Dunsinane Hill

The children were playing with a ball on the lonely, kicking it to each other, throwing it between themselves within a game that they were free to play, now that the fields had no need to be tilled and planted.

Now that nobody needed to eat, the poor farmers who lived on the lake side, with the direct view of the manor on the other side, had lost their employment and were now left abandoned and desolate.

The children were free from their bondage were finally allowed to indulge in the games and entertainment of their peers on the other side of the lake.

They held onto Lee's hands and arms, picking at the shredded and shorn threads of his clothing, giggling along as they brought him to their little corner of the world.

"My mother used to make the best soups with the forest mushrooms," one of the children boasted, a little girl whose eyes were wide and bright, her hair twisted into braids that hung in loops from her head as she looked upwards into Lee's face.

"Your mother couldn't make anything if it wasn't for my father and older brother sneaking out into the forest at night!" another boy, slightly older than her with a face covered within pimples and spots, resembling a painful rash rather than acne, and sporting a rather large inferiority complex, considering his often and extremely open hostile glances over to another boy who chattered away to a girl with a round face and soft features.

The boy who had initially approached Lee held his hands and pulled Lee along with him, down the dirt path, his footsteps not even disturbing the soil beneath him as he pressed down on it.

Lee followed the path of his feet, before looking back to the ball that the group had left behind in favour of ferrying him over.

It laid alone on the side of the water, still and seemingly innocuous now.

Lee thought and remembered back to the women who had worn makeup at the hotel, and wondered why the children could play with the ball and women could pain their faces, but were left unable to disturb any of the dirt which sat on the road.

He looked back into the town, before looking back at the ball.

One of the children, one of the bigger and older ones, noticed Lee's movements, making a hand gesture indicating for him to wait, before he ran back.

He sprinted all the way to the ball behind him, kneeling down next to it and leaning over the edge of the lake, his head and hands inside it where the water used to sit. He pulled out some kind of rope, attached firmly into the rock face which bound the lake.

Carrying over the free end of it with him, the boy reached over to the ball that had been left abandoned. He tied the threads of the fraying twist over and over the ball, looping the length over and over again, before pulling once, twice, then thrice, to ensure that the set up was secure.

Satisfied, he then stood up properly, giving Lee a proper look at his face and the smattering of freckles that dominated only one side of his face. The boy turned to look out over the lake, and placed the ball down onto the floor.

He stepped backwards towards Lee and the other children, establishing some distance between himself and the ball, before throwing his entire body into a desperate sprint, throwing one of his legs back before thrusting it forwards into the hard surface of the ball, with a resounding thwack.

The ball shot up into the air and away from the boy, kicking up a cloud of dust behind it, on the path, as it flew over a great length of the lake, the rope extending further and further. The smooth glide and the glorious arch of the path the ball travelled through the night sky was eventually cut short, as the rope ran out of it's length and began pulling the ball downwards towards the earth, into the lake.

The rope hooked itself over one of the buildings, leaving the ball to dangle within the confines of the underwater town, slung over one of the beams of the buildings that had a direct view of whatever was happening inside the underwater hotel.

One old woman, walking nearby on one of the bridges, startled slightly, before giving a small grin, bopping the ball with her fist once, watching it sway slightly at the force, before continuing on her merry way.

Lee watched the whole spectacle, clapping along with all the other children at the sight, as the boy, who had kicked the ball, walked back bashfully, his head lowered and one hand mussing up his hair in embarrassment.

One of the children, a little girl with the same half freckled face and a height that only reached up her brother's shoulders, launched herself at his chest, hugging onto him as if she were spider monkey, before scrambling up to his shoulders, singing her sibling's praises and demanding tithes in thanks for his efforts, only accepting them if they were paid directly to her though.

Some of the boys that were her brother's age, gave her head pats, before pulling her brother into a friendly head lock.

The younger children looked up to their little celebration, before quickly getting bored and deciding to bombard Lee with their questions instead.

"So, why're you here, mister?" one small child asked him, tugging on his robes.

"What d' ya want with our village?" another one cried out, pulling on his arm and tugging him along forward.

"Are ya gonna stay with us?" a smaller child asked, simply content with trailing along beside Lee without touching, looking downwards onto the dirty floor.

It only occurred to Lee then that the ground that they walked on was not covered in the layer of water than coated all the floors of the village. The ground were soil and dry, not of green grasses.