Chapter ~ 5

Rakia's POV

I thought I was dead until I tried moving my hand. My eyelids felt heavy but I made the effort to open them.

A wooden ceiling was the first to fall in my line of vision. I looked to the side. A vase full of flowers and a stack of books sat on a nightstand. On the otherside, the sun showered rays of light through a window whilst the faded curtains danced to the tunes of the wind. Panic coursed through my veins.

This is someone's house! What happened in the woods? And where's Luca?

I tried sitting up but a sharp pain shot through my body from the side. A groan left my mouth and I fell back on the bed.

"Oh, you're awake."

Carefully, I raised my head to see a young girl about the age of nine, standing at the doorway. Her short brown hair hung above her shoulders, working well with her bright blue eyes and rosy cheeks. She wore a simple yellow dress and her bare feet had traces of mud.

I leaned on my good side, holding myself up with my elbow. That was when I noticed I wasn't wearing my clothes. Just a simple cloth covered my chest from the back. My stomach was tightly covered with gray bandages. A thick blue duvet covered the rest of my body.

"I didn't change your clothes, Mother did," the girl said.

Speaking of clothes, my cloak was nowhere in sight. My eyes searched frantically across the room.

"Are you looking for this?" The girl asked, holding up my cloak.

I nodded and she walked over to hand it to me. Relief washed over me as I felt the pendant and locket in the pocket. I couldn't afford to lose these two, especially the locket. I put the cloak on the bedpost behind me. When I turned back, the girl had left and I relaxed on the bed again.

After a few minutes, the girl came running in with a small bowl and a spoon. She took out two more pillows from the closet and put them behind me to help me sit up.

"Ok. Mother said to give you this when you wake up. She's one of the best herbalists in the Midlands so she knows these kind of things." She handed me the small bowl and spoon.

I sniffed its content. It was mushy, green and smelt like grass. I wouldn't be surprised if it was mashed grass!

"It's Edamame," the girl said, cancelling out my previous thought. "It's medicinal. Good for the body."

I sniffed it again and looked at her. She looked back at me expectantly, like she wanted me to swallow everything in one gulp. A thought crossed my mind that it could be poisoned but she was a little girl. Why would she want to kill me? I used the spoon to collect a little of the green mush into my mouth. It wasn't so bad. It was sweet and had a beany flavour. A taste I was expecting. I collected some more and ate.

Content that I was eating, she grabbed a stool and sat beside my bed. She watched me swallow a few more spoons of the mush before speaking. "So. My name is Melanie. What's yours?"

"Rakia." Then a question dawned on me. "Melanie. How did you find me?"

"Oh! I didn't find you, my brothers did. They found you unconscious in the woods this morning. So they brought you home."

Wow! The people of the Midlands were actually quite nice. If something like this happened in Hartland, as long as people didn't know me, they'd have left me there to die. Besides, who lets unconscious strangers into their home?

"So where are they?" I asked.

"They went hunting with Father."

"Melanie! Melanie where are you?" Someone shouted from somewhere in the house.

"Over here, Mother!" she replied, smiling.

I heard quick footsteps before a brunette lady entered. She looked exactly like Melanie but an older version. The only difference was the eye colour. She had brown eyes instead of blue.

"Oh! Thank goodness you're ok." She came over to the side of the bed and hugged her daughter. "I see our guest is awake," she smiled. "Hello, I'm Rhoda." She extended her arm. I shook it and introduced myself. "I see Melanie gave you the Edamame. You should be feeling quite better now."

Now that she mentioned it, I felt stronger and the pain in my side had reduced a little. "Surprisingly, I do. Thank you so much," I said, giving the empty bowl back to Melanie.

"Wonderful," Rhoda exclaimed. "I should check your wound though. It's poisoned."

"Poisoned?" I couldn't believe my ears. I'd spent less than a day here and I'd already been poisoned?

"Yes," Rhoda confirmed. "The arrow that hurt you had skelp poison. It slowly enters your bloodstream then stops your heart from beating. A few more hours with that poison in your system and you'd be dead by now."

I was speechless.

Rhoda sat on the bed and expertly took off the bandage around my stomach, revealing the leaves underneath. I was about to ask about them but she answered before I could.

"Anaram leaves," she said. "It helps in clearing out poison and healing wounds." She removed the leaves and cleaned the greenish liquid splashed on my wound. "I need to put a new set of leaves on it. It's going to take about two days to heal."

"Two days!" I exclaimed in disbelief.

"It could be more." Rhoda tapped her chin.

"I can't stay here that long. I have to go find someone. It's really important." The sooner I found Granark, the faster I got to go back to Mother and Father.

"Well, if you leave now your wound isn't going to get better." Rhoda placed both hands on her hips. "Even though the poison is out, the wound can still kill you."

Heavy footsteps sounded below us. "Rhoda! Melanie! We're hooooome!" A deep voice roared.

"That's my husband and sons," Rhoda said. "Let's get you dressed so you can meet them."

Melanie scurried out to go welcome them from hunting.

Rhoda put salt and new wet Anaram leaves on my wound before bandaging it again. She pulled out a purple dress from the closet and helped me wear it, careful not to hurt me.

"Can you walk?" Rhoda asked.

"Yeah. I'm fine," I said as I pushed myself out of the bed. I followed her into a corridor, leading downstairs. Beautiful carvings of long vines and doves were displayed on the wooden walls. We went down the stairs into a quaint living room.

Melanie came out of the kitchen on the other side with a man I assumed was her father. She had a branch in her hand and they were both munching on blackberries from it. Melanie's father had long brown wavy hair which he had pulled into a ponytail and sideburns that led to hearty growth of hair round his mouth.

"Lance! No boots in the house!" Rhoda frowned.

"Oh sorry, sweetheart." The elderly man yanked his feet out of his thick muddy boots and tossed them out a open window that overlooked the front porch. He smiled at his wife, attempting to give her a kiss on the cheek, but she just sauntered past him to the kitchen, mumbling something about mud on her floors. Melanie followed with a giggle.

He turned back to me, rubbing his hands on his clothes. "Hello." He extended his hand. "I'm Lance. Pleasure to meet you."

"Hello, I'm Rakia," I smiled. "And thank you so much for finding and bringing me to your home."

He chuckled, "Well we couldn't leave you out there like that."

The familiar sound of a horse's neigh filtered through the air and my ears perked up.

"Ah, the boys finally managed to get the stray horse over the bridge." Lance moved towards the front door.

I followed him outside just in time to see a man struggling with my dark coffee coloured horse.

"Luca!" My bare feet carried me towards him and I wrapped my hands round my horse's neck. "I thought I'd never see you again." I gave him a gentle pat. He snorted a response on my shoulder.

"Hey! You're the girl we saved this morning."

My hands left Luca and I turned to meet a guy holding Luca's reins.

"Glad to see you're ok." He handed me the reins. The same patch of brown hair and blue eyes made up his features and it didn't take much to notice that he was one of the brothers Melanie mentioned earlier.

A charming smile lit up his face. "I'm Richard."

"Rakia." I smiled in return.

He nodded. "We found your horse near the creek. I think he has a rock stuck in his hoof but we can get it out. Right, Cliff?"

He paused for a reply, but when he didn't get one, a frown descended on his forehead. "Clifford? Clifford, where are you?"

"Over here!" Another man jumped down a wooden bridge fixed above a small gully. He had the same hair colour as Richard but had intense brown eyes instead. His hair was wavy and long but not as long as his father's and he was two heads taller than I was.

"You dropped the herbs Mother told us to get." Clifford held up two satchels with tiny branches and twigs sticking out.

"My bad," Richard apologised, taking the bags from his brother. "The horse was giving me a hard time."

Clifford shook his head before turning to me and for some reason, I felt my face heat up. If I wasn't brown-skinned, my face would've been red by now.

"Oh Cliff," Richard started. "This is Rakia, the girl we found in the woods this morning. Turns out the horse is hers too."

Luca snorted behind me.

"Rakia huh?" Clifford extended his arm, a warm smile on his lips. "Nice to meet you."

"L-likewise," I replied, feeling my heatbeat increase.

"You were pretty knocked out when we found you. What happened?"

"Uhh..." Suddenly remembering that the Hartland warriors were still out there, my blood turned cold. If they found me, there was no way I'd find Granark, meaning I came to the Midlands and got shot with a poisoned arrow for nothing. I couldn't let that happen so I quickly came up with a plan to lay low for sometime, just to plot out how I was going to find this Granark without coming into contact with the Hartland warriors.

"Rakia?"

Coming out of my reverie, I found Clifford and Richard staring at me like I'd grown a second head.

"Are you ok?" Clifford questioned. "You looked frightened for awhile."

"No, I'm fine," I pushed a smile onto my faced. "I was... I was just thinking about how lucky I was to have been found by you guys. May the Creator bless your hearts."

"Ah Amen," Richard grinned. But Clifford didn't seem too convinced.

"Get in, everyone!" Rhoda shouted from the porch. "Lunch is ready!"