The Stings dragged me out of Shea, the king’s town that my mother, Joy, and I lived in-he had many towns, and he himself didn’t live in Shea-and into a forest. No, don’t take me in there! I screeched in my head. Sibeal Rori, why didn’t you tell me that the Stings would capture me? God, help! The air was cold and frosty. It was dark already, the sky was a color to match a sapphire, and it was probably almost dinnertime. Mother would notice that I was gone soon. I hoped. God, help me!
We were going along the road through the forest. Please let someone see us! Sibeal, send someone to rescue me! On the way, we passed many forks in the road. The Stings went at an alarming pace, never stopping. One of them had me slung over their shoulder. I wondered at her strength. My wrists were tightly bound together, as were my ankles, the wire that held them biting into my skin.
A scruffy man came ambling down towards us along the road, but the Stings didn’t hesitate.
“Help!” I managed to choke through my gag.
He glanced up, but before he could do anything, a Sting had slit his throat with the slash of a hidden blade.
I bent my head and sobbed for the poor man’s life. My head started to fell very heavy. The light grew stronger, even among the trees. The moon had risen now, and I felt queasy, but in the end I was too exhausted to be kept up, even by the chilly cold, and I drifted off into oblivion.
*
I awoke to the force of being dropped onto sharp pine needles, and felt my bonds on my wrists being cut and then retied. I squinted my eyes, asking myself where I was, what had happened, and why I was so hungry. At once, the memory of those horrid, cold eyes blasted to my mind. God, what’s going to happen to me?
I shook myself to fully awaken, and saw a group of woman Stings, all but two sleeping, scattered about on the forest floor; the two were watching the camp, one walking away from me, so I assumed she was the wretched one that had dropped me. My ankles throbbed with a horrible pain, and I gasped at the sight of them. My wrists weren’t visible-they were tied behind my back around a tree-but I assumed they looked the same; at any rate, my ankles were a bloody mess. The blood was half dried, the scab forming around the rusty wire itself. I gagged.
We must have come deeper into the woods for the Sting’s slumber, for the road was no longer visible. I wondered if I would I be able to escape if I could get something sharp behind my back to cut the rope that bound me. But it was impossible to reach anything. So we sat there, hour after, on and on, me getting weak from hunger, when the guards woke up a couple of other Stings, and then they lay down.
By now I had supposed what the watch was for. The one lookout was just that, a lookout. But the other one was supposed to watch me, to make sure that I didn’t sneak off. I really didn’t see what the point of guarding me was, seeing (or rather feeling. Ouch!) how hard they’d bound me. But I guess the Stings had more strength than me, and they might even be able to break the bonds without a sharp object.
I drowsed for a while, seeing a gray bird darting under my eyelids. The real world muddled with strange dreams, and I slowly drifted off, wondering while I was just at the edge of both God, what’s going to happen to me?
*
Someone slapped my face; I opened an eye and saw the Stings. They cut the line at my ankles and told me to walk, their voices smooth and indifferent. My legs were hurting excruciatingly. My ankles’ scabs were torn off from the Stings taking the ropes, my legs had been in a weird position as I slept, and my whole body was stiff from the ground, from thirst, and from hunger.
Now we turned and trudged through the forest, going deeper and deeper. The forest gave way to more and more trees. We changed our direction many times, and I soon became confused. There was no hope of finding my own way home now. The sun started to turn orange as it neared the world’s edge once more.
After a long while, we entered a cave, and it led to a stairway. The stairs loomed up to me like a nightmare, and one of the Stings had to hit me to propel me down. The light diminished completely on the way. I paused, but the Stings seemed to be able to sense the way that the stairs led, and they drug me blindly through the dark. I tripped many times before I could see color. A red fire loomed near, growing as it consumed more of the logs under it, in the middle of a cold, mostly empty room. Doors surrounded the walls. The whole area was made of stone: the ceiling, walls, and floors.
A boy about my age sat in a large cage on one side of the room. He hunched in a corner of the enclosure, his blonde hair shining like liquid in the firelight. His hair … was it?
“Prince Absalom?”
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