I ran towards my mother. It had registered in my mind just then that my father was not going to rise from the dirt floor to help my mother. My brother grabbed my arm and dragged me away.
“We can’t do any thing for them Alaina. Come on we need to find Larse and Karsy,” my brother said.
My five year old mind didn’t comprehend what was happening. Why had we been attacked? Where were we going?
We walked on through the night. We never did find my other two siblings. It was just Alex and me. I was five while he was thirteen. My sister Karsy was ten, while my brother Larse was eight. I didn’t realize why my brother didn’t help my parents till years later. My father had commanded my brother to get me and my siblings away. We never found Larse and Karsy. For all we knew they were dead.
We had waited till morning. All we found was the ruined remains of our village and the bodies of several people we had grown up with.
At first I had thought they were asleep and tried to wake them. Slowly it had come to my mind they were dead. My brother and I had no other choice but to go on by our selves to find our lives. We walked through several villages. No one wanted to get in trouble, so all we could was continue.
During the weeks we traveled I became harder than most seven year olds. My brother seemed to grow from thirteen to eighteen. I began to be able to read people’s faces. I could see when people might welcome us with open arms for a night or those who would chase us off with their dogs. We finally reached far enough that no one knew of the trouble up north.
Now I only remember snatches of the place I was born. I remember it being green almost all the rime. Where I grew up it was dry, almost like desert, except that it had forests. My brother was able to apprentice himself to a blacksmith. The blacksmiths wife Nora took us in with open arms. Her only son had died from a sickness when he was young. My brother took his place while I took the place of a daughter she never had.
The truth was I never could stand sewing and cleaning. Oddly enough I enjoyed cooking. Nora always said I might have flaws in every thing else, but my cooking made up for every thing else. I grew to love animals. I wasn’t like other girls who flocked over horses because they were pretty, I fell in love with them because of their strength and power. I began hanging out at the stable more and the trainer took an interest in me, or maybe it was pity. I was a poor girl who could never own a horse. He began showing me the skill of picking out a great horse. In the end I became more of an apprentice to him than his real one.
When I was ten or so I found a stray puppy in the stable and brought her home. I had a simple mind and named her Peanut. When I got her she was brown with pointed ears and a curly tail. As a puppy she had green eyes but they later changed to brown to match her coat. She could blend in any where on the light brown dirt. Her whole coloring was the color of the dirt. Some people muttered that she looked like a coyote. Actually it was very likely that she was part coyote, because she was a stray.
She became my best friend along with the horses of the stable. The other girls thought I was weird because I worked the horses. I mean really it was some thing for men. On the other hand my brother Alex was very popular. He was a handsome young man marriageable age. Who wouldn’t want him. The other girls didn’t like me because Alex hung out with me and not them. I mean it was obvious why he hung out with me, he was my brother, but they didn’t seem to notice that. He was extremely handsome while I was just slightly pretty. If I cut my hair and put on some breathes and a loose shirt I could probably pass for a thin, pretty boy.
Then it happened. I was in the stable with Robert, the horse trainer. Alex my brother, Alex my friend was taken away. A couple soldiers had come into the town and had taken away all the young men. They said it was for a good cause, but we all knew what they meant. They had taken them away to work on building for the nobles till they died of exhaustion. They had been taken away to be made slaves.
After I heard that I had begun looking for ways to make money. I needed to get to the capitol and help my brother. I was desperate. Finally a Speaker came to my town. He spoke of a dragon in the mountains. The King was willing to give 200 gold coins to any one who could kill it. That was enough money to live richly for an entire life time. A plan began to form in my head. A plan that no one would guess. A plan that was just crazy enough it might work. What I was thinking would make me hated, a criminal in the eyes of the kingdom. One thought propelled me though. It was the thought of my dear brother Alex, always kind and ready to help, the last one in my family other than my self. I would do any thing to keep him alive, even some thing which might make him hate me, some thing that might make me hate my self. The one thing that had destroyed my family would be what saved it.
