| Subject: Angie's story! |
Author:
Steph
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Date Posted: 15:48:53 01/17/03 Fri
Hiya, Rob-- I got bored and decided to jot down some of Angie's story. So...here you go! I'll continue it ASAP. Hope you enjoy it.
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She was born beneath a chandelier of sputtering candles, into a world of subdued luxury.
Her mother, tall and slim, walked freely through the endless halls of the sprawling southern castle, and many of its inhabitants were required to bow their heads as she passed. She was seventeen years old when the child came to be, the illegitimate daughter of the young prince. It had only been once, a single time, that the red-haired head royal concubine had neglected to take preventative measures, but once was all that was required and a child came to be in due course.
It was a g.irl, unfortunately for the prince, but the child was so small and delicate, with dainty features and large, dark eyes, that the queen took an immediate liking to her and intervened before she was killed. Her Majesty’s appearance in the birthing hall was highly unorthodox but the woman would not be denied a view of her grandchild.
She looked down her elegantly snubbed nose into the receiving cradle at the tiny morsel of humanity that lay, red-faced and writhing, among the rough cotton blankets. She then turned her imperious gaze upon the mother, still a child herself, hair in wild disarray against the pillows, a sheen of sweat covering her skin. The looked up at her Sovereign in characteristic fearlessness.
Her manner suggesting unbearable boredom, the queen returned her attention to the child. It opened its eyes at that moment and startled all those assembled by being not the normal blue-grey of an infant but a dark, rich brown. It whimpered quietly.
Incredibly, the queen stretched out a long, flawless bronze arm and touched the baby’s head with a finger. The hair was short and velvety and showed promise of taking on its mother’s hue.
“My Lady?” inquired one of the queen’s accompanying guards. His sword was unsheathed and held at the ready.
The queen drew back from the child quickly, her face stonily impassive.
“No,” she said, in a tone of great finality. One of the younger midwives breathed a silent sigh of relief.
“No,” the queen repeated, and glared around the room. “She shall live. You—concubine.” She turned to the red-haired woman and spoke with command. “What is her name?”
“Hasn’t got one,” the woman replied shortly, glaring right back and blowing a strand of sweaty hair away from her lips. Even in such an ungraceful state she was beautiful, and it was obvious why the prince had chosen her from the hundreds under his command to be his escort. She was flawless, with exotic creamy skin and eyes that burned with blue fire. Her physical qualities in combination with her character of brash confidence and unshakable pride made her a perfect match for the haughty, demanding prince. The queen smiled; she admired the woman’s total lack of fear.
“Then her name shall be Angelina,” Her Majesty said, sweeping her bound ebony hair over a delicate shoulder and looking down at the child once more. “You,” she commanded of the young midwife. “Install her in the prince’s old suite.” With that, she swept from the room in a swirl of expensive fabric.
Moments later, halfway across the castle and in the main wing, tiny Angelina slumbered peacefully among silk sheets in a circular bed large enough to fit five people across. Gauzy curtains trailed down around the bed from the high marble ceiling, undulating slightly in the soft, warm breeze that floated through the open windows.
And so it was that the illegitimate daughter of a concubine spent her first five years of life in a world of silk and ivory. She was dressed and treated as a princess and she seemed born into the role, scowling as she demanded her way in a high, piping voice. Her skin was pale but a touch of bronze to it was the obvious influence of her father—that and her dark eyes, stunningly incongruous in her slender, long-nosed face. Her hair grew into a gorgeous, thick swash of pale red that tumbled down her back in loose, dripping curls. It looked spectacular when bound with gold.
As her mother and father were often otherwise occupied, Angelina was often left to her own devices. She wandered often into the Grand Hall, to the amusement and delight of the king and queen; for while she was shrilly demanding among the lesser members of the court she was a perfect angel in the company of the Sovereigns or her parents. She would scramble into the lap of His Holy Highness and tug at his thick black moustache with a piping giggle and the man’s heart would melt instantly. The older the child grew, the more she became as a daughter to the rulers of that great southern kingdom.
But when the child was five, her delicate features and slender limbs showing promise of great beauty to come, there stirred within the kingdom a mighty uprising. During the course of a single week the castle was laid siege to, penetrated, and taken. The few survivors were those who escaped into the tunnels that led into the cliffs against which the castle was built. Among these were Angelina’s mother and father, and the child herself. For days this small group wandered through the black, often ill-kept tunnels, occasionally coming upon trickles of water in the rocks but terrified to stay where they were. And every now and then, in the interminable darkness, they would suddenly find another person missing, and no amount of calling could locate these unfortunates—among which was the prince.
When at last the starving, staggering group emerged into the pre-dawn light, there were only four left—a guard, a servant, Angelina’s mother, and the child herself. The guard immediately pledged his service to the head concubine, looking relived to have some purpose. The woman stood grimly in the mouth of the cave, balancing Angelina on a slender hip, covered in dirt, her elegant (but properly revealing) clothes torn. The servant had collapsed on the fissured rock, weeping in relief and exhaustion.
The rising sun soon revealed their plight—they had emerged into a bleak landscape of sand and scraggly bushes, punctuated by towering mesas. It was soon judged which direction was north—the only logical direction, as the rebellion meant their kingdom was no refuge. And so they set out into the wilderness with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
They spent the night curled together beneath one of the sparse bushes that spread thick, gnarled branches fifteen feet into the air, each of its thousands of leaves the size of a fingernail. But only three of them awoke the next morning; the servant was found with a pinprick wound in her finger, and on the ground beside her was a scorpion. The woman took her child over a small hill while the guard carved and spitted the servant’s body; they ate their fill and carefully saved what was left, and the three of them struggled through the burning sun for two hours before reaching the shadow of a mesa. There they rested during the worst heat of the day, forcing swallows of blood down the child’s throat to keep her from dehydration.
In this manner they survived for three days’ further journey. But during the fifth night gleaming eyes appeared at the edge of the campfire’s light. As the fuel supply ran lower and lower, the concubine began praying desperately for sunrise, but at last the ring of light was dwindling and no gleam yet showed on the eastern horizon. It was then that the guard bade the woman take the child and run while he distracted the beasts. Tearfully, the woman thanked him, and even planted a kiss on his grizzled cheek before fleeing into the darkness. Angelina clutched around her mother’s shoulders and stared with solemn eyes at the rapidly retreating campfire, the raging squeal of the predator filling her ears.
It only took a moment for the beasts that did not get a share of the first kill to begin pursuit of the woman and child. Weeping uncontrollably, the concubine heaved her daughter onto a small ledge on the side of a mesa, and then dashed away in the other direction.
Nearly two days later, a driver in the lead of a trade caravan spied a small, crumpled figure at the foot of a mesa. Dehydrated and starving, her skin papery and stretched tight over her bones, Angelina was an inch from when she came into the care of the Yhorim—the Traveling People, the tradesmen. They nursed her back to health and dressed her in the odd combinations of color characteristic of their kind.
Her complete silence puzzled them; no amount of coaxing would induce her to speak, for the three years that she traveled with the Yhorim. They gave her the name Olwarni—Silent Child—and with them she came hundreds of miles from her home, departing the desert for the open woodlands of Henrau.
---
Whee!
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