Later on, while everyone else was doing dishes and helping to clean up, Serali decided that today she was going to go exploring. She informed her parents that she would be back in time for lunch and then set off towards the wild country that lay beyond the neat fields of the village.

Following a dry gully that meandered gradually towards the edge of the Great Escarpment, she mused about her life. Birthdays were always fun, but for her they had carried a bit of melancholy. Ever since she had been old enough to realize that she was different from her parents, from her siblings, ever since that birthday six years ago when her parents had told the story of her birth, how they had adopted her, she had wondered. Who were her real parents? And why had they abandoned her? Sometimes she despaired, thinking that they had not wanted her, that she had not been good enough for them. Other times she recalled what her adopted father had told her of them and imagined that she was being hidden from some great enemies, that her parents were royal, that someday they would return and claim her and she would become a queen. She had fond fantasies of rule, of how wonderful life as a queen would be.

Practicality tended to intrude though. Barona already had a king, who had plenty of offspring. And if she was the lost queen of some distant land, how could she leave her family behind? She loved her adopted parents too much to simply abandon them. And yet, they wouldn't be happy to leave the farm, the inn, their family home. Her father had inherited the inn from his father who had had it from his father before him and so on for generations. Someday her brother would inherit it. They would never be happy in some royal court. And besides, if her parents were royalty, why would they have left her here, of all places? Land's End was aptly named. The little road that wandered into the town stopped there and went no further. There was no further to go, for to the south lay the Great Escarpment, and to the west and the north were the cliffs and ravines and tumbled stones of the badlands. The road came from the east, from Barona, but the capital city was far, far away. Few of the villagers had ever been there. Certainly Serali never had.

Her thoughts turned from the city back to the great unknown of her parentage. She was twelve years old now. Twelve years was long enough for her to be fairly certain that either her parents had abandoned her completely, or they were dead. And what did it matter anyhow? Falio and Marilla were her real parents. They had raised her, whoever birthed her.

Her reverie was abruptly interrupted by a large hand on her shoulder. She was half lifted off her feet and spun around by the hand to get a view of its owner.

Patren.

Sudden fear washed over her and she yelped and tried to break free, but the man grabbed both her arms in an iron grip and wouldn't let go. She kicked at his shins and he knocked her feet out from under her, letting go and letting her sprawl on the ground. Before she could get up he'd pinned her, his face twisted with some strong emotion she couldn't name. She screamed, but she had wandered a long way from the houses and tended fields. There was no one to hear her.

"I had hoped you'd come here today," he said. "It's a special day, isn't it?"

She glared up at him, terrified but also angry, and said nothing.

"A special day for a very special girl. You're old enough to be a woman in some places now. And I want to show you how to be a woman. You're a pretty little child. So pretty..."

Her fear increased as she realized, with a shock of horror, exactly what it was that she saw in his eyes. What she had seen, and somehow known without knowing, all along.

She screamed again, and he put his hand over her mouth. "Hush my little girl, my Serali, I won't hurt you. I don't want to hurt you. I just want to show you. But not here. I know a better place."

He kept one hand clamped over her mouth, and the other was gripping her wrist so hard it hurt. He got up and dragged her up with him, started pulling her along the gully, back in the direction of the village. She dug in her feet and resisted, but the sandy floor of the dry stream bed gave her no purchase and he just kept going. She jerked and struggled and tried to free herself, but he was far larger and far stronger. Finally, terror grown to desperation, and desperation somehow banishing fear and summoning anger, she bit the hand over her mouth, as hard as she possibly could.

She felt a kind of fierce exultation as she tasted his blood and heard him scream. He let go of her for just an instant and that was enough. She was off, her long legs flying as she raced away from him.

She didn't know this particular gully, she had been trying to explore somewhere a little new this time, but she knew somewhere up ahead was the edge of the Great Escarpment, and she needed to get out of the gully before then. She scanned the sides for a place where she might climb up, but though there were a few she might have eventually managed, there were none easy enough to get up before Patren caught up with her. And as she went along the walls were growing higher and steeper. She glanced back and he was only a few yards behind. His expression now had rage mixed in with his unwholesome lust, and she felt terror spark in her again. She was trapped. She knew the edge had to be near, and there was no way she was going to get out before she reached it.

And then she did. She rounded a corner to see blue sky straight ahead. Only a hundred yards or so further and the ground simply stopped, dropped off, falling thousands of feet to the sandy desert below. She ran on anyway, having no other choice. Perhaps she might find a ledge, or some way to go across the cliff face. The upper parts of it weren't perfectly straight, she had found such places before. But when she stood on the brink and looked down and to either side the cliff face was smooth. There was no escape.

She looked behind again. Patren had stopped running. The rage was less strong on his face now, but that didn't make her feel any better. He was smiling, advancing on her slowly.

"You shouldn't have done that, my Serali. You were very bad, and I'm going to have to punish you for it."

"Get away from me," she yelled at him. "I'm not your Serali!"

"You are. You can't deny it, and you can't escape it either. Come, come here." He beckoned to her, but she backed up a step, now on the very brink of the cliff. Just one step back and she would tumble off the cliff to the ground. She could imagine it all too easily... And suddenly the insane impulse was back. Before her was unthinkable horror. Behind her was the rush of wind, the lift of her wings, the escape of flight. The conviction that she really could fly, that she would not die if she jumped, was stronger than it had ever been. And faced with the choice of Patren or jumping, her decision was easy.

She turned and leaped.