Bone Strength Prologue and Chapter One
Copyright © by J. Faith Kenney
ALL MATERIAL FROM CHARACTERS TO SCENES ARE COPY WRITTEN AND NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM CAN BE REPLICATED WITHOUT WRITTEN AUTHOR CONSENT
Prologue
December 25, 225MA
The knife glided across Father’s throat. His eyes widened as he choked on his gurgling blood. The men shoved him to the ground without mercy. Father dropped to his knees, blood running down the front of his nightshirt in the dark living room.
Hayden screamed and thrust against the men holding him back as Father looked up and met my eyes. I couldn’t scream. Couldn’t move. Only hot, burning tears streamed down my cheeks. Even if I wanted to use my abilities, the reason these men broke into our house in the first place, I couldn’t. They’d forced a black, leather cuff with certain metals running through it onto my wrist to stop my abilities.
Father’s breath grew shallower. He tried to speak, but only blood came out. With his last breath, the last few seconds of his life, he moved his hand toward mine. I wanted to reach out and grab it, but a man held me back, not caring about the pain his friend caused.
“Let them go,” said the eerie voice from the monster who had been doing all of the kidnappings. The kidnappings of kids like me and my brother.
The men holding onto us let go, but our weak legs couldn’t carry our body weight anymore. Father’s blood soaked into our matching Godsend Day pajamas, but there was too much of it. Not even the plush white carpet could soak it all up.
Hayden tried to catch his breath in between his sobs. The sound was muffled to me. The only thing in the world that mattered was Father's open, dead eyes. I reached out my hand to his cold bloody one and laced my fingers with his one last time. His final full words rang through my ears, ‘Take care of each other. Choose each other. I love you, Hay. I love you, little green eyes.’
“I love you, Father." I whispered as a ball of tears contracted my throat. With a trembling hand, I closed his wide, frightened eyes. “I will always choose Hayden.”
A pair of callous, bloody hands hauled me to my feet. Father’s blood from the man's hands stained my skin. Hayden screamed and fought against the man dragging him out of the house and through the bitter cold of snow without any shoes, to the plane a few meters away.
I couldn't fight with them doing the same thing to me. Couldn't do anything. As they dragged me away, I looked back at the house where my dead father laid, with tears contracted my throat. I’ll never know what happened to his body. However, I knew it wouldn’t be honored or respected in the slightest with Hundism tradition.
The echoing ghostly sound of Father’s blood gurgling was louder than any scream, any cry Hayden made. He could scream all he wanted, but there wasn't anyone to help us. Even if someone did, they would have only ended up dead.
I don’t know what happened next or how, but time was moving on, it always did. The plane with its loud engine flew to the next kidnapping of the night. All of the terrifying sounds—children crying, engine roaring, the shuffling feet of the next set of children, and the pounding against the windows—was drowned out by the pain from losing Father. The blood on my pajamas had stiffened. It seemed like blood, the metallic scent, and deep crimson color was everywhere. All I could stare at was the bloody handprint, of the blood belonging to my father on my clothes.
A finger jabbed into the side of my ribs, and it wasn’t the first time. My head turned to the girl who had a baby on her lap and held hands with a toddler next to her. She smiled, even with cheeks stained with tears and her deep brown eyes bloodshot, making her dark eyes wild. It was a smile of understanding, almost lost in her bouncy, silk curls covering her face.
“The States Government took my brothers a couple of years ago to an island,” she whispered.
“Where?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I think off the coast, but I’m not sure.” She paused for a second. “They are going to make us strong with our abilities. . . At least that's what they told my parents a few years ago.”
“For what?” I breathed.
She shrugged again. “I don’t know. My name is Fianna, and I am a Bloodist.” She looked at the baby on her lap and the toddler next to her. “These are my sisters. They’re also Bloodists.”
“I am Amina, a Boneist. So is my brother.”
“Is that your cute brother over there?” she asked, pointing at Hayden with her elbow.
Hayden had stopped crying and screaming, but a lost look replaced his tears. At a young age, Hayden looked like Father with his dark, almost black hair, tan skin like mine, brown eyes with specks of green running through them, and a medium built to him. . . And it broke my heart for what I had lost.
“Yeah.”
“Well, we’re both Healings, and I guess the only family we have now.” She glanced at her sisters. “Let’s make a pact to be there for each other. Let’s be each other's family now. We might not be blood, but we share more than anyone else in the world could understand.” Fianna paused for a second. She adjusted the baby on her lap to hold out her pinky. “Let’s be Healing Sisters.”
I took a moment, looking at her pinky. I had never made a pinky promise before, but it wasn’t the first promise I lived by for the rest of my life within those twelve hours.
“Alright,” I replied, lacing my pinky with her’s. “Healing Sisters.”
Our pinkies locked together, sealing the pact, the promise, and I had no regret there.
“Healing Sisters,” she echoed.
One
October 15, 235MA
I wish I could tell you, after I was kidnapped, someone found me and the other kids. I wish I could say there was this glorious hero I owed my life to, but that would be a perfect world, and frankly, I don’t live in one. . . Not for a long time. To be frank, over the years I’d learned that the only glorious hero who existed, was the one within you. No one’s going to save you. You had to save yourself in order to survive.
My fists raised to the proper form—dominant hand back, nondominant hand up to block, while my feet stayed in the imaginary box. My focus heightened on the heavy bag like it was a real opponent. I breathed the stiff air to fill my lungs.
BBRRFF! BBRRFF!
Left jab, right hook, right jab, left, and right again. It was a rhythm I knew by heart and always sought out comfort to do in times of stress.
Sweat dampened my medium tan skin, with my baby hairs sticking to the back of my neck. BBRRFF! BBRRFF!
“Again,” I breathed, imagining the heavy bag was Adele, a Strongist.
The day prior, Adele kicked my ass in front of everyone. Well, in front of the older Weaponries. A class I took but didn’t need to take at all since I was a Healing. Hayden and Fianna both laughed, telling me I would get my ass kicked multiple times, and they weren’t wrong. They questioned why I signed up for them in the first place, and the reason I gave was to grow my strength. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the full truth either.
Danny called both of us to the middle ring of the training building with Adele snickering, ‘This won’t take long’. The bitch wasn’t wrong, and if it wasn’t for the stupid black leather cuff with its special metals running through it, I could have broken her bones easily. Although at that point in my life, I had never broken anyone’s bones with my abilities. . . Times would change though.
BBRRFF!
My wrists popped, which I ignored like usual, and my muscles spasmed against my bones from never having a chance to relax. Sweat rolled down from my head to even the back of my knees, and some droplets could've easily been tears. . . Some were.
With every muscle screaming, protesting to stop, my mind yelled right back to keep going. To keep feeling free with a sense of control.
BBRRFF! BBRRFF! BBRRFF! CCRRKK!
“Ahh,” I grunted, grabbing onto my broken wrist, a common occurrence. If I was Adele, I would have snickered as well, I thought.
I unstrapped the velcro to the fingerless gloves and threw them to the ground. My wrist stung, but I hardly felt the real pain of a simple broken bone anymore. I had broken too many bones, repeatedly, too many times to count.
I fanned my hand out as my eyes turned from their dull green with specks of brown to a cream color of bone. The skin, muscle, blood, and nerves vanished from sight with only the broken carpals in focus. With little effort, the bones started to move back into place and mend themselves together, an action I could do in my sleep. . . And would later in life.
“Giving up?” asked a deep voice.
My bones jumped from my skin, figuratively, as I whirled around to the broader frame than most, leaning against the door in the shadows of the training building. A new wave of heat washed over me as my breath caught in the middle of my throat.
Danny took a step forward, letting the orange-red sunrise cast shadows over his warm, beige skin. It made his square mandible and cheekbones sharper like they could cut someone. His blue eyes twinkled, and his light brown, almost blonde hair reflected the morning sun.
The air around me stalled as my eyes lingered on the way his body moved. Remember how there was another reason I joined the Weaponry class? Well, Danny was the reason.
He had been on Jamic, the island where The States Government took a hundred children they kidnapped, longer than anyone else had. No one really knew his story, his past, and he certainly didn’t share it. He had his reasons, everyone did, but everyone knew a little bit about the others on the island. However, Danny was a complete mystery to all.
The things people knew about him were the events that happened within these almost ten years on the Jamic. Like how he became the youngest council member for the Jamic Government, but no one understood why.
“I have been at it for a while now,” I said, finding my voice.
Danny moved to stand a foot away, the gloves in between us, and raised one brow. “You have been at it for about twenty minutes.”
A chill went down my spine as his eyes seemed to harden from the shadows of the sun, and I couldn’t place why. “And how would you know that?” There was a slight quiver in my voice.
He took another step closer, and a tight smirk curled his lips as everything stopped within me. There were only two inches in between us, and I wished those inches would disappear altogether.
“I was up before the sun, like you.” His hand reached up and gently moved a strand of my long, dark brown hair out of my face. “Saw you come in here and thought I should stand in the bleachers to watch for myself.”
His eyes trailed to mine, but he wasn’t looking at them at all. He was looking at the black eye I got the day prior, and to confirm it, he lightly ran his finger under the sensitive area of bruising. I winced and pulled my head back from his touch.
“It’s a nice shiner Adele gave you.” His blue eyes looked into mine with his tight smirk.
“Thanks,” I grumbled, taking a step back from his reach. “The Tissueists decided to laugh instead of helping when I went to them.”
“Because I told them too before the day began.”
“Wh—”
“You were always going to fight Adele yesterday.”
“Nice to know you think I can’t win my own battles before they begin.”
“That wasn’t my intention, Amina.” He recovered the step I took away from him. “And you know that. Besides, you need to wear your wounds to show you are strong.”
I scuffed. “Are you kidding me? Or is it to show I am the weakest one in—”
“You are not the weakest one here,” he interrupted with a firm voice.
My sore shoulders dropped as I partly turned to the heavy bag. “Why do you think they snicker each time you call me to fight one of the others? Why do you think it takes them less than a minute to knock me out?”
“Now you are just telling lies.” His response made my eyes narrow, but he continued. “You are a good fighter, Amina, and it takes longer than a minute to knock you out. Besides, the only ones who snicker are Adele and her little friends. They know you are stronger, more powerful than them. They are just threatened by you.”
A puff of a laugh issued out. “Now, who’s telling lies?”
“You know I am not.”
I turned my head a little to try to hide my grin. “I hate you, Danny Burnett.”
He laughed, leaning his forehead against mine. “No, you don’t. You have many feelings for me, and they are all far, far from hatred.”
His lips lightly brushed against mine, and as quickly as his lips came, they were gone. It was only stolen precious moments in the shadows between us, and that's all that really happened. When things started to heat up, it should have been a warning. Wanting things, wanting more, made people blind and caused them to make rash decisions out of their hearts, not their brain.
It all started when he broke some ribs in training in early 234MA. I was the one who mended them back together, and he started talking to me after. Then the stolen moments happened, and nothing more. But the next thing I knew, I was the stupid Healing idiot signing up for a Weaponry class taught by Danny. The same class he, a Strongist, broke his ribs in.
“Are you going to help me become stronger?” I asked.
“I already am.” He turned and walked out of the training building. “Keep practicing,” he called, but didn’t look back, not even a glimpse.
The door to the training building clicked shut, and I waited to see if he would come back. He didn’t.
I picked up the gloves and strapped them back on before following his orders. Right hook, right jab, left jab, right, and left again.
To this day, I wonder what his words truly meant. What part, what moment was he trying to make me stronger?
Because I don’t think there was one.