Read Online The Pegasus's Lament by Martin Hengst - Free Book Online Page A

her thighs was proof of her fear. When mother had shoved her into the barrel, she had protested, half awake and groggy, not understanding what was happening.
    The naked terror in her mother's face had stopped any more questions. Seven year old Tionne found herself shoved in an empty water barrel and wedged under a bed.
    She had heard the monsters when they came into the house. Their claws made little scratching sounds on the floor. It sounds like the stylus on the slates at school, she thought. How strange that it could sound almost the same. Then the screaming started and she couldn't think of anything else. Tionne bit down on her lower lip, tasting copper and forcing any sound that might escape deep down into her belly which already ached from the panic that gripped her.
    Mother's screams, for she knew it was mother who had been screaming, ended in the same wet, rending sound that had ended the toddler's life only a few moments ago. It was dark in the barrel, but it wouldn't have mattered. Tionne's eyes were shut so tightly that her head pounded with the effort to not see anything at all.
    Tionne would never be sure how long she had stayed that way, crammed into her tiny cylindrical prison. All she knew was that when the barrel was yanked from under the bed, she couldn't bear to be quiet any more. She started screaming before the monsters pulled off the lid and didn't stop for a long time.
    Even when her eyes adjusted to the light flooding into the room from the broken window, she continued to scream. When she saw it was a woman, not a monster, who tried to take her from the barrel, Tionne screamed. When the woman called for help, Tionne screamed. When other men and women came rushing in, Tionne screamed. When they pulled her cramped body from what could have been a tiny coffin, Tionne screamed.
    In fact, she went on screaming until one of the women summoned a healer, who had the good sense to dose her with an elixir of valerian root and chamomile. Her tiny stomach empty of anything substantial, Tionne almost vomited back up the vile tasting liquid, but managed to keep it down. After a while, she stopped screaming and stared with vacant eyes at those who were gathered around her. Somewhere, deep in her head, Tionne knew they were speaking the same language she had been raised on, but it was impossible for her to put the words together. It all sounded like gibberish, so she stood, and stared.
    She wanted to ask for her mother, for her father, for her baby brother Raynold who was a very precocious two and liked to sit in the dirt by the water pump and make mud pies for hours on end. She saw Raynold with his mud pies. Then she saw the toddler from the market square. They were different, but the same. 
    No matter how she tried, Tionne couldn't make words come. Even if she had been able to speak, these people were strangers. Mother always told her not to talk to strangers unless she was nearby. But mother wasn't nearby, and Tionne knew with dreadful certainty that mother would never be nearby again.
    The enormity of that knowledge seemed to fall on her like a mountain and Tionne dropped to her knees, oblivious to the fact that the congealed crimson liquid that stained the rough wooden planks of their common room had poured freely from her mother and father only hours before. Tionne curled herself into a tight little ball, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs. Mother used to hug her, but now she knew, she would have to hug herself. Tionne began to shake and the strangers clustered around her looked down on her with pity. One of them reached out, as if the gesture could offer some sort of comfort or ease the pain, but snatched their hand back when Tionne hissed at her like a feral cat.
    Time seemed to have lost all meaning. The shadows moved ever so slowly across the floor as Tionne listened to the nonsense coming out of the strangers who had huddled by the door to speak in hushed tones. Tionne