Page 86 of A Simple Truth (the Freckled Fate #2)

85

FINNLEAH

I f I thought Gideon was outlandish with his flying skills, I thought wrong. My life flashed before my eyes as Aurelia spiraled us up and down in complete chaos while maniacally laughing. My knuckles turned shell white as I held onto the saddle with all my might.

“Put your arms up!” she shouted through the wind, letting go of the reins as her arms rose above her head.

“Aurelia!!!” my thrashing voice roared, as our dragonfly plummeted in a free fall. At least it was clear now why she was banned from flying.

“Weeeeee!!!” she screamed, enjoying the increasing speed of our fall.

I screamed too. Though my screams were filled with growing nausea and terror; hers were nothing but thrill and excitement.

If I wasn’t going to die, I was definitely going to pass out, frantically holding on to the saddle belts, praying that the white, leather straps were strong enough to keep me alive.

“Aurelia! Aurelia! AURELLIA DE VILLIAR!!!” my voice erupted with unnerving alarm as the red, sandy dunes grew closer with each passing second, yet she still didn’t pull up on the reins.

Only at the very last second, right before the inevitable crash, she grabbed onto the reins, yanking them up until we roughly hit the ground.

The moment our dragonfly was steady, I rapidly unbuckled myself from the saddle, dropping to the welcoming, warm sand as I fought the rising vomit. Aurelia, as if she hadn’t nearly killed us, beamed with pure joy as she patted the creature, whispering sweet nothings to it before sliding off her seat. She adjusted her adventure hat, her hair a perfect mess as she pulled the flying goggles off, ignorant of my sickly, pale face.

“How fun was that?!” She fixed her skirt. “I could live in the sky.”

“Yeah, I am going to be the one flying us home,” I retorted, looking for a canteen to wash out the sour taste in my mouth.

“Yeah, we’ll see,” Aurelia batted her eyelashes at me, grabbing our compass, a map, and a couple of ladies’ binoculars. “Come on, Finn. We better start walking if we want to get home by morning.”

Aurelia pointed with her binoculars to the small village peeking down below the sand dune, hidden well between the red, rocky hills. “Somehow, I never imagined people living in the Desolate Desert, I had always envisioned it… desolate ?” she mumbled as we laid flat against the ground, almost buried in the sand, watching a few people meander down below. Small gusts of wind caressed our skin, warning of the soon approaching night. I tucked a few loose strands of my hair behind my ear.

“I didn’t know either…” I replied. I, too, carefully examined the village. The houses were small, red, clay squares, half buried in the sand, windows just slightly above ground level—a way to preserve cooler temperature during the day. The roofs were short and flat.

However it wasn’t the village that drew my attention, but the trailing shadows behind that red mountain. “I am going to check it out,” I told Aurelia. “You stay here and go back if I am not back in an hour or two,” I directed.

“I don’t have a watch here. How would I know it’s been an hour or two...” She shook her head and I had to remind myself that she didn’t grow up outside like me, aware of every shift of the sun almost down to the minutes, but before I could reply, she said, “I’ll count seconds. It’s only 7,200...And I’ve spent hours counting before, until 10,000 or more. So that’s what I’ll do,” she decided.

“Good idea, adventure partner!” I winked at her, smiling. “We will have to go on more adventures together. Though next time, I vote we don’t fly.” I nudged her with my elbow, and she dramatically rolled her eyes at me.

“I’ll consider it,” she replied, digging her feet a bit further into the sand.

Without another word, I silently snuck down the sand dunes. I made my way to the red, round rocks surrounding the village, resembling tiny mountains. The shadows they cast kept me well hidden as I crouched closer to an opening between them.

My eyes narrowed as I saw the first two guards. They stood by large, curved doors holding their spears straight. There, high above the door, carved straight out of the red rock, was a little balcony and a window.

I climbed up on a boulder near me, pulling out my binoculars to look. A gasp almost escaped my mouth when I saw through the open curtains, a painting covering half the wall. A painting I had seen before. Of a mother and her four children. A painting matching exactly the one I had seen in my vision.

The picture was there, and I could bet my life on, the book being there too. I lowered my eyes back to the entrance. A few large, male figures came up to the doors, as the guards checked…their papers? Cards? Something in their hands.

I slithered down from my spot, the soft sand absorbing the shock from the small jump. I turned to head back to Aurelia, retracing my steps back past the mountain, pausing when I heard quiet female sobs coming from around a corner. I hesitated at first, and yet I still found myself walking towards the sound.

“Oh.” A girl about my size gulped as I stumbled right into her. I motioned with my finger to my mouth for her to stay quiet. She was a bit younger than me, closer to Aurelia’s age, barely covered. Clothed only in a mahogany bra that was embroidered with shimmering gold beads, exposing her full breasts. Her skirt, resembling more of a large belt, was sitting low on her hips with a long strip of fabric down her front and back, scarcely covering her lady bits.

She stayed quiet but her puffy, red eyes darted to the guards behind me, still clearly within our sight. In a split second, I grabbed her with a tight hold, placing my hand on her mouth as I dragged her away until we were out of sight. She didn’t object and I let go of her a minute later, hiding us behind one of the boulders.

“Do not worry, I won’t hurt you,” I assured her, glancing back just to make sure we were out of earshot of the guards.

“Even if you did, I wouldn’t care,” she replied, her voice heavy and laden. “Who are you?” she asked, her eyes scanning up and down my body.

“I am…visiting,” I blurted out, unsure how to explain the true reason why I was here or who I was.

“ Visiting ? How did you get here?” she paused between her sniffs.

“Why are you crying?” I questioned, taking another look at her. She was pretty and well fed and yet, there was something in her eyes that was broken, it gave me chills.

“I just needed to cry for a bit,” she retorted, her voice turning defensive. “You will need to let me go soon, or they’ll start looking for me.”

“Who will start looking for you?” I probed, noticing the slight shift in her tone and her face at the mention of them, whoever they were.

“People,” she replied nervously, scratching her arms until they were almost bleeding.

“What is it that they make you do?” I asked, aware of the skimpy clothes she had on, though clothes mattered very little compared to the dull survivor’s look I had seen so many times before.

“Nothing I cannot do,” she answered this time harshly, but her lip quivered at the words. She wiped away her tears, “Sometimes it’s just hard and sometimes I need to cry about it. If I cry now, I won’t cry in front of them. And I don’t want them to see me like this.” She tried fighting her tears, but she couldn’t stop them, as heavy sobs came back to the surface, suffocating her words. “I can’t go back, I just can’t…” she finally broke down.

“Come with me. You don’t have to go back there,” I offered as the last remnants of the sun settled behind the horizon.

“You don’t understand. I can’t. You’re not from here. If I go, my family will suffer,” she replied. “If I don’t go back now, they’ll think I’ve run away, and they’ll come for my family.” She wiped tears with her hands. “And it’s not like I could go anywhere, it’s a deadly desert for miles and miles ahead. We have nowhere to go other than Elfland, and I’ve heard what they do with anyone trespassing their borders…” Her voice shook as she shrugged.

I glanced over to the rocky area, to the tired village hidden by the dunes.

“Give me your clothes, then,” I replied without hesitation.

“What?” Her eyes widened.

“Here, give me your clothes.” I started pulling my shirt off. “I will go in your stead,” I responded. Her eyes grew even bigger as she opened her mouth, unsure, though, the tears had stopped. “We look similar enough. It’s dark, it’ll be fine,” I assured her.

“But they’ll…what they do there…you do realize what it is that I do there?” she asked.

“I do realize…and that’s precisely why I am going. You want to leave; I need an excuse to get inside. It’s a win-win.” I gave her a half smile, shoving down the protesting reason within me.

“There is nowhere to go, even if I wanted to…” She shook her head. “There is no escape from this place.” A little shiver ran through my body at her words.

I had believed the same thing before. Simply because it was the truth for me then.

And yet, now I was here. Alive and free.

“Sometimes Lady Fate works in mysterious ways, don’t you think? But I for one am a bit tired of her theatrics.” I winked at her, trying to ease the thick tension. “If you want to get out of this place, whatever it is, then come with me.” She stood there not entirely sure, not convinced. “I can’t promise you a blissful future, but I can promise you freedom and a choice,” I told her, aware that no promise of riches would ever overcome the promise of choice to someone who had it taken away before.

“Okay,” she mumbled, as she stopped scratching her arm.

“Okay, good.” I smiled despite the anxious feeling in my stomach.

“But if we are going to do this, we need to hurry, we all have to be back by dark and I’m late,” she said, concern mixed with determination filling her face. I nodded and we rapidly hiked the sandy hill back to where Aurelia was already saddling the dragonfly.

“Change of plans, ReyRey,” I declared, pulling off Tuluma’s necklace, placing it into the saddle bags for safety. The stranger girl stared wide-eyed at the large dragonfly and angel-like girl next to it. “You go back home, and take her with you, send Xentar or anyone else willing to help here.”

Aurelia paused, examining the girl and I, wordlessly questioning what the hell happened. “Are you really planning on staying here?” Her voice laced with concern as she watched me hastily exchange outfits with the stranger. “Finn, I don’t think it’s a good idea. Maybe we go back, and we come back with help…” she started, and I knew it sounded more reasonable, more logical.

“Maybe she is right…” The stranger now wearing my shirt agreed, succumbing to the doubts within her eyes. “I should go back.” She panicked, her eyes darting back to the mountain as her face filled with dread at the sight.

“No. I can do this. Truly. I might not be able to save the world, to free every slave, to bring peace to all the suffering hearts, but I can help you now and that is what I am going to do,” I replied with confidence in my tone. At those words, the rising fright settled within me, yet Aurelia still wasn’t convinced as she opened her mouth to object, so I added, “Aurelia, I survived over a year in the Rock Quarries, I will survive a couple of days here,” I assured her with a lopsided smile.

I survived this long, and I’d survive more. I reminded myself.

The stranger turned to me; her eyes filled with disbelief but also a flicker of hope.

“Find Anfissa, tell her that you’ve helped me. She’ll help you. Tonight is a bidding night... Each girl will be auctioned for the night and regular rules don’t apply.” She grimaced at that. “Why are you doing this…?” she asked as I helped her climb into the saddle, buckling the belts to hold her tight in place.

“Not so long ago, a stranger found me half-drowned, and knowing that I was a runaway slave, she still chose to save me, giving me a second chance at life. Sometimes to change the world means to help one troubled soul at a time. She helped me and now it’s my turn to help you.” I tenderly smiled at her, petting the giant insect before they swiftly took off into the night.