Rule 1. Always post the rules Rule 2. Answer the questions the person who tagged you asked, and write 11 new ones Rule 3. Tag 11 people and link them to the post Rule 4. Actually tell them you tagged them Tagged by: whatisacalum 1. If you could be an animal, what would you be? Oh probably a cat, I really like cats 2.) Fav Disney movie? FROZEN 3.) Fav Bands? oh lordy, this may take a bit We’ve got one direction, fall out boy, the neighborhood, panic! at the disco, Mariana’s trench, ed Sheehan (he’s a band all by himself), the cab, the 1975, paramore 4.) Play an instrument? my voice if that counts 5.) Do you have any fears? Needles 6.) Would you rather be poor and be trustworthy or be wealthy and not trustworthy? Defiantly poor and trustworthy 7.) Favortite food? SOUR PATCH KIDS 8.) Favorite app/game besides tumblr? oh candy crush, hands down, it’s gotten bad 9.) Would you go back in time or forward? Probably forward, I’d like to know what happens 10.) Favorite song? It changes weekly tbh, but at the moment Acadia by Mariana’s trench 11.) fav color? Purpplleee And now time for my questions!!! 1.) Favorite childhood memory? 2.) Dumbest thing you’ve ever done? 3.) What is your dream height? 4.) If you could know your entire future, would you want to know 5.) If you had to either live on yogurt or pickles for the rest of your life, what would you pick? 6.) What’s a movie that makes you cry every time you watch it? 7.) If you could be anyone for a day who would you be? 8.) Last song you listened to? 9.) The last text you sent, and to who? 10.) Favorite phrase? 11.) If you could be any supernatural creature what would u want be? Woop woop have fun guys
I wanted to do something a little different and a bit the same as well, so I hope you like Medieval land sorta thing AU's (if you don't well...It's easy to fake respond to presents over the internet ;))
Todd heaved the two buckets down the street, his feet breaking along the ground, the waterless earth crumbling under his toes. It had been a while since the land had seen rain, since the old Well near their house had dried up, since he'd had to start walking all the way to the other side of Prentisstown to pick up water. And since that one looked like it was dying as well, the Mayor ordered men to stand out the front of it, making sure that the citizens didn't take any more than what they needed. Todd sighed and heaved the buckets again, already heavy. He was guiltily relieved that he wouldn't have to add much more weight. Manchee barked, his little dog tail whirring around like the wheels of a cart, darting along the road, yipping at the tiny furry creatures that nobody could be bothered naming.
"Come here, you dumb dog," Todd muttered, shifting the stick along his back, the buckets thudding on the ends.
Manchee looked back at him, vacant dog eyes gleaming with excitement, mouth gaping open, white teeth drowning in saliva.
Todd made a face and kicked at the dog, only half-hearted, the old leather boots that Ben had repaired more times than Todd could be bothered to count flicked the end of Manchee's tail. Manchee howled and scampered away though, like Todd had come at him with a knife.
Todd glared. "Come here!"
Manchee barked, again, almost like he was laughing, and danced around in front of Todd, little puffs of dust rising up beneath his feet.
Todd grumbled to himself and kicked at a dehydrated stone, one that crumbled and lost itself under his foot.
***
"Have the fields changed in the last hour?" Viola's father asked her as she looked out the fabric that covered the window.
Viola glanced back at him and fought the smile that threatened to spill across her face. She didn't want to go to the lower lands this summer. No one else would be moving there until the next Winter. She and her parents would be all alone, alienated by wealth and title. Viola had had to farewell her friends, her family. Even the other daughters of the Ladies in Waiting were starting to seem preferable to where she was headed. Even Steff Taylor, with her cruel smile and her haughty attitude, claiming that she was leaving first.
If only, Viola thought. We'd be rid of her. At least until next Winter.
Her gone would mean Viola wouldn't have to worry about being mocked for sitting in the library with Bradley and Simone, pouring through the old books, the ones that went through the History of the Low Lands, the ones that were so bursting with knowledge that sometimes Viola lay in bed at night, remembering all she'd learnt, her heart bursting with all that she would one day know.
It had been Bradley who'd convinced her to go in the end, a kind word and a steady hand. Viola always thought that he had something for Simone, her warm smile and smooth skin, her words that were quiet and well placed, her temper that was always well placed.
"Viola, do stop looking so sullen," her mother told her, hurt shining through her eyes. Viola found it hard to meet those eyes, especially when it was her mother's fault that they were going in the first place.
Were her mother not so clever, so diplomatic, such a damn pacifist; perhaps they'd still be standing the summer in the cool halls of the Palace, drowning in silk and old books in their quarters.
"Sorry," Viola muttered, pushing her hair from her face and lying back, head pressed, hard and uncomfortable against the hard wood above the cushion of the carriage seat.
She closed her eyes and let the horses feet clip along the road, she let the sky pass above her, let the road disappear behind them. She let her parents exchange looks measured equally in worry and exasperation, she let her hand relax across her lap, her pants dangle half in and half out of her boot and her shirt's collar to squash around her neck.
They'd been gone for three days, and they had a week ahead of them.
The three cart procession lead on, steady through the countryside.
***
Things were different in the Low Lands than they were in the High, and that was all Todd knew about the neighbouring country. Different in that they remembered the feeling of rain tracing tears down their cheeks, they remembered smelling flowers not lost to the drought.
Todd wondered at the smell of rain, the one that Ben talked about with a wistful look whenever he drank too much of the clear liquid that he and Cillian had kept, hiding them whenever the Mayor of Prentisstown sent men to check their house. Todd didn't know what they were checking for, and nobody would ever answer his effing questions whenever he asked.
Todd had returned with the water, Hammer staring at him, a menacing look in his eye, glaring full-frontal when Todd turned tail and headed home, Manchee bounding underneath his legs, seemingly determined that Todd should spill it.
But he hadn't, thank God, not that his dumb effing dog had been much help.
"I'm back!" Todd hollered, banging through the front door and making sure that it collided back into the frame before Manchee could follow him in, cutting the door in front of his excited flopping tongue. Todd didn't look back as Manchee started whining, pushing his hands into the pockets of his overalls and scuffing the wall with his boot.
"Ben?" He yelled, crossing into the kitchen that doubled into a living room, their two beds sat opposite the kitchen. He sighed when there was no reply. "Cillian?"
"In here!" Came his father figures reply. Todd muttered under his breath and scuffed his toe along the ground as he made his way to Cillian's workshop. Well, if you could call it that. In there he smoked a long pipe stuffed with the dry pipe weed and went over the meagre number of grain they had to feed their meagre number of sheep to make money to buy there meagre meals which, unsurprisingly made the most used word in their household 'meagre'.
"D'ya get the wateR?" Cillian asked, turning only so that Todd could see his face in profile.
"Yeah."
"D'ya take Manchee?"
Todd frowned. "Why?"
"Todd."
Todd heaved a sigh. "Yes. Effing Hell."
Cillian glared. "No need for that tone, Boy."
Todd glared and made sure that when he apologised, that it was sarcastic enough for Cillian to recognise it's insincerity but not be able to reprimand him for it. Cillian just sighed and looked at Todd with tired eyes.
"Ok. Ok Todd."
Todd felt bad at that, but not bad enough to apologise for being so difficult. But Cillian treated him like such a boy, never mind that in their town, he was the closest to manhood of all the little kids that danced around the street, their eyes starving, their rail thin bodies knowing nothing but drought.
"Where's Ben?" Todd asked, making sure that his voice wasn't as harsh as he'd made it before.
Cillian gestured to their small field. "Out with the sheep."
Todd turned on his heel without a backward glance, itching at his neck and letting Cillian's door slam shut behind him.
***
Viola and her parents had been travelling for days now, their trek spoiled only by the heat of the Lowlands that caught up to meet them on the third day of their trip. Viola's mother had told her that the Lowlands had suffered for years in an insatiable drought. Their wells had dried and their animals were dying. Viola had thought she'd known a hot day during the summers in the Highlands, the heat lingering in the air like the breath of an angry god, but nothing could have prepared her for the never-ending bone crushing torture of the Lowlands. The heat seemed to smother her, encasing her into herself, turning red where the sun pressed for too long, a red that turned into a smattering of freckles after she'd, frowning and tasting a bitter spice in her mouth, peeled the white flaky skin from her shoulder. Her mother had clicked her tongue and handed her a bottle of white liquid that she had to apply to any of the areas that got burnt.
"But don't we have any preventative medicines or something?" Viola had asked, wincing as the strap of her shirt dug into her newer burn, the sun that stole through the window when she wasn't looking.
Her mother had looked at her like she was equal parts mad and a genius but nothing more had been said on the matter. Viola had taken to spreading the salve on herself before they'd stop for dinner and tea, despite what her mother said.
It was the fifth day that things really started heating up. Viola had taken to hoisting a fan by her face and brushing at the hot hair, the breeze streaming slightly cooler air around her neck and face. It was times like these that Viola wished that her hair wasn't at it's impossible length. She'd gotten it cut so that she wouldn't have to go to the ridiculous lengths to tame it that the other women seemed to have to go to, but now it just dangled wet and hot around her neck, too short to tie up with a bit of fabric cut from the bottom of her tunic and too long to be beyond caring about.
She sighed and resigned herself to another day of watching as the world became more and more barren. They hadn't driven through a forest since they'd left the border of the Highlands and they hadn't seen a home or a town since the day before last. Now the world spilled out as a never ending world of dead, white trees and crusted, brown bushes. She watched the dust crack along the ground to the beat of the horses hooves and it lulled her, it sung to her, it moved her to the state she'd frequented in the past few days. Almost sleep, but not, more in the in between, waiting at the doorway and quite content to just wait, facing the sky blue handle and wishing to go no further.
It was that day, or rather as that day began to drive to a close, that everything started happening.
A thud hit the side of the carriage. Everything stopped, everything was deadly still.
"What was that?" Viola asked, glancing to her parents who were exchanging horrified glances. She knew that the traitors and the criminals too dangerous for the dungeons had been sent out to the wastes of the Lowlands, but she'd thought that they'd all died out, or at least, that they knew better than to attack an armed carriage procession.
"Just stay here," her father ordered them, glancing to his wife and nodding, small and strong and so full of love that Viola felt as though she was intruding on an incredibly private moment. He made his way past her and she squeezed out of the way so that he'd be out faster and, if her logic followed through, her desperate, illogical logic, he'd be back faster as well.
Viola looked at her mother, not sure if peeling away her layers so that when her mother looked to her, her eyes were wide with fright.
She could hear her father talking with the driver and the three guards accompanying them.
"An arrow?" He asked, his voice came through the open window, singing on the late afternoon relief. "Just one?"
"So far," The driver said nervously. "Sir I suggest we relocate this discussion, they might be ba--"
Viola willed herself to get smaller as his word was cut off, gurgling replacing it. Viola heard her father cry out in alarm and then heard his body hit the side of the carriage as he used it as a shield from where the arrows were coming from. Viola moved away from the open window but peered out. She could see a rise, nothing too conspicuous, just a slight hill that could hide, if it truly wanted, men behind it. Nothing conspicuous, nothing conspicuous. All criminals die when they're taken to the Lowlands.
Oh, they were such fools.
Viola bit the inside of her cheek as the arrow burst through the window, knocking into the frame and clattering to the floor of the carriage. Viola looked across to her mother and swallowed violently as she saw how pale she looked.
Another arrow hit, and another, and another.
"They're here," her father said, his face appeared at the window opposite to where the arrows were coming. Viola heard, rather than saw, the twangs of the bows of the guards. But they'd be firing at nothing, unless they could see something that she could not.
And then another arrow hit, but this one was different. It had buried itself into flesh, the screams that sent a cold slither down her neck told her that much, and the softness of the sound of the arrow head hitting it's target.
And then she smelt it. Burning flesh.
And the screams made sense, and the heat seemed to overtake her, and she couldn't breathe. She couldn't breathe, oh Hell she couldn't move.
She was going to die, she was going to die here and no one would find her body. No one would find her parents. No one would bury her and say the special words, the ones that secured her a safe journey to the afterlife.
"Viola," her mother whispered. She needn't speak so lowly, but the screams had stopped and Viola didn't want to know what that meant. Not when the silence seemed to press on her more than the screams had ever done. A silence that consumed all other silences. He was dead.
Viola shuddered. Her eyes were fixed, wide and unseeing. Apart from an aged relative and a horse that she'd once cared for, Viola had never known death.
Certainly not like this.
She thought about the soldier and about his family.
"Viola."
Viola snapped awake. She forced herself awake. She looked into her mother's strong eyes, the eyes that she shared with her, and made herself strong.
"Get in here," she said, opening the language compartment, her dress sleeves pushed up to her sleeves, her eyes deadly serious.
Viola shook her head. Her last act of defiance, it might as well be a valiant one. "Not without you, not without Dad."
"Viola Eade, you will not argue with me on this," her mother said, and Viola could see the deathly panic underneath her rigid calm. "You will save yourself. You will not leave. You will not move."
"But--"
"No matter what you hear," her mother said, eyes prickling with tears. "No matter what you think you hear, you stay in this compartment. Do you understand?"
Viola nodded. She felt as though she should have fought back, or she should be crying, desperately fighting to stay with her mother and her father, but all she was and all she could feel was her utter hollowness.
She quaked with her nothingness.
Viola bowed her head and said nothing as she lay next to her bags, bags which her mother pulled out and lay where Viola had been sitting.
They might stop looking if they found the suitcases, and putting them where Viola had been sitting hid the imprints of her legs, any proof that she'd been there at all.
Her beautiful, clever mother.
Viola didn't hear much of what happened. The wood was thick and the heat was strong and her heart was too loud, far too loud. Thumping in her ears and around her brain, chasing her thoughts.
You let them die for you, Viola Eade.
They're dying for you, Viola Eade.
You don't know death, Viola Eade.
But you will.
"But you will," she whispered to herself, eyes fixed with and unseeing again. It was dark enough that she didn't need to close them to feel alone. It was dark enough that she felt as though she could sleep with her eyes open.
She heard talking, screaming and then silence. She heard shuffling above her head and banging. She heard her mother speaking. She heard the pacifist whom she 'd so hated. She heard the diplomacy despite the mystery of the words and she was so proud. So proud to call the mountain who'd hid her daughter to be her mother.
But it didn't work.
Oh, it didn't work and it never would have. And Viola knew it.
But she heard her mother gasp as a sword or a knife entered her body. She heard her mother drop to the floor, the blood leaking out of her wound, hitting the floor like water dripping from a rusted tap. She heard the sword being dragged out of her and talking, speech. She heard her father let out a cry. Left alive for some reason. Not dead yet. But broken. Broken as he saw his wife. Not broken enough to tell them where she was. Not broken enough to let out a howl that would freeze her blood and force her to leap out and protect him. Take the stroke intended for the last person she had left in the world.
So he died too.
And he hit the stairs of her carriage. Her carriage now. She was the only one left.
She prayed that they didn't realise that one of the suitcases contained clothes too small for the woman that they'd killed. The woman who's blood had begun to leak through the floor and onto Viola's hand.
Her fingers flinched when the amber caressed her nail.
Her other hand stifled the scream building up in her throat.
She lost everything in those moments. In the moments where they took the goods and the horses. In the moment where they gathered the three carriages and lit the furthest on fire. In the moment that they laughed and pushed the four bodies into a heap into the middle of the bonfire. In the moment that they left. That they moved away and left her to burn.
By the time that she couldn't hear their voices anymore, the heat was so complete that Viola knew that there was no ground she'd had to stand on over the past few days. It bit into her flesh like a rabid dog. It sizzled her blood and clawed at her cheeks. Sweat pooled under her arms and under her neck. Her hair was caught between the grease floating out of the desperate, lost girl it was connected to and the severe dry of the fire that threatened to overwhelm them all.
Viola blocked out the fire and pushed open the compartment.
She opened the door of her carriage and didn't blink as the smoke from where it had caught fire hit her eye.
She worked then like someone else was controlling her. She went deep within herself and relied on a strength that she didn't realise she had.
She walked to where her parents lay and she grasped their underarms, pulling them, straining out of the ring of fire. It was only when she had brushed past the only carriage to light up that she realised the stench that she'd ignored, the stench that she recognised but only newly acquainted with was her father.
His flesh burnt and she could see the white of his skull under the slippery residue of what was his skin.
Viola turned him over so that she wouldn't have to see, crawled away from where the bodies lay next to each other, one smouldering and one cold, stiff and so damn dead.
She wasn't far enough away to escape the morbid heat of the burning carriages, and the licks of flame that channelled into the darkening sky appeared everywhere, out of the corner of her eye no matter what she did.
Even closed eyes were penetrated by the cruel bright fire.
So Viola huddled over herself and willed herself not to cry. She would not cry. She would not.
She would sit up.
And she would make her parents death mean something.
So she did. She stood and she turned. She watched the flames until they burnt themselves out. She watched through the night. She watched as the flames died on her father and she did not flinch at the smell of his burnt skin and bone and muscle.
Night span overhead and morning came as the last of the embers fell from the roof of the first carriage that they had lit.
She took a deep breath. She allowed herself a few minutes where she could be a thirteen year old girl. Tears threatened at the corners of her eyes.
But she swallowed her sobs and dried her eyes; angrily, cursing. She would not cry.
***
Then, that morning, Todd Hewitt left his home to go to the Well again. Aaron was there. And Manchee came with him.
And the world was changed and the people were saved.
