Chapter 3

She hated them all: her parents, her siblings, everyone who had refused to believe her.  She had tried so hard to warn them and it just didn’t matter.

From the moment Ahleah had woken up in the meadow and pinched herself to make sure it was reality, she’d wished it had just been another dream, because in dreams you don’t wake up to find half your skin burnt off.

She hadn’t realized how bad it was at first. Everything was a little hazy at first: little shining lights like sky baubles, marmalade skies melting into orange gullies and chasms of flower feather petals. Then the opium poppy’s effect wore off and she felt the pain in her back, neck and face.

Ahleah had never known anything to hurt so much, and she howled, her previous drowsiness tossed aside like a dead rotten creature.

“MOTHER! MOTHER!”

“Leah, Leah, she’s with . . . “

“I don’t give a damn! MOOOOTHER!”

She gave up on words, and began to scream like an animal, and writhing like one too. Hands-Morgan’s hands- tried to hold her down, but he brushed her burnt skin, making the pain all that worse. And when Mother did arrive, it felt even worse-because at that moment, all Ahleah wanted was to be hugged and hugged over a loving shoulder on to which her tears could pour. But the slightest touch made her screech with agony, and the burns all over her denied her mother’s embrace.

That was the rational explanation anyway. Ahleah was now hysterical, far past thinking clearly, and her mind screamed ‘Rejected even now’ at her; even now, she was being rejected, for now her vision had come true, and like Cassandra she was cursed by foresight, a wretched freak.

Finally she stopped crying, and her breathing slowed. She became aware of it, and counted her breaths: in, out, in out. She became lucid enough to take in the dawn sky, and the smoke in the distance, and the golden grass around her, and the disgusting sight of her flesh. God help her, her flesh! It looked as if she had been flayed with a horsewhip and her wounds ripped open again and again with sandpaper - hideous, painful blisters across her body.

It was uncertain how the fire had started. Rumours of a vindictive enemy of her mother, a jealous one time lover of her father, a wretched Bedlam beggar-who knew? Some of the castle still stood, just enough for them to live in comfortably, and arrangements had been made for stone masons and architects to arrive and survey the damage. Still, all the old beautiful rooms, full of stained glass, cosy rugs, those stag heads that she and her dear sisters had loved to adorn with hats, all that was gone. So were many of their pet dogs-only Mulligan, the lurcher, had escaped unharmed; Jasper the terrier had burnt all the fur off his tale, and Wolf, named for his breed, was unusually subdued.

Many horses had died in the blaze: only a handful of yearlings in the pasture, and Nemesis and Trojan, the studs, and five broodmares had come out of the flaming stables. Ahleah had seen them: charred outlines as if drawn by a clumsy hand with a lump of charcoal; rubble and fried straw, with the burnt bodies of what had once been divine equine forms now strewn like emaciated demons on the ground. She’d dreamed about that in the night and awoken drenched in sweat, her lips cut from screaming. Her mother had held her tight, as now her burns permitted it, and soothed her, stroking her hair. And then Ahleah had asked her outright.

“Why did you save me?”

Mother looked shocked at that, tears pricking the corners of her green eyes. “Don’t ask such a question!” she snapped.

“WHY,” said Ahleah, in that same toneless voice.

Mother said nothing, just held her tighter, running a hand down Ahleah’s cheek and whispering “You’re still beautiful to me.”

Ahleah had been lucky to live. The flames had eaten through into the room; the smoke ravaging her lungs, the flames stroking and pinching her, scratching it, biting and knowing at her pale freckled skin, and scarring her from her left hip up along her side, , her shoulder, her shoulder blade, her neck and the left side of her face. There it cut through her eye and ravaged her eyelid. Her left eye now had a permanent bloody look, and was larger than her left eye, giving her a crazed look. Her hair had also burnt, and the remains had been shorn off, leaving dark stubble.

They still stung a little, but the pain eased once she had rubbed ointment into them and sipped tea made from the seeds of poppies, though they made her feel so lethargic that she couldn’t focus on much. She couldn’t amuse her sisters or throw sticks for Mulligan or stroke the distraught and traumatized Nemesis.

All she could do was wallow in thought. Her thoughts wee dragged up from the dark depths of her mind, from whence nightmares and cruel visions sprung. Her thoughts consisted of memories of her visions, and thoughts of her present situation. Scars, pain, agony, hate . . . oh the hate.

Hate still clung to her when she left the next month. She had healed enough physically to be able to ride. Coldly, she mounted Nemesis, and rode away. It was dark, the moon dying the world shades of blue with grey shades, captivating her for a moment, before she turned away, and rode the red roan stallion uphill, into the depths of the forest. There, in those dark twisted semi-human form wreathed with flora, she took for herself a new name.

Cassandra.