Free Rise by Danielle Racey

her thighs. Victoria smiled, tentatively. Dare she say it, she rather liked this new style.
    She grabbed her things, and glanced at her window. A tiny beam of light shone in. It was still early, but if she wanted to slip away unnoticed, she had to do it now. Victoria gently slid open the door of her bedroom, and shut the door behind her, as she made to tiptoe down the hallway unseen. Her eyes found the unassuming niche in the wall that indicated the doorway to the Other Sisterhood. Victoria pushed slowly against it, and the door slid open. She was immediately assaulted by the warm, wet morning air. To her delight, her vision was not impaired by the night, so she quickened her pace down the familiar cobblestone pathway, and into the open air.
    To her surprise, the forest took on a different nature, in the ethereal morning light. The grass, as green as the pines surrounding it, was deeply imprinted by several paths. One, Victoria recognized, led towards the direction that she must have gone, the night she met Roman. Several others spiraled off in different directions; back towards the convent, or through the brush. Victoria looked to the sky, and gasped, when she spotted the faint horizon line of the city. It was straight ahead, towards where Roman’s camp had been. Victoria checked her surroundings, as all good assassins do, before heading off towards the city.
    As she stumbled through the brush, feeling only slightly less clumsy than she had at night, she wondered, briefly, if Roman had ever ventured into the forest, in the morning. She shook her head. Why was she thinking about Roman again?
    Victoria continued heading north, stopping every so often to watch a squirrel, or other forest creature. It wasn’t often she’d had the chance to be away from the convent. In truth, it was never. The farthest she’d been from the convent, was to her secluded spot in the nearby forest clearing. The spot that Roman had, a short time later, infiltrated. Victoria flared her nostrils at Roman’s blatant disturbance of her area, but as she fished the memory from the back of her mind, she remembered how Roman had told her, that he was watching her. It concerned her to no end, but the way in which he said it, and how his eyes had never once strayed from hers, made her blood pulse in a way, that was not entirely fueled by fear.
    Timed passed, and Victoria’s legs began to grow weary. It seemed as if she had been walking in circles for hours. She looked up, hoping to the see the city’s horizon line appear to be closer. She squinted. She just barely make out several rows of windows on each of the buildings, which must be an improvement, she thought desperately. Victoria made plans to find a hand watch as soon as she got into the city.
    She trudged on, for what seemed like forever. When she was finally to the point, where she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to go on for much longer, the density of the forest began to thin. The pine trees, once so close together that it was hard to see between them, thinned out, and to Victoria’s surprise, and relief, she spotted a downward sloping section of the forest. She quickened her pace, her renewed excitement giving her bursts of energy. She neared the slope, and saw a tiny, but well-kept path leading downwards. It was smooth, and still smelled of whatever material used to make it. Victoria stepped onto the path, and walked, tentatively, downhill. When she reached the bottom, in front of her stood a large sign. Large, red letters that were slightly peeling at the bottom, read: “GRACELIEN NATIONAL FOREST AND HISTORIC BUILDINGS."
    Victoria stared at the sign for a moment more, before she registered what it was saying. She bristled at being considered some historical piece of property, but she was too curious to let it last. She wasn’t a complete stranger to the world outside the convent. She’d read books, and gotten her proper education, like anyone other child, but she’d never truly