The Final Days of Springborough

Before the hood came off, Thomas could hear their voices. Deep, gruff voices from many days of hard labor. The deepness didn’t scare him as much as the sheer amount of them. In his mind, these were criminals, but criminals typically didn’t run in groups so large, did they? On top of that, they sounded like adults. Adults typically weren’t savage criminals, were they? Where had he stumbled that there were so many older people so willing to commit a crime?

The voices didn’t talk in any particulars. Some just mentioned the weather as if taking a hostage was the least concerning bit of their day. Some talked of who he might be, what they might get for him. Others speculated that this young boy was a spy from the kingdom, and some of them hit the guessing game on the head, by suggesting he looked like the Prince of Springborough. “The young Thomas,” an accented voice said, “with his short blonde hair and freckles. This boy looks like him.”

“What would he be doing in the woods? In Fortis?”

“Heck if I know. Perhaps he got lost.”

“Maybe he’s running away.”

“Maybe the winds carried him.”

This got Thomas’ attention as he did remember flying through the sky once he got to the clearing in the village. He thought it was some overly grown bird that picked him up and carried him, but he could believe it was a strong wind, if someone was going to tell him they saw something similar happen to somebody else.

“You and your demon theory again.”

“It’s not demons! But, something is in this storm. Something that can lift a tree. I saw it. Lifted a tree. Almost took my dog. It’s as if the wind has arms and hands and can snatch us up in it.”

“A tornado doesn’t have arms and legs. It just has winds. And the winds are what pick you up. This storm just has a strong gust every once in a while is all. That is what you are seeing take things with it. Nothing more.”

“There is something more.”

With that, the room quieted. Thomas pictured in his mind everyone looking at him, this young boy, his hands tied behind him with a scratchy rope, the handmade chair under him, creeping with the slightest shift of his weight. He wondered how long he had been knocked out, because he felt slightly dry. The mud on his face, beneath the hood, was beginning to feel cracky and caky. Thomas was beginning to feel like himself again, if not just a little sore. He was pretty sure that if he could free himself from these binds, he could run at his full pace, and be back into the cover of the woods as quick as ever, disappearing to never reappear in Fortis again.

It wasn’t until he pictured his freedom that he remembered his sister Kyrstin, and hoped that she was all right. Now he was stressing about his own well-being, because he had stressed about hers. Hopefully, now she wasn’t having peace-of-mind while he worried for his skin.

“Let’s take the hood off, shall we?”

When they removed his hood, he was blinded by the small amount of light they had. Just a couple candles were burning here and there, but coming from the immense darkness of the hood, Thomas could barely see through squinted lids. Soon, the shapes faded into silhouettes and the silhouettes into people as his pupils contracted. Almost all of them looked like men, even though Thomas knew that some of them were female by the higher octave to their gravelly voices. All of them were dressed in what looked like loose fitting sheets that perhaps were once white but were now yellows and browns, stained with age and mud. They looked like what lifelong beggars on the streets of Springborough looked like, and these were the regular villagers of Fortis.

“Speak,” one said to him, the one with the longest beard in the room.

Thomas just looked at him, not so much because he was angry at being given an order from someone so far below him on the social scale (although he was, he had to admit) but also because he had no idea what to say in this current situation. He could speak a “hi” but it almost seemed comical that that be the first word out of his mouth. He could bark out an order, but if they were excited he might be a prince, he figured that information should be kept under wraps as long as possible. So, he simply stared at Beard, waiting for the next move.

“He’s mute,” Beard determined.

“He ain’t mute, I heard him speak,” said a woman whose front two teeth were missing. Thomas could see her tongue with every word, like a slippery, pink salamander trying to escape its enamel cage. “Right before I bagged him. He was asking where I was.”

“So, he’s blind?” Beard ventured, for some reason, hopeful that Thomas had some kind of ailment.

“He ain’t blind neither,” shouted a rail thin man from the back. “His eyes are focusing on us.”

“Speak!” Beard demanded again, grabbing the arms of Thomas’ chair with both hands and leaning down into him. Thomas could smell his breath, a mix of berries and sleep, that made Thomas want to throw up just to get away from it. “Speak or I’ll smack the dirt off your face!”

“Why am I tied up?” Thomas eek’d out, perhaps more feeble than he wanted to come across.

“Because you’re a prisoner,” Toothless responded.

“Prisoners get tied up,” the dirtiest man in the room said.

“What have I done to become imprisoned?”

“Trespassing,” Toothless Woman said, which sounded more like “treth-pathing.”

“This is Fortis, is it not?”

“It is,” Thin Man said.

“Than I wasn’t trespassing. Fortis is a community with no rules regarding trespassing. Nomads and other roamers can come and go as they please. You cannot hold me prisoner.”

The group looked at each other, smiles across some of their faces. Thomas felt like his argument was valid, and had no idea why they wouldn’t see it as such. They couldn’t hold him prisoner. They should let him go. And if they knew who he was, they should let him go quickly, for King Daniel would take his wrath out on them. Even if his father wasn’t the King, he knew what kind of man his father was, and King Daniel would have to be restrained because these people even touched his kid. His Father would punch his way out of this room. The King was a strong man. His power did not just come from his crown.

“Fine, boy,” Beard said, “you are not our prisoner anymore. You’re right. It’s not a crime to trespass in the village of Fortis.”

“Excellent,” Thomas replied, chancing a smile.

“But, before we release you from your restraints, you should know, we have decided to take you hostage. Does that make sense to you?”

“Hostage?”

“We have no reason to take you prisoner, but, you see, a child like you, with clean clothes before you fell in the mud, you might fetch a pretty gold piece or two-“

“Or twenty,” Toothless said with a wide, hole-filled smile.

“We look to fetch that ransom. Get some clean clothes for ourselves. So now you have to tell us, where are you from? Who should we send our ransom letter to?”

Thomas sat and thought. If he told them he was a Lishens of the Springborough Lishens, they would know they had stumbled upon the chance of a fortune. He’d be the most valuable hostage this area of the world had ever seen, which might buy him a particular sort of protection. And, if the kingdom found out he had been taken against his will, there was a surefire shot that the kingdom would rise in a fury, looking to find him. Why, he’d probably be rescued faster than any other hostage as well.

But, maybe these villagers knew about that. Maybe they would know how much more dangerous the situation would be to take a Prince hostage and not just a boy from a better household. If he told them he was royalty, they might not have any other choice but to realize they had gone too far in their criminal behavior, and the only way to protect themselves would be to make sure Thomas never talked about what had happened. And the only way to do that, was to make sure Thomas never talked about anything ever again.

As they waited for an answer, Thomas finally let the fear he was fighting all day settle in.