My mother loved children. She cried if one suffered hurt and fell into despair at the news of an innocent’s death. It didn’t matter if they were strangers and news of their fate arrived as gossip, or if they stood as family or friends. Sometimes the grief came as a long and unwinding spiral of cold and numb mourning, others carried the explosive rawness of heart-wrenching cries and wails. There were always tears.
I hated it!
Every year that mourning built through Ossard’s icy winter and thawing spring, only to mature into a deepening madness that rose with summer’s heat.
Summer…
Those balmy days brought the fever; Maro Fever. It spread from the docks and through the slums to take the weakest into its burning embrace. It loved the young, for winter had already found the old to claim.
During the summer, instead of my mother hearing of a child killed in some misfortune several times a season she’d hear of fever deaths every other day. We tried to keep such news from her, it trapping her at home, yet the sounds of passing funeral processions marked by the slow beat of mourning drums could not be kept at bay.
Poor Inger, so sensitive and emotional, so busy feeling other peoples’ pain – it almost drove her mad. Then one summer the real problems began…
Child-theft is a coward’s crime; that’s what my mother said.
At first I didn’t even understand it. I mean, how could you? Why would someone want to steal someone else’s child? But then it happened, marking the beginning of Ossard’s fall from grace.
A little boy was the first to be taken. An infant girl went missing half a season later, stolen straight from her crib. More followed, and they were all Flets. I didn’t know any of the victims, but I couldn’t miss their families’grief.
The outrages went on, haunting the alleys of Newbank – the squalid Flet quarter of the city. The Heletian authorities ignored it as they did all the problems that plagued our district. In the end, any attempt at handling it fell to our guild, the Flet Guild, who unofficially governed everything on our side of the river. Still, as skilful as they were at dealing with our other problems, this was one that they couldn’t overcome.
So the kidnappings continued, as did the misery they delivered.
Running our household kept Mother busy, it being one of the most prosperous in Newbank, and even of note in the larger and wealthier Heletian side of Ossard. She tried to keep an eye on me, as did Father, but that along with the family business, an inherited importing concern, just took too much of their time. One of our two maids could have watched over me, but they couldn’t hope to defend me. If I was to be safe, it needed to be at the hands of someone suited to the task.
Father found someone, a man of battle that came recommended as honest and able. Still, on the day he started, none of us were sure.
Like any young adolescent I came with some attitude. At Sef’s introduction, I displayed as much rebelliousness as I could muster.
“A bodyguard?” I asked.
“Just for now,” said my father.
Mother nodded, her movements anxious.
I said, “It’s because of the kidnappings, isn’t it?”
Father nodded.
Mother said, “No, not at all, and it’s just for a short while.”
I turned to face him – my bodyguard.
He stood tall and solid, in his late twenties, with blonde hair and blue eyes spaced between the occasional scar. He tried to smile to win me over. It sat strangely on such a big man, one made bigger by an armour of leathers, and a scabbarded sword at his side. He looked like he’d just come from the bloody battlefields of Fletland, our people’s war-torn homeland across the sea, so much so that I checked his boots for mud – to my disappointment they were clean.
He shifted, moving his imposing bulk awkwardly on our polished floorboards and setting them to softly groan. He just didn’t belong in our civilised household, or for that matter any home.
I smiled; having him around would drive my mother mad. “Well, I guess it could be fun having my own bodyguard.”
Sef’s smile broadened.
Mother sighed in relief.
Father grinned. “How about we give it a try by letting him take you to the markets?”
I was making it too easy for them, so I let my enthusiasm fade. “I guess…”
Sef’s smile faltered, making me feel bad. It was my parents I wanted to toy with, not him. He obviously didn’t have a lot of experience with children.
I found a grin. “I guess. He looks like he could handle anything.”
Their faces lit up.
Then I went on, “And he’s got a great sword.” I turned to him. “Can I hold it?”
He looked to my parents.
My mother paled while my father shook his head.
That’s when I delivered the punch line, “Killed anyone with it?
Mother nearly fainted.
He squatted, coming eye to eye with me. “Only those who deserved it.”
I looked into his eyes, cold pools that had seen a lot of worse things than a spoilt girl of thirteen.
Well, if I needed a bodyguard, I guess he could do the job. He was bigger than Father, and easily worth two maids and my mother in a fight.
Father filled the silence. “The markets then?”
Sef’s smile dropped, now all business. “The markets.”
I took a step back, my bravado dead.
All four of us took the family coach, Sef up front with the driver while my parents sat inside with me. My parents spoke of nothing in particular, just mundane household matters, both nervous as we headed out from home and away.
We arrived under overcast skies at the edge of Market Square. Crowds and stalls filled its wide expanse, all the way to its bordering sides marked by Ossard’s grandest buildings; the guildhalls; Cathedral; and Malnobla, the residence of the lord of the city-state.
Sef helped my mother from the coach and then reached up for me. He tried to be careful, but his strong hands held too firm, seeing me twist against them. In response he tightened his grip.
I gasped, “You’re hurting me!”
Father frowned. “Come now, Juvela, be good.”
Mother stood to his side, worried but silent.
Then we set out.
Sef walked a pace beside me, or a step or two behind. He watched the crowd for trouble, and my parents for directions, but more than anything he watched me.
Mother looked at some cloth, and then some fruit, before we headed towards the livestock stalls. Amongst them we found a boar running around an otherwise empty pen. Alone and in a strange place, the brutish animal had become frenzied, to the amusement of a small crowd.
The owner was trying to calm it, but the tusked beast lunged at his handling attempts. We watched for a while as the owner called in two men to help. Armed with long poles, they began forcing it into a corner. Soon they’d have it. With the chase over we moved on, my mother not wanting to watch its likely death.
I led Sef and my parents down a narrow path that cut between two banks of pens, some empty, while most hosted goats, pigs, or sheep.
My mother complained, “Juvela, the animals’ filth is everywhere!”
“But there are lambs ahead?”
Father looked to his women and sighed, then noticed my shoes already caked in muck. “Juvela, go and have a look, but take Sef. We’ll walk around and meet you on the other side.”
Sef offered an awkward smile.
My mother paled. “Can we leave her alone?”
Father put a hand to her back as he began to steer her away. “She’s not alone, she’s with Sef.”
I skipped down the path. I could see a dozen lambs in the last pen.
Sef followed, but also kept his distance.
The lambs huddled in straw near the fence, it made from a tight weave of oleander canes. I went to them, squatting down as I slipped a hand through the lattice to offer the nearest my fingers.
Sef walked past, coming to a stop only paces away.
The owner of the lambs, a fat Heletian, approached him to see if he represented a possible sale. They talked while I patted the closest animal, marvelling at its innocent face.
That’s when I sensed something behind me, it cold and sudden.
I looked down by my side to see a pair of black boots. A man stood there with his back to Sef, but Sef also had his back to him.
The man wore a dark cloak to protect against the coming rain that the sky promised, yet it also harboured something else – something akin to the chill that lurked in Sef’s eyes. Earlier, I’d been a little spooked by Sef, but right now this stranger had me terrified.
He said, “It seems you’ve made some friends.”
I just stared up at him.
“There are other friends you can make…”
Sef’s voice came firm and hard, along with the ring of his sword as he unsheathed it. “She has enough friends, sir, such as me.”
He’d escaped the lamb owner, moved around, and begun to push between us. I got up and stepped back behind him, putting a hand to his beefy hip.
Screams sounded from the other end of the pens. The three of us ignored them, caught up in our own intrigue.
Sef and the man locked eyes. At the same time, I swear, the very air chilled.
I looked down at the stranger’s feet, his boots dulled by a sudden frost as strands of mist rose to drift about.
That wasn’t right…
Sword in hand, Sef squared his shoulders and announced, “You’ll need to do better than that!”
The stranger showed some surprise.
I didn’t understand what they were doing, and had no time to think as I was distracted by a second set of screams. They were followed by a loud and bestial cry.
I turned to discover that the baled up boar was now charging towards us. Pink froth ran from its snout while blood streamed down its side; behind it, the beast’s owner lay tripped up amidst the pen’s ruined fence.
I cried out, “Sef!”
Following the narrow lane, the boar drew closer.
Sef hissed at the stranger, his sword held between them, “Get gone!”
The stranger chuckled. “So much to worry about!”
Sef said, “I can manage.”
“But so little time!”
The boar neared. We only had moments.
I looked for a way through the fence, but the gaps in the lattice were too small, and the canes too thick. The lambs on the other side scattered. “Sef!”
The boar was upon us.
He swung his sword up from between him and the stranger, half-turned, and then brought it down from over his shoulder and out to his side. The move left me under his arm, and between him and his steel.
The beast reached us as the blade’s tip flashed down.
The sword caught the boar on its great wet snout, with the charging animal’s momentum driving its head onto the razor-sharp blade. Sef held it stiffly, forcing its tip into a gap between muck-covered cobbles where he strained to wedge it.
The boar opened its own skull and then collapsed into the path’s mess. After a moment of spasmodic kicking, a wet squeal, and the spray of blood, it finally succumbed to a quick death.
Not wasting the chance, the stranger lunged around Sef’s side and grabbed for me.
I screamed.
Sef brought his knee up to hit the stranger under the jaw, and at the same time lifted his sword and brought the hilt down on top of the man’s head. He then turned and stepped back to pin me protectively between his back and the fence.
The stranger slumped to the ground.
Sef’s blade hung in the air in front of me, half its length red. He asked, “Juvela, are you alright?“
I whispered, “There’s blood on your sword!”
“Juvela, your parents are coming. Tell me you’re alright!”
I took a deep breath. “Yes!”
He stepped away from the fence, freeing me, and then squatted down to be eye to eye. “It’s alright, it’s the boar’s.” He smiled.
Still giddy with fright, I threw my arms around his neck to hug him.
He patted my back with his free hand. “Your parents are nearly here. Please be brave, I really need this job.”
I nodded.
Sef stood as we noticed that the cloaked man had gone.
I said, “He’s gotten away!”
Sef frowned. There wasn’t a trace of him.
My parents arrived.
Father cried out, “Well done!”
Mother dropped down to her knees in front of me. “Are you alright?” She was trembling and close to tears.
“Yes,” I said, “I like Sef, he’s great!”
Father laughed and nodded, while Mother sobbed with relief.
That night they discussed the terms of Sef’s employment over a roast boar dinner.
Sef became my closest friend, and, for me at least, part of the family. He had great patience. Not only did he watch over me, but he also talked and played, telling me stories of his adventures in Fletland.
Few families in Newbank could afford such a luxury, but it did keep me safe. Meanwhile, around us, the abductions not only continued, but worsened.
My burly swordsman never again had to raise a blade to defend me – well, not back then. In my early years I thought it was because I was unique, you know, like most children.
I was special!
The adults around me reinforced the notion by the way they watched me grow. I thought they were looking for something, some telltale sign of my hidden glory beginning to bloom. There wasn’t any. Later, I realised that they were just watching my all too ordinary progress into womanhood.
With its arrival the adults began treating me differently, like some kind of precious jewel. Only Sef didn’t. Secretly we joked that the biggest threat to me came from my overprotective mother and her countless rules.
My father, an observant and warm-hearted man, asked me to be patient with her overbearing ways. He explained that my grandmother’s dying wish was for my mother to take good care of her yet-to-be-born children. He said it plainly, telling me for the first time that Grandma Vilma had died in the riots that saw the Inquisition forced from Ossard, during the dark days known as The Burnings.
That moment had been a turning point for the city.
The expulsion of the Black Fleet marked the beginning of a new age of prosperity for Ossard, even for its marginalised Flets. Gradually the era faded, growing corrupt and wrong. That was when the child stealing had begun.
They never found the bodies, not even their clothes. Rumours abounded to blame everything and everyone. Occasionally, unfortunates would be set upon by accusing mobs, yet the kidnappings continued. It seemed that nothing could stop them.
The only thing the missing children did leave behind were their heartbroken parents, parents who carried unseen but deep wounds. Such hurts don’t heal, instead they’re re-opened by memories as if cut afresh every day. Left untreated they only spoil.
A city is the sum of its souls – when some begin to turn, all stand endangered.
It begged my maturing mind to ask what kind of city could allow such a thing? Perhaps a city too distracted by its own success.
Who cared if Flet children were being stolen from the slums? Not the Heletians ruling Ossard. In the city of Merchant Princes, anyone with the power to help was too busy doing business. In truth, it would take the theft of one of their own before they’d even notice the problem.
In many ways the city was as lost as its stolen children. And as the years passed and I began journeying through my teens, I felt lost too.
As my seventeenth birthday neared, my days revolved around little else than my mother grooming me for marriage. I didn’t know to whom. Nothing had been arranged, but whatever the future brought, a pairing would have more to do with influence and wealth than love. I didn’t care much for the notion.
The rude realisation that I’d soon have my own household and eventually children left me cold. I wasn’t ready for it. I could only hope for a kind man with a good heart, with whom my feelings might change and grow.
In truth, I think my real fear was of becoming like my mother.
Meanwhile, the abductions continued, three or four a season and always of children under twelve. It was a tragedy, but it meant that I was well and truly safe, and that meant that Sef was no longer required.
We all seemed to come to that realisation at the same time, both Sef and I, and my parents. It left me numb.
Surprisingly, Mother insisted on keeping him on. We were too used to having him around and wealthy enough to afford it.
As it turned out, he was as relieved as me that he was being retained – if now on broader duties. I can still picture him standing in our sitting room, anxious, as my father gave him the news. It left him with a huge grin and trying to blink back tears. Seeing the big man so vulnerable made me giggle. He went a deep red at the sound, but then burst out laughing. Even my parents had joined in.
I was so happy. We all were.
If we hadn’t offered the work, I think he would’ve returned to Fletland, but I knew he didn’t want to go. He was afraid of that place, haunted by memories of bloody battles he’d fought, and adventures that hadn’t always ended well.
Soon enough, he gave me another chance to giggle at him. This time it wasn’t because of held back tears, but my approaching coming-of-age. He began to get awkward around me, just like my father. It was very endearing.
Mother spent her days teaching me the skills of a lady; etiquette; how to manage a household; and how to master various crafts.
It was a bore.
In the afternoons, she’d send me to my loft bedroom with stitching to complete or some other enthralling task.
I’d often end up sitting at my window lost in the caress of the summer breeze. Once there, it’d not take long before I’d let my thoughts escape the monotony of my work to seek the freedom of lazy dreams.
Being from amongst the wealthiest of Flet families, I was destined to marry a Heletian to help Father’s business bridge Ossard’s cultural divide. The thought frightened me. Unlike the blue-eyed and blonde Flets, the Heletians with their dark hair and eyes matched to olive skin seemed so different and stubbornly traditional.
My mother sensed my apprehension, so she started adding a lotusbased concoction to my meals. It was reputed to induce thoughts of motherhood, love, and even lust. I didn’t notice any change, well, not at first…
Finally, and much to my mother’s relief, I began to look at the idea of a husband, my husband, with a fresh and hot-blooded heart. He became the focus of my dreams, shameful things, as my mother strengthened the dosage so that the fantasies crossed increasingly into the waking day from the sleeping night.
It threatened to become an obsession.
I could see him, handsome and wealthy, but at the same time gentle and loving – a Heletian merchant prince. He would be my hero, standing alongside me through the travails of life, living for me as I did for him. Together, as best friends, partners, and lovers – nothing less than a true couple. We would be inseparable…
Soon enough, bored with my mother’s lessons, the daydreams became an escape. More and more, when I wasn’t lost in a lotus inspired haze or taking lessons, I sought them out at my bedroom’s loft window, most especially at the end of the day.
In contrast, in the waking morning, when the grip of the lotus ran at its weakest ebb, my head often grew heavy with pain. At such times I felt trapped by a destiny promising comfort, but no excitement, where I could see a lingering lifetime only to be mercifully ended by the hand of Death.
Such bleak moods only fed my hunger for lotus.
I dreamt of a sacred union, of two souls joined by all things honourable in a partnership heralded by angels. It would be so beautiful that even the gods would weep. In time, with the passing of many happy seasons, children and prosperity would strengthen our most important gift to each other – our love…
I knew it was just a fantasy, but I couldn’t get enough of it.
I was being enslaved.
To my surprise, a respite surfaced in the strangest place; my sleep.
It began a little over a week out from my coming-of-age. At first it was just an image, like a glimpse of a distant land. It wasn’t until after its first few visits that I realised how much I needed it – something to counter my growing dependence on the lotus.
Every night this new dream came stronger and longer. It pushed aside stubborn scenes of handsome husbands, breathless kisses, and naked, sweat-covered shame. It ran like a vision, as if I flew free with the birds, seeing me glide high above a green and beautiful land.
Without the passion and lust of the lotus dreams it might sound like a bore, but it stirred something deep within. It gave a sense of life, hope, and liberation: It was of freedom.
Within its sleeping caress, I dove down into steep mountain valleys and soared up by rugged, snow-dusted peaks. Eventually, that landscape gave way to a rock-lined sound where the sea spilled in. Behind that coast rolled green hills that grew in height and grandeur, and not much farther back, a shadowed canyon cradled in their midst.
A sanctuary.
The canyon was warm, lush with life, and full of water’s song. Little streams trickled down tier after tier of the canyon’s moss-covered sides, falling lazily to its mist-shrouded and fern-forested bottom.
But the lotus always fought to reassert itself…
And out from that mist-veiled fern forest stepped my naked husband, his olive skin glistening, while the curve of his muscles caught the overhead sun. With a cock of his eye and a strong hand, he beckoned me, demanding that I come and make love to him…
Even my sanctuary could be violated.
My mother kept increasing the dosage, determined that I fall for the first man presented to me. She knew I could be rebellious and feared my initial reluctance. She wanted me nice and agreeable.
Amidst all this my headaches continued. At first I thought it was the lotus causing them, yet in the end I realised that the stronger doses actually worked to quell their pain.
After our courting, when finally he came to propose, the question would be asked with flowers – red roses. I’d always said; the first man bold enough to give me such a gift of scandalously coloured blooms would be welcome to my hand, for surely anyone so daring would have already won my heart!
Such daydreams were best had sitting at my bedroom window oblivious to the household and the crowded streets below. It was on one such afternoon that I found myself settled in and looking out at the maze of moss-covered rooftops, the whole vista still damp from a long morning of showers.
The soft green ridges reminded me of the rolling hills of my dream sanctuary as the afternoon sun peeked between clouds to highlight them with passing shafts of gold. Beyond that living mosaic climbed the sides of the steep valley we lived in; the Cassaro, Ossard’s cradle, and whose exhausted silver mines had given the city life.
The ancient range made the surrounding Northcountry difficult to farm. All about us, its granite pushed through the thin soil to loom rugged and stark.
The Northcountry was a treeless place.
The pine forests that had once veiled so many of its hills and mountain slopes had succumbed to a blight over a century past, and its few survivors long since been felled. The city’s symbol, its famed rose-tree, was also gone. Thickets of it had once lined the gullies and riverbanks along the valley-floor, but the same blight had also stolen it away.
Such a history saw the present slopes and valley-floor given over to pasture and crops, or where too boggy or steep, abandoned to herbal brush and a hardy oleander. The latter had spread without invitation many years ago, growing its long branches full of thin and poisonous leaves. The shrub’s one blessing came in its bright pink blooms, while pretty, they were also deadly. It was certainly no rose-tree.
But all that lay to the sides of my view and the inland depths behind, in the distance spread something else; the Northern Sea.
The port crowded the far side of the city. There, the sea’s deep blue drew a dark line between the mossed roofline of Ossard and the cloud-streaked sky above. In one place, partially hidden by a set of church towers, it glittered golden as it reflected the late afternoon sun.
A soft breeze tugged at my blonde hair, soothing in its caress. The sun also worked to seduce me as it set my pale skin aglow with its warm and sweet kiss. And all of it combined to make me sleepy.
I’d come here to daydream and endure a headache that had struck me earlier in the day. Its lancing pain had faded, but a muffled buzzing in my ears warned that it hadn’t finished with me yet. The aches had haunted me for weeks now, at first soft and barely noticed in the morning, but recently they’d worsened to grow rough and breathtaking. My mother had been concerned at the news, overly so, but she’d always been prone to fretting.
I closed my eyes to let the sun comfort me.
A mistake.
With the distraction of my vision gone, I became aware of just how wrong things felt.
The buzz in my head gained clarity as it cleared into a chorus of whispered voices. I couldn’t make sense of them, there were too many.
Was I imagining them?
While I couldn’t understand them, the longer I listened the more certain I became. Soft and busy, like the hum of a distant crowd, it came from nowhere, yet everywhere.
What was happening to me?
And then, as if that question was the key to unlocking a door, images flashed through my mind in glaring white and blinding blue, all against a void of the deepest black. They were of flames, leaping sparks and billowing smoke, and at the heart of it loomed a forest of stakes with people bound to them. Those poor souls struggled against their bonds and screamed, but the inferno feasted on them nonetheless. In a stark moment of horror, I realised that the elementals fuelling it planned on doing so for eternity.
I was watching a witch burning, something from the past that the poor souls had been unable to escape even in death. It was of Ossard’s riots, or more correctly, of the incident that had triggered them; The Burnings.
The vision left me shaken, but also different.
The tang of blood came to my tongue – my own!
Why was I bleeding?
The voices declared, “Magic!”
What?
They chorused again, “The coming of magic!”
No, not for me!
And my breath caught as I shivered.
I didn’t want it, not to be burdened by the Witches’Kiss!
And then my headache subsided, the pressure binding it suddenly released.
My mind cleared only for it to succumb to a new sensation, it eerie, like a flow of iced water cascading into my core. Its brutal chill came as such a shock that I cried out as my eyes sprang open.
And the vista before me held such clarity it was as if every other time I’d looked out of my window it had only been for a glance.
Now I could see everything.
Everything!
Across the city, wherever I looked, I could see people walking, talking, working, loving, and so much more. It was as if I stood out there with every one of them. I discovered, to a degree, I could even sample their feelings and thoughts.
I turned in wonder from the city to watch the chores of a lone fishing boat crew far out in the sound. I took all of it in effortlessly and in beguiling detail, as three men cleared their nets while seven seagulls circled above them.
I could see everything!
That’s when I noticed the sparks.
They rained down past my window to flare with an intensity that hurt to watch. It left me in no doubt, I wasn’t supposed to see them, no one was; they were black.
Only one kind of spark could hold such a hue. I knew that from Sef’s tales; they were of the celestial.
Magic!
The sparks stretched off in a narrow trail as they headed across the street towards Newbank’s slums. I leaned forward in my chair, mesmerised. About me, the air grew cool and expectant.
It was magic, but not of me.
Someone else was casting.
The wind sounded, it heavy with the whipping of cloth. A moment later, a tall and ragged form with arms outstretched glided past. The robed caster followed the extending trail of sparks, their brilliance fading with his passage.
I supposed him to be a forbidden cultist or perhaps an outlawed mage.
The dark figure coasted on until he began descending towards a faraway alley lined with rundown tenements. Several balconies jutted out from those grimy three level buildings, all but one of them empty.
A boy with only a few years behind him and a crop of messy red hair stood there looking up. Surprisingly, the child could see him, but even at his tender age he sensed something was wrong.
I watched with growing fear.
The alleyway grew dark with the cultist’s arrival, the light sapped away by some damning spell. The figure wore a hood, but I could tell by the strong jaw and a solid frame that it was a man, probably Heletian.
He landed.
This was no persecuted cabalist, a scholar of magic, instead it was a man who’d sold his soul to the diabolical, seeking favour in return.
Without a word, he offered his hand.
I held my breath.
The child looked up to the cultist, and then reached out to take it.
My vision, so strangely clear, marked the boy in the spoiled colours of death. I knew his fate, as though I’d be there when his blood was drained.
Under the weight of that feeling, the paralysing fear that had taken me finally released its grip. I stood and screamed, “Get away from him!”
The cultist’s head snapped about, even though he was surely too distant to hear. His eyes sparkled coldly. He wasn’t afraid, not of a Flet girl standing at a window too many streets away.
As if entranced, the child took his hand.
The cultist grinned.
It set me to tears.
The cultist and boy began to drift up, the two hand-in-hand. They followed a rising path of flaring sparks that trailed off towards the heart of the city.
I heard a scream and looked back to the balcony. The boy’s mother, oblivious to her son above, looked to the street below.
With a thick voice, I yelled, “He’s above you! He’s taking him!” but she couldn’t hear me. I was just too far away.
She rushed for the stairs.
My excellent vision faded, returning to the mundane. Sobbing, I dropped my tear soaked face into my hands.
Caught in my own grief, I didn’t hear the hurried footfalls on the stairs leading to my room. The door burst open behind me. My mother charged in, Sef, of course, was right behind her. They’d heard my yelling.
She ran to me looking for any sign of what was wrong. Finally, as only a mother can, she took me into her arms.
Grateful, I took my hands away from my face.
Her supportive sounds died as her eyes filled with horror.
Behind her, Sef took a step back in surprise.
What was wrong?
She reached for my cheeks with hesitant hands. “Oh Juvela!” With trembling fingers she wiped at my tears – they came away bloodied. She whispered, “Just like your grandmother!”
And that is how it began.