Blackened

Chapter 1

It was a domino reality. When my town was burned to the ground it set off a chain reaction of death. Running away from it was impossible, the pain was inevitable.

The day of the fire had started out so peacefully. Its almost hard to remember what really happened. Time is funny like that. But this is what I do remember.

The birds were chirping happily to one another and the crop was green. Scents of summer were in the air, mingling with the smell of blackberry flowers. My mother hummed to herself as she baked her special tarts for my sisters and I. Her hair was drawn back with a string but a few strands of ashen curls escaped from their bonds.

They said my mother was beautiful when she was younger, but very wild. She used to climb to the treetops and scout the area for her invisible enemies. Sometimes she tucked her hair into a cap and ran through the the fields and forests and streets with boy's clothes on. Townsfolk believed that she was a lad, a very pretty lad to be sure, and she used to have a great laugh about it. But in more recent days she had been a model of dignity and respectability to me. But only when her eyes hadn't been red and swollen with tears. Of course father died a few years ago but mother's heart couldn't ever fully be healed, I suppose. I wasn't very close to him anyway, so I wasn't too emotional about his death (my mother would have scolded me for saying so).

I remember the first signs of anything out of the ordinary that day had been the sound of horses neighing and armor clanking against armor. Unfortunately, the most cold and bitter fire in our history had been started by men.

It was all a blur of heat and smoke and the burning smell of pine and flesh. Beasts and men alike screamed and tumbled over each other in their haste to flee.

That fire was my mother's death and many others in the village. Only a few people remained. Two of them included my sisters. The tiny baby who was titled Anna, and Ciara a wee one of five.

All three of us were stranded in the remnants of our village of sixteen people with the taste of burning still in our mouths even after the fire was too tired to continue its rampage. Then the men took Ciara away and we were left with only each other, Anna and I.

I decided that reassuring Anna (though she probably wouldn't notice anyway, as she was of such young age), that I had a level head would have been the best option in a time like this although I most certainly did not. I knew we couldn't stay so I packed up the few belongings that I could salvage and wrapped Anna in a warm blanket and set off for a ship to England. Soon after, Anna died on the ship from a terrible fever that no one bothered nor cared to tend. This leads up to the present and, in hope, explains my situation.
* * *
I sit against the belly of the old tired ship and watch with a mixture of curiosity and pity at the people around me. Not a moment goes by where there isn't the sound of the rasping coughs that will, inevitably, prove fatal one day. I've been on this miserable ship for ten days now and I haven't seen the sunlight since I boarded. I suppose I should be grateful that I found a ship that would take me at all but I cannot deny that this tub is something of a hell above. This ship wouldn't even be worthy for Satan to sail it.

The wood is damp and smells of rot. People are packed together like animals with less than a centimeter to separate us. The whole ship creaks and groans as the crew mates above scurry to and fro with orders and commands of the captain. My eye catches on a man in the corner, wrapped up in a rough cloth similar to burlap. His eyes stare ahead unseeingly and his lips are cracked and bleeding. Part of his leg shows from underneath the blanket and the sight makes me want to look away. He quickly covers his limb up when he notices me staring and turns himself onto his side, away from all prying eyes. That was my first sighting of the thing that would be subject of my thoughts for years to come though at the time I could not afford the time to think about it much more.