Caught in the Devils' Hand Read online

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Caught in the Devil’s Hand

  ISBN # 9781419907838

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Caught in the Devil’s Hand Copyright© 2007 Ruby Duvall

  Edited by Helen Woodall.

  Photography and cover art by Les Byerley.

  Electronic book Publication: February 2007

  This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  Content Advisory:

  S – ENSUOUS

  E – ROTIC

  X – TREME

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing offers three levels of Romantica™ reading entertainment: S (S-ensuous), E (E-rotic), and X (X-treme).

  The following material contains graphic sexual content meant for mature readers. This story has been rated E–rotic.

  S-ensuous love scenes are explicit and leave nothing to the imagination.

  E-rotic love scenes are explicit, leave nothing to the imagination, and are high in volume per the overall word count. E-rated titles might contain material that some readers find objectionable—in other words, almost anything goes, sexually. E-rated titles are the most graphic titles we carry in terms of both sexual language and descriptiveness in these works of literature.

  X-treme titles differ from E-rated titles only in plot premise and storyline execution. Stories designated with the letter X tend to contain difficult or controversial subject matter not for the faint of heart.

  CAUGHT IN THE DEVIL’S HAND

  Ruby Duvall

  Dedication

  I’d like to thank Sheila for getting me started on all of this. It’s really a dream come true and I hope she knows how special she’ll always be to me. I’d also like to thank Shawn, who was extremely supportive and helpful when the story was being hammered out. Lastly, thanks to Linda for her helpful support during editing.

  Chapter One

  The dawn was cold and damp, still muted by the last remnants of a harsh winter. With the sunrise came an overcast sky, which drizzled at random upon a struggling village nestled in a small valley of the eastern mountains.

  The members of this small community were reluctant to rise from their beds, but as the landscape became easily discernable with the rise of the sun, smoke began to billow lazily from the thatched roofs. Soon, those who were still of able body would leave their homes, wearily hauling their tools to begin loosening the dirt in the fields for spring planting.

  For the family in a scanty, weathered hut among a small grouping of homes near the northern end of the village, today seemed like it would be the same as the rest. They would rise with the sun, stiff from sleeping on a narrow mat with hardly enough warmth to let them sleep at all. They would work in their isolated field, eke out a meager living to keep their bellies full of the plainest food and then return gratefully to their hard, narrow mats for another night of rest.

  However, these past few weeks had seen many villagers succumbing to a disease so deadly that it was catastrophic. The entire village, already at its knees, was now lying prone in the dirt. In her nineteen years as the only daughter of a family of apothecaries, Shumei had never heard of or seen so many fall ill and die. She could only pray to the Divine One that the worst was over, that things would improve. She could not bear to think what it would mean if things worsened.

  Shumei woke from a fitful sleep, disturbed by a muffled noise nearby. She swallowed around the itchy lump in her throat that bespoke of her overly salted meal last evening and took in a shaky breath, denying the urge to stretch since she was barely covered by a thin blanket. Opening her left eye, she realized with a mental groan that dawn had already arrived.

  Letting her eyelid shut, she almost drifted into sleep again before the muffled noise returned to jerk her eyes open. She grudgingly lifted her head to look about. Snuggled close within the curve of her body was her little brother, only nine years old, but he was sleeping peacefully enough despite his sickness. Beyond him, only an arm’s length, was the largest of their straw mats, upon which their mother slept.

  She saw her mother’s shoulders convulse a few times as she coughed and Shumei’s lips fell open as she realized that her mother’s symptoms had worsened.

  “Mama?” she called, her voice hoarse from sleep. She quietly cleared her throat, blinking the sleep from her eyes.

  “Shumei? I’m sorry to wake you, baby. Did you sleep well?” her mother called over her shoulder. Her daughter hesitated a second.

  “Yes, well enough. How are you feeling?” she asked, propping herself up on her elbow. Her mother rolled to her back, turning her face toward her daughter.

  Shumei bit back a gasp. A blood vessel in her mother’s right eye had burst, turning the white to red. Not only that, but her skin looked yellowish and drawn. These visual symptoms, plus her cough, confirmed that her mother was near the last stage of the disease.

  “Well enough,” she said, returning her daughter’s words and giving her a small smile. “Where’s your father? Probably in the medicine fields, right? There’s no need to watch the plants grow in the middle of summer,” she lightly joked. Her daughter lowered her face to hide her expression.

  Father had been dead for four years and full summer was yet two months away. This was another common symptom of the fifth day. Most people remembered a time in the recent past, though older people sometimes remembered their early youth. Shumei felt her breath hitch and suppressed the pained sob that threatened to bubble up.

  “I don’t feel very good today, baby. When Father gets back, ask him to rub my back. I think I should sleep a little longer…” her mother sighed, rolling back to her right side.

  “Yes, mama,” she agreed, her voice even more hoarse than before.

  About a month ago, a boy in the village had fallen ill from a strange disease. He didn’t know how he had caught it. Several of his close friends became ill as well. Then their parents…then their parents’ friends…

  Everyone now referred to it as the Burning.

  The sickness had spread like deadly fog throughout their tiny, poor village. Those who hadn’t yet become sick, including Shumei, were counted as lucky, but they were a very small minority. Out of their population of two hundred and seventy-two men, women and children, ninety-eight had died, and of the remaining one hundred and seventy-four nearly fifty were ill. The rest had either escaped the disease or had fought to recover from it.

  The village leader and his wife did nothing for the village except pray to the Divine One and rely upon Cooling Butterbur to save patients from the fourth day’s deadly fever. They did not even leave their home, frightened of catching the Burning from those they were charged with protecting.

  Shumei’s family had become important to the village because of the butterbur. Their winter supply, now running dangerously low and quickly growing stale, had saved at least three dozen people from succumbing to the heat of their own bodies, but many of them had still gone on to secondary symptoms on the fifth day of the illness. Two unfortunate souls had died from internal bleeding after their broken ribs stabbed through their internal organs.

  It seemed, though, that the Burning had nearly run its course. Their family still had the early spring harvest of Cooling Butterbur to rely on, should they have need of it, but if that supply was also consumed, their next winter’s supply would be next to n
onexistent since the spring harvest was the largest for such herbs.

  Shumei felt her lips trembling as she looked down at the sleeping face of her brother. Today was his fourth day. So far, children under age twelve hadn’t survived the fourth day’s fever. She could already see his cheeks warming to a deceptively healthy pink color. He had cried throughout most of the first day, scared of dying and in a great amount of pain, making his initial symptoms much worse than they might have been. Thankfully, though, he had yet to cough up any blood, showing that his lungs weren’t being damaged as heavily as other victims of the disease.

  On his second day, he spent most of it silently weeping, his body tense and occasionally convulsing as he lived through the longest and worst headache any human had ever endured. She managed to dull his suffering with a dose of Numbing Kava Kava, but he still couldn’t bring himself to speak through the haze of pain. He ate well on his third day but vomited the last of it just a few hours ago. She had woken to find him emptying his stomach on the floor, and had spent an hour cleaning it up and giving him medicine before they could settle back to sleep again.

  A splash of moisture landed on his rosy cheeks, and she quickly wiped at her eyes. She hardened her jaw, determined not to let her deep anxiety show. She was very practiced at hiding her feelings, and this latest crisis would not be an exception. Pressing her lips together, she pushed the fear to the pit of her stomach and sat up entirely, scrubbing her face with her hands as if removing the last layer of sleep still clinging to her body.

  A movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she felt her entire body squeeze into itself as her gaze landed upon a small, spindly legged spider crawling along the dirt floor, only an arm’s length from her little brother. It was headed toward the nearly dead fire in the center of their single room. She felt the usual rush of fear and adrenaline, wondering what she should do about the invader, and found herself unable to move, as usual. A small mewling had begun in the back of her throat when her brother suddenly turned in his sleep, flinging out one arm and effectively smacking the spider with the back of his hand, squashing the bug before it could even think to duck or dodge.

  Shumei felt her mouth fall open, a bit bemused now, and pressed her hand to her chest as her heartbeat slowly resumed a normal pace.

  When she had been Oka’s age, life was a little sweeter. Her father had still been alive, his boisterous attitude overflowing their small dwelling, and she was his little garden gnome, watching as he and mother poured every bit of knowledge and care they had into making their field of medicines grow full and ripe.

  Though the villagers and their thinly veiled animosity toward her for the color of her and her mother’s hair was always a deep wound, she was well-shielded from their sneers and remarks by a loving father and well-spoken mother, both of whom could always make her feel better with a hug and a small piece of wisdom.

  Then Oka was born. It was obvious from almost the first day that his hair would be the Beloved Color. He was the only young boy in the village with blond hair. No one knew why the color sometimes emerged in a child randomly and many had praised Oka as being touched by the gods.

  Most of the villagers had brown hair, and a very small minority had black hair, like Shumei. She and her mother shared that trait, at least. Her late father had also been brown-haired. Oka’s blond hair, however, was as rare as brown hair was common, and it had always fascinated her. For that reason, she loved washing his pale locks and combing them until they dried as golden as bee nectar.

  She hadn’t understood the hierarchy with one’s hair color when she was very young. She remembered this time as being the happiest of her life, a time when nothing was shut away from her, when the world held no hatred and no danger, but an incident had changed all of that, and she had learned very quickly about the dangers around her. The memories were fuzzy now, but since then, she had never wandered away from the village after sunset.

  Daylight was safe. The Divine One sheltered and protected his people with the golden sparkle of the sun’s rays. It was why children with golden hair were more loved. It symbolized the touch of her people’s God to have hair the color of the sun. Other than Oka, only two others in the village could claim to have been touched by the Divine One. One was the village leader, and the other was his wife.

  If you came unto this world with hair the color of the Earth, the Divine One’s priests believed that you had been molded for the task of working with the Earth, and so most members of the village with brown hair tended the crop fields, save a few like the miller and huntsman, who obviously had to perform other chores.

  If you came unto this world with hair the color of night, her people believed that your soul had been tainted by the touch of the Damned One. Her people’s God had infinite forgiveness and patience and so those with black hair were forgiven for the sin committed upon their immortal soul. However, it left a stigma that few with black hair could tolerate with impunity. Not even Oka’s existence, brother and son to women with black hair, would lessen the contempt of the villagers.

  She had adored her brother from the day he was born and had thought that his blond hair was glorious, but after his birth, the atmosphere around her became even more tense. The comments whispered to her as she passed grew more and more vile with each passing day, comparing her and her cherry-cheeked infant brother.

  Then one afternoon, her father’s dead body was found in the medicine field, and the cause of his death was unknown. It was not uncommon for someone to die suddenly, but when your wife and daughter bore black hair, your fellow villagers would come to many various conclusions, few of them logical or kind.

  Thus, the last four years had seen a change in her. Once she had been cheerful, talkative and outgoing, but she slowly grew quiet and reserved. Without her father to protect her from the villagers’ contempt, their cruelty grew exponentially. Their malice had forced her to shut down, close herself off and hide her emotions. It was now rare to see any soft expression on her face, let alone a smile. Her eyes were always downcast, and she held herself closely, as if awaiting the blow of someone’s fist.

  With Oka, she spoke gently and calmly, though never with a smile. She could no longer bring herself to act the cheerful older sister, even for him. As a result, Oka had taken to being nearly as soft-spoken as his sister, though much more physically active. He greatly enjoyed swordfights with imaginary enemies as he protected her while she and their mother worked in the medicine field.

  Their mother, downtrodden by the absence of their father and repressed by the village’s ostracism, aged incredibly in those four years. Her youth disappeared with her happiness, and though she was yet forty-one, she looked closer to sixty, her hair almost completely gray.

  Shumei scratched an itch on her exposed lower shin, which poked out from the much too short dress that she had not replaced since the year her father died. Today was the day for the delivery of medicines. Seeing as how both her mother and brother were sick, she knew it was up to her to prepare the packets of medicines and deliver them to the households that had ordered them.

  This was how her family made ends meet. By selling medicines, they scraped together enough money for food, clothes and wood for the fire, but not much else. Even then, their food was always the cheapest and least nutritious, the bolts of cloth they purchased were of the lowest quality, and kindling was always used very sparingly.

  If it were possible to work in another trade, her family would have done so, but families with black-haired members were required by tradition to tend the medicine fields. For ages, the priests of the Divine One considered the medical arts to be “less holy” because only the Divine One could grant true salvation from injury and disease.

  Over time, people began to see the good in medicines and rationalized their usage by saying that medicines were a gift from the Divine One, who made his people from the same earth from which the medicinal plants sprang. Tradition demanded, though, that black-haired villagers an
d their family members continue to tend the fields. So for generations upon generations her black-haired ancestors had provided the village with medicines for a fee almost too meager to live upon and she was just another in a long line of virtual slaves.

  Many times, she had wished for a different life. Surely, she thought, life was different somewhere else. She could make friends, find a better way to earn a living and walk among other people without seeing disgusted faces when they saw the color of her hair. She wished to live in a place that didn’t adhere to the caste system in which she found herself at the bottom, a place where she could find adventure, experience new sights and cast aside the yoke she wore.

  Sighing in resignation, she stood up, though she tucked the blanket more securely around her little brother’s feet before rising fully. She silently ground the herbs and medicines in the corner of their hut, tapping the powdery results into tiny cloth bags that the villagers returned to a small box outside their door once the medicines had been used. Her mother coughed a few more times, but was otherwise still and Oka slept somewhat fitfully, turning in different directions.

  Once she was finished, Shumei placed the small bags of medicine and a few bundles of herbs in her delivery pouch, which she slung over her shoulder. Carefully walking to her mother, she knelt close and touched her shoulder.

  “Mama? I’m going out to deliver the week’s medicine…” she softly called. Her mother nodded softly and Shumei stood again. She planned to make her deliveries as quickly as possible, purchase some meat to strengthen her ailing mother and brother, and return home to care for them. Her mother and brother were both at critical stages, and she couldn’t stay away from them for too long. Pushing aside the reed door and ducking out of the hut, she looked around at the morning scene.

  The day was destined to be overcast and chilly, making Shumei huddle further into her shabby clothing. One of her neighbors, a married man by the name of Akito, was just now leaving his home to go to the crop fields, but no one else was about. She waited until her neighbor had gone some distance before heading out to her first and most hated destination.