Fractured Soul

Chapter 1: Vague Memory

Having no idea who or where you are is not a good thing, any way you put it. That was the girl’s problem as she woke in a cave. There was a village in the distance. Her clothes were smoking, with holes burnt into random places. Her shoes were missing, and she had cuts on her hands and knees.

Getting up, she walked out of the cave into a cloudy afternoon. The village wasn’t as far as it had appeared, and she reached it in no time at all. There were people milling about outside, and they all stopped and stared as she walked toward them. They were all wearing fiery colors. I wonder why, she thought.

“Excuse me, but could anyone tell me what this place is called?” she called out to the crowd.

Their eyes widened in fear. The girl didn’t understand. It was only a simple question.

She asked again. This time people started to back away, edging closer and closer to their houses. Mothers grabbed their children, who complained loudly at being dragged away.

“I’m not going to hurt you. Please, I just need to know where I am.” she pleaded.

This set the people off. Everyone ran, terrified, to their houses. The only person remaining outside was herself. Why did everyone run? Couldn’t they understand me? What happened?

After a moment the girl kept going, struggling to remember what had happened and how she ended up in a cave.

In the silence, a door opened, and a voice called out.

“Child, come here.”

The girl turned around to see an old woman standing in the doorway of a small house, who’s only decoration was a stylized flame. The girl stepped forward. White hot pain flashed through her head. The flame, a drop of water, a mountain, swirling air, twinkling lights.

Mella.

The girl fell to her knees, clutching her head, trying not to scream from the pain in her head, while a single word kept cycling through her mind.

Mella.

And the world fell dark as she passed out.

The villagers, hiding in their houses, had watched the whole thing through their curtains. They saw their village leader walk up to the strange girl who spoke the wrong language.

“I need your help right now!” she yelled to the people. Reluctantly, some of the watchers came out and helped carry the unconscious girl into the woman’s house.

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“She’s burning up. We need to do something.”

Mella.

“Where did she come from?”

Mella.

“We can’t let the queen and king find out about her.”

The girl felt on fire. Pieces of conversation drifted past the flames, only to have the fire intensify and drown them out. The word was the only constant sound she knew, and the inferno consumed her again.

Myra looked at the girl. She was a wreck. It didn’t surprise her that the village was scared of her appearance. Even worse, she had been speaking Ivayan, a forbidden language in Rhydona. Only the people in the border towns and cities were allowed to learn Ivayan, and Berna was barely ten miles from the capital, Ulma. They were nowhere close to the border.

She turned away from the fever-stricken girl to the villagers trying to peer in through the window. Some of them looked scared, others worried, but the majority of them were angry. They wanted answers, she knew, but Myra barely had any answers to give. Better to tell them something than to leave them worrying.

Myra jerked the curtains shut and walked through her house to the front door, outside to the crowd of people, who all started shouting in Rhynish.

“She shouldn’t be here!” one mother yelled.

“The queen will find out!” another man shouted.

“We want answers!” was the cry heard most of all.

“Stop!” Myra shouted over the crowd, and silence fell. “I can’t give you your answers until she can talk, and the girl is too ill to do that. She will not be sent away just because of your fears of the queen. Where else would she go? There is no other village for miles, and she can’t go to Ulma!”

“But the queen,” the same man yelled again.

“The queen won’t find out if no one says anything. We’ve never turned anyone away because of suspicion from the queen, and we are not starting now over a girl! Most of you have wandered here over time, and we’ve helped you start over. We’re going to do the same thing with the girl. Any questions?”

Silence met Myra’s ears. “Good, now go back to what you were doing.” She turned on her heels and went back to watch over the girl.