Chapter 1: Fire

“Prudence, Prue, we have to run. The house is on fire,” The girl’s old Nanny Harriot said urgently, as she shook the girl.

Prudence Tully woke with a start. Pulled from her nightmare, she found smoke swirling around the ceiling. She clambered out of bed and grabbed her blanket off it. Coughing, she wrapped it around herself and her old Nanny.

They hunkered down low and headed for the stairs to find the way was blocked by flames leaping up the stairs. Harriot turned Prue around, and they headed back down the hall to the servant’s stairs. They made their way down coughing and wheezing as the putrid smoke billowed up the stairs.

They grabbed the rail as they heard a roof beam crash down on the other side of the stairs. It shook the surrounding house nearly knocking them down. More crashing and breaking could be heard further down the house, and the shell shuddered again.

Flames flared across the floor at the base of the stairs from the room to their left. They were trapped. They couldn’t go back. Harriot stepped in front of the taller girl. “Wrap the blanket around us Prue and hold on to me,” she yelled at her over the noises of the dying building.

The hissing and crackling noises created by the burning house were as terrifying as the fire and smoke. Prue hooked her fingers in the edges of the blanket as she pulled it over her head. Then she wrapped her arms around Harriot’s tiny shoulders. She stepped when Harriot did.

They hit the floor at the base of the stairs. Quickly they turned to the right. The kitchen had old stone walls, and the fire hadn’t got here yet. Prue let go of Harriot’s shoulders, and they hurried out through the open kitchen doors.

It wasn’t until they were safely outside that they realised the fire had snuck under the blanket and was eating Prue’s nightie and the blanket. Harriot grabbed the top of the blanket off Prue.

She pushed her to the ground and tried to extinguish the fire. The material stuck to her left leg and seared her skin as it smouldered. One of the other servants doused the burning blanket and Prue’s legs with a bucket of water.

The pain finally pushed past the shock, fear and disbelief that her home was gone and Prue screamed, she screamed the most soul rendering scream any of them had ever heard.

The flames danced high into the air and laughed at her.

Her pain, however, had not been short-lived.

Her legacy from that day was an ugly burn scar covering the outside of her lower left leg. It puckered the side of her calf muscle and wrapped to the front of her ankle. She also had three long ridged scars halfway up the outside of her thigh from her knee, due to the way her flesh had healed from her burns.

The loss of her parents had her inconsolable. Prue’s Uncle Albert had appeared after she was on the lawn to tell her of their demise. He had then sent her to Bavindor to see the doctors. Most of Prue and Harriot’s baggage was already on the coach to go to Bavindor. She was supposed to be leaving in the morning so she could attend her first Winter Season.

Her mother had intended to go six weeks before the start of the Winter Season, as she had planned to get some major renovations done on their townhouse. It needed new bathing rooms and a general makeover if she was to receive guests and possibly admirers for Prue. They had other shopping trips planned to get Prue’s clothing for the season sorted out.

They hadn’t used the Bavindor house much in the last few years. They were supposed to have left two days earlier, but her mother had dithered. Her father was going to come later with her mother’s brothers and her cousins Ty and Vincent.

Prue had cried, ranted and refused to go. She wanted to stay with her parents. She said that she had to stay for their burial. Her Uncle Albert, however, insisted her medical treatment was more important. Her parents had already had their funeral. It was a pyre, he had told her harshly.

He had her sedated with nadack when the doctor turned up and told Harriot to look after her and get her out of there. He told the coachman to hurry and too not stop. They left as the sun crept over the horizon to see the devastation the night had wrought.

In the early afternoon, the coach driver got worried by a wobbly wheel. Harriot had told him to slow down, as the rattling of the coach was too much for Prue. They ended up pulling the coach off the road and into a small grove.

He told Harriot and the guard they had with them, it would take him a little time to fix the wheel. He was very worried about getting his charge to Bavindor. Harriot calmed him, and told him there was little the doctors in Bavindor could do that, she hadn’t already done.

They had enough supplies to camp for the night, so staying wasn’t a problem. He needed time and a fire to help him make the new pegs he had found missing from the wheel. So they decided to stay the night in the grove.

Harriot was worried by the fever Prue was developing. She could look after her better if they weren’t moving. She spent the night bathing the girl to get her temperature down. Prue was mumbling and fighting the sedative Harriot had given her for the pain. Prue’s distress didn’t help alleviate the pain in Harriot’s heart.

It was mid-morning before the coachman, and the guard got the wheel fixed. By then Prue’s fever had broken to a much-relieved Harriot.

When Prue opened her eyes, Harriot said softly with love, “Happy birthday Prudence, you are seventeen today.”

Prue looked up into the huge trees that towered over them.

“Where are we?” she croaked, her throat was still raw from the smoke she had inhaled during the fire, and she coughed.

Harriot gave her some warm, honeyed chamomile tea to soothe her throat. “We’re in a grove. The carriage broke down, and we had to stop to fix it. Then you got the fever,” she said as she checked the girl’s forehead again.

Prue nodded and then Harriot got her to drink some more of the tea. They bundled her up, put her back in the coach and continued on their way. After a little while, Prue said to Harriot, “I had a strange dream when I had the fever.”

Harriot looked at her and then continued knitting. “This man, well it sounded like a man, but I couldn’t tell you what he looked like. Anyway, he said I’d been touched by fire,” Prue said and coughed again.

“He said that my Gift would help me understand how to work the energies and elements of the world. I got all these strange ideas and images pop in and out of my head, then I woke up. I have no idea what he was on about,” she finished.

Harriot looked at her strangely, “Oh dear, I think I know where we stopped. I was so worried about you, I didn’t think about it at the time.” She looked at Prue and frowned.

“We were at the Old Oak Grove. You were born at six in the morning. I remember it well. Your fever broke at about that time this morning. It’s said to be an Old Gods Grove. I think you have been Gifted, dear child.”

Prudence looked at her and thought about what she had said. “Ty said he had been Gifted, but he was further north near Terville. I didn’t think there was a Gods Grove near us?”

“Oh yes, but there isn’t as much left of it anymore. That area was once covered in a huge forest, but much of it got cut down about sixty to seventy years ago. Your grandfather fenced off most of the area that now contains what’s left of the Grove.”

“He told the farmers, if they cut any more of his trees down, they would die a painful death. The Keltrian Gods are not very forgiving in this regard. Some locals not of the Pagan faith didn’t believe him.”

“A wood-cutter cut one of the smaller oaks down, and they found him dead where the tree fell on him. So no one had dared to cut the trees in forty or more years. They say the Wood-cutter now guards the trees.”

Chapter 2 »