Magically Bound

Chapter one

Aurora’s POV

I ran through the darkness between the trees, dodging the low-hanging branches, my breath hitching in my throat as I heard the footsteps behind me closing in. The wind blowing in my hair, making loose strands fall before my eyes, had my attention as well as my surroundings as I desperately tried to focus on everything but the thing that was chasing me. And it worked, until the sound of a branch cracking, coming from the direction, I was heading, made me stop abruptly. The half-naked pine tree in front of me, leaning to the side as if bowing, looked like what I would assume true surrender would look like. 

It was here. The thing that had haunted me from east to west, granting me nothing but sleepless nights and company from-

“Get down!” he yelled just as an arrow flew by inches from my face.

The gush of wind it left on my cheek just before it embedded itself deeply in the bark of the tree to my right, could be felt long after. 

I should have listened. I should have stayed hidden, but my stubbornness as always took over and this time it would probably get me killed.

“Aurora!”

“Aurora!”

“Aurora?” Mrs. Clemons said, shaking me lightly until my eyes, with much struggle, opened, blinking furiously to let the frame in front of me clear up. “You had a nightmare,” she whispered quietly, her face now beginning to take shape in the darkness. 

“Mrs. Clemons,” I mumbled tiredly as I sat up in bed. 

“It’s almost dawn,” she gushed, pulling the blankets from the bed, waiting for me to get up. “You need to hurry if you want to get there first.”

I groaned, scratching my head before I flung my legs over the edge of the wooden bed frame, letting my feet hit the cold wooden floor beneath. 

“I know, I know,” I said as I walked to the small chair in the corner where my dress had been placed the day before. “The horse who jumps the fence first gets the greenest grass.”

A fraise my mother had told me as a kid when she tried to get me out of bed. 

Before long, I was out the door feeling the fresh chilly air as it surrounded me. The sun had barely risen, and the grass was still covered with the morning dew as I made my way down the small and narrow streets of Nemea. 

It was a thing I did every morning before the crack of dawn to avoid the crowd later during the day, and in moments like these, I appreciated my mother turning me into a morning bird. 

Every morning was the same down to the smallest detail. From the boutiques opening at the same time, their small signs flipping in the window from closed to open, to the people hurrying to the market with their small baskets for fresh fruits and greens. Everything happened as if clockwise, even the stares given to me by the others. The stares of pity and shame on my behalf. Stares I neither needed, wanted, or appreciated. 

The people in the village never changed, including me, despite my best efforts to fit in, even though I knew that I never could. Not after what happened at least. 

“Aurora!” Charlotte called from her small store, waving me over and, despite my efforts at ignoring her, it was too late, seeing that Charlotte was now making her way over to me with a small basket in hand. “Aurora! I know you heard me,” she said, her smug voice evident.

“Yes, Charlotte?” I asked, putting on my best fake smile before turning to her.  

“When are you going to give in and come work for me?” she questioned, tilting her head slightly to the side. “You know, I have lots of male customers that would love a look at that body you are hiding under those… racks,” she frowned while giving my dress a look. 

“The answer will be the same every time you ask,” I sighed, tired of hearing the same thing from her every time we bumped into one another.

“It will pay off that awful debt hanging over your father's head faster than the small, odd jobs you are doing now,” she pointed out. 

“I will not be selling myself, not now, not ever,” I hissed. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have some vegetables I need to go get.”

“Suit yourself,” she chuckled, waving her hand in the air. “I have a feeling I will be seeing you shortly.” 

I watched as Charlotte's slim frame made its way back to her store, while some men on their way home from their drunken trip the night before, stopped to look at her. Wherever she went, people stared, but not in the same way as they did at me. No, they stared at her because she was known as the Madame of the village, giving men exclusive dances, as she called it, and also because her upper body was half an inch away from no longer being covered by the fabric of her dress. 

“I see she won’t leave you be?” Nora chuckled as she approached me shortly after, snapping me out of my daze. 

“I don’t think she ever will,” I said, shaking my head. 

“I am honestly surprised her breasts haven’t fallen out of that dress yet,” she mumbled. 

“Or that her ribs haven’t cracked yet,” I added with a dry laugh. 

“It’s the corset,” she shrugged, linked her arm with mine, and pulled me towards the market. “It must be.”

Nora was my best friend, my only friend to be exact. She had always been by my side, even after everything fell apart and despite people warning her about being in my presence, Nora stayed. 

“You are wearing a corset too,” I pointed out. “But you do not look like that.”

“Because I know how to wear it with style and dignity,” she laughed. “Now come on, I want my tomatoes as fresh as a newborn babe.”

“Please don’t compare our food to newborn babes,” I complained. 

We had made it to the stand with the tomatoes and cucumbers with barely any problems. The owner, Mrs. Colaro greeted Nora with a smile and once her eyes met mine, the smile disappeared. 

It wasn’t because people didn’t like me, in fact, some did, but they pitied me and some even looked down on me simply because of who I was, the daughter of the former respected sailor, Isaac Arcan, struggling to hold the remains of her family together. 

It wasn’t easy and it hadn’t been for a very long time. Not since that day and every day when I went to the market or out in general, I was reminded of that. 

How I was unlike any of the other girls in town, unwed and unwanted. Any girl my age would by now have been married, had their first child, and settled down in one of the family’s houses. Even Nora was betrothed to one of the respected village men, but in my case, it was different, as was most of my life. Ever since my mother died, my father had been on a rampage. He started drinking up all the money, then turned to gambling at the local inn, getting in debt with some of the biggest loan sharks known to this village, and in order to pay them off, he had to sell his ship and all of his merchants, leaving me to handle not only the household but to take on every small job I could in order to bring food on the table and pay of his still existing debt.

“Aurora? Did you hear a word I said?” Nora asked, looking at me rather concerned. 

“Sorry, I’m afraid I didn’t.”

“You’re spacing out a bit there, are you getting enough sleep?”

I looked at the tomatoes lying in front of us as I tried to find the finest of them and just nodded at her question. 

“You still have those dreams, don’t you?” she pushed, and I sighed. 

“I do,” I admitted. “And every time the scenery changes. It’s only small flashes here and there, but it seems so real, and the man is there too, always shouting in my ear.”

“So, he is the only thing that is constant?” she asked as she put a tomato in her basket. 

She at this point was focusing more on me than what she was grabbing from the stand. 

“He is, and there’s always something chasing us or trying to kill us. It feels as if I’m only seeing crucial moments,” I shrugged. 

“If I didn’t know any better, I would say that you’re a psychic seeing the future or something,” she muttered. 

“Me? A psychic?” I laughed. “And when in the world do you see me running around the woods with some unknown man?”

“Who knows what the fate has in store for you,” she smirked. 

And that exact same question was one I had wondered about for my entire life. One I hoped I would soon know the answer to. There had to be more to life than being who I was now. Being what I was now. 

A village girl stuck in the mud to her knees.