Chapter 4 The Breaking Ground

The sun had not yet risen when the heavy wooden door of our cottage creaked open, and the morning air was so cold that it felt like tiny needles pricking at my skin as I stepped out into the gray light. My father did not come to the door to say goodbye, for his anger was a wall that he had built between us, but my mother followed me into the yard with tears streaming down her face and a small, trembling hand reaching out to me.

Before I could walk away, she pressed a small silk pouch into my palm, whispering that it held a lock of her hair and a dried flower from our garden, and she told me to hide it deep in my dress so the elders would not find it. I hugged her one last time, feeling the fragile shake of her shoulders, and then I turned my back on the only home I had ever known to walk toward the Great Hall where the other twenty-nine girls were already gathering.

When I reached the village square, the heavy iron doors of the Hall were wide open like the mouth of a hungry animal, and as soon as the last girl stepped inside, the guards slammed them shut with a loud thud that echoed through my very bones. The sound of the locks clicking into place made several girls burst into fresh tears, but I only gripped my small bag tighter and glared at the high stone walls, for I hated that we were being treated like prisoners in our own village. We were marched into a side room where the air was freezing, and the elders told us to strip off our warm wool clothes and our colorful skirts, replacing them with thin, white dresses that were made of a silky fabric that felt like ice against my skin. These dresses were meant to show our submission to the beast, but as I pulled the flimsy cloth over my head, I felt only a deep, burning shame that our own people were the ones forcing us into this nakedness.

Once we were dressed in white, we were led into the main room where thirty large, polished silver mirrors had been set up in a long row, and Elder Bram stood at the front with a long wooden cane in his hand. "Look at yourselves," he commanded, his voice echoing off the high ceiling. "Look at the girls you used to be and say goodbye to them, for the King of the Beast does not want a village girl with dirt under her nails and a loud mouth, but he wants those who are silent and beautiful. From this moment on, your old lives are dead, and you are only prizes for the treaty that keeps us alive."

I stood in front of my mirror, but I did not look at my face with sadness, and I certainly did not say goodbye to the girl I was, for I stared into my own dark eyes and promised myself that I would never let them wash the fire out of my soul. Elder Bram walked behind us, his cane clicking on the stone floor, and he stopped behind me to tilt my head back with the cold tip of his stick. "Lower your gaze, Kiana," he hissed, his breath smelling like sour wine and old age. "A beast likes a girl who knows her place, and if you keep looking at the world like you want to burn it down, you will not even survive the first night in the forest."

"Then let them try to break me," I spat back, refusing to look down even as the other girls gasped in terror. "If the beasts are so powerful, why are they afraid of a girl who can look them in the eye, and why do you spend so much time trying to make us look like dolls instead of humans?"

His face turned a deep, angry red, and he pointed his cane toward the dirty stone floor at the back of the hall. "Since you have so much energy for talking, you can spend the rest of the morning on your knees," he shouted. "You will scrub every inch of this floor until it shines, and while the other girls eat their morning bread, you will taste only the dust of your own pride."

I didn't argue, for I would rather work until my hands bled than sit and listen to his lies, so I spent the next few hours scrubbing the cold stone while the other girls watched me with pity and fear. My knees ached and my back felt like it was breaking, but every time I dipped the brush into the soapy water, I imagined I was washing away the cowardice of the elders. After the floor was clean, we were all gathered again for the "Blindfold Training," which was the most terrifying thing I had ever experienced in my twenty years of life. They tied thick black cloths over our eyes until we were trapped in total darkness, and then the elders began to move around us, making loud, sudden crashing noises or brushing against our skin with pieces of rough fur and cold leather to act like the speed of the beast.

The girls around me were sobbing and screaming as they felt the invisible touches, but I forced my heart to slow down and I opened my ears as wide as they would go, for I wanted to learn the sound of the air moving. I realized that if I could hear the rustle of a robe or the scuff of a boot, I could predict where the "beast" was coming from, and soon I was the only girl who didn't flinch when a cold piece of fur swiped across my neck. This made the elders even angrier, for they wanted us to be terrified and helpless, but I was using their own training to become a hunter instead of a prey.

When evening finally came, we were exhausted and hungry, and the elders brought out a large silver pot filled with a dark, bitter-smelling tea. "Drink this," Elder Bram ordered, handing a cup to each girl. "It is a special drink that will calm your hearts and stop your trembling, for it is better to be a quiet lamb when the beast reaches for you than a struggling rabbit that might get its neck snapped."

I took my cup and brought it to my lips, but as soon as the bitter steam hit my nose, I knew it was a drug meant to make us sleepy and weak so we wouldn't have the strength to fight back. I watched as the other girls began to drink, their eyes growing heavy and their movements becoming slow and clumsy like they were walking through deep water, and my heart filled with a fresh wave of rage. I waited until the elders were busy helping a girl who had fainted, and then I quickly dumped my tea into a large potted plant near the wall, pretending to wipe my mouth as if I had finished it. I had to stay sharp, and I had to stay awake, because I refused to be a sleepy doll for the beasts.

Late that night, as we lay on thin mats on the hard floor, the Hall was filled with the sound of the other girls' deep, drugged breathing, but I remained wide awake with my eyes fixed on the high, barred windows. Suddenly, a heavy silence fell over the village, a silence so deep that even the crickets seemed to stop chirping, and I felt a strange, heavy weight in the air that made the hair on my arms stand up. I heard a soft thud on the roof above us, followed by the sound of something heavy dragging across the shingles, and then I saw a pair of glowing red eyes flash for a split second behind the iron bars of the window.

The beasts were already here. The King of the Beast was not waiting for the Blood Moon to watch us, for his legion was already circling the Hall like wolves around a sheepfold, and I could feel their predatory gaze pressing against the stone walls. My heart hammered against my ribs, not with the drugged peace the elders wanted, but with a fierce, hot anger that made me want to grab my hidden knife. I realized then that the elders were no longer the ones in charge of our lives, for we were already in the shadow of the forest, and as I stared back at the window where the red eyes had been, I whispered a silent promise to the dark. You can watch me all you want, I thought, but you will find that I am the only girl in this room who is still awake, and I am the only one who is ready to fight for her soul.