Chapter 3

The dawn rose on the Ruby Isle and Katherine the Great was already up. She roused the page Alexander and traveled from the hostel that they were at for the night to the bishop’s cottage. They were in Quamth that day, and Katherine remembered how nice the Bishop was here. He welcomed them in and made breakfast while filling them in on what needed to be done in their town and what little news had come by ship. It seemed that there was a stranger come to the Ruby Isle who had asked to see the ruler but was dissatisfied when he had been given audience to Poe, the “King”. She was amazed by this, as all the bishops had been, but it was seen by the commoners that he was crazy and so, the bishop said, Poe had been forced to put him in the dungeon ‘till someone volunteered to take him across the Yets river, Namcre, and get a boat in Armedio to Homet on the Isle of Jobe and deposit him there. Katherine knew from previous dispatches that this wouldn’t be just a walk through the park, Namcre and Ratet being at war and pirates roaming the Yets river. They decided after a lovely breakfast that she would send Alexander on the next ship leaving Eclipse Pt. so he could travel from the port at Plagrath back up to Cosynth and ask Poe, who was there, for his version of everything.
It just so happened that there was a boat in port that very morning, and so after Alexander boarded, Katherine left for the Starsha forest. She would go and talk to the Elven people as well as the Dryads and get a guide to either take her through the forest to Cosynth or to her hovel. She also thought that she should check out the rumor that there was a marsh to the east of Starsha, which would make travel by land quite hard, not that anyone had tried that lately. She was glad to be headed to Starsha, the Dryads there always welcomed her and made her feel very much at home and loved her like no one else had done. Katherine hated to tell them that they would have to stay in the forest, but it had gotten to a point where it wasn’t safe to travel around any more if you were a person of the faeire. She still saw a few Elves in towns around Bristmal, but she highly doubted if there were any to be found south of there.
Katherine thought of the state of war that was brewing as she led her mare deeper into the forest. Ratet and Namcre just wouldn’t solve the problems of the river Yets, they both wanted it for their own but couldn’t see that it ran through both. It was equally hard because for the longest time, Namcre had been on the land of both where it is now and where Ratet is. But what could she do? It would take an army, and violence wasn’t something that Katherine thought would solve anything. She saw the sun setting and realized that she’s have to make camp someplace dry.... the only problem was that she didn’t have a tent. She was used to this though, and so, as the first drops of rain fell, Katherine crawled under a hollow log and let her mare find her own shelter, nothing new for the horse.
* * * * * * * *
While also getting her books, Yoshi had found a school for Katherine to go to where she wouldn’t be totally bored but also could learn what she needed. This was a real change for Katherine, after learning on her own for so long, to actually sit in a class and listen to what the teacher was saying. And need to listen. She didn’t like the new school any more than the last one, but it was at least a change, and what she was learning was basically right, according to her. She sat at lunch with people from her classes, nobody was really her friend, but she wasn’t a loner either. There were two kinds of people at the alternative school she found out, the flunkies who couldn’t make it anywhere else, and the really smart people who needed a place to go ‘till they were old enough to go to college. And that was mostly how the lunchroom worked, flunkies on one side and the smart ones on the other. That bothered Katherine, but it wasn’t like she could conceivably change the whole school.
The people she sat with were all girls, not those who she was like, but just some people from her classes. She tried so hard not to become superficial like she thought they were, but she didn’t want to seem rude, so she participated in most of their conversations. People were always coming to and going from the school, so seeing new people wasn’t really anything special. Katherine did notice when another guy joined the boy’s table though, just by the way that he held himself. He would lean away from the table like he knew he belonged, even if he didn’t talk to anyone. She saw how self-assured he was and wished that she could know his name at least, but wouldn’t go up to him and he never looked her way. After a week or so, all the girls were talking about him, which was a turn-off for Katherine’s wanting to be friends with him, but he still looked interesting.
That day was Wednesday, and Katherine got on the bus to go home, not even thinking about school. She just wanted to get home to do homework so she could sleep. Sleep was her release, it was even better than the Ruby Isle, which she would never share with anyone, and it kept The Mother from disturbing her. The Mother was strangely respective of sleep. When Katherine got home, the house was quiet and she was alone. Although at first it was a relief, it puzzled her because The Mother was a housewife and mostly just stayed at home doing motherly things and taking Katherine to those detested schools. She didn’t enjoy where she was at, but she didn’t want to leave either. Suddenly the phone rang, breaking that train of thought and making her jump.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Katherine, this is your mom,” and though the words made her think of her real mom, she knew by the voice that it was The Mother. “I’m going to come pick you up dear.”
“Where are you now?” she asked.
“It’s about your brother, I’m at the hos--”
“Tell me about it on the way over.” Katherine cut her off by saying. She started to shake. Anything but her brother she could handle. He was the only thing he had left of her old life. She set the phone down to The Mother’s cries of “Katherine? Kathy? Honey?”.
To be continued...
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