Playing With Fire

by Jordan Mendez

  Rapid footsteps echoed down the stairs as Al came bounding down the stairs at full speed along with Darren and Jake. Jake rushed past Al and ran straight to me while ignoring Vaze, who was wincing in pain from Seth’s work. It wasn’t long before my big brother’s deep blue worrisome eyes were focused on me. In fact, it was a little too soon. I still hadn’t thought of a smart mouth comment to explain what happened.

  “Are you okay? How did this happen? You look like you’re freezing to death! You know better than to run outside like a brain dead idiot in this weather without at the very least a coat.” Jake removed his cloak, which I assumed he had recently stolen from a shop or borrowed from the old bookworm because it was nicer than what he used to have, and draped it across my shoulders. I laughed. Jake over-reacted too much sometimes. He was the closest thing to protective parent I’ve ever experienced.

  Heavy footfalls from the stairs signaled our last interruption. I turned my head to see the old bookworm himself, walking slowly toward us. If he was surprised by Vaze or me, he sure didn’t show it.

  The bookworm’s real name was Draco Hale, but I never bothered to call him anything but bookworm since the day I met him. He was a round old man with a balding head and a pure white beard to frame his always rosy cheeks. In reality he was a sweet guy, but I’ve always had problems with almost every adult I’ve ever met. And when I say ‘almost every adult’ I mean with every adult I’ve met so far. Who knows? Maybe I’ll meet an adult someday that I don’t automatically want to piss off. He wore round rimmed glasses to go over his soft black eyes. His white apron was stained with ink from having to rewrite books that were too damaged to put on the shelves, or from copying books down just so there was another copy living in the world. Though he had the appearance of a kind old grandfather, he always had a weary look in his eye, as if he’d seen too much of the worst of what life had to offer.

  He towered above all of us with a presence I couldn’t place but it felt like something ancient and powerful. He strode over to me and knelt down.

  “You’ve seemed to have gotten yourself into quite a big mess this time haven’t you?” The bookworm’s voice was deep and reminded me of a gong or maybe a conch horn, but underneath its power was the lush feel of sympathy and kindness. And the tone he used made me think he wasn’t surprised at all. At least there was one person in the room who wasn’t freaking out.

  “You have no idea,” I sighed, smiling weakly. The bookworm removed my poorly made bandage, carefully cleaning it with a wet rag, then picked up a needle. Through the hole in my shirt he examined my wound, thinking of the best place for the first stitch.

  “You’ll have plenty of time to tell it while I fix your shoulder,” He said with a calm tone. The bookworm’s voice made me a little bit drowsy, so I hardly felt the first tug and pull of the needle slipping into my shoulder.

  I told the story, beginning to end, making sure I didn’t leave anything out. Darren came over while I was telling what happened. For the first time in days I examined my brother. He had pale blue eyes that were always alive with joy and long brown hair that fell over his forehead in long wisps, but unlike the rest of my brothers his hair looked like he actually tried to take care of it sometimes. His skin was snowy white, but was bruised and cut. It wasn’t unusual. Guards would beat him whenever he got caught. They didn’t beat him just because he had broken a law or because he made fun of them while being arrested though it probably encouraged them a great deal. It was because they knew he didn’t have an actual family that could do something about it. I would never tell him or any of my other brothers about it but every time Darren came back and looked like he’d been beaten I take it out on any guard I find that night unfortunate enough to go out alone. The funny thing is they never saw it coming, let alone see me at all, the poor idiots.

  Usually when he and I are in the same room we fight like there is no tomorrow, physically and verbally. But his eyes were swimming with guilt and worry as if he were to blame for my shoulder injury. He only looked at me like that one time before after I had broken my arm falling out of a tree when he was supposed to be watching me. It was just such times that reminded me he was my big brother, and even though we fought we still cared about each other. It made me a little sick because I hate all that mushy crap.

  When I finished my story I waited for a response from the bookworm. Everyone else seemed to wait for him to speak as well and all eyes were on him, all except for Vaze, whose curious blue eyes still hadn’t left me. It unnerved me. I wasn’t used to being stared at, or even used to being given a second glance.

  “I had hoped that Siren’s sacrifice would have prevented this, but it seems that Aru’s plan failed.” The bookworm’s words sounded grave though they made no sense to me. I glanced around to see if my brothers looked like they had a clue what he meant. They all had blank faces, except for Jake, whose face was filled with fear.

  “Wait, what are you talking about?” I asked, feeling as if there was a bunch more to the situation than how I found Vaze. Instead of the bookworm answering, Jake took his turn to explain.

  “Scarlet…there are things I didn’t tell you about. When I found you in the forest, you weren’t alone,” Jake said slowly, as if trying to find the easiest way to explain. “There was a woman there and a boy that was exactly like a younger version of the one that had attacked you and Vaze. At the time I had been sleeping on a tree branch like I always did before I had found you and the others, but was woken up when a loud crash came from behind me. Then I saw the woman hiding behind a tree, clutching a baby to her chest. Tears were streaming from her eyes, but they weren’t like tears that come from a regular person, they were like liquid amber. When I looked closer I saw that she didn’t look all that human. Her skin had a gold twinge to it and her eyes were deep purple. She was dressed like royalty, even though her clothes were torn and shredded. But the strangest thing was that she seemed to glow.

  The boy was getting closer and closer to her, and immediately I knew that was bad. The woman kissed the baby’s forehead and set it down on the ground. She then touched a pile of leaves next to her and it transformed into an exact copy of the baby. She grabbed the duplicate and ran past the boy as he was about to pass her. The boy chased after her and caught up in no time.

  He stabbed her and she screamed and fell to the ground. She tried to get away, but it was useless. Her white gown was quickly soaked with gold blood. The woman stopped and clutched the ground and…well, roots shot up from the ground. Don’t give me that look! I’m not making this up. Anyway, they shot towards the boy and I thought for a second she was going to be able to kill him. But the boy had disappeared right before the roots impaled him. The woman was just as confused as I was. Suddenly the boy was behind her, and before she knew what was happening, he stabbed her in the back. The boy didn’t wait to watch her die, but instead grabbed the duplicate infant and stabbed it over and over again until he thought it was dead. The woman’s eyes trailed over to me and with her last act she mouthed the words, ‘save her’. Then in a shower of light the woman’s body was gone and replaced by a crystal. The boy looked down on it and his eyes filled up with disgust. He was engulfed in shadows and was gone.”

  Jake stopped. What came next was a sensitive subject for me. He had already told me what happened when he came to get me. I had flipped out and burned him.

  “That woman you saw was Siren,” The bookworm said. “Your suspicions were right, she was not a human. She was a Guardian; Scarlet’s Guardian.” All my brothers stared at him blankly. That was good. It meant I wasn’t the only clueless one.

  “That’s impossible,” Vaze said. It surprised all my brothers because the most they’d heard from him was harsh breathing. “Guardians haven’t taken any form other than spirits for over a century, let alone a human form.”

  The bookworm looked at him, as though he had just noticed Vaze’s presence, but the bookworm never misses a single detail, which I personally know from the time I tried
to use three tiny books for a fire. I was caught immediately, but could he really blame me? I was only four years old.

  “I know, but that was because every mortal with incredible power died off, had gone mad, or followed an evil path. And even then there was no one who could control fire. In short, there was no need for Guardians to protect their humans from both physical forces and demonic forces anymore, so they subsided to their spiritual forms.” The conversation at hand made no sense to me, so I did the only thing I knew how to do in a situation like this: ask obvious questions.

  “What’s a Guardian?” Al asked the question I was about to ask, but in a nicer, possibly less stupid sounding way.

  The bookworm was about to answer when Seth took the spot light. “They’re real? I thought they were just old stories.” Seth’s eyes were wide in amazement. He wasn’t the kind of person who believes things he can’t see proof of for himself. If he reads about something like vampires or wraiths, he would probably say they just make up things like that to scare people. That’s a major difference between us; I can believe things like that because it’s just as insane and impossible as I am.

  Few people think like him, but no one has seen anything out of the ordinary since the kingdom of Moraj simply disappeared. Nobody knows how exactly the most important kingdom in history vanished. The entire kingdom and its population was just gone one day, leaving an open landscape where it used to be.

  Chaos ensued when that had happened because Moraj was the capital, and where the royal family lived, which were the rulers of the country. Without them there was no one in control, and for a while there was complete disorder. Eventually, the bigger towns became like small states, and the richest families became the royal family of their state, Laetus being one of those. It made it kind of boring when you met royalty because they weren’t really royalty; they were just rich and extremely snobby.

  The bookworm shook his head and chuckled. “You’re a smart boy Seth, but sometimes faith is truer than fact. I hope one day you will understand that.” Seth opened his mouth to argue but the bookworm gave him a stern look and he held his tongue. “I think the rest of your family would like an explanation, since they do not read old fables like you. Guardians are partners given by The Healer; everyone has one. They only take on a spiritual form and defend their partners from demons who do not take on a physical form. There are only a small amount of Guardians, and most have been killed. These days, if a Guardian takes a physical form it usually means that the human partner is extremely important or powerful. The only other case would be if the human partner’s soul was at risk of being erased from existence by a physical force, then the Guardian would take a physical form to save their partner. In those cases the Guardian partner ends up dying and merging with their human partner to make chances of surviving without them better. A Guardian merging with a human seals their fate of death because the Guardian gives their partner the last of their soul along with the Guardian’s unique power. Only few Guardians have done so, and only if the bond with their human partner is as strong as if they were their own child.”

  “So would that make me super important or I was just in mortal danger as a baby?” I asked very casually. I already knew I had a screwed up childhood, so why freak out about it?

  “In your case you could say you were both, although your partner did not merge with you. You already have natural power inside you and if your Guardian had merged with you the two powers would fight for dominance and tear your mind apart. But when a Guardian dies and does not merge they subside to a weak form. The form differs on what kind of power the Guardian had, and the fact that your Guardian took the form of a crystal means she had the power of controlling something without a defining form.”

  Al and I exchanged looks of shock. That was some pretty brutal information. Someone sacrificing their own life for another wasn’t the kind of thing you see every day. It made me sad that I had never known her, and that she had to die for me. But one thing was confusing. Who was the boy who had killed my Guardian and why was he trying to do the same to Vaze?

  “I think it’s time for our guest to tell his story, and shed some light on the situation,” said the bookworm. Finally, everyone seemed to actually acknowledge Vaze was in the room with more than just glances. All eyes were on him, waiting for the missing pieces of information.

  “The man who attacked us Scarlet, was Enzio. He was sent to assassinate me. As you might have already guessed, he isn’t human. He is a demon who took a physical form when Velkire first rose to power a hundred years ago. This wasn’t the first time he had tried to kill me. He had tried before when I was young. That time he had almost succeeded, if it weren’t for…” Vaze stopped as if he might choke up. “If it weren’t for someone very close I would have died then.”

  I realized that what Vaze was talking about was a sore subject so I held my personal questions and skipped to relevant ones. “Why was Enzio trying to assassinate you in the first place?”

  “It’s because I’m a prince and I am my father’s only son.”

  I scoffed. Just what we needed, another rich kid.

  “That’s not a big reason to kill you. There are a lot of states and a lot of royal families, and it’s starting to be cliché.”

  “That is true, unless you are a prince from a really powerful state there wouldn’t be any reason to kill you,” Seth cut in.

  “I don’t really know for sure… but would you consider Moraj a powerful state?” Vaze said it as if it were as plain as night and day. Five blank stares rested on Vaze. We were all in shock except for the bookworm.

  “I knew it was you the second I came down those stairs,” The bookworm said with a grin playing across his lips. “You look exactly as my colleagues described you, hair blacker than a lightless night and eyes bluer than the sky on its most vibrant days. I would have recognized you even without the wings.”

  I was gaping with my mouth open so wide that anyone could have shoved a fist down my throat with ease. “Moraj?” I exclaimed in shock. Can you blame me? Somebody claiming to be the prince of a kingdom that disappeared over two decades ago is a little difficult to accept.

  “I think that’s what I just said so, yes, I am the prince of Moraj, and I am the son of the last king of Moraj, Folic.” It came out so casually one would think he was talking about the weather. I recalled all my previous thoughts about rich princes, and realized that Vaze in no way met the criteria. He wasn’t snobby or obnoxious. He was even kind and somewhat gentle, even though he had been cold at first. That chipped away a tiny bit of my disdain for him, even if it was just a tad.

  My mind was racing as a million other questions flooded into my head, and in turn each came with about two million follow up questions. The bookworm sensed my brain over loading and said, “I know it’s a lot to take in, for all of you, but it’s late, and with your injuries both you and Vaze should get some rest. Seth, are you done with Vaze’s wing?”

  Seth nodded while wrapping up the leftover string over a bloody needle. “You can all stay here. I don’t want you staying in that damp Warehouse you call home on a night like this,” the Bookworm said. I glanced at Vaze again and was shocked when I didn’t see his wings. He met my gaze and acted as though nothing was wrong so I decided to ignore it.

  Al got up and offered me a hand. I didn’t take it and got up myself to show I was fine even though the pain in my shoulder had seemed to remember it had a job of bugging the crap out of me. Al just shrugged and asked the bookworm where he wanted us to stay.

  The bookworm led us to the attic of his bookshop which to me looked like it was bigger than the actual store. It had just enough beds for all of us and an enormous window at the very front of the store with a ledge to sit and watch the streets. Curtains of a gentle shade of dark green stretched from the top to the bottom of the window on each side. There was even another fireplace with dry wood ready to be lit in its hearth.

  Each of the beds had a thick warm cover with the softest
pillows I had ever set my head on, but then again the pillows I usually used were leaves stuffed inside a blanket or occasionally the feathers off our dinner. We try not to waste anything. My clothes for instance were thrown out of a tailor shop because moths had chewed holes in them. I didn’t care, in my mind it was a great birthday present from Al.

  The old bookworm had even thought to lay new clothes out on each of the beds for me and my brothers, and returned a few minutes after leaving with a pair of clothes for Vaze to wear as well. I would never admit this out loud but the old bookworm was the closest thing to a father we’ve ever had.

  My brothers and I chose our beds immediately after we had all dressed (though I had to dress in a separate room obviously) and I chose the bed in the corner by the window. Al chose the bed next to mine, which didn’t surprise me in the least bit. Ever since we met we had felt safer together than apart. Or at least he felt safer when he was around me. For me anything could be lethal, though after a while I was tired of being a nervous wreck and just took what life had to throw at me.

  It only took an hour for my brothers to be completely knocked out, to my disadvantage. Darren snored loudly across the room, making any chance I had of falling asleep a big fat zero. I could hardly hear Al’s soft breathing, and his bed was only two feet from mine. The one thing I could hear clearly was the rain pelting on the window pane. I tried to concentrate on the rather loud pat pat pat sound the rain made, turning it into my own little lullaby to help me sleep even in the midst of Darren’s snoring.

  I soon realized all resistance was futile. Giving up on sleep, I tiptoed out of bed and sat next to the window. I watched the rain hitting the icy glass, making everything I saw on the other side of the window distorted and warped. Street lamps sizzled out of existence in the rain, leaving only the dingy black street to be seen, all else obscured from sight.