AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This palace is gargantuan. Larger than the town I grew up in. Gardens and grounds galore, all gated by a large wall.
Passing the gardens, I focused on the stone wall that towers above the gardens. The wall is as dark as shadows.
Long dead ivy climbs the wall. Their climbing fingers are a charcoal gray. As though they were set ablaze years ago. Now they stand as a reminder of the once to living plants.
Beyond the wall, it appears that a city surrounds the palace.
Now where will I go in this strange place?
I know that I wouldn’t be able to leave through the front gates. The gates would likely be too heavily guarded for me to leave. Perhaps if I familiarize myself with the servant’s stairways, I could find a way to leave undetected.
As I scan the area, I spot a target. A test for my first venture into the castle. A secluded, quiet garden.
A bit of passive resistance to being captured. Sneaking around his castle, leaving the area that I’m permitted to be in and venture out into the unknown.
What’s better about my plan is that in the gardens, it would likely take the divine even longer to find me. I smile mischievously. I doubt that his royal moodiness goes there often… or at all.
Plus, I crave what little plants grow there.
Being in this stone prison is my own sarcophagus. So close to life, yet I’m sealed away from the world forever more.
The outdoors was my comfort at home.
My bit of sanctuary.
My solace away from a life that was full of hardship.
But even then, no one has ever barred me from the outdoors. Even with what happened to dad in the forest, I still missed being there.
At home, I spent as much time as I could manage outside. Laying in the woods under the pomegranate trees, listening to the woodland creatures go about their day.
Although I’m not sure how similar a palace garden could be to a set of woods. Even from this angle, everything looked clean and orderly. I would miss the chaos of the forest. The unpredictability was always a comfort.
But the gardens will need to do for now.
Memorizing the general area of the gardens, I head to the secret passage.
Slipping into the staircase, I softly click the door shut and I shuffle down the empty spiral staircase. It was dark, dusty, and full of cobwebs.
The ghostly threads brush past my skin as I imagine tiny legs crawling up and down my body. Watching me with those beady eyes.
Ugh!
They are just webs, I tell myself. My mind is playing tricks on me.
After several flights of the narrowest and steepest stairs that I have ever seen, I stop at the foot of the stairs. The narrow staircase spills into a much larger hallway. Nearly five people could fit shoulder to shoulder.
Every so often, there is a door handle along the wall.
Moving on deeper into the hidden world I spy an intersection that goes off to the left and right.
No cobwebs rest in the tall rafters above me.
These sections are used.
Likely used often.
Hushed voices move in my direction from the left. Lunging for the nearest doorway, I crack the door open and peak out into a main hallway. With the voices coming ever closer, I leave the servant staircase, quietly but quickly.
