Strange New Eyes

Chapter Two - Captor

Smoke was rising above the tree line along with the sun. The sight of the dark gray plume on the horizon flooded Aysel's heart with both relief and trepidation. How near the smoke was meant she was getting closer to her goal, and closer to a cure for the illness plaguing her brother, but it also was a sign that she was almost out of the valley where she had lived her entire life. The mountains surrounding her homeland were filled with nothing but danger and death.

Aysel sighed and let herself plop into the snow. She hadn't noticed until the the smoke had caught her eye, but it was midmorning, and she'd been walking all night. She stretched out her legs, which were incredibly sore from the high steps needed to walk in her snowshoes. It was time for a break.

She pulled out of her bag the rabbit she had taken from one of the binding circles outside of her village; one of its hind legs would make a good breakfast. A quick prick from her blade and a drop of blood were all that were needed to start a small fire on bare snow. She wasn't worried about smoke, since blood-fed fires created no more than a whisper. The fire crackled softly as she skinned and cooked the rabbit leg, adding more blood to the flames every time it started to die. It would have been peaceful, with the fire popping at her feet and birds chirping their morning songs overhead, but for the smoke winding its way above the trees.

It had changed from a dark, almost black gray, to a pure white like a cloud. The trail of smoke was punctuated and blocky as it floated into the sky, like beads on a string. The stories said that the smoke or the mysterious bursts of colored light that sometimes accompanied it were the product of a perverted Beast ritual, though guesses as to what the ritual was varied from brutal infant sacrifices to the torture of Letters before eating their hearts. Aysel looked back down at her breakfast as its oily meat blackened in the fire, trying hard not to wonder if she was walking straight towards her death.

She ate her meal in silence, then pulled her hunting bag back over her shoulder and stood again on her aching legs. There was no time to rest. Every second she spent here was another second her brother suffered, trapped in sleep. Once again, she began to walk.

The day passed quickly. Aysel marked her progress by the movement of the sun and the changing composition of the forest, which had long since lost the river golds and sallow trees that dotted the woods around her home. They were replaced by thick forests of snow-blanketed pines, which stood silent and steadfast against the growing wind. It really was silent here at the edge of the mountains, Aysel noticed as she troughed through the snow. It was if the world contained only the wind and the steady thump of her snowshoes on the ground. Even the birds were quiet.

She stopped mid-stride, suddenly remembering what the older hunters in the village had always taught her. The birds will know where the danger is before you do.

Cautiously, Aysel looked around--

Thunk.

Aysel didn't realize until later, but it was the sound of a heavy wooden spear shaft being rammed into the back of her skull. All she did realize, at the moment, was that she was seeing flashes of light even brighter than those unknown flashing signals from the mountains at night, and that she was on the ground again. Groggily, she tried to right herself--

Thunk.

More flashes. More snow in her face. She reached for her letting blade, her only hope, but was too disoriented to find it in the folds of her clothes. Above her, a woman screamed.

Thunk.

By now she had stopped trying to stand, busy focusing on the way her head seemed to be imploding and filling with flashing light. Suddenly, the background for the lights dancing in front of her eyes went dark, as if someone had slammed a door. She reached up to where she thought her face was and felt only stitched hide. Someone had put a bag over her head.