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I don't see how any of your friends could get away from you without being murdered. We might as well have fun before it happens. That's the trouble with being murder obsessed, you never know who to kill or allow to have fun before you kill them. decisions, decisions.
xd Amusing right? ....Right....?
Chapter 13 Kera
Kera was in a much better mood once she had food in her. It was amazing all of the food that Adelle had: bread, fish, eggs, cheese, pies, chocolates, and many other things that Kera couldn’t name but still tasted delectable. Adelle and the man she had talked about Sherwin had stared at her while she ate, they seemed amazed at her but Kera didn’t know why.
After she had finished eating Adelle and Sherwin cleared the table smiling. When they came back though, they seemed to be in a more serious mood. “Okay Kera, now that we’ve had a chance to relax and eat we’ve got to get down to business.”
Kera stared at them solemnly, “What business are we talking about?”
Adelle’s lips twitched, and eventually Sherwin’s face began to crack as well until both of them were breaking out in random bursts or mirth. “Oh my goodness, Kera its not that serious we promise! Well, it might be, but you don’t have to look so serious, you put us to shame!” Adelle said between laughs.
Kera blinked at them, uncertain what was going on, but she noticed that Adelle seemed somewhat familiar somehow…
Sherwin threw a teasing glare at Adelle, “In most seriousness then, we have things that we need to inform you of.”
“Okay…” Kera nodded, “what is it?”
“Well, first off, the stone around your neck, where did you find it?” Adelle asked, trying to keep her face calm.
Kera’s hand jumped to the stone, wrapping protectively around it, “Why?”
Adelle and Sherwin started laughing again, hitting each other and grinning. “Ah, how young you are right now, you remind me of how Sharron used to act!”
The name startled Kera, and she realized haltingly how Adelle looked familiar, she looked almost exactly like Sharron, except younger maybe in her mid twenties. “Sharron…?”
Adelle looked at her more significantly, “Yes…Sharron, what about her…?”
“Um…uh…” Kera opened and closed her mouth several times, but she didn’t know what the right words were. How would Kera know if the same Sharron that she knew even knew Adelle? Kera had no clue where she was, and it was entirely possible that there was some other Sharron somewhere.
“What, do you know Sharron…?” Adelle’s tone had an underlying crucial tone to it.
“She…she…I…know someone….” She stopped midsentence, starting wide eyed at Adelle who was leaning forward significantly in her chair.
Sherwin was looking back and forth between Kera and Adelle befuddled. “So…can we come back to this?” He asked, carefully pulling Adelle back into her chair.
“Yeah…” Adelle agreed, shaking her head quickly back and forth. “We’ll get back to that,” she shook her head again, “Kera, your jewel, where did you find it?” Adelle nodded vaguely at Kera’s neck.
“I found it in a field while I was growing grass.” She answered quietly.
Adelle and Sherwin glanced at each other briefly, “That’s it? It was just lying in the dirt?”
Kera nodded wordlessly, she had been just plowing the field and adding magical fertilizer when she had tripped over something. Dirt had gotten into her eyes and after she had rubbed most of it out of her eyes she saw it sitting blurrily in front of her and she’d picked it up not knowing what it was. She just slipped in into her pocket, planning to throw it away later after she was finished planting. But later when she’d been about to throw it away it had flashed, and in the instant that it had been lit it had seemed to cling to her hand. She had stared at it, and each second there seemed to be a different color swirling in the middle of the stone. It had interested her so she’d kept it and the next time she looked at it, she knew that it was special.
“That’s amazing! All of us had to risk our lives to find our stones, you’re so lucky!” Adelle beamed over at her, she seemed somewhat proud of Kera.
“Great, have you already gotten increased magic?” Sherwin asked her eagerly.
“What do you mean?” Kera asked.
“Have you noticed more confidence, better abilities to cast spells?” He reworded.
“Yeah I guess so…” Kera shrugged.
“Good, that means that your powers are progressing. I think that means you can help us.” He said rubbing his chin.
“How can I help you guys with anything?” She asked skeptically.
“Easy, you help us shine brightly in the darkness.” He answered, smiling.
This time Kera was the one to laugh. “Really? You think I can do anything like that? In that room back there, whatever that was, I couldn’t even manage to create any light, you think it’ll be any different another time?” As soon as she finished she realized what she’d just said, she clamped her hands over her mouth, eyes wide, her face flushing. She was being rude again and she couldn’t help herself.
Adelle gave her a strange look, “What’s wrong kid? You’ve been acting really weird since I met you, do you have a temperature?” Adelle reached her hand towards Kera’s forehead gently, brushing her bangs aside. Adelle felt Kera’s forehead, and Kera felt a small shock shoot through her when Adelle’s hand made contact with her skin, she jumped back, her hands still clamped over her mouth.
“Kera what’s wrong?” Sherwin stood slowly from his chair and cautiously walked closer to Kera and she found herself backing away from him bit by bit as he got closer to her.
“Sherwin, what in the world are you doing to the kid? She looks like she’s seen a ghost!” A new voice asked accusingly from behind Sherwin.
Sherwin turned around glaring, “I didn’t do anything! She just started acting weird…” He stopped moving towards her and shrugged at the owner of the new voice.
“Well move out of the way! She can’t see me with you standing there, you’re too tall for your own good!” the voice complained. Sherwin smiled and moved back over to Adelle. “Kera, nice to finally meet you in person.” Kera looked down at the small girl that greeted her. The girl was tiny she was much shorter than Kera, but she looked a great deal older than Kera. The girl’s blue eyes seemed to stare right through her, reading through her eyes and into her deepest secrets, it made Kera shiver.
“How do all of you know me anyway?” Kera found herself asking, looking around at the three of them and pulling her hands slowly away from her mouth.
“I’m Petula by the way!” The girl said indignantly before moving over to sit next to Adelle and Sherwin. Kera wondered how she was going to get into the high chairs, but the problem was solved easily as she snapped her fingers loudly and flew up to sit on the table.
Adelle laughed quietly before answering, “Well, Petula here, has been watching you for a while, she learned that you had great powers and so we began watching you to try and see if you had a stone.”
“What’s so special about the stones, I’m sure there are lots of them out there.” Kera wasn’t going to admit to them that she already knew that no matter what they said her stone was special and there was no other one like it anywhere.
“Actually no, there are only seven stones in known existence, and one of them has been destroyed so there are only six still intact.” Sherwin said, reaching his hand into his pocket. When he removed his hand it was gripping a black jewel that looked a lot like onyx, the jewel was glowing faintly, its glow growing steadily as it separated itself from the light of the sun streaming through the windows. The light coming from the stone was pulsing soothingly and it’s glowing seemed to prompt Sherwin into talking. He looked up from the stone smiling complacently, “You see, I too have a stone, and it’s reacting to the other three in the room. It is responding the strongest with Adelle’s because hers is closer, but yours is affecting it too.”
Kera glanced down at the stone around her neck, it wasn’t quite pulsing light like his was, but its glow was definitely stronger and different than normal. When Kera looked back up questioningly she saw that both Petula and Adelle had reached into some crevice of their clothing and in their hands they also held two jewels. Adelle’s was an emerald that perfectly matched her eyes, sparkling with light that it seemed to be creating. Petula’s fingers lightly gripped an opal its facets gleaming like sunlight on rippling summer waters.
“These are four of the six still intact stones the other two, a diamond and an amethyst belong to Devlin and William.” Adelle explained, looking down affectionately at the emerald.
Kera realized something suddenly, “You mean the same William that made me look for the purple stone in the field is the William you’re talking about?”
Petula laughed, “The one and only, he’s the oldest of us all and he’s a bit grouchy.” Adelle and Sherwin tried to stifle their laughs at this comment. “The six of us are granted great powers by our bonds with our stones or jewels for the most part. We normally just refer to them by the jewels that they look like the most, but as you can see with yours it doesn’t look much like a ruby at the moment, but you haven’t had yours as long as we have.”
“What do you mean at the moment? It’s never looked like a ruby before…” Kera asked, confused.
“Well, myself, I’ve had my stone for over a year, and before it used to look like an old piece of granite unless I held it in my hand. But now it looks much more polished and taken care of, even if I’m not holding it.” Petula explained.
“Oh…so it changes?”
Petula nodded, “Yep, as you become more connected to it, you’ll notice that it will become shinier and look more like a jewel than it does now. As you see with Adelle’s and Sherwin’s,” she pointed to each of them in turn, “theirs resemble jewels now, and they would be the only ones to be able to tell it apart from any other emerald or piece of onyx. Also, if you remember, William’s still looked like a purple stone when you found it, didn’t it?”
Kera thought for a moment and remembered that while it had glowed a little when she had found it, she had just thought that it was a purple rock. “Yeah…I didn’t even think for a second that it was a jewel…” She admitted, nodding.
“Exactly, but his will change soon, he’s just being quite slow about allowing himself to connect to it. He’s such a worry wart, he thinks if he attaches himself to it, he’ll be committing some huge crime,” Kera saw her roll her eyes before continuing, “but hopefully he’ll learn that you’re much happier once you let yourself go.”
“So what’s the difference between all of our stones then? Are they just…power sources?” Kera struggled to word her question, she couldn’t quite figure out how to ask it.
“Oh, you mean the different powers of each one? Simple,” she gestured across to Adelle, “this part is easy for Adelle’s at least, her emerald grants her the power to interact with nature in stronger ways than anyone else can. Sherwin’s onyx allows him extreme speed and agility, Adelle likes to call him the wind runner,” her eyes twinkled at the joke, “my stone endows me with the power of sight, I can see things in other places, and brief glimpses of the future.”
“What about mine?” Kera asked curiously.
“We’re not sure yet, I haven’t really had time in the past few days to watch you, so I can’t say.” she shrugged, “We’ll just have to watch and see.”
“Okay…” she sighed, disappointed, “what about William and Devlin then?”
“William’s suits his personality, but we all agree that it makes him a bit edgy on the danger thing, his bestows him a knack for traveling spells and,” she paused briefly to think, “how to explain…helps him to heal others I suppose. His stone allows him to do other-worldly things in order to protect someone…and,” her voice dropped cautiously and sadly here, “William also thinks that it gives him the power to sacrifice his life to save someone else who died.”
Kera’s took a drawback there, “Would he do that? It doesn’t sound like that would be…advisable?” Once again she was at a loss of words for her thoughts.
Petula nodded glumly agreeing, “I know, but he’s a crazy guy like that, he doesn’t value his own life at all…”
Petula’s face looked miserable, so Kera scrambled to change the subject, “Uh…what about Devlin?”
“Devlin’s stone give him…” she smiled, giggling, “a fury straight from-“
“Petula!” Adelle interrupted sharply, “You know that he would strike you down if he heard you making that joke again.”
Petula smiled innocently, turning to look at Adelle, “What joke? I wasn’t going to say it; honestly…he has a fury straight from the caverns of…” Petula’s eyes wandered to the doorway where a man stood his face shadowed.
“Straight from the caverns of where Petula?” he asked sardonically, “go ahead, finish the sentence.”
“I wouldn’t dream of saying it to your face Devlin, that wouldn’t make it surreptitiously rude. Plus it would ruin all my fun!” she smiled angelically over at him.
“You’re lucky I like you, otherwise you’d be seeing my fury right up close…” He muttered irately from the doorway. “Anyway, who’s this?”
“This is Kera,” Sherwin introduced her.
Devlin took a step out of the door way to get a closer look at her, “Ah, so this is the little chickadee that William’s been searching for huh? Nice of you to join us.”
Overall Kera decided that Devlin was frightening. His voice was scary, a low rumbling, growling sound but it came in second place compared to his face. He had a huge scar running from the corner of his left eye running down all the way to his chin in a crescent shape. There were several new deep cuts on the right side of his face and one of them was slowly gushing blood down his cheek.
“Devlin, what happened to you?” Petula screeched jumping off the counter and running over to him vexed.
“It’s time to head out, so start packing,” with that he turned around and walked back out the doorway with Petula dashing after him, struggling to keep up with his large strides.
Chapter 14 Sarila
The next few days of traveling weren’t quite what Sarila expected. Cavan turned out not to be a bad traveling companion, and Sarila found that she actually enjoyed life on the road. It had taken her three days to stop ignoring Cavan and for her to actually start talking to him, and she found that he was actually someone that she could be friends with. Away from the castle he was a completely different person than and even in the confusion of traveling he always had an optimistic view of things.
It was as they were stopping for the night after traveling for a week that Sarila realized something, “We haven’t used magic at all so far on this trip…”
Cavan glanced over at her, “Of course not, we have to get further away from your castle first. We can be tracked by our magic if we’re not already being tracked by something your mother gave us.”
“What does it matter if they know where we are?” She asked glumly, “At this point it doesn’t seem like we’ll get away completely anyway.”
He frowned at her, “that’s not a good attitude for proving your mother wrong. We will get away, and I’m sure it’ll be much easier to convince people from the ‘light clan’ to help us hide from your mother, they’d prefer that much better than the latter.”
“Which is?” She asked, jumping down from her horse to the cool grass they had decided to stay in.
“We completely destroy them and wipe out anything that they consider to be good.” He grinned, slipping easily off his horse and unsaddling it.
“Can we really do that? I don’t think that’s even a possibility at this point, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.” She argued, glancing up at him as she began brushing her horse.
“Of course we could, you’ve got the powers for it, and your mother’s spell book too.” He peered over at her above his horse’s shoulders, “You do still have it right? You didn’t dump it somewhere?”
She smiled simply, “Why would you even have to ask? You can trust me can’t you?”
His expression was amused, “Can I? I already know that you’ve been steadily dropping everything that your mother packed for you, why wouldn’t you toss the book?”
She pursed her lips and stared into her horses flank, “I don’t know, I guess you just have to believe me on that…”
He didn’t seem convinced, “How about you show it to me after you finish brushing your horse?”
She didn’t answer for several moments; she just continued deliberately combing out a knotted part of her horse’s mane. After she had finished brushing her horse she knew she couldn’t stall anymore, she peeked up at Cavan and saw him observing her carefully. “What?” She questioned somewhat guiltily.
“Do you have the book?” He replied gently.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, “Yeah…”
“So why are you being so difficult about it? Is it a bad thing that you still have it?” He prodded, tying his horse loosely to a nearby tree and letting it graze.
“Because…” She answered, moving to copy him and tie up her horse, “if I look in it I don’t know if there’ll be any spells in it…”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“Because last time I looked in it there weren’t any words at all…” She tied up her horse and then turned to Cavan.
“Why would that be the same now? I don’t really understand how the book works so you’ll have to humor me.” He opened his bag and pulled out the sleeping bags and began unfolding them.
“Well, if I look for any spells that would betray my mother the whole book goes blank and shuts on me.”
“Would you be looking up a spell like that?” He asked, placing the unfolded sleeping bags aside, standing to look for dry sticks for the fire. Sarila realized that he was slowly walking her through the problem.
She shook her head, “No, I’m not planning on it, but…” she trailed off shaking her head uncertainly.
He sighed lightly, dropping his branches in a pile in front of me. “Fine, do you want me to look in it first for you? To make sure that there’s something in it?”
She looked up hopefully, “Would you do that for me? Then…tell me…?”
He smiled, scathingly, “Only if you find more fuel for the fire. So get the book and start looking.”
She grinned despite his mocking tone, “Okay it’s a deal.” She ran to her bag and pulled out the book carefully, running her fingers along the soft leather. The silver blue words still luminous on the cover, were they there for good now? “Here,” she said handing him the book and walking away to distract herself picking up branches.
She heard him flipping deftly through the book, the papers whispering as he ran his finger down the pages. “Find anything?” she called over her shoulder, gathering as many branches as she could carry.
He didn’t answer but she could tell he was smiling, he continued flicking through page after page, ignoring me. She glared at him, dumping off her armful of kindling, she just needed one more load and then she could smack him for not listening to her. She turned around swiftly and got an idea, she really hadn’t cast any spells since she lost her powers, and Cavan was occupied so he wouldn’t notice…
She flicked her fingers and whispered, “Twigs!” Her fingers glowed blue for a few seconds, and then the blue from her fingers spread out to the grass around her, and only mere seconds later an entire armful of brushwood flew evenly over to her, settling themselves casually into her waiting arms. She smiled happily, her magic was back!
She strolled confidently back over to Cavan and dropped the kindling in front of him, “You’ve had your turn now stop hogging my book.”
“But I’m hogging it for a good reason, I found something good.” He explained, moving the book across his body so I couldn’t see it.
“Then you have to show me!” Sarila complained, reaching for the book.
“But you won’t like it,” he moved the book across his body again away from Sarila’s reaching hand, he smiled mischievously.
“Why won’t I like it?” She demanded.
“You told me that you hate legends, but I find this one very interesting.”
“Why would you think that those legends about Kera are interesting? Sarila asked skeptically.
He smiled, “Who said that it was a legend about Kera?”
She rolled her eyes, “She’s the only one any of those legends are about, it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out after a while.”
“Oh, well I guess that makes sense, but I find this one exciting, and I’m going to read it, so leave me alone until I’m done.”
Sarila stood there rooted to the spot starting at him, “Excuse me?” She managed to muster her voice through her surprise.
He looked up at her, “Well you obviously don’t want to read them; you told me they were the worst things ever.”
“That doesn’t mean I want you reading them! Which one is it anyway? I bet I’ve already read it.”
“I don’t know, it doesn’t really have a title.” He flipped a page and abruptly his face was filled with shock. “Hey you’re sure these are just legends?”
“Yeah…why?” She asked sighing and reaching for the book again. Surprisingly, he didn’t try to stop her.
“Because you’re in this legend…and…so am I…” He answered, actually pushing the book into her hands.
“What are you talking about?” She looked at him her face full of doubt. Then, she remembered the time that girl had taken her book, and when it had portrayed her exact actions. “Actually…” She looked down at the book and read:
…”Devlin, stop! Turn around and talk to me!” Petula commanded her voice cracking.
Devlin continued walking he showed no signs of having heard Petula at all. In fact, he seemed to start walking faster, his long strides quickly taking him away from her, and making it almost impossible for her to catch up with her tiny legs.
“Devlin! I know that you can hear me, what do you think you’re accomplishing by ignoring me?” She demanded, now sprinting to keep up with him.
Still he ignored her, but his face stiffened with some emotion and he increased his pace again, shaking his head back and forth.
“No Devlin, that’s not an answer, I will not wait until later to discuss this we need to talk now!”
He whipped around to face her, his back facing the open doorway to outside. “What is talking about it going to accomplish? What is the difference between paying attention to you and not? You seem to think it’s the same thing anyway, so why should I care? Everything we’ve ever been, everything we’ve ever had, it always ends up destroyed, and I’m done making repairs.”
“What are you saying?” Petula caught up to him and stared up at him defiantly. She was trying her best not to show signs of exhaustion from running but she was breathing hard anyway.
“I’m saying that I can’t help you out anymore, I can’t guarantee that I’ll be around to help you when you need it, and I don’t want to be caught doing something that will jeopardize the mission.” He explained coolly, his face as smooth and calm.
“Why would anything that you do jeopardize the mission? Adelle and Sherwin are just fine, you just can’t handle things, you’re just like your brother, too afraid of everything.” She glared at him coldly, her blue eyes becoming icy shards, burning with new hatred.
His eyes were slowly changing as well, taking on anger and jealousy, “I’m nothing like William! I’ve already told you my decision and its not changing. That’s all I have to say to you so go and get packed so that we can leave.”
“Leave where?” She asked frostily.
“We need to leave to find Sarila and Cavan, they’re traveling.”
“Already?” Sherwin’s voice interrupted, Petula and Sherwin turned to look at him.
“Yes, they’re traveling and have been for almost a week now, we need to wait for them to get a little further from Narelle before we can confront them, but we have to get going now to catch them.” Devlin clarified, staring at Sherwin and ignoring Petula.
“Already? I didn’t figure Narelle would send them out for at least another month or two, are you sure?” Sherwin asked, shocked.
“Positive, I’ll wait for you guys outside, but please hurry.” With those final words he turned on his heel and marched from the room, closing the door tightly behind him.
“Narelle, my mother?” Sarila asked, looking up from the book at Cavan.
“I know, scary huh? I’m starting to get worried, is this book telling us something?” He replied looking closely at the book, continuing to read.
“But…I thought that these were just legends, does that mean that everything my mother has been making me read is true…?” She let her question trail off, her thoughts swirling. Was this the real reason behind her mother’s teaching, was her mother teaching her the way to destroy these people? By reading exactly what they were doing at any time? The question of who the girl that had been in her room was became even more important, that girl had managed to make something else appear in her mother’s book, and the title had only appeared after that girl had opened it, so who was she? All these questions were getting no where while they were stuck in her head, there had to be some way to answer them. “Are we going to let these people find us?”
Cavan put down the book and looked at her, “So you really think that these people exist?”
Sarila deliberated before answering, trying to figure out the answer herself. “I’m not sure, but it sure seems accurate for being a book that’s hundreds of years old…”
He nodded slowly, agreeing, “I guess the only thing we can do is get some sleep now and talk about it in the morning.”
“Won’t it be too late then?”
He smiled shaking his head, “I don’t think so, its all up to us, apparently your mother is a double edged knife for us right now, she seems to be protecting us and making life difficult. While we’re here, this close to your mother they can’t make any moves, but then again neither can we, so until we’ve made all our decisions we’ll just stay here. Agreed?”
Sarila brightened, he was right, no matter what they were safe now, as long as they didn’t stay here for months her mother wouldn’t come looking and the rest of those people couldn’t do anything either. “Okay, agreed, but what do you think they want to do with us?”
“I don’t know, but…if we need to we have ways to get away, we’ll just have to be fast learners.” He sighed and stood to light the fire, flicking his fingers lazily, not worrying about the use of magic. Sarila sat herself next to the fire entranced by its dance, it was going to be a long night, but she wasn’t worried, as long as she had Cavan she knew she would be safe.
Right....?
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