"You will go with your father." My mother leans forward in her rocking chair, forcing me to promise her soundlessly.

The door creaks open. I know who it is, but I don't dare look back.

"But--"

"Your fate is sealed," she whispers, gripping my small hands in place. Her hair fell over her eyes, riddled with sweat and ash. The furnace coals steam and hiss behind us. "And I can do nothing to change it."

"Mother, I don't want to go," I choke out, desperate for some sort of reassurance, for some other choice. "I can't go." She only turns her face from me, her eyes set shakily out the window. Tears are streaming down my face, and my voice is broken into china pieces. "Mother, please."

I feel a wide hand press against my back. It's time.

My mother still won't look at me. She speaks softly, as if she didn't really want me to hear. "Annabelle, don't be difficult."

He guides me away from her, across the uneven wooden floors, out the door, into his car.

With that first step, when I allowed myself to be de-rooted from the ground I guarded closely with my feet, I lost something precious. I'm not sure what it was exactly-- my home, hope, freedom. Maybe the last of my innocence. Whatever it was, I felt it drain out of me like blood from a cut limb.

In the back seat, I see my father's eyes in the rearview mirror. Cold, focused, silver, sharp. Like a knife.