Page 1 of The Good Daughter

Chapter One

The Wilderness

I woke when I rolled over onto a rock.

It seemed there was no way the rock was there the night before when I went to sleep or surely I would have noticed it. I mean—why would I go to sleep on a rock? Which left three options: either some mischievous animal was screwing with me, or perhaps rocks led a secret nocturnal existence I knew nothing about, or I simply remained the punching bag of the gods.

Option three seemed most likely. Recently it felt as if my life was a catalogue of ‘if it can go wrong, it will go wrong’ and it was so much more satisfying to be able to blame the gods rather than fate or simple bad luck.

Sitting up, feeling various joints click in a way that a twenty-one-year-old’s really shouldn’t, I looked for the man who had slept beside me, out here in the wilderness under the stars.

“Uther…?”

He was gone.

“Uther!?”

The thick, rough grass was still pressed flat to show where he’d slept but there was no sign of the man himself.

I sprang to my feet, as quickly as I was able, other bits of my body complaining bitterly, and scanned the endless skyline. The wilderness was vast, and it rose and fell in ways that were topographically interesting but very unhelpful if you were trying to find a man who had wandered off.

“Uther!”

No response. I rushed towards the apex of the mound in the lee of which we’d slumbered, still yelling, now in desperation.

“FATHER!”

But that was probably futile; he’d ceased to respond to that name a while ago.

From the top of the mound, I got a somewhat better view, and I cast about desperately. At first, he seemed to have been swallowed up into the constant movement of the waving grasslands, but then I caught a flash of color amongst the dull greens, greys, and yellows.

“Fath… Uther?!”

I ran towards him, calling his name, and as I got closer, I saw him look around mildly, as if hearing me for the first time and wondering what all the shouting was about. He put a thin finger to his lips, and I skidded to a halt.

“Look…” The old man who I used to call ‘father’ pointed at a butterfly.

As he pointed, the insect took to the air and, with a cry of childlike delight, my father chased after it, laughing and clapping his hands.

“Wonderful! Wonderful!”

The sight had a sweetness and innocence about it, yet also a horror that nearly broke my heart. I steeled myself against the tears that threatened; I had to be strong. For him.

“Uther…” I laid a hand on his shoulder and he turned to me.

The beatific smile faded to a frown of confusion as he looked at me. “I know you. Don’t I?”

My heart started thumping in my ears. “Yes. Yes, you do. It’s me—Selena. Your…”

I paused. Several times over the past week I’d tried to explain to him that I was his daughter, that he was my father, but he always became upset or even angry, beating me with his weak fists, screaming at me, calling me a liar and dissolving into floods of tears insisting ‘I have no daughter!’ In fact, he had three daughters, but perhaps I couldn’t blame him for blocking all of us out.

“I’m Selena,” I finished.

“Selena,” he tried out the word. “Yes. I know you. You saved me.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Selena. I’ll remember you. My name is Uther.”

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