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Christopher
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-08-02
Posts 8296
Purgatorial Incarceration

0 posted 2001-05-14 04:02 PM



Part One: /pip/Forum15/HTML/001049.html  

Part Two: /pip/Forum15/HTML/001061.html  

Part Three: /pip/Forum15/HTML/001087.html

Part Four: /pip/Forum15/HTML/001116.html




Inspiring the Lost: Part Five - Gone to Ground
©2001 C.G. Ward

Stepping back from his sister and mother, Bran surveyed the room. Off in the corner was Johnny. Unlike Bran, he seemed to remember to cry when he reached his mother’s arms. At one time Bran might have thought less of the boy for his tears, but after the day he’d had there was no room in his heart for judging anyone by their fears.

Things were moving quickly in his mind and he had a hard time concentrating as people started coming to him, asking about the other men of the town who’d gone out on the search. Bran pushed them back with words and gestures, trying to get a grasp on the situation. It was obvious that he needed more information.

Kalina, regarding him with an odd expression, nodded once at his query and immediately began relating her tale in brief clips. Bran cocked a half smile at her, grateful for her acceptance and compliance. He knew that of all those present, his mother would remain level headed.

The woman from Aliron had arrived sometime in the early afternoon. Her name was (Was? asked Bran. His mother only nodded solemnly, an age-old gesture serving to confirm death.) Elyse. She had stumbled into Jake’s – the only tavern in town – and passed out on the floor. Taking her in, Kalina heard enough of her tale to demand that Nessan go out and find their son. In less than a half hour’s time, they’d gathered together half the men in town and set out in search of Bran and several other boys who were out in the forests.

After seeing them off, Kalina heard the rest of the story.

As far as the woman had known, she was the only survivor. The attack had come in the middle of the night with no warning. She’d woken to the sounds of violence and anger, the terror of shattering glass and broken security. It was the sound of her youngest daughter’s screams, which sent her reeling from her bedroom into the maw of a nightmare. The goblins, three of them, were in her house.

Kalina refused to relay the things that were done with the woman and her family, sufficing it to say that Elyse was the only one who survived, and that was only because the beasts had been enjoying tormenting her before they were suddenly called away. Bran could tell by the dark circles under her eyes, that his mother bore the great weight of that knowledge as something she would have to carry for the rest of her life. It seemed to hang over her like a specter, but he didn’t press her for details.

Caught between grief and terror, Elyse had hidden herself beneath her bed until all the noises had passed. Dredging herself up in the morning, she discovered that the whole town had been destroyed. She found bodies lining the walks and whole sections of the town had been reduced to ash and splinters. Half mad and without hope, Elyse somehow found her way to Leafwood.

The room fell silent for a time as those nearby took time to consider the woman’s tale as Kalina told it. Most there would have written the account away as fictitious nonsense that morning. However, the fact that the town was surrounded even now by unknown creatures gave even the most cynical no room for disbelief.

“As these things always go,” Bran’s mother continued. “It wasn’t long after the men had left that the creatures came. Immediately, they butchered anyone who made a move in their direction. They didn’t speak, but made it clear that the people were to remain inside their homes. Trying to muster up as large of a force as possible, I routed everyone I here into the house. After taking count and subtracting those known dead or out in the party, we found that we had a little less than two thirds of the town’s remaining population between the house and the shop.”

Kalina frowned.

“It was some time in this period that Elyse took her life. I guess she was just too afraid of what they might do to her if given another chance.”

So, we tried to get everyone as everyone as comfortable as possible, then began to wait. After several hours, we were beginning to be sure that the men were not going to return. With that in mind, we had begun to prepare some form of plan, knowing that if the other men didn’t return, there was no one to help us.

“Bran,” Kalina said solemnly. “Please, tell us, did the men find you? Are they alive?”

Bran swallowed hard. How was he to tell her?

“Yes, they found me. And last time I saw them they were fine. But…” He frowned deeply and quickly updated them on his side of the story. There were collective moans of worry as he came to the part where the men chose to attack the party in the clearing, but it was followed mostly by heavy sighs of acceptance as each realized that the reasoning behind the attack was sound.

But that it was the best likely action did little to alleviate the heavy burden of despair that hung through the room like the smoke of an ill-tended fire. Feeling black and gray, it seemed to permeate the holes of hope and plug them with doubts and fears.

“What do we do now?” A voice asked from somewhere in the group of people surrounding Bran and his mother.

“Mother,” Bran started, turning toward Kalina. “Father mentioned that you would know what to do…”

The older woman nodded absently, running fingers through her slightly graying hair. She seemed to be far away at that moment, and Bran wondered if her thoughts were with his father. She nodded once again and seemed to come back to herself.

“Yes and no,” she replied, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had taken the room. The people there weren’t used to making decisions, rather, they were used to following orders. Bran considered the fact that the only people willing – not to mention able – to give orders in the town were a scared older woman and her half-grown son. The irony didn’t escape his notice.

“Yes and no?” He prompted her when she paused.

“Well, I imagine he didn’t know about them when he told you to come back. What he wants is for us to hide from the invaders.”

“Hide where? They’ll find us no matter where we go. According to your boy there, they have whole groups scouring the woods even as we speak!”

Kalina waved her hand calmly in the direction of Alyse Winters. The young woman was close to hysterics. She was one of many whose husband hadn’t returned yet. She was also one of a couple who kept glaring at Bran and Johnny as if they were traitors.

“Hide in the ground, of course,” Kalina replied softly. Bran cocked his head at her. He was wondering if she was feeling well, and even asked her the same.

“Yes, I’m feeling fine. You, Johnny, come here. Bran, help me move this cabinet.” Bran immediately began pushing at the large cabinet that had been a fixture of the house as far back as he could recall. He even had memories of playing inside it as a boy. The large open space in the bottom had served well as a fort for a four-year-old boy.

He wasn’t sure why they were moving it initially, but as Johnny lent his bulk to their efforts it became obvious. Pushed aside, the cabinet revealed a large square hole in the wall, big enough for a grown person to walk through if they bent over double. The small opening only went back into the wall a few feet, but that was more than enough to form the landing for a steep set of dusty stairs that led into the ground below.

Bran stared at his mother with a raised eyebrow. The existence of this hidden passageway brought many questions to bear. She simply smiled and began forming small groups to grab items from throughout the house.

Soon, the formerly lethargic group of people was turning the house into a hive of activity. Even the discontented, such as Alyse, were doing there best to gather as much food, clothing, and weapons as possible. With direction such as that, it was less than an hour before the mass of people was in the relative safety of the belowground cellar.

Upon inspection, the stairs proved to be cleverly prepared so as to collapse when several pins were pulled. Then a mound of dirt with beams for support could be pushed across the ceiling of the cellar and up into the hole. If on the chance the opening behind the cabinet was found, it would appear nothing more than a small hidden closet. If the house were burned down, then there was no way to notice the plot that was different. For support, there were several beams against the far wall that could be braced beneath the mound to prevent it from collapsing, even under the weight of a wagon.

Bran was quite impressed and insisted on hearing how it came to be.

Kalina finally relented when most of the work had been done and all but a select group was below ground. The group, consisting of Johnny (which surprised Bran), Aldon, Mina, (which delighted Bran) and Bran himself were waiting to hear from Kalina about the “special chore” she had for them.

Kalina’s face was worn with lines of worry and weary as she faced the four youngsters. She had the look of one who’d just eaten something sour and couldn’t quite get the taste out of her mouth. And despite the air of haste that hung around her, she yielded with no small amount of grace to their curiosity about the cellar.

“You know your father and I haven’t always lived here, right.” It wasn’t a question, but Bran nodded anyway, intrigued. He’d heard only scant tales of their life before Leafwood, always hearing instead that those were days better left in the past. It was this knowledge though, at least in part, which had always had Bran thinking of the place just over the next horizon… “Well,” she continued, interrupting his thoughts. ”What you don’t know is why we came to Leafwood.” She paused, as if verifying with herself that she wanted to continue.

“Your father and I used to live in a town called Sweet Water. It was a large town, bigger than any you’re likely to ever see, if only because I think it was the last of its kind. Your father, gentle man that he is,” she added with a light laugh of fond memory. “Was one of the few soldiers enlisted to guard our town. Not that the bandits ever bothered us – though I think that the fact that we employed men like your father prevented that by their very presence.

“We lived well there, for it was a time when all seemed to prosper. Sweet Water did trade with many of the nearby towns, including those of the Kalornian towns. The change came about when I was with child, you Bran, our first-born. As fate would have it, what seemed too good to be true, in fact was.”

Kalina sat down and the four swept around her, wary of her seemingly frail balance.

“Mother?”

She nodded and waved them away with a grim smile. “I’m fine. Memories. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that memory has no power over you. It holds much more strength than most will admit.

“It was then that everything changed,” she said, jumping back into her tale before the others could say anything. “One night - they always come in the night, don’t they? – your father woke me from bed. My first thought was surprise that he wasn’t on duty. With my second, I noticed the sounds coming from outside our house. Screaming, Bran, screaming like I hope you never have to hear. I still wake up some nights shaking. Your father has to hold me down on the bed and whisper repeatedly to me that everything is fine before I relax enough to go back to sleep.

“I still hear those poor people in my dreams.”

A sound from behind caused them all to turn. One of the women had come up from downstairs and was beckoning Kalina to hurry. She nodded at the concerned woman and resumed her telling. Her voice bled dry of emotion and she increased the pace.

“To avoid all the gory details, what happened was an attack by the Legion. Understand that in those days they were more… restrained. That’s when the Regents still had control over their armies and themselves. Apparently, Sweet Water had committed some infraction against Regent Bliker and brought his wrath down.

“Through the dark of night the wraiths possessed several of the night guards and opened the gates wide to attack. It was only luck that prevented your father from being one. When he saw the vanguard of the attackers he did the only thing he could do, he deserted. It sounds bad in the telling I suppose, but I believe to this day that he did the only thing he could do. Were he to stand his post, he would be dead. As is, all he could think of was his unborn son and his wife.

“With no preliminaries, he raced back, woke me, and started running.”

A heavy sigh.

“I wonder sometimes if it was luck that helped us escape detection, or if it was just that the monsters were simply too intent on their pillaging to notice a few people escaping. Whatever it was, it brought us here, far, far away from Sweet Water.” She laughed bitterly. “Of course your father wasn’t about to be a guard again, so he took up smithing. It turned out, as fate would have it, that he was rather good at it.”

Bran sat on the floor, digesting the story. He would never have guessed that such was the history of his parents. It went far toward explaining many of the characteristics that had bothered or interested him about his father over the years. Bran hoped he’d have a chance to let his father know how terribly sorry – and proud – he was of the man for all he’d been through.

“But what about the cellar?” Mina asked, not quite as impacted by the story.

Kalina smiled that timeworn smile again and nodded. “Leafwood in those days was little more than a few scattered houses. In part, I think that our appearance here was enough to prompt it into becoming more like a real town. When we arrived, we searched for the best place to build a new business, a new house… a new life. We choose this place, which also prompted other businesses to grow around us, I might add, and built our house.

“From the outside, it appeared that we did nothing more than that. Over the course of the next year however, we slowly dug the cellar. Call it paranoia if you like, but we’d seen and heard enough death to last us our lifetimes. We weren’t willing to take that chance of another loss. Who knew, we might not be so lucky the next time.” She shrugged, half-apologetically. “We did what we had to, to preserve what sanity we’d managed to hang onto.”

Bran stood and walked over to his mother. This time, neither one of them forgot to cry.






Ok, Mina is introduced, though barely - I had intentionally intended more for her, but she grew obstinate and wrote herself out of a good part. Oh well, such are imaginary characters. There isn't too much left. A few more parts is all, with only one or two left for me to write. Hope I haven't bored everyone to death with this, considering it grew considerably larger than I'd intended.

Peace,

C

© Copyright 2001 C.G. Ward - All Rights Reserved
Nicole
Senior Member
since 1999-06-23
Posts 1835
Florida
1 posted 2001-05-14 05:25 PM


I'm not even finished reading, but I had to reply real quick-like before the real reply.

They came from SWEET WATER?!  YOU SNEAK!!!
LOL

Nice  

Nic

kitkat
Senior Member
since 2000-01-11
Posts 878
Nova Scotia
2 posted 2001-05-14 07:05 PM


Still captivated by your writting. Waiting(in the dark) for the next piece..
Elizabeth Cor
Senior Member
since 2000-10-13
Posts 879
Over the river and through the woods
3 posted 2001-05-14 10:36 PM


Only one comment right now (regarding the story in whole): stating that he stole side-glances at her -- that was nice, but don't mention Mina the subsequent time. The second mention just sticks out like a sore spot.
And saying that he was proud of her… THAT seems to leave the story empty, as though we already know Mina herself and her significance.
Perhaps she doesn't NEED any foreshadowing? Introducing her in great detail in Part Six (that's what you're planning, isn't it?  ) should be enough.
I'll get intimate with the red pen when you finish...

Poet deVine
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-26
Posts 22612
Hurricane Alley
4 posted 2001-05-15 08:34 PM


Again, this is excellent. You again impress me with your talent, sir!  
Dusk Treader
Moderator
Senior Member
since 1999-06-18
Posts 1187
St. Paul, MN
5 posted 2001-05-16 09:20 PM


Excellent, Chris! You carve a wonderful tale again. You're doing an excellent job extending this, the characters are wonderful.. LOL, Except for the ellusive Mina?  

"There's nowhere to set my aim
So I'm everywhere" - Dream Theater

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