Prologue: Bound

I’m trying to protect him from little, mettlesome girls like you and from those that try to hurt him, for all his naivety.

It was interesting how the light of the mid-afternoon sun glinted off of the sparkling river, the rocks glinting like hidden diamonds, the crimson sky burned from the scorching August sun.  It made the boy smile as he felt the warmth of it on his bare back. It was always so cold in the house, so cold among the couple that lived there, and the little girl with the questioning eyes. And now, with these watchers whispering to him, a murmur in his ear like an insect, the boy annoyingly wished they would go away. Too many voices: a cacophony of sound that was getting him angrier and angrier each passing moment.

“You’re so stupid! You’re going to get caught.”

“She’s going to find us.”

“She already knows too much about us.” The boy murmured absently, letting his hand through the water. It was cold enough to numb him.  “It was only a matter of time before she decides to follow us.”

“She can’t know.”

“We should at least try to contain it. Do something. Anything.”

“I can take you up on that.” The boy said a smile on his lips. “If the council agrees, of course.” There was a mocking edge to his tone.

“Shut up. You know this is serious.”

“Stop making this out to be such an issue, then.” He snapped, his voice still quiet. “I can handle it better than any of you can. It’s what I do, if you remember.”

One of them laughed, another sighed.

“I still don’t think…”

“Thinking is going to kill us.” The boy said, cutting the other off. “If you want me to act, then let me do it. Otherwise let her figure it out, if that’s really what you want. It’s either her or us.”

They were silent at this, not even a murmur as they all thought over what the boy suggested, only the soft murmur of the water running over the rocks to keep him company. The silence was beautiful, something he did not have all that often, something to be cherished.

A voice suddenly broke the silence, a familiar one, far away, and most definitely female. She called her brother’s name, shouting from the house up on the hill a little ways away from his place by the rocks. It was an annoyance, her sweet, innocent little girl voice, one that the boy hated more than anything- not even the rest of the “council” that he could not avoid.

She broke through the trees, a little ways away from him, and he did not look up. His hearing was all he needed to see the movements as if he was looking at it. She stumbled slightly through the branches and the leaves. This place left her out of her element- she was a city girl in the middle of a country boy’s paradise. Not that he had ever been a country boy.

“Sean. Good. I found you. Why didn’t you answer?” she said, sounding breathless.

The boy smiled, and turned.

The little girl gasped, her brown eyes going wide. “What are you doing here? I told you to never bother us again.”

“See boys, I told you that she would figure it out.” He murmured to his “council” hiding unseen, and put a hand through his blond hair. They were strangely silent, watching the scene unfold almost with as much intensity as he himself was. “And what makes you so sure I’m trying to bother him? I’m not. I’m trying to protect him.”

He sighed, knowing the words were a double bind, a truth and lie, all in one breath. He paid no attention to it. “From little, mettlesome girls like you.” He continued. “And from those that try to hurt him for all his naivety.”

“I don’t understand.” The girl said, sounding frightened.

“Of course you don’t.” he sighed, pulling the knife from it’s hiding place in his boot, and she gasped, backpedalling as if she knew what was going to happen. “Children like you never can.”

His sight went red, a blur of color and sound and shapes, even though he knew his eyes were closed. Seeing without his eyes was a beautiful thing, when all sound was a color, intensities made up of all different shades and rainbows. They blurred together to make a coherent, singular image: the girl.

He smiled, knowing that he would finally get things to go his way for once, he sauntered forward, relishing each step before the final, inevitable kill.

Reviews

Very interesting story and really well written.
I think you've got the perfect mix of not giving to much away but also giving just enough away so that the reader knows whats going on.