Free Dralin by John H. Carroll Page A

gulping deeply and wringing her hands more furiously. They
waited for her to gather the fortitude to continue.
    “My mother and I walked for days, sleeping
in fields when we thought the farmers wouldn’t notice. Then we were
caught. The man lived alone and offered us his home if my mother .
. .” she trailed off, staring blankly outside.
    “A mother does what she has to in order to
take care of her child,” Lady Pallon said in understanding.
    Sheela shook her head slowly. “She just
shrugged and went with him. It wasn’t to take care of me, she had
stopped doing that long before. He took us into his house and she
just lay down in the bed. He didn’t even sleep with her, going out
to work the fields instead.” Sheela took a deep breath and let it
out slowly. “I made the food and took care of things inside. When
we ate that evening, he stared at me . . .”
    Frath felt anger rising in his chest. He
understood why she didn’t want to kiss him originally and why she
had frozen. Then he felt his cheeks burn in shame at how forward he
had been in his advances. Sheela pushed in closer to him for
strength, causing him to set aside his own musings in the
realization that she needed him right then.
    “That night, I bolted the door to my room.
He knocked quite a few times through the night. I hid in the
corner, terrified he would break it down.” She took another deep
breath, her dessert forgotten. None of them wanted anything else to
eat at that moment. “The next day, I got up after he left for the
fields. I took care of my mother, but she just continued to lie in
bed. The clothes she had worn before were just as they were. The
man hadn’t touched her.”
    “Do you know the name of the man?” Lady
Pallon asked.
    Sheela shook her head. “No. He never said,
nor did he ask ours. That afternoon, I was collecting eggs from the
chicken coop when he suddenly appeared behind me. I dropped the
eggs when he put his hands on my arms. He was so quiet and I was so
busy trying to think of what to do that I didn’t hear him.”
    Frath felt his vision growing red and his
heart beating against his chest as though it was going to leap out
and hunt the man down on its own. “Frath. Not now,” Lady Pallon
told him. He saw her warning look and took a deep breath to calm
his anger. Sheela looked at him worriedly.
    When Sheela knew he was listening again, she
continued. “I pulled away from his hands and ran out of the coop
toward the barn. It was closer than the house and I didn’t know
what else to do. He followed me in and cornered me. I was so
terrified. A part of me wanted to fight or continue to run away,
but I couldn’t seem to move as he walked toward me.”
    “That is perfectly understandable, dear,”
Lady Pallon reassured her. “You’re very brave for telling us this.
Go on.”
    Frath wasn’t certain he wanted to hear more.
The image of a rough, brutal man with evil eyes stalking his love
like a hunched over wolf was the only image in his mind and it was
taking all his willpower not to give into fury and hunt the man
down.
    “He took my arms again and pushed me into a
pile of hay in the corner of the barn. I remember he smelled so
bad.” Sheela thought deeply, no longer crying. Frath knew this was
the first time she had had a chance to tell anyone what happened to
her. “He lay on top of me and forced kisses on me and I remember he
tasted as bad as he smelled. I began to struggle, but he was
strong. He hit me in the face twice. I think it was to get me to
stop struggling, but it just made me mad.”
    Frath held her hands as gently as he could
manage, setting his own feelings aside with extraordinary effort
because he knew she just needed him to listen at that point. Lady
Pallon came over, squeezing next to her on the other side of the
seat to lend even more support.
    Sheela briefly smiled in gratitude. “I went
still, desperately trying to think of what to do. He stood up to
take off his clothes. I knew I had to