The King and the Huntress-Chapter One

Chapter 1: The Calm Before the Storm

Her sapphire blue eyes fluttered open early in the spring morning. She sat up and brushed her ebony and crimson-stained hair out of her face. She guessed the time was about 5:30 in the morning and she got up out of her sleeping bag, causing her sister to stir in her sleep.

"Kira?" She murmured. Kira turned to the little blue mass of fur lying next to her and gently ruffled her brunette hair.

"Sorry, Jadzia. I didn't mean to wake you." She said. "Go to sleep."

"I can't." Jadzia said. "I'm already awake."

Kira shook her head. "You can fall back asleep." She said. "It's way too early for you to be up and about."

"Are you going to be out a long time again?" Jadzia asked.

"Not for too long." Their mother said. Kira turned to her red-furred mother, who was sleeping in the sleeping bag next to her.

"Look, I promise I'll be back when I have enough game to trade in for a good price." Kira said.

"Your father wants you to be home before three today." Deanna said.

Kira scoffed. "What's so special about today?" she asked.

"The king's coming into the village and your father wants you to go." Deanna answered.

"No way." Kira said. "I don't want anything to do with that horrible man! I'll die before I meet him face to face." Her blue-furred father stirred at this, his peach muzzle turned deathly white by illness and freezing cold.

"I want you to go." He said.

"Dad, go back to sleep." Kira said. "You're not well enough to be moving around." Her father was ill with pneumonia, and was getting weaker everyday. Kira had charged herself with coming up with the money to purchase a cure for him so that she wouldn't have to become the permanent head of the family, knowing how her mother was going to react. Troy ignored her and sat up, coughing weakly.

"Look, I'm not punishing you, I'm just wanting you to be present when the king comes." He said. "If he catches you hunting, you'll be put to death. I want you back early so he doesn't catch you. Besides, it would be a good time to test your self-control."

Kira remained silent as she considered the extremity of his request. With the mistake of looking him in his brown eyes, once burning with intensity, she was won over. "Fine, I'll be back by three." She said, standing up.

"And not a minute later." Troy said, being racked by a bought of coughing.

Kira tried to block the sound of her father's painful choking, dawning her beige deerskin tunic and black leggings, slipping her snow boots on. She pulled her brown leather jacket over her arms and up to her shoulders, buttoning it up to her neck. She quickly ran her hands through her hair and tried her best to smooth it out as possible.

"You look pretty." Jadzia said, sitting cross-legged on her sleeping bag.

"Thanks." Kira said, grateful for the compliment. After putting on her belt and the sheath for her knife, she gave her sister a light kiss on the head, saying goodbye to her mother and father. "Make sure he does not get out of bed today." She said to her mother. She knew that while she was out, her father would sometimes roam around, trying to do things for his family that he knew he couldn't do with his illness.

"I'll do that." Her mother said. Kira nodded and rose, carefully getting out a duffel bag from the closet. She stepped out of the house into the frigid winter morning air, trying to suppress a little shiver as she set her jaw.

With absolute silence, Kira moved through the village to the end of the territory where the city was guarded by a high rock wall, preventing any intruders from getting in, and any of its inhabitants from escaping. At least, that was its original purpose, until the landscapers either all died of starvation, illness and cold, or quit their job due to lack of pay from the government, leaving the walls in a state of breaking down and growing vines around it. Now, instead of a wall to keep everyone out and in, it had turned into a climbing wall with twisting vines that made a sort of rope ladder, tough to get over, but not impossible.

Kira had perfected the art of climbing the wall, and she got over it with ease. Having made it to the other side of the wall, Kira jogged off to a large rock mound and squeezed into an opening, revealing a cave that traveled underground. She pulled back a willow curtain that she had made herself, and revealed a bow and a quiver of arrows she had stashed in the crevice of the rock wall. She slung the quiver over her shoulder, and gripped the bow, which was a simple recurve bow made of sturdy oak. Checking to make sure the coast was clear, and that she wasn't being followed, she started her hunt.

The hunt continued until about 10:45 in the morning, and by this time, Kira had only managed to catch a squirrel, two rabbits and had harvested some berries and roots, and needless to say, this was making her feel hopeless. She didn't even have enough to put on the dinner table for her family let alone enough to sell at the market, which was just a small, rundown shack used for trading items of need for money or other sorts of goods and vice versa.

"I must be doing something wrong." She thought as she reached the stream that ran through the woods. "Maybe I'm too loud. And maybe I've moved so that I'm not downwind anymore." Just to make sure, she pulled out some grass and when a good breeze came along, she let the blades go one by one so that she could be told which direction to head. The grass blew toward her face, telling her that she was still downwind and that this couldn't be the reason that the game wasn't coming out.

"Maybe I'm just not looking in the right place." She thought. "Maybe we overhunted. Or maybe everyone's settled in to hibernate. It is the middle of winter." She knelt down to get a drink from the stream when she saw it. A rack of antlers was peeking out over the brush. "What luck!" she thought excitedly, silently pulling out an arrow. She clipped it to her bow, pulled back and-!

"HEY KIRA!" a shrill voice shouted. The elk instantly heard the shriek and turned and ran away. In desperation, Kira shot the arrow after the elk, which missed by an inch. Frustrated, Kira turned to the screamer.

"Damn it! Jake what have I told you about screaming while I'm taking a shot?!" she shouted.

The red and purple furred wolf peeked out from behind a bush as his companion, Mitch the Meerkat, slipped out of a tree.

"Sorry." Jake said, coming towards her. "You know how easily excited I can get." Mitch shook his head and came right up to Kira, slipping an arrow out of her quiver.

"Well either way, what on Mobius would you have done with an elk that big?" he asked, waving it in front of her face.

"What I always do." Kira said, snatching her arrow back. "Divide it up so that you would have some, I would have some, Jake gets some and the rest I trade at the market! That's what you do, right?"

Mitch shook his head. "No! Not today. The king's in town and if he figures out that we hunt illegally, he'll execute us or worse!"

Jake started swinging his hips and singing "Hound Dog". "Ladies and Gentlemen, the King is in the building! Ah-thank you, thank you very much!" Kira gave an amused huff as Mitch rolled his eyes.

"Not that king." He said. "King Shadow."

Jake crossed his arms. "Well excuse me for trying to lighten the mood." He said. "I guess Elvis has left the building."

Kira smiled slightly and started fiddling with the fletching on her arrow. "Well either way, the point is that that was the first elk I've seen in months, and now I don't have anything to trade. I barely have enough to feed my family tonight."

Mitch thought for a minute then picked up a rock. Jake understood what he was doing, and pulled out his bow. "Archers ready?" Mitch asked.

"Ready!" Kira and Jake said. Mitch threw the rock into the brush and made a flock of geese come out.

Jake shot first and hit one in the chest. Kira shot two geese in the eye, both with the same arrow.

Jake looked at her incredulously. "How in the heck can you manage that?!" he said. Kira shrugged. "Then if you cannot give me an answer, I will assume that you have somehow fixed your arrow." Jake said.

"How do you fix an arrow?" Mitch asked, Kira running off to grab her game.

A couple hours later, the trio came back to the cave where Kira had retrieved her bow and quiver from. Kira's game bag was now nearly full, along with Mitch's and Jake's bags. They began to take their cool-down time, when they usually relaxed and talked in peace, freely and without any danger of being arrested and tortured for some of the things they said. Kira split the berries she had collected with her two companions, glancing out at the winter afternoon, finally able to take a free breath.

"It's a nice day out." She said.

"Yep." Jake said. "Except for the fact that it's cold as heck outside."

Mitch nodded, taking some of the berries that were offered to him by Kira. "That and we have to get back early if we want to trade the game before the king arrives." He added.

Jake turned to Kira. "I heard he's looking for a bride." He said.

"And you're telling me this, why?" Kira said.

Jake shrugged. "Just thought you might be interested in knowing the possible events of today." He said.

"If you're suggesting that I subject myself to possibly getting him to like me you can forget it." Kira said. "I'm attending for my father's sake but I'm not participating."

"You might not have a choice." Mitch said.

"Well so long as I do, I won't get up there and flaunt myself for him." Kira said. "I do enough of that already."

Jake looked at her and cleared his throat nervously. "Speaking of which." He said. "How much did my dad give you for last night?"

Kira didn't answer for a while, fighting back the sick feeling in her stomach that came from the memory of all she had done for her uncle the night before. When things got tough and hunting alone couldn't keep her family alive, she became a part-time prostitute in order to boost her funds. She wasn't proud of what she had to do, but it was necessary if she was to keep her family alive.

"70." She said finally. "So that plus the 80 I already have saved up, makes 150."

"I wish you didn't have to do that in order to save your father." Mitch said sadly.

"Yeah, I know." Kira said. "But I need the money." She put her hands behind her head and lay back on the ground, popping a berry in her mouth. "I mean, if I didn't live here and Shadow wasn't the king, or at least a greedy king, I wouldn't need to do that." She said. "But because I do live here and Shadow is a greedy king, and I do need the money, I have to do all I can in order to keep my family alive."

Jake nodded. "You aren't the only one going to great lengths to stay alive." He said. "Almost everyone in the town is taking bigger risks in order to keep food on the table."

Mitch chuckled. "Yeah, this morning April got up early in the morning to go hunting in the woods with us." Kira broke into a mad fit of laughter.

"April?!" she choked. "April the Cocker Spaniel who can't even be bothered to help around her family's shop?"

"Yeah, that one." Mitch said.

"Wow, things must be very bad if April is looking to hunt." Kira said.

"Yeah." Jake said. "I heard the grocer is looking to go out of business because no one can afford to buy anything. The king had to tax Soleanna again for a bad crop." Kira stopped laughing, growled and sat up, picking up a stone and throwing it across the valley.

"That man is bent on ruining this country, isn't he?!" she fumed. "Either that or he wants to sentence us to death!" she sat back down, having finished her short rant. The trio sat in silence for a while, and then Jake spoke.

"Oh, we almost forgot something. Mitch, show her what we snagged today." Mitch smiled and opened his game bag, pulling out a loaf of bread.

Kira's eyes got wide at the sight of the golden brown brick, which was still warm and fluffy. "No way!" she said, struggling to touch the delicacy. "That can't be real!"

"Well if it isn't, the baker owes us back our 3 geese." Jake said. Mitch handed Kira the loaf and she inhaled the sweet scent. With a smile, she divided the bread into thirds.

"One third for each of us." She said, handing the broken bread to the boys next to her.

"Oh, Kira you're too kind." Jake said. "Now why is your third bigger than ours?"

Kira giggled. "Because I'm splitting my third with Jadzia." She said.

"Ah." Jake said. "That makes sense." Mitch shook his head, taking a bite of the bread. Soon, he stood up.

"We should go." He said, slinging his game bag over his shoulder. "If we want to trade anything today, we'd better do it before King Shadow comes."

Kira nodded, standing also. She took one last look at the peaceful forest that she called her sanctuary, and then turned back, following her counterparts back to the village to trade their kills, nearly forgetting to put her bow back.

Suddenly, Kira stopped, her fur on edge. She felt a strong feeling that she and her companions were being watched. She pulled out her knife menacingly, growling.

Jake noticed her actions and turned to her. "What's wrong?" he asked softly. Kira remained silent, scanning the area around her. When she didn't see anything, she replaced the knife and turned back to the two worried boys.

"Nothing." she said. "I just thought that we were being followed, that's all." Mitch cocked his ear and tried to listen for anything out of the ordinary. When nothing arose, he shrugged.

"Come on." he said. "It's probably April. She'll follow us back to the village, and if it isn't her it was probably nothing."

Kira nodded and as the others started walking again, the feeling of being followed not leaving her until she crossed over the wall.

To Be Continued...