Mistress Morrigan

Prologue

Prologue

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She hung from the rafters, suspended from her wrists by manacles.  Morrigan's feet were a few inches above the ground, which doesn't sound like much, but it is when you are eight years old, and have been hanging there for a little over a week, without many breaks.  Her wrists were cut and bruised from when she had struggled to break free of her bindings. She doesn't even try to struggle anymore, because she knows if she does, the woman will just hurt her with that horrible red leather rod. She had come for her, and it seems as if it were only yesterday. She had stricken down her father and mother, whom of which she was helping care for the garden that beautiful spring day. She then tortured them with that rod for a minute or so, but it seemed like a century. She told the young girl to kill them, to end their suffering.  But she couldn't. She couldn't even stand to kill a fly. Then... the woman smiled. It was possibly the most horrible thing I had ever seen. It wasn't that it was an ugly smile. Not at all. At least,  not in looks. It was so horrible, because of what she could see behind that smile. Cruelness. Patience. Was that hurt she saw? She only saw it for a split second before her eyes turned hard, and her smile widened. She then grabbed her by her dark thick hair, and simply dragged her away. She twisted, and looked back, frantically searching with her green eyes for her parents. She will always regret that decision. Because now, when she thinks of her mother, the person she loved with all her heart, the person she would go, and pick wildflowers for, the person who would kiss her goodnight, all she can think of, out of all of those things, is that broken, fragile figure, sobbing for a daughter she knew to be lost to her now. And when she thinks of her father, the man she looked up to, her best friend, the person who would pick her up when she scraped her knee, and spin her in the air, to make her feel better, all she can think of, is that blank stare of disbelief, as if he couldn't believe that his daughter, the little girl he had protected, loved, and laughed with, was gone. Simply. Gone. As she thinks back now, hanging from the rafters in this dungeon of sorts, she wishes she would have done something. Anything at all. But she didn't. And that's all she could think of. Until that horrible woman came, of course. In the past week, she had come to fear that long blond hair, and those hard, insane, heartless, icy blue eyes. And whenever she saw her, it seemed she was tortured... Tortured to her breaking point... We all have one. And when we reach it, there is no going back. You can never go back, to that nice, reliable plane of sanity. You are forever sitting on that sharp edge between normal and insane. There is no going back.