Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: FOLD (10/08/15)
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TITLE: Consumed By Fire | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jenna Fowls
10/15/15 -
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After the clatter died away, a short man in dark robes and a hat shaped like a shallow fish tail turned back toward the center of the room and assailed his victim again. Still wild with rage, and slightly limping from his violent contact with the decorative urn, the be-robed man hobbled forward to glare at the young man wrapped in chains before him.
“This is your last chance, boy,” threatened the desperate clergyman. “Tell me where the document is and you may possibly be released from prison one day. If you do not, you will be put to death immediately!”
The young man called Darren was no fool. He saw straight through the lies coming from those fat, greasy lips. He knew that his body would not escape this tribulation. His life, however, would most assuredly go on…At least that’s what the document hidden inside his shirt said.
“The miraculous document in my shirt,” Darren thought to himself, “The one they cannot find.”
Darren recalled the first time he read the nondescript writing on the faded, crinkled page. He remembered how the words themselves seemed to penetrate his soul and send fire through his veins. A lifetime of religious chains were instantly shattered, and a boldness, fueled by passion unlike he had ever known, completely consumed him.
It was this boldness which caused Darren to stand fast in the face of certain death. It was this passion which prohibited him from giving up his prized possession…but strangely, it appeared that the latter choice was not his to make anyway.
Since the day of his arrest, Darren, and his clothes, had been repeatedly subjected to searches, but no trace of the coveted parchment had ever been found. Darren smiled slightly to himself as he marveled at this astonishing occurrence, for the document was in fact resting in a pocket of the very garment he was wearing! Somehow their greedy hands could not touch it. Somehow their lustful eyes could not see it.
A sharp slap brought a sudden halt to Darren’s musings.
“Did you hear me?” shouted the clergyman. “Or do you think there is some other way to save yourself?”
Darren looked into the hate filled eyes inches away from his own, and with all the conviction and authority he could muster, he replied to his persecutor. “My life is saved. It is not my own, therefore you can never take it from me.”
Enraged at the boy’s nonsense and obvious indifference to his threats, the interrogator gave up.
“Get him out of here!” he screamed. “He will die at dawn!”
Three guards immediately surrounded Darren and hauled him away by his chains.
***
By early afternoon the flames were all but diminished. By evening only char and smoke remained. As twilight set in, a handful of men with wooden buckets and crude shovels appeared in the square. They slowly and carefully picked their way through the debris, looking for anything that might fetch a price. Though the greed-driven and thorough church fathers picked their victims clean of valuables before setting them alight, once in a while a trinket or two could be found throughout the smoking rubble.
One of the thieves, a strapping young man, separated from the group and began poking his shovel around a smoldering pile. Suddenly, the dull clunk of the blade on cobblestones was muted. Bending down to investigate, the young man was surprised to find a soft, dirty shirt wrapped around his spade.
Quickly searching the material in hopes of trinket or coin, the lad was startled when his cold hand brushed not against hard metal but a crinkly, and oddly warm piece of parchment buried within the folds of the fabric.
Cautiously, he unfolded the page and stared at the words. Despite the fact that he had never learned to read, the young thief was immediately able to understand the contents of the document. It was full of wonderful things he had never heard before, and, somehow, he knew them to be true. Time stood still as the words became alive to him and buried themselves into his heart. Flames of passion and boldness ignited within the former thief’s soul…
Darren was not the only one consumed by fire that day.
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