Don't be mad people, okay? I'm just playing around with this. I'm still working on the others - this was a brief escape.
Chapter One
He loved her, that I could see. The way he watched her hands, the smile on his lips when she spoke, just the glow in his eyes were all obvious signs. They were all things I had seen before, on numerous faces. I had watched and known love all my life. I knew what to expect, how to act if it were me.
But it would never be me. I could never dare to hope that someone would look at me that way - at least not a human man.
They were so beautiful. Their skin looked so soft; whenever I watched them I always had to resist the urge to reach out and touch them. The slaves I could have touched if I had wanted, of course, but they were all frightened of me and cringed away. Their skin was hard from labor, anyway.
The man I was staring at from the sewer grate on the side of the street wrapped his arm around his woman’s waist. They both walked out of my line of sight.
Sighing, I stepped away from my spy perch. The tunnel around me was dark in the fading twilight, and I could hear the faint sound of water sliding down the walls. Not a pleasant place to spend my time, for certain, but the view was the best I could get in these tunnels. All the others my father had placed guards at - most of them led to the outside. Many of our young had wandered into the human world and had been taken.
My sister had been the last child to disappear.
Father had forbidden everyone to go up now. There were times when I could have thrown on a coat and a scarf and walked out among them - unless touched, our kind went unnoticed. But now… I was resigned to staring at them from sewers.
The sound of approaching footsteps alarmed me, and I sunk back into the shadows, pasting a bored, nonchalant expression on my face.
The troll came around the corner and jerked to a halt, smelling the air. I couldn’t see who it was; we all had horrible eyesight.
“Megan?” the troll called softly.
I relaxed when I realized it was only my cousin, Seth. “Oh. What are you doing here?” I left the shadows and walked to him, straightening my long hair and pulling my skirt down from where it had wrinkled around my knees.
He eyed me, as if he knew what I had been up to. “Your father is looking for you. There’s something wrong with Rose.”
The news didn’t surprise me; small Rose had been a sickly troll since birth. “Where is Ann?” I asked him. “Why can’t she--”
“Ann is fading,” Seth interjected quickly. No doubt he was glad of it. Ann was not a favorite among the York Trolls. But I experienced an odd moment of sadness. I instantly shook the feeling off. Trolls weren’t supposed to mourn the passing of a friend. Fading was an honorable way to leave the York. It meant that our gods were taking them home for doing a job well done. Ann had completed her task of nursing the York Trolls, and her time to fade had come.
“Megan!” Seth suddenly hissed, grabbing my arm and jerking me back. Startled, I let out a small sound of annoyance. I followed Seth’s gaze to the sewer opening. There a hand reached down a picked up a coin lying on the cement. My heart leaped in my throat.
The hand merely picked up the silver coin and moved out of sight. “Penny for your thoughts!” a male voice called out, laughing.
My shoulders slumped, and I shook off Seth’s hold on me. He dropped his hand, embarrassed.
“I guess I’ll go see to Rose,” I mumbled, pushing past my cousin to walk down the tunnel.
“Don’t forget to see your father,” Sethmumbled after me. “He said he had something to tell you.”
I waved in dismissal, and shoved past a guard that had been standing somewhere behind me as I watched the humans. He had been my personal guard since I was a child.
“We’re going to the infirmary, Eustace,” I told him. He didn’t reply, as was his custom, and followed me, which was also custom.
Before I left the tunnel, I threw one last longing glance at the sewer opening, and looked at the fluorescent lights that lit the street. They were lights that were the only bright thing of my dark, underground life.
That happens to me a lot.
Now I am really exited to read this!
