Nada's Escape: Fighters' lies

4.1 Ceremony

The crowd starts to shuffle into a circle in Seven's inner courtyard. I reluctantly move to join them, regretting my promise to Macie yesterday. The mix of seveners and well dressed Huntsmen is strange, like throwing sparrows and hawks in the same cage for a day. A hand brushes my elbow and I turn to find Finley holding out a stylish cream hat with a sweeping brim.

"I thought you might like a hat?" He asks. He wears blue today, somehow looking cool in the heat.

I narrow my eyes at the gift, aware of a hundred gazes around me, a hundred listening ears. Very clever, I think, don't approach me until I'm in the middle of a crowd.

I snatch the hat without response, angry at the gift. But as I pull it on the exposed skin of my face and neck sighs at the shade.

My lips part to demand where he had been yesterday when I feel a pair of eyes boring into my skin. I turn to see a tall man in a grey button up take one step into the circle. His gaze rests heavy on me, making my breath still. A few quiet seconds roll by where I'm unable to make a sound. Enthallment?

His eyes move on and a Mexican wave of hush follows his gaze around the circle. In a matter of seconds, all is silent.

"Huntsmen have always been a part of this world," He intones in a rich, deep voice. "And we are pledged to defend it, on behalf of our human brothers and sisters, from the hordes of fey that would throw it into chaos. Our duty requires strength but also cunning. We go where we are most needed, donning the guise of the unnoticed, the overlooked, blending in with our innocent brothers and sisters so they do not discover the service we do for them.

"Uncountable Huntsmen have hidden as peasants and servants to protect the human world. So few are remembered away from these walls. But in their myths we are there, a mere huntsman, gardener or maid. A traveller on the track. In the human world we are invisible.

"But here by the walls built by our own Seven we hold our own court; where we are the kings. We are the true hunters of the wicked, the warriors against the chaos and the true wardens of the world. We are the Huntsmen... and today we welcome two more to our crusade." The Huntsmen in the grey button-up steps back into a place in the circle.

I scan the circle for the girl who would pledge her life away today. Her gaze is blank, like an empty cardboard box. It shouldn't be like that, should be a babling brook, a swaying tree, a sunset on the horizon. But now she's just Macie's latest triumph. A perfect enthralled little worm.

She shakes her dark curls around her, eyes glazed with a detached terror. The crowd, I guess. Had she been afraid of crowds before? I ask myself, trying to remember what she had been like before she'd been enthralled.

A quiet girl, but everyone was quiet at first. A fast runner; had it been her who'd beat me that time? Four... maybe five escape plans ago? I can't remember.

It doesn't matter. She's a vegetable now.

Macie is trying to usher her to step forward and she blinks in confusion. She totters forward a few steps and then stills, like a deer, pausing on the road before an oncoming truck.

"My name..." She mumbles and then stares intently at something on the ground. Macie jumps forward to whisper in her ear. "My name is P- Penny," she tries again.

Macie confirms Penny's success with a nod and a kind smile before pointing out the leader of the ceremony, the man who had first spoken. Penny totters further into the circle. Then she frowns and turns back to Macie. Macie nods towards the man, making little shooing motions. Penny sedately makes it over to him and stands there like a statue. I wonder what thoughts, if there are any at all, are looping around inside her head.