My Mother Died Three Years Ago—But Every Night She Appeared in My Dreams Begging Me to Find Her in a Forgotten Village Called Medanna… Then I Discovered the Truth

Chapter 9

“The goddess exposed a plot tonight,” he said, “but the goddess did not name you specifically. The king named you, out of his own jealousy over his daughter. That means the plan is not finished. It only means we must move faster and more carefully than before.”

By morning, Kitorrah had returned to the palace hallway, her heart pounding, determined to find her father’s master key to the underground cells. She walked on tiptoe down the long royal corridor, checking under pillows, inside golden boxes, scattering papers across the desk in her desperate search.

She was so focused on the search that she did not hear the heavy footsteps approaching from behind.

“What are you looking for here?” the king barked, his voice like sudden thunder in the enclosed room. “How dare you enter my room and scatter everything?”

“Nothing,” she said, shaking, trying to block the scattered drawers with her dress. But it was too late.

“Oh, so you’re looking for the key, are you?” the king hissed, eyes burning with hatred. “You must be out of your mind. You are a cursed child, since you cannot listen to my instructions. Because of a common city slave, you have lost your respect as a princess. You want to betray your own blood for a stranger?”

The argument escalated into something terrible. Kitorrah could no longer hold back her anger and frustration.

“He is not a slave, Father!” she screamed. “You are the one who is cursed! You kidnap innocent mothers, you lock up innocent youths, all because of your greed! If you don’t release Joshua, I will reveal all your evil secrets to the neighboring villages!”

The king’s face turned completely red. He could not believe his own daughter would speak to him with such disrespect.

Before she could finish her next sentence, he slapped her.

The pain and the insult made her lose her mind completely. As the king stepped forward to grab her hair and drag her out, she reached blindly for a rod lying nearby and struck it hard against his head.

The heavy iron staff made a loud sound against the king’s temple. He stopped moving instantly. He fell heavily to the floor. Her father collapsed and died.

The palace went into total chaos the moment the news broke out. The king was dead. The ancient laws of Medanna were very strict. They banished Kitorrah for killing her own father, and released all the slaves at once.

The chief guard, who had waited fifteen years for this exact moment, was the one who gave the final order. He turned to the remaining guards, pointing at the dungeon. “Open all the cells. Release all the captive maids and security guards from the foreign cities. The old king’s blood has stained the soil, and we must clear out all strangers to avoid the curse of the gods.”

I was dragged out of the pit, and the heavy chains were finally cut from my legs. The moment the gate flew open, I ran straight to the laundry yard and grabbed my mother. We wept together, knowing the nightmare was finally over.

As we walked out of the great village gates of Medanna, the sun was setting behind the palm trees. Kitorrah walked beside me, carrying only a small bundle of her clothes. She was no longer wearing her gold jewelry or her royal crown. She looked down at the dusty road, tears flowing non-stop from her beautiful eyes.

Kitorrah felt deeply hurt that her father was dead, but I comforted her, promising to be by her side always.

I stopped and held both her hands tightly, looking straight into her eyes with deep love and gratitude. “Kitorrah, look at me. You did it to save an innocent soul. You saved my life, and you saved my mother. You might have lost a kingdom, but you have found a forever home with me. I promise to be by your side at all times. I will work hard, I will protect you, and I will never leave you.”

Hearing this, she smiled through her tears and leaned her head against my chest.

Before we left the village entirely, the chief guard found us on the road out. He knelt briefly before my mother, an unusual gesture for a man of his rank and history in that palace.

“Madam,” he said quietly, “I am sorry for every day you suffered inside those walls while I stood guard over your suffering and called it duty. My own sister died the same way, doing the same work, and I never once found the courage to act until this young man walked through my gate on his own two legs and gave me the reason I had been waiting fifteen years for.” He straightened and looked at me directly. “Take care of them both, Joshua. And if this village ever tries to build the same wickedness again under whatever king comes next, know that I will not wait fifteen years a second time.”

We finally arrived at the city, and my uncle, who had sold my mother into this slavery, was arrested.

The journey back to the city was long, but our hearts were filled with determination. The moment we stepped into town, I did not even go back to my uncle’s house first. I walked straight to the main police station with my mother and Kitorrah. We gave the officers our full statements and showed them the physical marks of slavery on my mother’s body.

Two hours later, the police patrol van pulled up in front of Uncle Jude’s house. He was sitting outside on his veranda, drinking cold beer and counting money, completely relaxed.

“Jude! You are under arrest for human trafficking and kidnapping!” the police inspector shouted, cuffing his hands instantly.

My uncle saw my mother standing behind the police car, alive and well, and his face turned pale like a ghost.

He fell to his knees, crying and begging for forgiveness. “Sister, please! It was the devil! Money tempted me!” But the police dragged him into the back of the van and drove off. Justice had finally caught up with him.

With the small savings I had and the support of my mother, who was now resting peacefully in a comfortable apartment, life began to change for the better. The bad dreams that used to wake me every night completely disappeared. The crying voice of my mother in Medanna was gone forever.

Kitorrah and I finally got married.

It was a beautiful, simple city wedding. She wore a lovely white dress, and her face glowed with pure happiness. As I slid the ring onto her finger, I knew that our love had conquered the darkest kingdom either of us had ever known.

In the weeks that followed, once my mother had regained enough strength and enough safety to speak freely without fear of being overheard, she finally told me the fuller story of those three lost years, the details she had never dared reveal inside the palace walls where any word could reach the wrong ears.

She told me my uncle had come to her one evening with what looked like a genuine solution to her financial troubles — a woman in the city, he said, was hiring house help for good pay, room, and board included, far better wages than she could ever earn selling wrappers in the market. She had hesitated, she admitted, some instinct warning her that the offer sounded too generous for the little effort it seemed to require. But she had thought of me, of my school fees, of the shame of watching her only son grow up in someone else’s house because she could not properly provide for him herself, and she had let that hesitation go quiet.

“I trusted your uncle because he was my own blood,” she told me, her voice still carrying the particular rawness of a wound recently reopened and finally allowed to breathe. “I never once imagined a brother could sell his own sister the way a man sells goats at market. When the vehicle that was supposed to take me to my new job instead drove for two full days into unfamiliar country, I understood, far too late, exactly what kind of arrangement I had actually agreed to.”

She described the first months at the palace as the hardest — the disorientation, the confiscated phone, the constant surveillance, the particular despair of understanding that no one outside those walls even knew to look for her, since the story told to her own family back home was that she had died. It was this despair, she said, that had eventually driven her, night after night, to whatever desperate spiritual reaching a person attempts when every ordinary avenue for help has been closed to them.