Prologue - 1

The sky was a rolling mass of shifting gray, pouring rain in rippling sheets over the grass and fences and low thatched roofs. Sora’s sandals squelched as he ran through the mud that was once a dirt road. His hair plastered to his face, the rain refreshingly cool as he skidded joyfully down slippery grass hills through the village. With a small leap, he landed on the outside porch of a long, squat building, with doors rolled wide open in spite of the storm. Taking advantage of the shelter of the porch, Sora took off his sandals and tried to wipe off the mud on them and on his feet.

“Sora!”

Turning around, the young boy noticed a group of kids sitting in front of the empty fireplace at the end of the long room inside. A gangly teenager, sitting on the hearth, was waving at him. The others around him stared curiously.

“Dusan”, he called back.

“What are you doing out in the rain?” asked a girl sitting on a table, twisted so she could look at the doorway despite facing the fireplace. Sora took a step into the dimly lit hall.

“Stuff for my mum.”

Dusan snorted and some others giggled. Sora smiled sheepishly.

“For your mum,” someone repeated.

“In this rain?”

“You’d really do anything for your mum, wouldn’t you?” added the girl on the table.

“Ah, well...” Sora shrugged, moved closer to them inside, soaking wet and sandals in hand.

“It’s that Sora’s got no father,” said Dusan, sighing as if Sora’s behaviour where a flaw that could not be helped. “How couldn’t he help Dae, when she is so hardworking...”

The teenagers giggled again at Dusan’s little performance.

“Idiot”, replied Sora, grinning. He was now close enough to the sheltering kids to shower them when he shook himself like a dog. They protested, laughing and squealing and shifting away from the wet boy. Dusan tried to scramble away, roaring with laugher, when Sora wrung his short, drenched hair over him. The young group finally chased him away playfully, still laughing as if they didn’t have a worry in the world.

Sora hummed as he found himself once again under the loud and angry sky, not bothering to put his sandals back on. Rice fields now rolled out on each side, dotted by warehouses much like the common room Sora had found Dusan and the others in.

Ignoring the entrance that branched off from the dirt road, he scrambled up the small ditch and clambered over the fence, and made his way to the back of the squat house. He stood dripping wet and breathing hard at the wide, doorless entrance, listening to the angry beating of the rain outside and peering into the semi-darkness inside. The building, which was once supposed to be a barn, was now cluttered with an impressive amount of tools, drying plants that gave off a peculiar odour, piles upon piles of large sacks, some that had teared and spilled sand over the earth floor. Sora made his way to the back, where the walls had been replaced with with stone masonry and a piece of rough cloth formed a curtain behind which a roaring fire played shadows.

"Hello ?" Sora gently pushed aside the curtain, discovering an old man bent over his work in front of the furnace. The light danced of the walls and flickered mesmerisingly over the rows and stacks of glassware filling the room. Picking his way through the organised disorder, Sora approached the worker.

"Old man Ɉenda"

His eyes intent on the glowing piece of molten glass he held, heating it, blowing it, not looking away, the old man didn’t hear him. He was part deaf, actually.

Sora waited a couple of moments for him to put down his work, then tapped his shoulder. Ɉenda turned around and raised his eyebrows at the wet teenager standing in his workshop.

"Sora! When did you get here ? And why are you so wet ?"

"It’s raining, old man Ɉenda. It’s been raining since morning"

"Still ? Here, help me cover the fire will you. And what might be the reason you come despite the rain to seek this old man ?"

It’s for mum. She’s in Miesto for the moment and she asked me to do a few chores. Why were you working so late, anyways ? You shouldn’t spend all day shut off in here."

"Dae’s been called out again ? To think our small village herbalist is being summoned to the city by merchant families. Good thing she has you." The old man ignored Sora’s last comment.

Sora held up the makeshift curtain to let through Jenda as they made their way back outside. They paused in front of the pouring rain.

"That’s why she needs the glass," the young boy replied.

"Huh huh. The rains come early" was the answer he got. The old man probably had not heard.

Inside Ɉenda’s house, a few strides from the old barn entrance, Sora helped the old man revive the kitchen fire and put water to boil, as he had insisted on having the young boy heat and dry himself before going back to the village. Ɉenda promised to have a set of flasks and other glassware ready within a couple of weeks, free of any charge. Almost nothing was expected as payment for anything from herbalists, if not the guarantee of being able to count on unconditional experienced help when in need. Especially Ɉenda, who knew Dae since she she was a child and would never dream of asking anything from the woman who had a few times saved his life.

Sora thanked the old man for the tea and for his kindness, then faced the rain again. The heavy clouds hid the sun but he could feel the light lessening and evening pulling the day to an end. He picked up once more a running pace, thinking of the boiling bath he’d sink into, not wanting to catch cold.

The group of teenagers had deserted the common room and few people were to be seen, if not the torch-lighters on duty that evening, who saluted Sora briefly as he skidded through the muddy dirt roads.

Although not as far from the village cluster as Ɉenda’s barn workshop, their herbalist’s hut was situated behind a cluster of trees over a small stream. Ignoring once again the little bridge and the worked path, Sora jumped over the water and picked his way through the young trees. He hurried too much, however, and caught his foot on the forest floor and was sent violently flying into the bushes, crying out in surprised.

"What the--"

The young boy pushed himself back onto his knees, swatting the ferns from his face. He stared at a scratched elbow and the sore palms of his hands. Then he looked up at where he had stumbled. And froze.

Where he expected to find an upturned root or a fallen branch on the wet and leafy ground was a human foot. A small, slender foot clothed in an equally small leather slipper. He noticed the second foot a few inches from the first. It was missing it’s slipper.

The rest of the body defined itself in the half light under the wet bushes. Slightly scared of what to expect, Sora pushed aside the ferns and discovered the face of a young woman, lying as if dead on the forest floor. Maybe she was dead.

She could have been handsome if her features weren’t pale, frighteningly pale. Her hair was unusually long, rough and white as well, sprawled around her head over the leaves. But what had Sora frozen in shock and horror was the blood that seeped into the earthen ground, staining her brightly coloured clothes and running away with her life.

Trembling despite the years he had spent with his mother nursing all ailments, Sora pulled at the limp body and turned her over, freezing all over again at the sight of her blood-soaked torso. But she was still alive. Somehow, a small, shaking breath pushed its way through her lungs and her throat throbbed faintly. Sora pulled off his own tunic and tore it to temporarily bind the girl’s wounds, whatever had happened to her. He heaved her up and, before he could take a couple of steps out of the trees, he tripped again and fell back onto the wet ground. Swearing loudly, he picked the wounded girl back up as he looked for the cause of his fall. This time he found the elaborate hilt of a sword lying where it shouldn’t be. Too overwhelmed to really assume this new surprise, he grabbed it clumsily, his arms already full. He heaved them both out of the cluster of trees into the rain.

-

The water he set to boil was not for his bath, and instead of relaxing and doing his evening chores Sora had the small hut in a frenzy, the mysterious girl lying pale as ever in the firelight on the sickbed. The wound he discovered under her strange clothes, after washing away the blood, was one of the most horrible things he had seen. Living in the plains in a simple farmer community, Sora had never treated a blade wound before. This girl had been wounded in a deliberate, murderous way, aiming clearly for vital organs, for the kill. He bandaged her as best he could and fed her herbs and treated her with all his knowledge, even though there was no way for her to survive. He had no idea for how long she had been lying in the bushes bleeding under the cold rain, nor, even, where she could even come from. He tried not to think of it. He was unable to just let her die.

The fire burned low, just enough to provide warmth and light as Sora cleaned up their healer’s hut, his movements clumsy with exhaustion. He sat with a blanked, his back to the wall, and stared at his unusual patient. Her clothes he had folded next to her bed, those stained with blood he had disinfected and put to dry, as well as the wet weather would allow. The sword was lying next to her bed as well. There, he fell asleep, forgetting his own bed, slumping against the wall across the room from the bareley, miraculously alive stranger.

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