Prologue

Generations ago the whole world was at war.

The most powerful weapon of all was magic. Not the Bipidi-Bapidi-Bo-kind. The dangerous one. But, although it was dangerous, it was also extremly beautiful.

It could make flowers bloom, heal wounds and determin fate. For some more than for others.

After nearly a century of war, all the wizards and witches came together and agreed, that without magic the world would be a more peaceful place.

So they decided to give up their magic, though some more willingly than others, and stored it in a huge crystal in a hidden cave on the far side of the highest mountain.

One after the other they went to the cave and gave up their magic, returning to their homelands as normal human beings.

The last witch to enter the cave was a young widow, who was carrying her late husbands' baby. She alone had had to be forced to give up her magic, for she feared she

would lose her child without it. As she laid her hands upon the crystal, It heard her whispered plea, for they both wanted the same thing.

The unborn baby became the new vessel of all the magic in the world, though the widow now had none.

A month later the first Keeper of Magic was born.

Since then the magic has been passed down from mother to daughter along with the knowledge, that the magic will only awaken when it is needed.

And it hasn't.

 

Until now.

 

 

 

Chapter One

 I roll over under the covers. The summer has passed and the nights are getting colder again, proving my thin woolen blanket absolutely useless.

I sigh and try to settle down, but my shivering body makes the rickety bed shake and no matter how hard I try, I just can't fall asleep.

I lie like that for the next few hours drifting in and out of an unsatisfying sleep.

Finally, I give up.

It's no use.

It's too cold and too windy and too-

I loose my train of thought. I'm too tired to even think.

I sit up in my bed and look out of the window.

The sun shows no sign of rising any time soon, but going back to bed isn't an option either.

So I get out of bed and get ready as quietly as I can, so that I don't wake my mother. I have to tiptoe past her bed on my out of the small cottage. It's about  a mile away from the nearest city in one direction and two miles from the woods in the other.

Normally, on an occasion like this, my mom still being asleep and everything, I would head straight towards the woods.

I don't know how today is any different from yesterday or the day before that, but today, for the first time, it pulls me towards the city.

 

 

Chapter Two

When I get to the gate in the city wall there's already a long line of merchants and travelers waiting to be let inside. I head towards the front of the line, weaving in and out of carts and horses. As I get closer to the gate, the guards get into a heatet argument with one of the merchants, giving me the perfect opportunity to slip past them unnoticed. I'm only a few paces away from the gate, when I smell it.

The iconic stink of the city, rotten and foul. I can taste it as I breath in through my mouth in an attempt to make it bearable, but it only makes me retch.

I turn onto the market street and the crowd suddenly closes in on all sides. There are so many people here, that I can't even make out the market stalls on either side of the road. It's impossible to take a step and not trample on somebody elses foot or have your own foot turned into mush by a passing wagon.

Cloths in vibrant colours are pushed into my face. "Pretty colours for a pretty girl" The grinning merchant says to me (he's grinning so wide that I could count his teeth if he had any). He holds a blue cloth next to my face. "This would look great with your hair!"

Even though he's creepy and I don't like him at all, he's right. It would look great with my hair. My hair has a vibrant red colour, wich naturally harmonizes with blue and green colours. "I'm not interested" I turn away from him and start making my way through the crowd again. Even if I had wanted the cloth, it was obvious that I would never have enough money to be able to afford it.

Since my mother didn't have a husband we had to work ourselves. My mother basically took any work she could get her hands on, but I mostly stuck to hunting and selling the game to one of the richer farmers a couple of miles from our cottage.

He has a son, Aiden. I've been friends with him for ages, which could be one of the reasons why his father always buys the game I bring.

Something bumps into my shoulder and I stumble out of the way and into a samll alley.

I have no idea what it was, but that doesn't matter right now. I lean against the wall and take a deep breath, enjoying the open space aound me. No bodys pushing into mine. Breathing air that has not just left thel ungs of someone else.

The reasons, why I hardly ever go to the city. Nothing belongs to anybody here. Not the air we breath, not the soul under our boots. Not even the light that lets us see.

I sit down on the hard ground and close my eyes. I'm not used to big crowds. They make me nervous.

Anybody, who comes to the city on their own accord must be crazy. Which would make me one of them, but I know that already.

I sigh and start getting up again. This whole thing was abslolutley pointless. I could just as easily stayed home.

I'm halfway off the ground, when I hear someone say my name.

 

Chapter Three

 "Lily? What are you doing here?"

I know that voice. I look up and my eyes meet Aiden's.

The surprise on his face is evident. He knows for a fact that I usually hate going into the city and that I try to avoid it at all cost.

If I tell him now, that I'm here for absolutley no good reason, he would probably think that I've hit my head or somehing.

So I say: "My mom sent me to buy some herbs since winter is on it's way and we're all out." I shrug to make it sound convincing, but I can already see that he's rasing his eyebrows. He looks at me with a quizzical look on his face.

"Why didn't you just ask me to bring some the way you usually do?"

Crap, I totally forgot about that. I shrug again. My  hands are starting to feel sticky with sweat. I'm not very good at lying. I'm trying to get better at it, but my practice has obviously not taken any effect yet.

"I just felt like getting out of the house for abit. And you already do too much for me anyway."

I know that he knows I'm lying.

But just like he always does, he ignores it and shrugs.

"Okay. Let's go then."

He starts to turn around to head back into the crowd and I have no other choice but to follow him.

I take one last deep breath, before running after him.

We make our way through the crowd. Him alot more easily than me, as he goes to the city a lot more often than me.

Finally we arrive at the spice shop, which is located just off the market street, where it's alot quieter.

The sign above the door reads "SPICE SHOP! HERBS AND SPICES OF ALL KINDS".

I have only been here once before, with my mother a couple of years ago, because I had a bad cold and nothing seemed to be able to fix it.

The woman who had treated me had been very nice. She even gave me a spoonful of honey to make me feel better. I had never tasted honey before in my life, so that was a pretty big deal for me.

I hoped with all my heart that she was still working here.

 

My hopes are shattered in an instant. I'm only halfway through the door and I can already make out the person behind the counter as a very grumpy old man, with a white, unkept beard and a milky-white eye. A big scar runs over his milky eye and half of his face.

I shudder. I definitely wouldn't want to look like THAT.

Aiden confidently goes up to the counter and makes the order for the herbs I need. As I hear him count down all the things I need, i notice that I would have forgotten more than half of it.

I look around the shop to distract myself from the milky eye that keeps staring at me.

The ceiling of the shop is so low, that Aidens head nearly brushes against it. From it hang varieties of herbs, plants and roots of all forms and sizes.

The shelfs on the walls are packed with jars upon jars of spices and medicines. Some even have instructions on how to use them written on a small label attached to the lid.

If it wasn't for the scary old man, I could spend ages in here just looking at all the different things you'd be able to find here.

"Let's go."

Aiden pulls me out of my fascinated trance. LIterally, as he pulls me out of the shop by my arm.

"If you like looking at that stuff so much, why don't you just come here more often? It would save me a lot of time, you know."

He looks at me, a smile pulling at his lips.

"The guy creeps me out" I shrug and pull my arm out of his grip.

He shakes his head. "You're weird. A bear doesn't scare you, but an old guy does? Where's the logic in that?"

"A bear doesn't scare me, because I know I can take it out within a couple of seconds, but a guy like that? Didn't you see his scar? I bet you anything he's a good fighter. I wouldn't stand a chance against him!"

"Because you spend all your time fighting animals! You have never faced off agaisnt an armed opponent. It's one of the reasons why even the stable boy armed with a dagger would be able to take you out." He laughs.

probably because that actually did happen, and belive me, it was very embarrasing.

The girl who can take down an angry bear can't even hold her ground against a thirteen year old boy armed with a dagger. And he was alot smaller than me back then, which makes it even more embarrasing.

Aiden laughed about it for days.

"Teach me, then."

"What?" He scrunches up his nose in confusion.

"I said, teach me how to fight. You're good with a sword and I need to be able to protect myself. There's nothing against it really." I shrug. Now that I was in the city again, I felt more than ever the need to be able to protect myself. I just didn't feel save, even though Aiden was standing right next to me. In a fight I'd be helpless and, worse than that, I'd be dead weight on Aiden.

"But you're a girl." He looks at me like it's the most logical thing ever.

"And?"

"And girls are not supposed to fight. For one, they're not build for it. And they wouldn't be able to handel killing someone. Girls and swords just don't go together."

I swallowed my anger at his ignorance, keeping a calm face. I might be crap at lying, but I had a knack for hiding my true feelings.

"I'll get you to teach me how to fight, you just wait and see."

Pushing him would get me nowhere.

I need to make him see, that I need to be able to protect myself to survive in this world. Otherwise, he was never going to teach me.

Dangerous situation here I come!

 

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 31.05.2019

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