on the compound. That was a new word she’d just learned last week – compound. Caum-paau-nd. That’s what they all lived on. She was allowed because her ma worked at the big house on top of the hill. But this outside girl? She really wasn’t supposed to be there. She could warn them. But why? Maybe they had permission. She was with Mr. Maroni’s son, after all.
And they were kissing again. Weren’t they getting tired? It looked so boring after the first few seconds.
Done with the show, Amara decided to go back home since it was already pretty late. The sun was almost set, the sky about to get dark, and the woods could get scary without light. And she was not supposed to roam on the compound after six ’o'clock; she’d get in trouble.
With that thought in mind, she started to run on her little feet back where the woods ended and the buildings began. The sky darkened and Amara panted, getting scared. She didn’t like the dark. She shouldn’t have stayed out so late. Her small body started to shake as she reached the edge of the woods, and tripping over her own feet, she went down hard.
Ouch, it hurt.
Amara looked down at her knee below the hem of her skirt, bruised and throbbing, and winced. Ma said her pain threshold was low. That meant she felt more pain when she got hurt. Threshold was a new word for her too. Thresh-hold, she repeated in her head, seeing a drop of blood well up on the skin of her knee. Feeling sick, she looked up at the dark sky to not see the blood.
“Who’s there?” the voice of a man came from a distance, reminding her she had to hurry back home. She wasn’t supposed to be out on the grounds after dark, especially not on these parts of the compound.
Standing up, her injured knee wobbly, Amara hurried over to the building where she lived with her mother. As she went downhill towards her home, feeling the throb in her leg, Amara hated the Maroni grounds. Why did it have to be so big, and on a mountain? Hills were hard to climb and get down on.
“Sneaking out again, ‘Mara?” a boy’s voice from behind her startled her.
Almost falling on her behind again, Amara barely balanced and stopped in her tracks to greet Vin. He was her best friend, her only friend actually. And for some reason, he could never say her name right. She had always been ‘Mara to him.
“Vinnie! What are you doing sneaking around?” she demanded. Vin was just one year older than her – a fact he never forgot to remind her of – and he was wandering even though he wasn’t supposed to either.
Vin came beside her, an inch shorter than she was. She liked to tease him about that until he reminded her he was going to grow tall in a few years and she’d stay the same. Ugh, he annoyed her.
“I was training,” he said quietly, starting the walk downhill, taking her arm to help her. Okay, he was less annoying when he was being nice.
“What do you do in training?” she asked for the hundredth time, genuinely curious. He had begun ‘training’ – whatever that was – a week ago, the day after his eleventh birthday. She knew it had something to do with the big guns she saw the guards carrying, but nothing more. And Vin didn’t tell her what he did, no matter how many times she asked him.
He shrugged, glancing at the dark training building to the right, where he’d come from. Amara saw the building in the distance, seeing another boy limping down the hill but in the opposite direction, towards the lake. The new boy. Even though he’d been staying there for as long as she could remember, everyone still called him the ‘new boy’. She’d never met him, but from the way everyone talked about him, she knew he was dangerous.
“Have you talked to the new boy?” she couldn’t contain herself from asking.
