Changeling

Chapter One

Rowan's world moves with a jolt.

Of three things she is aware.

Firstly, she is in darkness. Something is wound tightly around her head, and the pressure against her eyeballs is starting to make bright flashes of colour burst behind the woven cloth. She tries to reach up to take it off, which leads her to her second revelation.

Her wrists are bound with rope, undoubtedly bloody and grimy by now, if the flares of pain which came with every swing were not unwarranted.

The third realisation not so much dawns on her as hits her in the face like a live wet fish. She has no idea where she is.

Behind the rag in her mouth, she screams in protest, but her muscles follow suit when she wiggles around, trying to slip out of her binds.

Suddenly, she is thrown against something sturdy and gnarled- a tree, perhaps? - and reality slips from her like the strength from her muscles.

***

When Rowan comes to, her mouth is dry, and feels like it has been stuffed with cotton wool. She is contemplating the probability of being stuffed alive and displayed in some cruel taxidermist's office when she hears a click.

The click of a key being turned in a lock.

She scrambles to sit upright, forgetting her bonds, so when they rub against unhealed skin and congealed blood, she cries out and curls into a ball, holding her roped wrists to her chest. Hot, salty tears burn their way down her pasty skin.

'Oh, don't cry, my dear!' A croak comes from outside. Hope sparks in Rowan and her tears stop. Could this woman help her escape wherever she was, and what/whoever had brought her here? Her thoughts are interrupted when the scratchy cloth surrounding her is torn away, sending her rolling across the room.

'I'll be treating you very well.' Her blindfold is torn away dizzyingly fast.

'We aim to please, dear child.' The cloth stuffed in her throat which makes her jaw ache.

Rowan sees a painfully beautiful face, full lips drawn upwards in a snarl, before she is thrown forwards and her face collides with stone.

Her limbs point out at strange angles, and she whimpers pitifully again, but she's lifted upwards by her hair. And despite the blindfold being taken away, her eyes are clenched shut.

Ignorance really was bliss.

Another sharp tug causes her to gasp sharply and her eyes fly open. In front of her is the same woman- flinty grey eyes, cold and unrelenting, with no whites. Her skin is taut over high cheekbones and a sharp jaw line, and she looks almost gaunt. Before the girl can absorb too much of her appearance though, a door is opened and she is thrust in.

Something slices through the rope that chafes her wrists, but when she reaches down to soothe and rub the raw skin, she finds herself suspended in mid-air. Gravity pulls Rowan down, her body colliding with the stairs and ricocheting- a silver ball in the pinball games she played in the arcades at home. Luckily, she lands in a mound of hay- although the hay is wet, almost warm, and smells of the boys' toilets at school...

Shuddering, she hauls her aching body across the dank stone. Purple-blue bruises bloom under translucent skin. Above her curled up body, watery sunlight leaks in rivulets, filtered by narrow glass breaks in the stone wall, illuminating a man in front of her. Hair the colour of burnt umber sticks up in tufts around a freckled face, tanned chestnut brown. The coarse hair of an unkempt beard shadows a sharp jaw.