A Boy Called Ginger

I’ve grown up knowing that one day, before my eighteenth year, I would be chosen to sit in as a Decider for the execution of scourge delinquents.  Life or death, at my disposal. Today is that day.

I know it won’t be easy, deciding someone’s fate, but it is a requirement to join the ranks of the Executioners. A role carefully chosen for me at birth. My entire life, I’ve been training for this moment.

“The Executioners are an invaluable asset to this colony,” my father said this morning as he handed me my invitation.  “Our survival depends on them and their fair and just decisions. The scourge delinquents must be eradicated.”

It’s a speech I’ve heard more times than I can count. I rolled my eyes and pretended not to hear him, but his words have burrowed deep into my mind. Invaluable. Survival. Eradicated.

“It’s too much for a boy,” my mother said.  My mother has colored my hair blonde since infancy. Ginger haired boys are not accepted among the colony. She’d never admit it, but I believe it makes her feel that I am weak. But after today, I’ll no longer be a boy. I will be a man. An Executioner. I will make them both proud.

I take my seat along with the six other boys in my class, making us a total of seven. Seven Deciders, an odd number so there can be no chance of a tie. But there won’t be a tie. There’s never a tie. We’ve never been told as much, but every one of us knows what is expected of us. When they bring in the delinquent, we will hear his case, then hold our thumbs in the air and turn them down. Down, for death.

The trial is merely a formality. Something left over from the old world, before the Colony. I know this, and still I feel a sense of pride to be sitting here in this room, with its gold pillars and intricately carved archways. Like being chosen as a Decider, the step before Executioner, means something great. It is a privilege, my father would say.

Barron Berg leans over and whispers to me, “Do you think we’ll get to see it?”

“See what?” I try to spot the Executioners from across the room, and I think I see the toe of one’s boot, just outside the door.

“The actual death.”

I turn to face him then, expecting to see a childlike glee written in his features, but instead I see fear.  Dread. Barron’s eye’s, usually full of mischief, are white and wide, and sweat shines across his brow.

“No,” I say as I rest my hand on his shoulder. “We’re only here to decide the fate of the delinquents. Not carry it out.” Not today.

Barron looks a little more at ease as he slides back into his chair. “Thanks, Cam.”

Just then the Judge walks in, surrounded by half an army of Executioners. Their uniforms are designed to intimidate, and I can feel my pulse surging at the sight of them. Sleek, gray, and sharp. Every angle crisp and perfect.  I feel myself slide forward in my chair and I sense a similar reaction from Barron.

The proceedings begin, the opening speech by the judge, the rules given by the head Executioner. And then they bring in the first scourge delinquent.  He’s a middle-aged man with dirty clothes and unkempt hair. I wonder if they’ve brought him in this way, or if he’s been detained somewhere below the courthouse.

“What do you think he did,” Barron asks.

I shrug. It doesn’t matter what he did. His fate has already been sealed. The Colony does not tolerate rebellion of any kind. He could be a thief, a gambler, an addict. We hear his case, thievery, and we all turn our thumbs down. The executioners carry him away to have his hand amputated. He’ll spend the rest of his life in a five by five cell beneath the courthouse.  And with no anesthetic or medical care, his life will be short-lived.

I tell myself to feel no remorse, and mostly it works, but then I think of how my life would have turned out, had my mother not hidden my hair. The Colony requires its citizens to fit into a specific mold. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Medium build. Anything less is considered rebellious.

Two more cases follow the thief. Both young men. Both rebels. Both defeated, weak, and dirty. Thumbs down without a second thought. One more, and we will have completed the first of three days of trials.

Whispers filter through the courthouse below the deciding booth. I can’t make out what anyone is saying, but I hear the words girl and rebel. It is rare to find a woman among the scourge delinquents. Our women have been taught since childhood to be meek and compliant. Mothers. Wives. I’ve only ever known one girl who didn’t fit the Colony’s mold. In public, she was perfect, but in private, I knew her better.

My thoughts drift back to my childhood, and for the moment I’m distracted. I don’t see the doors open, or hear the judge call her name. But I feel Barron tense beside me. His fingers bite into my wrist. When I look down at the floor, I see her. Shoulders held high. Head raised. Eyes fierce. Completely fearless.

Annabelle.

****

I was eleven, Annabelle ten, and we raced barefoot across the farm complex, stealing tomatoes and pelting them at one another until our skin turned red. We didn’t stop to think what could have happened had we been caught. I didn’t think. I don’t think Annabelle cared.

“C’mon, Ginger,” she’d said. Annabelle was the only person who knew the real me. All of me. She knew me better than I knew myself. “Come and get me.”

I still remember the feel of her in my arms. Fragile, like a small bird, but more fierce and wild than any scourge delinquent. Annabelle, my Annabelle.

She kissed me, the last summer that I saw her. Before they told me she’d died of some long-eradicated disease brought over on the slave ships. She’d climbed the apple tree faster than any boy, perched on the thickest branch and waited for me to catch up. She was always waiting for me to catch up.

Our feet dangled below us, and we stole apples and ate them like the world was ours.

“Do you want to kiss me, Ginger?”

I choked then, on a piece of apple, and nearly fell from the tree. When I looked at her, her blue eyes were shining brighter than the summer sky. Hopeful. Happy. Alive. And I was frozen, mesmerized by her. She grabbed my ears and pressed her lips against mine. I still had apple in my mouth.

****

I taste it now, the kiss and the apple, as I look down at the girl I once knew. Annabelle is not dead. She’s very much alive, and more on fire than I’ve ever seen her.  It takes three Executioners to hold her, though she barely seems to be straining against them. She’s grown-up, and even though the situation is a tense one, I can’t help but notice how incredibly beautiful she’s become. Like nothing I’ve ever seen. Again I am eleven years old, and I am mesmerized by this girl.

But this time her life, and mine, is on the line.

The judge reads her name, tells the court what she’s guilty of. The list is long. The longest we’ve heard so far. Thievery. Resisting arrest. Assault. Breaking and entering. Corruption of a minor. Kidnapping. Murder.

My breath hitches at the last charge. Murder. There can be no absolution for her. My stomach twists. My muscles tense. I close my eyes and feel her lips. Smell her skin. Hold her against me, like I’ve longed to do all these years.

“Cam,” Barron whispers. I nod and he doesn’t say anything else.

The room falls silent. The eyes of the Executioners, the judge, all focus on us, the boys in the deciding booth. I can’t stop staring at Annabelle, half wishing her to not be her, and completely hoping that she will remember me. That she will see me and all those memories will flood her mind. Give her something to think about besides what comes next.

Barron nudges me, and I realize I should be holding my thumb in the air. As I raise my arm, her eyes meet mine. They don’t scan the courthouse. They just find me. My chest tightens, and my breath stops.

Annabelle.

She recognizes me, I know because she smiles and her lips move. Ginger.

The judge orders, “Decide.” And as one, the boys turn their thumbs to the floor. I feel Barron hesitate, but he follow suit, until only my thumb remains undecided.

Annabelle.

I twist my wrist, and point my thumb toward the summer sky.

*************
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Kingdom of Lies (Part 3 of 3)

Without looking down, Magda drew swirls, circles, and runes with a finger, lightly skimming the surface of the pool. Any pool, she knew, could be used to see. If you knew how to use the magic the water held onto so tightly.

“Show me my home,” she whispered, as she leaned forward and gazed at her reflection.

It was selfish, she knew, to risk so much for one glimpse of home. If the sisters turned their empty eyes this way, it wouldn’t only be her in danger, but Mathias and everyone else in these woods. But she would be quick, she assured herself. She could afford this one small comfort.

At first, the pool revealed nothing but her own face made pale by the darkness of the water.

Magda kept her breathing even and focused on the relaxing her thoughts until the only thing in her mind was a single, clear note.

It was different for all seers. For some, the note sounded loudly as though bellowed from a great height. For others, it was breathy and faint, just a secret of a sound so difficult to discover it required the most solitary of rooms to develop. But for Magda the note was so simple to invoke it took effort not to do so accidentally. In her mind, it sounded as clearly as any bell. Though she had never shared the note with another – it was considered folly to do so – she knew precisely what it would feel like humming through her chest and nose.

Once, her grandfather told her of a time when seers would join around a pool to combine their powers and see great distances. When that happened, each of their unique notes had sounded together. “We are a choir,” he’d said. His eyes grew watery to remember it. He was not blessed with an over abundance of emotion and so when it surfaced, Magda took notice.

As she gazed over the pool, growing increasingly frustrated with its placid surface, she wondered if Mathias and his seers might open their minds to hers. Perhaps, if they could gather enough power, they might succeed in clearing the minds of King Caldriel’s seers and break his hold over the kingdom.

The water shimmered and the note in her mind became muted. The image that rose through the shallow pool was not that of her family home in the valley of the Fold River, but that of her grandfather’s face.

Magda sat back on her heels, startled. It wasn’t unusual to see something she hadn’t asked to see. Minds wander, after all, and she recalled now that hers had done exactly that. But it was unusual to see someone who had passed onto the next world. Grandfather Pim had left them long ago. She shouldn’t be able to see him, yet there he was, pushing a smile into his tired face.

He didn’t speak. At least, not in the conventional sense. But in her mind, Magda again heard his voice answering questions she wasn’t aware she’d asked. Quickly. For, they both knew there was no time to waste on reminiscing. The stone-faced sisters would be quick to find her now.

They had just enough time for Magda to understand one thing with absolute clarity: she must kill the king.

* * *

She didn’t remember her walk back to the cabin in the woods. Bastian walked beside her, she knew, but it wasn’t until the smell of smoke teased her nose that she had any sense of where she was. The next hour – or was it two? – passed with more raised voices than she’d ever heard at the cabin.

It wasn’t every day they discussed regicide.

It was Mathias who resisted the most, and he did so with such fury that Magda nearly lost her nerve. But when he raised his hands and asked, “What power do we have that could possibly give us a fighting chance against Caldriel’s army?” Magda saw the fear that caused his hands to tremble.

She didn’t back down. Instead, she raised her chin and looked at each of the seers gathered around their rough-hewn kitchen table when she said, “We are what Caldriel fears. Why else would he pursue us so desperately? It is because he fears our power. All we need do is join our minds and free those of his seers. With their help, we’ll be able to challenge his hold on this kingdom and the next.”

Mathias stilled with his eyes on Magda. “But what of the sisters? If we join our minds, we’ll be a hundred times brighter than any one of us alone. The sisters are as sharp as Caldriel’s hounds. They would spot us and prevent us from reaching the others.”

From this, Magda knew he was no longer allowing fear to dictate his thoughts. He was planning, which was nearly as good as if he’d proposed the idea himself.

She looked at the old and young faces at the table, at Celeste whose hands were pressed together at her unsmiling mouth. How could she ask them to risk the small, happy lives they’d managed to create here? Yet, they were here. Not a single person had left the room when she proposed they take action.

“Yes, they would,” Magda said, confirming Mathias’ words. “That is why we must have someone in the palace. Someone who can join us from inside and overwhelm the sisters.”

This time it was the entire room that stilled.

Mathias broke the silence with a simple, but clear, “No.”

But Magda was tired of running. She was tired of hiding and was not at all satisfied with a prison in any shape, even if it was one she found agreeable. She could see in the press of his lips that Mathias knew this, too. He would let her go.

She stood and her red consecration robes swayed around her ankles. Though she’d been offered other clothing, she’d never accepted. It was as if part of her had always expected to return, though she never would have guessed how and with what purpose.

“I’ll leave tomorrow,” she said, and though she was more afraid than at any point during her flight, she discovered that fear was easier to carry when the path ahead was clear.

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Thanks for reading! Next week, Lacey will be delighting us with an unTangled short of her very own. And the three of us have been chatting about a contest at the end of this month, so stay tuned!

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Kingdom of Lies (Part 2 of 3)

The scent of wood smoke lay heavy in the air, enveloping them. In the dim light of the fading dusk, Magda could just make out a cottage, and in its doorway, a man. No, she thought, as Bastian came to a stop with a soft whiny. Not a man, a boy. Not much older than she.


“We’ve been waiting for you,” he said, with a voice that was at once kind and calming, and decidedly not the voice she’d heard in her mind.


Magda let go of the reins, and slid off the fatigued horse. She managed one step toward the boy before exhaustion overtook her and she fainted into his waiting arms.



Over the weeks she’d been safeguarded, Magda had explored every square inch of what Mathias told her was protected by the shroud.  A small stretch of forest, bordered by the thickets trees Magda had ever seen. Trees that wouldn’t naturally have grown in the kingdom, without a little magic. It was the trees, Mathias explained, that protected them from the King’s seers.

A small band of runaway servants and seers alike, Mathias and his companions knew the truth about King Cadriel. And like Magda, they’d tried to escape. But there was no escape from the far-reaching clutches of the demon king. He’d spread his seed far and wide among neighboring kingdoms, already ensnaring the people of the land with his spell. The only safe place was to hide in plain sight.

The morning air was brisk, sunlight seeping through the canopy of trees, as Magda lead Bastian from the stables. Mathias had gone into a nearby village, two days travel at best, with a former servant man by the name of Sazh. Though she’d only known Mathias a few weeks, when the boy was gone, Magda felt restlessness in her heart. The cottage walls seemed to press in on her, and the constant bustling of the other women, especially an elder seer named Celeste, made Magda long for open air and green pasture. Though she knew she couldn’t leave the safety of the shroud, she climbed onto Bastian’s back and led him into the forest.

The woods were silent and the air around her seemed thick and heavy. The shroud, she thought, for as she neared the border the weight began to lessen and her breath came easier. She peered through the thickest of trees, spotting something glinting in the distance. Water, she knew by the way the light bounced and moved in soft waves.

This way, Magda. The voice she’d heard just weeks before, when she came upon the cottage, was back again in that same soft lulling tone. Underneath her red robes, her skin prickled and she felt Bastian tense beneath her. The voice was familiar in a way that things sometimes are, without really being. Like a name long forgotten.

“Come, Bastian.” She clucked her tongue and nudged the horse’s sides with her calves. “This way.” But the horse refused to move, stomping his hoof in protest. She tried again, and Bastian locked his legs and jerked his neck, tugging the reins from her hands. She huffed, and jumped from his back, allowing the stubborn stallion to graze alone as she crept closer to the pool.

Magda. Her name was a whisper through the trees. From somewhere on the other side of the shroud, in the direction of the pool, she heard it again, and again. She glanced back the way she’d come, knowing the cottage to be near, but too far for her voice to be heard by the women. Mathias had travelled into the village many times before, and he’d never been detected by the king’s seers. They wouldn’t notice her. They’d probably long forgotten that she’d run away.

She turned back toward the pool, watching the peaceful waves drifting along it’s sunlit surface, reminding her so much of the pool back home, where she’d first learned to see, when times were better. Was it really better, to be naïve and believe her king was fair and just, and not the monster she now knew him to be? She couldn’t know, and decided it best not to wonder.

Magda.

Though she missed her home, her life had not been a terrible one. She’d found Mathias and the cottage after all. And she still had Bastian by her side. The horse lifted his head and snorted once at her, as if reminding her of his presence, before he went back to grazing on a patch of purple clover.

Still, she thought. It would be lovely to see her home again. If only for a moment. She slipped between the trees, tearing her red robe as she made her way beyond the boundary of the shroud, and to the pool just beyond.

Magda knelt at the water’s edge, leaning back on her heels, not yet ready to gaze into the water. She could just see Bastian’s ears pricked and pointed in her direction from where she’d left him inside the shroud. She should turn back. She felt it in her bones, the fervent need to run back inside the shroud. Back to safety, back where she was protected from King Cadriel’s seers. Back to Mathias.

Magda, we’ve missed you. The voice sounded more like her grandfather each time she heard it. It beckoned to her, like a watery finger from beneath the surface of the pool. Without looking down, Magda drew swirls, circles, and runes with a finger, lightly skimming the surface of the pool. Any pool, she knew, could be used to see. If you knew how to use the magic the water held onto so tightly.

“Show me my home,” she whispered, as she leaned forward and gazed at her reflection.

************************

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Kingdom of Lies (Part 1 of 3)

Magda wasn’t sure how many days she’d been running. They had begun to meld into a continuous blur of light and dark, green and brown, somewhere in the second. She was tired all the way down to her bones, and she knew that Bastian, her horse, wouldn’t be able to go much further before collapse. Still, the urge, the desperate, clawing need, to go further wouldn’t abate.

No amount of distance felt safe. Not from the king’s men. His seers could see her anywhere she went in his lands. Unlike most villagers, she knew this to be fact rather than just rumor, because until she'd snuck into the stables and stole away on the old horse, she had been one of them. A novice seer, that is. A job she’d loved until she’d discovered the awful truth about the king. Until she’d made the fatal mistake of following her heart. And until the moment the king set his hounds on her with the order she be brought back, dead or alive.

Knowing what she did, Magda couldn’t decide which option was the better, and so she hoped she would face neither. Unfortunately, being able to see people on the king’s land, is not the same as being able to see the lay of it, and Magda had no idea how close she was to the border, or how to tell when she’d crossed to the other side. She was tempted to use her gift to search for a soul that might know it, but the risk of opening her mind to the sisters was too great. Opening up, even just a little, was enough to make her a shining beacon on the map. They’d be there in no time.

Even without the opening her mind, she stood out too much. She still wore the bright red robes of the consecration ceremony, where she looked into the golden bowl and saw the king’s true, monstrous, face upon the surface of the water. Whatever he was, he was not King Cadriel and as she stared with dawning horror, she saw that the sisters, and everyone in the court had fallen under his spell. She felt pinned to the spot, as though someone were holding her there and sending her this vision.

Amidst the flickering candles and the stone-faced sisters, Magda watched the thing-that-was-not-her-king’s plan spool out across the water in scene after horrific scene. He would turn the kingdom into a wasteland where other beasts like he could thrive, and then they would spread to other lands, until the whole of the world was swallowed, and those in it dead or worse, playthings. When the vision finally released her, she found that she had already planned her escape. Each step fixed inside her mind except this last – where to go.

Bastian trembled beneath her and his steps began to slow. Magda couldn’t remember the last time they’d had water. Only that it had been in the moonlight and now, the sun was slipping behind the hills that never seemed to get any closer. “There now,” she stroked Bastian’s neck, letting him know he could stop. “It’s alright.” They’d been running along the edge of the forest, where the land was flat, and she nudged him toward the trees. She doubted they could make it far enough to find water, but at least they would be sheltered, perhaps hidden from view.

This way, girl. The voice sounded inside her mind, Magda was sure of it, but Bastian’s ear pricked, and he turned in the direction from which it seemed to come. Only a few steps more. The voice was reassuring. It reminded Magda of her grandfather, not in the sound of it, but in the gentle tone. Magda was too tired to fight it, she felt her body go slack with relief. If this was a trick, she would meet her end. She couldn’t run anymore, nor could Bastian, who even now, stumbled as he slowly made his way over roots and fallen branches.

The scent of wood smoke lay heavy in the air, enveloping them. In the dim light of the fading dusk, Magda could just make out a cottage, and in its doorway, a man. No, she thought, as Bastian came to a stop with a soft whiny. Not a man, a boy. Not much older than she.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” he said, with a voice that was at once kind and calming, and decidedly not the voice she’d heard in her mind.

Magda let go of the reins, and slid off the fatigued horse. She managed one step toward the boy before exhaustion overtook her and she fainted into his waiting arms.

*****
Come back Wednesday for part two from Lacey!

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