Magic and Mortality (DISCONTINUED)

Chap. 6 - Preparation

KEY = Subtitle/POV change | Author's note |"Speech" | 'Quote/Thoughts' | Text | Emphasis

Belinda walked through the kitchen door, still groggy from sleep. It wasn't until she had set out the entire table for breakfast that she realised she hadn't heard her father whistling, a habit of many years that he practised while gardening before breakfast. She peeked outside to see an empty garden, then walked to Marcus's bedroom to see his bed made — unslept in. Marcus never neatened his bed. 

Belinda ran out the front door, sprinting until she reached the village. No one there had seen her father. After a while searching in the village, she returned home, dejected. She went back into her father's room and leant on the window sill, unknowingly in the exact position her father was in the previous night. The dirt had been churned up, muddy footprints marching through the short grass. It took a single swift movement for the now curious Belinda to hop out of the window, following the tracks until... 

They disappeared.

BELINDA'S POV

I crouched closer to the grass, a crestfallen grimace peering up at me from a muddy puddle that had seemingly erased the tracks. I had followed the tracks to the road. Birds twittered innocently around me as I swallowed. Either my pa had abandoned me — which was pretty much impossible — or he had been taken. 

The walk back home flew by, the surrounding bushland a haze. The dragonflies that I usually chased, giggling, flittered by undetected. Squirrels chirped in the trees as I passed underneath them.

I walked through the cottage door silently. I almost stepped on a letter that lay by the open window. I sat at the table, letter in hand. It read:

 We have your father. Turn yourself in or he never returns.

My hand covered my mouth as I gasped. They took him. But who? I turned the page over to see a small inscription at the bottom of the page. Poltragow. If I remember correctly, that was over a week's carriage ride, maybe almost a full moon turn on foot. The single map that we owned was on the table within a second. I charted the route, then moved on to packing a sack for the ride. 

Rations; a few biscuits were in the kitchen, I'd need more. I could easily swap out my dress for a pair of my father's trousers, and pose as a boy. It was dangerous for a girl to walk around unprotected. Of course, I wouldn't be unprotected. My father taught me to throw knives from a young age, and I could use the small hunting bow and arrows quite well. I could borrow my father's cap to hide my hair. A small bed roll and pillow were added to the growing pile on the kitchen table, the uneaten food from breakfast pushed to the side. Now all that was left to do was find a sack to fit it all in and, of course, bake more biscuits. 

'I will find you, Pa,' I told myself.