Elle slept, dreaming a pleasant, calming dream. In her dream, she was in a flowered meadow. At the center of the meadow there was a godlike figure with a soft radiance emanating from Him. He was calling to her, holding His hand out to her beckoningly. She came to Him and held His hand, and warmth washed through her. She knew that He would always protect her. This recurring dream was the only solace she could count on.

  When she awoke sometime later and her dream faded, her reality set in like a millstone tied around her neck. It was almost all bad. Elle was very glad to have met Juleen and Mira, though. They, like her dreams, were like a balm to her.

  Elle thought about her new friends as she got out of bed and went through her morning routine in the kitchen. The place was a mess. There was dried vomit on the floor, empty wine bottles lying about, and half eaten food still on the kitchen table. Her father’s pipe was lying on its side with fresh ash in the bowl. She knew there’d be no breakfast for her, so she didn’t bother looking in the cabinet. Elle could hear her father snoring heavily in the next room. She wondered what the shop looked like downstairs, and she hoped it was better than this. Pyter’s drinking and drug habits were getting worse.

  She found a rag, soaked it in the already dirty water from the basin, and got to work as quietly as she could. If the house wasn’t spotless by the time her father woke up, he would beat her without mercy. It had happened many times, and she was desperately afraid. Her mother never protected her from Pyter.

  The Chandlers lived above their candle shop in the lower city of Stonekeep in a very modest house, most recognizable by the paint peeling off the walls. On the floor above the shop there were two rooms. One room was where her parents slept, and one was the kitchen and common living area. There was an attic where Elle slept that was accessible by a ladder in the corner of the common room. They had a beat-up cupboard and a rickety table with four chairs in the living room and a bed and chest in the bedroom. There was a straw pallet in the attic for Elle. That was all the furniture they owned.

  When Pyter was a young man, he was somewhat famous as a bard, and his musical talents made him very popular with the ladies. He found a very pretty one to settle down with, but his life went downhill from there. He liked to drink and carouse too much, and he regularly spent all his money on wine. He was an angry drunk and he eventually made a nuisance of himself at all the inns and taverns in Stonekeep. Soon enough, no one would hire him to entertain in their establishments anymore. He found himself with a wife and baby girl, and he blamed them when he couldn’t travel to find new places to play. His disposition soured, his addictions grew, and the addictions replaced people as the center of his life. Now Pyter would do or sell anything to feed his habits. He had to keep his shop running or he wouldn’t have a roof over his head anymore, but it seemed that every month he was able to buy fewer raw materials to make his candles.

  Elle heard her mother, Corinne, struggle out of bed, use the chamber pot and stumble out of the bedroom. When Elle looked up from the floor, her mother looked at her gently with a tear in her eye. An eye that was blackened and bruised. Elle had seen this before, of course, and knew that she would have to do all of the shopping, laundry, and cleaning of the candle shop until her mother could show her face without shame again. A bad reputation for Pyter would mean the family had nothing to eat as their business dried up.

  Corinne was a beautiful woman once, but now she had frown lines in her face and a slumped posture. She had started drinking years ago just to try to dull the pain. Pyter didn’t let her have much drink, as he kept most of it for himself, but it was enough to make his wife a slave to her own addiction. Corinne’s hands shook a little bit as she sat down at the table. She looked at Elle again and broke down into bitter tears. She tried to keep quiet to keep Pyter from waking, but it was heart wrenching to watch. Elle started crying, too, and got up to hug her mother. They stayed that way for several minutes. When Corinne calmed herself, Elle pulled away to continue her cleaning. Corinne helped her in silence. Between the two of them, they finished the living room and the shop below in short order. The shop’s dwindling supply of wares made that a lot easier.

  Sooner than they would have liked, Pyter’s snoring stopped. They braced themselves for his presence, each lamenting the end of the only peace they would get this day. Pyter roused himself from his bed and they heard him use the chamber pot himself. When he came into the room, he was still carrying it in his hands.

  “Why isn’t this pot cleaned out yet?” Pyter demanded. As Elle moved forward to take the pot, he said, “I guess I’ll take care of it myself,” and he casually threw it out the open front window to splash all over the street and any passersby unlucky enough to be close. There was a shout of indignation from below that Pyter didn’t even notice.

  “Where is my breakfast, woman?” Pyter yelled.

  “Coming, dear! Coming.” Corinne dashed to the cupboard and brought out the only thing in it, a bottle of wine. Her hands shook as she poured him a cup.

  Pyter took a deep drink of it and sighed. “Better,” he said. Then he turned his bloodshot eyes on his daughter.

  Elle guessed what he had in mind for her, and she panicked. She didn’t say anything, but nearly leaped out the door, down the stairs, through the shop, and sprinted down the street as fast as she could run. She knew she couldn’t leave the city without the very real certainty of death, but she ran all the way around the inside of the lower city wall until she found herself at the gates of the city facing the fields and forest. She looked out wistfully for a long time as the farmers and travelers came and went. Finally, her thoughts went back to her mother who was stuck in the house with her beast of a father and she felt very guilty. They didn’t have anything to eat for the day, and she didn’t want her mother to have to go to the market looking like she did. She walked home.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  When Elle made it back to her house, her father was minding his shop, and she quickly walked past him with her shoulders slumped and eyes downcast. She went upstairs and found her mother laying on the floor cradling her left arm, which was red, swollen, and bent at an unnatural angle. Her lip was split open, and her nose was bloody.

  “Mama!” Elle exclaimed, crossing the floor quickly to her mother’s side.

  Corinne just cried softly in pain, hunched over and slowly rocking back and forth. Elle’s heart broke. She then felt a warmth filling her heart and flowing through her arms into her mother’s broken arm. To her astonishment, Corinne’s arm reset itself and the swelling went away. Her nose righted itself, then her eye and lip healed like nothing had happened. The warm feeling slowly receded back into Elle’s heart.

  “Elle? What happened?” Corinne asked, her mouth hanging open.

  Elle just shook her head in amazement. “I don’t know! It was like my dream. A warm feeling I had like in my dream. I think it came from a god.”

  “I thought those tales of healings were lies,” Corinne said softly, prodding her healed arm. She looked sharply at Elle. “Say nothing of this to your father, or he’ll find a way to ruin us both. Can you do that again?”

  “I don’t know anything, Mama. It just happened. I’m so glad it did, though.”

  Corinne and Elle sat with each other and talked for a long time.

  -----

  Kromwell sat on a plush sofa next to his mother in a beautifully furnished sitting room on the fourth floor of their home in the upper city of Stonekeep. The furniture was all polished, the gilded lamps were bright, and the bookcase across from the sofa was stuffed with dozens of books. A maid servant freshened the potpourri on the end table as she waited to fulfill any demand.

  Nystara Surekeel read from a leather-bound book with a colorful illustration on every page. Her voice seemed perfectly suited to her delicate features and ice-cold, blue eyes. She saw a golden hair stray from her carefully arranged curls as she read and tucked it behind her ear with a graceful gesture.

  “The newly crowned King Karnas consolidated his power over Fellton by doing what was right and just, publicly torturing and executing all who dared speak a word against him,” she read to Kromwell. “He ended the consolidation of his power with the traitorous Apothecary’s Guild, destroying utterly any who defied his will. In his generosity, King Karnas freely gave the wares of the apothecaries to all the people to enjoy and set farmers to grow more herbs to meet the people’s demand.”

  Nystara paused for a moment to eavesdrop on a conversation occurring in the study below that was becoming more heated. Kromwell turned his attention to the conversation when his mother did.

  “Don’t tell me what the prince wills, you dullard!” a deep, commanding voice said. “I control the Council of Elders, and so it falls to me to govern in his absence! I will decide what laws are enforced and which are conveniently ignored. Thus, you will not need to worry about any constables nosing around my warehouses. Now do as I command!”

  A smack could be heard followed by something muttered. It was probably an apology, Kromwell thought. The commanding voice issued more orders in a lower voice.

  “Aren’t you going to keep reading the history, mother?” Kromwell asked, unsuccessfully stifling a yawn.

  Nystara immediately smacked Kromwell across the face. “Silence, boy! I’ll read to you if and when I feel like it.”

  The sudden transformation in mood was shocking. Kromwell sat in silence rubbing the red hand mark on his face, trying not to cry. He knew better than to run out of the room without permission, though. His mother regarded his state with a sneer.

  “You’re not going to cry, are you? Should I have a dress made for you?”

  “No, mother,” Kromwell whimpered. He was so angry that the emotion came out as tears. Kromwell had never wanted to kill someone so much. His mother smiled mockingly, knowing full well what he was thinking and enjoying it.

  “Only the greatest displays of power can attract the attention of the ancient ones,” Nystara said. “Quit your sniveling. You’re much more likely to be their sustenance if you keep this up.”

  He silently tried to master his hatred as his mother calmly listened to the conversation taking place below. At last, they heard his father dismiss his lackey and walk up the stairs after the lackey left. Sivash Surekeel entered the sitting room in the act of unbuttoning the top button on his perfectly pressed shirt.

  “I require your private attentions, woman,” Sivash said in a casual but still commanding tone.

  Nystara immediately closed the book and handed it to her maid servant. Sivash took a look at Kromwell’s face as Nystara stood.

  “Something wrong with your face, worm?” Sivash asked.

  “No, sir,” Kromwell said softly, his face downcast.

  “It looks like there’s something wrong to me,” Sivash said. He took a step towards his son and smacked the other side of his face hard enough to knock Kromwell off balance where he sat on the sofa. “That’s better. Now both sides match.”

  The maid servant gasped involuntarily at this display of cruelty, despite having seen similar things many times before. Sivash immediately turned and faced her, his eyes narrowed in a deathly white face. He punched the maid in the stomach hard enough to send her to her knees.

  “Never interrupt a family discussion!” Sivash shouted at her.

  The poor maid could do nothing other than gasp for breath.

  “Do you have something to say, girl?” Sivash asked in a low voice.

  The maid bowed her head low and shook her head in a negative, still trying to regain her breath. Nystara smiled in perverse pleasure as Sivash grabbed the maid by the hair and yanked her head up to make eye contact with him.

  “Dismissal from my service is a much more permanent situation than you realize. See to it that you do better,” Sivash said in a deadly serious tone.

  “Y- Yes, milord,” the maid gasped out.

  Sivash pushed her head back to a downcast position and exited the room. Nystara followed quickly, already knowing what was demanded of her. Kromwell, knowing he would not be read to any more today, left the room, completely ignoring the misty-eyed maid. He paused by a mirror on the wall and rubbed his face, trying to dispel the red handprints. When he was satisfied, he left the house intent on finding his lackeys. He’d find some little urchin to work out his aggression on, and then he’d feel better.

  It worked every time.