Alvina

Chapter One

I was thirteen when my mother died.

This was the first time I really understood what it meant to hate. Whether it was people, places, or circumstances, I was filled with a boiling rage for everything around me.

It was so consuming at first, I'm sure colors could have changed and I wouldn't have noticed.

I was a really mean thirteen year old because of that, but eventually, the overflowing rage ebbed a little over time.

Although it doesn't matter if I'm no longer a hurricane of fury, the damage has been done.

No one in the village will talk to me anymore. They don't get it.

They'll whisper as I pass and talk behind their hands about who I am and how unstable I am. They call me a witch because of how I act out, but I don't particularly care.

I don't want to talk to any of them anyway. They're all annoying and obnoxious, they're self-centered and never willing to lend a hand.

When my mother was dying, no one wanted to help.

I had demanded over and over to healers that they help her whenever she got sick, but they all declared there was nothing they could do and eventually they would manage to slip away from me.

I yelled at my mom every day to get up. I tried to get out of her bed and to eat. I forced her out into the pathetic garden we had and tried to make her do something. Anything to get the blank look off her face.

Do something! I screamed over and over when all she could do was lay in bed, and when death came to claim her, I screamed so loud my only friend Kenna heard me and she held me before I ruined the only home I ever had by breaking everything in a fit of rage.

Now, with no parents left, I live with Kenna and her mom Helena. Even when people call her cursed for being seen with me.

Maybe she will be. Maybe something about me is cursed and getting too close will kill you. That's all I can think about when I kneel beside Helena who lays on a makeshift bed of blankets and sheets, a sickness claiming her body until she can hardly open her eyes to look at me.

After another failed attempt at curing a sickness no one has seen before, I leave behind Kenna who sits beside her mom with tears in her eyes.

Slamming the door behind me, my skin heats with anger and frustration. My fists curl into themselves as I walk down the street with the intention to find another healer. A better one. Someone who can help.

As I pass by bakeries and blacksmiths and jewelers, people around me part, none coming more than a few feet away from me. I glare at each of them. I hate the stupid village we live in. I hate how people beg in the streets and everyone has to look out for thieves. I hate how everyone marvels at the castle in the distance. How the flags of Varasia wave in the wind. Every time I see the blue flags and they wave at me, all I can feel is that they mock me. Mock everyone here for being dirt poor. Mock us for the jewels we don't have, for the ratty fabrics we have when they wear dresses of velvet and silk and wear crowns on their heads.

Sometimes I wish each of those stupid flags would catch fire. I wish they would burn to nothing. I wish I could throw all the pristine jewels and clothes into the dirt under my feet. I want to paint the white walls of the castle red for every person they kill by neglecting us. For every person that goes hungry. Every person who couldn't be cured. Red on their walls. Each drop for the people they imprison under those pretty castle walls.

I sneer up at the flags and throw open the door to Margaries. Margarie is the best healer in the village. The problem with her is that she was one of the people who tried to take every penny my mom had. When she was coughing her throat raw and was pale as a sheet, begging Margarie for help, she only claimed she had better paying customers and if we wouldn't give her the price she demanded, she couldn't help us. She is vain and selfish and on more than one occasion I imagine cursing her as if I were a real witch. I would curse her to be as sick as my mother. I would watch her beg me for help as I shut the door in her face.