“Ever up.” Merrina reached out her hand.
Kosov smiled and took it. Squeezed.
“Ever onward,” he chimed.
Their world went dark.
As quick as the light faded, it returned. She blinked to orient herself to wherever Kosov managed to transport them. It had been a risk, trusting his abilities to save them, but even with his lack of practice, Merrina knew how powerful he was. She didn’t need faith when she had confidence; though, some could argue there was little difference between the two.
Taking in the world around her, Merrina spotted the city gate two hundred feet away. It rose to what had to be sixty feet high with ornate swirls cascading along the length of it. The bars seemed to absorb the sun’s rays rather than reflect them, and with the solid stone wall encircling the entire city, the gate stood out like a bruise. Kosov hadn’t gotten them far, but it was enough to gain an advantage. She pushed Kosov into the shadows of the building to their right and peered around the corner at the looming iron gate separating them from freedom. They stood open, droves of people and carts lining either side, waiting for entry or exit.
“What are we do—”
“Shh!” She slapped her hand over his mouth, never glancing his way.
Dissimilar to Kingbroke Village, from whence they had escaped before the palace guard came for her, this gate had at least ten guards stationed at it. It would not be as easy as simply walking through. Especially with her recent arrest and the bloody gash on Kosov’s forehead; they’d make quite the sight if they attempted to stride right out of the city. They could hide within one of the carriages as it left; they just had to get to one without anyone noticing.
Kosov licked her hand, and she slung it away, wiping it on her pants as a grimace overtook her features. With the same hand, she punched him in the arm.
He gripped it and shared her frown. “Your hand reeks.”
She swiveled her head to look at him squarely. “So you licked it?” She wanted to barf.
“It was either that or suffocate under the stench.”
She rolled her eyes and turned back to observe the gate, bringing her hand up and giving it a quick sniff. She dropped it subtly. In her periphery, Kosov touched his fingers to the wound on his forehead and winced. She sighed and reached for the hem of her shirt but struggled to tear off a piece of the fabric for him. He held up his hand and with his other one snatched a handkerchief from his breast pocket. Holding it between two fingers, he offered it to her. Grinning and brows raised, she took it and began to dab it along the bright slash of red.
She made quick but careful work of it, ignoring how white Kosov’s knuckles became or how he didn’t take a breath the entire time. Neither of them were strangers to pain, but that didn’t mean she took pleasure in his suffering. Wiping away the final dribbles of dried blood, she stepped back; it didn’t look so deep now that it was clean. It brought her a relief she didn’t know she needed. Kosov took the handkerchief back and wiped the stranger’s blood from her cheek with what little cleanliness remained on the cloth. She had forgotten it was there, forced herself not to recall that damp feeling of someone else’s ended life pressed against her face. She pushed the image aside, but the smell of copper still twinged her nostrils.
She peered up at Kosov, drinking in the sight of the man—her brother—who had risked everything for her. The memory of his magic erupting around the throne room was enough to send chills across her arms; he had finally used it, and he did it for her.
Her face must have revealed her thoughts, for Kosov said, “I couldn’t let you die.” He hung his head, as if ashamed, but she glided forward and wrapped her arms around his neck. She squeezed, and he slid his arms around her waist and squeezed back.
“You saved me,” she breathed. “And you did it in style.”
He laughed and they pulled away from one another. He looked down at his once-elegant outfit, now torn and stained, and shrugged. She didn’t mean the outfit but thought better than to correct him.
“Thank you, Kosov.”
He nodded his head with a soft smile.
The iron gates clanged, and the earth shook beneath them. Merrina gasped and looked out from behind the safety of the shadows.
The gate screeched closed.
Merrina looked, wide-eyed, to Kosov then back to the only exit in the city.
They just lost their chance at escape.
. . . . .
This was fine. Everything was fine. Kosov would just teleport them again, and they’d be outside the walls.
She faced him in full, gripping his shoulders. “Listen, you need to get us past that gate now. We stay here any longer and were screwed.”
Kosov shook his head, eyes wide.
“What is that? Why are you shaking your head? What are you—you’re saying…” Merrina’s heart quickened.
“I’ve got nothing left,” he whispered. “I used up what magic I had getting us out of the castle.” He placed a hand on hers. “We’re stuck.”
Her arms fell to her sides; scratch that plan. She didn’t know how they were going to get out now, but she knew one thing: they couldn’t sit still. They had to move before the guards began searching for them. She filled her lungs and stepped out into the street, marching deeper into the city.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Kosov asked.
Merrina doubted that he understood the magnitude of the matter. If they could not leave Meirla, then their chances of survival would plummet. It was a large kingdom but a rather small city; they’d be found in a matter of days.
“If we can’t run, then we have to hide.”
He caught up to her and matched her stride. “And where do you suggest we do that?”
“In plain sight for now. Before we do anything, though, we have to get new clothes. Neither of our outfits scream ‘average citizen.’”
It was true, they both looked as if they had escaped from a den of savage animals, and Merrina worried for the glances already being cast their way—not just at their appearance but at her face as well. She wasn’t like everyone else; there were no others like her in the city, or any city for that matter. None that she had ever been to anyway. There was a world out there where her eyes weren’t too small, where her nose didn’t slope too low, where her cheeks weren’t too round, and her mouth wasn’t the wrong shape. She doubted she would ever see that world, but she knew it existed. She never considered herself ‘less-than’, but she could never shake the feeling of being ‘other’.
She couldn’t dwell on such matters now; she had to find them something to change into or else they may be discovered within hours instead of days. She made her way toward the center of the city, looking this way and that for some meager semblance of salvation. She stopped in her tracks, Kosov nearly tripping at the suddenness. A bit down an alleyway to their right, she noticed a skirt and top hanging from a clothesline; they both looked like they could swallow her, but they would do. The location was discrete enough that the actual outfit mattered little. She had to fight the instinct to check over her shoulder, but to appear as nonchalant as possible, she strode straight down the alley like it was her home. Kosov followed suit; she’d conditioned him well.
She approached the skirt and dared check the windows facing the alley then tore it off the line. In one swift motion, she slid the skirt on and removed her tattered pants. The skirt was a patchwork of browns and pinks, and it fell to her ankles. It hung loose on her hips, but as long as it didn’t slide off of her, she didn’t much mind. She twirled once, nodding in satisfaction at its fluidity.
“Merrina,” Kosov hissed at her.
She grabbed the white blouse next. “What? We need clothes.”
“Your stealing is what got us into this mess,” he whispered, but she could hear the intensity behind his words. “Don’t you think we should not do it now?”
“Do you have money for new clothes?” She hid herself behind a towel and switched her old shirt for the new one. The sleeves wrapped down to her elbows, lace hemming them in a beautifully delicate pattern. “Besides, we’re not stealing; we’re trading.”
“Trading what?”
She lifted her pants and clipped them to the line, smiling.
Kosov didn’t smile. He didn’t stop her either. He rolled his eyes and brushed past her, toward another set of clothes. She grinned wider at him as he removed a pair of brown pants and an off-white button down from a line deeper into the alley. He spun his finger, motioning her to turn away. With a dash of pride, she obeyed and clipped her shirt—speckled with blood, she realized—onto the line.
“Are you happy now?”
Merrina spun to see Kosov’s new clothes fit him rather nicely; though more cheaply made than his suit, she thought them more flattering. She extended her hand, and he took it, still not a trace of a smile on his lips. She let him pout.
First order of business, she needed food.
Tugging him even further into the city, she followed the scents and sounds of life: vendors shouting their bargains to the afternoon crowd, the whiff of roasted nuts and cinnamon, indistinct chatter, and wafts of cheap perfume. First, they saw the cluster of people, then they became a part of it. Joining the masses would allow them to remain undetected, at least until the people dispersed and the cover of night would be their only ally. Though, she imagined such a strategy would not benefit them the longer they stayed in Meirla; they would need a way out and soon.
Merrina stopped in front of a cart full of various pastries and breads, and her mouth watered. Her fingers brushed the tip of a lonely loaf that seemed to call her name when she heard it. It started soft, almost as if she were imagining it, but it grew louder, and she soon forgot about the bread. She paid no mind to Kosov trailing behind her, she cared only for the simple melody painting the air. She pushed past a wall of people clearly entranced by the same music and spotted the source. An old man, wrinkled and worn from years of work and sun exposure, sat atop an overturned bucket, and held aloft a violin in his left hand. His chin pressed to the instrument and his eyes closed, the man glided his bow across the strings, the fingers of his left hand seeming to move of their own accord. The sound was gentle, innocent—like a child asking questions. The notes bounced through the clearing around the man, forming a procession of tunes that reminded her of frogs jumping across lily pads.
Another sound emerged, not interrupting but complimenting. A younger gentleman with a flute walked from his place in the crowd to stand at the man’s side, the man smiled but did not open his eyes. Merrina tapped her foot against the stones to a beat that did not exist, until it did when a woman with a baby strapped to her back began to hit a fist and a palm against the box on which she sat. The growing tempo sent butterflies scattering within Merrina’s chest.
For fear of discovery, no music was ever played back home. It was a town of refuge, and no one dared sacrifice its safety by indulging themselves with music. Now, Merrina hated that unspoken rule; by prohibiting music, they were prohibiting life. She understood that now.
Without realizing it, Merrina had drifted closer to the open clearing. She glanced back at Kosov who shook his head at her, but she only smiled, letting her feet carry her where they wished. She floated forward and swayed to the triumphant melody overtaking her every sense. She let the notes flow from one set of fingertips to the other and obeyed their every command.
Everyone stared.
But no one truly saw her.
Her hair was a sea of ink pirouetting around her slim figure as she spun to the lilting melody of the streetside minstrels. She closed her eyes and breathed in the heat of summer, and people, and life—life she had forgotten could be so…fun. She splayed her arms wide and twirled until the world had neither up nor down and her dizzied mind threatened to end her escapade. She drove her foot into the ground, stopping her momentum and causing her skirt to swoosh against her legs. She grabbed it with both hands and swirled it back and forth as the beat grew and more people dared to join her. A buzz of energy and joy coursed through her bones as it radiated off those around her who decided to rid themselves of ridicule and dance. She did not know what magic felt like, but if it was anything like this, Merrina coveted, not for the first time, what Kosov possessed.
Higher and higher the music climbed, and along with it the excitement of the crowd. Releasing her skirt she began to clap to the beat, quiet at first, then louder and louder. An older woman with thin whisps of white hair stuck to her forehead in sweat joined her, her grin contagious. Merrina smiled in response, her thin lips pushing back to reveal the face of someone who had just gotten away with something.
She had gotten away, though, hadn’t she? Not just from the palace and a swift death, but away from the shame her heritage brought. For a moment she was not a thief, she was not a foreigner, she was not broken; she was a plume of blues and yellows on a hill of cascading green, she was bare feet in a cool stream, she was a symphony in a major key.
The breeze seemed to agree as it tousled her hair and kissed her skin. Merrina laughed. She laughed and didn’t care who watched; she didn’t fear the wary eyes. She frolicked into the middle of the now rather large cluster of people dancing, bumping into this person and that, but no one cared. The lute and the flute were arguing which could make finer music, but their dissention only erupted into a harmonious unification, sending chills across Merrina’s spine and along the length of her arms.
Closing her eyes once again, she lifted her face to the sky and let the heavens look upon the so-called monster they had made. She stuck her tongue out before erupting into giggles.
A masculine hand clutched her wrist and spun her.
The world went cold.
She froze and she opened her eyes. Her focus blurred, and she could not note a single feature of the man’s face, but he danced on all the same. Under his grip she felt the familiar burn of metal and ice. She ripped her wrist free of the man’s hold and stared at the scar she had forgotten and now viewed as though it were new.
The wind knotted her hair, the music melted into the screeches of a dying child and its weeping mother, the people around her were close—too close. The sun hid behind the clouds, casting the world in hue of gray, and she could hear the clink of chains and the cough of a man about to take his last breath.
She spun in place, eyes not knowing where or how to settle. She wrapped her arms across her stomach. The ground swayed beneath her like a restless sea.
She had to breathe, had to think.
She wasn’t in that cell anymore. No frost painted her skin or stole her breath now. No one would touch her like that again.
Too many people; too much touch.
Water tickled down her temple.
The shackles were gone, yet her marred flesh still burned.
She stumbled through the congregation of blank faces that stomped and writhed to a broken tune. Loose limbs snagged her skirt, others brushed her shoulders or tugged her hair. The blur of bodies wouldn’t end. Her knees shook—always shook when she remembered. She loathed this splintered part of herself, the part she fought to forget. A master of forgetting who remembers is not a master but a fraud.
Fraud!
Thief!
Monster!
The music disappeared. The people still danced, and musicians played on, yet it was as though the world at once went mute.
Child.
A firm hand grabbed hers, pulling her from the fray and into the open air. Instinct had her yanking her hand away, but the individual quickly caught it again and held tight this time. His voice muffled in her ears like he was speaking into a pillow. Something familiar tugged at her, beckoning her forward, present.
Kosov? She vaguely recalled leaving her friend behind to dance. Did he come to scold her again?
Clearer now, though still so far away, the voice muttered gentle reassurances, “You’re quite safe now. Would you like to sit? I can grab you some water if you’d like.”
Merrina blinked, breath returning to her lungs and light clearing her vision.
She was safe. She wasn’t in a cage; she’d escaped death with Kosov. She didn’t have to go back; she didn’t have to remember.
She squinted at her hand’s captor, his features sharpening until they created a recognizable image.
Not Kosov.
The man who chased her from the palace.
She jerked her hand toward her hard enough to break the young man’s hold, and she stepped back. She gripped the material at her chest and scanned the horde of people for Kosov.
They’d found her. Somehow, they’d already found her already. She stepped further away; she needed to run.
“Please!” He called.
Something in his tone made her hesitate, listen.
“I just want to talk to you.” His eyes lowered to her wrist but didn’t linger. He raised his brows and showed his empty palms.
“Talk to me?” She hated how small her voice sounded.
“My name is Tril.” He slowly extended his hand.
He held his hand there for an agonizingly long time, but she had no intention of shaking it. He dared a step closer; she didn’t run. She stared, taking in every pore, every splotch of pink, every imperfection in his blue-gray eyes, and every rogue strand of blond that brushed his forehead. He did not waver from her scrutiny.
She could beat him in a fight.
Pleased with her assessment, she offered her hand, cursing herself for how much it still shook. “Merrina.”
His grin took up his entire face and he eagerly returned the gesture. As their hands met, he gave her a quick nod.
Someone pulled Merrina back, breaking her and Tril’s linked grasp, and stepped in front of her.
Kosov.
Merrina stiffened, but Tril’s grin only grew wider. He left his hand outstretched. Kosov didn’t take it, but Tril didn’t seem to mind.
“Sir, what you did this morning was marvelous.” He scanned both of their faces, the glee never fading from his. “Oh, no need to worry. I have no intention of turning either of you in. Quite the opposite.” He finally lowered his hand and gestured away from the crowd.
Tril didn’t wait for them to respond, just walked away. She stepped to follow but Kosov grabbed her arm. He shook his head but said nothing. Merrina surveyed Tril as he waited patiently for them to join him, and she couldn’t say she trusted him, but she was curious. No one had ever looked at her like Tril had in the palace, like she was valuable—like she was someone to appreciate not fear. She had been stuck just now, trapped in her own mind, and it wasn’t Kosov that brought her out, it was Tril.
No—she did not trust him, but she would hear him out.
She pulled Kosov’s fingers from her arm and strode toward Tril and whatever future he might offer. Like a puppy, Kosov followed a step behind her. “What is it you wanted to talk about?” She hadn’t meant for her tone to come out so cold, but she didn’t bother softening it.
Tril glanced around frantically like a toddler about to cross a street before setting his focus back on her and Kosov. She didn’t know what he was looking for, but her palms began to sweat, and her breath picked up pace.
“I did some digging into why you were arrested,” Tril began, pointing at Merrina.
Her heart stopped. Not even Kosov knew the real reason she had been arrested; and she hadn’t planned on telling him. She might no longer have that option.
Tril leaned in close, whispering, “I know of your conspiracy to overthrow the king.” He locked his gaze to hers. “And I’d like to help.”
Kristin Mitchell hails from Corbin, Kentucky. She is a Senior at University of the Cumberlands pursuing a degree in English with a Creative Writing emphasis. Set to graduate in Spring 2024, she hopes to thereafter pursue an MFA from University of Kentucky. It is her goal to travel the world while writing/publishing Young Adult (or New Adult) novels that touch the hearts of readers through the exploration of life’s hardships and conquerable circumstances. She also plans to inquire into editorial opportunities in the years following graduation.
Pensworth 