by E. S. Mercer
“I didn’t say she would,” I argued. “But if you know who could, she and I could find them together.”
He put his drink down on the hand carved coffee table between us and reached out for my hands.
“Who are you?” he asked, as he closed his claws around my fingers, squeezing harder than I expected he could.
“You tell me,” I replied. “And why do people keep asking me that?” I asked, trying to pull away.
“Because you must remember,” he answered, pulling me back. “We can’t tell you who you are, it won’t break the spell.”
“HUH? What spell?” I asked.
“Do you believe in magic?” he countered. “Do you believe that it exists?” “I didn’t, not sure I still do, but something happened to me outside the club.” I replied, feeling his hands begin to sweat as they tightened a bit more.
“Wait? Are you saying I am a magician or a witch?” I asked.
“Oh darling,” he snorted, before laughing hysterically. “You are not the witch. I am!”
He let go of my hands, waving his hands in the air, presenting himself in a flamboyant and unnecessary manner. “I am a Magatorian. I am a guardian and practitioner of Magic.”
“Hmm….ok,” I said with visible doubt. “So, like voodoo and witchcraft or card tricks and illusions?” I asked. “What does that have to do with me?” “I am given the remaining power of the Cimmerian, to wield and manipulate what is left of it,” he replied, ignoring my last question.
I just kept looking at him like nothing he said really registered. “A Cimmerian carries the power of the dark,” he continued, getting annoyed. “A Cimmerian uses their power and we, tap into what is left, using this heavily diluted power to perform spells and such. The remaining power is more like waste that is expelled as they use their own. We channel it and use it as our own.”
“Oh, so you are a magic leech?” I said with a chuckle. “Or better yet, a mystical garbage disposal."
I thought I was so funny that I ended up chuckling myself into a full belly laugh. Noita, however, was not so amused.
“I am the only one who can get you out of this mess,” he exclaimed. “I just need to figure out why this time it is so much harder for you to break.”
“Break what?” I asked. “Again, what does this have to do with me.” “The spell that keeps you from remembering who you are,” he responded a bit aloof. “Samiel obviously can’t break it, which leaves it to me to figure it out.”
“So Samiel is one of you?” I asked.
“Far from it,” he responded, reaching out for my hands again. I gave them to him, still skeptical about what it was he could do, but at this point, I was hungry for whatever answers I could get. He closed his eyes, concentrating as hard as he could, as I felt pulses of electrical current flow from my hand to his. The longer he held on, the stronger it got, until it started to course through my veins like hot lava, burning as it left my fingertips to return to him. Then, the palms of my hands lit up as they did before, but this time instead of blasting him away, it fused our hands together, into one blob of flesh for a split second.
The light was so bright that I closed my eyes, to shield them from it. That is when I saw the most bizarre thing.
I could see a crack form in the darkness of my mind, allowing for a bit of light to shine through. Everything I didn’t know I knew, was on the other side of the barrier, like a word I couldn’t remember, sitting on the tip of my tongue. I went from remembering absolutely nothing to knowing that I was forgetting everything. The light then quickly dimmed down, releasing him from me, allowing him to pull away from me in haste.
“Oh no, it can’t be,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “I can’t touch this.”
“No wait, please don’t stop,” I begged. “I felt something happen.”
“And that is exactly why I can’t continue,” he responded, bolting out of his chair in a panic. “I can’t undo what has been done. I can’t fix this at all.”
“What?” I asked, as I got out of the chair and tried to follow the pacing Magatorian. “What has been done?”
“Your father,” he blurted. “Your father did something horrible and no one can fix it this time.”
“My father!” I repeated. “Who the hell is my father? What has he done?”
“You need to go,” he cried, pointing towards the door. “He is going to know that you are searching for answers and he is going to come for me.”
“Who is he?” I begged again. “He’s what most people know as God and he’s done everything in his power to make sure you don’t exist. If he finds out that you can remember or are at least trying to remember, all hell will break loose.”
“But you and Samiel acted as if you wanted me to remember,” I said, grabbing him. “What changed?”
He ignored me again as he instructed one of his bouncers to locate Zara and escort us both out the door.
“What changed?” I asked again, holding on to the door frame in one final attempt to get answers before the bouncer started dragging me out.
“Everything,” Noita said, turning his back towards me. “Fine,” I said, throwing my hands up. “I’ll figure it out on my own. I turned and walked down the stairs. “Oh, and now you want to find her?” I asked, following the bouncer.
He chuckled, nodding his head, as he led me through the crowd, once again pushing people as if they were simply in his way. If he found a girl who he thought might be Zara, he would pick them up, show them to me and then toss them back into the crowd if I didn’t respond adequately. Finally, we found her, on the other side of the room, so drunk she could barely stand.
“Oh, my god, it’s my sister!” she announced, falling into my arms. “What’s up beeee-autiful sister?” she asked, as she started stroking my face obsessively.
“I need you to sober up,” I said, scooping her up to get a better grip on her. Between her slinky dress and her spaghetti legs I couldn’t keep ahold of her.
“I am as soooober as I need to be,” she slurred, “a sober as a church mouse.”
“It’s as quiet as a church mouse and you are far from it,” I said dejectedly. “I really need you right now Zar.” “Let’s get her to the diner down the street and sober her up then,” Gail suggested as she and Levi came to my rescue. She could see how upset I was and felt responsible for Zara’s behavior.
“We were here to drink our sorrows into oblivion and she got a bit carried away,” Gail continued as she helped me get Zara out the door.
“She seems to get carried away a lot, since she met you guys,” I snarked as we stumbled on to the sidewalk. “Yes, we do like to party,” Levi said, as he came up beside us with Gail and Zara’s belongings. “There is something about Aaru that always makes you want to return.”
Zara interrupted us she sang the last song she had heard in the club. It was as annoying as it was entertaining, but it allowed us to walk in silence as we made our way to the diner. Once we arrived, between the singing and the impromptu flailing she called dancing, we finally managed to get her into a booth, before she collapsed face down in my lap, leaving us with nothing to do but stare at each other and listen to the sounds of her little snores, like the purr of a kitten to entertain us.
I could have struck up a conversation, but I was angry at them for letting this behavior get so far out of control and they felt too guilty to apologize. Finally, Zara broke the ice, as she started muttering in her sleep, causing the three of us to laugh uncontrollably. Once we were able to finally catch our breath, we found that it was much easier to bond that we had thought.
I learned that Gail had come from the West Coast to start over when her father, a well-known Drug Lord for one of the biggest Cartels in the Northern Hemisphere, along with her mother and little brother, was killed by a rival Cartel. She, twenty-four at the time, had been away visiting friends from college and came home to find them all dead. The Government offered her protection, but her father had instilled in her a major distru
st for the New Government, so she took it upon herself to find her father’s hidden cash and trek across the country to find a new life.
It was then, on her journey through the Southern states, that she picked up a young hitchhiker wearing nothing but flip flops, shorts and old book bag with everything he owned, hanging off a sunburned shoulder. He had come out to his parents after church one Sunday, causing his father, a Baptist minister to denounce his existence and gave him five minutes to pack his things and leave their home. His mother, torn by the love she had for her son and the duty she had to his father, secretly handed him the only twenty she on her and begged him to stay safe. He had pleaded for her help, but she served her husband first and recommended that he find his way North where people like him were more accepted.
Gail continued her story, telling me that she changed her name, trying to stay under the radar while putting her and Levi through beauty school with the some of the money she had taken from her father’s till. She invested the rest in some unsavory dealings, allowing her to save up the money she needed for them to open their own shop when they graduated. For ten years, they did what they could to build themselves a life they could both be proud of. And until that day, they thought they were untouchable.
“Boy, were we so very, very wrong,” Gail said, sipping her coffee. Turns out that the building Gail and Levi lived in had burned down that morning, along with the business she built on the first floor. The third floor, which was occupied by the building’s owner, caught on fire, as his teenage daughter fell asleep with a cigarette in her mouth. The building, which was over two hundred years old, with its dry timbers and aged plaster, became engulfed in a matter of minutes, creating a blaze that destroyed everything before the fire company could respond. The sprinklers, which hadn’t been tested in at least ten years, only worked on the first floor. But, those didn’t matter much, because when the top floors caved in, the first floor was kindly relocated to the basement.
Zara, who had lost her job at the University, had been staying with Gail, sweeping floors and answering phones until she could get back on her feet. She wasn’t about to tell her father or Ksenia that she had screwed up the first good thing she had outside the camp. She knew that would mean losing any freedom she had on the outside.
“Where are we?” she asked, waking up and struggling to sit up on the bench. “Wait…Ness!” She exclaimed, wrapping her arms around my neck. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you to sober up kid,” I choked. Her bony shoulder was digging into my throat as she kept squeezing me tight. “Why? What did I miss?” she asked. “Oh, my god, did somethin’ happen?” she continued. “Did somethin’ happen to Ryan? Cause of Ryan?”
“All the above,” I replied, pushing her back onto her side, trying to get her breath out of my face. “All of the above.” While Zara did her best to sober up enough to hear the story, I came up with a plan to help them all out. I realized that they were pretty much in the same spot I was and right now, I could use all the friends I could get.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said, waving the waitress over for the check. “My life is completely upended right now. I can’t say that I am going to be in the best mood until I get all this figured out. I have answers I need to find, a past I need to remember and a feeling I really need to explore. But, it turns out we are all technically homeless, and I have been given an entire building to do with as I wish. My studio only takes up a part of it. There is a space large enough to build an apartment in the back and more than enough room for you to reopen your salon. So, why don’t you guys just come stay with me?”
I didn’t have to ask twice. With no place to go and a friendship so easily made, Gail and Levi took me up on my offer immediately. And Zara knew no matter what she was coming with me anyway, so she let them show all the excitement deemed necessary for such an invite. Although the splitting headache and upset stomach might have been what tempered her enthusiasm. She wasn’t usually one for avoiding excitement.
We paid the check and hailed a taxi. Heading into the unknown together.
Chapter IV
We worked as hard as we could to get ready for the re-opening of Gail’s salon, putting in late hours, as we did all the construction ourselves. It was cathartic being able to help create a new life for them, and an attempt at a distraction for me, as I was forced, yet again to make a fresh start. But alas, as much as my heart was in it, I found myself wishing I was somewhere else, seeking answers.
I couldn’t get past the thought that there was something more to my story. I had ignored the signs, distracted by the people and things around me, and now I realized I had dragged this out for far too long. It wasn’t just the burning feeling that that I needed to know more, but the fact that I found myself inundated with new oddities and signs that were smacking me in the face.
First came the blinding headaches. Out of nowhere I would get hit with these excruciating pains in my skull, as if someone was cracking into my head in with an ice pick. Next, I would get these flashes of light that blinded me; light that seemed to come from my eyeballs. Finally, once I was on my knees, practically in tears and gasping for breath, I would see strobes of visions flooding my brain, like a slide show on high speed.
Thing is, I couldn’t make sense of any of them. There was no sequence to them, and although I could identify them as memories, I couldn’t connect with the emotions I should have felt that went along with them.
Each time I would have one of these blinding headaches, I saw things changed. The shadows that haunted me on and off through the years especially, as they became a little more three dimensional. For weeks, I would see them pop in and out of the darkest recesses of the city, trying to avoid being detected, but it got harder and harder for them to hide as time went on. At first, their vivid yellow eyes popped through the darkness, frightening me a bit, but once they started to take shape, I found them a little less haunting and more of a nuisance.
It wasn’t until the last whopper of a headache that I was able to see I had nothing to be annoyed or terrified of at all.
I was coming back from another of our many trips to the hardware store and I could just feel that I was being followed. I had played this game before so my eyes went straight towards the shadows. As quick as they thought they were, I could see the movement of more than one, trying to find cover.
I continued towards back door at the end of the alley, laughing it off as my brain playing tricks on me, when I was hit hard with one of my ridiculous headaches. They were coming more frequently now, some with little warning. This one though, hit me hard and fast and the pain that came with it was so severe that I didn’t have time to realize whether the visions came with it. I ended up passing out and hitting the pavement quite hard.
When I came to, everything seemed brighter, crisper and a bit different. My ears were drawn to the pattering of the feet of the tiniest of bugs crawling across the building next to me, so small they made mites look like Godzilla. Specks of dust that flew past my face, looked more like snowflakes as I could see the make-up of each one. It was so overwhelming, I found myself collapsing back on the ground, with my hands on my head, sobbing.
I tripped over my feet, desperately trying to stand up and make it to the back door. The sunlight was now too bright for me and I couldn’t stand it any longer. As I lifted my head, trying to breathe, I saw a creature morph out of the shadows and into a visible being. Two more followed, until three exquisite beings stood in front of me. They looked as human as the rest of us, however, with two distinct differences.
They were three of the most beautiful people I had ever seen in my life and they had wings. But their wings didn’t have feathers like ones you see in artistic representations. Theirs were more like wisps of blue light and energy in the shape of wings, flowing from their backs and into the air behind them. It was if their wings were meant to tether them to something rather than give them lift.
Their eyes glowed a beautiful shade of gold
enrod and the parts of their flawless skin not covered by leather and muslin, glistened slightly under the harsh sun above us.
“You can see us?” the female asked, as she helped me up off the ground.
“You are real?” I asked her as I stood up, trying to shade my eyes from the sun.
“Oh, yes, very real,” she responded, “but you aren’t supposed to be able to see us or understand us.”
“What do you mean understand you?” I asked.
“We don’t speak in the same tongue as you,” she answered, “We speak in an ancient language, lost to you mortals long ago.”
“What are you?” I asked her, staring at her impressive wingspan. “And why can I understand you then?” “We are Lumenarians. We are part of The Praetorian Guard, sent to watch over you,” she replied. “And since we are having this conversation, things are about to change, drastically.”
“Neriah, you cannot tell her these things,” one of the males chimed. “Our job is to monitor and report, not interact.” “I cannot do that Ophiel,” she responded. “I will take whatever comes my way. What they are doing is wrong,” she continued, bowing slightly towards me. “Seek out the one swore to protect you. Ask the right questions and he will give you the answers you seek.”
“Who am I?” I asked the exquisite creature, as she grabbed my hands, holding them for comfort.
“That I cannot tell you,” she responded dejectedly. “I, like the most of our people are cursed. We cannot say your name, even if we wanted to.”
“Can you at least tell me what I am?” I asked.
“We must go,” Ophiel interrupted, looking past me into the shadows. “Hyperion has been warned of our interaction.”
“Ask the right questions and seek out what is yours,” Neriah reiterated, letting go of my hands. “You cannot allow them to do this to you again.”