Rooted

Reiner

Es war einmal, ein Prince....

The world did not go black; it went brown with a frame of green. I was stuck, my arms out stretched and stiff, my legs bound together, rooted in place. It felt like a prison I would never escape from. I didn't know what she did to me. I remember her anger and I remember not caring about it, and then there was a searing pain taking over my whole body, like a wild fire. Now I was stuck, confined in what seemed like one position, and it was terrifying. I tried to move but it felt as though I was glued to my place; with every attempt at moving I seemed to simply snap back to where I started. The brown and green started to close in around me finally creating black. I tried to breath, but no breath came.

After what felt like a breathless eternity, I started to be able to take small steady breaths. Why didn't I faint? Why didn't my body fall to the ground, leaving this infernal prison! A numbness started to crawl over me; one that I had a feeling would stay for a long time. Who knows how long this spell would last? Maybe an eternity. Numb was good: it meant that I would not worry about my kingdom, my parents, my brother. No, if I was to be frozen, then so were my emotions. Time started feeling relative. I started to see the seasons change. I noticed I was in the woods, not a clearing but in the depths of them, amongst the thickest and oldest looking trees. The moss was heavy on their branches almost touching the ground. If you looked hard enough, the trees started to look like people, the knots and curves of the bark their faces, the moss their hair, for some even beard. In the spring the moss was at its peak; it weighed heavily full of dew. In the summer the little bit of woods was filled with the sweat smell of that moss when the sunlight hit it, and in the fall it would dry up completely. The fall and winter are the seasons I can recognize the best, the most obvious change in the trees around me, and not in me.

I know I should have been cold. I know that I should not have been surviving these winters standing still with my arms stretched out, but I am. I don't even feel the cold. Why couldn't I feel it? I almost missed that bone chilling feeling when you can't get warm. I don't know how long I stood there. I used to count the winters, but I stopped; I don't see the point any more. I know it sounds as if I have given up, but I haven't: my hope, as much of my life now did, and come in seasons. I do still try and move, I see the birds migrate every year and that is usually my season of courage. The season when I try and move; try and break free of the wretched spell. Every year was the same, I try and move with minimal successes and when nothing remotely life altering happens the next season is that of hopelessness. I remember hearing voices in the grove, some would encourage me to try, but there was one who just kept saying I should give in, that this was a good life, if I just embraced it. I didn't understand that voice. This life terrified me, so I tried one more time, and this time was different, there was a change in the air. I had felt it for a while now, the birds came back a few nights ago and I guess that's my queue for bravery. I took the deepest breath I could, which had been harder to do since this spell was enacted, and gathered all the confidence I had left.

Pulling with my arms I started to feel a familiar small tug, this is usually as far as I had ever gotten, but it was different this time, my arm started to go a little farther. Distracted by my minimal success and excitement, I didn't hear the first screams, but I heard the second. I didn't have time to think. I didn't even notice that I had broken free. The only drive I had was to get to the origin of shrieking as fast as I could. I didn't even have time to notice I was running! This was amazing. Running had never felt so good to me. I was filled with such excitement and joy, that is until I found out were the screams were coming from.

The road was horrifying. The carriage was overturned and a man lay dead, trapped underneath it. There was a man pillaging through the trunks that had once been on it, searching for anything of value Another man was holding a women by her long strong braid and screaming at her to tell him where all of the jewels were, while the third man held another women by long, lively, blond locks, pushing a knife so close to her throat I was sure I saw blood. I wasn't sure what to do, I wasn't sure how I could possibly help the situation, before I could think, the women with the braid started to beg louder for the other women's life, screaming that they didn't have any riches with them. At that the man simply said that they were of no use to them, and in one practiced movement his blade look the life out of those blond locks.Without really thinking, I ran into the fray, and tried to help the girl in the most peril. I ran at the man holding the knife, trying to distract him so she could run, but she didn't. She screamed at me and sat there frozen. The man dropped his knife the second he saw me, and his other two cohorts started running. I didn't know why, and I didn't care, I was just glad they spared the two of us.