Forest's Ends

Seventeen

We flew back to the cave in silence. Dusk was approaching fast, soft sobs could be heard from Coal and Shkya. I landed in the cave and walked to the far back corner away from the others. I sat and faced the wall, thinking, planning, strategizing.

We could search for a place in the world full of life, there I could leave the others. I could then come back here and go into a frenzy and kill every last zombie. Maybe even kill myself in the process....

My eyelids started getting heavy and before I knew it I was fast asleep. And for the first time in years, I had a nightmare of a time in my past.

I was kneeling in front of the queen, my aunt. I was naked and about to be punished for a rule I broke. "Misty, countless times I told you, NOT to go to the human boarder!" She bellowed as the steward snickered next to her. He always did this, lied and said I went to the human boarder. "For your disobedience, forty lashes." I cringed at the amount, she was more hatful to me than normal today.

I stood and walked to the post in all my naked glory. There was not one fairy in the palace that didn't know what I looked like bare. After three years I got used to the audience and the snickers.

I grabbed the leather and bit it. The guard that usually does the whipping came with a huge grin on his face, as usual. He stopped behind me and raised his whip. There was a snap and then the sting and blood came. "Wait," the queen said as I prepared myself for the next lash. I heard her walk toward me. "I will be giving the lashes this time." I could feel her smirking at my bare back. I hated it when she did the whipping, she would draw it out and speed it up randomly throughout the entire thing.

Ten lashes and I was beginning to sweat, but I would not scream, not for her, and not at ten. Twenty was the usual and I could withstand it then.

At twenty five my back was on fire and my wings trembled. Blood ran down my back and dripped on the floor. Adding to the huge stain that has been there since I was ten.

She whipped five fast lashes at once, "Thirty." She counted, when it should have been thirty five. I trembled, eyes burning, back on fire, but I would not scream.

More fast lashes at a time, either six, seven, or five, and she always counted then as one. By now I was at fifty, but her count was thirty eight.

Her last lashes made me scream, I couldn't help it anymore. The edges of my vision where darkening, and I knew she wouldn't stop unless I screamed. "Forty." She said, and I let go of the post and slumped down into the puddle of my blood. She said forty lashes, but it was really sixty five. I lay panting in my blood as the court cleared out. Everyone got their show, now they had to get back to work.

No one came to my aid. I laid in the middle of the court naked and covered in blood.

I woke up panting from the memory. Cover in a cold sweat, frantically feeling my back for blood. Only when my hands came away bloodless did I calm down.

"Bad dream?" Derek asked sitting next to me. I nodded.

"A memory." I told him. He looked at me and came closer, looking at my back a new what he found there, in the small space of skin at the bottom of my neck he could see, a patch work of criss-crossed scar tissue.

"I would be lashed for breaking my rules." I turned facing him. "Of course, I never really broke them. There was a steward in the palace, with the role of watching me, that would lie, saying I went to the human boarder."

"How many lashes would you get for that?" He asked his brows coming together.

I shrugged. "Depended on the day and how much my aunt hated me that day. Most of the time twenty to twenty five." He cringed at that and I continued, "But sometimes more, especially if she did it herself." I turned and unfasened my armor and took it of, then I lifted the shirt off over my head. I heard him gasp at the sight.

"The nightmare I had was the day I had the most lashes in my life." I said, still shaking at the memory, all so vivid in my mind.

"How many?" He whispered, tracing a particular thick scar.

"Sixty five," I said. "The next day, I got the steward thrown in prison, for thievery. And my lashes weren't so often." I put the shirt back on and looked at him.

"When did you fist get whippings?"

"When I was about ten, but at that age the most I got was ten." He raised his eyebrows and clenched his fists.

"When did they stop?" He glared into the wall over my shoulder. I had a feeling if I told him that I would be left in the court naked and bloody, and to claw to my room, clean my wounds by myself he would punch the cave wall.

"They never really stopped, just lessened, since he got thrown in jail." He looked at me with sadness and anger in his eyes. "After that I spent less days in court and away from my aunt and a lot more training and practice. The less I was in the palace, the safer I was." I grabbed my armor and started to put it on.

"Why were you so relaxed being naked in front of me?" He asked as I fastened my armor. I sighed, not liking that I would have to tell him anyway.

"For years I would be lashed in front of the whole court, which was a lot of people and some people from out of the court if they were there that day." He nodded edging me to go on. "It was like a show, I was completely naked in front of them and covered in blood." He didn't punch the wall and he very calmly said.

"Not even dark fairies do that. We have some whippings once in awhile, but nothing like that." I looked into his eyes for a minute and saw all the emotions he felt towards and for me. He reached out to comfort me, but I got up and walked away. I needed to stop getting close to him.

"I'm going out." I told Shkya as I left the cave. She just nodded understanding, I knew she heard every word between Derek and I. I needed space and she knew that too.

I jumped out and flew off, looking for a fight. That always cleared my head. Well it used to always clear my head, before I was forced to...

Moving off the thought I flew over human land. Looking down I saw about ten zombies wondering around. So I went down to land and tear them to shreds.