I woke up extremely disoriented and with her head in immense pain. I looked at my surroundings and noticed that I was in an unfamiliar room. The stuff in the room seemed to be extremely tidy and I’m pretty sure the Village Chief is a neat freak so I think I'm in his house. But why would I be in the Village Chief’s house? The pain was making it hard to think and so I started to slowly remember everything that happened today. From dawn to dusk the day was like most others with the only difference travelers in our village. 

It was then that I remembered the events that occurred after my nightmare woke me up. I assumed that I had been captured and I ran out of the room in order to find the other villagers and escape as soon as possible. However as soon as I ran out the door I crashed into someone, fell down, and got some splinters from a loose floorboard.

Resisting the urge to cry from the pain inside my head and the new splinters in my knees I started to run away thinking I bumped into one of the soldiers. Before I had the chance to get very far I was interrupted by a familiar sounding voice. 

“You shouldn’t force yourself to run while it still hurts my dear Kat. It will only hurt you more and worry all of us.”

Feeling hopeful for the first time during this terrible night, I turned around and started to cry when I saw my mother standing there just as fine as she was any other day. I started talking about how I found my father's dead body. My mother pulled me into a hug and started to gently console me.

“It’s ok now my dear Kat. I'm sure you’re scared right now but Mama won’t be going anywhere soon. We’ll get those splinters out and I’ll explain what's going on later but for now just let your tears out.”

Mother lifted me up and hugged me close to her body as she started to walk back towards the room I had woken up in. Once there Mother started to take all the splinters out of my knees while she talked about what happened. 

“Over the past few days soldiers snuck into town by pretending to be travelers and merchants but when they all finally gathered they spread a bunch of dried hay around most of the houses in order to easily set fire to them. During the chaos of the fire they used kitchen knives to murder all the people who could fight. Then they gathered up the survivors and locked us all in here without mentioning what they were going to do to us.”

I remembered that the guy they called Commander had mentioned part 4 of a plan and thinking that it might be relevant I was going to tell my mother about it but before I could someone ran into the room with an urgent look on their face. Before anyone could say anything I saw a mob of people all yelling at each other and hurrying by the doorway trying to quickly get out of the hallway. I didn’t understand why until I heard another group yelling fire.

As soon as my mother heard that she grabbed hold of me and started rushing down the hallway alongside everyone else. Everyone was pushing against each other in an effort to get away from the fire as fast as we could. When we finally reached an exit we realized that in our haste to get away from the fire we forgot that the soldiers trapped us in here. Some people started throwing out ideas and it only made us realize even more how hopeless our situation is. 

“Let’s escape out the windows.”

“There are no windows.”

“Well then let’s break down the door.”

“We can’t the Village Chief made the doors out of sturdy wood so that thieves couldn’t break in.”

Eventually people didn’t even bother to give out new suggestions, they just argued to distract themselves from the fact that the fire was getting closer. Thinking we were soon going to die I got closer to my mom so that I could at least hug her while we died.

“Ouch that hurt”

“Huh mom?”

“Oh sorry Kat I guess we didn’t get all those splinters out. When you went in to hug me one of the splinters in you must’ve poked me.”

When I heard my mother say that I was reminded of how I got the splinters in the first place and when I thought about it it started filling me with hope. I could barely contain my joy so I decided to  shout out my idea.

“That’s it, we can use the loose floorboard to escape!”

“Has the lack of oxygen driven you insane! How exactly would another piece of firewood save us!?”

It looks like some people got too caught up in fighting that they won’t even consider my idea. I’ll just have to calmly make everyone realize how we could escape.

“The floorboards being loose may mean there's a passage under them.”

“Many other houses in our village had loose floorboards, which makes you think the Chief’s house is special!”

“The Village Chief prided himself on his tidiness. I highly doubt he would leave floorboards out of place like that. Besides nobody is coming up with any other ideas and as long as there's the smallest chance of getting out alive we should take it”

It took some convincing but it looks like at least some people believe I might be right. There are still a lot who doubt me but it’s fine. All we need to do is go check those floorboards in order to find out whose right and if I’m wrong we had no other way of escaping anyway so at least we tried.