by Alexie Aaron
“Chess. I’m going to have Nordin convince your parents to send you to chess camp.”
“You know, it may work. They are always looking for ways to get rid of me.”
“What about school?”
“My father has been at odds with the quality of my education for a while. I’m the one that makes me go to school. He thinks by supplying me with books, I’ll teach myself.”
Nordin, who entered the room in time to hear his new role in this farce, handed Mia the translated copy of the candle along with its incantation spelled out phonetically. She looked up at him and asked, “Is there anything you can’t do?”
“We’ll see how well I can act. I guess you and I are off to convince your parents that you’re a chess prodigy. Have you ever played before?”
“Not in front of them. As far as I can remember, I’ve never even picked up a chess piece.”
“Then how did you beat, Mr. Wayne?” Nordin asked.
“He taught me in another timeline. I played a bit, but he and I spent many hours playing chess. I learned a lot from him.”
“It’s confusing, you talking about the future as if it’s the past,” Nordin admitted.
“Too much for you?” Mia asked.
“No, I just have to adapt. That’s what we butlers do, adapt.”
“You’re a hell of a butler, Nordin.”
“Thank you, miss.”
Wyatt got up and patted Mia on the back. “You two go and get permission, and I’ll make some phone calls. Then we’re off to see the wizard…”
~
Stephen Murphy moved into the dark house, being careful not to displace too much air. He was aware that his wife’s spirit had been seen by previous homeowners and renters. The last thing he wanted was to have Chastity find out why he was inside the home after all this time. He could argue that he wasn’t aware of how much time had passed, but he wasn’t a good liar. She would know that he watched the seasons change and marked it in the woods. He knew, within a month, how long it had been since he stepped into his abandoned house.
The décor had changed over the years, but the layout of the home hadn’t. Electricity was brought in, the wires clumsily run just behind the mopboards and cabinets. He moved up the stairs and rose into the attic. He found the safe he had cut into the beam and looked at the contents. The jewels and coin were all accounted for. The girl, Mia, knew where his hoard was but didn’t rob him. Either that spoke of her character, or she, like himself, didn’t like entering the house if her actions had even the slightest possibility of raising Chastity.
He left quietly and started to move towards his barn. He stopped and backtracked to the ice house. The child also knew where his grave was. Murphy stared down at the brambles that hid the old wood from prying eyes. Nature had moved in as soon as his mother had left the farm. They had forgotten the crushed man who was laid out and awaiting his burial. No one to miss him. No one to care.
But evidently in the future, he and the young girl do meet. Judging from the amount of information the girl knew about him, they must have talked, talked a lot. He didn’t know he could talk to the living beyond a word or two, words he used to frighten away lazy homeowners. He wasn’t concerned as much over his house as he was his barn and his farm. He had cleared the land himself, felled trees, and built his structures. His mother prodded him into taking a wife. The wrong wife. And when it became apparent there would be no children from their pairing, Chastity and he lost heart.
He pushed the bad memories away, choosing instead to concentrate on the story Mia Cooper had given him. She seemed genuine. She had come to the farm for what?
“Help. She came to me for help, and I threatened her with my axe,” Murphy scolded himself.
“We worked together.” Her words echoed around him. It stirred something in the back of his mind. He closed his eyes and brought up the memory of her offering him her hand. For a moment, he had expected to see a gloved hand reaching for his. He pulled his axe closer to his chest and tried to hold on to the vision of the gloved hand. He moved his eyes up the arm and pushed backwards to see the Mia who was attached to the arm. Gone was the scrawny wild child. A shapely woman stood there, her moss-green eyes dominating her face.
A deluge of memories fell. He snatched one like a lifeline to prevent himself from getting swept away. The memory he held on to was of him reciting a poem:
Deep in the forest there is a tree
Beautiful and fragrant it attracts many bees.
Still young it has to live through many snows
Many springs and summers will come and go.
Then Mia’s grown voice overlaid his and finished the poem:
I will be there forever to protect this tree
This is the promise I give to thee.
The memory generated a vision.
Murphy watched as he turned and confronted a grown Mia. She was talking… What did she say? He concentrated hard and remembered.
“Funny thing about promises… they’re rarely kept,” she said, kicking at a dirt clod on the ground.
“Why are you here?” he had asked her.
“I came to ask you if you were a keeper or a breaker of promises,” Mia asked.
“I’m an honorable man,” he insisted.
“But in being honorable, does it mean that you keep promises?” she prodded. “Do you cut a tree down the first sign of disease?”
“No.”
“Do you leave the tree without water?”
“No.”
“Then why are you treating me this way?” Mia asked him.
“You know why.”
“I absolutely don’t!” she snapped.
“You’re not who I thought you were.”
“Gee, I haven’t really morally changed since I was fourteen. Physically, I’m a mess. I don’t know from one day to the next what’s going to sprout. I’m like that tree they grafted all the different fruit trees on. I’m like a Stone Fruit Tree.”
“Those are an abomination,” he had told her.
The vision faded. “I called her an abomination.”
“Gee, I haven’t really morally changed since I was fourteen,” she had told him. Which meant that they originally met, what, two years from now? He pushed himself to open another door in his mind.
He was in a strange house attacking Mia. She held a sword but didn’t use it. She instead used her shield to keep pushing him away. She was bleeding but still managed to stay on her feet. Why didn’t she use her sword?
“Snap out of it, Murph!” she yelled as he connected with her shield again and again with his axe.
There was a horrible little girl ghost in the room who shouted instructions in his brain. It was as if he had become her puppet, her mercenary.
Mia took a step backwards and wings grew out of her back. She screamed as she charged him. He was too startled to move. She picked him up and flew him past the controlling ghost and sliced its head off as she went. They crashed through the window and ended up outside.
They landed on a snow-covered lawn. Mia tossed Murphy on the ground, put her foot on his chest, and took away his axe. “I promised you that if you went rogue on me, I would dispatch you myself. Look at me, Stephen. Tell me who I am.”
It took a few moments for the influence of the entity to leave him. He lay there not moving, his eyes on the woman he had just tried to kill.
“Please, Murphy, don’t make me do this,” she said, her voice breaking. “Who am I to you?”
“Crazy Cooper,” he said, lifting an eyebrow.
“Wings?” Were these the things Mia mentioned sprouting? Was this why he had ceased their friendship? He couldn’t quite remember. He walked away from the ice house and out into the woods. The forest had changed since his death. Although, nothing really grew where the tree had fallen. He knelt down and remembered his death, and then he remembered Mia, a giant, and an angel named Sariel.
Mia appeared by Sariel’s side and watched the large man, he remembere
d as Ed, approach bearing a cedar coffin on his shoulder. Mia stared down into the open grave where he had been digging and removing the frozen earth.
“I see a coffin bearer and a gravedigger. What is my role here?” she asked the archangel.
“You’re the mourner,” he said simply. “Stephen Murphy has unearthed his own grave. He faced his own death. Now he will return his body to where he died. There is a reason that nothing grows here. The forest has been waiting for Stephen Murphy’s remains.”
Mia bowed her head as the casket passed her. Ed laid it beside the grave.
Murphy moved upward and planted the spade, blade side down, in the pile of loose dirt. Sariel opened the coffin.
“Stephen, your remains need to be returned to the earth. You promised the forest, and it has waited all this time.”
Mia stepped forward. “I’ll do it.”
“No,” Murphy had said. “It’s my chore to complete.”
Mia nodded and stepped back to allow him room. He picked up the open coffin and poured the contents into the grave. He then set it to the side.
Sariel turned to Mia. “Burn it.”
Mia open her eyes and nodded her head. The coffin burst into flames. In minutes, it was nothing but hot embers smoldering in the deep snow.
“Misfit, your hand,” Sariel ordered.
Mia held out her hand. Sariel drew his sword and sliced her palm. Mia walked to the grave’s edge and squeezed her blood into the grave.
“She has given you her heart, her allegiance, and now she gives you her blood,” Sariel told Murphy.
Mia stepped back. Ed wrapped her cut hand in a leather band.
Sariel spoke a strange language. Mia knelt along with Ed in reverence.
Murphy began to fill his grave with dirt. With each shovelful, he relived his death and that promise he had made. When he had finished, Sariel stopped speaking.
“I leave it to the forest now. Come, Ed, Misfit, let’s retire to the aerie. Murphy will wait for a sign.”
They left, and Murphy stood watching the snow fall on the freshly packed earth. He saw a small disturbance in the center of his grave. He fell to his stomach and watched as a shoot moved out of the soil and the seedling curled upward. The plant was fertilized by his bones and Mia’s blood. Soon the small tree grew thick and tall. An elm had ended his life. His remains gave another elm new life. This circle of life pleased the land. Murphy stood up, and he felt the power of the land move upwards from his feet into his body. It felt like a thousand energon cubes had exploded inside him. His steely gray eyes glowed. Gone was the blue mist of the ghost. Instead, Murphy glowed with the deep green of the forest. He took a moment to thank the earth before he sped to the aerie to tell them what had happened.
Those memories gave him the truth. He and Mia not only knew each other in the future but there was a bond between them that she fought hard to keep. Why? Who was he but a poor farmer who didn’t live much past his thirty-fifth year. But this woman didn’t see him that way. He erred, and she forgave him, just like Mother Nature forgave his taking of her beloved trees. The high entity of the forest gave him power. Wherever nature had a foothold, be it a lush forest or a scraggly plant that pushed up between the cracks of a sidewalk, he could regain his power. But that was in the future… or was it?
Murphy knelt down and called out, “Keeper of the flora and fauna, I, Stephen Murphy, ask for your forgiveness and promise to replace the trees I took to build my house and barn tenfold. Please bestow upon your humble servant the power of the earth so I may protect those who fight for this planet.”
A crackle of footfalls on the forest floor alerted Murphy to someone coming. He looked up to see a beautiful woman walking towards him. She wore robes made of light, and in the deep pleats, moss and fungi grew. Her hair resembled a spring willow’s branches, and she wore a circlet of daisies. “Hello, Stephen,” she said. “This meeting is unexpected.”
“There is devilment about. Time has been changed. I must help reinstate it, but I need the power to move far from my remains. A power I don’t have yet, but you will bestow upon me in eighteen years.”
“You’ve always had the ability to leave this place but, yes, not the power to regenerate your strength. Why would I do this?”
“Sariel asked.”
“Oh. Does he know that you’re in this predicament?”
“I doubt it.”
“Explain…”
Murphy explained what he knew.
“And you trust this hoyden?”
“Yes.”
“Mia Cooper, the girl that screams in graveyards?” Mother Nature confirmed.
“Yes.”
“A child with a woman’s memory. A sensitive with no access to her genetic powers.”
“She has no way of defending herself on her quest to reset time. I’ve always had her back.”
“And her heart. I’m not sure we should continue this pairing. It may end with you in the Dark World.”
“I know the rules. I will not take advantage.”
She stood still and listened to the silence of the woods. It was as if her children had all stopped moving, awaiting her decision. “Children, talk to me. Does this man deserve our gifts?” she asked.
Murphy felt the wind as it moved, freeing the trees of their paralysis. The birds and beasts of the hollow gave their requested testament. He watched the everchanging visage under the circlet, looking for a favorable expression.
“I will give you power until the next full moon, Stephen. At that time, I will take it away until you’ve earned it properly. If you and this screaming child succeed, then all will be as it was. If not, you’ll have some difficult decisions to make.”
“Thank you,” Murphy said.
“How strange is it that only you and she remember the future…” Mother Nature questioned before fading away.
Chapter Four
Mia sat in the back of the Town Car beside a very quiet Wyatt Wayne. Nordin had convinced the Coopers that two weeks of concentrated study would determine whether Mia was indeed a prodigy or not. Either way, it would be an educational experience for the young woman, and the cost was being picked up by a local enthusiast.
“My wife and I will use this time to prepare for my Wyoming dig,” Charles told Nordin. “This couldn’t have come at a better time.”
Nordin kept to himself the disgust he felt for these people. Who left a twelve-year-old’s well-being in the charge of two dirty old men? Not that they were dirty old men, but what if they had been?
“I’ve been thinking about the order in which you need to interview these people,” Wyatt said.
“Interview?” Mia questioned.
“Accuse, interact, whatever you have to do to see who made the wish,” he clarified.
“Yes. Aside from the locations we need to travel to, I thought I’d approach the females first. I originally crossed Audrey off in my mind because she has a wonderful marriage and a beautiful baby, but what if she didn’t realize that by being twenty years younger that everything under twenty years would no longer be. My godfather Ralph is always saying, ‘If I was your age, Mia, I’d treat my skin better.’ I doubt he wants to be twelve nor wishes to go back in time. He just wants younger skin.”
“Vanity is a powerful sin,” Wyatt told her. “We should see her soon. It may make a lot of the travel unnecessary if you’re right.”
“If my memory hasn’t been corrupted, Audrey grew up in the same house that her parents were living in when I first met them.”
“You said females plural,” Wyatt reminded Mia.
“Yes, I think that Glenda Dupree is the strongest candidate, followed by her son Mike. Both are vain and have expressed their displeasure of aging to me,” Mia said.
“I agree that vanity is a strong reason but not the only reason for wishing to be twenty years younger. It has to do with choices. For example, I wish I had spoken up when I saw the disruption Lucifer’s actions were causing. If I could go back, I would.”<
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Mia thought about it. “Then they are all strong candidates, except for Murphy.”
“Have you taken him off the list?” Wyatt asked.
“I was drawing a line through his name but stopped myself.”
“Why?”
“Because I never asked him point blank if he wished it was twenty years ago or if he had a candle in his pocket. He was busy helping me come to terms with that this wasn’t a dream, and what was I going to do about it? His wish could have to do with planting trees or me. Who knows?” Mia said. “I know I’m making myself the focus of this, but I am the only one who seems to have memories up to twenty years in the future.”
“That you know of,” Wyatt reminded her.
“Argh!”
“How did you meet Orion?” Wyatt asked.
“He showed up to have Angelo’s back. Angelo Michaels is a birdman warrior who helped PEEPs out in the early years.”
“Your face clouded over when you said his name.”
“Remind me never to play poker with you,” Mia said, frustrated.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“What’s the problem with Angelo?” Wyatt demanded.
“What does he have to do with this problem?” Mia fired back.
“Mia, we have to consider all variables. We’re dealing with something very dangerous. I don’t want to be surprised by a birdman’s talon slicing my throat.”
“Sorry, I just… K, Angelo. How much do I tell you? It all comes back to me, but you’re part of it too?” Mia thought a moment and decided to just go for it. “Wyatt, I’ve been genetically engineered by the Council of Women to become an assassin who is beautiful and desirable enough to attract Abigor and kill him.” Mia held up her hand before Wyatt could ask any questions. “Orion and my grandmother are my father’s parents. This is how I ended up with demon and birdman and angel genes. Orion’s mother is part birdwoman, part demon, and angel. On my mother’s side, we have angel. There are wings on the female side of the family.”