KATIE
I woke up with long curls draping over my face inside my tent.
I grabbed the kernel that was underneath my pillow and chucked it into my mouth as I heard voices outside my tent.
The pricking feeling started immediately and I shivered as all my hair went straight.
It was a strange feeling and similar to what I had felt that night when Albert kissed me.
When it disappeared, I opened my eyes.
My hair was short again and my breasts were gone.
I was a man.
I got up and put on my shirt and pants.
I had to say, this form was so much easier than my girl one. I did not have parts that had to be strapped in a corset, or layers and layers of clothes to wear.
I loved pants.
I was meant to be a boy. I always felt like that and the only time I felt like a girl, was the night of the ball, when Albert kissed me.
I didn’t care anymore, Albert was gone.
I went for breakfast after Tom peeked into my tent to make sure I was up. I had to be more careful. He couldn’t find out that I was really a girl.
War food was horrible.
They served sloppy oats and strong coffee with no sugar.
I had never developed a taste for coffee and wished for tea. Something told me that today I was going to need the extra strength.
I took a seat among Tom and the boys from Disseldorf.
For boys they sure seem to talk a lot, and about crap too. The way Craig talked about a girl back in Disseldorf was disgusting. Were all men like that? I doubted father was.
I didn’t want to think about father either. I would miss him too much and then mama would find her way in too, and all my siblings.
No, I pushed them to the back of my mind.
I was Andrew Squires now and didn’t walk with my heart on my sleeve.
I swallowed my oats hard. They were gooey. Maybe I should sign up for prepping food, but I was afraid that I wouldn’t be trained then since I would be too busy preparing three meals a day.
I froze when I saw a boy of around twelve, not older than fourteen years entering the tent.
“His name is Maze,” Tom said. “His dad died of the soars last winter. He is the eldest boy in his family.”
“He is just a kid.” I said.
“The king doesn’t worry about how old we are. If you ask me Albert died just to piss his father off.”
“Nobody would die just to piss off anyone.” I said.
“I would if he were my dad.”
Craig laughed, and the others followed.
I didn’t like that. It would mean that the night we had spent together at the ball meant nothing to him at all.
“I heard he had a thing for Chromatic dragons. Funny how one killed him.”
“It probably just wanted to play with him a little.” The boys laughed at the way Tom said it.
“What do you mean play with him?”
“Oh, c’mon Andrew. It’s not normal how those four idiots were always together. You never saw Albert with a girl.”
“There are rumors that he had one regularly in his room.”
“Probably playing chess.” More laughter came.
He wasn’t like that.
“Or probably learning how to truly satisfy a woman.” I countered and the laughters quiet down.
“I don’t think he would know what to do with one if he ever had one in his room naked.”
More laughter. I just stared at Tom.
“He is royalty you idiot. They train at a young age, Maze’s age or younger, how to be great with women. The rumors that reached my ears, were the complete opposite.”
They all looked at Maze. “Are you serious?” Craig asked.
“Yeah, he probably had loads of sex. And the best part is, no syphilis would be able to kill him since there is a Swallow Annex at the castle.”
“How do you know so much about the royals?”
“I told you, I’ve been places. I know a lot of things.”
My eyes caught Maze sitting alone at a table. Twelve years old and fighting in a stupid war.
A man sat down in front of him and my eyes darted toward him.
It was Goran and he immediately started talking to the boy.
“Why do you guys think he’s here?”
“Beats me. King Magnus hasn’t been himself since Helmut’s death. I heard he despises Goran.”
“We all heard that, but the question is why?” Tom asked.
I wished I knew the answer too.
After breakfast, Goran disappeared and officers came in and we all stood up.
“Form a straight line,” they yelled and we all rushed to form one. My heart was beating erratically as they walked down the line.
One stopped in front of the boy standing a few men from me.
“How old are you?”
“Turning thirteen soon, sir.” I could hear the fear in his tone.
He huffed.
War was cruel.
“Today we are going to start training with weapons. To see which weapons you might have a talent for.” He looked around.“Has anyone handled a weapon before?”
I raised my hand with a few others.
“I thought you never had training before.” The officer growled at me.
“I hunt with a bow and arrow and know how to use an ax,” my manly voice said.
“I see. We’ll see just how good those hunting skills are on a human target and not some helpless little deer.” He sneered and walked on to the next idiot that had raised his hand.
“You can hunt with a bow and arrow,” Tom, who was next to me, whispered. I nodded.
“Can you teach me?”
“Something tells me they will,” I whispered back.
“Follow me,” one officer yelled and said something about being fast and orderly too.
I marched with the others and we stopped when we came to an open field.
There were swords, bows, hammers, axes, every weapon I could think of and some I’d never seen before.
“Archers, here.”
The few of us that had hunted with bows followed the officer.
Target boards were stacked. The distance was a mere 50 feet. There was one that was about 150 feet away.
The officer that couldn’t have been a few years older than me, pulled his bow, then released it, hitting the target that was 150 feet away. He was showing off.
It wasn’t even a bullseye.
Then it was our turn.
We all hit the target. My strength was a thousand times better than I had as a woman and my arrow almost went straight through the board.
My aim was a bit off and barely hit the target.
I guess Andrew’s height was making my aim off.
“Struggling to see the board, hunter?” The officer teased and everyone laughed.
They moved the targets farther back by about twenty feet.
I needed to train Andrew’s body. Remembering dad’s words of what he taught me in the beginning,
I took my time.
“Do we have a bit of a confidence problem?” The officer drew more laughter from everyone around me. What was his problem?
“Ignore him.” I heard my dad’s voice in my head as he told me to pull back the bow, to aim lower on the target board and to aim straight.
I finally let my arrow fly and this time it was just above the bullseye.
“It’s about bloody time. You would’ve been dead if that was a human with a weapon.”
I took another arrow, pulled back the string fast and aimed at the 150 feet target. My arrow flew faster than it took to count one, two, three, and hit the 150 feet target, bullseye.
All of them became super quiet, even the officer that hadn’t hit that target’s bullseye. He ground his teeth and walked toward me with huge strides.
Shit, what did you do?
He stopped as his eye caught someone behind me and I turned around and saw Prince Goran looking at the target board and arrow in the bullseye.
“What is your farthest distance?” he asked me.
“I hunt, I have never measured my distance.”
He smiled. “Mind if we try it?”
I shook my head.
“James, take the target board back another fifty feet.”
He didn’t say anything this time and did what the prince told him to. He moved it back fifty feet and got out of the way.
I took my position in line with the target, nocked my arrow, pulled back, and let it fly.
My eyes rose as it finally made a singing sound. Or a slight singing sound. As Kate my arrows never did that, but father’s had. He called it the arrow’s voice. The most beautiful sound in the world.
It wasn’t bullseye, but it was close. I still needed to fine tune Andrew’s strength and height, get used to it.
“James,” Goran yelled. “Another fifty feet.”
James ran and took the target back another fifty feet.
I nocked another arrow and pulled back the string.
I aimed slightly lower this time and let it fly again.
The arrow sang, hitting the target bullseye.
“It seems the farther your target, the better your aim, Andrew.” Goran joked.
I smiled. “Something like that.”
“James, back another hundred feet.”
Everyone gasped, including me. “Wait first.” He said and went to his tent. He came back with a beautiful bow and a sheath of arrows. “Try these.”
“I can’t, they’re yours.”
“Just use them.”
I looked at the target. It was three hundred and fifty feet away.
I took his bow and arrows after putting mine down.
It was a beautiful and sturdy bow. Strong too. The arrows were carefully designed.
I looked at the target and nocked the arrow in the string. I had to use a bit more strength to pull it back because it was wired string.
I got the target in my sight and took a deep breath. I aimed and then when I blew out my breath the arrow was singing.
I laughed as I hit the target and Goran looked through his hand scope to see.
He smiled.
“You can have that. You are much better with it than I am. Bullseye.” He said and everyone gasped before they all started clapping.
“You are really talented. I have only seen one other person that had the gift to make his arrows talk.”
“Just one?”
He nodded.
“Mind if I ask who?” Thinking of the one person I knew — Nicolas Squires.
“The Crown Prince of Etan. Well, was the crown prince.”
Albert? I looked at the target and at the bow. “Was this his?”
He smiled. “No, it’s yours.” He turned around and walked away.
He hadn’t answered my question. Was this Albert’s bow? It could be. It was a perfect bow and I had never seen arrows designed this way.
Practice continued right after Goran disappeared back in his tent.
I got promoted to head archer that night and had to teach a few select men and boys, those that had shown talent for archery, the finer art of how to shoot with a bow and arrow.
Maze was one of them.
I was given the nickname Bullseye.
Everyone wanted me to sit at their table for dinner, but I went to sit with Maze.
Tom, Craig, Raf and Stewy came to sit with us.
“You are really great with a bow and arrow,” Maze said.
“You’ll get there soon Maze. It just takes practice.”
“I heard you shut James up real fast,” Tom said.
“Not to mention getting Goran’s attention.” Craig added. “See what we mean by men getting their attention.”
“Shut up. You are an idiot. I didn’t get that feeling from him once. He admired the fact that I could make my arrows sing, that is all.”
“Arrows sing?”
“It’s a term. Meaning that the wind slices through the feathers so fast, it makes a singing sound. It’s said that not a lot of archers can do that.”
“I see,” Craig said.
We ate in silence and that night I went to a nearby stream to wash up.
I looked like a man but that didn’t mean that I wanted to wash up with them.
My bag of grain kernels were safely in my tent, buried in a shallow grave.
I felt dead and flopped down on my bed roll, after I washed up, and closed the flaps.
I took out a kernel from my bag and put it under my pillow. I hoped that the transformation back would wake me up. It had to.
There was no privacy in these tents.
I would be fine. I just needed to keep on telling myself that until it sunk in.
Hopefully tomorrow would be a bit brighter.
ALBERT
Robert came back. There was no news of my lady. How could a girl just disappear like that? I mean she was a girl and didn’t have many hiding places to begin with.
My hope of ever finding out who she really was was deteriorating. My father was recruiting more and more soldiers for his army. Goran sent word that he had been given a group to train and there was a boy named Andrew that seriously had talent with a bow and arrow. They called him Bullseye. We needed to give Goran time to win over Bullseye’s trust and hopefully he would switch sides.
We needed good archers. I myself had been training a few.
Connie and Issy were also bringing in more and more Chromatic children.
It was getting out of hand. They were so afraid when they saw the humans at the camp, but with friendly smiles and Connie promising them that no harm would come to them, plus giving them time to get to know me, they finally started to relax. After that point, they showed us what they could do.
They were really talented. They had fire and lightning, frost and green fog coming from their hands.
The Green-Vapor kid sure had a mouth on him too. He lied through his teeth. But all in all they were good kids.
Helmut and Caleb helped with the log house, building extensions to have room for all the kids. The more kids Connie was going to bring, the bigger it needed to be.
“I’m sorry for the extra mouths Al.”
“Don’t be. They are innocent and I told you to bring any child that doesn’t have parents to care for them. We will be fine.”
She nodded and smiled softly.
Ever since I told her about my lady she had been slightly distant.
I understood that. Now she knew that my heart belonged to someone else and she was trying to protect her own heart.
I kept on helping the others building onto the log house and trying to keep the peace between some of the Chromatic dragons and Metallics. They did not get along that well. For years the Chromatics had seen the Metallics as traitors.
But that would all change in due time. It had to change. It was time to change.
They would find mutual ground to co-exist together and years from now, they wouldn’t even remember a time when the breeds didn’t get along together.
That was my dream for a better Paegeia. One where we could all exist together in peace.
