The King's Shield

Chapter 8- The Demons of the past

#Discretion is advised.

Shiva was shivering with anger. She felt as if the entire room was spinning. Does he think he owns me? Treating me like I am some kind of a puppet. She stood up and went to the table beside her bed. She was still holding the torn vest in her hand; she took the mirror, which was lying on the table and held it in front of her. Her chest was barely covered by the underdress. She could see the marks on her neck and shoulders. Burn marks and scars, wounds that had healed but left their undying pain. Tears rolled down her cheeks as all the suppressed memories came back.

" Why did you send the fat fish back to the river Baba? Fat fishes are tasty." She said.
"Tasty fat fish, " her sister had repeated loudly. Chief Bhira of the Chirca tribe and his two daughters were sitting on a fishing boat in the early hours of the morning.

" That fat fish has babies, my dear. This river has plenty of fish, why do you think it has plenty?" She didn't know." Because we take only how much we need. If we take all of it, the river would have no fish left. Then little Shiva would be hungry." He tickled her stomach. She giggled.

A few strangers had come in the dead of the night. Burnt the whole village down. The man with crooked fingers had slit the throat of the chief, his wife and their son in front of the little girl. She didn't know where her sister was. The image of the lifeless bodies of her Baba, Amma and brother still haunted her. That man had left their bodies to burn in the hut and she was carried away and hoarded like cattle with other girls like her on a big boat. No one heard her scream, no one had come to help her.

She had seen the man with crooked fingers on the boat with her. Pain and anger boiled inside her. All she wanted was to kill him. Take his life the same way he had taken the life of her family, burn him the same way he had burnt her home. But her fear was greater than the revenge she wanted to take. She had seen that man kill two other men on the boat. He had strangled one of them and thrown him overboard.

They had reached at the end of their journey, a stinky and dark town. Where she was sold to a woman, who had taken her to an ugly place where girls like her had lived. She was burnt, beaten and kicked. They had broken her body but they couldn't break her mind. They had stripped her bare, and shown her to visitors who had then stripped her of her dignity.

Years passed and she missed home and her parents. Twenty times she had tried to run away but they had caught her every time.

One day she found out that the woman who had bought her had swelled up and couldn't breathe when bees stung her. She had learnt from her Amma how to take out honey from the beehive without getting stung by bees. She had slipped into the woman's room at night when she was sleeping and locked it from the inside. Then she threw a big beehive at her. The woman screamed for help but nobody could help her. She just stood there and watched her die in pain.

That night, she escaped and lived on the streets, where she learnt how to survive. She had promised herself that she had to live to kill the man with crooked fingers. She had learnt how to steal both food and coins. She could easily scale buildings the same way she had climbed rocks in her village. She searched for that man many times but did not find him. To survive she had turned into a killer, a predator who could get to her prey without being noticed. She had taught herself combat and mastered knives and daggers. She had travelled a lot and learnt about different types of poisons and deadly herbs. Which had owned her a reputation of death personified.

One day a merchant called her to meet.

" I have a job for you." He said. "I think it is the thing you waited for your whole life." The merchant said.