Chapter One
Blood seeped over my eyes; pain rang through my ears as I was blinded by the red. Soon, I thought, soon the blackness will take me. I waited for it, waited for it to end the searing burns, to end the screams escaping my tiny throat, so loud they surely didn't belong to me. But it never came, I was always on the cusp, my tolerance too high and my stubbornness betraying me. It bled down into my tunic and onto the soft dirt I lay curled upon. I begged for her to stop, to let me have a moment in between but she said it was better this way, quicker. What a lie.
"Hush child, you'll tip us off." The woman said, still holding the saw in one hand, making no move to comfort my shaking body. She came over to me and shoved a piece of leather in my mouth. "Bite on that, the worst is over." She said.
I bit on the leather, I was salivating so much it saturated the leather and pooled at the side of my mouth. Snot and tears mixed into the dirt, I reached for my horns and screamed louder when I hit the raw stubs instead. The woman hit my hands away and scowled at me, she proceeded to kick dirt onto my head and then hauled me onto my feet.
"Get up, enough crying, inside, the soldiers are coming." She ushered me into the stone building. "And wipe that blood off your face, you'll be a dead giveaway." The woman pointed to a basin filled with water. I hobbled over and began washing my face, the water turning red tinged as I worked. The pain was still there, but now it was a dull pain that made me grimace with every stray hair that brushed against the raw wounds. I could hear the soldiers approach the woman outside and ask her if shes seen any Mulvix's around. The woman said no and I heard footsteps leaving. The door opened and the woman joined me in the small room. She threw my horns on the ground in front of me and spat on them.
"Know that it gave me great pleasure to cut those off of your head, you should be grateful that I took pity on you child." She said as she came over and stroked my cheek. "Now listen to me very carefully girl, you will work for me, never utter the word mulvix again, and keep those wounds covered at all times if you want to survive in our new world, okay?" She said this while eyeing my body from the floor up. I nodded yes and the woman left me as she muttered something about new clothes. I crouched down and picked up my horns, something that had been a part of me not even seven minutes ago. Something my mother and I had spent time polishing and shining together, adorning them with flowers and leaves, celebrating the growth. Now they lay dead, a part of me I lost today, I put them under a stone in a corner of the room and looked in the dirty mirror above the sink.
A small scream left my mouth as I stared at my reflection, hornless and bloody. Where was mom and dad? How did everything turn bad so quickly? An hour ago I was eating lunch with my parents, and then they came, they came and stole everything from me. I could see my mothers face of terror as she made me hide in a cupboard, not knowing I cracked it open and watched in horror at what unfolded. My father went down first, he had no time to react, one swipe to his neck and then something was rolling onto the floor. My mother had grabbed an axe we kept for firewood and struck someone once before they held her down and did things that made her scream. That's when I ran, it was too loud for them to hear me and I ran into the city until I wound up at this woman's house. She took one look at me and grabbed that saw, she smiled the whole time as blood sprayed her face. It was too much, too much blood in a day, and where was mother now? I curled up onto the only cot in the room and wept some more, vowing to find my mother the next day.
