Five

That night, we walked into the most crowded bar we could find and told everyone in there that I knew where the missing girls were. A few guards asked me for proof, and I told them that I saw them take the girls deep into the woods and I barely escaped with my life. When they asked who the kidnapper was, I pinned the blame on the pirates in the area. As I was convincing the people in the bar to join us, a few guards slipped out of the room. 

    We had Donatello and Nathaniel tail them, and they overheard them ask the chief if the girls were still in the basement. “Of course they are. Where else would they be?” he replied in a disgustingly satisfied voice, “Why would you even question me?” They told him how I claimed to see pirates dragging one of the girls away. They referred to me as a “mysterious traveller.” The chief apparently scoffed at that and told them to “bring” me to him as a way to tell them to kidnap me. Donatello and Nathaniel left immediately after that and returned to us to tell us the news.

    We planned to show the townspeople their chief’s true colours after we confirmed that the house I saw in my dream was in fact the chief’s home. The plan started the next day with Donatello, Joan, and Nathaniel leading an angry mob of civilians and guards to the harbour to confront the pirates. Once they arrived, they told them the truth about the truth, but many didn’t believe them. 

    As proof, they placed their lives on the line. If they were wrong, they would be publicly executed, but if they were right, they would get free food. Joan’s terms, not mine. And so, they headed over to the chief’s house, ready to expose him for the monster he truly was.

*****

    As this was all going on, George and I waited outside the chief’s home and snuck in as soon as the guards left to join the angry mob. We went straight to the basement, dodging and hiding from guards all the while. After a nerve racking trip through a sex-traficking chief’s mansion of a home, we made it to where the girls were being held, but we were greeted by the chief. 

    We expected him to arrest and behead us, but he offered to let us go if, and only if, we stayed quiet about the whole situation. I went to reject him, but George took advantage of this opportunity and got him to tell us why he kidnapped them in the first place. He told us “Those girls will fetch a high price if sold to the right person, but you and your daughter over there don’t need to stick your nose in other people’s business. Now swear on your life that you will leave quietly.” George refused to swear. 

    The chief then had guards hold George back as he grabbed me by my hair and pulled me beside him. He held a knife to my throat and threatened to kill me if George didn’t swear on his life. George, defeated, agreed, but as he was swearing, the chief changed his mind. “On second thought,” he said, “Your life is worth nothing to me. But this beauty here,” he gestured as he spun me around, “She would catch a fair price, wouldn’t she boys.”

    The room erupted with “yeas” and whistles from the guards, and George said, hopefully in desperation, that I was a boy. Don’t ask. He was released from the soldiers hold and asked to prove it, to which he handed me a sword. He also grabbed one and he “lunged” at me. 

    I somehow blocked his attack, and I used all my strength to swing the sword back at him and I hit the sword out of his hand. How? I don’t know, but after I did it, he began cowering for mercy and everyone erupted in laughter. They let us go under the pretext that I was a pathetic thin, little boy and George was an even pathetic, big baby. George was pretty discouraged, but not because he was called a giant baby (I think.), but because we didn’t know where the girls were. 

    I didn’t know what to do either until the wind came out of nowhere and blew me towards a tree that had a torn piece of fabric on it. George examined the fabric as I found another piece a few trees away. We followed the trail back to the shed in the woods, and back to where we had begun. George raised his sword, expecting a guard or soldier as I broke the lock with a rock and opened the door. 

To our luck, we found all the girls and they were all safe. They had gotten my message only they didn’t know it was from me. We filled them in on the plan as we untied them and they all wanted in. And with that, we headed back to the chief’s home, hoping the plan would hold. 

*****

    We made it back to the house in time to catch the chief red-handed in a lie about the girls’ whereabouts. He tried to pin the blame on us, but the girl from my dream ratted him out. She told everyone how he summoned her to his house after she had been accused of stealing an apple by a guard. He asked her to be his concubine, and when she refused he threw her in the shed for two days before moving her to his basement on the third.

The guards in the mob, as well as a few by the chief, arrested him and two of his accomplices upon hearing this, and others’ confessions. The town rejoiced in getting rid of their tyrant of a chief once and for all. They even called us heroes and threw a party in a nearby pub that lasted till morning. It was there that I met Emmanuel.

    Apparently, Emmanuel helped Joan and the others convince the mob to help us out and go to the chief’s home. He opened up to us and told us how that wasn’t the first time that chief had committed a crime, but it was the first time he was being punished for one. We asked how he got away with crime so many times, and apparently it was Nathaniel’s father’s fault. 

    Eighteen times. eighteen times someone went to the king to complain about the chief and his behaviour, and eighteen times they were disregarded. The second time Emmanuel went to the palace, the king threatened to have him killed for treason and threw him out. “I hated the king and queen-” he said, but Nathaniel stormed out after hearing that and I followed him out. Donatello later told us that Emmanuel preferred Nathaniel over his parents because “he was yet to be corrupt. Spoiled? Maybe, but not corrupt. As for his parents, I did hate the king and queen, but I never wished them dead. Never in my worst nightmares did I wish them dead.”

    As he was telling Donatello, George, and Joan this, I was outside trying to calm an angry Nathaniel down. To make matters worse, he wasn’t listening to reason. Emmanuel went outside to apologize to Nathaniel, but before he could, an armed attacker came out of the shadows, aimed for Nathaniel.

*****

    I rushed over to the two of them, while Donatello tackled the attacker, who was the chief’s last accomplice, and started to mercilessly beat him to a pulp. It got to the point where George had to intervene before Donatello ended killing him. He went over to check Nathaniel’s wound, but to our relief, it was a shallow slice and not life-threatening. Emmanuel asked me about Nathaniel’s condition and that’s when I figured out why his wound was so shallow.

    Emmanuel had blocked the attacker from gravely hurting Nathaniel by taking the hit himself. I stared at the knife stuck in Emmanuel’s abdomen and watched the blood spread on his clothing. Everything then began to morph around me and I found myself back in that ballroom, instead of Emmanuel, I stared at my parents lying on the ground. I felt the tears rolling down my face and once again felt helpless. As I cried, I heard a familiar voice. 

    The voice belonged to the woman from my dreams. She told me to put my hands on Emmanuel’s wound and I followed her instructions. She asked me if I wanted to help him, and told me that I had to “accept pain and believe in hope.” I closed my eyes and looked at my parents until the pain subsided. They then began to crumble away to show the most heartwarming memories I had with them. 

    The traumatic scene from the ballroom became the carriage ride to the ball, my first ball, my first waltz with my father, my first flower with my mother, my first portrait with them too. The pain in my chest that made it so difficult to breathe just subsided and all that was left was a golden feeling of warmth and happiness. A feeling I hadn’t felt in a while.

When I opened my eyes, I was told that a rather large beam of light went high into the sky, right where I had placed my hands, and Emmanuel’s wound was miraculously gone when I lifted my hands. I didn’t know it then, but that beam of light grabbed the attention of a lot of people, good and evil.