Short story for inkpop
Saw their latest challenge and it matched a story idea I had recently, so I decided to write that so I can turn it in on the ninth. Here's what I've got so far at a suitable cut off point. No worries though, far more than 2000 words.
Ulorna stood on the hill overlooking the Wild Valley near her home; she breathed out the warmth of her heart and watched it freeze in the air. She curled her bare feet into the icy ground and felt for whatever might be coming her way. There were no animals or humans. She thought she might have felt something, but it was something she did not know. Her feet, the ground beneath them and the air around her told her that whatever was coming would not harm her though. The ritual could begin.
Her Uncle once said not to put too much stock in asking the gods for favors. Not because the gods were cruel, but they knew what they were doing. When drought was meant to come, it would come. When it would rain, it would rain. When people died, they died. It was not right for them to control things, for they could not see the grand scope of the world as the gods could. Uncle knew such secrets in the world. He taught her to feel the earth and the air, to know what was around her at all times. The village folk always thought Uncle strange, but kept their mutterings behind their hands, least he hear and not share the meat from his hunts. But they whispered things, horrible things, she knew.
Now Uncle lay dying. And there was no harm in asking was there? It was not as if she had killed the doe just for the blood, so the sacrifice would be proper as well, Ulorna thought as she sprinkled the blood against the snow. She drew against the white, a red symbol of the hunt god and prayed as she did. “Please let my uncle live. Please let your hunter live.” But there was still the overwhelming feeling that something was watching her, there in the snow. Something not human or animal. Then, from the hill came the very human feeling of her stepfather, beginning to climb up to the pass.
The skein which held the blood slipped from her hands, the blood seeping from its lip like the doe it came from. Ulorna half slid, half ran down the hill to where her stepfather stood pausing for breath.
“What were you doing up there?” he asked.
“Looking for game!” she shouted over a wind which picked up her cloak.
“You think because your uncle is dying you can just assume a man’s roll as hunter?”
“He’s only just lain up!” she protested. He raised a hand to strike her, though when he brought it down she had already moved. He huffed a cloud of hot air and snarled at her.
“He’s dying! Nearly dead where he lays, and would not stop calling for you. I wouldn’t be here save he might put a curse on us all if he does not have his way. Though I’d run if I was you. The healer’s given him not much time.” Ulorna’s eyes widened and she continued racing down the hill, letting the wind catch behind her and push her even as she entered the village. A large fire roared in the village center as she ran passed it, the laughter of the men drinking there, burning in her ears.
The hut her uncle lived in, standing at the very edge of the village, looked nothing like the hut of a dying man. There were no mourning hovering outside the door, and not even the healer stood by his bedside as she entered. It was as if they had all come to see a spectacle and then left, like they had been disappointed with the sight.
“Ulorna,” he gasped. “Come and sit by my bed child.” Ulorna walked the few steps to her uncle’s bed and collapsed beside it. He was pale, his dark eyes sunk into his face, and his dark hair plastered to his sweaty skin. “They poisoned me, you know. Poisoned my meat. They came in the night, I thought to steal it, but none was missing in the morning. And then some of the other hunters…I wasn’t paying attention. I couldn’t feel them like I normally could. They pushed me down one of the rocky slopes.” He smiled weakly at her. “I needed to tell someone. And I needed you here to talk to you a final time. You know what they say now? About what I did to your mother?”
“They say I am your daughter,” Ulorna admitted.
“From your mother’s own lips,” he coughed. “That it was I who forced her those many years ago. You can see it in our hair, she says. In the way I love you, she says, like a daughter.”
“You love me like a daughter because she refuses to,” Ulorna said.
“This is true,” he replied. “They will come for you next, Ulorna.”
Her uncle never lied to her.
The matter at hand was so ugly it demanded attention. She had always been a bastard; when her mother had been found pregnant, the woman concocted a story about how a traveler passing through the village during the fertility festival had forced himself upon her. Ulorna had not yet been born, but she imagined her mother sobbing, like Mother always did when she wanted something. As of late though, there had been whispers, comments of Ulorna’s dark hair and her uncle’s strangeness on the same breath. It was a dark haired man who raped her mother, after all. Why not her strange, outcast brother?
Stepfather was a village chief, and had a powerful, if angry tongue. Next to Mother, he was the best manipulator the village had. He would convince them to poison his wife’s strange brother. It was no secret that he had wanted to drown Ulorna since he and her mother had wed. But no one killed a child, not even a child of rape. Ulorna was a woman now.
“Listen,” her uncle croaked. “Oh, I can feel it coming. Feel, child tell me what is there.” Ulorna knew what he meant. She had felt it from the high pass into the Valley of the Wild.
“I don’t know what it is,” she confessed.
“Death,” he told her. “Death is waiting here with us.”
He fell limp, his eyes looking to the door of the hut. Ulorna trusted her uncle died like that for a reason, and did not touch him. Instead, she took out of his torches that lay against the wall and thrust it into the small fire in the hut pit. It lit with such radiance, Ulorna admired it for a moment, before the ground warn her that there were people coming. She pulled the torch from the pit and touched it to Uncle’s bed, the thin blankets and straw mattress catching the fire immediately.
“Safe journey to the Dead Lands, Uncle,” Ulorna said, letting the torch rest against his bed. She reached for the claw jars of fire oil beside the pit and smashed them on the floor of his hut. When she left the hut, she saw that still no one waited to see her uncle’s fate. She scooped up the meats left to hang and dry, and threw them into the burning hut. They would have salvage of her uncle’s goods, for they destroyed him.
Ulorna took off running again, this time around the village to where she lived in the grand house of her stepfather. Not as the daughter of a chief, but more as a beggar. When she arrived, though, the house was empty. No doubt, the members of the house had gone to see the fire, or help put it out before it could spread. Good. Ulorna knew she needed to leave, but also knew that without supplies she would not travel far. She could raid a cache of her uncle’s dried meat closer to the valley of the wild, but she would need other supplies were she safely to traverse the snowy lands.
In the small room off of the kitchen, she dug up the tiles on the floor where she kept her best hunting supplies. A knife already hung from a belt she wore, but her bow and quiver were hidden away, along with her best knives, the knives her uncle had given her. Ulorna frowned as she fastened them to her belt. Should she have taken his knives as well, instead of leaving them to the fire? No time to think of it now, though, she needed to make haste.
Digging up other tiles, she pulled free a box her uncle had given her but told her only to open when she became a woman. She was a woman now, and needed to know if she could take her uncles gift with her. The lid of the box pried open in her fingers to reveal clothes pressed into the small space. They were all black, women’s traveling clothes, fine, but sturdy and would surely last to wherever her journey would take her. Ulorna quickly stripped out of her clothing, and slid on the dark cloth, all of it fitting closely to her skin, as if it had been made for her.
Where had uncle gotten her such a gift, she wondered, as she dressed. He had never left the valley to her knowledge, and knew nothing of sewing women’s clothing or making clothe.
“Such thoughts for later,” she chided herself. Ulorna stopped when she saw the shoes at the bottom of the box. Quite usually, she did not wear shoes, as they impacted her ability to feel, but these were different. The bottoms of the shoes only curled around her toes and strapped under her arches, leaving the rest of her foot to feel quite easily. And when she tried them on, she found them easy to move in. So, she laced them up over the traveling trousers, and they laced up her calf to the edge of the travel skirt she wore over the trousers.
Ulorna started as she heard someone entering the house. The stone tiles moved back into place before she slipped her arms through the new black cloak, and tied its hood around her neck, hurrying to pull her bow and quiver back on, and fasten her belt. Footsteps, people coming. Two of the men. Ulorna slid against the wall by the door way of her small room hoping they would just pass by.
“Doesn’t feel right,” said one man to the other. “Ain’t her fault who sired her.”
“She’s a witch girl anyway,” said the other. “Strange like her uncle, not even proper magical. Won’t do no wrong to this village to push her into the lake with stones around her ankles. Would’ve done it sooner, but we can’t go ‘round killing children, no matter how strange they are.”
“Well, yeah, I s’ppose,” said the first man. “She does hunt well though.”
“Yeah, but she knew when the animals were coming, just like her uncle did. Her Father I should say.” Their voices trailed off, as they went through the kitchen and out into the yard. Ulorna slid out of her room, and into the kitchen, grabbing her hunting pack from the wall. Stuffing it with bread and cheese, she remembered to leave room for the dried meat from her uncle’s cache. The wine skeins on the wall tempted her, but she was already weighed down and would need to travel now. She could drink the snow. The last thing she took from the kitchen was a flint and tender from the fire pit. Dropping them into the pack, she sensed if there was anyone in the yard. The two men must have left, for she could feel no one waiting for her.
Ulorna ran.
Sticking to the outskirts of the village, she ran as fast as she could to the Valley of the Wild. She only needed to make it there before she would be much safer. Once outside the village, she began paying attention to the warnings her feet were giving her. There was no one following, not yet, but they were there in the town square, gathering with the dogs and the few horses the village had. Now Ulorna ran faster, hiking up her knees and panting out the breath of her lungs leaving clouds in her wake.
If they used the horses she might not make it to the Valley of the Wild at all. If they were that intent on catching her-
Do not think, the wind whistled in her ear. Run! RUN!
Ulorna ran until she reached the hill that led up to the pass, and stopped, trying to remember where her uncle’s cache was. It was at the base, she knew it, but the snow had her confused. Her heart raced under her skin, as she felt the horses began to gallop. Where, where? Without that meat, she might as well just die now, sinking into the lake.
Against the white snow, a red rivulet of blood streamed down over a clump of rocks. “Where did that come from?” she wondered, as she advanced on the rocks, tearing them up to find a pit full of dry meat. She slung her pack from her shoulder filling it to the brim, and pulling her pack back on before she began to race up the pass. The horses’ hooves echoed under her feet. They were coming.
But half way up the hill, an arrow hit the ground ten paces from her. Ulorna did not turn back to look or fire an arrow of her own. She knew they were close. Instead, she kept climbing the slippery, snow covered hill until she reached the top. Then she did look back, and saw they were beginning their own climb. Ulorna turned, and began to run again.
The hill down to the Valley of the Wild was slicker than she had found it only a few weeks before when she came there with her uncle. The snows seemed deeper on this side, and she nearly tumbled several times and found herself growing wetter and colder, sloshing through the snow, even as she reached the bottom and began to race for the forest’s edge. More arrows began falling beside her, but none ever hitting her. The wind blew up around her, blowing the arrows off course, but never touched her as she ran, wading through the snow. Until, around the forest’s edge, the snow began to lessen and she could run faster.
Though she felt safer under the cover of the trees, she still ran, trying to outpace them, should they think to enter the forest. Finally, when the light obscured by the forest and the clouds above began to dim such that she could no longer see where she was going and tripped over a root, Ulorna rested where she fell, settling into the roots of the tree and wrapping her cloak around her tight, sleep claiming her.
Ulorna stood on the hill overlooking the Wild Valley near her home; she breathed out the warmth of her heart and watched it freeze in the air. She curled her bare feet into the icy ground and felt for whatever might be coming her way. There were no animals or humans. She thought she might have felt something, but it was something she did not know. Her feet, the ground beneath them and the air around her told her that whatever was coming would not harm her though. The ritual could begin.
Her Uncle once said not to put too much stock in asking the gods for favors. Not because the gods were cruel, but they knew what they were doing. When drought was meant to come, it would come. When it would rain, it would rain. When people died, they died. It was not right for them to control things, for they could not see the grand scope of the world as the gods could. Uncle knew such secrets in the world. He taught her to feel the earth and the air, to know what was around her at all times. The village folk always thought Uncle strange, but kept their mutterings behind their hands, least he hear and not share the meat from his hunts. But they whispered things, horrible things, she knew.
Now Uncle lay dying. And there was no harm in asking was there? It was not as if she had killed the doe just for the blood, so the sacrifice would be proper as well, Ulorna thought as she sprinkled the blood against the snow. She drew against the white, a red symbol of the hunt god and prayed as she did. “Please let my uncle live. Please let your hunter live.” But there was still the overwhelming feeling that something was watching her, there in the snow. Something not human or animal. Then, from the hill came the very human feeling of her stepfather, beginning to climb up to the pass.
The skein which held the blood slipped from her hands, the blood seeping from its lip like the doe it came from. Ulorna half slid, half ran down the hill to where her stepfather stood pausing for breath.
“What were you doing up there?” he asked.
“Looking for game!” she shouted over a wind which picked up her cloak.
“You think because your uncle is dying you can just assume a man’s roll as hunter?”
“He’s only just lain up!” she protested. He raised a hand to strike her, though when he brought it down she had already moved. He huffed a cloud of hot air and snarled at her.
“He’s dying! Nearly dead where he lays, and would not stop calling for you. I wouldn’t be here save he might put a curse on us all if he does not have his way. Though I’d run if I was you. The healer’s given him not much time.” Ulorna’s eyes widened and she continued racing down the hill, letting the wind catch behind her and push her even as she entered the village. A large fire roared in the village center as she ran passed it, the laughter of the men drinking there, burning in her ears.
The hut her uncle lived in, standing at the very edge of the village, looked nothing like the hut of a dying man. There were no mourning hovering outside the door, and not even the healer stood by his bedside as she entered. It was as if they had all come to see a spectacle and then left, like they had been disappointed with the sight.
“Ulorna,” he gasped. “Come and sit by my bed child.” Ulorna walked the few steps to her uncle’s bed and collapsed beside it. He was pale, his dark eyes sunk into his face, and his dark hair plastered to his sweaty skin. “They poisoned me, you know. Poisoned my meat. They came in the night, I thought to steal it, but none was missing in the morning. And then some of the other hunters…I wasn’t paying attention. I couldn’t feel them like I normally could. They pushed me down one of the rocky slopes.” He smiled weakly at her. “I needed to tell someone. And I needed you here to talk to you a final time. You know what they say now? About what I did to your mother?”
“They say I am your daughter,” Ulorna admitted.
“From your mother’s own lips,” he coughed. “That it was I who forced her those many years ago. You can see it in our hair, she says. In the way I love you, she says, like a daughter.”
“You love me like a daughter because she refuses to,” Ulorna said.
“This is true,” he replied. “They will come for you next, Ulorna.”
Her uncle never lied to her.
The matter at hand was so ugly it demanded attention. She had always been a bastard; when her mother had been found pregnant, the woman concocted a story about how a traveler passing through the village during the fertility festival had forced himself upon her. Ulorna had not yet been born, but she imagined her mother sobbing, like Mother always did when she wanted something. As of late though, there had been whispers, comments of Ulorna’s dark hair and her uncle’s strangeness on the same breath. It was a dark haired man who raped her mother, after all. Why not her strange, outcast brother?
Stepfather was a village chief, and had a powerful, if angry tongue. Next to Mother, he was the best manipulator the village had. He would convince them to poison his wife’s strange brother. It was no secret that he had wanted to drown Ulorna since he and her mother had wed. But no one killed a child, not even a child of rape. Ulorna was a woman now.
“Listen,” her uncle croaked. “Oh, I can feel it coming. Feel, child tell me what is there.” Ulorna knew what he meant. She had felt it from the high pass into the Valley of the Wild.
“I don’t know what it is,” she confessed.
“Death,” he told her. “Death is waiting here with us.”
He fell limp, his eyes looking to the door of the hut. Ulorna trusted her uncle died like that for a reason, and did not touch him. Instead, she took out of his torches that lay against the wall and thrust it into the small fire in the hut pit. It lit with such radiance, Ulorna admired it for a moment, before the ground warn her that there were people coming. She pulled the torch from the pit and touched it to Uncle’s bed, the thin blankets and straw mattress catching the fire immediately.
“Safe journey to the Dead Lands, Uncle,” Ulorna said, letting the torch rest against his bed. She reached for the claw jars of fire oil beside the pit and smashed them on the floor of his hut. When she left the hut, she saw that still no one waited to see her uncle’s fate. She scooped up the meats left to hang and dry, and threw them into the burning hut. They would have salvage of her uncle’s goods, for they destroyed him.
Ulorna took off running again, this time around the village to where she lived in the grand house of her stepfather. Not as the daughter of a chief, but more as a beggar. When she arrived, though, the house was empty. No doubt, the members of the house had gone to see the fire, or help put it out before it could spread. Good. Ulorna knew she needed to leave, but also knew that without supplies she would not travel far. She could raid a cache of her uncle’s dried meat closer to the valley of the wild, but she would need other supplies were she safely to traverse the snowy lands.
In the small room off of the kitchen, she dug up the tiles on the floor where she kept her best hunting supplies. A knife already hung from a belt she wore, but her bow and quiver were hidden away, along with her best knives, the knives her uncle had given her. Ulorna frowned as she fastened them to her belt. Should she have taken his knives as well, instead of leaving them to the fire? No time to think of it now, though, she needed to make haste.
Digging up other tiles, she pulled free a box her uncle had given her but told her only to open when she became a woman. She was a woman now, and needed to know if she could take her uncles gift with her. The lid of the box pried open in her fingers to reveal clothes pressed into the small space. They were all black, women’s traveling clothes, fine, but sturdy and would surely last to wherever her journey would take her. Ulorna quickly stripped out of her clothing, and slid on the dark cloth, all of it fitting closely to her skin, as if it had been made for her.
Where had uncle gotten her such a gift, she wondered, as she dressed. He had never left the valley to her knowledge, and knew nothing of sewing women’s clothing or making clothe.
“Such thoughts for later,” she chided herself. Ulorna stopped when she saw the shoes at the bottom of the box. Quite usually, she did not wear shoes, as they impacted her ability to feel, but these were different. The bottoms of the shoes only curled around her toes and strapped under her arches, leaving the rest of her foot to feel quite easily. And when she tried them on, she found them easy to move in. So, she laced them up over the traveling trousers, and they laced up her calf to the edge of the travel skirt she wore over the trousers.
Ulorna started as she heard someone entering the house. The stone tiles moved back into place before she slipped her arms through the new black cloak, and tied its hood around her neck, hurrying to pull her bow and quiver back on, and fasten her belt. Footsteps, people coming. Two of the men. Ulorna slid against the wall by the door way of her small room hoping they would just pass by.
“Doesn’t feel right,” said one man to the other. “Ain’t her fault who sired her.”
“She’s a witch girl anyway,” said the other. “Strange like her uncle, not even proper magical. Won’t do no wrong to this village to push her into the lake with stones around her ankles. Would’ve done it sooner, but we can’t go ‘round killing children, no matter how strange they are.”
“Well, yeah, I s’ppose,” said the first man. “She does hunt well though.”
“Yeah, but she knew when the animals were coming, just like her uncle did. Her Father I should say.” Their voices trailed off, as they went through the kitchen and out into the yard. Ulorna slid out of her room, and into the kitchen, grabbing her hunting pack from the wall. Stuffing it with bread and cheese, she remembered to leave room for the dried meat from her uncle’s cache. The wine skeins on the wall tempted her, but she was already weighed down and would need to travel now. She could drink the snow. The last thing she took from the kitchen was a flint and tender from the fire pit. Dropping them into the pack, she sensed if there was anyone in the yard. The two men must have left, for she could feel no one waiting for her.
Ulorna ran.
Sticking to the outskirts of the village, she ran as fast as she could to the Valley of the Wild. She only needed to make it there before she would be much safer. Once outside the village, she began paying attention to the warnings her feet were giving her. There was no one following, not yet, but they were there in the town square, gathering with the dogs and the few horses the village had. Now Ulorna ran faster, hiking up her knees and panting out the breath of her lungs leaving clouds in her wake.
If they used the horses she might not make it to the Valley of the Wild at all. If they were that intent on catching her-
Do not think, the wind whistled in her ear. Run! RUN!
Ulorna ran until she reached the hill that led up to the pass, and stopped, trying to remember where her uncle’s cache was. It was at the base, she knew it, but the snow had her confused. Her heart raced under her skin, as she felt the horses began to gallop. Where, where? Without that meat, she might as well just die now, sinking into the lake.
Against the white snow, a red rivulet of blood streamed down over a clump of rocks. “Where did that come from?” she wondered, as she advanced on the rocks, tearing them up to find a pit full of dry meat. She slung her pack from her shoulder filling it to the brim, and pulling her pack back on before she began to race up the pass. The horses’ hooves echoed under her feet. They were coming.
But half way up the hill, an arrow hit the ground ten paces from her. Ulorna did not turn back to look or fire an arrow of her own. She knew they were close. Instead, she kept climbing the slippery, snow covered hill until she reached the top. Then she did look back, and saw they were beginning their own climb. Ulorna turned, and began to run again.
The hill down to the Valley of the Wild was slicker than she had found it only a few weeks before when she came there with her uncle. The snows seemed deeper on this side, and she nearly tumbled several times and found herself growing wetter and colder, sloshing through the snow, even as she reached the bottom and began to race for the forest’s edge. More arrows began falling beside her, but none ever hitting her. The wind blew up around her, blowing the arrows off course, but never touched her as she ran, wading through the snow. Until, around the forest’s edge, the snow began to lessen and she could run faster.
Though she felt safer under the cover of the trees, she still ran, trying to outpace them, should they think to enter the forest. Finally, when the light obscured by the forest and the clouds above began to dim such that she could no longer see where she was going and tripped over a root, Ulorna rested where she fell, settling into the roots of the tree and wrapping her cloak around her tight, sleep claiming her.