Chronicles of Kells and Temra

Chapter One: Maeve

The ship seemed to groan as it rocked back and forth on the open sea. She sighed as she felt her stomach turn yet again, but she forced herself to keep the mush they had fed her down. It wouldn't be becoming of her to stain her clothes with puke. Besides she'd been through this enough times to know that she would get her sea legs and soon, she'd feel a little more human. It'd easier to adjust if they would let her above deck, but she knew better than to ask that. No doubt, they've heard about her reputation as a difficult prisoner.

She made no apologies for her hard-earned reputation as a difficult prisoner. She had spent her life fighting for what was due to her; that so-called King would be foolish if he thought she would stop just because she was in captivity.

In her short year in exile, she had still managed to earn the enmity of virtually all who had been drafted into guarding her. She made herself such a difficulty to her original captors that they had washed their hands of her, sending her to other allies. From there, she had been passed from ally to ally until she lost track of who had her all together. But she didn't care: all dungeons looked about the same.

She leaned against the wooden side of the ship as it heaved back and forth and tried not to focus on her stomach like some gutter peasant. She was a queen; nothing could change that, not King Conchobar, not anybody. She was a queen through and through, and no matter what happened to her, no matter that they fed her worse than the animals and dressed her in rags, she would always be a queen and they would always be beneath her.

Still she wished she could get up on deck and see the ocean. Her fondest memories of her youth all involved traveling across the sea, bracing herself against the wind, and smelling that wonderful sea air. But she could never be that young again.

The ship groaned again, deeper and louder before, like some dread sleeping monster rousing itself. The sea began to batter against the sides like a ram. She could hear the sailors curse as they scrambled to lower their sails as rain poured in sheets, leaking through the deck to the cargo hold where she was being held.

This storm wasn't natural. Normal storms came with warnings: dark clouds and rings around the moon. She had never seen anything like this before: a storm just appearing on a clear day. She braced herself against the side of the ship, hoping the ship would hold.

The great timbers of the ship began to split, snapping one by one as the waves turned into a cyclone, whipping and spinning everything in its path. Maeve cried out and clawed at empty air as the ship fell apart around her, desperately trying to hold onto something, but there was nothing to hold onto.

As the ship shattered into pieces and was spun around, she saw faces of the crew members rush pass her, eyes wild with desperation, but she didn't reach out for them nor did they reach out to her, as they were dragged into the deep. She was worthless to them.

She fought, kicking and scrambling against the rushing torrent of water, grateful that Nemain had forced her to learn to swim. Nemain? Was this her doing? She didn't have much time to think. She clawed and clawed at the water until finally she surfaced. Only then did the storm stop.

She looked around her as she bobbed like a cork in the open sea. The storm was over; the clouds were gone; and the sea was as smooth and calm as a sheet of glass. Were it not for the few splintered boards that floated around her, she would never have known that a ship had been there in the first place.

She struggled to catch her breath, her memory still filled with the images of drowning sailors and of the ship breaking apart like a child's toy. So what are you going to do know? She knew someone's hand was in the storm and her survival, but she didn't focus too much on who and why; right now, survival was the only thing on her mind.

She had no way of knowing where she was. All she saw was miles and miles of open sea, smooth as glass, under a clear blue sky. There was no sight of land anywhere and it wasn't long before she began to despair. What was she supposed to do now? She started to think that the sailors were the lucky one; a quick drowning sounded better than a slow death from days at sea.

But there wasn't much she could do except start swimming.

She was a fairly strong swimmer though she hadn't done much swimming since her youth, but it wasn't long before she exhausted herself. She sighed, too tired to spit out the salty water which flowed into her. Her tongue felt like a piece of flannel and her eyes stung and she felt like a worthless worm struggling in a puddle of water, struggling so hard to live when it was more sensible to just stop. Yet her will was strong; her legs kept kicking, kept forcing her head above water, even though increasingly, she was starting to see little point in all this.

She wondered what her nemesis, the King of Kells, would think of all this. When she was not being disagreeable to all who were stuck taking care of her, she spent her time plotting to return to Kells. She had decided years ago that no matter what happened, she would not end her days in a foreign land. She had never thought of the possibility that she would die at sea instead.

The King of Kells was probably unaware of the many transfers she had gone through and probably didn't care: as long as she was out of his hair, he was happy. He probably would never know about the ship and if her bad luck continued, never know about her death. If she died out here, which was a strong possibility, no one would find what was left of her bloated body.

Her head throbbed. Everything hurt. Even her hair hurt. She was so preoccupied by her aches and pains that she almost missed the cry of a gull.

As soon as she heard, it her mind filled with hope. She was almost ready to crown that gull for saving her. Lord knows it would rule better than that King of Kells. She swam, putting as much strength into her strokes as she could muster, in the direction of the gull. Gradually she saw it: land, wonderful land. She swam and swam, fighting her growing exhaustion, until finally she collapsed against the rocks on the shoreline.

She did a quick survey of her aches and pains. She was no longer as young as she once was, and what she had been through would try even a young man. Her right leg was a horror of pain; the bone felt like it was in the very least broken, if not shattered. She was cold and every movement sent spasms of pain through her body. She wanted nothing more than to lie down and wait for death. Had she survived so much, come so far, only to die on some foreign shores?

Then she heard a fluttering of wings, looked up, and saw that her troubles were just beginning.