Chapter III
Realization

The next day, I found I could talk again, though my voice still broke every once in a while. That morning, while the merchants were packing up camp, I asked Jasmine and Maple something I’d been dieing to know since the night before, “So what’s your story?”

Maple looked into my eyes, and I saw something flicker in her’s, but only for a second. Jasmine looked to the sky, and began to speak for both of them, “I don’t have any family, never really had. My mother died giving birth and I never knew my father. My brother took care of me until I was about 10 and then disappeared; I never found out what happened to him… I ended up just wandering around, having no where to go.

“Then, one day, Maple and her husband found me. I guess you could say they sort of adopted me. Even though they weren’t my real parents, I felt like they were.”

I knew that bond. It was like what Isabella and I had had when I was a kid.

“Anyway,” Jasmine continued, “we were visiting her husband’s grave when we noticed the village in flames. Then those merchants came and took us away before we could do anything.” She paused and looked around; making sure the merchants weren’t listening. Then she leaned in and motioned for us to do the same. Then she whispered, “If you ask me, I think those merchant’s may have something to do with the fire.”

Before either Maple or I could respond, the merchants gathered around us. Untying the ropes that bound us to each other, they retied them to the camels’ saddles and we were off again.

The sun had moved half way across the sky when we stopped. We were in another small village. This was the third one since our journey began. The merchants would stop at a village every so often to sell and trade, while Maple, Jasmine, and I sat locked in a stable with the camels.

We were there for a long while, just like all the other times. The sun had sunk so low that we could see it shining through the western window. That’s when a small boy wandered into the stables carrying a large bucket of water for the camels. We saw children like him often. We’d decided that they must have been instructed not to speak to us. If not, then they were afraid of us. I couldn’t blame them if that was the reason. After all, everyone we’d seen since that tragic day almost two weeks ago was so much paler and strangely dressed than we were. That on top of the fact that we hadn’t bathed in all this time. Jasmine and maple were a mess I knew, and I was afraid to imagine what I must have looked like.

I waved to the boy anyway. He looked at me confused, and then smiled. His teeth were a sickly greenish yellow colour – the ones he still had at least. He was filthy, every inch of him covered in dirt. He was thin and looked sick. Cuts and bruises littered his body. I had to fight not to cringe. I felt sorry for the boy, he couldn’t have been much older than Snaps had been, yet he looked like he’d never eaten more than twice a week, or known the warmth of a mother’s touch.

Hauling the bucket that was nearly half the size he was, he scurried out the barn door to collect his earnings. I waited, but I didn’t hear the slam of the board that had been used to lock it shut.

Something leapt inside me. Freedom. I was only a few steps away from it. I jumped up. “You guys, the door’s open! Come on! Let’s go!”

I tugged at the ropes, but neither Maple nor Jasmine moved…

“What are you guys waiting for? This is our chance! We can go home!” frantically I tried to convince them to leave with me.

“Home to what?” Jasmine’s eyes were hard, her face carved from stone. “Everyone but us is gone, you know that. The village is destroyed and, on top of that, we don’t even know where it is from here. Need I remind you that it’s taken almost two weeks to get this far? How do you think we’d fare, on our own, not knowing where to go, with less nourishment – if any – than what we receive now?”

I hadn’t though of any of that…

“Besides,” she added, “Maple wouldn’t last half that time under those conditions, and I refuse to leave her here! I won’t let you leave either. We’re all the family we have left, and no matter where we may be headed, we have to stick together!”

Her speech hit me hard. Not only because I felt stupid for not having thought of any of that, not only because she was right, it was because, in my heart, I knew she was right all along: we were all that was left…

A few hours later, the merchants came and took us away; our journey continued.

The next morning, as we began to walk again, I felt like I would explode if I didn’t say something. My feet were killing me. After doing nothing but sit around nearly the whole of yesterday, I became unadjusted to the ridiculous amount of walking we had to do each day. The only thing that kept me quiet was the thought that Maple, being the age that she was, must have been feeling much more pain than I was. So the rest of the time, I sucked it up, biting my lip the whole way, licking up the blood so the merchants wouldn’t notice.

That afternoon, the man with the sky coloured eyes assured us that we were only a day’s journey away from our destination. His men seemed please, but the three of us soon found out that that meant we wouldn’t be stopping for the night. The next morning, my feet might as well have been bleeding, and if I’d had a chance to sit down and check, I probably would have found out they were.

My eyes burned from the bright sun light combined with my lack of sleep, but I ignored the painful sensation with thoughts of where the men could be taking us.

I imagined the places Isabella had described in those stories of long ago. Places full of enough people to fill 10 villages. Buildings taller than the highest trees I’d ever seen. Farms full of plants and animals I could never imagine.

As we reached the top of one large hill, I caught sight of the strangest place I’d ever seen.

The buildings were huge, colourful, and made of a hard material, but it wasn’t stone or wood. Our simple dwellings, made of logs and deer hides, paled in comparison. A new world of scents and sounds was opened to me. I could even smell the familiar sugar bread I’d so adored; the weeks without food had made my hunger for it even greater. As we entered the town, people looked at us strangely. I could see why. Their clothes were colourful, their hair tied in strange, elaborate fashions. They wore lace and shining jewels, the women had ribbons every where. They were draped in the colours of sunrise and set, grass in midday during summer, rainbow birds that soared over the village, and some of them were as colourful as the butterflies I’d left behind. Some of the people even harnessed what I’d decided were the horses Isabella had spoken of, and were riding them down the streets.

Compared to these people, we were like rats.

Looking around I was amazed; I never would have imagined that some day, I would be able to experience Isabella’s stories first-hand. At that moment, I wished more than anything that Adrian were there with me.

I noticed we were leaving the town. I wondered where we were going and looked to Jasmine and Maple for answers. My stomach dropped when I saw the worried looks on their faces. What did they know that I didn’t? Where were they taking us? What was going to happen to us?

Different scenes played and replayed in my mind. These were strange people. Would they eat us, or feed us to their animals? Would we continue to walk forever? Would they kill us and use our blood to dye their clothes? Gruesome thoughts, I know, but when prey is trapped, it can’t help but go into a panicked over drive. Its mind races. Its heart beats faster and faster. Fear of the known and unknown consumes and destroys any sense or logic, any will power. Some how, looking into the others’ eyes, I knew they were thinking the same thing: What ever the reason was – that our lives had been destroyed, that we’d lost everything and everyone we’d loved – what ever that reason, we were about to find out what it was…

Chapter 4 will be posted eventually