Scout Stories: Bruised Beginnings

Feathers and Flame

Faye removed her hand as his eyes rolled back into his head. He fell onto his face. She used her foot to roll him onto his back.

Then Faye stumbled across the room and sat down. She put her head into her hands and tried not to pay attention to the part of her mind that was yelling at her, at the dread that slowly rolled over her. Even while she had been doing it, she knew that it was going too far.

She opened her eyes and peered through her fingers at the mess on the floor. She should have kept him awake longer, made him do something about the guards at the door. She should have been thinking about getting out of the town alive and not about the people in the cages. It wasn't like they were Aedly; she didn't have any duty to them. It had been a waste of her limited energy to give him pain. She should have rested more. Faye should have done things differently, she knew that, but she couldn't summon up any regret while looking at Tadgh. She could no longer tell if the piece of scum was dreaming, but she hoped she had given him some choice nightmare material.

Faye looked up at the ceiling, her eyes following the wooden beams that were keeping the thatch up and the hole in the centre of the roof used to let the smoke out when the fire was lit. That would have to do.

It took too long for her to be able to stand again. Faye got up and walked to the door as quietly as she could. Getting a foot on top of the frame was her only way of reaching the beam above it. She grabbed a chair and placed it slightly next to the door, on the side that would be hidden by the door should it open. She did this quietly, afraid of alerting the guards standing at the door. She stood on the chair and pulled her body up the small ledge of the frame. When she could get one foot up, she pushed off and quickly grabbed the beam. It was thinner than Faye liked, but held her weight just fine.

Faye pulled her legs up then forced her body up as well so she could crawl along it. A spasm of pain let her know that she had opened up the wound on her arm, and a quick examination showed that blood was now racing down her arm towards her palm. Faye stood up on the beam and walked quickly across it. She jumped onto the next beam at the other side of the room. The beam had a slight angle, and Faye had to catch it with her arms to travel along it, up towards the hole in the roof. She did so as quickly as she could, trying to move faster than the blood making it's way down her arm. The blood would make slick the grip she needed to get to the top. The blood was dripping from her fingers when she reached up to grab the side of her escape hole. She slipped, once, and was dangling precariously when she heard someone yell for Tadgh.

She had managed to get half way through the hole when Séamus burst into the room, laughing about one of the men getting stuck in a barrel. The he spotted Tadgh and his words died on his tongue. As Séamus ran to Tadgh, Faye got her ass out of the hole and lay on the roof. From her hiding place, she listened as Séamus shook his sleeping leader into waking.

"What happened?" asked Tadgh.

"That's what I was going to ask you."

"The Witch," Tadgh managed to say, "She's Council. We have to find her. Now."

Faye heard Séamus help Tadgh up, then both men run for the door, and Tadgh screaming at the men outside. She slipped down the roof, to the back of the house. She jumped to the ground, rolling so the shock rolled through her instead of breaking her ankles. She stood up and looked quickly around while backing up so she was pressed to the wall. She manoeuvred around to the side of the building, where she hid behind a bundle of firewood. She could hear people yelling, shouting out directions to find her- close the gate- watch the hole in the boundary wall. Not that she would head towards the wall when it meant crossing through open fields. That left only one way out of the town.