North by Ann Michelle Harris

South Kingdom, Rainier Year 8695

Hundreds of lethal snakes swirled through the overgrown grass. Kai walked between the thick sliding bodies in a practiced routine. When Teagan demanded deer for dinner, this was the best place to get one quickly. And, being here got Kai away from the guards, at least for a few minutes. After a few horrifying deaths in their ranks, the guards avoided the place, calling it the blood field. A bit dramatic, but still accurate. These days, they left Kai alone when he hunted here. But the other slave children would suffer if he ever truly tried to escape

He raised his crossbow when the first deer came into view. The morning air drifted mild and cool, rustling the leaves, a reminder of fall approaching the South Kingdom. Kai exhaled and aimed for the head. He had it, dead shot. It would have been perfect, if not for the girl walking into the path of his arrow. Kai should have run when he saw her, that was the rule. Instead, he watched her from across the abandoned field. He lowered his crossbow, realizing he might have killed her in his haste to get the deer. Teagan would have the guards rip his back to shreds if he didn’t return with a stag. At sixteen, his aim was perfect but his judgment, lately, was questionable. The girl continued walking, unaware of her brush with death, until she stopped and saw him.

She stood dressed in perfectly tailored hunting leathers. There was a symbol on her vest—it meant she was rich. Other than that, those family marks were meaningless to someone like him. The king’s seal was the only emblem he understood. The early morning breeze blew reddish curls across her brown face while her fingers cautiously skimmed the silver daggers strapped to each leg. Kai’s own clothes were torn, oversized, dirty.

Another boy, pale, ginger-haired, and equally well-dressed, stood off to the side watching, looking vaguely suspicious of him. They probably thought he looked like a ragged animal. Two people had seen him now… two children. That was worse—adults were busy, children were curious. He should run, Teagan would kill him for being seen. Killing a slave was as easy as breathing the old man always said. But she was too close to the field. She would be easy prey for the snakes. He heard them moving like whispers in the bitter smelling grass. Killing was as easy as breathing for them too. The girl and the boy looked his same age but they were clearly lost to have wandered so close to Teagan’s estate. The neglected field seethed with poisonous animals and he and Dahlia were the only ones who braved it anymore.

“It’s not safe here,” he called, against his better judgment. The girl walked towards him but kept her fingers on her blades.

“We’re looking for a boy.” She stared at him. “Seventeen, brown skin, braided hair. I need to find him.” Her eyes scanned him as she stepped closer and he remained unmoving, as if rooted there. As if his senses had left him.

“No one else is here,” Kai said. Behind her, the deer skittered away. Kai fought the urge to shout at her for ruining his kill. Instead he said, “If your friend were in the field he would be dead.” He ground the words out. “You need to leave, it’s not safe here.” The sharpness of his voice stopped her before she reached the edge of the field. A pair of snakes slid past his boots. The snakes feared him and would leave him alone. But they would kill anyone else, quickly and painfully.

The girl frowned. “If it’s not safe, then why are you here?”

She was near enough for him to make out the color of her eyes, gold, and for her to meet his own, silvery gray. Why are you here? What a stupid, rich-child question. He hung his crossbow behind him and walked away. They were probably students from the academy on a “field trip.” Probably.

He glanced back. “Leave now. The field is full of red snakes.” They would turn her into a pretty corpse in a matter of seconds. She blinked her gold eyes at him as he turned away again.

Something about her bothered him as he walked, the way she looked at him, curious and focused, making him feel like a real person rather than the shadow he was forced to be. His boots crushed dry grass while his mind drifted back to the time before he was sold. Slavery was illegal in the South Kingdom but for five years no one ever came to check on him or the others stolen from the orphanage. Poor children are always forgotten. His thoughts continued skittering unmoored, before returning to the present, landing like a bird lost in an unfamiliar place.

The grand mansion of Teagan's estate rose before him, looming with its thick white columns cracked with age and its closed, covered windows gray behind the dark iron gates. As he approached he heard crying. He always tried to put himself between the younger children and a beating from the guards when he could. But today, as he ran closer, something was different. The guards were hovering this time even as several children cried, untouched, all of them collectively blocking his view.

As the guards shifted, he saw Teagan himself, the old man gray and hulking, had Dahlia on the ground, choking her with a strip of leather wrapped around her pale neck. She made no sound, unable to get any air, silently resigned to the inevitable out-come. Kai reached for his crossbow and smashed the weight of it into Teagan's face sending him flying, startled and bleeding, into the dusty ground.

Dahlia gasped and scrambled away and he heard, to his satisfaction, her sharp intake of breath and the scuffling of her feet, even as the guards grabbed him and beat him unconscious.

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