Beyond the Walls

Within the Walls: Rewritten Teaser

Welcome to the newly drafted version of Within the Walls. I'm excited to tease the first chapter with you here on Wattpad! 

I have loved this story since I was 16, but this year I knew it needed to grow up. I have almost finished the entire rewrite and will be working to get this out to you in paperback and ebook. So it will be published! 

The characters, themes, and setting of this story have remained. However, there has been a shift in the plot. In the wake of the Covid19 pandemic, I decided to remove the virus subplot. However, the essence of the story, the rebellion, has not gone away. I believe this new version is far stronger, more cohesive, and takes a deeper dive into Elle's world. But let me know your thoughts!

"When Elle commits a heinous crime, she's forced to become one of the king's guards and betrothed to the prince. Little does she know the breadth of blood on her hands, and the rumours of rebellion on the wind."

I hope you enjoy and please let me know your thoughts! I may create a new story on Wattpad to upload a few more of the chapters if you are interested. 

WITHIN THE WALLS. CHAPTER 1. 

A scream rattles my bones. It reverberates through the alleyway and rakes its fingers down my spine. I quicken my pace as I weave through the shadowed, dusty alleyways and emerge into the town square. The rumbling crowd falls silent as the three men in uniform fasten bronze handcuffs to a girl’s wrists and shove her into step. She mutters prayers to the Gods as they direct her through the rendered still crowd. The girl looks no older than me, 19, with knotted brown hair pulled behind her head. She tightens her jaw, and a tear dribbles her cheek. Her dirt stained, threadbare apron, grey tunic, and scrubbed raw fingers indicate she likely works with my sister in the laundry. Hundreds of eyes, including my own, follow her as the men shove her forward. She does not resist. As she stumbles past, her gaze locks with my own. Bile stings my throat as I swallow the terror in her deep brown eyes.

The Tranquillity, nicknamed the Tranqs, load the girl into a barricaded trailer, shoving her into the wooden seat. The Tranqs wear their uniform of black pants and long-sleeved tunic, with black stained, bronze armour over their chests, shoulders, and forearms. They each wear black metal helmets that conceal their face, other than slits for eyes. Enormous spears and long swords are pinned to their backs, with other dainty, glinting knives sheathed to their belts. Horses snort and stamp their feet before jerking the trailer forward. But the girl’s eyes remain pinned on us, on me, the Convex people. Our silence betrays her.

As soon as the horse and trailer disappear around the corner, the crowd disperses at an astonishing rate. Mothers in dirty grey tunics grip the hands of their uncomprehending children, desperately tugging them away. Elderly men and women, thin and frazzled, shuffle back to their homes in a knowing silence.
I duck my head, slipping into the throng escaping the square. A shiver spider-walks my spine. The air is icy, dry. My lips are cracked. A freezing draft blows through the streets leading into the square. I brace myself as it burns my cheeks. An array of buildings borders the square, built from brown brick and mortar. There’s an apothecary on the ground floor of one building, leaking an aroma of pungent sage and other herbal medicines. The scrawny woman who owns it slips from the throng and slams the door shut, flipping her open sign to closed and drawing the blinds tight. A pub, otherwise crawling with drunkards, flicks its warm candle lights off. The last few buildings are filled with residential apartments.

The Tranqs took the girl into the street between the apothecary and the pub. We all know what that means. A woman with greasy hair squeaks next to me when the distant city gates ease open on their mechanical hinges. Groaning and screeching. Stone gates, against the stone ground. I hold my breath, listening for the girl’s final scream. My heart thunders against my chest.

I loosen my breath.

A rough voice catches my attention.
“I hear she stole food from a Concave gentleman,” the man says, shaking his head. His scruffy beard and hollow cheekbones indicative of his Convex status. His hands are calloused and stained with black oil. He’s likely a blacksmith.

“She was his wife’s handmaid,” another man mutters. He chews his cracked, dark lip. His jawline is too sharp, and his ribs poke out from beneath his thin, tan tunic. “Stealing from a Concave man whose wife is pregnant…well, she’s at the mercy of the insanity beyond the walls now.”

“Not if the monsters find her first,” the first man says grimly. They shoulder their way around a corner, towards the markets and their voices dissipate.
I hug my thin body against another biting gust of wind, turning the marrow of my bones to ice. Grey and white clouds billow across the city walls, coating the skies over the farms in the east of the Convex Sector. The snow will fall tonight.

At last, I slip into the street across from the one leading to the markets and navigate my way home. Every person I pass, scrawny and hollow from the famine, doesn’t bother to glance my way. We all keep to ourselves in the winter months when the famine is at its worse. Starvation means people must be selfish. Although, few skip the opportunity to lose themselves to alcohol. I shake my head at a group of young men spilling from another bar, pitchers of ales in their dirty hands. Their braying laughter and crude jokes remind me we are all trying our best to survive. I cross the cobbled stone road, and step into my apartment building.
The stench of rotting wood hits me at once. Green mould grows up the walls like a grotesque painting and clumps of dust adorn the corners. The wooden spiral stairwell groans like a dying animal as I climb it, cringing as the sound grates my eardrums. Dust particles burst into the air, disrupted by my movement. A lazy finger of sunlight reaches into the window, catching on my red curls, appearing to set them alight. Dancing flames.

My elder sister’s eyes widen when I step into our tiny, cramped apartment. She scurries over, with a book clutched to her chest. My stomach clenches. Her bones are becoming more prominent by the day and shadows are finding a home in the curves of her cheeks. Her skin has long since drained of colour and liveliness. But her pale blue eyes, the same eyes that once belonged to our mother, still sparkle.

“I heard the screams from the square,” Lyra says. Her voice is soft and can always ease my racing heart. She pushes her thick red braid over her shoulder. “The Tranqs banished someone, didn’t they?”

I nod, dropping my gaze to my tattered boots.

“We must be more careful, Elle,” she says. “Lie low until the summer.”

“If we survive that long,” I say, unable to withhold the sharpness in my tone.
The glimmer in her eyes dims, and she presses her lips together. I trudge to the window and peer down at the street. The crowd thins out as the sun dips below the horizon. I am certain there will be bodies littering the streets in the morning. The cold and the famine will drag a handful of the Convex people into the arms of death.

I shift my gaze to my faint reflection in the glass pane. My sharp, slightly upturned nose, high cheekbones, and grey eyes make me look cold and calculating. Which, I suppose, I am. The red curls drape on both sides of my shoulders. A feral mane.

Lyra drags a match across the small box in her trembling hands. She moves around the room, igniting the six candles we own. The shadows in the room run away. Then she tosses the creeping flame into the hearth and feeds the fire with chunks of wood I chopped earlier that day.

“Look, I’m going to head into the forest again before nightfall,” I say, spinning around and leaning against the mildew infested wall. “We have no food. There are a couple of potatoes in my hidden garden that we can eat.”

She chews her lip and furrows her strawberry blonde brows. “You would be so stupid to do such a thing after what happened to the girl?”

“I will be quick.” I snatch the rucksack from our wobbly bookshelf. “Would you rather starve to death?”

She shakes her head as I slip my two knives into the straps of my belt. I reach for the sword but decide to leave it today. The sword is only a reminder of the tensions and impending war with the strangers outside the kingdom's walls. “You know the Tranqs multiply like bacteria at this time of year,” Lyra says. “They fill the streets. I don’t want you to draw attention to yourself.”

Heat creeps into my cheeks. “We promised mother and father we would look after each other.”

“You won’t be of use if you’re arrested or banished, Elle,” she snaps.

I bristle, spinning on my heel and marching towards the door. The frosty air seeps into my pores and my fingers quickly stiffen. My breath plumes like ghosts from my mouth as I move through the streets, towards the southern forest. My boots click against the cobbled stone. I move from the streets into the meadows of farmland in the east, following the yellow path south. Men and women carrying heavy woven baskets pluck the fruit from an array of trees in the orchards, apples, and oranges, and pears. Another group of men, covered in a layer of dirt and grease, grunt and groan as they push the ploughs through the vegetable fields. The clumps of earth burst out from the plough. As they sow the seeds, a wave of anger gnaws at my gut. None of this food is for the Convex people. The farmers will ship it across the river to the Concave Sector. The crops we can eat, which comprise mainly potato, are ravished with the blight every year, worsening with the winter.

I follow the path, past the rotting potato fields, eventually reaching the first trees of the forest. At this time of the day, with the sun racing towards the horizon, ominous shadows throw themselves in haphazard shapes among the trees, like sinister monsters, with unknown horrors. But I am more than familiar with the maze of the forest. It was once my father’s favourite place. His peace.

Now, the forest belongs to me.
Bright green moss coats the floors, soft and moist. The wind blows through the trees, shaking the dripping bare branches, loosening the remaining leaves clinging to the bark for dear life. Branches groan as their limbs bend towards the earth. During the summer, the branches teem with birds and chirping insects. But they have all scurried into their nests and burrows, waiting out the winter.

I draw in a breath and shake the tension from my shoulders. This is my place of peace, too. Frost crunches beneath my boots, and my heart thumps to a steady rhythm. The Tranquillity do not roam this forest. It is empty of other people. The stories of a monster terrify the Convex people from ever entering. A monster, never seen by a person who lived to describe it. But my father used to tell Lyra and I that the monster was the night itself. Swathed in shadows, like a storm of misery and death. A monster who steals screams.

“They echo the screams of their victims long after their deaths,” my father used to say. His leathered face would wiggle into animated facial expressions as he launched his hands at Lyra and I, feigning claws. We would squeal until his laugh chased the fear away.
I used to think he told us the scary stories to keep us from the forest. Not until my peers at school recounted the same stories. Albeit, when an otherwise heavy silence falls over the forest, I swear I can hear someone’s distant wailing. Either that, or it’s just the wind.

The forest is criss-crossed with thin, gurgling streams. Bubbling, frigid water home to several species of trout. Convex farmers fish them in the river, bisecting the city. They send the trout to the Concaves across the moat. I leap across a stream, slipping into a tight-knit set of trees and then emerging into a small clearing. On the border of the clearing, in a tiny patch, a couple of potatoes sprouts reach out from the soil, brimming with hope. I crouch and yank the potatoes to the surface. Dirt and roots cascade from the vegetables and I brush the excess off. With a tentative glace at my surroundings, I shove the potatoes into my rucksack.

I stand, ready to hasten back the way I came. My heart lurches into my throat when I see them, staring directly at me from within the shadows. A pair of wide, brilliant green eyes. The colour of the forest itself. Demanding my attention and swelling with startling malice. Human.

I stumble backwards, regaining my balance against a tree. But when I glance up again, the eyes are gone.
Terror caresses my bones, and I startle. With a grip on my knife, I fall into a run, leaping across the stream, bounding through the forest maze as the blood roars past my ears. The farmers are finishing for the day when I explode from the trees onto the path and make way back into the town. I reign in my erratic breathing and knitted brows.

Who was that? Why were they in the forest?

The eyes, green and feral, burn through my gut, even as I try to push them to the recesses of my mind.

“What on earth happened?” Lyra asks as I crash into the apartment.

“Nothing,” I snap, tossing the rucksack of potatoes onto the bench.