Kerawyn’s Story : A Little Girl’s Life

A House on the Hill

Lightning flashed behind the house on the hill.  It was an ordinary house, better than some of them in the village.  It had a large front room with a great fireplace that had a fire in it that night that could be seen from the road below.  Lining the shelves were interesting artifacts from areas far away and large books that were well read.  There was a fair sized kitchen and dining room separate from the main room.    The family that lived inside the house were sitting down for dinner.

A thin and wiry man sits at the head of the table his black hair slicked back and his clothing is formal.  Next to him sits a grown woman, his wife, who is tall with long black hair.  On his other side is a young girl of perhaps three or four.  She is the image of her mother.  The sounds of laughter float through the air as the family dines together.

Time passes on the stormy night.  The father reads the young girl a book and then the mother takes the child to her room that is up the stairs.  The girl seems without fear of the storm, tucked away in this house above the village.  She falls asleep and dreams of things that only the innocent can conceive.

The man and his wife settle down by the fire and discuss their days with one another.  Peaceful and quiet is the man and his wife with their daughter nestled in her bed.   The night grows darker and the storm continues outside of their utopia.  The man stands up and takes his wife’s hand and they retreat to another bedroom upstairs.

The three do not know that a watcher is outside, he has watched them for days but his interest is not in the man and the wife but for the little girl that naively sleeps in the bed upstairs.  Silently in the night, his footsteps covered by the thunder and lightning the man steals himself into the house.  He walks up the stairs and into the room of the man and his wife.   He stares down at them as they sleep and with a simple spell sends them into great agony until they fade away.  He ponders if he should leave them as they are or if he should have fun with them.

The little girl sat in the closet, she was cold and alone.  Months had passed since the Master had taken her here.  He said she was to be her student but she didn’t understand.  He made her carry and fetch for him all day.  If he was unhappy with her then she would sit in this closet by herself.  He never raised a hand to her.  She was fed well enough although some of the things were foul.  He didn’t let her bathe.  She had to earn that right he said.

The months continued to pass and the times in the closet grew more and more.  She would cry sometimes but the longer she was in there the less she cried.  Sometimes when she was sad she would think of her mommy and daddy.  She didn’t understand where they were or what had happened to them.  She wanted to know but any time she mentioned her parents the Master would put her in the closet.  She hated the closet.

She thought she had turned five but days were meaningless to her.  The tower she lived in with the Master was without windows.  She spent day after day in bleak light.  She knew nothing of other children and forgot the past more and more.  She tried to hold on to the memories of a house she had once lived in but they seemed to fade.

Time continued to speed by and the Master had seen her efforts to follow his orders.  He had begun to teach her spells.  One night he took her out to a graveyard and showed her how to make things that had died into living beings.  They would do anything she wanted.  She studied hard and learned how to do many spells but still her Master was never pleased.

One morning, she thought it was morning at least, she came to her Master’s room and found he had died.  In his hand was a letter.  The letter read:

My apprentice:

You have now found me at the end of my life.  I have lived for many centuries and practiced the dead arts in many regions of this world.  I learned several years ago that through my works in the magic I was slowly dying.  It was my decision to find you, a very special child, to pass on all my knowledge to you.

I wanted a blank slate to teach my magic to and for this I needed a child.  You are young in elf years and have learned much from me.  I know that memories of your past life still haunt you.  You had a mother and father who loved you but they could not give to you what I have given you.

I must confess to you that I took the lives of your mother and father.  I will also confess to you that I would do so again.  I did nothing to their bodies after their death and they died relatively fast.  However, you are now alone.  I hope that the gifts I have given you will help you to survive in this world.

Your Master

The girl’s young mind could not absorb the new information.  She had suspected that he had killed her parents but this was confirmation.  The dream of the house on the hill came back to her.  She was maddened sufficiently by the loss of yet another caretaker, even though her Master had been cruel in many ways he had functioned as her parental figure for a long time.

She felt no love for the man who she called Master but a dependence that was now broken.  She was in a tower that she had never known how to leave, in a country that she knew nothing about, she was lost in a place that she had lived now for several years.

The days after the Master’s death were long.  Insanity set in pretty quickly as her mind was already very fragile from the past few years ordeal.  She roamed aimlessly throughout the tower talking to herself.  By the third week she had resurrected the Master’s corpse and had spent time playing with him like he was a doll.  She spoke to him as though he could respond.  However, the zombie Master could not last for long and slowly rotted away.

After six weeks of being in the Tower alone the girl finally found the exit.  It was down beneath the Tower and through a dark tunnel.  She found the key in the Master’s belongings.  She stepped out of the Tower and the light burnt her eyes.  She had not seen daylight in several years now.  Her clothing was falling apart on her body.  Her thin frame looked fragile.  Her hair was stringy from lack of proper nourishment.  Her skin had grown so pale it was near translucent.

She retreated back into the Tower and waited until it was night before leaving again.  She spent her nights exploring the outside world, unconscious of all the dangers.  She found a graveyard and turned many of the corpses into her servants.  She sent them to bring her food.  She made them play games with her like children would do with their dolls.

She practiced her dark arts and found that she could devour fresh corpses for more energy and power.  She lived in her own world and her only companions were those that were dead.  She was not a completely evil child but she had no compass for good or evil.  She existed and played in her own fantasy on the brink of madness.

During her wanderings she eventually came to a city that was ruined and destroyed.  She found a man named was there.  She observed him for a long time and saw that he too knew the dark arts.  She spent weeks watching the men who lived in the city before she crept up and talked to him.  He said his name was Liouter and explained that he was a Necromancer.  She stayed in the city for some time but eventually left.  The clans were always at war and she knew nothing of wars.  She was a small girl.

After leaving the ruined city she wandered into the city of Pyrenthia.  She met many people there from different walks of life.  They all regarded her with an awkwardness because she knew nothing of social conventions.  She would spend her evenings in the graveyards collecting servants to collect her things.  She found that she could preserve some of the corpses instead of making them into zombies.  She would preserve some of them and they would become her dolls.  She would animate them and have tea at the temple.

Many frowned upon her actions but she was by this time too far gone in her own insanity to notice what others thought was abnormal.  She liked to talk to people and she kept searching for where she came from.  She wanted to see the house on the hill again but did not know the way back.

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