by Chase Erwin
There was a bit of an embarrassed silence filling the room. The group didn’t seem to know what to say to me; I was thinking too much to decide on anything to ask.
I nursed the sweet ice cream slowly. Evidently, I was still feverish, or there was a lot of heat running through my body, because it melted faster than I expected it to. When I finished the last of it, I released my hold on the bowl… but it remained in mid-air.
The group watched nervously as the spoon slid around the bowl while it hovered. I realized that must have been my telekinetic power engaging once again. Rather than grab it, I envisioned the bowl resting gently on the table. The bowl floated to the table and came to a soft rest.
“Get some sleep now, Abel,” Beltrin said. “Tomorrow we can get to know each other better and we can figure out what our next steps should be.”
I nodded, and everyone slowly made their way into the makeshift bedroom, curled up underneath blankets, and drifted off to a peaceful slumber.
However, I simply couldn’t fall asleep. I walked gingerly around and paced, before deciding it would be better if I did my pacing in another room.
I tiptoed across the hall to what appeared to be a lesson room. There were benches, but no desks, apart from a hutch-like piece of furniture pushed hastily against the far wall.
I ran a hand along the hutch and noticed a drawer. I pulled it open. Inside was a brand-new theme book, pocket-sized, with a brown leather cover and laces to tie the book closed.
Curious, I stuck my hand further into the drawer. Aha! A pen. Perfect.
I chose my words carefully for a few moments, sitting on a bench, before I began to write:
Dear log:
You are a diary, a journal of a new stage in my life, as I chronicle a series of bizarre and frightening changes. Your predecessor, a journal I kept since I was 16, is gone, along with almost all my worldly possessions…
I went over the abduction, my brother Antareus, and his murder at the hands of the Ravens.
When I reached the part about this group taking me in, I remembered the date, and how I had been missing for so long.
I realized my membership in the Culinarian’s Guild must have lapsed, and I would have forfeited any claim to my career track. I resolved to set about asking — pleading, if necessary, with the head of the Guild to get my place back.
I’d also have to search the remains of my house to see if anything could be salvaged. But that, too, would have to wait.
The sounds of a group of jovial partiers passed by the alley outside, and I finished writing my first journal entry:
As I hear the sounds of life once again, I am resolved to continue living. I remembered Festivals past, where I was able to make many thousands of treats, hear thousands of tales and jokes, and just make people smile. I miss that. I want it back.
It’s going to be a difficult road to recovery, dealing with these new abilities and trying to regain my livelihood. But I think I have a support group building — at least with Beltrin. And if that is indeed the case, I have an untold amount of gratitude to repay him.
Until next entry, my dear Log…
I signed my name underneath the last line, as if finishing off a letter to a dear relative.
Shutting and lacing the book closed, I took the journal back to the sleeping quarters and slid it underneath my pillow.
Yawning, I climbed into the cot, closed my eyes, and before I knew it, I was in deep slumber.
Shortly thereafter, the nightmares began.
2. Shattered Memories
Sleep was rather short for all of us that night. And for each of the next three nights boarding with this group, I was hard-pressed to get any meaningful sleep.
Each night, mere hours after I drifted off into slumber, I was shouting and yelling in my sleep, waking the rest of the group.
Irek, the cleric and resident medical expert, was standing over me when I regained composure and was able to open my eyes on the fourth night. He appeared to be chanting over me. When he saw me stir, he stopped the incantation.
“Hello there,” he said softly.
I was panting. I felt extremely hot. I had sweated through my clothes and the sheets. His words, kind in tone as they were, scared me, as if they were a ghostly echo.
Beltrin appeared from a few paces away, just inside my field of vision. “Is he gonna be alright?”
“I expect so,” the cleric replied. “He has a heavy fever. It comes in bursts.”
“Am I sick?” I blinked as a bead of sweat rolled down into my eye.
“Not in the classical sense of the word,” Irek replied, taking my wrist and checking my pulse. “You are not suffering from a disease. There is a distinct amount of magic associated with your fever.”
He looked down at me, mopping my forehead with a damp cloth. “Tell me, Abel… what can you remember about, let’s say… the fifth day of your captivity?”
I struggled to reply. I could tell him quite easily about the night my imprisonment began, and I could tell him about the breakout, my escape, and meeting up with the group just last night… but everything else in between those days was dark — a void in my memory.
“I… don’t remember anything,” I said, helplessly.
“What about the fifth hour,” he pressed.
“The smell of mold growing in the corner of the cell was so strong,” I said, almost automatically. “There was screaming from behind the door across from me, where they were beating Antareus to within” --
Irek held up a hand to silence me. He scratched his tan, bald head. “This is what I feared…”
“What is it?” Beltrin asked.
“His captors have cast some sort of memory-inhibiting spell on our new friend here,” Irek said. “Judging from this and what the Daggers described to us the other night, I would venture to say that the Ravens attempted to disorient him when he left the perimeter of their compound. I believe that this intermittent fever is their way of trying to ‘burn’ your memories of this ordeal from your mind.”
I sighed as I heard Irek’s theory. “I don’t understand,” I said softly. “Why was I there in the first place? What did my brother do?”
Neither Beltrin nor Irek could offer an explanation to that question.
“We don’t know,” Beltrin said, “but we’ll try our damnedest to help you figure it out.”
“We shall see how you’re feeling come morning,” Irek said, “and if you’re up to it, perhaps we could venture to your home, see if you can salvage anything that will help you piece things together.”
I nodded, though the prospect of going back to that house — my old home — scared me. My last memory of it was being dragged from it while strange men ransacked it, destroying everything we owned looking for something Antareus told them they wouldn’t find.
What was he talking about?
I pulled the damp sheets off my body, and turned myself to face the wall, intent on going back to sleep. Irek bent his body forward again, incanting words I couldn’t understand.
“Is that a spell?” My words came out ragged, an easy indicator of my growing fear.
“A prayer,” Irek replied. “A blessing, of sorts. To help you have an easier rest.”
Shivering slightly now from the chill the fever was causing, I turned back around to face him. “Does that work? Prayer, I mean?” My family did not have much of a spiritual history.
“In most cases,” Irek replied. “It is by no means a sure thing, but I like to think I have a decent relationship with the Great Mother when it comes to asking for protection and blessings.”
He closed his eyes and continued his recital. I continued to lay there, eyes wide open, expecting some immediate feeling of relief, some physical indication that something was coming into effect. But there was nothing.
Irek finished his chant and opened his eyes again. He smiled softly at me and mopped my brow once more.
“Try for some rest now,” he said. “Good night, young Abel.”
<
br /> He excused himself and moved back to his own cot.
I stayed awake for just a few more moments. “Young Abel,” he called me. It triggered a feeling I couldn’t quite describe - unease. Something about that phrase made me feel uncomfortable, but not about Irek himself.
There was just no way for me at the time to figure out why it made me feel that way.
“Would you care for a little bit of music?” Taryn wheeled his chair over to my cot. For the first time, I was able to study his figure, admire his smart, tailored clothes. His body was entirely purple – lightly colored skin which darkened at his fingernails and his two curled horns.
I figured I should try anything to help lull me to sleep. I nodded.
Taryn nodded in reply. He reached to the side of his chair and toggled a small switch. I watched with awkward awe as his chair lifted just a fraction of an inch, suspended by nothing but air. It tilted backward slightly, and as Taryn pulled both wheels of his chair upwards, the frames and spokes stretched with them.
In seconds, Taryn was sitting in between two gilded, oval-shaped harps.
“That is beautiful,” I breathed.
Taryn smiled the way I used to when customers would similarly compliment my breads and pastries. “Yes, it is, isn’t it? This is the only instrument of its kind in all of Londolad — I won’t vouch for the rest of the world, but I very much doubt there’s another out there either.”
He began to pluck at the strings on his left side. A series of tones began to reverberate around me.
“Won’t that disturb the others?”
Taryn closed his eyes, shook his head, and began to play, one hand strumming each harp. “I choose who hears my harps,” he replied. “Every note I play is attuned especially for my audience. And tonight, that is you and you alone.”
I noticed that some of the strings began to respond to each other’s’ vibrations. By all logic, the sounds I was hearing should have come from a string quintet, not two harps… but I knew enough to believe my eyes.
As the chords began to play a beautiful, serene melody, I closed my eyes. I immediately pictured myself by a babbling brook. As Taryn continued his song, the warmth of the springtime sun tingled my skin, the moss and clover provided a comforting bouquet to my nose, and the flow of the water cascading off pebble after pebble made me feel, at least for the moment, at peace.
I wanted so badly to continue hearing the fae bard’s beautiful song, composed just for me, but the will to finally sleep overtook me.
✽ ✽ ✽
It was late morning when we all stirred awake again. Remi fixed small mugs of hot milk and oats for us all to get some quick energy.
I saw she had put some honey on top of my oats as I sat down with the rest in the kitchen. It was dolloped in the shape of a smile. It was quite the sweet gesture.
There was still an encumbered silence as we ate. Beltrin finally broke the silence as he set his mug down at the dining table.
“Do you think you have the strength to take us to your house?”
I swallowed and thought for a moment before nodding. “Yes, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
There was no confidence in the sound of my voice, which I know Beltrin picked up on.
“We don’t all have to go,” he said. “I’m sure Caeden and I could accompany you. The rest need to go into town and prepare for the week ahead.”
“Oh? Do you all have business to attend to during the Festival?”
“We do, actually,” Beltrin said with a little smile. “We have been asked to attend the Grand Ball at His Majesty’s.”
I gulped a bit. “King O’Hir? You all work for the King?”
Beltrin exchanged looks with the others, who seemed to be all right with his explaining further. “Not in any official capacity, but yes, we have worked on his behalf recently. There was a skirmish in one of the Outer Territories that we helped end.”
“Oh, wow,” I breathed.
“It was nothing major,” Beltrin said, before pausing. “Well, it was, but it’s what we were contracted to do. Everything we do is just a job, how we earn our way. And our invitation to the Grand Ball is his way of thanking us for our work.”
“We could see if there are any clothes that would be suitable still at your home,” Caeden offered.
I blushed at the mere thought of being in the same room as any member of the Royal Family. “I doubt there’s anything like that still there,” I said. “And I couldn’t begin to afford anything that would suit me for something like that…”
“Don’t worry about that,” Beltrin said, adjusting the flower on his lapel. “We’ll cover your expenses until we can get you on your feet.”
“That’s very kind of you,” I replied.
A few hours later, as we were in the midday hours, Beltrin, Caeden and I set out in a southeasterly direction from the church and the city center towards the family farm.
I kept my head down, watching the cobbles pass by as we walked at a slow pace. I hadn’t walked under my own free will for quite some time, and after the frenzied running during my escape, my legs still felt like jelly.
While we walked, Beltrin and Caeden talked more about themselves and about Taryn, whose brilliant music helped me rest the night before.
Taryn was adopted by a pair of gnomes called the Turnipseeds. His mother had been attacked by werewolves outside their forest just on the outskirts of Sinanju, a large city on the opposite end of the continent. The attack sent her into early labor, Caeden explained, and she died shortly after giving birth to Taryn.
The child had been left there for dead, and because of his mother’s distress during birth, he was born with permanent nerve damage to his lower body. The Turnipseeds were talented blacksmiths and leathercrafters, and they were able to endow Taryn with a magical wheelchair that could grow and adapt with him and his talents.
Taryn and Beltrin met when they signed up to be freelance adventurers at the same time, and they became fast friends. During their first assignment they met Caeden, a druid who helped them fight off earth elementals and vine monsters, and who decided to tag along as their adventures unfolded.
The cobbles turned into grassland as we passed the city border, and as I directed the other two towards the path leading to the farm, I began to worry more about what I would see when we got there.
The worry made my heart beat faster, and a heat developed within my body.
“Guys, I need to stop for a moment,” I said. No sooner had I said the words, my arms and legs jolted, and I sank to my knees as a bolt of electricity grew from my ankles, snaking over one leg. Another charge crackled over my left shoulder and extended down my arm. It hurt, like a thousand pins stabbing my skin at once.
“Stand back,” Caeden warned. He and Beltrin gave me space as I crossed my arms over my chest and heaved.
I felt like I was going to vomit, but the feeling soon turned into a sensation that I would soon be projecting this electrical energy out of my body. Thinking quickly, I looked past Caeden and Beltrin to a dead tree several hundred yards behind them.
Wincing from the uncomfortable crackling, I extended both hands outward towards the direction of the tree.
Sparks flew from all ten fingertips, and then two solid bolts of lightning sprung from my palms, speeding past my companions and into the dead wood of the tree. It splintered and cracked into two pieces. Terrified birds that were standing on the branches flew off, cackling in panicked chaos.
I rolled onto the ground, putting my hands over my face as I gasped and tried to regain my composure.
As I blocked the midday sun and applied pressure to my eyes with my hands, I began to see red dots swirl around, almost as if they were zooming towards me. The dots multiplied, twirling faster and faster — and then suddenly, they were gone.
All I saw was darkness. Then a flicker of a memory came into being as I remembered zapping electricity at someone else, back at the Raven compound. It wasn’t anyone I knew, and it wasn’t any
of my captors. It had to be another prisoner. I was electrocuting them, pointing just one finger at them, the finger sending bolt after long, lethal bolt into the other prisoner’s convulsing, burning body.
I snapped my eyes back open. Beltrin and Caeden were both over me, blocking out the sun. They helped me back to my feet.
“Should we go back to Galek?” Beltrin was deeply concerned.
“No,” I insisted, “let’s just get this over with.”
We continued walking, past the dead and now slightly charred tree, and continued closer to the Mondragon farm.