Boneland
A teenage girl sauntered, slightly hunched, through a village full of crumbling huts. The streets were scattered with smashed glass bottles that made them glimmer. She was not from around here; this place was far from the white-washed pristine streets where her masters and mistresses lived.
The girl was dressed in a dirty rag of a dress and she walked barefoot, the glass making her feet bleed. Her hair hung in two locks of mousy blond, slicked over from the heavy rainfall that thundered against the leaking roofs around her.
This girls name was Anika Brealey.
Anika reached an intersection and followed the dirt road that led toward what she could vaguely make out as a mass of hundreds upon hundreds of rag-clad people in neat lines. The lines went all the way up a vast mountain of rock beside an enormous field covered entirely in bones and milling people collecting spare wood and pinecones from the only trees for miles.
Anika’s feet were starting to hurt, she had argued with her mistress that very morning about going to Boneland.
“Yet here she was” She thought moodily, more trouble than she began with. The quarrel had resulted in her not being aloud any shoes, food or being aloud to bathe for a week.
It wasn’t the weather that made her not want to come; it was the things that guarded Boneland. The Guards always had a cold, dark look about them and had dark hair that fell over their crimson eyes set deep into their daunting white faces.
No one knew why they guarded Boneland or in fact, what exactly they were, they weren’t human but they weren’t quite beast either they were a terrifying mix of both. Only one rule was obeyed follow their laws…or suffer.
Anika saw another figure of a girl the colour of the dirt beneath her feet coming down a tunnel leading out on to the road at the end of it.
“Sara!” Anika called out, running towards her into the shelter of the tunnel embracing her and lifting her off the ground with the force of it.
“Anika!” Sara smiled and gave a feeble pat on Anika’s back.
Anika pulled away her huge grin fading into a frown as she peered at Sara. “What happened to your eye?” She whispered reaching out to touch the black eye patch that covered Sara’s eye, assuming there was one there of course.
“I misbehaved and my master punished me accordingly” Sara answered stiffly resuming a slightly faster pace than she had before, leaving Anika jogging to keep up.
“What? That old pain in the-“
“Don’t you dare go and insult my master like that. He had worked hard all day-” Sara was not looking at Anika but staring straight ahead shouting seemingly at the broken down store ahead of them.
“Yeah right” She muttered raising her eyebrows.
“-and his temper was running a bit high and I knocked over an old family heirloom and I-and I broke it” Sara seemed to be losing steam and instead seemed to finish what she had obviously thought was a reasonable explanation with sobs.
“Oh Sara,” Anika said placing an arm around Sara’s shoulders, “So he took your eye out?” As Sara gave a louder sob Anika shivered, and to think before, she was worried about not getting shoes.
They had now crossed onto the path leading down to Boneland. The path was wide and crowded with many other people. None looked twice at Sara and Anika; many people had far worse masters or mistresses than either of them and one person sobbing was not a strange sight.
As they descended further down the hill, the grounds grew hushed and eerie. Sara had stopped crying now, and instead stood with a red swollen eye being dragged by Anika into a nearby line where The Guards were strolling down taking the names of the slave’s masters and mistresses.
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