Chronicles of Den'dra: A land on Fire by Spencer Johnson

Author:Spencer Johnson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Published: 2014-11-21T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen: Tragedy

I have few memories of my early childhood. Odd… seeing as most of the rest of my life can be recalled in sharp detail. There are a few details that stand out of the haze that hides these memories. My earliest memories were of walking with my mother down the road towards town. The ground crunched with every step because of the film of ice that covered the mud. I know that my mother was wearing my father’s old cloak while I wore the cloak that she had previously worn. She had cut it down to my size and hemmed up the edges. It was thin and struggled valiantly to keep out the chilly wind that cut across the icy fields. I know that the reason that my mother was wearing my father’s cloak was that he had died. I don’t remember how he died, but only that he had before that walk.

I remember being thin and that my stomach was growling from hunger. I knew better than to ask for food because I still had the fading remnants of the bruise earned the last time I had complained of hunger. Since father’s death, there had been little to eat. I recall having been so hungry that I had tried eating grass after watching a cow happily munching in her field. It hadn’t tasted very good and had stained my teeth green enough to earn one of mother’s screaming fits. It was little things like my mother giving me the cloak before we set out that day that confused me. I wondered if she had gone back to being like she had been before father died.

That moment is crystal clear in my memory. Every sensation and thought is as fresh as what happened three days ago. As clear as that moment was, the years leading up to that cold walk are a blur. As is the hours after. There are fragments that I can recall from the days that followed. I remember being in town. Mother was talking to a bald man with three parallel scars on his shiny scalp. The way he looked at me made me uncomfortable. Then there was the confusing moment when mother pressed a few pieces of stale bread into my hand and gave me a hug. She promised to visit me when she could get into town.

It wasn’t until I had been riding with the four other girls in the bald man’s wagon for five days that I realized I would probably never see mother again. Even then, the full picture was as good as invisible to me as a naive little girl. I had seen the gold coin the bald man gave my mother, but I wouldn’t realize why until years later. I should have felt a twinge of pride that I could garner such a price. Two of the girls had been “hired” for less than half that amount and the other two had still only been two thirds that amount.

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