Unwilling (Book One of the Compelled Trilogy 1) (12 page)

Jace turned his head to look at her from across the fire, as if pulled by her gaze on him; a look crossed his face that Rowan could not name though she a kin’d it to desperation. It was replaced quickly by a smile that made Rowan’s knees shake and he jerked his head, indicating he wanted her to follow him and traipsed off into the darkness, oblivious to the reaction he was causing in her.

Rowan followed slowly, feeling completely comfortable with following Jace off into the dark woods. Once she would have said that the only person she knew better than herself was Elias, with his painted fingers and soft, reassuring words, his protective nature, determined to never let any harm come to his little sister. But she no longer knew Elias, could no longer guess what he was thinking by the look in his eyes, he was as much a mystery to her as her mother.

But Rowan knew Jace. She knew the trivial things; his favorite color, food, season. She knew his secrets; that what he regretted most was not being able to say goodbye to his parents, that he was terrified of water, he had never learned how to swim, and that dogs scared him senseless. Though why he had taken up arms with her- so to speak- remained a mystery to her, and she was terrified to ask him, afraid that he would tell her that he just felt
compelled
to. And Jace knew her, she had even told him about her mother, about the long nights when father was gone and the look of horror and pain in his eyes as she had ducked her head in shame had nearly shattered her apart from the inside. No, there was no two people in Lamarina that could claim they knew each other better than her and Jace, and that’s why she felt so comfortable following him off into the tree’s, she knew she was safe. Rowan’s heart sped up at the thought of being alone with Jace without an escort, and she blushed to find that she really wanted to be alone with him without an escort. Well maybe she wasn’t safe from her own intentions.

Rowan was thankful for the darkness that disguised the blush creeping up her neck.

Jace stopped by his bedroll, a thick pallet of soft blankets, torn and dirtied from life on the road.
I’ll have to find better sleeping arrangements once the rainy season hits, and Gods I hope we’ve caught up to Elias by winter.

“I asked Pickard to pick something up at the Market, while he was there.” Jace said turning to face her as she walked up behind him. He was holding something in his hands, with a cloth draped over the top. He looked anxious, and nervous, constantly shifting from one foot to the other. Jace looked up at her quickly then looked down again as if embarrassed and Rowan had to stifle her laughter, for fear of chasing him off altogether. She thought it was adorable that after all they had shared with each other that he could still be shy and nervous around her. “Well, I, I hope you like it.” He burst, shoving the cloth into her hands then darting back the way they had come, toward the fire. Rowan felt unusually cold in his absence.

Rowan removed the cloth to reveal a small pastry. A honey tart to be more specific. She made a gasp of pleasure,
this is possibly the sweetest thing any one’s ever done for me,
Rowan thought, gratified. She turned her head after Jace wishing to thank him, but he was already back by the fire, his shoulders hunched, staring into the flame.

She devoured, inhaled, savored every bite of the honey tart, reveling in the sweet flaky pastry with honey that dripped down her throat; though it was slightly stale, she moaned low with every bite she took, closing her eyes and rolling the food around her mouth as if to commit the taste to memory.
This might be the last honey tart I ever eat.
She thought sadly, shoving the last bite in her mouth and licked her fingers.
If Elias were here, he would make endless fun at me for carrying on the way I am.
Rowan speculated and let out a small hiccup of laughter.
If Elias were here, I would not be here at all!
She snorted, finding the notion absurdly funny.

A twig snapped somewhere behind her and before the flicker of a thought could cross her mind about the sound belonging to a deer or something of the like, a strong hand clamped over her mouth. Rowan kicked out viciously, trying to scream through the fingers, her heart dropping into her stomach like a pile of bricks and for a moment Rowan felt a fear so deep that the world tilted, shifted, went gray black and threatened to overwhelm her but

Rowan breathed

long and deep

“Now I’m gunna letya go missy, and I don’t wan’ no hollerin outta you.” The voice belonging to the hand whispered, and it was so surprising to Rowan, she immediately calmed herself and ceased her struggles.

His voice sounded like dust, or sand, if such things had a sound. He released her and Rowan turned to face him. The dust voice indeed belonging to a man so ancient, she feared he would die and wither away before her very eyes. “I’m not such a young person, anymo’, and I regret I must sit down befo’ my legs give out.” He announced. Before Rowan could as much as nod, he plopped down right on Jace’s bed roll, gathering a blanket about his legs as though the bed belonged to him and he was merely loaning it to Jace.

Rowan studied the old man, her brow furrowed at the curious sight before her. He had long, frizzy, dark gray hair, matted and tangled, and Rowan was disgusted to find dried bird poo had dripped down the side of his head and plopped onto his shoulder. He had a long beard, reaching half way down his chest that was wrapped with twine that crisscrossed about the coarse hairs, holding the thick beard together. He had wrinkled skin, as if he had sat in water to long, and it was dark, as ones skin tends to brown from years under the scorching sun.

He carried a long walking stick that was crooked and made of sturdy black wood that he placed across the blankets above his knees, which bounced up and down with energy. His long, slender, fingers rested on the stick and Rowan noted his dirty fingernails, half-moons of dirt caked in the long nails. His nose was large and dominated his face under his squinty eyes, which darted about as if searching for something.

The old man made a clicking noise with his tongue, looking around the forest floor as though he had dropped or misplaced something precious to him
. His sanity perhaps
, Rowan mused as he held out his hand and rubbed his fingers together, shooting her a quick frown.

“Who are you?” Rowan asked once she concluded the old man would not speak. There was something about him that seemed familiar to her, as if she should know him, but didn’t.

“I am Jacob, you fool!” He exclaimed quietly, not looking at her, his tone suggesting she should already know this. “But peoples round these parts call me that Crazy Old Man Who Lives in a Tree.” He smiled at her, and she was startled to find he had no teeth, just a pair of squishy pink gums. “By chance do ya have any nuts? Moon Shine loves her some nuts.” He asked her, his eyes staring wide, making him look surprised under his scraggly coarse eyebrows. Rowan not knowing what to say to that, said nothing.

She heard a scratching noise behind her and a second later, a skinny, long rat jumped up onto Jacob, nuzzling its small brown chin into the grove of his neck. Jacob giggled like a little girl. “Stop that ya scoundrel!” He demanded, but there was no malice in his voice, and he even stroked the rat gently atop its head.

“What is that?” Rowan asked as the creature turned its head to her, lifting its nose in the air as if to smell her.

“This is a Moon Shine, fool, and don’t you forgets it. She don’t take too kindly to peoples not memberin’ her name.” Jacob said seriously, leaning towards her slightly, his foul breath puffing out and making Rowans stomach curdle.

“Yes, but WHAT is she?” Rowan repeated.

“She’s a ferret, you foolish girl!” Jacob proclaimed, then more to himself then to her, “expected her to be smarter, but no. Not a lick a sense in either of em’.” He grumbled further under his breath, unintelligible words Rowan couldn’t hear. Then he leaned forward suddenly, a twinkle in his eyes, as if he was sharing some great secret. “She was sents from the moon ya knows, that’s whys I call her Moon Shine. Her eyes’ is made of tiny pieces of the Moon. Look.” He said seriously, darting forward and grabbing the unsuspecting ferret about her midsection and shoving the wiggling animal in Rowan’s face.

“That’s very, nice.” Rowan said hesitantly, turning her head away from the angry ferret. Moon Shine squeaked and Jacob placed her back on the ground, where she skittered and ran in circles.

Jacob sat back and smiled at her, grinding his gums together, his eyes giant circles in his head. “Got any nuts? Moon Shine loves nuts ya know.”

“Look, I really must be getting back, the others will have wondered where I’ve gone.” Rowan stated, though it seemed unlikely that the others WILL have wondered where she had gone, as she often wandered off on her own to think, to not think, to just breath and be and try to make sense of the chaotic hours and days that slipped by her, accumulating to months of uneasiness and sleepless nights and a so far futile search for her brother that probably didn’t even want to be found.

Rowan stood to leave, hoping the old man would be gone by the time Jace settled in for the night. Jacob launched forward with surprising speed, clamping his cold fingers onto Rowan’s wrist and tugging her back down. Rowan stumbled and caught her knee on a rock; she sucked air in through her teeth, her knee screaming in pain that jolted up her thigh and settled in her stomach.

“Yous best member’ missy. This path you are on will not bode well for you. Abandon it, lest you end up just like him. Go home, hide like your mother, she had the right idea.” Jacob’s eyes sparkled in the darkness, his voice low. Moon Shine clicked in agreement.

“I’m not sure I understand…” Rowan began, cringing from pain in her knee, in her head; a memory, red and angry, lurching out of the little box she had put it in that was just as quickly shoved back in, as she tried to move away.

“Your one in the same, missy. You cants trust him. He’ll kill the both of ya.”

“The both of whom?” Rowan shook her head,
he is absolutely mad!

“Didn’t tell em nothin’ no, Katia made one promise and didn’t tell em nothin’.” He mumbled to himself, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. “If you do not bow to him, he will kill both of ya. You can’t save him neither. Believe me, I’ve tried.” Jacob replied loosening his grip on her wrist. He sounded broken, and looked off in the distance, cringing away from something Rowan could not see and probably did not want to see.

Rowan rubbed the tender skin around her wrist and watched shocked as the old man stood and hobbled over to the nearest tree, and with astounding youthfulness, vaulted himself into it, lodging himself firmly into a fork in the branches. He instantaneously proceeded to snore and Rowan blinked several times to assure herself that Jacob was real and she had not summoned him in some honey tart sugar coma.

Moon Shine clicked a couple of times, then curled up in a ball on Jacob’s chest, staring at her as though to protect the old man from the dangers she might possess. 

Rowan stood stunned for several moments before Pickard’s robust laughter, as he stumbled away from the campfire, brought her crashing back to reality. “Crazy old man.” Rowan decided, walking away from the tree holding the sleeping person, toward her own sleeping pallet.

Rowan covered herself with a thin blanket, her mother’s screaming voice suddenly thrusting its way into her thoughts.

Please Rowan! Please!
Her mother had screamed at her, sobbing.
And the blood, Gods there was so much blood.

Rowan shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut before the images began popping into her head and fell into a fitful sleep with a dark feeling uncurling itself in her chest.

NINE

“ILL SHOOT HIM DOWN!” Someone screeched, jolting Rowan from her slumber with a lurch and a confused expression dangling between her sleep crusted eyes.

“ILL CHOP THE WHOLE TREE TO PIECES IF I MUST!” Another man yelled. Crackling laughter burst out in reply and ended in a dry erratic cough.

Rowan sat up in her pallet, her head foggy, and her eyes filled with grit. She rubbed at her eyes as shouts and screams forced their way into her thoughts.

Rowan blinked.

She looked around her, her eyebrows low over her eyes, only to find men running in all directions, in various stages of dress. Some were fully clothed, others in only sleeping pants, their bare chests exposed and Rowan ducked her head at the inappropriateness of it. Mills, who had on just a simple pair of undergarment shorts, held a bow up to his face. An arrow was notched and ready to loose at Jacob, who stood barefoot in a tree with an arm full of large pinecones, chucking them down on the angry, scrambling men.

Jacob cackled again as he caught Galamee in the back of the head as he fumbled to pull a shirt on, causing the plump man to go sprawling on the ground. “DAMNIT!” Galamee shouted, scuttling on his hands and knees to cower away behind a tree, holding the back of his head as though the pinecone would have caused him to bleed.

“Mills!” Rowan shouted, trying to compose rational thoughts in her still groggy state. Mills looked around wide eyed, unsure of Rowans outburst. “There will be no shooting of anybody!” She stated, managing to disengage herself from her blanket. She walked to stand below the large tree Jacob was in, only to be smacked by a pinecone hitting her with ferocity in the forehead. “GAH!” She shouted out, glaring up at the old man, who shrugged and hooted with laughter, aiming another pinecone at Pickard, who was just standing still, looking up at Jacob as though he wasn’t sure if he was real or not.

“Alright everyone! I think it’s time we pack up and move on!” Rowan shouted heatedly, moving to stand out of the firing range and rubbed the stinging welt that had sprung up beneath her hairline. She heard grumblings of agreement and the occasional curse as Jacob threw another pinecone.

The camp dissolved, the men shouldering their packs, stamping out the fire that had dulled to small glowing embers unattended in the night. When all was clear and all traces of the group virtually erased from the area they turned to Rowan expectantly, their many different colored eyes looking to their leader for direction.

Rowan hesitated
. Elias’s trial is growing colder and we are falling farther behind.
She had heard rumors that Elias had left some of his soldiers in Tramial, a moderate sized town, about three days ahead of them, if they pushed hard. “Were making for Tramial. I’ve heard Elias plans to return there soon, and if we travel fast we could make it there in three days time.”
Hopefully
, she added to herself, her unease from last night creeping back upon her and making her second-guess her decisions.

“When I was in town last night I spoke to an inn keep who said Elias had changed course and was making his way back toward Bellham.” Jonquil threw out, rubbing his hand over his baldhead.

“Are you sure, that would mean we are backtracking by at least a day?” Rowan questioned, sighing.

“Yes,” Jonquil answered, “She uh, she said Elias left something important there, and now needs it.”

“What was it that he left there?” Rowan asked, frowning.

“She didn’t know. Just knew Elias was headed that way. She said her uh, her sister saw him personally and asked to stay with her a few days to get out of Elias’s path.”

Rowan thought a moment, shaking her head. “Alright then, we make for Bellham.”   

A mutter of agreement flowed through the group once again and they all turned as if they were one entity and began picking their way through the forest. Rowan watched them go, the nine men that she has accumulated in her months of travel and wondered, not for the first time, if they were doing it of their own free will, or if something in her very soul was unintentionally controlling them. Rowan sighed heavily, knowing she would probably never know the answer, and it killed her, eat at her insides until she felt so hollow at times, it was a wonder she still managed to breathe, that she could make any of them do anything they did not want to.

Rowan glanced back at the tree Jacob was in and was surprised to find it empty, no trace of Jacob left in the tall tree. Rowan looked around her in search of the old man, but he had gone and Rowan could not say she was not relieved; let him be gone and take his foreboding words with him.

Rowan turned back to the group, the back of Jace’s head catching her eye, his blonde hair sticking out like a beacon among the varying shades of brown. He was talking excitedly to Barton about something and Rowan wished she were privy to the conversation.
I wonder if her ever talks about me
. Rowan blushed, as if her inner thoughts could be plainly read on her face and was thankful she was walking behind the group so they would not see the red heat creep up her neck. She’d known Jace the longest.
Well not really known
, she corrected herself,
more like acquainted
, but she had talked to him many times before, in the Market. His father made the best honey tarts she’d ever tasted.

She pondered again why he had been so eager to come with her and she resolved that one day she would ask him, when all this was over. A twig snapped behind her and Rowan whirled, eyeing the thick tree trunks and full branches. Though she saw nothing now, she swore she had seen the tail of that ferret scamper behind a tree, but chalked it up to a trick of her mind.

“I kin check it ou’ if you would like?” Rowan used to be unnerved by Chevs accent; the way some words were clipped and others seemed rounded, the O’s more pronounced.  Chev had an overwhelming presence when he stood right next to her. Rowan still fought the urge to take a step back whenever he approached, though she knew he would never harm her. He was dark skinned and shaved his black hair close to his head. He had deep brown eyes, but they appeared almost black, a bottomless well that seemed to look right into a person’s soul, at their very being, exposing all their secrets to him for him to judge and condemn if he so choose. His face was hard angles and he had a scar running from his temple to his ear on the left side, and another across his neck, as though it had been slit. Both were puckered angry white lines and Chev wore them proudly.

He was also missing his pinky and ring finger on his left hand and most every one called him Two Fingered Chev, though Rowan thought that was impolite and just called him Chev. She’s not sure where he had came from, only that he was with them one day in the woods, bringing a freshly felled deer with him, the first real food their group had had in weeks, so they let him stay. Although most thought he was an assassin and would kill them all in their sleep one night, for no reason at all except he had wanted too. Nobody would say it to his face though, for fear of being another tally on his arm.

Perhaps the most unsettling thing about Chev, not his scars or demeanor, though those were perturbing, were his tattoos. He had 24 crude lines etched into the fleshy part on the underside of his left arm. He would not talk about them, and if you brought them up, he would simply flare his nostrils and stalk off, returning later with some new meat for diner. A bribe perhaps, never to mention the tattoos again. Most thought it was the number of heads he had chopped off. Some speculated it was the number of years he had been alive. Others yet, ventured that that is the number of years he had lived in Hell with Dovorin, the four head Devil who owned the souls of the worst kinds of criminals, before returning to Varisin.

“I’m fine thank you’” Rowan said hastily after she’d gathered that she had just been staring at Chev and, suspected, he probably thought she had lost her mind. Rowan thought that maybe she had lost it, the night her mother had… 

She shook her head vigorously, erasing the traumatic memory and smiled at Chev. Who of course did not smile back.

Chev did not smile.

He did grunt at her however before gliding back to the main group, his feet barely making an indent in the ground where he walked, as if he were a ghost, a part of their world in all but physical form. Jonquil hooted with laughter and beside him, Tomman gave a weak watery smile at Pickards latest tale, no doubt, another grand adventure where he had saved hundreds of people, or stopped a near pandemic catastrophe by himself. With his eyes closed. And one hand tied behind his back. And his feet bound. Tomman laughed softly and Rowan’s face lit up in a smile at Tomman’s soft, almost feminine giggle, his musical laughter floating its way back to her.

Tomman was a small boy, barely 11, and all the clothes he owned were too big on his slight frame. Several weeks ago at a village they had stopped in Rowan had wandered off by herself to ask for news of her brother’s travels when she happened down a dark path. She had heard crying and she hurried toward the sound thinking a child had been lost, but what she found was much worse. A middle-aged man with alcohol rank breath and graying hair was holding a small boy- Tomman- by the scruff of his shirt. He was using his other hand, closed into a fist, to whack the small boy by the ear, who was crying and saying he was sorry.

Rowan could only think of all the times her mother had beat her and she shuddered, barreling forward in a rage so consuming Rowan’s body shook and she had to stop angry tears from welling in her eyes. She laid a hand on the older man’s shoulder. He had started, surprised that an onlooker had seen him and began a spiel of reasoning’s as to why the boy deserved the abuse, Rowan did not let him talk long. She had used the gentle voice that she hated so much, told him to start walking and never stop, and never to come back for the boy again.

Every few days Rowan wondered if that man was still walking, his feet cracked and blistered, the flesh flaked off to reveal his toe bones scraped down to nubs at the endless miles he had walked, leaving a trail of blood behind him. Or if he had dropped dead somewhere, lying in a pile of his own filth, his body rotting and picked apart by scavenging animals, exposing his ribs and his life’s blood spilt beneath him.