Young Writers Society

(this is a rough draft... Please be gentle)

Every day, I am surrounded by people but I feel more alone than I ever have. Almost three years ago, I was sent to work on a farm for a man named Samir in a Village east of the island. His name is Samir, he is big and slightly tall, his gut is large and his hearty laugh and voice is just as big. Samir was the first man I had ever met, he is oily and skin like bronze, and thick black hair all over his body and two large coiled bushes growing out of his head and face. At first, I thought he was our father, but his hair was a light brown in the sun and mine and my sister’s was a deep black no matter day or night. Me and my sister had never left the forest until that day before she brought me to the farm. I was running in the forest, happily and got lost. I had began to cry as I always do and before I could run back to find her she was there to bring me into her arms. Most nights… even when I wasn’t scared she would sing to me. Her voice like the prosonification of light. In the night, the humming sound of bugs and in the morning, the chirping of birds would be drowned out and nothing mattered but her voice and nothing was more calming and reassuring than her voice. But this night, there was no soothing voice, no holding me in her arms. As we laid in our home, a home that had stood here so long the trees and grass surrounding it had swallowed them and it looked like a hill. She woke me, something she had never donw, she would always wait till I woke up on my own. She walked me to the village, I had never seen so many people, and my sister, how did she know they were here? As we walked the streets, some other children even knew her name. Most mumbled to themselves and just stared at us. The stare they gave was not a stare I had ever seen before. It wasn’t like an animal ready to eat its prey, filled with ambition and a task to fulfill, more like fear, which was something I had come accustomed to feeling but never knew how it looked, and hatred.

Its been almost three years since Samir allowed me to work on his farm. Not long after my sister brought me, she left. Sometimes I would pretend to go home and sleep in someone’s vineyard. They had realized their grapes were getting low and started to patrol their crop at night. After that, I started to go back to the forest, most of the time becoming too scared to realize what direction I was going in and just trying to get out. Those nights, I slept on the hardened ground and cried myself to sleep. Now, I stay in the stables with the horses on Samir’s farm. The first time he caught me the first time I did so. He said I could sleep with him in his home but I decided not to. One morning the kids who worked for Samir came and saw me sleeping on the hay. They laughed at me and called me weird, “Ew… you selpt here?”, one said shocked at my presence there. “It reeks in here… what is wrong with you?”, another asked. I could say nothing, I never said much. Why would I, people had already made up their minds about me and so did I about them.

Over time those kids got tired of coming to the farm and grew even more exhausted of laughing at me. My once nervous smile turned to an indefinantly stiff and lifeless face, void of any emotion when anyone was around. But, when I was with the horses I felt happy. They never tried to make me feel bad or different in such a bad way, and they never abandoned me. Before they left, the other kids would play games and laugh in a good way, like my sister would make me feel and looking at them brought me a warm feeling. Now its nothing, me and Samir and his tall tales of women in the village and stories he plucks from the sky. One day, I decided to ask him why do those kids hate me so much. “What do you mean… they don’t hate you Asante.”, he said softly and he hardly ever said anything softly, and I was even more shocked he knew my name and didn’t called me “boy”, or “hay-kid”. I could easily tell he was lying and he knew what I had meant but chose to act like I was pulling something from nowhere. “Why do they hate me and why do the people look at me like that?” I asked, “A lady speaking with others in the market, called me the forest child… a demon… they-they think I killed my sister.”, I was fed up, that warm loving feeling had turned sour and into a true flame that would cover my body and fill my lungs with smoke, tighting my throat and causing my eyes to water.

Samir sat beside me on a stool in the stables and told me of the tale that surrounds the forest. This was not one of his lies, this was something true, or at least he believed in. He told me of the men and women who were killed and for a long time no one was allowed to enter the forest and yet me and my sister emerged one day. I remember all the stories my sister told meof our parents, this-this morbid truth they hold near and dear to their hearts and minds to be self evident, had to be false. “Do you believe it? Do you think we are demons?”, I asked him. He looked into my eyes and smiled, and said, “No… But let me ask you something? What do you remember of your parents and your life?”, he asked. “What Renee told me… I had a fever that lasted very long, it even overtook my parents… I don’t remember anything from before that. All I remember his here eyes and her voice.” I told him.

Things between me and Samir never changed after that. He knew he could always find me in the stables tending to the horses. Whoever he would put to work to earn some money or lost a bet and couldn’t pay him he made work far away from me and it wasn’t like they had a problem with it anyways. He would come and talk to me and when people would see it was me he was talking to they would leave abruptly. I would talk to the horses until my mouth dried and my tongue felt like gravel. I mostly talked to them about me and Renee or repeated a Samir tale they had heard before. There were two I spent the most time with, there was Darlis, white fur with a flowery rose mane that was loosely curled, she was small but fast and would go into fits if you didn’t clean her and brush her to her liking. Then Rook, who was the largest horse in the stable, someone tried to buy the horse from Samir but he refused just for me. He has a white strip down from its nose all the way to its back and down to its belly, long mane that shimmered blue in the sun and even longer than Darlis’. The reason it takes so long to tend to him is because he’s too big and also because he won’t budge much, cleaning his hooves and washing his back is the most draining and turns my arms into crushed grapes to make the finest of wine.

If I remember correctly, its almost the day I started working here three years ago and they day Renee left me. She left me nothing and hasn’t tried to write, where ever she is I hope she’s okay. I always feel ashamed but I cant help but feel that warmness turn into a flame once more when I think of how she left me. I think often and wonder was it because of me she left. There was a star in her eyes, it felt like hope, but I never knew what I was hoping for, maybe it was something else. She had always been the adventurous one, her golden brown eyes were always facing the sun to take in its embrace and move forward and even comeback to guide me with her soft an gentle hand. I love her, but as much as I try to say it with a smile the meaning if the words don’t change, she abandoned me, left me here on this island to fend for myself. I hope one day, I learn why.

Faress Island was a small island off the southeast coast of the mainland. Known for its farms and fishing boats, far away It isn’t much but the people make it their home. Amongst them is a young boy, his name is Asante a young stable hand. He's a quiet boy who always busiest when the sun was at it's fullest. Not that Faress Island was ever that busy it was quiet and most of the time it seemed that time itself stood still. if you lived on the mainlands you wouldn’t know it existed. Although it had some reputable farms in the surrounding areas and even a vinyard, it wasn't exactly a place people came, nor people who left the island, except ofr my sister who hadn’t returned. In fact, I had never heard of people coming to Faress. I had heard of someone called, a Basileus. Someone who rules all the land. Reading was not something I had needed in the forest, gathering food and wood for fire was something that didn’t require words or they’re understanding. There were texted written on paper made by a select few that knew how to make it, and as away of learning, it was the children’s task to read, and re-write the text for further understanding. I had stole some scribes and asked Samir to help me learn from them. Overtime I learned that there was a world behind this island and in a way grew closer to realizing why my sister left.