Chained Freedom
By Natasja Hellenthal
Summary
Tana Woodwolf wakes to find herself trapped within a strange land. She learns quickly from the faces of the others that this is no paradise she has been transported to; it is a prison.
Unable to escape, Tana soon discovers that a dark and malignant force is dragging them, one-by-one, to unreachable higher rooms of the tower from which they never return.
If she is to ever escape from there then she will need to use all the guile and strength she has within her. Does one of the others hold the key? Or is it something else within the prison that she needs to study?
As the darkness comes nearer, a strange voice whispers, ‘Look and be free… You have to let go of what you know.’
Should she trust the voice? Should she trust the others? Does she even have a choice?
As despair and terror closes in around them all, only one person can discover the truth and save them...
This e-book is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents therein are entirely the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Cover Design by N.M. Hellenthal
Edited by M. Jackson and K. Johnson
Beyond Books Press
Manchester, United Kingdom
First Edition - February 2014
Also By Natasja Hellenthal
The Queen’s Curse
Call Off The Search, Comyenti Series #1
Children Of The Sun, Comyenti Series #2
The Comyenti Series Book Bundle, Volume 1 and 2
City of Dreams
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
Maya Angelou
Chapter One - Not A Fairytale
‘Somewhere far away from what men called ‘civilisation’ stood a single tower. It was a tower belonging to a wizard,’ the storyteller began her story in a low and mysterious voice. She explained to the small crowd that had gathered around her in the village square, that this was not a fairytale, but a true story; her story.
People always liked true stories better than made up ones, so she had their attention right from the start of her tale. It could have also been because Tana Woodwolf was a likable young woman with remarkable amber eyes that seemed to glow from within when she started to speak in her charismatic voice. With those eyes she glanced from person to person in the crowd; making contact with every individual and at the same time making sure there were no children in the audience, for this story was only meant for adults’ ears.
In a steady voice the woman, with dark hair so long that it covered her whole back, continued, ‘Striking and unyielding it stood between the sea green hills that seemed to behave like waves with the swaying barley. Bordered by dense woods it stood quite protected, this tower. Rising like an angry flame with bricks crimson as old dried blood it somehow seemed out of place here. The tower didn’t belong in this landscape, but the builders seemed not to have cared, and nor did I. I hated the tower and the cruel wizard who lived within. My only thought was freedom; to find a way to escape. That was the only thing that kept me going.’
The people in the crowd stared at one another with excitement and intrigue and many eyes lit up as the story began to unfold. Some of the audience were able to relate to it as they too had been slaves once, resorting to buying their own freedom. Others struggled to make a living forced to take low paid demoralising jobs which in time brought with it low self-esteem and depression. Tana had felt this when she arrived at the village this morning.
‘I didn’t know the name of the man who took me to the tower, or even his face. All of us, his prisoners, simply called him Wizard and sometimes simply… the Evil One. We all knew he must have been a wizard for it was his magic that had transported us one by one to the tower that had been built by the blood and sweat of other prisoners; poor souls long gone, long forgotten. The place had a sense of dread about it and pure terror.’
‘I’d had a bad day that day. I was moody and had argued with my mother in the morning and she had left my farm in tears. I didn’t go after her to apologise like I should have…and have regretted that ever since. That very same day I was taken and deposited outside the tower. Brought there in a flash, in a dreamlike state as if there had been nothing else in the world before but the tower and the surrounding sea of fields, full of grim people. I had been working away on my own land when it all happened; desperately trying to forget about the harsh words I’d spoken to my mother. I had felt a tight grip, squeezing the air out of me and leaving me nearly unconscious. After the dizziness had worn off I noticed other people busy harvesting, but it wasn’t my land that I saw. They looked up from where they worked and glanced at me with empty eyes, before quickly returning on with their work. I realised I wasn’t hallucinating or having a daydream; it was too real for that and the faces of those people too haunting.’
~~~
The sun was soon setting so I followed the workers to the tower that rose in front of me. When they opened the door a warm pungent whiff of body odours and human waste took my breath away. People were busy mending and repairing tools and didn’t seem to be bothered by the smell. It was there in that stuffy main hall where more people then came to gather, all stopping their work to have their simple dinner of chewy bread and something that reeked of potato soup. They all sat on the dusty floor. I wrinkled my nose and had an urge to leave, but I was puzzled by what had happened to me and also to them I suppose, so I sat down to join them and started asking questions. I learned all there was to know about living and surviving in this strange place.
~~~
No one seemed to wear any chains but everyone I saw in the fields worked so hard and had such harrowing looks about them that I began to wonder. Freedom lay out there, beyond those fields, so why not walk away? The people I spoke with warned me not to do so; not to draw attention to myself. The wizard and his magic would grab me back, so they said. The terrified look in their eyes frightened me and so for the first few days there I obeyed the fear which soon nestled in my heart and instead of escaping I tried to find out everything that I could about this mysterious place. I felt I had nothing to lose and without realising it started to somehow draw me in.
But that fear was only made worse soon; a fellow captive of the tower was called for one morning and with a look of pure terror on his face he reluctantly ascended the stairs to the top of the tower. That man never came down and was never seen or heard of again. A stranger soon appeared at the tower; pretty much the same spot where I had arrived at, to replace the man that had gone that day as if to keep the numbers equal.
A group of us instructed the newcomer with pain in our hearts, exactly as they had warned and instructed me and presumably many before us, who were long gone now. We tried to gather as much as information as we could about the wizard and his mysterious ways but that was little, very little. He never left his tower attic as far as we knew. We had to provide for our own food and needs; if not we would simply wither away and die. Those were the options; live or die while we waited for our unknown destiny
up there in the tower, which was most likely death.
Sometimes we would see and hear the effects of the wizard’s magic cracking and illuminating the top of the tower through one of few windows. He practiced a vicious dark magic; that much we could sense. A negative, dark atmosphere wrapped itself around the entire building and the prisoners, like dark opaque clouds. The prisoners who each had been assigned their own task in providing for the group, desperately wanted to stay as far away as possible from the building as they could. But they didn’t, for it was the only building and their only shelter from the elements. I somehow thought it a little peculiar though, how they all huddled together like cattle in the hall of the tower. Sometimes there could be about thirty people in there, even on a sultry summer night. Sure, it was dry and warm, but how could they stand the smell? Men and women, reeking of old sweat, urine and who knows what else, for me was very off putting.
It fills me with pity to say that some got used to it, or maybe they just couldn’t care less anymore. They got so used to the same day’s routine; every day that lousy existence; to the point that they simply started to forget about the outside world altogether. Maybe they were better off than me, accepting their fate, something which I could never do.
Luckily for me my appointed task was to work on the land which I was used to and fairly experienced at. I cared for the crops; barley, potatoes, beans and onions, our only food. To be outside where the wild fresh wind was, feeling the sun and rain on my back. It gave me a little comfort, but I wanted more. I wanted my birthright back; my freedom.
We assumed the Evil One didn’t eat or that he used his magic in such a way as to provide for himself, but we, despite doing our best in the fields, never seemed to have enough to eat. We used the harvested crops wisely; making flat round tasteless bread out of the barley we managed to grow. I had some knowledge of farming, being raised as a farmer’s daughter, and it made me wonder if that was the reason the wizard needed me here. I noticed that everyone did what he or she had the skills for; we had a weaver, a tailor, a baker and a toolmaker. There were no chosen leaders. It was almost like a little community and when one person was taken they were soon replaced by a person with similar skills.
But why did he need us?
‘Whatever was going on in the attic of the tower no one knew since no one ever came back after going up the stairs. We could only guess. Some thought he experimented with the ones who were sent up to him, why else would he take us and hold us here? But why didn’t he call for us straight away? Why were we made to suffer? For we undoubtedly did suffer with every passing day.
We felt as though we were livestock, raised for our flesh; living close by the slaughterhouse, smelling the blood and fear of our fellow captives, awaiting our own deaths in fear. If we could, we would have fought him, but how could we fight someone we couldn’t see?’
Chapter Two - Prison
‘Another doomed person was called for and pulled against his will. Again unsuspectingly, the victim was dragged in a mysterious way backwards towards the long spiral staircase. Not many ever dared to set a foot on that staircase unless his or her time came. They could either make it easy or hard for themselves but however they dealt with the calling the outcome was always the same. Some looked up from their work, some sighed, but most tried to ignore it. It was a taboo to talk about that phenomenon among us. It was like mentioning a cancer that grew slowly inside all of us; no one liked to talk about it, for no one could change it, so why bring up the subject?’
The storyteller opened her hands to emphasise her words and paused for a brief moment.
‘Anyone with a death wish, or brave enough, to encounter the wizard by climbing the stairs freely and without being called for, was also never to be seen again. At one stage the group population was reducing to such a low number without being repopulated, we all thought our time was near. We were very scared around those days and some people even died of terror and madness before they ever faced the wizard. We called them the ‘lucky ones’. I wasn’t brave enough to take my own life for I was still too much alive for that and hope lived on in my heart.
Even when we were at our smallest numbers the crowd was always too big for me, for there never seemed to be enough room for all of us in that one hall of the tower where the bedrolls were laid out and most of us spent the night. From the moment I arrived I couldn’t stand the stench of the place and the noise from all the snoring and people passing wind in this unnatural crammed situation. I needed personal space and plenty of fresh air, so on the nights when it didn’t rain, and thankfully that was most nights, I took my bedroll and slept outside under the open night sky where I imagined myself free.
Despite having water from a nearby drinking well to wash ourselves with, if it hadn’t rained for days, the water level reduced so much we were forced to be frugal with it. So in the summer the hot and dry days were hard for us, just as the winter’s freezing days and nights were as well.’
‘I happened to arrive in the autumn with the clothes that I wore at that time; simple leggings and a long sleeved shirt belted with a girdle that luckily contained my notebook and pencil. After time these clothes got thinner and became like rags on my hardened body. The notebook and pencil were initially useless to me. There were enough thoughts to be put into words but, for the first time in my life, I couldn’t move my pencil, for every story I had ever made up before couldn’t compete with the one I was living in at the moment. I was empty inside and could only draw sketches with the pencil in my spare time but it gave me no joy.
My first winter there was extremely cold, even though we had a big fireplace in our quarters which we kept burning with peat, we didn’t have enough warm blankets for the amount of prisoners. There were many quarrels and even fights about the blankets. Those of us lucky to have one always had to carry it with them or keep it close so no one would steal their worn out blanket. Most often we had no choice but to hold each other close for warmth, whether we liked each other or not.
In the summer the tailor, along with the help from some of us, made new clothes and blankets from a sea green grassy weed, which grew largely on the fields, harvested by us farmers; the only thing that lived here apart from our crops. I found out how creative one can be when you have so little, but yet somehow cling on to life in order to survive. That survival instinct proved greater than ever once we had warm new clothes again.
It was obviously very human to bond with one another, but also very painful, for when you thought you had found a friend and an ally you lost him or her to the wizard. It happened to me too many times. I decided to hold people at a certain distance and I noticed others started to do the same. I began to understand why some people had been so cold to me in the beginning. We only shared conversations when there was something that needed to be said. Everyone seemed to come from different parts of the world, but strangely we spoke the same language and understood each other perfectly. The work of the wizard?’
~~~
As time passed by I missed the companionship of animals a great deal; their honesty, friendliness and unconditional genuine love; all the things the slaves had lost, whether voluntarily or not. The only animals that lives there were the worms in the soil, not even birds would make a visit.
During those days I often felt like a lifeless shell, not to mention very lonely, and I began to despair.
The main door leading out of the tower, our ‘home’ was strangely never locked, so when I wasn’t working on the land but needed to keep myself busy I would roam the treeless and the surrounding hills, looking for flowers. It was hard to grow anything; only sometimes the odd plant or bush would pop up amongst our own crops as well as on the hills, but this was very rare. Even the wind struggled to bring seeds to that place. There was a dense forest of pine trees in the distance so I couldn’t understand why there were no seedlings of trees in our area.
But at that time the most important question o
n my mind was: why if there were no locked doors, wouldn’t anyone ever try to escape?
Chapter Three - The Magic Wall
‘I know that we certainly would have tried to leave, if it weren’t for the magical shield surrounding the hills, the fields and the tower keeping everyone in, as long as the magic in the tower was alive and well. That was the story according to the prisoners, some of whom had been there more than two years, some even four or more years. To me, that seemed like a lifetime.’
‘It was obvious that no-one on the outside of the wall knew about the existence of the tower or the wizard. We called the shield a wall; cold and hard as rock. There was never any sign of anyone trying to rescue us. Well, either they didn’t know, or they simply couldn’t penetrate the magic wall from the outside, just as it couldn’t be breached from the inside? The tower was visible from the edge of the woods, that much was sure, but if no one ever came there in the first place then no-one might ever become curious about the building.
The people who were transported from the outside left no traces, so their relatives and friends didn’t know where to start looking.
I had already lived in the tower for over four seasons by now, days of working on the land with others slaves chosen for their skills, never forced to exactly, but just doing it, for if we refused we knew we would soon die. That happened to the ones who lay down their tools and disobeyed the rules for a time and just sat around, doing nothing or those that quarrelled or fought with each other. The wizard would always know who was not pulling their weight or causing trouble and those who did, would soon be dragged upstairs, one by one.
I tried to stay out of trouble and just focus on growing corn, beans and potatoes, helping them grow by watering and even talking to them and then harvest the crops when the time came. To me it was important work, because it gave me some purpose. I also did a number of other things for our basic needs, like helping out in the kitchen or cleaning in the main hall as I felt hygiene was important. I even tried to smile to people and talk a little, but I had to be careful. The men could take it the wrong way, and on more than one occasion I had to fight my way out of their arms.