Honor and Blood

Chapter 2

The Empire's army was massive. And I knew this was only a piece of it.

As the week passed, my mother and I watched as the soldiers cut down trees on our property, mowed down our last standing stalks of corn, and set up their canvas tents. The river was saturated with fish traps, the forest over-hunted and barren. All within a week. Our house turned into a split operation. The kitchen, laundry room, and my bedroom were left to my mother and I. We alternated duties between cooking for the army, doing their wash, and sleeping. We kept the garden fenced off, harvesting the plants as they came and using them to feed the army. The other half of the house; sitting room, outhouse, bedroom, and storage room, were given to the Kainan and his men.

I had thought Kain Sterling was scary, but the Kainan was worse. He was a man of few words. I spent his day in the storage room, which was his new office, soldiers hurrying in and out. I rarely saw him, and for that I was thankful. My mother would drop things in the storage room but always kept me away. She feared my daydreaming would endanger us.

It's an honor became my daily mantra. But every minute it felt less and less like an honor. I spent every hour of every day soaked with dirty water or sweat from cooking. I had no time to slip away from the chaos, or anywhere to retreat to. My head pounded with unexplored imagining. But I was doing a good thing. I was providing for the holiest army in the world. I was serving my greatest purpose.

When the Kainan and his men settled down to sleep, I crept downstairs and laid in front of the fire. My mother snored, and I couldn't sleep. So, I cushioned my head with my arm, staring into the flames. I desperately wanted to retreat into my imagining. I could feel the expands of my own personal universes pressing against my skull. My heart ached for the freedom of floating in a salty ocean like my father had described to me in my youth.

I had once asked him how he knew so much. He told me that his parents had lived long before the Empire came to save us. In their youth, my grandparents had wandered far and wide with my ancestors. They roamed from coast to coast, selling wears and fine spices. When my great grandparents grew old, they settled here in the house we lived in now. My father told me his parents lived into their teenage years, and then the Empire came. He said they burned the town to the ground, and released us from our daily torments. The Empire saved them from themselves. So, my grandparents married under an Empirical flag. When they had my father, they settled into the lives of farmers, like the rest of their peers. My father grew up in the saving graces of the Empire, and so did I.

I recalled the stories of my grandparents and felt myself slip into their shoes. My feet tread along a worn dirt path, the squeaking wheels of a caravan behind me. A colorful sash hung from my waist, and gold rings encompassed one of my fingers, so shiny it reflected the bright blue skies above me. I was young, beautiful, and I sold the jewelry dotting my mother's wrists. A child whooped as they ran past me and I joined them, dancing and singing along with them. My bare feet smacked the hard earth, creating a billowing of dust. But this dust wasn't sticky, and oppressive, it rose and fell like little clouds around my feet. I laughed as my cousin fell, but helped them up as they brushed the light dirt off of their colorful clothes. I felt happy. As I glanced at the horizon, I saw a gathering of grey clouds. They darkened as we neared them and I felt a wave of dread over my body. The warm air turned ice cold and I felt my breath shudder through my lungs.

"Ana Ryder" they clouds seemed to whisper ominously.

I whimpered as my feet fell from under me and my knees scraped the hard ground. My hands bled from the impact.

"You're not supposed to be here".

My eyes shot open.

"Ana Ryder, shouldn't you be sleeping in your room?" a deep voice mused from above me. I looked up, swallowing the stone of guilt in my throat.