Rebel Children

Rose yelped when the spell she was trying to perform quite literally blew up, sending sparks and bright blue smoke into the air. Maria coughed and waved the smoke away.

“Well, it’s not technically supposed to do that,” Maria said. “But you did successfully light a fire.”

“I’m never going to get the hang of this,” Rose groaned, flopping backward onto the grass.

“You’re doing quite well, all things considered,” Maria assured her. “What you need is a more experienced teacher. I’m afraid I’m not very good for much besides healing, which we’ve already covered. We’ll have to find you another instructor.”

“That seems risky,” Rose frowned. “And you’re a wonderful teacher.”

Maria smiled. “I’m not knowledgeable enough to help you fight Lorena. If we’re going to stay in a town soon anyway, we can probably find someone else to help you learn these things. Discreetly.”

“I suppose I don’t have much choice,” Rose said. “I need all the advantages I can get if I want to beat her. I guess we should be getting back.”

They put out the fire Rose had created and headed back in the direction of camp.

“Do you think I really have a chance against her?” Rose asked suddenly. “Or do you think she’ll probably kill me for real this time?”

“Well, someone woke up on the bleak side of the bedroll today,” Maria snorted. “Rose, you’re the one who’s supposed to be queen, and you’ll be a good one. We’ll find a way to defeat that…shrieking harpy.”

Rose laughed and Maria winked, nudging her. They ceased all talk about queens and fighting Lorena as they got closer to camp, and Rose spotted their newest “recruit” pestering Philip with questions. Rose bit back a snicker; Philip usually seemed a bit agitated but he looked particularly stressed with the boy tagging along with him.

“Charlie, will you come help me?” Rose asked, taking pity on Philip. Charlie got a look of interest on his face as Rose picked up her bow and quiver.

“It’s my turn to take patrol,” she said. “Why don’t you come with me? We can do some foraging and collect some extra firewood on the way back.”

“Do I get a bow?” he asked as he tagged along.

“Do you know how to fire a bow?”

“No.”

“Then I guess not,” Rose laughed. “But here, you can keep this hunting knife on you. You never know when you might need it.”

She handed him the rather large blade and he perked up as he took it. He’d been with them for almost three days now, and he kept insisting that he was better off here than at home and that no one was going to be worried about him. Rose still doubted the truth of those claims but she still wasn’t going to send him traipsing through the woods all alone. He was just a kid. Instead, she told him about which berries and plants were safe to eat and which weren’t while she surveyed the trees, on alert for any suspicious activity. She hadn’t been kidding when she told Philip that the woods were getting more dangerous.

“See these dark red berries here, with the little star shaped leaves? You never want to eat one of these. They give you all kinds of weird hallucinations before they inevitably kill you. Stick with these big purple ones. They’re really sweet, they sort of taste like candy. And you can put this sticky moss here on a cut to help stave off infection.”

“You know a lot about plants,” Charlie remarked. “Seems like a weird thing for a rebel to know about.”

“I live in the woods,” Rose pointed out. “I’m surrounded by plants. And I thought I told you, we’re not exactly rebels. We just try to help people who pass through here, and protect the people in town.”

Rose supposed that, technically, she was the biggest rebel there was; but that wasn’t information she was going to share. She still preferred that her little ragtag band weren’t called “rebels,” since the word was likely to bring on unwanted attention.

“What does a young boy like you want to be a rebel for, anyway?” Rose asked.

“Because the queen is awful,” Charlie said. “And rebels are brave and do dangerous things.”

“You want to do dangerous things?” Rose raised an eyebrow. “People are generally supposed to avoid those.”

“Well, you’re out here fighting stuff in the woods that attacks people. That’s dangerous.”

“And most of the people who used to be with us have left,” Rose told him.

“Why haven’t you?”

“As it happens, we were thinking of relocating to a town soon.”

“Well then you can become real rebels. And I’ll come with you,” Charlie said excitedly. Rose suppressed a sigh.

“I’m not afraid,” he added, getting a stubborn look on his face.

“That’s not always a good thing,” Rose said. “Fearlessness leads to recklessness. You can’t just run into things with your eyes closed.”

Charlie made a noncommittal noise in reply. They collected some berries and a bit of extra firewood and were circling back to the campsite when Rose heard a heavy rustling in the trees and put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder to stop him. She put a finger to her lips to silence him and they stood stock still. She heard the rustling again, getting closer. Rose grabbed an arrow from her quiver and nocked it against the string.

“When I say to, run to that big tree and climb up,” she whispered.

“What is it?” Charlie whispered back. Rose raised her bow, the arrow aligning with her line of sight.

“Just run when I tell you to,” she replied. She waited three beats, and then the rustling grew louder. Whatever was coming was moving faster, and right towards them.

“Go,” she said and was relieved when Charlie at least listened to her instead of asking more questions. The way she had gone tense must have made it clear she wasn’t kidding around. He scurried to the tree and a snarling creature roughly the size of a wild boar came charging out of the brush. It looked a bit like a boar too, but it was too thin and its limbs were just…wrong. It was one of the awful things that had sprung up from all of Lorena’s dark magic. But it did sport wicked looking fangs that were nearly as long as Rose’s forearm and glowing white eyes.

Rose released a breath and loosed her arrow, immediately nocking another one. These unnatural monsters could die but they didn’t like to go down easily. The first arrow struck the creature in the neck, and her second went through its left eye. It jerked and made another snarling sound, but it only slowed a little. Rose cursed and hopped back a bit, firing arrows as fast as she could. It took five to bring the boar-like thing down; it finally lurched and made an ear-splitting shrieking sound before collapsing on the ground barely two feet from her. Rose blew out a relieved breath. She’d sent two arrows into the thing’s neck, taken out both eyes, and nailed it once in the chest.

“Holy shit!” Charlie scrambled down from his tree branch so fast he almost fell on his face. “That was amazing! You have to show me how to do that!”

He skidded to a halt next to her, eyes wide as he stared at the creature, which was starting to collapse in on itself and turn into tendrils of oily black smoke.

“Okay, well. Back to camp,” Rose said. She was disappointed that it had taken so many arrows before the thing died; she couldn’t use the arrows again because they were tainted by the substance the boar-monster had melted into. She’d have to make some new ones. She hurried Charlie back to camp and he was very eager to tell everyone what had happened. Maria took the berries from him and listened patiently while Tobias frowned worriedly.

“Rose, are you alright?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m fine,” Rose assured him. “I need to make some new arrows though.”

“I’ll help.”

Charlie kept peppering them with questions as they worked on replacing her arrows, which she could tell was making Tobias a little anxious. She showed Charlie how to build a fire and was showing him how to roast some fish with the berries they’d picked, to distract him. She was helping him turn the fish over the fire when they heard the sound of something approaching.

“That sounds like hooves,” Tobias said. He set aside the arrow he’d been working on and moved his hand to the hilt of his sword. Rose told Charlie to keep his attention on the fish though she tugged her bow a little closer with her foot, just in case. A lone horse came trotting into view, and Rose nodded to Tobias, signaling him to relax. He moved his hand away from his sword and Rose stood to go greet the horse’s rider as he dismounted, stumbling slightly in his haste. He was disheveled and seemed anxious, but his messy dark hair reminded her instantly of someone else.

“Hi, sorry. I don’t mean to intrude on you like this-“

“Let me guess,” Rose interrupted. “You’re here about Charlie?”

“I…yes.” Surprise momentarily replaced the stressed out look on the man’s face.

“Mmm, so you’re the terrifying guardian I’ve heard so much about,” she said dryly, lips twitching up in amusement.

“The what?” The man frowned. Rose nodded toward the fire.

“Young Charles is right over there,” she said.