Children of The Moon Chronicles: Echo (Book I)

Chapter 16

We finally reached the next village, which was at least a few miles away. The villagers were intrigued by the light which had burn throughout the afternoon. The usually quiet village of Yribus was abuzz with excitement that we didn’t dare entered it on daylight. We surveyed it from a nearby hill, we saw some of the men had mounted their sleighs and were heading towards the burning light. Most of the adults and elderly were crowded at the entrance of the village, whispering to each other while the children watched the burning flame with amazement, some tried to get passed their mothers, presumably expressing a desire to go to the source of their amazement.

We lay on our bellies, waiting for the excitement to wane which didn’t happen for hours.

They stood there and when they got tired, they laid out furs which they sat on.

The night fell and finally the men who had gone came back carrying news.

We strained our ears to get snippets of conversations.

We heard phrases such as ‘the dark people’ (which I thought was what the people in this parts call the Hunter who are always doled in dark clothing.) ‘fight’ and ‘animal people.’

My shoulders dropped when I heard the villagers said ‘animal people.’ Now, our secret is out, the North may be far from the major cities and compared to other places in this country, it is sparsely populated but still, word is bound to travel no matter how far from civilization, soon, everyone will know about our existence.

I looked at Alex, he wasn’t looking at me but I know that he was grimacing. He was tracing patterns on the cold snow, his hands were blackened with soot and the untouched flesh was a little bit blue from the cold.

All of us looked the worse for wear, if we ever walk in the village and the people saw us, it wouldn’t take a genius to know where we came from.

The excitement that had once gripped with locals was now replaced by worry and fear. Their voices were strained as they talk about monsters of ancient times, beast that had risen once again, they spoke of their legends about witches and devils, entities that have the abilities to turn into animals.

I turned over to face the dark blue sky, strewn with millions of stars.

Had the heavens really cursed us?

Are we really to blame for what we are?

Are we devils off springs like what the Hunters’ thought?

As far as we know, we didn’t come from the pits of hell.

We were as just us, we were born like this, and we had exists with humans from the start of time.

We don’t commit sins unless we’re force to do so and we’re not better nor lesser than other human beings or at least that’s how we see it.

But normal people don’t understand, and they usually fear what is strange and different, it had been like that ever since.