Balance Shattered - A Gundarakite Tale
22 Years Ago...
Branch and thorn cut into her flesh like steel razors, but the feeling of warm blood trickling down her arms only hazily registered in her thoughts as she tore through the undergrowth. Above, only the faintest streaks of moonlight illuminated the woods through the oppressive branches of the oaks and pines that grew thickly about the rough ground she scrambled over. Her mind was ablaze with dread, fear, and panic.
The suddenness of her reality breaking was unfathomable. At any moment, she imagined that a cold spearpoint would pierce her back, her throat would choke up with hot burning blood, and she would be gargling out her last breaths as she fell into the muddy leaves. Instinct kept her legs moving, her chest pounding for air as she struggled to crest a rise in the woods, and the gasping breaths of the small form next to her were the only thing that kept her mind from shattering apart from the insanity of this black and horrid night.
The headlong flight of the two Rakoczifalva daughters into the Tepurch Forest would have been unthinkable a mere hour earlier. They had been at supper with their mother, a quiet affair for Gundarakites of modest means. The fire of their single room home crackled with a liveliness that stood in stark contrast to the small bounty of their meal. Onion and leek soup, with a few bits of crusty bread and dried pork. Typical fair, for most nights... and most mornings and middays, ever since their father had died in a construction accident. A forty pound stone block had crushed his head as it fell from a scaffold rope, improperly secured. The Red Vardo Traders that owned the worksite offered a pittance of condolences for their father's death; half the remaining wages of the month for his work as a stonemason. The family survived, however. They had kin in Zeidenburg. Kin watched after their own. Onion soup was enough to get by. It could always be worse, couldn't it?
They had been playing a guessing game with their dinner. Their mother would describe an animal, and the sisters would take turns pondering its features until they discovered its name. Simple amusements for simple folk. She had been puzzling a creature with four legs, that swam as well as a fish, but built like a man. The answer was on the tip of her tongue, but there was a distant buzzing, an angry hum, combatting her thoughts. The clattering of horse's hooves accented the roar, breaking the peace of the evening. The sudden, anguished screams from outside destroyed any hope of calm returning. Adrenaline had already pumped through their veins as their mother had rushed to the window, peering through the shutters.
"Grab the satchels from the rack!" Her voice was sharp, wild and hard.
The sisters scrambled to follow her cry, but small hands fumbled as if grabbing at unpowdered dough. Leather straps tangled about the wooden pegs as they ripped them off. She was shaking, uncentered fear grasping at her with sharp fingers, the feeling jittering and rapid over her stomach.
"Go to the river, the ford with the rocks. You jump across, you get to the other side, and you run! You run until you can't hear the river anymore and then turn east! You look for the old signs, the marks. Erika! Do you hear me?!"The tears had started, welling up in her eyes as she tried to focus on her mother. She blinked rapidly, her tongue trying to move, her mouth working but without words.
"River, ford, run east! You do as I say! You find your cousins!" Her mothers hands grasped her by the upper arms, clutching her tightly, her green eyes locked onto hers, wide, insistent.
"Do you understand!""Y-yes!"The screams heightened, shouts and calls, roaring, louder, fierce, like a bear in anger, rage. Wood splintered feet away. Torchlight slipped through the cracks of the wooden boards.
Her sister's hands pleaded with the back of her shirt, tugging, pulling.
"Come on, Erika!"Her mother's eyes were the last sight she saw as her sister dragged her out the back door into the cool night air. She whipped around, tripping over stray hens that had been disturbed by the commotion in the yard. Onion sprouts had been carefully coaxed into the light a few days earlier and were trampled without thought. On the other side of the small house, a jumble of shapes and shadows; forms of men and horses surging about. It was a small hamlet, six or eight shacks and buildings clustered about an earthen square. Flames had started to flit across the dry thatch, grey smoke sprouting upwards. She caught the sight of a neighbor, stumbling with a long feathered arrowshaft through his shoulder, and another through his gut. A goat pleated in panic, the cry sharp. She turned, the grasping hand of her sister on hers. A crashing of woven branches as they broke through the garden fence, and then she heard it. Her mother was screaming. Pain so heightened that there was surely no solace from it in life; only in death.
They didn't stop until they had crossed the river, leaping over rocks and boulders that had before been skipped across in games and youthful fun. A pause to see the mark on the half-sunken oak along the shore, a shout of a hoarse voice, the Balok tongue, loud and rageful -
"Gundarakite mongrels! Burn it all down!"That had been an hour ago. As they reached the crest, their bodies shuddered, stalled. Gasping breaths as they doubled over, panting. The tears surged back, and she felt her sister stagger against her side, sobbing.
"They're gone! S-she's gone!"The sounds of the village inflamed, their childhood shattering, had long dwindled. The woods were as if they had taken in a long breath, and held it, hushed in the still of the night. The branches shifted, creaked gently in the wind. Slivers of moonlight gleamed through the gaps of the oaks, over bright, bloody streaks on her arms, but all she saw were green eyes.
