Through the Land of Element

Part One of Chapter One – Escape from the Kingdom of Learning.

I once lived in a city where all of the houses looked like giant books, standing on their edges, and they all surrounded a huge palace that looked like a library.  The ground in this place was all sand and rock, the only plant life was a lush green forest to the west of the city.  The people of this city live in fear of the forest, and the realms that surround our little kingdom.  Rumors of poisonous snakes, dark powers, and creatures that suck the color out of your body as if it is the blood in your veins float through the houses and hallways of the palace.  Of course, these were only old wives tales told to scare people into staying in the city.  Either way, entering the forest is forbidden. 

I lived in cramped quarters in the lowest part of the palace with all of the other girls ages ten and up.  I was a slave, forced to work my fingers to the bone so that my family, who I hardly even remember, could have food each day.  I worked in the Palace of Knowledge, so named because all of the “Knowledge” of the land of Element is kept in the library (also the throne room) that takes up more than half of the palace in the form of millions upon millions of books.  All of the slaves there are females, taken from the poorer families (which are most of them) at the age of ten in order to work for their family’s sustenance.  The king told us that it was an honor to sacrifice our lives to feed our families.  I suppose that is true, except… I never saw his daughters working for their food.

The boys have it differently.  When they turn fifteen, they are taken to be trained for guard duty.  When they turn eighteen, more than half of them are shipped off to fight in the war that is waging with the dark kingdom of Ebony which lies to the south.  Most never return.

There are four kingdoms in the land of Element which used to live in peace with each other.  Ebony supplying metals for building, Ivory, the white kingdom in the north supplying water and silver for trading, my kingdom of Learning, the smallest of the four, which supplied the knowledge of Element, and the Rainbow Valley kingdom, the biggest kingdom to the west Snake Forest supplied the rest.  What lies to the east, no one knows.  It is said to be nothing but desert stretching out to the far eastern edge of the world.

And then there’s me.

My name is Rebekah, and this is the story of how I escaped from slavery in the Kingdom of Learning.

But at what cost?  Perhaps the life of a dear friend?  Is one life worth another?  

This is what I ask myself; what motivates me.  Why I will go back to free the one who was taken so that I could get away.

I will not let her down.