To Cut the Sky: First Phase - New Moon (c. 1)

(Otherwise known as the prologue...)

 

“Curse you, you little mutt, get away from me!” the bellow was harsh and guttural, and followed closely by a vicious snarl.  Dark flecks shone in the air an instant before spattering the earth in an asymmetrical pattern, and the young girl to whom they belonged cried out in pain, cupping the slashes on her shoulder with her shaking palm.  She took a step back from the furious, black-haired boy, eyeing the sharp flint knife he brandished at her.  Bright tears welled in her soft hazel eyes, and she took another step away from him, her body shaking in pain, fear, and sadness.

“Danien, please...” she whimpered, crouching to protect herself, but at the same moment to make herself less threatening, and more submissive to him “I only wanted to play...”

He lunged, driving the ball of his foot into her ribs, and sending her sprawling in the dead leaves of the sun-dappled forest floor.  Standing over her with a look of sour distaste scrawled all over his features, he spat on her, and then took a step away.  “Filthy mutt,” he hissed, eyes flashing a dangerous orange “I don’t romp with dirty trollops like you!”  Anger mounting with every word, he took another step and raised the blade threateningly.  The girl scrambled away from him on her hands and knees, falling over herself in an effort to escape his furious attention.

“No!  No!” she begged.  “I’ll go!  I won’t make you angry!”

“Then get of my sight, you vile mongrel!” he screamed, throwing the knife at her in an overhand fling.  “Go!”

The blade glanced off her shoulder as she frantically gained her feet and bolted, vanishing into the brush with a mournful howl.  The flint knife clattered to the ground, breaking in half as it struck a stone jutting up from the leaves.  Danien swore.

“You broke my knife, mutt!” he howled after her, tracking her movements with his ears.  “I’ll kill you for it!”

***

Her shuddering cries didn’t cease until she was long away from the fury of the boy that she’d thought she’d be able to call a friend - but he was just like all the others.  Listening to the prejudice of their parents, and deeming the poor frightened female a blight on society.  The only one who showed her even a shred of mercy was her own mother, and her mother was on her deathbed, waiting to depart from this world.  Spirits help her, she was only a scant eleven years old, and already on the verge of being murdered by the people that were supposed to be her peers, friends, and protectors.  Her brothers and sisters.  And they wanted her dead, because she was just a tiny bit different.

Pushing through the thick leaves of the deciduous trees all around her, she frightened a number of birds from their perch when she gave up running as she was, and leapt, hands first.  Her form twisted and writhed in mid-leap, collapsing in on itself in a twist of rippling black fur and muscle.  When she landed she wasn’t a girl - she looked, in fact, much more like a fox.  A small black fox, only half a metre long, and then as long again with her tail.  Her eyes were a vibrant, inquisitive orange. With a little shuffle through the leaves she bolted again, tearing through the underbrush with much fleeter paws than the clumsy human girl she’d been moments ago.

She vanished into the forest without another sound, the only trace left the small flecks of blood spattering the ground in her wake.

***

“Mama!” the mournful scream sounded loud and sharp as she shifted at the bottom of the rope ladder.  Using her hands and bare feet, she hauled herself up the little tract of rope and branches, to a small platform some twenty or more feet up.  From there, she scrambled up a more solid ladder, and across a little suspension bridge before she came to a more permanent fixture.  A tree house it was, but a tree house that would have been worthy of living in for even a spacer.  She flung open the door, bouncing it off the white-washed wall, and fled into the dark, quiet interior.

“Mama?” she called again, softer, but still rather frantically.

Nothing but silence answered her in the house, and outside only the creaking of the branches in the wind.  Shadows played across the floor from the leaves shifting in and out of the light, and she jumped at a twig slapping against a window pane.  Her feet made a soft patter as she skittered across the floor, and down a hallway, disappearing into the darkness that was the depths of the dwelling.

The gloom frightened her - her mother always kept candles and tiny lanterns lit so that no one would fall and be hurt.  But they were out - cold, and dead, like they’d been out for hours.  Her hands, cold and clammy with a slickness of perspiration, closed on the handle to the door to her mother’s sleeping chamber.  She swallowed several times, breathing deeply to calm her racing heart and her shaking hands, and then pushed the door in, to nothing but more black.

She took a step into the room tentatively, her bare feet silent on the cold wooden floor.  Nothing moved, and there was no sound -wait...yes, there was the sound of very light, shallow breathing.  She could hear it.  Her heart calmed, and her muscles loosened slightly as she took slow, but more steady and even steps toward the place where she knew her mother to be.

Her feet nearly slipped from under her as she stepped into something cold and wet on the floor.  Water?  Maybe...?  No.  She couldn’t tell.  And she could not smell what it was over the odour of sickness that had hung in the room for months now as her mother slowly died from the inside.  It was overwhelming, but she was used to it. It was nothing to her anymore.  But water on the floor concerned her - her mother could slip and injure herself.  She would have to clean it up once she found a light.

Another step, and her hand came in contact with the bed.  She felt rumpled covers, pushed down to the bottom of the mattress and the frame, and moved her hand up further.  “M-mama?” she whispered, not wanting to scare the fragile woman.  “Mama, it’s me - wake up...” 

Her fingers slowly sought up further, and they came into contact with thick, wiry fur.  Ah, there was mother.  She was sleeping in her natural form.  That explained it.  But she was so cold - why had she thrown the covers off?  Tiptoeing so as not to wake the slumbering creature, she crept around the side of the bed, her eyes beginning to adjust, and picking out shapes in the dark.  Somehow, the silhouette of her mother against the blankets looked wrong.  Something seemed like it was missing.  She moved out wide to avoid the small tray that she knew sat on the floor, and her tiny form collided solidly with a much larger, warmer, and rock solid mass.  She started, looking up, and gasped.

A screaming hiss filled the room, and she was suddenly blinded by a vibrant violet light that shot from the stranger’s hands, taking the shape of a long, slender blade, and pulsing with a deep menacing glow.  She could see nothing but flickering lights in her vision from the sudden ignition.  She screamed, and fell backwards, landing on the bed where her left hand came into sudden contact with a slimy, wet patch.  She looked.

And her scream heightened at what she saw, filling the room, gaining pitch and volume with her increasing terror.       

There was the form of her mother, stretched out on the bed as though she were sleeping, her fur a little ruffled along her sides and back, but not damaged.  But now she knew what was missing...

The head.  There was nothing but a charred stump of neck, pumping blood lightly still despite the cauterization around the edges.

Purple light flooded her vision, distracting her, as the blade swung at her, and she threw herself flat to the floor, diving and rolling under the bed to avoid the next strike which burned a hole where her chest had been seconds before.  She wailed in terror, screaming high and shrill again, and rather suddenly, the stranger went still.  She continued to scream, and there was a sound of glass exploding from somewhere overhead.  With a roar, and a thunder of steps, his feet vanished through the doorway and into the hall, vanishing around the corner, and taking the light with him.  Her scream continued for a second or two, but as she ran out of breath it flickered out, and she fell silent, tears streaming down her face and front, and her fingers shivering against the floorboards as she waited in silence for him to come back and take her to the other side as well.

***

And she did not move from that position until days later when a hunting party finally noticed the lack of her disturbing presence, and ascended into her tree-top home to find the carnage, and the little girl they all loathed curled amidst a pool of blood.