Riddle Of The Owl - YA Fantasy

Chapter Two

Alleria buried her chin in her green muffler as she scaled the hill from the post-office with the packet hugged against her chest. The setting sun spilled hues of red over long feather clouds and she had to squint her eyes against the chilly, stinging wind.

While her feet walked, her mind was deep in a fantasy and she didn't notice that someone was approaching.

"Lerry," a woman's voice suddenly said causing the packet to fall to the ground and its content of papers to spread.

Tara, with her braid swinging as she bobbed down, helped Alleria quickly collect the papers before the wind swept them away. She bunched them together, her lips moving as she read the titles and then handed them over to Alleria.

"So, you'll be apprenticing?" she asked, her brow curling into a serious expression.

Alleria nodded her head.

"What will it be, then?" Tara asked.

"I haven't decided if I'll be a midwife or a Hand." There were precious few apprenticeships offered to girls. If she had had the choice, she would've become a doctor. But one year in the school for medicine cost more than her parents yearly income combined.

"So, you'll be either delivering babies or copying imperial documents in the emperor's handwriting?" When Tara said it like that, it sounded like these were bad jobs.

"I can reach nursing school through midwifery and get a secretarial position in a college through being a Hand."

Tara opened her mouth to speak but said nothing, which was worse than any response she could have had.

Alleria heaved a sigh. She wasn't fooling anyone, especially not herself.

"I just wonder, why'd you say no?"

"Because..." The full truth couldn't be spoken, it was a secret she had to take with her to her grave, so the half-truth would have to do. "I didn't want it enough."

"Oh, Lerry." Tara placed her hands on her hips and shook her head slowly. "You know, every day when I work in that stupid store, every single day, I've got me head bent over me little tasks and I forget, Lerry, I forget to lift it and look up at the sky. I won't lie, it was almost like a fairy-story happening in this small place. It makes me sad to think how much you're going to regret it."

Alleria clutched the papers she was holding, pressing them to her chest. "Even if I would've said yes, I would never have become a Scholar, Tara. They would never have allowed it."

Tara's eyes flashed angrily, but her gaze was distracted by a scratchy roar coming from behind Alleria.

It was the sound of a car driving down the single street of the village. Alleria turned to look whose car it was - there weren't many families that owned them - and was surprised to see that it was one she didn't recognise.

It was large, modern and black with tinted windows and big, round headlights. It raised a cloud of dust as it passed over the worn cobblestones. She and Tara moved aside to allow it to pass, but the car stopped before them and the driver lowered his window.

"Good evening, ladies," he said in a clipped city accent and a fake smile. "I'm looking for Bellencreek house. Could you perhaps point me in the right direction?"

Alleria's eyes shifted from the diver's face to the tinted window of the back seat. Strange, black cars with strange men never came out here. She heard the creak of a shutter as somewhere behind her someone was peeking out of an upper window to look at what was happening below.

An icy sense of foreboding prickled down her skin.

"Who're you looking for? Mr. and Mrs. Bellencreek, or their daughter, Alleria?" asked Tara.