The Icon Unbound

Chapter One, Part A - Mirrah

Hello my lovelies! I have had the great privilege of posting the ICON UNBOUND over the last year. I am in the process of updating my draft. Many of your wonderful suggestions have helped refine a world that has been so dear to me. Also, I am splitting the first two chapters so if I lose some comments, forgive me. 

Please continue to show your support by clicking on the vote and leaving me a word or two in the comments. Next month, I will be posting chapters from the second installment of the Bloody Saints, the ARBITER UNFORGIVEN, and I hope to see you there as well. 

--Elizabeth, UPDATED 4/15/2017

Mirrah had never quite gotten used to sleeping on a bed, or even having a door between her and the rest of the house. While she liked the door just fine, she found the bed impossible to use for its intended purpose. She slept under it, her blanket and pillows the only comforts she needed. When she woke early, as she did today, she did not leave her narrow sanctuary, but scrambled to the farthest corner where she kept the books from which she studied, and the diary of notes.

Not halfway through the first round of revising yesterday's lesson Mirrah startled as a strange, scratching noise outside her window interrupted the morning silence. It sounded as though someone were raking nails along the old wooden slats of the house. Perhaps another child would have ignored it, but Mirrah had experienced a very different upbringing than the other children of Waterwall and she came alert as quick as a direcat.

When the noises continued, she crawled out from under the bed and threw open the wooden shutters to see what visited her.

There was nothing.

Frowning, she looked closely at the ground and saw a few odd indentations in the grass.

Mildly curious, Mirrah rested her chin on the windowsill. Perhaps the Icon had discovered a new specimen and not told her? The Icon always drew exotic beasts to the realm for study and preservation; but why would such a thing be hanging around by her window?

The first rays of sunshine poured over the slate roofs of the village, warming the sky from black velvet to silky rose. Mirrah took a deep breath of air and felt it sizzle in her lungs. This was too lovely a morning to spend chasing after the Icon's new specimen, or playing silly games, that were really too childish.

In a flash of rebellion, she was out the window. Laughter tickled her throat as her bare feet slapped through the thick, dewy grass.

It took only a few minutes to escape the village proper and make her way to the little brook and the wildflowers.

Today, the Icon would not find in her a willing Apprentice.

Today, she would make a crown of roses. She would eat wild honey. She would make her way down the path to the valley, where a certain someone might be waiting to join her games and, perhaps, her dance. So focused was she on primrose and the perfect blue forget-me-nots, that Mirrah did not notice the change in the world.

Only the noise of a great flock of starlings flooding to the sky from the trees made her look up and begin to wonder.

The wind, which had been a friendly breeze only moments ago, vanished.

Even without a single cloud in the sky to obscure it, the rising sun... dimmed.

Then a badger snorted in the little copse of trees not twenty feet from where Mirrah sat. It scuttled on short legs away over the hill as if a direcat were nibbling its hindquarters. A silly notion because the Icon kept the direcats well away from the town and in the mountains where they belonged...