by K.N. Lee
“No. I do not have some brewed, and I didn’t lie to any of you. I was just economical with the truth. I do not remember the exact recipe for the Elixir. However, I do have the ingredients in the correct quantities for a small vial. I separated them and sealed them and put them somewhere well hidden, many hundreds of years ago. I was telling the truth when I said I’d forgotten the exact recipe I just didn’t say that I knew where to get it.”
“Where?” Hope sprang to Anais.
Aldrich started to unbutton his pyjama top. Anais didn’t know what he was doing so she kept silent as he put his hand down the front. He withdrew his hand and pulled out something on a chain around his neck. It was a star pendant just like hers. In the place of her pearl was a black diamond. She subconsciously brought her hand up to her own neck, before remembering that she’d left her necklace on the bedstead.
“I sealed a small amount of each ingredient in a pendant. Fourteen different ingredients, fourteen different pendants, fourteen different owners.”
Anais thought of her own necklace. She’d never guessed it was hollow. She’d kept on to it since the day her mother had died, not knowing it contained an ingredient to eternal life.
“So all we have to do is get all the pendants, break them open and make the Elixir.”
“I’m afraid it is not that simple. For a start, there are more than fourteen ingredients. There are sixteen.”
“What are the other two?”
“One is water.”
“Just plain water?”
“No, the water was taken from a stream near to the village we lived all those years ago. It was taken from the source of the stream. If we are to do this, we must do it correctly. However, I have no reason to believe that the stream still doesn’t exist.”
“Ok, water from a specific stream--got it. What’s the other ingredient?”
“Well, that is where it gets a little more complicated. The other is a plant. It was the only ingredient that wouldn’t keep over a long period of time.”
“That doesn’t sound complicated. What plant is it?”
“It’s a plant that was rare even all those years ago. Unfortunately, it is now extinct.”
“That is a problem. Wouldn’t any other plant work?”
“It was the only plant that worked at the time, and I tried hundreds, if not thousands. Of course, I did not have the methods of travel that are available today, so I could only try plants that grew within a few miles of where we lived. It is possible that other plants could work, although I would have to experiment.”
“Ok, so we all go out and bring you as many types of plants as we can find, have some imported if needs be. It’s not much, but at least it’s something to go on.”
Anais was trying to keep upbeat despite the pain in her legs, which was becoming unbearable.
“Unfortunately, that is not the only predicament we face. There is another reason that I believed making the potion was impossible.”
He paused to massage his temples. He seemed to have aged years in the short time Anais had known him.
“Like all animals who are kept in captivity, after a while they begin to feel trapped. They fight with each other. We were not unlike animals in a zoo, constantly together. Ava and Alfred, as you know, bought a boat and moved out as did some of the others. Two of our members, Abel and Amber, left us over a hundred years ago. There had been a disagreement, I forget what about, but it wasn’t the first. They didn’t want to live in our group, and so they left. Unlike Ava and Alfred, they have never been back. We do not know where they went, and none of us have heard from them since. They took their pendants with them when they left. I do not know if the others still have theirs. They were handed out so long ago.”
“My pendant has a black pearl. Aethelu’s is a ruby. Am I right in thinking they all hold different precious stones?”
“That is correct. This one here...” He held out his own pendant “is a black diamond.”
“I’m guessing that you put the stones on the pendants to remember which ingredient was in each pendant? Surely, if you see which we have, then you only have to remember the ingredients of those that are missing.”
“I wish that were the case. I wasn’t lying when I said I can’t remember the ingredients. I cannot remember which pendent got which ingredient. Also, when these were made over five hundred years ago, they did not have stones in them at all. They were all identical except for their contents. You forget, with how small the world seems now, that I could not travel very far when I was young. Cars and planes were hundreds of years from being invented. We could go as far as our feet could take us, or if we were lucky, a horse. Rubies and diamonds were not in plentiful supply in Yorkshire in the fourteenth century.” He gave a mirthless laugh “A hundred or so years ago, not long before Amber and Abel left our number, I collected all fourteen of the pendants. I took them to a master jeweller, had them coated with platinum and the stones were added at that time. I have no way of knowing who got what ingredient. I do know, however, who got what stone, so if there are any missing now, we will know who last owned it.”
“So we could open up all the pendants we have, and hopefully, you will remember what is missing?” Anais was desperately trying to solve all the problems and cling to hope, despite the increasing pain in her legs.
“The pendants cannot be broken before the ingredients are ready to be used. They have been sealed against moisture and oxygen. Once exposed to the air the ingredients will begin to decay. Within days, they will be no use at all.”
“Ok let me get this straight. Firstly, we need a plant which no longer exists, then, if, by some miracle, we find a plant that will work, we still need fourteen other ingredients, of which we know two are definitely lost and haven’t been seen for a hundred years. Only then can we make the Elixir.”
“That’s about the long and the short of it, yes. However, you are missing out a vital point.”
“Which is?” Her legs were really beginning to become so painful, she was struggling not to cry out in pain. She was having trouble concentrating on what Aldrich was saying to her.
“I cannot experiment on any new plant without the other ingredients. There are such small amounts of each ingredient as it is. I will not have any spare to experiment on one plant, let alone hundreds.”
“Which leaves us where?”
“I’m afraid it leaves us out of options.” He held his head in his hands.
Anais had a feeling she could see a way out of the mess, but with the pain she was in, she was finding it too hard to concentrate. At that moment, Aethelu began to stir. She murmured “Anais.”
Winnie ran over and poured her a drink of water from a jug on the cabinet.
“Anais?” Aethelu spoke much more urgently this time. She was unable to move too much with the drips and the bandages, but Anais could see her eyes were wide and pleading with her mother.
“She’s fine, darling. She’s right here next to you. Now have a sip of water. It will make you feel better.”
She helped her daughter into a sitting position slowly. Aethelu groaned with the pain. She looked over and saw Anais sitting next to her in the next bed, a similar look of discomfort on her face, but with a weak smile. Anais held her hand out between the gap and Aethelu reached for it. They were only close enough to touch fingertips, but even the effort of doing that seemed to exhaust her.
“I’m giving you both some more painkillers. They will knock you both out. Now before you protest, I’m not taking no for an answer. You both need time to heal, and before you lie to me, Anais, I can see the pain in your face.”
Anais grinned sheepishly. Winnie could always read her like a book.
Winnie gave each of the girls’ two tablets and some water and waited until they had both swallowed them.
“Now those tablets should begin to work in about ten minutes. You should sleep through the next twelve hours or so. None of us can come up with a solution in the state we are all in. We all nee
d our sleep. Tomorrow we can look at the problem afresh. Come on Aldrich, back to bed.”
Aldrich shuffled out after her and softly closed the door behind him.
“Are you ok?” Aethelu asked, the pain evident in her voice.
“Broken leg on one side, injured leg on the other.”
“Best not enter any marathons any time soon.”
She laughed at her own joke and then groaned in pain.
“Did Jago escape?”
Anais filled Aethelu in on everything she had missed, including the problems they faced making the Elixir.
Aethelu yawned and held her hand out again.
Anais was also beginning to feel sleepy. Her eyelids were getting heavier by the second.
“Aldrich didn’t know what to do.”
“We go find Amber and Abel, that’s what we’ll do. You and me together.”
“But what about the plant?”
“I think I know what do about that.” Aethelu sounded extremely drowsy.
“What?” but it was too late, Aethelu was already asleep.
The bed that Anais was in was a hospital bed which meant it had wheels. She felt down with her hand, pulled the break to the off position and pushed hard against the wall. The bed moved towards Aethelu’s, hitting it with a soft bump.
Anais laid back down and held Aethelu’s hand in her own.
How could Aethelu find an extinct plant?
Anais didn’t know, but she did know that they would face the future together as one. With that in mind, she smiled and surrendered herself to the blackness.
Chapter 25
The next morning, Anais awoke to the sound of birdsong. She’d never heard it here before, but now she could hear a sweet chirp, chirp of a robin perhaps, or another bird calling out the morning. Sunlight poured brightly through the small windows, a warmer orange hue than the previous months of hazy pink sunshine.
Anais felt like the morning held a moment of promise, and despite the futility of their situation, she couldn’t help but smile. She looked over to the bed next to hers and saw Aethelu still sleeping. She never looked more beautiful, with the sunlight colouring her face making her look almost rosy.
Anais wanted nothing more than to wake her up, just to hear the sound of her voice, but she didn’t. Aethelu needed to rest. Instead, she contented herself with watching the rise and fall of Aethelu’s chest with each breath.
It was a miracle that she was even breathing at all, after all her body had been put through the night before. Anais had never been so thankful for falling in love with someone full of The Light.
She spent a few wonderful moments thinking of a long and happy future with Aethelu when they finally got themselves out of their situation. She didn’t dwell too long on the horror they were facing, but instead thought beyond it.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the birdsong suddenly getting louder. She snapped out of her fantasy and looked up.
The door was open which explained why the birds seemed louder. She panicked momentarily, wondering if Jago had somehow got back into the grounds, but then she saw Winnie just outside the door, picking up a silver tray laden with breakfast.
Anais tried to pull herself up to greet Winnie. It hurt, but she was pleasantly surprised to find it was remarkably less painful than it had been. She was also surprised at how hungry she felt. She was ravenous. Her stomach made a loud, embarrassing gurgle to concur.
Winnie bustled in and quickly put the tray down on Aldrich’s desk when she saw Anais pulling herself up. She plumped up Anais’ pillows and helped her into a more comfortable sitting position.
“Hungry are you?” Winnie said with a big grin on her face.
“Starving!” Anais grabbed a croissant from the tray which Winnie had passed to her. She demolished it and quickly followed it with a glass of orange juice, pulp and all.
Slightly worried that she appeared to be a glutton, she slowed down with the food and looked up at Winnie.
It was then that she noticed that the grin was still there. It was odd given their circumstances.
“Are you ok, Winnie?”
“Fine, fine,” she said “Yes, good. How about you? You’ve been out for three days.”
“Three days?” Anais spluttered. That would explain why she was so hungry this morning “Why? What happened?”
“Oh, don’t worry. You were having really bad nightmares and trying to toss and turn in your sleep which was aggravating your leg, making you scream out which was in turn waking Aethelu up and causing her pain as she tried to turn to see if you were being attacked. In the end, Aldrich decided to deeply sedate the pair of you to allow you to heal. It worked quite well actually, Aethelu hasn’t woken up yet but when she does, she’ll probably be well enough to get out of bed.”
“That’s fantastic!” replied Anais, yet again thankful for The Lights amazing healing properties.”
“Don’t be getting any ideas, though,” carried on Winnie “You are not getting out of this bed for a while yet.”
Anais was getting a suspicion that Winnie was keeping something from her.
“Fine, I’ll stay in bed, but you’ve got to spit it out!”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“Whatever it is that’s put a smile on your face for the first time in months, and that I know you’ve been dying to tell me ever since you walked through that door ten minutes ago.”
“How did you… Oh, never mind, I’ve never been one for keeping secrets. I was hoping to tell you and Aethelu at the same time, but seeing as you asked. Perhaps you can tell her yourself when she wakes.”
“Winnie!”
“Oh, ok. They’ve found him.”
Anais pulled herself up quickly at this information, giving her a huge jolt of pain down her leg and upending the tray onto the floor where it made a loud clanging noise.
Aethelu stirred, moaned slightly and then went back to sleep.
“Jago? They got him?” Anais almost couldn’t believe it was true, but the look on Winnie's face told her all she needed to know. “When, How? Who found him? Why didn’t you wake me up to tell me?”
“Wow, so many questions,” laughed Winnie “Firstly, don’t worry that you have been left out of the loop. I only just found out this morning myself. Arcadia called us to let us know the news not an hour ago.”
“Arcadia? Is she ok? Is Alex?” She had a tiny moment of worry which was quickly assuaged by Winnie.
“They are all fine. They caught him in a small house just outside of Florence and are driving him back to France. There they will be picked up by Alfred and Ava in their boat and brought across the channel to the UK and then brought back up here to the manor.”
“Then what?” Anais didn’t like the sound of him being brought here, but they couldn’t very well just hand him over to the local police.
“I guess we’ll have to just cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“I thought Alex, Cadie and Audsley were in Las Vegas?”
“They were.”
“So what took them to Italy?”
“Well they were getting nowhere in Las Vegas and as Arcadia called it, they were on a fool’s errand. I think they realised pretty quickly that they weren’t going to find him there. Too many tourists go through that city and nobody had heard of a Jago. The crossbow was apparently one of quite a few that got made and not as rare as they thought. So that was a dead end. Alex spent the evenings on the internet searching Jago’s full name, just for something to pass the time I think.”
“But surely Andrew has searched and searched looking for him?”
“Yes, well, Andrew has not left his room since Judith left, poor thing. I think having her here took his mind off the task at hand anyway, to be honest. Anyway, as I was saying, Alex had been searching the internet trawling through hundreds of websites with any mention of the name Jago. Eventually, he found an art website where one of the users had the moniker Jago. It was one of those sites where anyone can get a login
and upload their own artwork. Alex was going to dismiss it. It was a site with thousands of users and it seemed weird for Jago to be idly painting whilst plotting to wreak havoc on the entire world. On a whim, Alex decided to click on his profile. Of course, all the information about him was false.”
“So how did Alex know he had the right guy?” interrupted Anais.
“The pictures. They were all of the village where we lived all those years ago. Of course, the village now looks nothing like it did all those hundreds of years ago, but he’d named each picture with the name of the village.”
“It could have been a coincidence.”
“Unlikely, but yes, it could have been. However, it was enough to get Alex excited. When he saw the next series of pictures, he knew. They all showed a young girl with light shining from her.”
“It could still be just one amazing coincidence.” Anais wasn’t convinced that someone who was plotting to take over the world would have time to paint, and why would he upload them under his real name?
“Well, it was enough to go on. They’d hit a blank in Las Vegas, and so it was the logical next step. Audsley set up her own login for the website and contacted him on the pretence of wanting to buy some of his artwork. When he told her that he lived in Italy but would post it out to her, she just told him that she was in Italy herself, not close enough to arouse suspicion, but close enough to make it believable. She arranged to meet him at his house with cash for the paintings, but instead, she took Alex and Arcadia and enough chain to wrap around him to stop him ever escaping.”
“What would he need cash for?” mused Anais.
“Sorry?”
“Well, why would he go to the effort of selling his paintings, knowing that he was about the obliterate everyone on the planet? It makes no sense.”
“Perhaps it was all ego, made him feel good about himself, the hotshot painter. Who knows? Anyway, they recognised him, so it’s a moot point.”
“Mmmm,” mused Anais “Are you sure they recognised him? They’d not seen him in over six centuries.”
“He still had the white blonde hair and black eyes. Had not even bothered to disguise himself. Now, please stop fretting. We have him! We need worry no more. It is a joyous day!”