“Liberate yourselves,” they told us after they left us huddled in the muddy shack.

We clung to each other, only concerned with the immediacy of keeping warm as the endless rain pelted down outside.

We slept awhile, fitfully delirious, and when we awoke a new dawn had broken it’s silvery rainbows all across the land.

We had all come so far the past few days and we had no idea where we were or how we’d ever get home.

But written in the mud with a stick outside was a message. It said: “The Author is looking for you.”

We searched each other’s eyes for answers. The tallest of us had tears in his eyes. Others looked concerned. Some looked around fearfully. The last time any of us had spoken or eaten had been those ten miserable days ago when we’d witnessed the mutilation of the one we’d called The Winner.

He had spoken at the wrong time in The Game and had his limbs chopped off and his tongue mutilated. What followed were days of torturous and gruesome games against The Opponents and then some of us who ran to hide in a crate in The Maze from The Predator were found and beckoned out of our hiding place by a little old lady with a funny twitch in her eye.

We somehow all trusted and followed the bent-over hag and she brought us to a cave near a waterfall in the woods somewhere none of us had never been in The Game-Board before. We had all been too scared to utter a word and the arduous hike had been without a bite to eat.

She had not spoken to us - almost respecting our mutual silence- and had gestured to us to lie next to one another upon the cold earthen floor.

She had crouched there by our heads and closed our weary eyelids with weathered fingertips. All of us had fallen into a deep sleep and then awoken, to find ourselves flying through dark skies with stars whizzing past. Or rather, we were not flying ourselves, but on the backs of two or three winged reptilian creatures.

They had flown us into the storm and dropped us by the hut and disappeared. We were not sure if this was a part of The Game or not. They had spoken in our heads so I wasn’t sure we had all gotten the same messages to free ourselves. My eyes fixed on the writing near my feet.

“The Author is looking for you.”

What could it mean?

I wished then earnestly for warmer clothes and my ma’s crusty freshly baked bread. Tears sprang to my eyes at the thought.

My mother, bless her soul, was long dead in an unmarked grave since she, my brother and elder sister had all protested with our community when The Game came to our town. The Game was used to cull the population and curry favour for The King amongst the wealthy. The wealthy would keep paying taxes and The King would have a new income stream whilst keeping the poorer populations smaller and more manageable without outright killing us.

Rather, he would elevate the best of us and marry the first, second and third winners of each game to his wealthy friends’ children. This ensured a steady flow of new and strong blood into this smaller pool of people he kept in his courts. It helped his courts stay engaged and keep their eyes off his affairs.

For us, it was a fight for survival. If you didn’t win, you would be killed. We were highly incentivised to win since we could then afford to keep our poor families fed and warm thereafter, but they could never visit us nor we them.

As I reminisced about the smell of baked bread, I spotted The Tall one wandering off into the mist. I grappled over the uneven ground to follow him not caring what the others did. Tears were running unbidden down my cheeks as I saw what I guessed he must have seen too. There were tiny green plants pushing up through the hard baked lava-like ground at intervals. It was almost as if we were to follow them as signs. As the mist became thicker I lost sight of The Tall one but could still see the plants.

When the mists became too thick, I decided to sit down next to a plant.

I rubbed its new leaves between my fingertips and a queer scent drifted up to my nose.

“Who are you Author?” I thought. Then more urgently, “Where are you?”

“I am here.” Came a gentle voice all around me, muffled somehow in the warm mists that now enveloped me like a cloak.

The voice was that of my mother!

And suddenly, there she was: emerging as her younger self out of the mists surrounded in a light that shimmered copper and gold.

She reached out her hand.

“You are home.”