The Kingdom

"What?" I asked dumbly.

My father seized me from behind and dragged me back across the floor with more effort than he'd ever shown in any protective effort on behalf of my mother. I halfheartedly thought about resisting, but I was too lost in coming to grips with the situation that was unfolding.

My father heaved me off to one side and I tumbled off the porch into the dust near the hitching rail. I sat up in the dust to see my mother and father standing on the porch, staring with nervous anxiety at each other.

Slowly, as if asking a dumb question or one that I couldn't believe the need of even asking, I asked, "You're mad at me for keeping you from being raped by that man, mother?"

My mother turned on me and with surprising harshness said, "How do you think we've survived out here on the border Rollan? Open your eyes boy! The visits by the surrounding Nicationers are all that's kept us from going under out here on the borderlands. But now, because of your foolish stunt, they'll come and burn this place down around us!"

I blinked repeatedly as I felt my whole world begin to collapse in on itself. Feeling far too much emotion leak out into my voice I managed to choke out, "All these times that I've come to defend you…… save you…… it was all just acting out a part?"

I watched my mother's eyes dart off to the side as she said, "They paid more for the double experience. They liked beating you up almost as much as they liked having me."

I felt bile rise in my throat at the reality of the lies I had been living under and suffering from.

My eyes turned to my father, "And you were in on all this too?"

My father gestured around broadly, "Look around boy! Do you think we could have made a go of it with this crummy place? It wouldn't matter how much effort we made or how much good weather that we could ever have, we'd still not make a success of this place. If it hadn't been for your mother doing what she has, we would have starved long since or been killed by the border raiders!"

"What are we going to do Ralin?" My mother asked, breaking into the conversation anxiously.

My father looked past her to the Nicationer's horse and then back to me still sitting in the dust. "This is what we'll do Ezney. I'll haul off the dead Nicationer, while you get busy scrubbing up the blood. As for you boy, you get on that horse and ride out of here and never come back or, so help me, I'll kill yah!" To underscore his words he picked up an axe from beside the door and brandished it at me threateningly.