The Orphan's Secret

by R. J. Francis

  The trees grew taller, and greener, and their trunks, branches and twigs appeared more brown now than grey. The air was warming. A doe and two very young fawns hopped out in front of them, startling them. “I promised myself I wouldn’t end up like you,” Jaimin told his father as they watched the deer scamper off, “but it doesn’t matter now.”

  “We can’t go back?”

  “No, I guess we can’t.”

  They pressed on, and began to see higher, farther and wider. Tall trees held up their canopy like pillars in a temple.

  Soon they came upon a well-trodden trail that led up onto higher ground before them. They followed it over a small hill, and when they came down the other side they saw something that stopped them dead.

  Just ahead, the trail was clogged with the corpses of infants and children. There were what seemed like hundreds of little bodies—slit, flayed and pierced in all manner of horrible ways.

  Jaimin and Julian stepped cautiously around the bodies, assessing the extent of the carnage. The death of these children was so fresh that nature’s scavengers had yet to close in. Boys no older than twelve had been shot in the back. Not far away, several infants were pinned to the soil, each with a single shot through the middle. A deep red stained their swaddling clothes.

  All these children, and the only movement was the noiseless twitching of leaves and fluttering of wildflowers in the breeze. Julian knelt before the broken body of a girl whose vacant eyes were still open.

  “I know this place,” Julian said, in hardly a whisper. “This is Celmarea. Your mother and I passed through here on our way to the escape ships.”

  “You actually saw this?”

  The king lifted the flaccid arm of a toddler, “I caused this.”

  “You didn’t kill them,” Jaimin said.

  “The choices I made killed them. We should have all fled sooner. They might have survived.”

  “This is not your fault.”

  Julian began to move from child to child, closing their eyelids if he saw that they were still open.

  Jaimin noticed that he and his father were no longer flanked by patches of nothingness. They could now see as far as they normally would in a forest, and they saw sunlight through the treetops. The air had grown much hotter.

  “This is the day of the great battle?” Jaimin asked.

  “It has to be. This is just as I remember it.”

  “Can we do anything? Can we save lives?”

  Julian smiled and reached out to touch Jaimin’s shoulder, but his hand passed through.

  “What’s going on?” Jaimin asked, trying to grasp his father’s hand but finding only emptiness.

  “Your mother told me something about this a long time ago. I wish I could remember. We’ve shifted into different worlds. And look what you have now!”

  With his right hand Jaimin felt the hilt of a sword at his side, and with his left he touched a crossbow on his back. He saw that he was in the brown uniform of an Arran soldier. He pinched his own arm and felt pain. He scratched his own wrist with his nail and a white streak appeared. His thinking was sharper. He felt alive.

  “You’ve been given those weapons for a reason,” Julian said. “I think you need to go on alone. The city’s not far.”

  “But you…”

  “Don’t worry, my son. You’ll see me again.”

  Elaina came to and pushed herself up onto her knees. She sensed Alessa nearby. “Where are you?” she cried.

  “Right next to you, with Jaimin. Are you all right?”

  Elaina reached over and felt Jaimin’s body. She felt the bolt lodged in his back, and with trembling fingers followed it down to where his skin and flesh were torn around the arrow’s shaft. What she didn’t feel was his spirit.

  “What happened?”

  “He’s dead,” Alessa said.

  “He’s not!” she sobbed.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “He’s alive!” Elaina said. She’d closed her eyes. “I see the archway again, and he’s there, beyond it. I see him!”

  Alessa had never heard of anyone being able to see through the archway. But she had gone through there herself many times, and had always returned safely.

  “Go to him, then,” Alessa said. “I’ll watch over you.”

  Elaina left her body in Alessa’s care, and followed Jaimin into the unknown.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Jaimin reached a spot where, through the trees, he could see the Celmarean capital city. The azure bay ringed by sand, the whitewashed houses hugging the hills, and the great marble palace near the shore were just as he’d seen them in paintings of this place, except that today they were shrouded in the smoke and dust of battle. He stepped through the broad leaves of the undergrowth to get a better look.

  Four Destaurian warships were anchored in the bay. Hundreds of Celmareans and Arrans stood knee-deep in the shallow surf. One of the ships fired over their heads at the palace, pulverizing a patch of the palace’s façade.

  On the beach itself, Arran soldiers loaded their cannons. Celmareans dressed loosely in ivory and beige huddled behind the few trees, helping each other load the unfamiliar Arran bows they had seized. Crisscrossing trails of blood marked where the injured had been dragged from the beach into the city’s shadows.

  Somehow, despite the foe’s barrage, the allies who stood in the surf seemed to have the upper hand. With Arrans defending them with raised shields, the Celmareans had control of the bay’s water and were gradually turning the enemy ships so their main guns couldn’t fire on the palace.

  Next, as Jaimin watched, hundreds of tendrils of seawater slithered up the sides of all four ships, latched onto the gunwales, and yanked the massive vessels straight down into the water, until only the stumps of the main masts were visible. The Destaurian crews scrabbled to cling to floating debris, but the Celmareans, using their unique ability from afar, pulled the men just below the water’s surface, holding them there thrashing until they drowned.

  Jaimin looked the other direction and saw that more enemy ships were lined up at the mouth of the bay. They were offloading hundreds of soldiers using rafts and planks.

  Jaimin considered where he could help. He noticed a group of Arrans set up behind barricades near the broad stairs that led from the beach into the palace, so he loaded and spanned his bow and made his way over there, using trees for cover and concealment.

  The soldiers at the first barricade immediately directed him to a commanding officer near the palace doors. “We need more help inside,” the officer told Jaimin and several other troops that had turned up at the same time. “We hear the enemy has found a way in. Clear the fourth floor and work your way down.”

  Elaina willed herself into the archway with her thoughts, but when her soul passed through the glowing, swirling stuff that filled the portal the experience became physical—and it was not comfortable. The substance vibrated her soul’s particles, brutally rending them from whatever plane they had been affixed to, in a process that felt so suffocating she charged desperately forward to get through it.

  She emerged on the other side in a body that felt light and quick. She was barefoot, and dressed sparsely in a trio of white swaths. The portal was casting its glow across a perfectly rectangular room with walls and ceilings of cut stone. The chamber had no visible windows, and no doors.

  She walked its perimeter, looking for an exit. She touched a wall. Her hand passed through it! She drew it back. She dipped her toe into the floor and it sank into the floor. She pulled it back, careful not to wonder why her other foot was still holding her up, for fear it would suddenly decide not to. She leaned her head into the wall and it sank through, somehow sharing the space with the stone. A little further in there was nothing but dirt and rock.

  She had to find Jaimin, but where was he? She could try passing through the walls, but in which direction? Instinct told her to go up. She willed herself to ascend, and her body floated upward, first through the air, and the
n through the ceiling.

  She found that whatever substance her head passed through she could “see,” and also smell and taste, sensing the essence of the material—first the stone ceiling, and then a layer of dirt, and finally the open air of a room. The room was dark, so she kept going up. Above the ceiling was another dark chamber. She sensed it was more spacious, but she still couldn’t see much, so she kept going. Finally, she ascended into a bright, sunlit room with a glass ceiling.

  Here, she could feel the heat of the day in the air. She could also feel the fibers of a plush rug between her toes, but she wasn’t quite standing on it; rather, she was floating in a standing position. She could smell the wildflowers in the vases around her.

  It was a lovely bedchamber; and a lady’s bedchamber for all the lace and satin. The color scarlet was favored in the opulent furnishings, bedding, and even in the ocean-themed art where one wouldn’t expect red, such as in an enormous painting of dolphins playing in a lagoon where the water was streaked with red, as if one of the pod had been slaughtered. Elaina marveled at the interplay of passion and coolness. Surely a great artist lived here.

  There were books, too; hundreds of them, on low shelves. Whoever lived here had set out to immerse herself in knowledge.

  Against one wall were two wooden cribs, side by side. Elaina came up to them, half walking and half floating, and ran her phantom hand along their rails, remembering—somehow—the feel and scent of the polished wood. Next, she came to a desk where two sea star pendants hung from a tiny white-lacquered tree. One pendant, with which Elaina was already familiar, was golden and studded with yellow sapphires, and the other was silver with dark blue sapphires. There, on the desk, lay a note—the same one Nastasha had found in the book that didn’t want to be red.

  And the ink was still wet.

  This time she understood what it said. So she read:

  Dear Elaina and Eleonora,

  My precious daughters, I love you with all my heart. Should you survive me this day, and there are none left to tell you, the truth is on this page.

  We are eight princesses of an ancient order: you and I, my best friend Alethea, young Alessa, and three mothers. How many of us will live to see the evening I cannot say. You see, your father has brought a multitude against us.

  Radovan first came to our island two summers ago. My sisters rejected him, but I sheltered him, and I took time with him to explain our ways. And in that time we fell in love.

  My precious daughters, I love your father still, and you should know he’s a good man. I believe he’s a victim of the masters of old, made an instrument of death, sharpened by his innate brilliance.

  He is my husband, according to our rites, let there be no dispute.

  He is not perfect. He faltered, and I had to send him away, but it was never meant to be forever. What did he do? Reached inside me, daughters, and made you two from one through his craft. I could not abide what he did.

  I hope for your father, that he may be healed.

  I charge you, my daughters, to find a way. Rescue him from the grasp of our ancient enemy. Believe, as I do, that it can be done. And tell him I never lost faith. Remind him of our love, so that he and I can walk together in the upper world.

  And I hope for our people, that they may be healed. I have a vision of all nations elevated. Let ours lead and not shy away from others; for only in sharing with outsiders do we reveal the richness in ourselves. My sisters are beginning to understand this. Carry on the message.

  You have grown so much in your short time with us. Elaina, your strength is in your patience. Eleonora, yours is in your cunning. I watch you play, and I see the understanding between you. Working together, you can achieve the impossible.

  Each of you is a princess of two nations. Don’t forsake either of them.

  And love your husbands with all your heart as I have loved you, our sisters, our people, and your father, Radovan.

  May your journey be blessed.

  Panei Andienna

  Radovan? My father?

  A small, framed portrait of a young woman sat near the note, and Elaina immediately recognized the woman as her mother—and the mother from her dream. Princess Andienna had Elaina’s brown hair, with a single stray curl hanging down on each side of her face.

  Just then a shell’s explosion rattled the palace walls. A moment later it sounded like someone was unlocking the door. Elaina backed into an open wardrobe and hid.

  The door opened.

  It was the teenage Alessa with the baby girl on her hip, dressed the same as when Elaina had seen them in her dream about the ship. Alessa plopped the girl down onto the red satin sheets of the unmade bed and handed her both sea star pendants to play with. She must have seen the note on the desk, for she came back to it, picked it up and read it. Then she blew on it to dry the ink.

  “Elaina,” she called. Elaina wasn’t sure what to do, assuming she’d been seen, until Alessa said, “not in your mouth,” and pulled the silver sea star from between the girl’s strong new teeth. She took both pendants away and offered a stuffed seahorse instead. “I’m sorry. I’m not thinking. Where’s your mother?”

  Another blast rocked the palace.

  “That’s it. We can’t wait,” Alessa said. She grabbed a shoulder bag and began stuffing it with baby paraphernalia and clothing, stopping each time she passed the desk to blow the ink dry on the note. When she was done packing, she folded up the note, slipped it into her bag, and scooped up young Elaina, who promptly dropped her seahorse toy.

  “Da,” said the child, reaching for the toy, clearly unwilling to leave without it. When Alessa knelt to retrieve the toy, there was a knock at the door. The knock had a pattern: one, three, one.

  “Wait here,” she told the child.

  Setting Elaina on the floor with her seahorse, Alessa hurried to open the door for two Arran soldiers. One said, “Your Highness, you must leave this minute. The enemy is inside the palace.” The other soldier was Jaimin.

  Alessa ran back and scooped up the younger Elaina, and was about to leave when the spirit Elaina burst from her hiding place. “Jem!” she called out.

  Alessa spun around. “Sister?” she asked.

  “There’s no time! Get this girl and the baby to safety,” Jaimin told his fellow soldier, who speedily ushered Alessa and young Elaina out.

  The older Elaina floated up to Jaimin.

  “Oh, Jem, I’ve found you,” she said. Jaimin ran to her to embrace her, but their bodies would not connect. She was mortified. “Why can’t I touch you?” she asked.

  “I don’t think we’re in quite the same world,” he said.

  “This isn’t our world at all. It’s not our time either. If I can get you back to the archway, maybe I can get you back to Arra.”

  “What archway?”

  “In the basement. It’s a kind of gate between the worlds.”

  “But my body in Arra…”

  “It’s broken. I know. But if you could go back, all you would need is a few moments to mend yourself, right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We have to try,” she said.

  “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  They left the room and made for the far end of the corridor. Elaina floated down through the floor to scout out the level below. Jaimin, stuck in a more corporeal form, had no choice but to use the stairs. Just as he was about to descend them, Crack! a bolt hit the armor on his shoulder, sending him into the wall. Stunned, he collapsed and bounced down three steps.

  He staggered to stand. Soon, he had help. An enemy fighter lifted him, spun him around, and raised a broadsword to his chin. “Where is Andienna?” the man demanded. “Where is she?”

  It was Radovan!

  And he wasn’t exactly how Jaimin had seen him portrayed in paintings. He didn’t look much older than eighteen. He was shorter than Jaimin had pictured too, and, aside from his sword, the only thing menacing about him was the odd grey-blue o
f his eyes. He was dressed simply—in a plain uniform. Two Destaurian guards stood behind him, with their swords drawn.

  “Where is she?” Radovan yelled.

  “Where is who? I don’t know who you’re talking about,” said Jaimin.

  “You’ll die to protect her? You stupid shit.”

  “I don’t know who you mean.”

  “I’ll find her without your help.” The muscles in Radovan’s hand firmed to draw his blade’s edge into Jaimin’s neck.

  Suddenly, those menacing grey-blue eyes lost focus.

  “Run, Jem! This way!” It was Elaina! She’d come up from downstairs.

  Jaimin saw an instant opportunity, and seized it. He pushed back on Radovan’s now-limp arm, drew his own blade, and moved to thrust it into the enemy king’s heart.

  Clink! One of Radovan’s guards swung in and parried Jaimin’s sword. Jaimin reeled backward, steadying himself on the handrail.

  Elaina knocked all three enemies out, finding again that her talent could cross the world barrier, even if she couldn’t. Once more, Jaimin saw an opportunity to put an end to the tyrant before him. He leaned in, this time to slice Radovan’s neck.

  “No. Leave him!” she shouted.

  “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you know who this is?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Don’t hurt him.”

  The period that followed was a frenzied, bloody blur. As Jaimin and Elaina fled down the stairs, they ran into band after band of enemy soldiers. Jaimin parried their blows while Elaina tried to stun them by shifting the blood in their heads. Once they were disoriented, Jaimin could disarm them and cripple them by jamming his sword into the weak seam in their leg armor. Still, there were a lot of them, and even with Elaina working her magic Jaimin was still fighting for his life. He quickly tired.

  When one enormous enemy soldier, unfazed by Elaina’s disruptive shunt, raised his bow toward her head, Jaimin leapt on him and jammed his sword up under his helmet and into his neck, killing him instantly.