Esme - Blossom of Creation

CHAPTER ONE

Nothing had ever felt as dry and hot as the summer I decided to leave home.

For good this time.

The ground, underneath my feet and the stuttering wheels of my wagon, was cracking into deep veining lines, the telltale signs of the lack of rain over these past weeks.

My feet ached dreadfully. In a moment of self-pity, I imagined my parched mouth looking just as cracked and dry as the ground beneath me. PerhapsI was allowing myself to exaggerate, but even so. I thought it time for a rest.

I lowered the beams of wood which were jutting out from the bulk of my wagon and stepped out of the harness I had been using to pull it along. Sighing deeply, I launched my arms into a giant stretch, muscles arguing with the sudden movement, as I felt the strain deep in each tendon.

I really wished I had taken one of the horses. Even after years of endurance training, my body had a limit to the strain I was now putting it through. I loathed this heat with every fibre of my being—how it drained the life out of everything, keeping the landscape the same barren desert it had been since my childhood.

I stepped around to the side of my wagon, savouring the feeling of steps without the weight on my hips, and yanked up the canvas I had tucked over my belongings.

Underneath were exotic fabrics with hues that challenged my perception - deep greens and blues shimmering in the light, despite the days they had spent gathering dust. Glittering trinkets of assorted shapes and sizes, that tinkled enticingly under my hands as I rifled through and clinked against the small glass bottles filled with colourful, sparkling liquids that looked equally tempting, but I knew better than to taste them.

I found the cloth straps that indicated my water cannister was attached to the other end and yanked softly. Taking a few sips was all I could spare until I reached the next township. Until I figured out what to do with myself next. And what to do with the body lying alongside my wares.

It has indeed been only days, I realised. It felt like much longer, but in reality, it was just last week that my father had told me I was to be married. To Archibald Wilken, of all people. I tried to recall the scrawny-almost-skeletal boy I grew up with years ago. The earnest in his eyes, that were almost the colour of cinnamon, when he met my own dark and tear-filled gaze - how firmly he would take my hands in his.

His father, Eldrich, who was the heir to the Lordship in the town nearest ours, Treaddermore, assumed leadership fifteen years ago after the death of his estranged grandfather. He brought Archibald along as his heir apparent. I saw him that day. The day he was taken. How much he screamed and yelled, begging to stay. How his father seemed utterly indifferent to the fact that he had essentially kidnapped him, tore him away from his home and friends.

I had missed him after he left, but only in the way that children who share similar burdens could miss each other. It definitely wasn't love, in any sense of the word. It certainly didn't mean I was happy to marry him. My father should have known that. Known how much he hurt me with how easily he wanted to give me away.

Yet there he stood. Uttering the very words I couldn't bear to hear. His face, usually filled with paternal love and care for me, now set in stone, brows furrowed and immovable, as the feeling of dread sunk lower and lower into my gut.

I felt that feeling sinking into me again, as if the last few days spent trying to escape it, with every step forward, meant nothing. I brought the cannister back up to my lips for one final sip, lifting my eyes once again to the dusty, cracked road before me.

Father had changed so much in the months after Mother died. As if something inside him had likewise perished along with her, and all that mattered now was his role, his duty as Lord to our township, High Blacknell. And to him, that also meant arranging my political marriage to Archie.