✓ | Girls of a Feather | #OpenNovellaContest2019

| six |

Annemie

 Annemie blinked, waking to a room shrouded in darkness and pain splintering through her limbs. Everything hurt, as if her blood had turned to kerosene and she had then been set on fire. She tried to sit up, pressing her back against the wall for support, but even the small movement sent fire ripping through her muscles.

"Don't try to move just yet," a voice advised. Recognition tingled in the back of her mind, but she couldn't recall the speaker's name. "The transformation always hurts the worst the first time," the voice continued, stepping close enough for Annemie to see their face.

She drew in a sharp breath, wincing at the knife of pain that stabbed between her ribs. No wonder the voice sounded so familiar. She had heard it since she was a child, tossing fancy dance names into the air like they were sugary candies.

"Elke?" she asked tentatively, running her eyes over the older girl's lithe frame, cinnamon-dusted freckles, and silky hair.

The girl nodded, her lips quirked upward at the corner.

"Hallo, Annemie," she murmured. "It's been awhile."

It had, and yet Elke didn't seem to have aged a day. Annemie was fifteen, almost the same age as Elke had been when she had moved to the village. It was disconcerting. Annemie had idolized Elke for years, looking up to her as the wise, graceful older sister she had never had, but now they were equals. She didn't know if she liked it.

"What happened to me?" Annemie asked, searching the girl's face for answers. "Where are we?"

She remembered escaping to the woods and meeting Antsje Pluk - the name sent a shiver down her spine as she recalled the heks' gnarled skin and crooning voice - but everything between then and now consisted of murky memories.

Elke lowered her gaze, strands of her hair falling over her eyes. Even so, Annemie knew the older girl enough to recognize her emotions. Elke was scared, and she was trying to hide it.

"Lieveling," she began hesitantly, as if the words pained her to utter, "Antsje Pluk took you, just like she took all of us."

Us? With that single word, Annemie's world came crashing down. Maybe all of the girls that had disappeared over the years had been stolen by the witch after all. Annemie thought they had run away to chase their dreams, but she had been wrong. All this time she had believed she could escape the village, but no one had actually left.

Aleta was right. She'd be so smug when Annemie told her.

If I can ever get out of here, Annemie thought bitterly.

"She wove a spell around us, cursing us all to live out half our lives as birds," Elke continued. Her words sounded worn, as if she had told the story so many times by now it had lost all meaning.

"But I'm not a bird right now." Annemie looked down at her palms. She flexed her fingers, just to reassure herself that they hadn't turned to feathers. For a moment, she had forgotten her pain amidst her panic, but with the slight movement, it came flooding back.

"It's daytime," Elke explained, but it made no difference to Annemie. Darkness blanketed the room, and whether or not the sun sat in the sky held no hidden meaning. "We're only birds during the night," she clarified, noticing the confusion sprawled across Annemie's face.

"Why can't we just leave right now?" Annemie cried, wincing at the unintentional sharpness to her voice.

"Besides the spell around us, Antsje Pluk also wove one around this house. While we're humans, we can't leave without her permission. Only at night are we free."