• Chapter I




    I darted up with a tense gasp.
    I had awaken from a terrible dream. Mordai had sent me away into the unknown to save someone. I could see the person, alone, in a dark pit crying out, suffering from the darkness every moment I chose to ignore them.
    I comforted myself, It was only a dream, Bria, only a dream.
    It was time to start the day and I couldn’t let a dream bother me.
    I rolled out of my goat wool blankets onto the wooden floor. Coal black ringlets fell to my waist as I stood up and dusted my goatskin nightdress. My bed used to be a long, broad shelf near the floor, but Mordai made a straw mattress and covered it with a goat wool blanket and a goatskin pillow.
    He set the mattress on the shelf underneath the shelf that held his collection of many books. It wasn’t the most comfortable bed to sleep on, especially knowing that a book from the overhead bookshelf might fall on you any moment.
    I shivered as my feet touched the dusty floor of the pantry which could easily be mistaken for a floor of ice. The scent of goats and spices filled the air and the wind shook the walls of the house.
    “Hold together,” I mumbled, tapping against an unsteady wall. “At least until we leave.” Then my hands lightly touched my necklace. It was a thin silver chain with a single silver charm on it, a silver arrow. Mordai had found me with it.
    All the food in the house was stored in the cellar. I quickly brushed my hair and splashed melted snow on my face, wiping the wet drops off with a linen cloth.
    I opened a chest under my shelf-bed and pulled out my woolen stockings and other things. They were my only clothes and appeared very primitive. It did not matter anyway, I was a mountain girl.
    After I put on my clothes, I brought the makeshift broom from a corner in the kitchen and swept all the dust into the fireplace. There was quite a lot of dust and it took quite a while to sweep it all up. Mordai never bothered to sweep the cottage and I was usually outside with the goats or a ways down the mountain chopping firewood.
    I heaved a few logs into the fireplace and lit the fire. The orange and yellow flames licked the sides of the stone chimney. The heat warmed my body. The house was quiet, except for the sound of the crackling flames in the hearth. I slipped on my wool coat and my goatskin gloves and slipped out the creaky front door.
    As soon as I stepped outside, the wind blew snow in my face. I looked up and saw the peak of the mountain wear Mordai said the sun rose over just for my pleasure. He told me that when he found me on his doorstep twelve years ago when I was but three, the sun was sitting on the peak watching over me. I was fifteen now and could travel up to the peak on my own. From there I could see the towers of Satris and even the volcanoes of hot Istonia. Another gust of wind brought an ice cold burst of snow around my body. I shivered in the cold.
    I was glad we were moving down to our winter house today. Since we live near the peak, it gets very cold during winter. Mordai and I move down the mountain in the late fall to the outskirts of a village in Bayane, a sea-side kingdom. Our winter house has beds and books and clothes in it; it has everything we need, so we don’t bring a lot from our spring, summer house. Often, I stay with Mordai’s sister, Miriam. He has a daughter, Melanie, but she lives in Simone. She visited Miriam once when I was there.
    I wish I looked like Melanie. She had straight blonde hair that curls at her earlobes. She always wore big, silky bows tied around her hair like the woman in Simone wear their hair. There were no mirrors in our house on the mountain. Mordecai said that we shouldn’t be bothered with our appearance, but do our job in life. Before he moved to this mountain, he was a scholar. He studied about many people, and then married a woman named Sara. He doesn’t talk much about her, because after their daughter, Melanie, left home at the age of sixteen, Sara died and Mordecai became a hermit and moved up to this mountain. Miriam does not think it is healthy for him or me to live on the mountain, but I would not trade it for anything else in the world.
    I remember our visit to Miriam’s shop last year. She and Mordai talked in whispers quite often and they sent me out on much more errands than could be imagined. I did not like her town, Rose Village. The first winter I went there, Mordai signed me into dancing school, but I was so clumsy that all the children laughed at me. The next winter I was put in acting school and I was always so distracted that the teacher sent me out. The next winter I tried acting again, but the teacher once again sent me home. The year after that I was put in a singing school. My voice towered above the other children’s voices and the voice teacher was so proud; the other children were jealous and I made no friends. So the years after that, I stayed in our house and visited Miriam’s shop quite often.
    Outside, I went into the makeshift barn where all the goats were huddled together. I milked them and put all their milk in a large tin pail. Then I brought the pail inside and sat it near the fire to warm. I didn’t hear any stir in the house. Mordai was probably still asleep so I would make breakfast this morning. I looked down the hallway where Mordai’s room was. His door was open, so I walked in. He was sitting up in bed, a candle beside him, reading a large book. As I entered he looked up at me and sighed.
    Mordai was quite old. He used to be a strong man, but was weak lately and stayed in bed often. He never bothered to shave his white beard anymore and hardly ever ate. He was sick most of the time and was never outside the house only when it was time to go down to our winter home.
    “Bria, come here,” he said in a hoarse voice. I walked closer to his bed and sat down beside it, “Bria, I am getting very old. I am going to die soon.”I was shocked by his words. Of course I knew it would happen eventually, but it sounded so awful when he said it. I was silent and let him continue speaking.
    “Do you know what today is?” he asked. I shook my head.
    “Today is the day I found you on my doorstep, twelve years ago. You were about three then.” He coughed and I nodded. “You’re older now, and so am I.” He was silent as he looked down at his book and closed it shut. Dust swirled up from the pages.
    “Bria I’m too old to go down the mountain this year,” he began. I nodded.
    “You want me to go down the mountain on my own?” I asked. Mordai looked up at me. He was quite old, seventy-two to be exact. He looked it too. Last year it was harder for him to go a ways down the mountain to collect firewood or shear the goats when their wool was the thickest. I did all those chores now. The only job Mordai did was cook, and he was usually too sick to do that.
    “Go and take the sheets off your bed and put them on me. Then take all the firewood in this house and set it near my fireplace. Go do those things.” He blinked his grey-blue eyes and exhaled a rattled breath.
    I ripped my blankets off my bed and laid them over Mordai’s blankets. I took the firewood and set it near his hearth. Then once again, I sat at his bedside, waiting to hear what he would say. Mordai took a deep breath before speaking again.
    “Now,” said Mordai, “Do you see that chest over there?”
    I looked towards the wall where he pointed. There was a large chest covered in a thick blanket of dust. Cobwebs covered the ends of it.
    “Go and pull it over here,” he ordered. I dusted the chest off and pulled it to his bedside. He reached into the drawer beside his bed and pulled out a bundle wrapped in goatskin. He un-wrapped the goatskin around the bundle, revealing a silver chain. On the chain was a charm that looked like an arrow, but there was a space on it that showed that part of the necklace was missing.
    “The bow is missing,” whispered Mordecai, “The silver bow that belongs with the silver arrow. There is a prophecy behind it. There once were a people called the Silines. They lived in a land called Siline and were a powerful, peaceful people. Many years ago, the Silines were attacked by an army belonging to the king of Satris. After years of battling, the Satrisicans were winning. They attacked the castle and went to kill the king. The king and queen had a young daughter, only a baby, and they wanted to keep her safe.” Mordai had told me the language of the Silines. He had not told me anything about them, though.
    He was silent for a long time and stared at the wall opposite him. I waited for many minutes and finally, could not wait any longer.
    “What happened to the baby girl?”
    “The queen gave the baby to the child’s young nurse and told her to go through the secret city and escape safely with the girl.”
    “Did they escape safely?” I asked, becoming interested in the story. Mordai sat up straighter. He grinned and nodded his head.
    “They did, but somehow the baby girl ended up with a band of gypsies,” said Mordai.
    “What happened to the nurse?”
    “No one knows,” said Mordai, “Some say that she died and others claim that she sold the child to the gypsies.”
    I thought that it would be awfully dreadful to sell a princess away to a band of gypsies and wondered where the nurse was now. Perhaps she was still alive and found somewhere to stay where no one could find her. It would be a lonely life. Patiently, I waited for Mordai to continue.
    “The gypsies lost the child when they were ambushed by Istonian gnomes,” said Mordai, “The gnomes took the child’s precious things and before they could take her silver necklace, they were attacked by wolves. The wolves took the child up to a snowy mountain and left her there on the doorstep of an old hermit.”
    The story was beginning to sound familiar.
    “The man knew at once who this child was. He had studied the Silines, for their people go way back to ancient times. There was a prophecy told by the prophet of King Aric, the king of everything, the universe. The prophecy was that the princess, whose name was Silver Arrow would grow up and when she was a young woman, fight and take her people out of Satris and defeat the Satrisicans, winning back their land.” Mordai paused and took my hand in his.
    “I told you this story sixteen years ago when I found you on my doorstep. I repeated it many times to you. Can you finish it?”
    I believed I could. She would be crowned queen and rule for many years, peacefully over the land. The people would know who she was because of her strange birthmark.
    I had a strange birthmark. It was shaped exactly like a silver arrow. Mordai looked straight at me and suddenly, I felt strange. He said the girl’s name meant ‘silver arrow’ in Siline. That was my name. Bria Estelle which meant Silver Arrow.
    “Can you guess what the girl’s birthmark was of?” he asked me.
    “A silver arrow,” I whispered. I rubbed my arm, wishing the birthmark was no longer there. It would always be a reminder to me of this story. Then my fingers closed around the necklace around my neck. The silver arrow.
    “Bria Estelle,” said Mordai, “You are Princess Bria Estelle of the Silines and you must go and save your people.”
    My dream . . .