AMARYLLIS

Approximately an hour had passed since that strange storm surrounded us on the field bordering the forest. Although neither of us could say with any certainty that we were no longer near that forest anymore, there was a noticeable difference to the taste of the air, which seemed thinner, colder, and wetter.

The muddy ground beneath us suggested an incline.

After I was struck by the golden lightning Chicory found his way back to me and I had no intention of letting anything separate us again until I was certain we both were safe.

Pitch black darkness without a single sliver of light prevented us from knowing where we were. I had ran my hands over our heads in search of scorch marks, but found none, making it seem increasingly unlikely we were unable to see as a result of being struck by lightning.

Chicory sneezed. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Stop apologizing,” I said.

My hands, pressed against Chicory’s waist, could feel his stomach whining for food. I couldn’t glean much about where we were but the loose creak of branches caught in the brisk wind told me there was no shortage of trees in every direction. Trees meant there was a slim chance of there being fruit we could eat.

Rain began to fall in drizzling sheets, which wouldn’t have been so bad if not for our lack of suitable clothing and the icy embrace of the cold night air.

Snap!

“What was that, Amary?”

“Shh!”

I could hear the sound of something huge moving about in the darkness. The muddy ground yielded to its heavy footfalls. Though each of its steps was slow, there was something unnatural about the speed with which the limbs of the thing drummed the ground.

“Ah-chew!”

I slapped my hand over Chicory’s mouth and held my breath. It was impossible to keep absolutely still given how much Chicory and I shivered and the incessant chattering of our teeth.

Chicory’s hands made a weak attempt at prying me off because I was holding him so tightly. My arms wrapped around Chicory had to be like iron if I were to stop myself from letting him go and abandoning him to the thing in the dark.

The sky flashed with sudden bluish-white lightning.

For a single spine-chilling moment I saw the monster in the night. Unlike anything I had ever seen before it was crudely identifiable as a woman in shape and had four spider-like limbs which were positioned on its upper-back like wings, and were at least three times my size in length. The limbs held a wide stance and by their own strength kept the huge woman-shaped-monster’s body off the ground. Though the light was gone after an instant I could still see in my mind’s eye the sight of the monster’s lightly furred and feminine body, its chalk-white eyes, and its mouth full of long sharp teeth set in a snarling grimace.

The sound of thunder like a log bursting atop a campfire masked some but not all of the sound of the monster racing towards us. Just as the monster’s warm breath brushed against my face Chicory stiffened on my lap and let out an aggressive sneeze.

“A-chew!”

The monster gave an unhappy grumble like a disgruntled horse; it turned around and sped off at a galloping speed.

* * *

Hours later, dawn’s first light warmed my bones. The cold of the night had passed but, with Chicory nestled on my lap, I continued to shiver as if I were nervously anticipating something awful to occur.

The strangeness which began with the golden lightning and throughout the night wasn’t over because, under the light of day, the forest which surrounded us continued to be a mystery. The unfamiliar trees were a good deal shorter, and stubbier, and spaced farther apart than the usual ones I knew so well. The roots of the trees were much thicker and were like elbows and knees of bent limbs reaching out of the ground at awkward angles. Never before however had I seen trees with leaves that were blue. At first I assumed it was because I was in the midst of becoming very ill due to being out in the elements all night long. But Chicory, who was faring better than me since I had sheltered him from the worst of the cold throughout the night, was looking with fascination at the trees too. And it wasn’t just the trees which had strange foliage; the ankle-high grass on the ground was blue, and so were the bushes amongst the trees; as well as the various unique and peculiar looking flowers dotted throughout the forest. None of the foliage looked edible and there weren’t any fruits growing from the trees which I could see.

Snap! Crack!

Chicory clung to me and I to him as we looked in the direction we both heard the twigs breaking. Had the monster returned to the same place it remembered finding two small meals hours before? Maybe Chicory sneezing in its face had put it off eating us for a while, but now it was ready and willing to claim us?

A man and woman walked casually into view from further along the forest. I watched with caution as they neared the fringe of the meadow Chicory and I were in.

The man, in his mid-to-late-twenties, was easily the most handsome I had ever seen; he had a prominent chin, thick eyebrows, and a friendly, boyish demeanour at odds with his overt masculine features. His eyes were blue, and his head of hair was reddish-brown. He wore a red-dyed cotton shirt and brown boots and trousers and looked to be in excellent shape.

Not to be outdone the woman who walked beside him, of a similar age, was easily the tallest and most attractive woman I had ever seen; her face had a masculine shape that accentuated her overt feminine beauty. She had large full lips and long ginger hair that reached to her mid-back and down to her large bust.

The woman glanced our way for a second before stopping in her tracks. She looked ready for trouble but her demeanour changed from serious to sudden relief.

“Hress,” she said.

The man, who had begun to move away from the meadow, whipped round and faced towards her and us. He grinned charmingly showing his relief.

“Oh there you are,” he said.

Chicory stirred on my lap perhaps because he was a little embarrassed to be seen wrapped in my arms like a boy half his age, but I refused to let him go. The man, seeing this, his gaze firm but friendly, squatted down in front of us.

“What are you two doing all the way out here?” he said.

My ability to speak was at the mercy of my worsening health. My constant shivering must have made me look like a nervous dog.

“Are you from the Sakura Kingdom?” the man asked.

I managed to meet his gaze for a moment before skirting my eyes down to the top of Chicory’s head.“N-no,” I mumbled.

“That’s odd,” said the man, “You look like someone I know.”

On the surface of things I could only guess he meant that I looked Sakurian. Chicory and I could have both been referred to as half-breeds, but we weren’t fully of the same race. Assuming the person this man was talking about was Sakurian that would have explained what similarity he saw between us. I learned at a very young age from the guardians talking about me in an indirect way that I was half-Rosian, but also half-Sakurian. Who out of my parents was Sakurian, and who was Rosian was a mystery of my birth, which the guardians didn’t know themselves and didn’t much care.

I had never been able to observe what another Sakurian looked like which meant I had to infer what it was about my appearance that full-blood Rosians could tell was different.

Although I couldn’t be certain, I’d come to understand Sakurians typically were shorter than the average Rosian, most typically had black hair, and black irises, and eyes which were slanted with a unique kind of eye fold.

I could interpret the subtleties of my mixed blood heritage with a small degree of certainty because people at Rootwork loved to point out how different I looked compared to the other children. And because I at one time had a fascination with looking at my face reflected back at me in the river’s water near camp. My eyes were wide and Rosian-like, but mixed and muddied so that the black they might have been if I were full Sakurian were hazel instead.

My hair, which again could have been full black, was a dirty brown colour. My skin was pale and almost cream-coloured, but with an additional bronze tinge that stayed outside of the summer months.

“Would you like this?” said the man.

He reached for a blanket which was tied with a string on the back of his belt. After unfurling the blanket he spread it out and motioned to drape it over me and Chicory. I gave a high pitched scream.

“It’s alright, we’re not going to hurt you,” he said, “You’ll catch your death if you stay out in the cold like this.”

The man approached with the blanket again. Its warmth once draped over my back threatened to send me to sleep.

“Are you hungry?” said the man.

I must have given something away because the man broke into another charming smile.

He then produced several long pieces of dried meat from his pocket. One look of the meat pieces was enough to make my eyes widen like some beast. Chicory reached for a meat stick but I swatted his hand with my own before he could seize one. The man gave me an unimpressed look for doubting his good intentions.

“It’s not poisoned,” he said.

Chicory and I watched as the man placed a whole stick of meat into his mouth and started chewing. All seemed well until he made an effort to swallow; the meat lodged itself in his throat and cut off his ability to breathe.

I didn’t know how to react at first. Was he pretending? The uneasiness I felt watching him choking grew worse as I realised he wasn’t. A scream tore out of my mouth.

The woman, not at all alarmed, came to the man’s aid as if she were helping a feeble relative. With abrupt force she swept her right leg under the man who was then sent falling backward for a fleeting moment. No sooner had the man’s back hit the blue grass did the chewed up meat wad shoot out of his mouth and into a bush.

“Phew!” the man puffed. He declined the woman’s hand and climbed to his feet. If he felt humiliated by almost choking to do death he wasn’t showing it.

“Sorry about that,” he said, “You can still have some if you want; so long as you chew it of course.”

Seeing him almost suffocate made me feel like I could trust him. There had to be much easier ways to trick two helpless children into eating something they shouldn’t. It also begged belief to imagine the man and woman were intent on causing us harm. Their initial surprise upon stumbling across us seemed genuine. But they did however look relieved when they found us; did that mean they were looking for us but didn’t know our exact whereabouts? If that were the case, then what was it that made them seek us out in the first place?

I stretched out my hand and the man placed two of the meat pieces onto my palm. I examined the pieces up close for a brief moment before letting Chicory take one. The meat was tough, salty, and dry, and to my starving stomach it was delicious.

The man waited for Chicory and I to finish swallowing every last bit of the meat before speaking.

“If it’s alright,” he said, “we’re thinking of taking you both to our home. There’ll be more food than you can eat, a warm bed, a bath. You’ll be looked after.”

“Okay,” I said in a hoarse voice.

Chicory looked over his shoulder at me in surprise. The truth of the matter was I felt bone-achingly tired, ill, and I had used up all the stores of willpower I had left being exposed to the rain throughout the night. I didn’t want to make Chicory worry, but I knew I would soon be overcome from the fever which was threatening to make me pass out. For better or worse I had to hope going with this man and woman was the right thing to do.

“Great,” said the man. “Can you walk or would you like me to carry you?”

“I can walk,” I said. As I climbed slowly to my feet my body felt cold and drained of its strength, as if I were hollowed out and might crumple like a dress fallen from its stand.

The four of us walked in tandem, Chicory to my left, the man to my right, and the woman standing right of the man as we moved past the meadow threshold into the forest proper.

“I’m Hress. Hress Dunter,” said the man. His accent was an overtly thick commoner’s one. I had heard many like it at Rootwork, though not quite as thick. The man gestured over to the woman.

“And she’s Red.”

The woman gave a slow nod and maintained a stony gaze.

“I’m Amaryllis,” I said in a whisper, “And he’s Chicory.”

“Nice to meet you both,” said Hress, “Let’s be getting on. I’ve had too much day for my day already.”