anthorn
Well-Known Member
I've rewritten the piece and added a few more scenes. My novel is not an entirely first person story. There are bits and pieces that are 1st person, like this scene.
I suppose I should start my story at the beginning then. I suppose I should tell you about the day I was born. Isn’t that what you people want to read? I won’t, but I need to tell you something of my childhood to make you understand a little about me. I’ll keep it brief, or at least as brief as I can in suchcircumstances.
I was lucky enough to be born into one of the wealthiest families in Onchara. My parents were Mika and Millana Sarakus and I am called Nikita. My sister, the woman whose journal I write this in, is called Sarana. Growing up people liked to call us twins but this was wrong for several reasons. The first reason was I was a year older. The second reason was because we looked nothing alike. We never got on growing up or when we were older. She was much more outgoing than I was, and found it easier making friends. She was also mean and would throw our leather ball so hard that I would have bruises afterwards. You don’t want to hear this do you? All right, I will skip ahead a little.
Father liked to spend his time on business trips that took him from the desert lands of Juppa to the frigid cold of Drakovia. Despite this he would always complain when he returned that he missed the tropics of Imara dearly. During these absences it fell to me as the oldest to help mother in the house. I didn’t mind this as when he returned he always spoiled me with gifts. The gift he returned with this time happened to be a boy about my age-I was seven at the time-I think. He’d found the child washed up on the shores of the Shigekum sea, buried beneath some wreckage. ‘It’s amazing he was alive at all,’ I recalled him saying as the cook and kitchen staff fussed around the boy. I remember thinking him ill at the time because his skin was a deeply tanned yellow colour much like the jaundice found in the dying.
‘What’s his name?’ mother asked.
‘Anthorn,’ father replied, something unspoken passing between them. ‘He’s an orphan and dumb as a brick.’
‘Then how do you know his name?’ mother enquired, her tone sharp.
My father simply straightened his shirt in the way I’d later come to learn he did when nervous. At the time I was more concerned with the boy who stood at his side and stared vacantly out into space. I was quite sure he was dumb too at this point. My father turned to me and my sister at that point. ‘Meet your new brother.’
This apparently settled the matter but I can remember my parents arguing about him late into the night. Unable to get back to sleep I climbed out of bed and made my way to the playroom, creeping silently past their bedroom in the way only a child could. The door was openand I pushed it aside. Anthorn was standing by the window, illuminated by themoonlight. He was crying, silently, but turned when he somehow sensed me. I’ll never forget the words he said to me, the first words he’d spoken since he wasdiscovered. ‘I’m not stupid. I’m not stupid.’ I hugged him then and let him cry into my shoulder.
This in hindsight was probably my first mistake.
Would it surprise you if I told you we became thick as thieves after that? That we somehow found in each other a piece that was missing. It surprised me and angered my sister too. She hated Anthorn with a passion, rejoicing in tormenting us in any way imaginable. This culminated in a prank that saw me thrown from a horse and her sent away to a faraway school to be forever talked about in hushed tones. I was twelve at the time and remember the doctors saying that I would never walk again, my father punching a wall in his fury, my mother weeping and my sister laughing.* (Which is probably what got her sent away come to think of it.) I remember as well my father bringing everyone and anyone to our home in the hopes they would cure me. They only repeated what the original doctors said. I would never walk again. I would never dance. I would never have children.
In time I learned to accept my fate, or rather get used to it. In my weakest moments I didn’t even let Anthorn see my tempers though I’m certain he heard them. He finally caught me in a temper when I woke during the night with sodden sheets. I wept at him, cursed him and told him to kill himself, but he didn’t leave me. Instead he cleaned me up and lifted me into his arms and took me to his bed. Laying me down he whispered. ‘You call for me anywhere or anytime and I’ll come running for you, this is our deal between you and me, always.’
The next day I could walk again. They said it was a miracle and that the Goddess had heard my family’s prayers. It wasn’t until I was murdered the first time that I realised that the Goddess had nothing to do with it. Anthorn did. That was when things really went to hell
Editor’snote: *Sarana assures me that although she is entirely guilty of crippling her sister from the waist down, she was not laughing because of this. She would like to state for the record that she is no longer that person.
I suppose I should start my story at the beginning then. I suppose I should tell you about the day I was born. Isn’t that what you people want to read? I won’t, but I need to tell you something of my childhood to make you understand a little about me. I’ll keep it brief, or at least as brief as I can in suchcircumstances.
I was lucky enough to be born into one of the wealthiest families in Onchara. My parents were Mika and Millana Sarakus and I am called Nikita. My sister, the woman whose journal I write this in, is called Sarana. Growing up people liked to call us twins but this was wrong for several reasons. The first reason was I was a year older. The second reason was because we looked nothing alike. We never got on growing up or when we were older. She was much more outgoing than I was, and found it easier making friends. She was also mean and would throw our leather ball so hard that I would have bruises afterwards. You don’t want to hear this do you? All right, I will skip ahead a little.
Father liked to spend his time on business trips that took him from the desert lands of Juppa to the frigid cold of Drakovia. Despite this he would always complain when he returned that he missed the tropics of Imara dearly. During these absences it fell to me as the oldest to help mother in the house. I didn’t mind this as when he returned he always spoiled me with gifts. The gift he returned with this time happened to be a boy about my age-I was seven at the time-I think. He’d found the child washed up on the shores of the Shigekum sea, buried beneath some wreckage. ‘It’s amazing he was alive at all,’ I recalled him saying as the cook and kitchen staff fussed around the boy. I remember thinking him ill at the time because his skin was a deeply tanned yellow colour much like the jaundice found in the dying.
‘What’s his name?’ mother asked.
‘Anthorn,’ father replied, something unspoken passing between them. ‘He’s an orphan and dumb as a brick.’
‘Then how do you know his name?’ mother enquired, her tone sharp.
My father simply straightened his shirt in the way I’d later come to learn he did when nervous. At the time I was more concerned with the boy who stood at his side and stared vacantly out into space. I was quite sure he was dumb too at this point. My father turned to me and my sister at that point. ‘Meet your new brother.’
This apparently settled the matter but I can remember my parents arguing about him late into the night. Unable to get back to sleep I climbed out of bed and made my way to the playroom, creeping silently past their bedroom in the way only a child could. The door was openand I pushed it aside. Anthorn was standing by the window, illuminated by themoonlight. He was crying, silently, but turned when he somehow sensed me. I’ll never forget the words he said to me, the first words he’d spoken since he wasdiscovered. ‘I’m not stupid. I’m not stupid.’ I hugged him then and let him cry into my shoulder.
This in hindsight was probably my first mistake.
Would it surprise you if I told you we became thick as thieves after that? That we somehow found in each other a piece that was missing. It surprised me and angered my sister too. She hated Anthorn with a passion, rejoicing in tormenting us in any way imaginable. This culminated in a prank that saw me thrown from a horse and her sent away to a faraway school to be forever talked about in hushed tones. I was twelve at the time and remember the doctors saying that I would never walk again, my father punching a wall in his fury, my mother weeping and my sister laughing.* (Which is probably what got her sent away come to think of it.) I remember as well my father bringing everyone and anyone to our home in the hopes they would cure me. They only repeated what the original doctors said. I would never walk again. I would never dance. I would never have children.
In time I learned to accept my fate, or rather get used to it. In my weakest moments I didn’t even let Anthorn see my tempers though I’m certain he heard them. He finally caught me in a temper when I woke during the night with sodden sheets. I wept at him, cursed him and told him to kill himself, but he didn’t leave me. Instead he cleaned me up and lifted me into his arms and took me to his bed. Laying me down he whispered. ‘You call for me anywhere or anytime and I’ll come running for you, this is our deal between you and me, always.’
The next day I could walk again. They said it was a miracle and that the Goddess had heard my family’s prayers. It wasn’t until I was murdered the first time that I realised that the Goddess had nothing to do with it. Anthorn did. That was when things really went to hell
#
Editor’snote: *Sarana assures me that although she is entirely guilty of crippling her sister from the waist down, she was not laughing because of this. She would like to state for the record that she is no longer that person.
