Chronicals of the First Circle

Chapter 1

It was a small town, with an arid summer that lasted year round. It was a town without a name…perhaps it had a name once, but people never used it…people never needed to. The town consisted of two shops, a repair shop, and a grocery shop; both had been boarded up long ago. It was largely a failing community. The main components that kept the town alive were the livestock: three chickens, two mules, and one prized cow, and the people. This town was an old dried up mining town, left over from the Year of Metal…most people had cleared out, but there were always those that were too stubborn, too proud, too tiered to leave. They decided that this was their chosen place of living, they would sit on their porches and watch as their kids ran around in the dust and played with large limbs of the only tree in the community. Every kid was friends with all the other kids…except one. This one kid would just sit underneath the large spruce tree and whittle at a branch he had picked up from the ground. He was a quiet kid, but he had a secret.

And this is how this small town with two shops and six families stayed alive.

Linkin Thornwill was the outcast, barely understood by himself and by everyone around him. He didn’t like the other kids much. He was already aware that the elders had matched him up with a girl named Melissa. She was nice and there was no bad air between them…but Linkin was only ten, he didn’t understand why the elders were planning that far ahead, it wasn’t like they were going anywhere.

“Linkin!”

His head slowly rose from his whittling as his name ricocheted towards him off of the cracked ground and the dry bushes. “Coming.” He flipped his knife closed and stuck it in his pocket, his whittling stick fell to the ground as he jogged over to his father.

“Get out there and play with the other kids.” Mr. Thornwill insisted. “Your mother’s having a fit about you not getting enough exercise.”

“Yes sir.” Linkin said and turned to head to the group of other kids. His father’s hand ruffled his dust covered hair. A cloud surrounded Linkin’s head and he coughed.

“Why do you rub dirt in your hair?” One of the other adults inquired. They leaned forward in their chair, the porch creaking from the movement.

Linkin turned and looked at them with a confused expression, “I want brown hair like the other kids.” By then the cloud of dust around him had settled and all the adults on the porch saw his hair. It might’ve been because now the small detail was brought to their attention, but the group of parents on the porch truly saw the boy’s hair for the first time.

It stood up almost straight, with a couple strands drooping down into his face, touching his eye brows and curling at the tips. It was bright red, it made it look like his head was constantly on fire, and in a right light, it can look as if it is moving like living flames born on top of his head.

“They already think I’m funny look’n because of my eyes.” Linkin smiled and nodded at the adults as a form of respect and turned to go play with the other kids, leaving a small line of dust behind him.

He was the boy with the red hair, the mismatched eyes, and a secret that would send his small dried out town into a period of peace and a period of war.

It started with a merchant man, he had gotten lost on his way to the new settlement on the west coast but had somehow ended up on an old dirt road that after thirty miles lead him to the dust town with no name.

He pushed his cart steadily in front of him and parked it in the middle of town, by the steps of the old repair shop. “Haloooo?” His voice set off a state of panic in the elders of the town. It was unfamiliar and they all decided to take precautions. The merchant man studied the town as he heard the porches and houses creak and groan as people ran around inside them.