A boggeymn in the night

Chapter 1: A rude awakening

Princess Malea slept soundly in her room, after a hard day of traveling, solving problems and other duties. In the middle of the night awakened by a shockingly loud scream. Malea bounced out of her rather large bad and onto the floor. Her heart beating quicker by the second she tip-toed across her room, slowly and quietly opened her bedroom door; only to find her older sister, Shardea dead and her mother and father fighting for their lives. Malea’s tears ran down her rosy cheeks. She quickly grabbed her silk, red coat, opened her door again, looked up the hallway and down the hallway but she saw nobody. Malea ran down the hallway and as she touched the doorknob a strange man snatched her coat and whispered, “Where do you think you’re going?” Malea froze with fear.
Luckily, one of their soldiers was still alive and came from down the hallway and commanded, “Release the princess!” Before the other man had time to respond the soldier swung his sword. Malea opened the door and gasping the cool night air in huge gulps, Malea ran away from the only home she had known, Malea sobbed as she ran, occasionally stumbling, banging her knees and tearing her nylon nightgown. As she was running flashes of her sister and parents were running through her head. She was still thinking about the soldier who was dead now, whoever that man was he had given Malea the chance to flee. She was deep in thought when she heard men’s footsteps so she was still running. After 10 minutes of running nonstop she had lost the men behind her. She was getting deeper into the woods now. Her supple, fur lined slippers had long fallen off, only her scarf remained because she had tied it around her shoulders. Brambles and prickles pierced her feet and her hand had been injured and it still had a piece of the stick from a papaya tree was still in the wound, but she ignored them, the panic she felt was stronger than the pain. A sharp branch lashed her cheek and she wasn’t aware of blood running down her cheek to blend with the tears. After what seemed like forever, Malea’s legs refused to keep running and stuck to the place where they were. She tripped over a root and went rambling down to the ground, mud staining the white part of the nightgown and changed the color of the red. Trembling from exhaustion and fear, she crawled to a rocky ledge not many feet away from where she had stopped running and curled up, hoping that she would survive the night.





Chapter 2: Rescuer or Pursuer?

Malea opened her eyes drowsily in the dazzling morning sunlight. The glare incised into her eyes, and she shaded them to see.
She had no idea where she was. In the terror of the night before, she had run blindly into the woods until she had fallen, her legs; too exhausted to carry her any further than where she was.
Looking to the left, she saw that she had come within feet of running off the side of a cliff and into a ravine of water. She gave a muffled shriek, and scampered away from the edge. It was then that she noticed the man behind her. It was like backing into a solid wall.
Malea froze, sudden fear making her heart leap into her mouth. She leaned her neck backwards cautiously, expecting to feel a knife, sword or something hard and sharp against her throat or chest; but the man only watched her in the sense that she had a cramp in her neck.
He was dressed in white, and had star-shaped scar across his face.
Malea opened her mouth to scream, but the man, with a speed that filled her with terror in her once more, bent and gagged her with one hand.
Pulling her close, he whispered in her ear...

"Don't scream, who are you?" whispered the man.

Malea, frozen with fear though he loosened his grasp around her hands, she probably would have been unable to do anything but gaze in fear.

"Who are you?" he asked again, an odd persistence in his voice. The question seemed to pause in the air and wrap itself around her body, swirling, searching... and finding. The gold pendant around her neck, a small phoenix that was the symbol of the royal house, slipped up from beneath the neckline of her nightgown and hovered in the air on the delicate chain her father had said was made in the deepest mines of Plima, a city south of the kingdom. Tears smarted at the corners of her eyes with the fresh realization of grief.

The man sucked in a hissing breath when he saw the royal symbol but he did not let go. A moan got higher in Malea's throat.





To be continued………………………………………………….