by Ron Vitale
Alessia pulled the Moonstone from a pocket in her robe and presented it to him. Stephen took it from Alessia and held it in his hand. “Looks normal to me.”
“This gem contains powerful magic that brought us back in time to see you.” I could see him already become disinterested.
Stephen rolled the stone over in his hand, but then quickly ignored it. He turned fully to Alessia and asked, “Are you truly my daughter?”
She nodded, unable to speak for fear she might cry.
“I never thought to have a child. I didn’t think it possible. All my life, I’ve wanted, other things, but to see you now and know that you are here brings me great happiness.” Stephen pointed to me. “I would do anything for your mother. I truly would. I love her like she’s my lost twin. Well, not exactly like that, but I think you know what I mean.”
I smiled at him and took the Moonstone out of his hand and gave it back to Alessia. “I do. I’ve always known what you meant. Now I need you to trust me. We need to go on a journey and find the other half of the Moonstone before my house lord does.” I looked to both of them. “Having both pieces of the gem will give us the power to stop my house lord.”
Alessia stopped me and said, “That’s why the house lord chases you. He has the second stone, the dark side of it. Like the moon, there’s the light and the dark. Together, they make one powerful artifact.”
I nodded and said to Stephen, “In a few days from now, I try to kill the house lord and steal the light side piece of the Moonstone. I run off and give birth to Alessia, but he uses the dark side of the Moonstone to keep his spirit locked into his dead body. He becomes a mummy, a shade, or worse. And he will chase after me, until he finally finds us. The problem is that he’s hidden the dark piece of the gem. We must find it before he does.”
Stephen shielded his eyes from the sun and glanced off in the distance. “And then you’ll unmake him, and he will no longer chase after you.”
“I need to undo what I have done. I might need to stop myself from killing him. I might need to make different choices and live a different life. I need to find a way to stop him from becoming the shade that chases endlessly after us.”
“I will help you. But I don’t know what I’ll be able to do. I’m not a wizard or have magic. I only have a sword.”
“And that’s something we have need. We can use your arm and your wit. We will go off and find the dark piece of the gem and then right what was made wrong.” I grabbed Alessia’s hand and squeezed it. “For her sake, our daughter’s sake.”
“This might not be the best time for me to bring this up, but isn’t that him right there?”
I whipped around and, walking alone in his dark robes, my house lord came up the pathway from the road to the farmhouse. Alessia glanced at me in fear, and I tried to hide my concern from her, but could not. He strode toward us, confident and free from worry, waving a white handkerchief above his head. I did not stop to think and cast a protective spell around us.
My house lord walked right up to us and continued to wave the white handkerchief. “I am here to help. Please, I am not here to harm anyone.” He appeared fine, alive and well.
Stephen brandished the scythe in front of him, protecting us. “Stay back!”
Thaddeus used his handkerchief to dab the sweat off his head and ignored Stephen but faced me. “You’ve grown into a powerful witch. And is this your daughter?”
“What are you doing here?” I asked. I silently prepared another spell, but still he made no aggressive movement toward us.
“I want to come with you. I can help you all and you can help me in return.” He turned to face Stephen. “Please, lower the scythe. Do you truly think I would walk up here without help and try to attack you all?”
“How did you know that we would be here?” Alessia asked. She positioned herself behind Stephen and kept her hands at the ready.
“I am a wizard and can see into the future and the past.” He rubbed his chin and then put away his handkerchief. “I had a vision of the future. It seems that your younger self will kill me in a few days’ time and I will die, but an evil spirit takes possession of my body, and I think you know the rest.”
“And so you’ve traveled from your home, on foot, to come meet us here to simply convince us that you want to join us on our adventure? I know you. You are manipulative and a master strategist. I doubt that you suddenly have good intentions and want to help right a wrong.” I pointed at him and prepared my spell. “Why should I not kill you now?”
“Because killing me here will not stop the mummy from chasing after you. He searches for you still. The Moonstone may have brought you back to the past, but it’s only a matter of time before the mummy sniffs you out and finds you here. Then it will use the dark part of the Moonstone and come for you.” He offered his hand to me in peace and shook his head. “And I don’t want that to happen.”
Alessia turned to me and asked, “Is he telling the truth? If we don’t kill him now, what would happen?”
I weighed what my house lord said to us. “I thought that if I could stop my younger self from killing Thaddeus that we would be saved, but it might not be that simple.”
Thaddeus shifted his weight onto his right leg and smiled. “You are right. If a few days from now, you could stop your younger self from killing me, that would not stop the evil spirit from possessing my body. It would try again and again to kill me. Over time, it would win and defeat me and my dead husk becomes the shade that chases you now.”
I could not contain my fear. My hand shook so I clenched it and hid it in my pocket. “How do you know this?”
He turned away for a moment and took a deep breath. “Because this isn’t my first time trying this.”
Alessia understood what he meant and asked, “And you failed all those other times before?”
“Yes, we have.” He did not lower his gaze and chose his words carefully.
Stephen took a step forward. “But if this is not the first time you have met up with us and we have failed on the quest … I don’t understand how that is possible.”
He smiled at Stephen and said, “Time is relative. It will ebb and flow like a wave breaking onto the beach. The future is being changed all the time, but we just don’t recognize it. There are those more powerful who can float through the planes and through time.”
Alessia said, “You speak of Mohan the Wise. In all our books, he is mentioned to be our greatest living wizard.”
“Exactly. He has the ability to shift through time as do a few others.” My house lord folded his hands behind his back and asked, “That is why we sometimes have déjà vu or can’t remember a name or place. Time is being shifted around us. If you do not kill me a few days from now, then maybe you steal the Moonstone from me anyway, or the evil shade possesses me another way. Somehow there is a shift in time, and when you return to your own period, you might not remember this conversation, but events remain the same. But now I know what we need to do to right all the wrongs. I need you all to trust me.”
Stephen put down his scythe. “All this talk of wizards and time has me confused. What do you think we should do, my lady of the rags?”
I smiled and squeezed his arm. “I have missed you so. You always found a way to make me laugh.”
Alessia turned to me and said, “I think we should trust him. I do not detect any magic around him or obfuscation. He’s not lying.”
“Are you so sure?” I kept my hand out, ready to cast a spell. “He is a master at his trade. But I agree, if he had wanted to harm us, he would have by now.”
My house lord looked to me and asked, “What do you think?”
“Thaddeus, I must ask you for the full truth.”
At the use of his true name, he paused and pulled back from me. “How do you know my name?”
“I know many things, and now I need you to tell us the real truth and not just what you think we need to know. If we choose to help you, I cannot have you against us. I
have power over you.” I faced him, and now that I was older, he watched me and then lowered his head.
“I understand. Then we will forgo all these games.” He threw open his robe and something looked different about his body, but I could not place it. He waved his hands over his torso and his body shimmered, if but a moment, and we could see into him as though his skin had become translucent. “Look at me like I truly am.”
The bright sun faded from view as though a dark cloud passed in front of it. In the darkening sky that grew around us, Alessia let out a gasp of fear. She pointed at his body and said, “It’s not real. What are you?”
Stephen had the hardest time seeing through the illusion Thaddeus kept up but then recoiled and held the scythe tight in his hands, ready to fight once he did see the truth. “Your bones are like metal and there are gears attached to them.”
Thaddeus made the façade all fade away from himself and stood in his true form. “I am a clockwork man, having been broken and battered, with only parts of me left. I have fought to survive for many years.”
Now I understood. “And when I kill you, the dark spirit takes over the automaton that you are. I see now. Your body is more than flesh and bone. When I kill you, I only kill the man, but not the clockwork body.”
Thaddeus nodded. “Exactly. I want us to work together because I want back what’s mine.”
Stephen lowered the scythe. “You want to bring us back to when you lost your body and then win it back.”
My house lord shook his head. “It’s not that simple. But, yes, I want to never lose what I have lost. We need to go back before the war, back when I was young, to face my master and to win back the dark side of the Moonstone. And I can take you to where and when that is. But you’ll have to trust me.” He put his hand out for the Moonstone.
Alessia refused and looked to me. “Why would he help us? And why would we trust him?”
“Because he does this for love.” The words fell out of my mouth and Thaddeus’ face lit up.
“Yes, you have guessed right. I do this for the one I love.”
“Ada.” I said her name to show that I had more power over him than he knew. He could not fool us with his charms.
“Yes, for her. I do all of this for her.” He rose up and puffed up his artificial chest and let his robes fall back around him. “I want to have a normal life with her. I want to be whole again. Undoing the past is the only way I can truly be with her.”
“Then we should go and get this over with,” Stephen said.
Thaddeus pointed behind us and said, “We’re already there.”
The sun came out from behind the clouds, and the world had changed. The field had vanished as had the farmhouse and even the scythe had faded away. Behind us, in a great large square, a large crowd of people came together pushing forward to hear a man speaking to the crowd. He spoke loud and his voice sounded familiar but strained from speaking at such a high volume. Thaddeus pulled his robe’s hood up and over his head and pulled the folds of his robe close around him. A chill in the air caught me off guard, and I turned to see who the people listened to up on the makeshift stage in the square.
Alessia came close to me and leaned into me. “I’m tired and could use some rest. It’s been a long day.”
Stephen put on his shirt and shivered. “And it’s much colder here. Where are we?”
“We’re deep in the south. We’re in the city of Malis.” Thaddeus spoke low.
“I can’t find a way to keep warm.” Alessia shivered as did Stephen.
I pushed my way closer to the stage and tried to get a good look at the man speaking. He ran across the stage and pointed out to the crowd. “And you suffer each day, toiling in the fields, working for whom? For the king of the north? We are free men of the south and need to rise up. We need to break our chains.”
I stared at him and the familiarity came to me. I glanced over to Thaddeus with a question on my tongue.
He answered before I could speak. “Meet my brother, Damen. The leader of the Southern rebellion that causes the civil war.”
“Wonderful. Do you have any other great news for me?”
“I’m afraid I do.” He smiled and faced me fully. The crowd pressed around us, and he leaned in closer and said, “And you’re not going to like it.”
“There’s not much more you can do to surprise me.” I searched for Alessia in the crowd but could not find her. “Stephen, do you see …” I could not find him either.
Thaddeus waited for the crowd’s cheering at his brother’s words to subside and said, “They’re both gone. They were never even truly here.” He splayed his fingers in front of me. “It’s all magic. Illusions upon illusions.”
I wanted to cut the smile off his face and make him pay. My anger went deep to my heart. “Where are they?” I gathered my strength, but knew that if he fooled me so easily that I had underestimated his power greatly.
“They are on their own quest. Do not worry about them. Everything is flowing like a river, and there are moments of time that need to match. I have set the clock in motion and now the sands of time are falling down. The more time you waste with me, the less we have for getting back to them.” The crowd roared again, and he stopped speaking. We were jostled in the crowd by people pressing up against us, trying to get closer to the stage. When the roar died down, he said, “We are even now. You have my true name as well as my love’s. I have your daughter’s and lover’s fates in my hand. If we work together, we both win. If not, then we both fail. I rather like it that way. What do you think?”
“I will kill you for this. Trust my words.” I shouted at him, but the din of the crowd drowned me out.
“You already have. Let’s not forget that.” Thaddeus handed me the Moonstone. How he had stolen it back, I did not know. “Take this back and go find them. But if you do, what I become will chase after you. My true name only stops me, not the mummy I become. You’ve tried that, am I right?”
I would not give him the satisfaction to see my disappointment. His words were true.
“Take the stone and strike me down and it will stop nothing. You know I speak the truth.”
“What exactly do we need to do for me to get back to my daughter and Stephen?”
He motioned up to the stage. “First, we have to kill my brother and stop a rebellion.”
I watched as Damen jumped off the stage and lost himself in the crowd. The people chanted his name, and the roar was deafening. The crowd surged off to the right and people mulled past us, pushing and blindly following along. I faced Thaddeus and stood eye to eye to him and said, “Then let’s get started.”
Epilogue
Alessia stood in the hallway of the house and reached her hand out. “Mother?”
Her voice echoed through the empty hall.
“They both vanished.” Stephen took Alessia’s hand in his and clasped it tight. “But you’re real. You’re here. I feared that I was alone.”
“Where did they go and where are we?” She spun around in a circle, and they both heard a door opening down the opposite way.
Stephen recognized the décor. “We’re back in the house lord’s dwelling. Come on, we must get going.” He pulled her along down the end of the hall, and a woman nearly bumped into them.
“Stephen, is that you?” Mary carried a basket in her hand. “Where are you rushing off to?”
“I need to get back home.” He started to head away, but Mary stopped him.
“Is this the new maid that our master was talking about?” Mary leaned in close to get a better look at Alessia. “You’re not trying to sneak off with her, are you?”
“No, I was going to bring her downstairs to get her situated down below.” Stephen stammered a bit, but did his best.
“I can take care of her.” Mary looked to Alessia and then shooed Stephen away. “Go on and get going before I call the house lord.”
Another door opened down the hall and Thaddeus stepped out of a room and he quickly c
losed the door behind him. He looked back past Mary and smiled knowingly at Alessia and Stephen. He lingered for a moment, watching them, and the end of his mouth turned up in a slight smirk. Then, without a thought, he turned away and left them there.
Mary pushed Alessia down the hall in the opposite direction. “We don’t want to anger him. Our house lord has been moody lately. Come on, let’s get going.” To Stephen, she pushed him hard. “Get out of here and come back another day. It’s bad enough that I caught you two up here!”
Alessia headed down the stairs, and Mary followed close behind, carrying her basket filled with bread. Stephen followed in the rear, and once downstairs, they headed past the kitchen.
“I’ll see you later.” Stephen said.
“But where …” Alessia started to talk but Mary cut her off.
“You’ll do no such thing. Go home before you get into trouble. Shoo!” Mary put the basket down on a table and then waved him off.
Unsure of what to do, Stephen turned around and started to walk away.
A young Sabrina came out of the other kitchen door, at full speed, carrying a basket of bread to give to the soldiers and bumped right into him. “What are you doing here? I didn’t think I’d see you for a few days.”
Stephen’s face went pale and his mouth opened. Alessia rushed forward and put her arm around Stephen. “My cousin brought me here himself so that I can begin work today. He’s told me so much about you. I’m Alessia.”
Sabrina smiled and showed no sign that she recognized her daughter. “Pleased to meet you.” She turned to Stephen and asked, “Why didn’t you tell me that your cousin was coming here? I would have prepared for her.”
Stephen shrugged and smiled. “I wanted it to be a surprise for you.” He glanced over to Alessia, thought quickly, and added, “I thought having a new friend to talk to might be fun for you.”
“That was thoughtful of you.” She could see Mary giving her the stink eye so she kept her words short. With the bread basket still in her arms, she pushed past Stephen and said to him, “Go back to your home and we’ll see each other tomorrow.”