Your Narrator Meets a Kid Who Ruins Everything

The road’s packed with people, all moving in the opposite direction from me. A few—clearly the wealthier ones, judging by their colored clothing—ride carts laden with goods and pulled by tired-looking horses. The majority, though, are walking on feet, holding baskets and bags of all sorts and chattering brightly.

I grit my teeth, keep my mouth shut, and continue putting one foot in front of the other. Who cares if they’re going to like, do capitalism or something at the market and then die right after? Say I go ahead and warn them, what would would come of it? One, they’re not real. Two, I can’t draw attention to myself, the moment someone asks how I know attackers are on the way I’m toast. Three, no one’s going to believe me anyway. And four and most importantly, they’re not real.

My stomach and feet both give out around the time the sun’s directly overhead. Honestly, I can barely believe I lasted this long [1]. To think Mrs. Morrell said “Wow, you woke up late today!”—when I’d set off, the sky had still been pink with the light of dawn!

When I see others breaking off and heading down a well-grooved forest path, I take an educated guess and go down the path with them [2].

It only takes a couple of minutes of walking to know I’ve made the right decision. The foliage’s too thick for me to see anything yet, but the farther I walk, the louder the sound of trickling water gets. And then the trees thin, then disappear entirely, and I find myself with everyone else in a broad clearing, hemmed in on the far side by a crystal-clear looking stream.

With a sigh of relief, I follow everyone down to the bank, sit down with a heavy plop, and wipe the sweat off my brow. Aurelia’s wool tunic is stuck to my back like shedding skin, and my feet feels wet and gross inside her leather shoes—I made a bad, bad mistake by not packing an extra pair of clothes in my running-away bag. I’m going to be rancid by the end of today [3].

As I wash one of my apples in the stream, a kid I’d noticed walking in front of me the entire way hops over to my side. He looks a little like my eight year old cousin, with a pudgy nose and fat, pinchable cheeks.

“Hi, miss,” the kid says, with the slightest lisp to his words.

I nod back warily, and tuck my sling bag closer to myself.

He grins at me, and I notice he’s missing his front baby teeth. He holds up his two hands, so I can see roasted potato cupped between his two palms. “Will you trade with me?”

I look down at the apple, then back at him. “With this?” I clarify.

The kid nods enthusiastically, just as a man—the one that had been walking hand-in-hand with the kid on the path—comes running over. The moment the kid is within an arm's distance from him, the tension in his whole body relaxes.

“Winfred!” he scowls. Judging by their similar facial features, the two are definitely father and son. He folds his hands across his chest. “What did I tell you about not wandering away? There are a lot of people here, what if you got lost?”

“I want to trade with the pretty lady!” he pouts.

Pretty? I mouth to myself.

But of course, I am. I’m Aurelia now. I’d seen my reflection as I bent over the stream to dip my apple in the water. The rippling surface had fragmented Aurelia's features, but that still hadn't been enough to erase their elegance: her high nose, small mouth, pale skin, wide coy eyes. Badass arms and shoulders too.

“Miss?” Winfred asks.

“Uh, yeah, sure?” I glance over warily at the man, but when he smiles and shrugs, I hand over the apple and take the potato in return. It’s cool to the touch. Winfred and his father must’ve roasted it before they’d set off this morning.

Winfred immediately takes a big chomp of the apple. “Are you going to the Harvest Festival too?” Winfred asks, spraying juice everywhere. His father gives him an exasperated look, but he's clearly an indulgent father, because he doesn't intervene but sits down on the grass too, at an angle so he can see both Winfred and me at once.

“Uh…” I say, but I don’t really see a reason to lie to the kid. “No, actually. I’m going the other way.” I point west.

Winfred’s forehead wrinkles. “Why are you going that way? Don’t you want to go to the Festival?”

Uh... I wave my hands vaguely. “I’ve something to do.” I say.

“But you’ll miss out on all the fun!”

I flake off the thin burnt skin on patches of the potatoes, just to have something to do with my hands. “It’s nothing special anyway—”

“But it’s so great!” Winfred sounds so aghast, like I’ve just pronounced Christmas is the worse day of the entire year. “There’s so many people there, hundreds, thousands. And there’s such good food too, and you don’t have to pay for it. Oh! And music and singing and dancing too. Then in the morning, you can walk around the marketplace, there’s so much stuff there—”

Oh God, get me out of this conversation. I can’t take a look at his bright, happy face much longer. “I don’t know,” I say desperately. “It’s like that every Sunday, why don’t you come back some other weekend—“

“Wait, you live at Silverwood Keep?” He says Silverwood Keep like somebody from rural Louisiana might say New York City.

“I mean, not at Silverwood Keep, just near it—“

“Wow,” he says, his voice hushed. “We only get to go twice a year, for the Spring Festival and the Autumn Festival. Mama and Papa mostly sell our stuff to the merchants passing by on their way there, Mama says we live too far to go ourselves.” His mouth droops. He looks challengingly at his dad. “But I think we can go more often! It’s only a three days’ walk.”

I stuff the potato whole into my mouth, and stand up while swinging my bag back over my shoulder.

“Sorrygotgonicetomeetyou,” I say through a mouth full of carbs, and scramble hastily out of there.

“Okay!” Winfred’s boyish voice calls out after me. “Thanks for the apple, miss! See you at the Harvest Festival!”

“Not going,” I mutter.

I tell myself not to look back—but in the end, just before I head back into the thicket of trees, I give in and turn back. Winfred’s sat down now too, right next to his dad, talking away in between bites of apple. He doesn't just look like my cousin, he's as chatty as him too.

He’s not real, he’s not real, I repeat to myself as I get back the path. None of them are real.

One foot in front of the other, that’s all I, Gemma Tran, have to do. Then I’m scot-free and out of trouble.

Everyone around me are all basically extras anyway. Cannon fodder. They probably wouldn’t have anything interesting to say, even if I try to talk to them. Maybe they’d even all say the same lines, over and over again, like NPCs in video games. “I love the Harvest Festival!” “I’m so excited to go to the Harvest Festival, are you going?” That sort of thing.

I ignore the fact that Winfred seemed plenty able to say whatever he wanted.

I ignore the fact that his dad seemed plenty able to care for him too.

Winfred would never see the Sunday market, probably. The attack was happening tonight, so—

I yank myself away from the thought, before the image of Winfred's sweet open face going slack and lifeless could crystallize in my mind.

They’re not real, I think, gritting my teeth—So what if Winfred ends up being one of the victims, so what if he never speaks again—

I stop in the middle of the road, so abruptly that the woman just in front of me curses as she steadies her baskets, and swivel my feet back towards the east.

Damn it.

With a swallow, one foot in front of the other, I walk with the flow of the crowd, back in the direction of the Keep.

Then, I calculate how long it’s going to take me to reach the Keep, then how long it might take me to convince someone to believe me about the upcoming attack—and I break out into a run. I’m going to have to sprint back the entire way, to even have the slimmest chance of getting there in time [4].

Maybe after raising the alarm, I can lock myself in the dungeons and put a knapsack over my head. If I hide myself really really carefully and pretend I'm not there, maybe I can survive.

===

[1] Turns out fear of dying can do a lot more for you than 11 years of gym class.

[2] I mean, there’s really only two explanations, right? It was either a medieval outhouse or a medieval picnic area, and honestly, I’d take both/either right now (Turns out, it's both, only there's not really an outhouse, just some thick bushes).

[3] On the other hand, the books are always joking about how bad medieval people smell. Maybe the stench will actually help me blend in? Like a smell disguise.

[4] I once read online that adrenaline helped one woman lift a whole car up to rescue her kid. I'll need adrenaline to perform a miracle like that on me to pull this off, because before this I’d never so much as finish three laps around a track.