“How about that one?” Reign asked Aman.
The innkeeper smiled at her. “I think it would suit you very well, miss...?"
"Reign," she supplied.
Reign, then. Follow me, please.” She turned and led Reign up a flight of stairs.
Reign followed Aman up the stairs and into the room. It was small, containing nothing but a bed and a squat table in one corner.
“Is this alright?” the innkeeper asked as she set her candle on the table.
“It’s fine,” Reign said quickly. “I’ll take it.” She was worn out, and Aman seemed busy. She handed the woman some money. “It’s enough for three nights,” she said. “If I need to stay longer, I’ll give you more. Thank you.”
Aman smiled and left the room.
Reign removed her boots and settled herself on the bed, savoring the comfort of a real mattress. The smell of food from downstairs made her hungry, but the cost of the room left her a little short. Her own food would do well enough tonight.
Reign undid the drawstring from the bag that lay beside her on the bed. She took out a package of bread and cheese, only slightly stale, and a flask of luke-warm water. As she ate, she let her thoughts wander.
She could see her family, just the way they looked at suppertime, all smiling and happy. She could see the expression on her mother’s face as she asked for the soup, and the way the corners Father’s eyes crinkled as he laughed at a joke. But most of all she saw Jesse’s face, Jesse smiling, Jesse laughing, Jesse telling her a story about Ripred the One-legged Bandit. She loved the way his dark eyes flashed and sparkled, turning from excited to serious to happy to sad like a continually shifting kaleidoscope.
She had gone out to the field one evening to call him to dinner, just as she had done every night for as long as she could remember. Father had gone into town that day, so Jesse was seeing to the farm himself. Her father and Jesse always ended the day in the cornfield, and this year had been an especially good one.
She had known that something was wrong when she could not see her brother’s dark curls bobbing up and down behind the tall rows of corn. She started to run, pushing the thick stalks aside and calling his name.
Then she saw him, laying facedown on the ground, and she was screaming and telling him to get up, and there was blood … so much blood … maybe he was sleeping … she tried to wake him up … but the blood …
Then everything went black.
Through the dimness, she could hear voices, and the voices said that she had fainted and that everything was going to be okay now. But as the voices moved away they said something else, too, that her only brother was dead and someone had killed him. Not Jesse! They were talking about someone else’s brother. Jesse was sleeping in his bed across the room. Orcs, the voices went on. Orcs had killed him with his own scythe. Hacked him to pieces in the field for no reason but cruelty. And now someone was screaming, screaming like their skin was being peeled off or something terrible like that. And it was herself who was screaming. The voices thought she was sleeping, but she was not, and Jesse was dead. Her own beautiful brother lying dead on the ground.
Reign jolted back to reality with her mouth filled with blood. She had been biting her tongue, and it throbbed with pain. She took sip of water from the flask, snuffed the candle, and lay shivering in the dark. Eventually Reign fell into a restless sleep.
<font size=1 color=339966>[ 11:04 PM January 30, 2004: Message edited by: Memory of Trees ]
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