I had always believed in magical creatures and I still do. Now more than ever is their proof of their existence. Although my belief has stayed, my faith in their goodness has left. In the past six years, I have learned that the best way to get to know somebody, is to live with them.
Six years ago, I had lived with my parents and brother within one of the hill civilizations name Tillape. It is a small town filled with adequate schools and shops and equally adequate citizens. My parents treated me good enough and I had no reason to leave, especially at the age of ten. However, that is exactly what I did. I think it is important to understand my reasoning because sometimes I even question my younger self
Growing up bedtime stories had been a huge influence on my life. throughout my childhood, my parents read me bedtime stories to teach valuable life lessons about sharing and being a good member of society. However, after I had grown old enough to no longer need bedtime stores, I continued to read them on my own. I loved the fantastical aspects which I couldn’t find in my town. Through these stories I had learned that the forest surrounding Tillape was filled with fantastical creatures who lived in towns like mine. The stories featured intriguing adventure tales of the creature’s heroic and self-sacrificing actions.
Now, I stand at the edge of Rogue’s town limits, picking fruit for our annual midsummer feast. My bare toes curl in the dewy grass, fresh from the morning mist. The field I pick our fruit from looks out on the trees which line the town. This evening all the creatures from Rogue will leave their small birch homes, pass all the small stone shops, and enter our town’s dining hall. Baskets of bread, towers of steaming meats and vegetables will fill our dining table for the celebration. After that, everyone will engage in the hour-long dances of midsummer. Although I am forced to do my daily work, midsummer is one of my favorite nights of the year. because I am usually able to go off and dance. However tonight I will be escaping back to my human village, back to civilization, back to my family.
As I mindlessly pick the jewelberries, I recall the nights in which I lay in bed plotting my escape from Rogue and compare it to my plotting only six years earlier. Back in my human village my reasons for “escape” were juvenile fantasies which would eventually be killed by the reality of the creature’s lives and their treatment of humans. I was bored of the mundane routine of day to day life, going to school and then coming home only to spend the rest of my time with my parents and brother. It had been a life of privilege, but my mind was infested with dreams. I was told from a young age to pursue my dreams, and never give up. This is generally good advice, especially to adults whose dreams are of opening up their own shop. This is not good advice when all you want to do is live with magical creatures who you believe are all good and all knowing, who would never harm a child.
As I am lost in thought, a small voice speaks,
“Are you done picking your share of the jewelberries, Kassy? We can go play cards once you are finished with your chores.”
It's Lily. I smear a smile on my face and turn to face the small girl. Her freckled violet eyes shine up at me with a look of wonder, and my smile cannot help but spread the full width of my face. I give her a small nod of assurance and we begin our walk back to Rogue’s common grounds. As I trudge behind Lily, her “bounces”, as I like to call her steps, remind me of the first time I saw her. She had been six, four years my minor, when she has stumbled into my home on accident, mistaking it for one of the other human’s home.
“Sorry!” she has shrieked out when I had tried to swing a pan at her, thinking it was an intruder. From that moment on she had followed me around like a lost puppy dog, going wherever I go. One day we had been on the shores, she was playing with seashells while I did my morning chores, when she had stopped and suddenly spoke,
“Kassy, you’re like the big sissy I never had, ‘ya know?” Then she continued working like nothing had happened, but from then on, I had seen her not as an acquittance or even a responsibility, but as my companion, my haven in the hell on Earth that was Rogue. She was the only one who reminded me of the humanity I had received back in Tillape. All the other creatures in Rogue treated me as a cog in their machine, the same way in which they treated all humans.
Lily was also the only one who I was reluctant to leave. In fact, if my safety wasn’t in danger, I would happily stay in Rogue to see Lily grow up. sadly, that was not the case. The thought of bringing her with me back home had also occurred to me. However, bringing a living, breathing fairytale creature into a human village would not work out well. It would result in the exposure of the true nature of the creatures.
The storybooks, which I read from as a child, described the creatures as heroes who used their magic to defeat villain's and bring justice to the civilians. The epic tales, looking back, are obviously exaggerations, for there are no villains to defeat or general injustices to stop. However, when you are five years old it doesn’t matter how unrealistic something seems, all that matters it how intriguing the story is and how inspiring the characters are. These stories are exaggerated for the sole reason of preserving the creature’s race. Their magic is fueled by children’s belief and faith, without it they would cease to exist.
I was awoken from my daydream when the grassy ground suddenly gave way to a narrow cobblestone road, which wound through the whole village of Rogue. I glanced over at Lily’s bouncing figure and spoke,
“’Ya excited for the grand feast tonight?”. She nodded widely and practically began jumping up and down. Lily had always loved the feasts, and not just because of all the rich food. She mainly loved the way everyone was brought together, sharing polite conversation, dancing, and feasting. It was her favorite thing to do, right after playing cards with me.
Cards was the only exposure, other than my own story, that I had given Lily to the human world. She knows of human’s existence and their importance to creatures’ survival, but not much else. We had begun playing cards after my chores one day because Lily was bored and there aren’t many games in the creature world. Life is about survival and controlling the human race, nothing more, nothing less. Now playing cards was a weekly, sometimes daily, activity we indulged in after I finished my chores.
We arrived at my home, which was at the end of one of the back roads where the cobblestone turned to dirt. From the outside, the house appeared to be only one room big, with two dusty windows on either side of the front door. On the porch was a wooden chair, one of the legs held together by tape, and a single plant, which was on the verge of death. I lead the way up the two molding stairs which led to my front door. I only had to lightly push on the door, since the door could neither lock nor fully close. The doorway opened to the single room, which had a bed and sink to the left side, a card table set up in the middle, and a bare desk to the right of the room. There was no sense in having any kitchen appliances, for all the humans had to report for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the main square. We were not even trusted to feed ourselves, one of the many restrictions the creatures had on us. Lily beelined for the third drawer of my desk and fished out a deck of cards. The edges were heavily worn and some of the cards, the jack of hearts was the worst, were splitting down the middle.
Lily gave me a sheepish smile and sat down with me at the table. When I had originally began spending a lot of time with Lily, I was ashamed at the state of my home. All the creatures, especially the high families, had old yet inviting homes with interiors filled with all the necessities and then some. Lily was used to comfy sofas and end tables with coasters on them. Despite all that, Lily hadn’t been judgmental of living conditions, she knew it was out of my hands. Since I was a human, I was placed in a run-down home, given only the leftover furniture no one wanted and told to make do with that. In the past six years, I have not received any money for ten hours of daily work, and instead told “You are human. We are creatures. You are lower than us, you don’t earn anything for your work, it is expected. Or else, expect death.”
“Ok Kassy, ‘ya wanna play go fish o war?” Lily asked me while her hands simultaneously shuffled the cards. I shrugged, my mind elsewhere. I received a questioning look from Lily, but then she just began dealing the cards out for go fish. Once she was done, she analyzed her cards and began to say something when there was a light tap on the door. The visitor slowly pushed the door open and spoke,
“Hey Kasandra, it's time for us to head down to prepare food for the feast. I’ll just wait outside, but don’t take too long we can’t be late.” It was Naoimee, one of the other humans who was also held captive in Rogue. I sent an apologetic look to Lily, which she returned with a smile, and grabbed my apron which laid wrinkled across my bed. Lily followed me on the way out, the game of go fish sitting forgotten at the vacant table.
Naoimee and I arrived at the dining hall quarter ‘till three. We had parted ways with Lily near the main square, where she veered off and headed towards the creature’s family estates. We rushed through the back doors and into the kitchen, immediately beginning to chop vegetables. After five years of doing the same tasks in the same order, it was useless to waste time on complaining. Besides, complaining could get you extra chores for a whole month. As I mindlessly chopped away at the thin carrots, I was sucked back into my daydream about escape. What did I expect to come back to in Tillape? Also, that’s only if I even make it back home. The biggest flaws in my plan is the escape from the dining hall itself. I was expected to stay in the hall all night, continuing to cook and serve any food which was ordered. Curon, the head of the top high family, kept a close eye on us, sending guards to watch our movements in the kitchen. He was used to having to deal with escapees. In the past ten years there have been several humans who have tried to escape, and several dead humans, all dying before even leaving Rogue’s city limits. My plan of leaving the midsummer feast was insanity, which also meant nobody expected it.
There is a high chance I will die tonight, however, it is almost certain I will die if I do not try to escape. This is due to Curon’s system of keeping and using humans. After their sixteenth birthday, he no longer wants us. Instead, we get sent off to one the more powerful creature villages, where we will be placed in factories and worked to death.
Although Rogue is hell on earth, it is at least in the countryside. The powerful urban villages are crawling with disease, horrible sanitation, and powerful lords who will kill you for breathing the wrong way. I would not last a second.
When five o’clock arrives, we are instructed to begin bringing out the first course to all the guests. I grab a tray of the steaming appetizers and exit through the main kitchen doors. I’m greeted with a large room filled with many creatures, all seemingly enjoying themselves. I quickly pass out the rolls to some of the creatures, and then head back into the kitchen. The rest of the servants are still passing out food, so I am ultimately alone in the kitchen. The door to the outside, which connects to the back of the kitchen, hangs slightly open, inviting me to join the darkness. This is my best chance, I convince myself. I will be sixteen in five days, and there will not be a better opportunity to escape before then, except for now. I grab a bag of trash, to give myself an excuse for my absence from the kitchen, and quickly dash out the back door, walking swiftly towards the dense forest.
I am roughly halfway across the patch of grass which stands between the hall and the forest when I hear small steps behind me. Lily. I turn around, facing her directly, and whisper
“What are you doing out here Lil’?”. She picks her eyes up off the ground and says
“Well, Kassy I was in the kitchen waitin’ for you, to talk ‘ya know, and then I see ‘ya walk straight through, grab a bag, and run through the door. So, I decided to fallow ‘ya?” She tries to give me a soft smile, which I can’t help but reciprocate. My mind ever so briefly thinks back to my plan to bring Lily, but then I remember the danger and where she belongs. Here, in Rogue.
“Well Lily, I was just bringing out the trash,” I raise the bag in the right hand, “ ‘Ya go back in there, I won’t be long”. I smile sadly at her and then add
“I love you Lily”. She responds with a smile and a casual “Love ‘ya too” and bounces back into the hall, no suspicion anywhere in her voice nor actions. I reluctantly turn away from her vanishing figure, and stalk back towards the forest.
Ah, the forest. It had been this very forest which I had arrived in after my escape from the human village, and now I am going back. I set the bag down against an ancient tree towards the front of the forest. I speed walk quietly straight through the forest, not really having a sense of where I should be going. Then suddenly a large weight collides with my body, my head hits the ground and all I can see is the fading, star-filled night sky, barely visible behind the dense treetops.
If I had been any less hellbent on escaping Rogue, I would have realized the risk of Lily following me outside. As I lay there dying, my existence slowly fading, I thought about how I got here. This is what I came up with:
Lily’s long absence must have alerted her parents, who weren't inherently worried, but after your ten-year-old daughter has been gone for 30 minutes with no warning, something is up. They must have gone out the front doors, looking for Lily, but had instead saw me, a human, stalking off towards the forest alone. They must have altered the guards of a human leaving the hall, and the guards must have had followed me into the forest, killing me once they caught up to me. I hadn’t broken any important rules, but their hatred towards humans, the scum of the earth, had driven their actions.
I now saw my body for what it was, an abhorrent excuse for a human body. The guards retreated from it, showing no regret on their stone-cold faces.
I watched my body lay there for three days before anyone found it. Who knows what they were doing out in the forest?
I became another statistic, another example of what not to do and why “you should obey the high families and appreciate their taming of humans”
The news had obviously reached Lily, who at the age of ten didn’t even understand that people could die. She had never faced death head on, in its cold eyes. Although my death numbed her, it also brought back a memory of a conversation we have shared late march. I had been explaining my past life before Rogue and how I escaped home. I had told Lily that
“I had always read of the creatures in the forest, how epic of lives they lived and what heroic acts of sacrifice they committed for their people. I had thought you guys were great, but then I arrived and was treated as scum, as less than, as a slave.” Back in March, all Lily could do was stare with a look of disgust, but now Lily knew what she had to do. I don’t know if she did it for me, or for just the goodness of the world. She titled the small, wrinkled paper with “The truth of the creatures” and began with “My name is Lily Sagon, I am a creature, and this is the truth of the creatures, of what they are, and what they stand for”. A sad smile grew on her face as she wrote, and her leg bounced slightly.
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