by SL Perrine
“Ty, I have to tell you something.” I almost couldn’t hear myself; I had said it so low. I realized I was worried about his reaction around the same time I noticed the metallic taste in my mouth. I had bit my lip open–a nervous habit I’d acquired at a young age. Most of the time, I never knew I did it. I swiped my hand across my lip and cleaned the blood off on my jeans.
“What?” He stopped walking and turned back to look at me.
“I have met your uncles, or um… the elders.” Nolan knew, since he was the one who relayed the invitation. So, Nolan disregarded us and continued up the stairs.
“What? I thought I asked you not to come here.” He didn’t raise his voice, but instead looked hurt. His voice all but whispered to me.
“I know, but when I was sought out and invited, I didn’t think I had much of a choice.” I stood still, clutching one hand with the other, waiting to see what his response would be.
“Nolan. Of course he would.” He turned around as Nolan disappeared inside. “I told him not to listen to them,” he finished as he looked off at his brother.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, but wasn’t answered because Chase stepped forward to intercede. “Can we just get her inside, and then we can discuss this?”
“Yes,” Ty said as he turned and continued up the stairs. I followed close behind and stood in the large foyer once again. Before the door could close, Hogarth and Gareth were standing there. The look of worry bothered me. When I was with them before, they seemed to radiate with contempt and callousness. They didn’t strike me as the type who worried easily.
“I think we need some tea, Gareth,” Hogarth said to his brother. He placed a hand on my shoulder, reminding me he was the superior among them. His tone was as callous as it was that afternoon, and just then, I became more at ease.
“I’d love some tea, thank you.” I was ushered inside, but not to the overwhelming study we sat in before. We walked through the same hallway, but through another doorway, which led to an oversized kitchen. Again, I was awed with the interior of the house compared to its exterior.
The appliances were all new, stainless, and sparkling. It didn’t even look like the room was ever used. Chase moved to the other side of a large island in the middle of the room while Gareth began his task. Hogarth stood near the rear door and looked outside. Ty and I remained inside the doorway, and Nolan had disappeared once more.
The kitchen was nothing like the magnificent original wood beams and crown molding throughout the rest of the house. It had ceramic tile in white and pale blue, like a checkerboard. The enormous gas range sat to the right and was nestled between a baker’s oven and a very long counter. The cabinets ran parallel above the counter everywhere, except behind the stainless sink, which had a huge window as its backdrop. The refrigerator was also stainless and snug between more counters and cabinets. The island stretched from one end to the other with chairs on either side. I wondered for a moment why they would ever need so many seats in there. Ty placed a hand on my shoulder as he moved into the kitchen past me and took a seat beside Chase.
I watched as Gareth moved about the kitchen. The day’s events, as troubling as it had been, was nothing compared to the thought that more people from a world–that was not mine–were wandering around Cherry Valley, unchecked. How many were hiding within our town? How many could there be across the country? That was the question I failed to ask when Ty reanimated in my bedroom last year. From the way those boys were talking, it seemed as if they were all meeting in my town. That couldn’t have been a coincidence.
As much as Ty tried to get me to believe I somehow had a part in the curse and its end, I couldn’t believe it until they looked at me. Those eyes were so cold, I could tell they felt some amount of hatred for me. I wished I knew why. Did they all believe I was the key to getting rid of their curse, just as Ty said? Or were they like Zechariah, who wished to get rid of me to keep the curse and their king alive? My head spun at the possibilities, so I sat and stared venomously at my hands as Gareth placed a cup of tea before me.
“Thank you,” I manage to say without looking up.
“So, you all wish to speak with us?” Hogarth asked.
“Yes.” Ty stood and paced the room. “There have been some interesting things going on today.”
“Such as?” Gareth asked as he took a seat at the small oak table in the corner of the room, which I hadn’t even noticed a moment ago.
“Well, for one, everyone in town seems to have been changed.” Ty stopped and looked back and forth between his uncles. “Have you something to do with that?”
“Why would we tamper with the townspeople?” Gareth asked, seemingly unaffected by the accusation.
“That, I’m not sure,” Ty answered.
“Now that I think about it,” I started, “everything seemed to have changed when I left here this afternoon. Before then, while I was at school today, everything was the way it has always been.”
“What exactly has changed?” Hogarth moved to the island next to Chase as Nolan entered the room behind me. We all stopped to look at him.
“Am I late to the party?” He stood in the doorway.
“No. Not at all. Renee was just about to explain the changes she has noticed today.” Hogarth motioned for him to take a seat.
“Well, I went home after I left here.” I stopped playing with my hands. “My house looked as if it had been cleaned by Mr. Clean himself. Nothing resembling magic was left behind.” I took a sip of tea and tried to recall all that had happened at home with my father and brother. Then Ty, Chase, and I explained further what we witnessed at the party.
“Hogarth, everyone in town is acting differently. It’s like their character or personalities have been altered,” Chase added to help.
The two brothers didn’t speak right away. They looked between us all and at each other, as if they were having a conversation amongst themselves that we could not hear. Hogarth started first. “This sounds like magic interference, but I can assure you, it is not our doing.” Hogarth shared another look with Gareth, and the worried looks came back to their faces.
“There is something more.” Ty looked to both of them. “There are new mietitore in town.” He moved next to me and sat down. I got the feeling he was trying to protect me from the group we encountered that evening, even though they were not there with us.
“What? How many?” Gareth got up and walked to the island.
“There are six, so far that we know of,” Chase answered first.
“That you know of?” both men asked in unison.
Nolan stood from the table and walked to the refrigerator. As he opened the door, I noticed it was full beyond its normal limits. It looked as though the back of the container was twenty feet away, even though the outside resembled a regular-sized appliance.
“There will be more,” Nolan added as he sat down with a bottled soda. “More than likely, it will be every single one of them who has been stuck here. No doubt they have been stranded all over the country and have been traveling for the last year. Everyone can sense her,” he said, pointing at me with the tip of his bottle. “Since the sigils no longer work to hide her from us, she is no longer hidden from them either.”
“Seriously? I am being singled out here?” I wrung my hands together again in my lap.
Nolan sat and looked as though he were contemplating world domination. “There will be more, we just don’t know if they are on our side or the side of Ourobus,” he said calmly as he tipped his chair back and crossed his feet atop of the table.
Hogarth bellowed, “Remove your feet, or I’ll turn them to lead bricks!” He pointed at Nolan’s shoes as he spoke.
“Okay, so if magic is still possible, then why is magic not working in my house?” I couldn’t imagine my house would be any different than any other place.
Hogarth regarded me before responding, “It’s your mother’s absence.”
I was brought back to reality once more. My moth
er was still missing. She had been my protector, and she was missing. No one spoke as I contemplated what that meant.
“She’s not in this world, and there is no passage to the other world, so her magic no longer works here.” My own response startled me. It was as if I knew the answer to the question all along; like a memory flitted to the surface of my mind. I shook it away before tears could well in my eyes.
“Well, there is always a silver lining… as they say,” Gareth spoke, pulling me from my thoughts. “If more buio are to come, then so are more luce. We shall have a fitting fight.” He rose from the island as the water on the stove chirped again. “More tea?”
The blank stares he received gave him his answer.
“A fight?” The reality of this scared me to my bones. “What kind of fight?” I didn’t think I would do much good against anyone in a fight. If magic was concerned, I didn’t think I would be able to help at all.
“Is it not obvious my dear?” Hogarth said to me. “A fight to protect you. Well, until the curse can be broken.”
“Umm…” I wanted to give them a hundred reasons why that was never going to happen. One being the idea of marriage at seventeen, but Hogarth stopped me before I could rant.
“Oh, before you say it, there may be another way to do it, besides marriage,” he said.
I relaxed a little as all eyes were focused on my reaction. I took a deep breath and let it out before I spoke next. I was willing to hear anything not related to me getting married. The fight between dark and light should not have been based on whether or not I married someone I didn’t even know. Why that would be a way to break the curse baffled me, to say the least.
“Good, can we figure out what that is, and fast?” I said to all the eyes in the room, which were staring at me. Chase laughed and Nolan just shrugged before he got up and left the room.
Over the course of the evening, we discussed everything that needed to be done. I thought it was irrelevant to reform the sigils hiding my location, but I was outvoted, and they made the decision to add them back to both my house and theirs. Also, Hogarth and Gareth walked me through an assortment of spells I would need to protect my home and defend myself against the coming storm. Ty knew I needed further instruction with magic and offered to give me lessons. The elders agreed he was better suited for the job, which I didn’t entirely understand.
After what felt like all night, Ty and I walked back to my house in silence and performed the protection spells together. It was lucky the magic used to spell the house clean didn’t remove the sea salt, anise, rue, or fennel seed from the cupboards. Luckily, the incantation was short and easy enough to remember in English, but with only a few hours of practice in Italian, I stumbled over my words. With repetition, the spell became easier, so we chanted together:
“Grande Dea del giorno e della notte
Proteggere questa casa con tutte le forze.”
Loosely translated, it said: Great goddess of day and night, protect this house with all you’re might.
Once Ty felt the spell was complete, he stopped the chant. We just stood, staring at the house. I had never done a spell before, so I wasn’t exactly sure if we were waiting for something noticeable to happen.
“I feel like I should tell you something,” he said. “I just don’t want you to overreact to it.”
My interest piqued. “Okay,” I responded in kind.
“I haven’t been completely honest with you… about who I am.” He stopped and stood silent as he looked at me. When his mouth moved again, I couldn’t make out the words he spoke. My heart raced and all the blood in my body seemed to rush to my head. I felt faint and dizzy, and the world spun. I caught a glimpse of Ty running towards me. I thought I heard him calling out my name, but the scene playing in front of me was blurry and in slow motion. I could feel his arms around me as I felt myself falling, and then there was only darkness.
Chapter -12-
The farther they walked, the farther from their destination they felt. They knew they were going the right way. In the last three days, they saw the young girl who erupted laughter into a group of buio boys four times. Tabby had considered catching up to her and introducing themselves so she didn’t have to travel alone, but she didn’t think Chris would be okay with the idea. She seemed content looking after her from afar. Although, Tabby felt for the girl traveling by herself. She seemed so unsure of her powers each time she had to stop and concentrate enough to rid herself of the buio boys she encountered.
Chris had been cut off from society for years, and Tabby knew that’s how she liked it. She wasn’t a fan of big crowds, and more than anything, she didn’t like meeting new people. In the past, however, that had more to do with getting to know someone and then having to move on. She despised the awkward goodbyes.
Tabby looked at Chris, who seemed to be off in her own little world, which happened a lot. “So, do we have a name?”
“What?” Chris watched the girl try to use magia to spell a tree that had fallen in the woods. Whether she was trying to move it aside or lift it, Chris couldn’t tell from that distance.
The hillside led them into more rainforest-like scenery. They had spotted the girl again that morning and followed her throughout the day. She stopped along the way every few hours to practice her spells. Chris believed she was a novice, probably forced into magia because of the passage nonsense.
Tabby thought Chris might have liked to help her practice. She was, after all, part of the clan sent to this world to do just that, even though she left her family and those responsibilities as soon as she turned eighteen. She knew Chris still enjoyed teaching the little ones, but Tabby felt her path was elsewhere.
Be that as it may, Chris seemed content with watching her from a distance. However, stopping every few hundred feet meant they were delayed for almost an hour as she practiced. The idea that they were being hindered from reaching their destination frustrated Tabby.
“A name. You know, a family name for who we are looking for. Do you know who the other clan was?” Tabby exaggerated the question.
“Yes, of course I know who the other clan was. It’s a royal clan. Everyone knows of them.” Chris didn’t know if she should share her information with Tabby. She had a problem with helping anyone royal and probably wouldn’t agree to continue on the journey with her if she had known where they were headed, and for whom.
“I didn’t know they were royalty.” Tabby scoffed, which Chris expected.
“I’m sorry, I thought... You know, your family, I thought they would have told you all about this,” Chris spoke as she watched the young girl ahead of them.
“My family has nothing to do with what I know, but to answer your question, yes, I know all about it.” She rolled her eyes.
“Oh. Well, if you knew all this time, then why do you keep asking me?” she shot back.
“Because I know what I’m supposed to be doing, but you never shared what your part in all this is… and don’t tell me it’s nothing. We haven’t been traveling towards nothing, ” Tabby added.
“I wasn’t going to say nothing. Geesh. My mother warned me this was going to happen, and when it did, I would receive some sort of inner homing device. I’m just following the GPS in my gut.” Chris pointed to her midsection.
“And where is your gut taking us?” Tabby pushed for an actual answer to her question.
“I’m really not sure where we are headed. I only know that I’m supposed to go. I’m supposed to help someone, and I think if I do, it will get me closer to getting my mother and sisters back.” Chris had hung onto that hope during their entire journey. “I always thought my mother was this overbearing mother hen.” She picked up a stray branch and pulled at its leaves. “Now, I just wish I’d stayed home, and… oh, I don’t know... learned more.” She sighed.
“You’ll find her. Remember, they’re with your dad, and they’re probably working just as hard as everyone else to get the passage back open.” Tabby sat on a nearby log.
“I don’t think so.” Chris looked up to the sky. If they didn’t move soon, the daylight would be lost to them and they would have to stop for the night. The woods were dense, and with the number of uprooted trees and fallen branches, Chris was afraid walking in the dark would be more dangerous than traveling on the roads.
“Why don’t you think so?” Tabby interrupted her thoughts.
“You obviously don’t know the stories.” Chris threw the branch down and looked through the forest to see if the girl was still in sight. When she saw her, she was still practicing her spell. “After it happened, my mother told me and Jamie about the war. She told us all about the curse on the Buio King and what that would mean for the people in his realm. She knew we would be needed to help those who would be able to break the curse. She was told about the day the passage would be closed, and why, although she didn’t share that bit of information.” She kicked a rock and looked at Tabby. “I don’t know why she was so vague, but she said I was supposed to help someone of great value; keep her safe and return her to her family.” Chris looked back at the girl ahead of them. It looked as if she were giving up on her current mission with the branch, so Chris picked up her backpack and got ready to continue onward. She glanced at Tabby, who looked hard in thought.
Tabby adjusted the pack on her back. She thought about what the curse had done to her family, and why she had to leave them. The tears welled in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She turned so she wasn’t facing her friend and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. She thumbed the locket resting under her collar.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how, but I think the buio are responsible for the passage being down. I also think mother wasn’t sure it was going to happen when it did because she would have never chosen to be stuck there. Now it’s up to us. We have to fix it.” Chris noticed the girl had finally given up on her attempt at her spell and moved on. “Here we go.” Chris moved first so her friend could collect her thoughts. She knew talking to Tabby about family was hard on her. She knew what Tabby had told her. She had to leave her family so she would be safe, but in the end, she hadn’t told her why that was. She never said what dangers threatened her, but she did know there was someone special she needed to find as well.