Untiled Book

Chapter 1: Lily

Chapter 1
Lily

         It was unseasonably cold that night. The bite of late autumn should have been far from sinking its teeth in. Yet Lily found herself pulling her black leather coat tighter around her small frame, wishing she'd added another layer of wool to the inside. The movement caused her bones to creak like the hinges of an overused door - much like the doors at home. She shuddered and hugged herself, pushing the thought from her mind. It was best not to think of such things now. Carefully she lifted her pale green eyes and squinted against the wind. The trees were stark, losing their leaves far too quickly. The unforgiving cold had caused their bark to crack and peel away from the trunks, leaving the exposed wood like gaping wounds. She could barely recognize where she was. “Dammit”, she cursed under her breath. This was not the time to be lost.
         She knelt down in the frost covered leaves, wincing at the sudden sharp pain erupting from her thigh. She must have cut herself worse than she realized. A minor wound hardly mattered now though. She breathed a heavy sigh, causing a huge white cloud of breath to circle her head. It was getting colder. She guessed that it must be getting close to midnight. She would have to find some place to rest –soon. She knew the woods well. Growing up on the edge of Blackwood forest it was nearly impossible not to. Countless days had been spent scaling the towering trees, creating a second home in their massive limbs. There were plenty of hiding places too, if you knew where to look. Once home to villages many cycles ago, there were countless ruins scattered throughout the area. There were simply too many, and the forest far too vast for any one person to have seen them all- although Lily liked to think she was very close. She had been fortunate enough to have been born in the Late Summer period of the cycle, when the daily temperatures no longer reached unbearable heights. This made it easy to roam far without getting exhausted. The days had been easy and she had known nothing but pleasant sunshine and fragrant breezes her entire childhood. But things were different now. Now she was seventeen and Autumn had struck faster and harder than anyone could've anticipated. Those in their last days of life went around muttering that it wasn't a good sign. A bad omen. Winter was descending rapidly, bringing the Dirge with it. Any day now The Door would appear somewhere in the world. It would open and those chosen would be spared from the Dirge's death sentence. Winter would pass quickly and a new cycle would start again. Except things would be different this time. The Door was not going to open this winter. Lily had to make sure of that. It would be better to let the world end then to let it be corrupted. After all, wasn't perfection the whole point of existing?
         Swimming in these thoughts she reached back and re-secured her long dark hair, which had come loose yet again through her traveling, and briefly considered cutting it. She dismissed the idea quickly however. “It’ll be easier to blend in with longer hair”, she thought to herself, “I must avoid standing out at all costs.” She pulled her knitted wool cap farther down and wrapped her scarf around her face, temporarily blocking the wind. Turning around she looked downward to a large brown sack that lay at her feet. Her nose wrinkled in disgust at the thought of its contents. Every one of her feelings screamed to leave the sack in those frozen leaves. She could still walk away. It wasn’t too late. “And then what?” she thought, “Go back to how it was? Go back home and pretend nothing is happening like a good little girl? Never. I have to know why!”
         Furiously she reached down and wrapped her bare hands around the tied end of the sack, cursing herself for forgetting her gloves. “I’ll be lucky if I have hands by the time this is over”, she thought bitterly. Tugging hard, she pulled at the sack, slowly sliding it across the ground. Pulling the end high she turned around again and settled it on her shoulder. Leaning forward she began to drag the mass behind her, grunting with each step from the effort. Her black knee high leather boots were growing heavier by the second. More than once she'd thought about leaving them behind. They were far too conspicuous with their numerous buckles. She had never understood why the Messengers had insisted on everyone wearing them. Undoubtedly they were durable, but Lily still found them ridiculous.
         To take her mind off of the task she let it wander through her vast range of emotions , from the relief she’d felt when she finally realized what she had to do, to the self disappointment of not planning things out better. Then she drifted to how things had reached this point to begin with. Just a few years ago, at the age of 15, the Messengers had come to her house looking for her. They had heard the rumors throughout the nearby village of Pinevail of her special ability. No one quite knew how, but Lily had a knack for knowing when someone was lying. She couldn't always tell what a person was lying about exactly, but she always knew when it was happening. Men in dark clothes and capes had come and taken her away to be trained as one of the Collective's Assassins, the Messengers. While not the most accomplished member of the group, she had a reputation for being quite clumsy, she was invaluable when it came to interrogation. It was much easier to obtain information when someone could pick out the lies. This had earned her the privilege of being able to visit her father when ever she wanted. She did this often, as he was getting old, and frequently helped keep his house tidy and comfortable. On this most recent visit, once she'd finished cleaning, she started poking through things in her father’s musty old house, having nothing better to do on that chilly day. Everything could have turned out so different, but she had come across a box, awkwardly tucked under some clothes in a closet. It looked like her father was going to be going on a trip. Curiosity coursing through her she had opened the box and was shocked at it's contents. The more she looked through the box the more panicked she became. And now she was here in the woods, almost certainly bringing the world to an end.
         A new rush of anger enveloped her and she paid little attention to where she was going dragging the sack into a particularly rocky area. When the end of the bag thudded particularly hard on the ground after sliding off of a particularly large rock, a deep agonized moan crept up from inside the bag. Dropping everything she spun round and leaped on to the now moving mass. She balled her fist, placed her other hand on top of it and drove her elbow down hard on the end of the bag. A sickening smack was heard of bone hitting bone and everything was still and quiet again. She waited but only the wind could be heard now, once again blowing her hair out of place.
“It would be wiser for you to stay in that condition”, she muttered “You’re lucky I haven’t killed you…yet. But we’ve got a long way to go. And I need you alive.”