The Empty Ones (Fantasy Romance)

5. Alsayida

That night in bed, I trembled from cold and fear. Even if Mairi hadn't been particularly nice to me lately I didn't want anything bad to happen to her and I knew that precisely that was going to.

In this place, where you got beaten quite often for trivial matters, I didn't even want to imagine what the punishment for an actual offense like the one I witnessed would be.

The sleep just wouldn't come. I kept staring at the door, thinking frightened of what they would do to Mairi and even to Chioma, who I didn't know that well, or to myself if they would find out I was there too. If by any chance I didn't wipe well enough the water my footsteps left on the hallway, they would know I was in the garden; they would know and assume I wanted to escape too.

The light of the golden star, Sham Soleilis,  started illuminating the room. I hadn't slept at all but neither had I been beaten. Mairi and Chioma didn't return to our room, and neither did I see them that day at breakfast.

Salma whispered something I couldn't understand to Fera, grumbling over her porridge boul. The two weren't friends, but unlike Fera and Itotia that never talked to each other, they were at least cordial.

"What did she say?" I asked in genuine curiosity.

"What all of us are thinking: where Mairi and Chioma might be. It is rumored they escaped."

I wasn't sure how to react but telling them what I saw didn't seem like a good idea. Maybe I would have told Fera since she was the only thing resembling a friend there, but I didn't dare.

"If they escaped they will not last long unless they are very lucky," said Salma. "It is difficult to survive in the desert and they likely couldn't take many things with them and if they went into the mountain land it's certain death too by the weather or by the mountain clans."

Fera wasn't offended, how I would have expected her to be, hearing Salma's statement about the mountain clans. She only said, "Yes, they would likely kill them. We don't like foreigners."

"What if they didn't manage to escape," I add carefully.

"You mean if they got caught? Then I don't want to be them. Death is a lighter punishment than the scorn of The White Grace."

"You mean they get a beating?"

"No. You usually get a beating, they would get a horrible death after..." Fera hesitated, "having been taught the painful lesson they refused to learn over and over again."

"You mean that they would be tortured and killed?" I asked horrified and at the same time, I already knew I was right and felt like kicking myself.

"Yes. The White Grace hates disobedience almost as much as she loves power," whispered Fera.

Sometimes the way she talked didn't seem to be that of a girl fourteen star-circles of age. She seemed to have seen much of the world.

I looked towards the table of The White Grace. She was a rather small woman, white-skinned like the mountain people with an ageless face. She could have been any age between thirty and fifty. She also didn't seem mean or hateful at all. Her mimic was generally rather expressionless, still, the night before made her seem plainly frightening. The image of the thunderbolt that left her hand and struck Mairi and Chioma down, got burned into my mind forever.

That day I couldn't concentrate on anything, neither cooking, nor lessons, nor what Fera was saying. I kept seeing Mairi's face and how her body fell limp on the grass below the wall, how she opened her eyes and crawled towards Chioma while blood was trickling down her chin.

Mairi was grumpy and had been mean to me, threatened me and mocked me often, but she had also helped me or tried to. She gave me water when she knew she would likely be beaten for it and she told me her secret for whatever reason. And besides everything, she was just a little girl, just like me, that watched her family get murdered, just like me or worse. If I thought about that, her being mistrusting and mad at the world did make a lot of sense.