Chapter Five

One of Janice’s earliest memories was a dream. Or at least she thinks it was. She was three, maybe four. Hell, maybe five. She was in a white, empty room. The floor was bare. And she was alone. Except for one person, deep in the corner of the room.

“Come with me,” that person said. Janice couldn’t tell who or what that person was. It would always remain in a haze. A blur sitting in the corner of this white, empty void.

“Come with me, or you’ll die,” the blur said.

Janice didn’t speak. She couldn’t speak. And she dared not speak. The blur shivered. It began to slink across the room in her direction.

“Please,” the blur said. “Just do what you’re told. Just do what you’re told. I need you to just do what you’re told.”

When Janice was four, she held a sword in her hand for the first time. She would later be told by her father that she would drop it, inadvertently slam her face into the hilt and spend the next twenty minutes sobbing uncontrollably, snot running down her face. She would not remember this.

By the time she was eight, her father stopped training with her. She would run to the Moldav Estate courtyard, wooden sword in hand and find her father, alone with her four-year-old half brother practicing stabs and parrys. Her brother cried through most of it. Janice cried alone that night in her bed.

When she was twelve, Janice fought in her first tournament. She was the only girl. She fought with viciousness and anger. And she won, often. Before each match, she would sit alone and think about her opponent. She would think of every reason conceivable to hate him. His smug grin at the thought of fighting a girl smaller than him. The snooty look of his family in the spectator’s seats thinking themselves better than her because her family was broken and theirs thrived. His dumb mop of hair. Anything to gain an edge.

The parents of her opponents did not like her. They argued to have her kicked out, pointing to her mocking behavior in victory and propensity to hurt her opponents worse than most. But her mother fought harder. No one had a sharper tongue. And no one came to her aid with more ferocity and consistency.

Her mother had never enjoyed the tournaments. She couldn’t understand what drove Janice and would often chalk it up to “that thing you do with your father.” At first, she never attended the fights and preferred to ignore they even occurred.

When Janice was thirteen, she won her first tournament. Her father had not attended, citing “work commitments” in his letter. After that, Janice’s mom never missed a fight.

She was there when Janice cracked open the helm of Bug Snyder and then proceeded to stand over his prone form shouting taunts and insults in the direction of his clique of mates. Janice made sure he earned his nickname that day.

And she did not let her small stature dissuade her from throwing herself between her daughter and the towering group of angry teens who advanced in retaliation.

In the face of their impotent, misplaced rage, she was an oak.

When Janice was fourteen, she received a life reading from her grandmother, a gift the family matriarch did not give often. “You will one day have the power to save your family’s soul,” she said. Janice did not understand what she meant and chalked it up to mere cryptic words from a woman whose life and past was shrouded in a great deal of mystery.

When Janice was fifteen, she lost everything.