The Bloodstained Parchment

Chapter 1

Once, there was a girl; she wasn't beautiful, but she was certainly not ugly. She had long, brown hair which she wore in a braid behind her back. Her face was flecked with small freckles, and she had a mischievous glint in her hazel eyes.

If any other fourteen-year-old girl had been in her situation, she would have longed for the same thing as her. What she wished for was adventure and excitement; a little variety to make her opinionatedly boring life livelier. What she was unawares to was that it is inaccurate to speak of your life as a whole before it has completed its course.

She lived in a forest entitled Diskimult. There she resided alongside Heather, whom she called Mother, in a rather stony and thick tower, which stood bluntly surrounded by a sinister black iron fence that stood as tall as a common black bear stretched to its full height. Draped over the tower's pristine windows were velvety scarlet curtains that rippled in each earth-smelling breeze, for the panes were generally left ajar. Protruding from the cylindrical structure was a fine balcony. It would have been a very admirable home if it hadn't been in the middle of nowhere.

And in the middle of nowhere it indeed was. Audrey often wondered what lay beyond those black gates as she watched Heather leave to go on some errand, jealousy seething in her heart.

Heather quite often left on errands, in fact, leaving Audrey alone for lengthy periods of time to gloat on the balcony, or simmer inside if it rained. You might have thought that there was a high level of trust in their relationship, but the gates always stayed locked.

Only once or twice had Audrey been admitted free roam of the forest, and even then she was closely watched by their servant elf and strictly instructed not to go far. However mischievous, Audrey was not altogether disobedient (and did not want to get her privilege revoked), and so never knew of life outside of Diskimult.

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An evening came when she decided to address the matter with her mother.

"Life here is boring," she stated plainly.

Heather was a bit taken aback. "Boring! Why, Audrey, what could possibly have drawn you to such a conclusion?"

"There's nothing to do! I mean, we're in the middle of a forest, for goodness sake," the girl complained. She pondered for another excuse, staring blankly out the window at the cage of her Merlin falcon, Gawain.

The falcon had appeared one gray night, when Audrey aged ten years, in the midst of a storm. Each bolt of lightning and skull-rattling strike of thunder caused the eyass to cower in fear, and he cautiously made his clumsy way to a place he was sure to be his home, though he was unsure why. His wings were soaked and therefore useless, and the pinons weren't even experienced anyway. He shivered, cold to the bone, and soaked clean through with loneliness and sleeting rain. The confused bird slipped between two black iron bars that would have been nearly invisible to a person, but were caught by his sharp falcon-eyes. He cawed shrilly, the high frequencies cutting through the roaring night.

Inside the falcon's destination, Audrey woke with a start. Eerily knowing she must get up and search the yard, she sprinted down the stairs, snatching her father's leather jacket from the closet on her way out the door. The sleeves drooped past her fingertips, and the hem hung to her knees, but she insisted it above any other.

As she stepped into the yard, her bare feet sunk deep into the wet soil, but she trudged around the base of the tower, until finding the pitiful soggy heap-of-a-falcon at the north side. She stooped to the ground, the mud squelching and her knees splashing in the wet. Gently enveloping the nestling in her leather coat, she whispered, "Welcome," and the black beady eyes shone back at her through the dark and sleet, as if saying, "Thank you." Both drenched now, Audrey rounded the tower again and gave the falcon a home in the warm shelter. Gawain never had to live through another storm unsheltered.