WARNING!! -- this is old, and while recently updated with minor edits and the last of the chapters i never put up back in the day, it shall never be updated...enjoy it anyways!
...since a lot of you seem to keep doing so o-o ...
- Created By itsumademo
Chapter Four
The Catalyst
Chapter Four
I slowly pulled the threads stitched into an old white blanket spread over my grandmother’s bed. The nervous tears I made in the now slightly damaged bedding helped ease the anxious flutters from my last encounter with The Immortal. Even now, a good two hours later, I could still clearly see his hard black eyes glaring at me with anger and disgust.
“I don’t understand what I did wrong…”my sudden voice in the wide room sounded foreign and abrupt to my ears, especially with the long hours of relative silence. As I shifted position to better satisfy my comfort, clumped strands of my long black hair fell past my shoulder and pooled around my hands where I continuously fiddled with the loosened fibers. “I wonder why he got so upset.” I turned my head in thought while tumultuously picking at the cloth.
“Because he’s got a pole up his ass.” A sudden sarcastic male voice broke into my personal conversation with myself.
I looked up quickly with surprise, recoiling on the bed until I was sitting up straight, facing the intruder. He was leaning casually against the edge of the open balcony doors, a smirk gracing his features.
“Who the hell are you?” I furrowed my brow and watched him closely, in wait for his answer.
He shrugged slightly and pulled off the wall to head toward the bed with hands held up as he sighed. “Questions, questions. What’s wrong with being a mystery?” He peeked at me from beneath closed eyes and grinned while dropping his arms, crossing them against his chest.
“I suppose I prefer knowing who the perpetrator is beforehand.” I mirrored his movements, in some way demonstrating that I was playing along.
“Perpetrator? What makes you think I’ve come to do something that my incriminate me?”
“You snuck in, how would I know what you’re thinking?” I raised my brow with a mischievous smile tugging at my lips.
“Valid points.” He nodded to me, similar to a gesture of gentlemanly defeat.
I released my arms and, against my natural instincts, crawled toward the man, though I kept enough distance in order to move back if necessary. I looked up at his lowered face and noticed his still smirking lips below nearly closed eyes. “So, who are you then?” I cocked my head while still gradually edging closer to the man in anticipation.
Nothing happened for several minutes. I opened my mouth to speak again and in an abrupt flash the man grabbed my hand, pulled me off the bed and let me land directly on his lips. My eyes were open wide; his strong hold around my waist edged me closer, while his other hand cradled my face along the jawline. I must have been about a foot or so off the ground.
My brain was not really working correctly and so I felt my body take matters into its own…well, hands. His eyes opened and looked at mine, I couldn’t make out a single expression in those exquisitely bold violet colors. Suddenly I saw my fist come hurling towards the man’s cheek; when the skin, muscle, and bone collided with his face my lips and body were freed as the victim of my blow nearly lost balance from the surprise and dropped me to the floor.
“What in the hell do you think you were doing!?” I glared angrily at his hidden face.
However, instead of whatever it was I had been expecting him to do, I heard a quiet, clear laugh erupt from his slightly hunched posture. “You are fiery, aren’t you?” He turned up to face me, still smirking, without any mark or drop of blood on his face.
I grimaced in confusion, noticing a sharp, growing throb of pain in my knuckles. “I really should have kept on with those kickboxing classes.” I whispered to myself, while examining my quickly bruising hand for any breaks.
“Kick boxing?”
I looked up, quickly noticing the perverted stranger staring at me with puzzlement in his features. I realized I had yet again spoken my thoughts. “Oh, um, it’s a sport…a type of fighting practice, I guess.” I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could manage.
“Fighting? You?”
True, I wasn’t really much of an actual fighter. I had started many things, only to move on quickly afterward. Uncertain of where this situation was heading I opted to stretch the truth, just a bit. “Yes, actually. I enjoy many sports; kickboxing, rock climbing, horseback riding, swimming; lots of things.” My voice ticked off several of the activities I had participated in, although my thoughts were already beginning to wander a bit off track. Mumbling, “Grandmother took me everywhere with her, anything interesting and unique.” I smiled longingly at the thoughts.
“Ah yes. And how is dear Guinn?”
I focused my drifting attention back on the man, leading me to notice how close he was to me. I took a step back, hitting the bed with my leg before I stopped. “What makes you think Guinn is my grandmother?”
“I can see it in your face. You look similar and yet not at all…there is just something new and different about you, it’s there, in your eyes.” He reached his hand out to me but I pulled away, nearly falling backward onto the bed. “Hmm…regardless, I welcome you my flaming beauty, I am Caleb.” He moved back a step and bowed low before me.
“Uh…thanks, um, I’m Jade.”
“May I ask you something, Jade?”
I leaned back more with my balance being secured by my hold on the bedpost beside me. “Sure, what is it?”
I watched cautiously as Caleb’s hand slid along the wooden post, his eyes watching mine. He suddenly grasped my steadying hand tightly against the timber, “How much do you really know about this place?”
“Uh…o-only what my grandmother’s told me…what’re you doing?” I mumbled anxiously, finding it hard to predict Caleb’s movements.
I managed to release my hand, but was instantly shoved back and pinned down on the bed with Caleb securely holding my wrists. We looked at each other for a few seconds; he was very handsome, with soft masculine features and coiffed yet messy black hair framed his face. He moved closer to me and opened his mouth to speak.
“There were some things Guinn never knew…” he came even closer, his cheek down beside my own. I could feel his hot breath on my neck, and, despite the peculiarity of the situation, I found myself to be blushing fiercely. My quickening pulse I sensed in places I had never noticed before as his whisper continued “…there were secrets we Immortals never revealed.” The soft brush of his lips sent my body into hot shivers.
“Wait…” I exhaled quietly “…we? We Immortals? You’re Immortal?”
Caleb pulled away from my neck to look into my face. The exciting moments now left and part of me was excessively pissed at myself for halting its progress. I continued gazing into his seemingly endless violet eyes while I waited for his answer. Instead, he leaned down and lightly pressed his lips to mine, flaring my hormones again. As he slowly backed off the bed I found myself following, not wanting to break our gentle bond.
Caleb moved back from me and grinned “If you ever need me, call my name and I’ll come.” He bowed once more with a glint in his bright eyes.
“T-thank you…” I whispered, though I quickly regained my senses “…but you’re still a creepy pervert.”
He laughed and then stepped toward the open balcony doors.
“Wait!” I inadvertently spoke to him just as he was about to leap from the railing. “I uhh…can I, um, if I call for you…will you allow me to ask questions?”
“It all depends on the question.” He grinned a convoluted farewell and leapt from his perch.
I gasped quickly from his sudden departure and ran over to the rails to look for him. I thought I may have seen him slip beneath a tree but it was so dark I couldn’t really tell whether it was or wasn’t even anything at all.
“Caleb?” I heard the strange echo of my voice flow out over the trees.
“Yes.” He asked calmly from behind me.
“Oh my gosh,” I turned around to find him smirking as he did before with his hands on his hips.
“I’m gone for hardly ten seconds and already you miss me?”
“No,” I turned my head in denial, “I don’t even know you…” With the slightest bit of embarrassment in my tone, “I was just testing.”
“Didn’t think I meant what I said, huh?” He quirked his brow at me and crossed his arms.
“Listen, I’m sorry for being skeptical, but I’m just not used to you guys yet…this is all very weird for me.”
“You guys?” Caleb scoffed, “don’t compare me to that man.”
“The Immortal?” my brow furrowed. “Why not? He isn’t that bad really, a little mysterious perhaps, but not bad.”
“That all depends on one’s definition of bad. Even still, whether he be bad or not, he most certainly isn’t someone I would leave a young woman with.”
“Oh no … no, he’s not like that… I mean you are, but he isn’t. Definitely not. No.” I shook my head several times.
“No, he’ll bore you to death!” his hands gestured into the air. “He hasn’t been company to even the dust in this crappy tower for the last few centuries!” Caleb shouted with irritation, rolling his eyes and continuing to fling his hands about.
“He’s not that boring, I think he simply needs to work on not being…I don’t know..passively annoying.”
Caleb stopped his over the top antics, “Passively annoying?”
“Yes, he is always teasing me slyly, hiding behind his stoic face, like I don’t notice it when he does. And one time I swear he laughed at me.” I rolled my eyes.
Caleb didn’t respond, he looked as though he were staring into space.
“Caleb?” my hand reached out, but I stopped it quickly.
“That bastard!”
“What?!”
“That ass, how dare he! Not after everything, no way in hell!” Caleb ran past me and leapt off the balcony.
I spun around in confusion, trying to follow where exactly the conversation had gone and why Caleb was suddenly pissed at The Immortal. Or, well, more pissed. Leaning over the railing I was barely able to make out the figure of him protesting loudly and walking in a circle.
“CALEB?” I shouted out to him, but from the way the shape continued to pace I assumed he hadn’t heard my call. For a brief moment I saw the glow of his violet eyes before he ran into the darkness of the dense Talen forest.
I watched for a little while longer but I never saw anything more, so I went back into the room and closed the two doors behind me. Once I had both shut, I noticed for the first time that the wooden carvings sporadically placed on the glass didn’t match against each other’s opposite reflection. Instead they made some odd design….somewhat like the symbols in grandmother’s book. I walked over to the still opened text and started flipping through the pages in a quite possibly ill attempt at finding the meaning.
I leafed through every page and image, taking a cursory glance at each, but I couldn’t find anything that matched the sign formed by the double doors. With an almost unhappy realization, I knew that there was practically no way I would ever be able to figure out a single word in this book, at least not without the help of a certain person who seems to be invariably unpleased with the mere sight of the old grimoire. I dropped my head down onto the desk with a sigh; I had fallen faster than I realized and though I stayed down I could feel the bruise forming on my forehead.
“Ugh…I don’t want to ask him for help…I’m surprised he hasn’t already thrown me out!” I wrapped my arms around my head in irritation. “Damn it, damn it, damn it…there is no way I can learn any of this. I don’t know why grandmother ever thought I would be good at this. How can I hope to be a witch if I can’t even read the language! Plus even if I could read it, I wouldn’t be able to understand it.” I bit my lip harshly, but resigned myself to my fate.
With mental and physical exhaustion, I closed the book and went slowly over to the disheveled bed where I laid down with yet another weary sigh.
“Today has been the longest day of my entire life…I’m just so tired…” I rolled over onto my side, staring at the blank old wall ahead of me. I kept my eyes open for a long while, thinking over the bizarre bits of information I had gotten from Caleb. Everything about him and his words seemed to upset all grandmother had told me; I was more lost in this world than before.
I slid my eyelids shut and began drifting into the weightless feelings of sleep. Confused combinations of violet and black eyes swirled around in seas of silky onyx hair, drowning me with knotted lies. In my floating unconsciousness I pondered what to believe, my grandmother who raised me more than my own mother or a strange sensual pervert who suddenly appeared with strings of unanswered questions.
“…Caleb…”
Chapter Three
The Catalyst
Chapter Three
After two large inhales, the annoying, ticklish congestion of a sneeze erupted from my nose, which of course didn’t seem to faze the Immortal any as he continued to hunt around in a large open closet. I brushed my nose with my hand and looked back to the several boxes and small containers that lined a few shelves I had been asked to search. I lifted yet another box and wrinkled my nose at it. Dust. Every single object in the kitchen was covered in layers of thick, caked on dust. I ran a cloth I had found earlier across the front of the box, it was very difficult to figure out what anything was when all the food appeared to have come from various countries and various…who even knows… around the world both back home and here. I sniffed at its contents and coughed away from it, to avoid disturbing the dust again, and with irritation shoved the box back in-between its companions.
I examined a few more cans and with great disgust tossed them aside and turned to face the man still passively digging through the closet behind me. “You have absolutely no food in this kitchen. I mean, I know you’re Immortal, but you still need to eat! What have you been living on all these years? The only thing that’s plentiful enough to sustain a full-grown man here is dust. Dust, dust, and more freaking dust!” I set my hands on my hips and waited for him to reply.
“Here.”
His stoic voice surprised me and immediately following a small, circular object was thrown at me. My hands barely caught the thing before it hit me.
“I found that fruit in the pantry, that’s all I have.”
“An apple? Who keeps one apple in a pantry yet can’t even keep bread or cereal or just something that lasts more than a few weeks? Peanut butter! That lasts forever. You don’t even have that.” As I spoke I checked the apple thoroughly to ensure there wasn’t any mold, or worms, or bruises, anything that would make this an unsavory meal. “Ha, meal.” I looked up and saw him staring at me strangely.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head and inwardly hit myself for not working on that annoying habit when grandmother had kept insisting to.
“Well, come on. There are a few fruit trees in the garden.”
My eyes opened wide. “Garden? You have a garden!”
He grinned slightly at my expression and headed out of the small kitchen. I hurriedly followed so that I would not become lost in the maze contained within the dark tower.
“Where could you even keep a garden? I walked the full span of the tower when I first came, and regardless, the land was completely barren at least 10 or 15 feet around this entire building. So there is no way you could be hiding one, not by shielding it from sight at least. Unless, perhaps, you have some way of pulling it to and from this dimension which is just silly…I mean, I hardly believe that this is even a whole other world.”
The Immortal chuckled quietly ahead of me, to which I scoffed louder than I intended in the blackness.
“You’re quite talkative, aren’t you?” His still surprisingly mild tone carried to my ears.
“No. Sometimes I just ramble. Grandmother would always tell me when, so that I would shut up.” I rolled my eyes at the thought but then became silent. I know I hadn’t been gone from home that long but my grandmother’s death was starting to weigh on me with every mention of her.
“Jade.”
The sound of my name on the man’s lips was foreign and jolted me from my internal trance. He had never called me by my name before now and, strangely, I found it comforting. “What?” I held up my hand to avoid running into his back again.
“We’re here.” He opened a wide but low door, flooding light into the darkness of the hall.
Behind the door was a huge greenhouse, incredibly bright in comparison to the rest of the building, which hurt my eyes for a moment or so.
“Wow. I can’t believe such a place exists in this tower. How is this possible?”
I looked to find the man but he was not beside or behind me. I glanced to the doorway where I noticed his outline; he had yet again declined to enter the light.
“Why do you avoid the sun? It can’t hurt you. Well it can.” I mentally snapped my filter shut before I began to ramble about the various issues with prolonged sun exposure.
I walked to him and saw a gentle glow from the whites of his eyes. “Come on.” I took hold of his wrist as I had done before and pulled him to the smooth stone path on the floor of the nursery.
He was more reluctant this time, but came forward anyway. He looked even paler in this light, however he didn’t stay in place long enough for me to continue observing his features. His feet lithely walked further along the path of well-placed bricks, after a few steps he stopped and turned his head slightly; I saw a glint in his black eye and began to follow him.
“So, how did you manage all this?” I sped up my pace so that I was close enough to hear his low answer, if he gave one.
“I didn’t. The entire greenhouse is capable of maintaining itself.”
“How can it do that? They’re plants…I mean, well organized and trimmed plants.”
I watched his face and waited curiously for a reason, his eyes lowered once in thought but he declined to respond. Despite my curiosity, I decided not to argue and attempt to pull it out of him, his downcast face seemed to repel me and so I stepped back and followed in silence the rest of the way.
“Look.”
I turned my head, following his outstretched arm and extended finger. Growing up to the top of the arching glass dome was an enormous apple tree; reflexively I began to slowly caress the lone apple I still held gently in my palm.
“This tree must be centuries old.” I walked up to the tree, being careful to avoid stepping on any of the smaller plants surrounding the path and placed my free hand against the rough bark covered trunk. My eyes slid shut as I stood beneath the shade and inhaled the sweet smelling nature air around me. “Immortal, do you know how old this tree is?”
I waited for a few moments but he didn’t answer, I couldn’t even recognize his slow breath on the air. I turned from the tree to look toward the path where I had last seen him, but he wasn’t there. I blinked several times in confusion and glanced around the area. “Immortal?” I mumbled.
I stumbled lightly as I headed toward the path and turned in the direction of the door and then back to where we had been heading. My brow furrowed in confusion and annoyance. “What kind of person leaves someone stranded in a greenhouse in a pitch black maze of a tower?” I whispered beneath my breath before finally deciding to head further into the multitude of colors.
There was myriad foliage in every direction, in every color possible with vining limbs or bold leaves branching all over the visible patches of faux earth. Some seemed to be concoctions bred there in the greenery and others were foreign plants that were nearly or definitely extinct back home. I had a difficult time resisting going to each plant and touching its exterior or marveling at its colorful beauty. Focusing on finding the Immortal was becoming more difficult every time I saw what had to be a dead species with all its abnormal coloring and design.
After a great deal of walking, I noticed that the stone bricks were becoming fewer and far between and soon my feet were touching lush green grass. I followed the carpet to an even larger tree, which broke from the glass and spread its ever-growing branches out over the exterior of the dome. My head craned itself in order to take in the entire canopy of green and yellow and orange shifting from a slight breeze drifting through the leaves from the outside.
I brought my gaze down and saw the Immortal standing before the huge expanse of life; it was difficult to tell his expression from his stoic stance. However I did notice that he had his hands in front of him, possibly holding something.
“Immortal?” I leaned forward a little in order to try and see what it was he held so close, but not disturb him by trying to pier over his shoulder, not that I could, since he was so tall.
His head shifted briefly in acknowledgment of my question.
I waited and he soon turned around, eyes closed and palms still cupped. His pace was steady and even; his feet stopped beside me and he looked down at my confused expression. He suddenly dropped an orange colored item in front of me, which I caught awkwardly, while still holding the apple he had handed me earlier. I shifted the object into my free hand and saw that it was a large, soft peach, lightly colored with a few leaves still attached to its stem.
“Um, thank you.”
He nodded and continued in the direction I had just come from. I looked back at the peach tree and gazed for a long while without really thinking of anything or anyone, I merely watched the leaves swirl around in the wind beyond the confines of the glass.
“If you linger, you’ll be left behind again.”
His sudden loud voice startled me out of my thoughtless reverie, causing me to nearly drop the fruit in my hands. “Pardon me.” I muttered somewhat sarcastically.
He exhaled what could have been an airy laugh and walked on, leaving me to catch up or be left in the continuous wilderness. I quickly jogged to follow him. His black hair swayed with his gentle gait and entertained me through the silent journey to the door of the greenhouse, although when he stopped at the threshold I nearly rammed my nose against his spine.
“Don’t nod off in the hall; my back won’t be visible to follow.”
I shook away my mesmerized expression and childishly stuck my tongue out behind his back. Once we stepped into the dark, I instinctively held the fruit closer to my chest while I watched the Immortal’s outline disappear as the greenery door shut and the light was extinguished.
I could hear my quiet breaths and the light taps of my feet on the wooden flooring, the hushed aura in the hall made me a little uncomfortable.
“Stairs.”
“What?” I stopped after hearing his voice ahead of me.
“We are at the stairs.”
“Oh.” I moved the peach into my other arm and then reached my hand out to find the banister. Instead I met his hand in the dark; he took hold of my limb gently and moved it to the smooth surface of the timber rail. I grasped it abruptly, he then released me and went on down. I cautiously groped my foot out ahead of me and let it fall, with the hope that a step would stop me. Luckily it did. I sighed in relief and continued easily down the stairs, but nearly fell forward once I had reached the floor in a sad attempt to find another step.
I searchingly listened for his minute breaths to figure out how close to me he was, but couldn’t hear anything. I took another cautious step forward until I saw the familiar red light glow around the Immortal’s hand against a wall. Quickly I headed over to him, stopping right as he opened the door to the room we had been in earlier, my grandmother’s old room. The pale orange of evening light flooded the hall as he opened the door and gentlemanly gestured for me to enter. I slowly walked into the center of the large room and then turned to face his familiar outline in the doorway.
“So, I’m staying in here then?”
“Yes, it would be most appropriate.”
“Alright,” I turned back to face the setting sun’s glow. “Goodnight, Immortal.”
No response came to me, and I assumed he had already left, likely closing the door without a sound beforehand. A small grin settled itself on my face.
I walked over to a sturdy, dark wood writing desk adjacent to the window and placed the two fruits on the chipped surface, making sure they wouldn’t topple over. Slowly I pulled the chair out from beneath the table and sat with a low sigh. “I have barely been awake that long today, but I still feel worn out.” I dropped my head onto the old top and wrapped my arms up into a pillow.
“Ow.” I lifted myself off the desk and looked down to see what had jabbed my stomach. A small curved handle protruding from a drawer had been knocked loose when I laid my head down and applied weight to the top. My hand rested upon the knob and gently pulled the drawer loose, revealing an ancient book and several scraps of paper, alongside a few aged pencils.
I slipped the hard covered text out from its container and placed it where I had once been resting. Archaic symbols, some of which were exactly akin to the ones covering the paper that decorated the walls of the room, spread themselves before me. I ran my palm across the coat, feeling every torn fabric edge and embossed character against my fingertips. The textile smelled similar to my grandmother; “she always had a lovely aroma…” a tear broke free of my eye and glided down my cheek, landing on the rough stitching of the book.
With one hand running along my face to catch the salt water of memories, the other took hold of the edge of the pages and opened the strange volume. Pages flipped and flew by, finally settling on a bookmarked section with a thin strip of paper in the crease. The words were small but at least they were in English. My finger underlined the handwritten text as I read.
“Frozen
Drops of red wishes,
Bits of existence yet none of flow,
No breath to have,
Glow of life,
Dance of strength pulsed with text,
Simple answers,
Glean complex regrets.”
I left my hand on the page as I thought of the poem grandmother had written into a spell. The words themselves were combined in such a way so that they were to create something, supposedly. I leaned back in the chair, pushing it up onto two legs while stabilizing myself with the elderly desk. “Ugh, I always hated literature classes. I don’t do analysis very well.”
I stood from my seat and walked away from the confounding text; instead, I decided to search the rest of the room. When I faced the door unintentionally I stopped in my tracks, noticing the stance of the Immortal past the threshold and glaring at the book I had just left.
“Immortal?” I cocked my head at his peculiar expression and stepped toward him in curiosity.
His hard black eyes kept away from me, continuing to force its anger at the area behind me. I held my hand out to him in a mere gesture of concern. “Immor—” he turned his face in my direction, stopping my words while looking at my outstretched limb with disgust. His eyes slid closed, swiftly turning from my view, and heading out of the room without a sound.
Chapter Two
The Catalyst
Chapter Two
I gently opened my eyes and found a dark hard wood ceiling looking down at me. I quickly flung myself forward in shock, “What the…?” a small damp cloth fell from my head into my lap. I picked up the cloth and curiously looked around the area I found to be surrounding me. I was in a large room where everything was made entirely of wood and iron, several pieces of paper with strange archaic, and some kind of familiar writing covered two walls of the room. The sheets I sat upon appeared hand woven wool and silk spread out on a four-poster bed with a roofless canopy.
“Uh, this is weird.” I rubbed my head as I got up to have a better look around. I stood with a bit of a wobble and noticed I had many small bandages all over my body and my dress had been stitched perfectly where every rip and tear had been made. “That’s right, I fell through the ceiling…but where am I now?” As I headed for the large door, I continued to observe the room. There was a huge window on the wall opposite the door and it had the same balcony with warped iron railing I remembered seeing outside… so, it must be a real one then. Since I had been backing up while still observing the window I nearly bumped into the door, but my hand rubbed against the metal doorknob before I managed to. I spun around to turn the handle slowly, just in case it made any sudden noises.
I gradually peered out from the room I was in and, glancing in both directions, saw only vast empty hallways. The darkness enveloping the entire place seemed to give every corridor or room an eternal breadth of area. I cautiously crept down the left passage, mostly out of curiosity rather than self-preservation, and ran my hand along the smooth timber of the shadowed walls. It wasn’t terribly hard to see once you had been used to the murky atmosphere for a moment or so, but in a few select areas there seemed to be an unrelenting aura of not only black air but also a morbid rippling that made my skin crawl. I tried to ignore the uncomfortable feelings and continued on for an endless span of time until I felt my hand brush against the cool iron handle of a door. Through my trek, I had forgotten to pay attention to where I was going, “it’s good I kept my hand out,” I sighed, “otherwise I’m sure I would have rammed right into this door.” My voice echoed slightly despite my lowered tone, although thankfully the waves of sound didn’t vibrate as harshly in opposition to the thick wooden panels.
I opened the door and found it to be incredibly heavy, as though it were made of iron as well. With panted breathes and much thanks to my grandmother for pushing me into doing yoga, I managed to heave the door into a slightly ajar position, just enough for me to wedge through. On the other side there was only more of the abyss that appeared to be engulfing the entire building, all, however, except the entrance to the tower where the peculiar clear blue light emanated without origin.
Now that I had become lost within the belly of the beast, I found myself wishing that I could be back in that lobby where at least I was able to see my surroundings. I sighed with frustration at my never ending sojourn and ran my tired back along the passage wall, sitting in defeat and now combing through tangled hair from the impromptu brush against the confines of the corridor. “Crap, now I’ll never get out of this place.”
An abrupt squeak of floorboards came from my previous location, most likely from behind the large door I just realized I had left open. Quickly, my feet scrambled to stand and hurriedly moved me further away from the noises, since currently my brain decided to argue with itself over whether or not to see if anyone were there and basically risk the chance of tortured murder on a different world in another dimension…or something like that. I stumbled lightly, using my painstakingly enhanced balance to catch myself.
“Hello?”
I froze in place, neither brain nor feet working. The question fluttered out of existence after running itself over my sensitive ears and causing little nervous pricks to dance along my skin.
“Hello.”
The voice came closer and this time it seemed as if the sound crashed into me like an ocean wave, flowing around every curve of my body.
A large hand gently placed on my shoulder appeared nearly two seconds after the sounds. “Found you.” The definitely male voice whispered behind me, however, instead of screaming, I tightly gripped the hand, forcefully twisted the wrist, and finally thrust my other palm in the area of his face. All I received for my self-defense was a quiet vocal expression of surprise and the fast gripping of both my wrists.
“That was uncalled for.” He spoke clearly.
I scoffed with irritation in my tone and attempted to pull myself free, but to no avail. “Let go!”
“You’re rather rude.”
“Rude!? HA, you’re the one sneaking up on young women in this abysmal rabbit’s hole!”
“Rabbit’s hole?” His voice sounded genuinely confused.
“It’s a literature reference.” I sighed and shook my head. “But that is not the point!”
“There is no point, therefore this conversation is pointless.”
“Pointless!? You’re the psychotic torturer kidnapping women!”
“Kidnapping? I never kidnapped you.”
“Me? Whoever said I was speaking of myself? I obviously meant the woman you had chained to a wall!”
“Her? I suppose I may have captured her, but I had my reasons; nothing for you to worry about.”
“Why not worry? Regardless of how I got here, I have been kept here, implying that I may be another victim. Not all murders require bait.”
“You are being stubborn.”
I growled at his remark and yet again tried for my freedom. “Just let go already!”
“Why? I came to get you, if you had simply stayed put I wouldn’t have needed to come and find you.”
The strangely matter-a-fact and actually sort of true way he said that only made me more annoyed and yet also kind of embarrassed by the current circumstances.
“Come on.” He released my arms, but I could still feel his presence in front of me. I felt a gentle brush of skin on skin and noticed that he was slipping his hand into mine, strangely I felt my face flare hot for a brief moment. He then easily began to make his way back to the door with me in tow.
After a moment of awkward silence, I opened my mouth to speak. “So…how did you find me?” My voice was relatively quiet, though somehow I knew he could hear me.
“It wasn’t difficult; I followed your heart actually.”
I laughed loudly, thinking his comment had been a cliché joke.
“What’s so funny?”
“What you said, you were joking, right?”
“Joking? No. I followed the pulse of your heart and minute sounds of breath as well.”
I cocked my head in the dark. “How could you follow something like that?”
“The dark is most beneficial, I use it to see and hear.”
“You’re blind?”
“No, but living in the dark helps one learn to use heightened senses.”
“Ah. That’s a useful skill. The most interesting thing about me is that my nose is hypersensitive.” I released a solemn giggle at my pointless fact muttering.
“That is very helpful. A powerful sense of smell can be invaluable.”
A shook my head and suddenly found my face colliding with a solid mass.
“Sorry.” He mumbled. “I needed to reopen the door.”
“Oh, no it’s fine…my fault really. Umm, do you need any help? I know the door is rather weighty.”
“Really? I always thought it a little too light.”
He steered me across the threshold and afterward I heard the quiet thud of iron against wood.
We continued at a calm pace the rest of the way to the room I had awoken in. He stopped me and I assumed we had reached the entrance, though he made no indications. I watched the black air I believed he occupied and a sudden red glow appeared, outlining the upper form of his body.
“He’s taller than I thought.” I swiftly thrust my hands over my mouth during which I thought I heard him elicit a quiet laugh.
When the blood aura decayed, I heard the turn of the handle bringing forth a crack of light from the room behind. Once the door was opened completely I found myself heading directly for the balcony windows, which I pulled wide open allowing me to gaze outside.
The timid breeze rustled my hair and I simply wanted to breathe in the sun’s warmth after my long trek through gloom. I turned around expecting to find the man right behind me, but I only managed to pinpoint his outline still behind the doorway in the darkened hall.
“Why are you still out there?” I tilt my head.
I walked across the floorboards and without even thinking I stretched out my hands and took hold of the man’s, pulling him into the room despite his peculiar hesitancy. Once I got him into the light I noticed his features more clearly than the fuzzy memory of when I first saw him though the ceiling. He did have black eyes, completely pure; I couldn’t see what was iris and what was pupil. He also had long black hair falling down past his hips, with two short pieces draped along his chest wrapped in blue colored ribbons. His skin was fair and smooth with no bits of pigment left darkening fragments of the surface, although he did have dark circles under his eyes.
I think I was staring slightly because his brow rose along one side with curiosity. “What are you looking at?”
“Hmm… oh, nothing. You just…you look exactly as I thought you might.”
“What are you talking about?”
I released his hands and shook my head in denial. “Nothing, don’t worry about it.”
He opened his mouth to question my reluctance, but I immediately spoke before he could. “So…why did you put me in here? Why am I still here, actually?” I casually looked around the room while waiting.
“You were injured because of me; it was only natural that I help you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to become injured if your ceiling was stable.”
“The tower is stable; you merely became an easy target for Narre. That is entirely your fault.”
“My fault? Maybe you should take better care of where you leave obvious cracks so that curious trespassers don’t become interested!”
“That never existed until your presence triggered Narre’s attention.”
“Well, pardon me!” With my hand expressions gesturing wildly, I fell backward onto the bed and sighed. Though I was focusing my irritated gaze on the ceiling, I soon noticed the man’s head coming into my field of vision. “What?” I mumbled.
“It just occurred to me that I don’t know your name.”
I blinked several times as I also came to the realization that I didn’t know his name either. “No wait, I know you. You’re the Immortal.”
He didn’t seem at all phased at my knowledge of his title. Which, considering my grandmother said that’s what a few people called him, didn’t surprise me.
“I’m Jade.” I held my hand up in the air, expecting the general greeting of a handshake. However, he simply looked at me; for some bizarre reason I think I had been expecting some realization at who I was. I lowered my hand slowly and blinked a few times in confusion. “What? It’s just a handshake?”
“I don’t particularly enjoy physical contact.”
I sat up and furrowed my brow. “What are you talking about? You took my hand in the corridor and you allowed me to bring you into the room by grasping your wrists.”
“Different. One was merely to help you through the dark, the other I had not been anticipating and was not voluntary on my part.”
“Hmm. You certainly have issues.” I stood up off the bed and started to gracefully pace around the room, somewhat unintentionally encircling him. “Soooo, is there any food here? I feel like I haven’t eaten in days.”
“You’ve been asleep for over a day.”
“WHAT! What do you mean?”
“I mean what I said. Why else say it if I had not intended the meaning?”
I rubbed my temples in frustration. “Uhh, too many means…” I casually flopped down face first onto the floor and moaned into the wood. After a few moments of silence I felt the presence of the man next to me. “What?” My voice was muffled and sounded more like ‘uut’ in the confined space between the ground and my barely open mouth.
“I keep some vitals on the second floor kitchen.”
I pulled up onto my arms and raised my brow slightly. “Did you say vitals? You may be old but you don’t need to speak like you are. It’s the 21st century where I’m from and we say food.” I looked at him and noticed he had a much taken aback appearance.
“Who are you?”
I held my mouth open and drooped my eyes as though I couldn’t believe he was that inattentive or ignorant. “I told you, I’m Jade.”
“No, not your name; who are you? Where did you come from?”
This time I sat up, and nodded somewhat for my own benefit. “Oh yeah, err, yes, sorry. I had completely forgotten about that with all the chaos I seemed to fall into.”
“Of course.” He himself nodded to my explanation calmly.
I cleared my voice lightly. “I’m Jade Kannon. Daughter of Sonya and Derek, and granddaughter of Guinevere and Kalen.” I paused my incredibly formal, and honestly, somewhat sarcastic introduction to watch his face. When he made no show of recognition, I then opened my mouth. “Uhm, you do remember her, don’t you? Guinevere, Keeper of the Catalyst?” Still saying nothing in response, I continued with a little of my own confusion, “you know, brown wavy hair, grey blue eyes, a few dark freckles here and there.” I was pointing at my face as I spoke, when at last he did something.
Closing his eyes, his face briefly twisted in anger. “I knew it,” he whispered beneath his breath.
I moved my head to better see his face, which was downcast and turned away from me. He didn’t say anything, so I placed my hands on either side of his face and brought it around to look into my eyes. He looked stunned by my sudden contact and I was also a bit shocked that I simply did such an intimate gesture to a near stranger. I reactively pulled my hands away and held them together close to my chest. “Sorry, but don’t worry.” I paused and pondered what I was going to say next. “Um, grand-I mean, Guinevere didn’t leave you; she was taken back to my world…well, her world. She has never been able to come back to you. The Catalyst, the ring…” I held up my hand, “she gave it to me for my 18th birthday. It was that night that I came here.”
He straightened himself and walked out of the room. Unsure of where I even was, I quickly scrambled to my feet and followed him as best as I could into the darkness of the tower.
Chapter One
The Catalyst
Chapter One
I casually repositioned myself on my bed when I realized that I had been staring at the small emerald lined box for over an hour.
Gradually, I opened the soft cover and exposed the perfectly clear gem, shaped similarly to a needle, nestled in a black onyx ring, which closed in around it in peculiar designs. I gently removed the piece of jewelry, and examined it closely beneath the lamp beside me. Every turn reflected the sudden rainbow of colors produced by the apparent prism within the onyx setting.
I slipped the smooth stones onto my ring finger and again observed its appearance in the light.
“Hmm…” I tilted my head curiously. I had never really been too fond of jewelry other than the simple rosary-like necklace I wore to ward off my cousin’s curse; I shivered reflexively from the memory. However, there was something special about this ring.
I solemnly remembered my grandmother’s story, the true one at least. She said she had slit her wrist in an attempt to kill herself. When she fell, her injured limb landed onto the old wooden flooring of her kitchen and the longer she laid there the more her blood seeped through the cracks in the wood.
For some reason, the ring and its box were directly beneath the boards her blood was spilt on. Every time a drop slipped down to the hidden area containing the ring it seemed attracted to the gem. She remembered that just before her final breath the ring must have become full, turning a deep scarlet, causing it to emit a slow pulse. Her flat hand had begun glowing in reaction to the rhythm and just a second later she looked as if she simply flashed out of existence, not a single drop of blood was left where she once lay.
I stared blankly at the wall before me, and then took a quick look at the ring resting comfortably on my finger. Sighing, I mumbled quietly to myself. “I suppose I could try…it couldn’t hurt. Well, to try, not…not literally.”
I quietly pulled off my bed and walked over to my bookshelf; resting neatly on top was a medium sized chest carved from wood and intricately painted in various warm shades of green. The clasp slipped open easily and I carefully opened the top. Deep within the several objects filled with past memories was a small clean steal dagger my uncle had given me before he disappeared.
Once I had replaced the chest I moved to the center of my bedroom and kneeled to the floor. My natural inclination toward strange and possibly dangerous things caused my nerves to flutter anxiously as I steadied the dagger above my left palm. I tried to keep my breathing steady as I prepared to start and in my head counted: 1…2…3…cut!
The initial feeling was strange, but not bad. Nevertheless, almost immediately after that the pain hit me, the cries of millions of nerves struck my body and I instinctively clutched my hand tightly, making a strong fist in an attempt to dull the pain.
Biting my lip hard, I released my grasp. The cut was much deeper than I had intended, the wound reaching from the center of my hand to the top, thin skin of my wrist. The flow of blood was very strong, spilling onto the floor in small pools of red. My body began feeling a little heavy and I seemed to be slowly rocking my head in a gentle, rhythmic circle.
Slowly, I took a deep breath and balanced myself as best as I could. Despite my attempts to control my body, I continued to feel the same as I felt the blood dripping away from my existence, like an hourglass leaking it’s sand, and slowly my ripped hand began to throb angrily as though it were being refused oxygen.
“Damn.” I exhaled, “I think…I cut..the veins... but...but I wouldn’t have thought that…I would pass out so soon…I-I never would have pegged myself for…squeamish…” I took a few more deep breaths while weakly holding my wrist, trying in a near futile attempt to slow the blood. “I’m…going to pass..out…”
The strange feeling of constriction and pain continued to increase its overwhelming hold on me; in an effort to cease the confusion I quickly jabbed the odd ring deep into the flooded abrasion and then slapped my hand onto the floor. I nearly slipped in the blood covering the surface combined with the clotting layer on my hand, but I caught myself awkwardly just as the fabled red glow traced along each stained finger. I watched the light until suddenly the world turned black.
Large shadowy figures were everywhere; it was so very dark, my eyes ignored my hopes that they’d adjust. Being practically blind, I began running my hand in along the ground I sat on, soft dirt, small rocks, and little clumps of grass and moss rubbed against my fingers.
I quirked my brow slightly, “…Is this the place?” I thought out loud.
I leaned forward and used my hands to help push myself up. A sudden sharp pain swept through my calf, causing me to topple over and catch myself alongside a hard mass.
“OW!” My voice echoed eerily through the blackness before me.
With an unseen, but definitely annoyed, expression on my face I pulled away from the object and rubbed my hand along my now sore back. Using my other hand, I reached backward for the thing I had run into and found a rough, bumpy, moss covered tree. The tree wasn’t very big and upon further inspection I found that I had just nearly missed a broken, protruding branch, which was covered in sticky sap. I quickly pulled my hand away from the substance and wiped it against the trunk and a little on my most likely filthy dress.
Continuing to feel around, which gleaned only more evidence of foliage, I mumbled to myself, “This must be the forest grandmother talked of.”
I stumbled briefly in the dark against a rock lying in my hidden path; thankfully another tree broke my fall. “If this is the woods, it’s not quite how grandmother described. She said it had been strangely bright with animals rustling all around her. I don’t hear anything.” I stopped my blind groping and looked about at the deaf air around me. “What was that thing about silence in a woods?” I tapped my lip as I thought. “If-if you don’t hear anything, that’s when you should worry…because…animals scatter when they sense danger...”
My heartbeat sped up and my eyes observed the black anxiously. I suddenly felt my hand grasping the metal cross of my necklace.
“Help me, Daela.” I heard my voice whisper.
The sound of my deceased cousin’s name seemed to echo back to me, spreading though the hidden trees like light reflected off metal. Beneath my hold the tree shook abruptly, knocking me backwards. Daela’s name still fluttered to my ears in the dark.
A warm wisp of air ran across my neck. “Guinevere?”
I jerked slightly at the sound of my grandmother’s name, even though the darkness prevented me from seeing anything.
“Who’s there?” My voice echoed once again. “How do you know my grandmother?” Once the words of my second question passed over my lips I noticed there was no chime of echoes but more of a dull, flat nothing, similar to talking at a wall.
“Grandmother?” The mysterious voice spoke clearly, as though it were right before my face.
Abruptly, bright light broke out around me, startling my eyes, and I reactively brought up my arms to shield my face. A small, soft hand lightly touched my arms, urging me to put them down. I blinked my eyes a few times before they adjusted and settled on an attractive child, no more than, perhaps, eight years old. I opened my mouth to speak but was interrupted by a delicate, albeit, demanding voice.
“Who are you?” bold, golden eyes were fixed on my own. Waving wildly in half curls were long thick locks of completely brown hair, nearly the exact same color as the dirt and trees I now saw clearly around me. Her golden glare narrowed at my silence. “Who are you!?” she demanded again.
“Oh, uh, sorry, I’m Jade.” I grinned politely, but continued sitting quietly beneath the young girl’s gaze.
“Jade?” She lowered her brow questioningly, “How do you know Guinevere?” Her tone suggested she was confused by my answer.
“Guinevere is my grandmother. I’m the only one of thirteen grandchildren who enjoys being with her.” I chuckled a little awkwardly.
“Grandmother? Grandchildren? Guinevere never had children.” The girl gracefully crossed her legs and sat down across from me like we were about to have some long conversation. Since she no longer protested so forcefully I assumed she wanted me to elaborate.
“She did eventually. Ten children, six boys and five girls, however her first two boys-twins actually- they were born at an entirely different time period then the other eight but they have been missing for a few centuries. And since obviously she never told anyone but me about her life here, none of her other children have any idea about their older brothers or their mother’s past.” I paused, realizing I had kind of babbled off, but she remained watching me, as though waiting still. So I continued, “Uhm, unfortunately most of her children dislike her, so they never come to visit.” I looked off, thinking, “there was one son who cared for her and one daughter who tolerates her, that would be my mother. I had also been rather close with my uncle, he was like another father to me…” my gaze lowered sadly, “but he went missing after my fourteenth birthday, three years ago.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” The girl shook her hands angrily, “I don’t understand. I thought Guinevere left because she never wanted a family or children?” The girl seemed to be unintentionally leaning toward me with intense curiosity in her eyes.
“Oh um, no…is that why you thought she left?”
The girl nodded anxiously.
“No, she told me that she was heading for this forest to tell someone something, I would imagine you. I think it was to mention that she may be pregnant.” The girl inclined forward a little more and opened her small mouth to speak but I held my index finger to her lips. “She said was running through the trees when suddenly the setting just changed and she was on a rain drenched cobblestone road in the late 1700’s,” I quirked my lips in thought, “I think around 1798 or ’99. Grandmother told me she researched for many years, but was never able to figure out why she went back or why she could never return.”
Surprisingly, the girl had a large smile drawn across her face.
“What?” I tilted my head.
She ignored my question and leapt up happily, her long hair bouncing about her face and shoulders. “Hello Jade, granddaughter of Guinevere, I am Autumn, the druid of Talen Forest,” she spread her arms around smiling proudly.
The gesture leads me to notice she had a vine twisting around and going into parts of her left arm. I didn’t have much time to observe it though, since she continued her exaggerated introduction.
“It is a great pleasure to meet you.” She held out a small hand and, although I was wary, I took her invitation; the second our hands met she swiftly yanked me off the ground. I attempted to pull my hand away, but Autumn held fast. “The Catalyst suits you well.” I watched as the rainbow effect reflected onto Autumn’s young face.
In all the chaos I had almost completely forgotten about the ring on my finger and the cut on my hand. I pulled my arm away from her at last in order to see my once mortally wounded limb; a long, pale, somewhat silvery taut scar lay where the bloody slit once was.
“Don’t worry, the scar will go away a little more in an hour.”
“Only a little?”
“Yeah, the first wound you ever get when you come here stays with you as a scar forever, but all the others completely heal once you arrive in Talen.”
“Hmm.” I ran the tip of my finger along the smooth, slight protrusion on my skin.
“Well, now that we’ve been introduced, it’s time that you got going!”
“Wha—” she turned me around as I protested and pointed a finger directly ahead of me.
“Just go straight, heading for the shadows. That’s where it’ll be.” I felt her give me a gentle nudge forward.
“W-wait, that’s where what will be?”
“You’ll see.” Her voice whispered across my ear as she had done the first time we met.
“Autumn?” I swung around, but she was nowhere to be seen. Taking a deep breath, I returned to face the gradually darkening shadows. “Ok, I guess it’s off to… somewhere.”
Once I started walking I yet again felt the sharp pain in my calf, it had lessened now but still not good enough to walk well or quickly. I gasped through clenched teeth and continued, limping along with the help of sporadic trees. After about an hour, the sky had nearly fallen into the blackness I once sat in and the bright Talen Forest still shown faintly behind me. The further I went, the fewer the trees became, but then about fifteen feet away an odd, large tower stood on the ground, the area around the edifice was far spreading and barren of all nature. Once I finally managed to get out into the clearing, I was better able to view the structure hidden within Talen Forest.
“Wow, that’s a very tall building.” I craned my neck so that I would be able to view the peak of the tower.
Large rectangular bricks wrapped themselves around the cylinder with perhaps three large windows set into the stone, two of which had balconies with black iron railing warped into a strange mess of designs. As I limped in a daze around the side, I found vibrant green ivy growing from nowhere up the wall and slightly tangled with a railing. The leaves stemming from the vine were large and soft with small veins of blue emanating from beneath its thin skin. For some reason, I felt rather compelled to hold and take one of the hypnotic leaves. Gently, I slit through the stem of one leaf and carefully tucked it into the bosom of my dress, as I had no pockets. The plants appendage was warm against my chest, calming my racing mind, which eased some of my discomfort with my wounded calf.
While I continued my observation I came across a large door. “That looks relatively heavy and impregnable, maybe steel or some other form of iron. I wonder why? It’s not very probable that whoever lives here comes across many robbers.” I cocked my head and noticed the handle, it was vertical iron and just as warped as the railing along the balconies edges.
“AHHHHHH!” A muffled female shriek echoed in the clearing.
My heart skipped a beat as I gasped, “holy crap…w-where’d that come from?” I gazed up the tall structure, “the only possible place is this tower.”
Although the voice was obviously expressing pain from who knows what lurking inside, I reached for the large handle and pulled. Dust, dirt, and small rocks drifted from the top of the door molding, it had evidently not been opened in several decades or centuries even. Luckily, as I strained to open the door, not one rusted cry came from the hinges. I heaved a sigh of relief, just in case there was a murderer or psychotic torturing fiend waiting in the tower, and so I then carefully shut the heavy door behind me.
The inside was even darker than the clearing until my eyes adjusted and I noticed a small amount of patchy, pure blue light drifting in from most likely one of, if not all of, the three windows.
“I didn’t see the moon while I was outside?” After a moment I shrugged my shoulders and began to look around.
I quickly found that the room was enormous and quite empty, with polished black marble floors and smooth ebony banisters lining the two elegant spiral staircases, one on each side of the room.
A sudden vibrating creak sounded from above me.
“Eheh…that’s right, I had almost forgotten about the scream I heard. Maybe I shouldn’t go on...” I had my head tilted slightly in thought and my upper lip pushed out over my lower one as I looked cautiously up into the ceiling’s abyss.
The excitement began increasing its force and fast paced adrenaline advanced its once steady flow through my veins. My thoughts raced quickly with all I could imagine, good and bad, and something clicked in my brain. “Urg…” I groaned, “It seems my curiosity has gotten the better of my fears.” I bit my lip lightly and then stepped toward the left staircase, but before my foot even touched the first step I felt the blue, clear light envelope me. It was strangely warm, like walking into the sun’s rays. I looked up to find the source of the light and discovered that the blue only seemed to continue toward that black nothingness above me. The light was similar to the source-less vines that grew on the outer walls of the evidently huge tower.
Turning my head away, I again focused on the dark stair that twined before me. Another shrill creak rattled the wood of the banisters and pulsed eerie vibrations through the tips of my fingers. I stepped onto the smooth step and began to lift myself up. The blue light dulled bit by bit and the further up I went, the deeper I headed into darkness and consequentially toward a possibly life threatening danger.
When I finally reached the continuation of a stair I assumed I had reached the top level, although I couldn’t actually see to be sure. As my eyes adjusted to the pure black around me, I noticed a ray of white light emanating from what was most likely a crack in the floor. I made my way over to the hole rather slowly, groping about with my hands straight ahead of me. I kept feeling the general paranoid thoughts of sudden blindness, like I were about to hit a wall or fall down a never-ending pit.
The hole in the wood flooring, or so it appeared to be, was not very large but did give me a view of two peoples in a brighter room, though it was dimmed in several areas. It appeared to be a man speaking to a woman tied to a wall coming up out of the floor. “A wall in the middle of the floor?” I whispered without thinking, but my hand quickly smacked over my mouth. Hopefully they hadn’t heard me.
For a brief moment I thought I saw the woman’s disturbingly bright pink eyes twinkle excitedly in my direction, but I must have only imagined it. Her eyes were very vivid.
She suddenly screamed violently toward the man who leapt back with anger on his face, at least that’s what it looked like. I didn’t really have the best view from where I was. She definitely glanced at me this time and her eyes seemed to glow before she winked briefly at me. I pulled back my curious eye in confusion and concern. However, an almost immediate cracking sound erupted from beneath my body. Before I knew it the floor had given way and I felt myself falling a good twenty feet down, however, before hitting the ground, I was caught lightly in the air and then set down on the broken rubble. There was a sudden flare of pain from my injured calf; no doubt falling through a ceiling didn’t help matters much.
Everything was blurry for a few seconds due to the abrupt change of light and startling fall, but once I could see clearly I saw untainted black eyes staring back at me. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what his expression was, but I assumed it wasn’t a good one. We continued to stare at one another, though I kept my gaze for mere uncertainty of what could happen if I turned away.
A few long black hairs draped down over his shoulder and caught my attention, making a good excuse to stop looking so intently at him. He seemed to begin the attempts of forming a word when the woman abruptly rammed into him, knocking a chunk out of an arch molding and breaking several small objects.
Many more loud bangs came from the room openly connected to the one I had landed in. A bit of the separating wall beside me began to crack and dribble pieces of what looked like dry wall but smelt completely different. I leaned forward to touch the strange substance when the wall unexpectedly ruptured and collided with my head. The peculiar scent hit me along with a painfully nauseous dizziness, I felt my eyes roll against my eyelids with small patches and blurs of moving light and then I drifted into unconsciousness.
Prologue
The Catalyst
The Prologue
“Jade, do you remember the story I told you as a little girl?” My grandmother gently held my hand between her own, her soft aching whisper carried on the heavy smelling air of the room she had been in the last few weeks of her gradually worsening illness.
I nodded slowly and placed my other free hand over our entwined ones. Her hazy gray blue eyes still held the youthful glimmer I always used to see when she looked at me as a girl. A small grin pulled at her delicately aged face and then she nodded as well, disrupting her pure white hair, which flowed in soft waves all around her face and head.
“Jade sweetie, can you hand me the box over on the vanity.” I rotated my waist toward the small table near the bed. The container was about the same size as a ring box with a strange greenish metal or stone lining the edges and forming in the center of the cover to create a strange design. It appeared to be a hand.
I placed the package in her open palm and watched as she stroked the unique design on the top. Tears flooded her eyes and her breath shook slightly as she ran a finger across her cheeks.
“Are you alright?” I moved forward to make sure everything was normal.
“I’m fine sweetie, fine.” She eased herself up against her pillows along the headboard while still cradling the box in her hand as though it were the most precious thing in the world. “Jade, remember how in the story the simple girl ended up in a magical world and met the man of her dreams?”
“Yes,” I quirked my brow in confusion.
“The story is actually…very different.”
“I don’t understand, what do you mean different? Why does it matter?”
“You see, the story is true but not exactly how I told it.”
I shook my head. “But—”
“Jade.” Her quiet voice interrupted my question, “I feel that it may be time to tell you the real story, or at least how it really began, but I warn you, it’s not what you may think.” She chuckled a little, “You probably won’t believe me, if you ever even did before.” A small smile stayed on her face for a moment, as if she were reminiscing on something, but then her expression drooped a bit, “…just, please, wait until I finish telling you. ”
I nodded somewhat reluctantly and repositioned myself as she took a deep breath in order to begin speaking.
“Back in the 1600’s, around 52 years after the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims had settled into their lives somewhat, I was born. It was the 21st of June 1672 that I was born as the second daughter of a prominent family among our colony. I grew up like all children did in that time, however I had always felt…different. And some of my interests were likewise. Unfortunately many of those were things our families, my family, would consider evil. Around my 18th birthday I decided to start quietly voicing these interests, which caught the attention of a small group of three woman and two men in our town. It turned out they were what our village dubbed as witches, though, despite everything I had learned and heard and been forcefully taught since I was an infant, I simply didn’t see in them the qualities our reverend had described. I worked with them for about a year, learning and discovering all these incredible things I never knew but felt I was somehow always meant to know. It was so, fulfilling, so wonderful that I was,” she chuckled “I was over the moon. And in all the haze of acceptance and confidence in myself, I stupidly decided to try and tell my parents who I really was. What I really loved and wanted in life.”
For a minute she paused, looking off, her lower lip slightly quivering before she pulled in a deep breath to continue.
“They disowned me; called me a devil worshipper. I spent two weeks living in that horror from not only them, but soon the whole of our town. You know, back then, the world wasn’t like it is now. There really wasn’t anywhere I could go, and even if I could, this place was my home. Our sense of community was so strong, so, completely normal, that when it was stripped from me it was hard to live.” She sniffed a bit as a few tears ran down her mildly flushed cheeks.
Clearing her throat a tad, “Well, not long afterward all of this happened, it had been decided that two of my spell-casting friends and myself were condemned to be burned at the stake. The remaining three of my friends were kidnapped for a time but were able to escape, and as far as I know they lived safely for the rest of their lives. Oh, and just so you know, this was close to the time when the famed Salem Witch Trials occurred. I guess we sort of gave the final spark to that flame.
“Anyway, back to before that happily ever after my friends hopefully managed, these three appeared the night before our death, and rather stealthily rescued us from where we had been confined. Thanks to their excelled skills, they were able to burn a hole in the wall so that my two captive friends and I were able to slip out into the woods unseen. We were on the run for three days, and while I knew that I shouldn’t feel badly, I reached a point where I finally couldn’t stand the guilt that welled up inside me. The main problem was that I missed my two younger brothers terribly. They had always played with me, and called for me and not my mother when they were scared or sick. So, after a great deal of tumultuous thought, I eventually decided to leave my company and went back to my cottage home.”
She exhaled a small sigh, “It was about one in the morning when I arrived, so I crept in through a window and, as quietly as possible, headed to my brothers’ bedroom. They were asleep together in their one bed, their shiny black hair rustled on top of the pillows. I was rather eager and wanted to run over, hug them, and never let go again. But I had to be quiet, so I went over and gently tapped them awake. Neither were too surprised to see me; they were always rather mischievous and not easily scared little boys.” Grandmother smiled sadly at the thought.
“The boys both sat up and, instead of a warm reception, I was met with cold glares. They had these big green eyes, so full of expression, almost just like yours actually,” she grinned lovingly, though her own eyes were still saddened, and brushed her thumb across my cheek. “In the beginning, I thought…I-I was so sure they would find me more exciting due to their rebellious nature, but when they looked at me, I could see so clearly that they were very angry. I wanted to ease my way to them and so softly spoke their names, but…in return th-they spat at me and turned their faces away, calling me a...a devil worshipper.” Several tears were streaming down her cheeks, “I-I was stunned. Of everyone, I thought that surely they would still love me, as young and stubborn as they were. But, I was wrong. They shunned me, in every way. My family and other friends had refused to acknowledge me, the entire colony rallied together to burn me alive; throwing me away like garbage. And yet, I never allowed that to seep in, not all the way at least, because I still had my brothers. Then, suddenly, with that one moment of pure hatred in their eyes, I felt the weight of all the rejection I had ever received for so long run me over.
“I walked away like a dazed ghost, sweeping easily through the hall, and eventually I stopped in the kitchen, or well, what was as close to a kitchen as possible nowadays.” Her lips quirked a little, her eyes having shifted to the little box in her hands.
“Everything seemed empty, I felt so alone, completely worthless. A broken shell that had been discarded by every person I had ever known and ever loved. The feelings that had before plagued my mind now came flooding back to me. Horrid, evil things, but I soon found I didn’t care, I didn’t feel much of anything the longer I stood in the light of gentle darkness. I slowly searched the area until I clutched a smooth wooden handle and I slowly picked up a surprisingly clean blade, which my fingers excitedly held. I knew my people’s ideas in regards to killing oneself and, honestly, a part of me wanted to spite them. My life was over no matter what I chose to do in the end and without the love of my brothers; I just saw no life to be lived. Why not curse their precious ideals? So,” she exhaled, “I quickly ran the blade through my skin and severed the veins. There was a strange mix of sharp pain, then a tingling, dizzy numbness drowning my senses, and then back to sharp, now throbbing pain. I sat down and soon fell to my side, my entire arm felt as though it were being simultaneously strangled from blood flow and flooded with biting fire, all the while attempting to recite the Lord’s Prayer. I remembered that just before I was gone, basically lying in my own blood, there was a faint red glow dancing in front of my blurry, tear-filled eyes. The next thing I recalled was bright sun, it was like a sudden jerk from a second of unexpectedly tripping into sleep.”
I watched as she took a long, deep breath and sighed, sniffling a few times.
“It turns out that this little box was opened beneath where my wrist had landed, catching the blood as it went through the wood of the floor. The ring this holds was just waiting for it to come. You see, to work, the clear gem needed to absorb fresh blood and once full, it would glow that scarlet I saw before everything was supposed to go black. Forever…” Her words drifted off.
“Grandmother?” I placed my hand on her shoulder, worry in my gaze.
“Hmm, oh, I’m fine. Just tired, sweetie.” She nodded, patting my hand calmly.
Clearing her throat, “now, I stayed in this new world for a while and found it to be quite pleasant, somewhere freeing, although I never did hear of a name for it. In that place I was able to practice my witchcraft and study many more different types of magic, most were things I had never heard of before. It was a dream come true, one I never could have been able to imagine coming from where I did.” Her gaze had grown a bit happier as she spoke of the fairytale world I grew up on.
“About a year into my time there, I met him. The Skeleton Man is what many referred to him as; others simply called him the Immortal.”
I nodded at that, recalling his title name since he didn’t seem to have a real one. This story was now beginning to come to what I remembered as a child.
“I soon began to work with him. He opened doors into dreamlike wonders my old friends and I could have never imagined, never thought could even be conceivably possible, and soon I was able to create an elixir, which, in a way, could make a person immortal.”
I furrowed my brow at this. She never talked of creating a way to be immortal; actually, all the magic in her story felt a lot more like the kind of magic you read in books or on.
Despite my being caught up in my thoughts, she continued, “In reality it merely prolonged life depending on the amounts of certain ingredients added to each portion.” She paused, her lips growing into a smile like I had never seen before. “We spent a great many years together, more than two centuries. Not only working together, him teaching me ways of this world and it’s magic that I would never have been able to learn on my own, but also just…being with each other like friends, the closet of friends. It wasn’t too long into our meeting and working that we found we had fallen in love.” She exhaled a laugh, “It was literally like a fairytale, the fairytale that I would later tell you off in my many tales of our life. Yes, we were very happy for such a long while and one evening I discovered some exciting news, something I couldn’t believe and was dying to let out, so I left in search of a friend to tell as quickly as possible.”
Unexpectedly, that smile I had never known fell away, “I was running through the woods I had originally appeared in when I first arrived, but then, suddenly the soft sounds of my feet on the moss and grass changed, the air became heavy and thick with moisture, and the scenery was now quite different. The forest I had grown to love so dearly was no longer there, instead there was numerous dreary buildings coming up all around and a rain drenched cobblestone road spread beneath my running feet.” She shook her head, “I felt like I had gone mad. This completely foreign city had just appeared without the slightest warning, the shift had been so smooth, even beyond when I had first arrived in that world I loved. When I realized I was no longer there, when my efforts to saturate my ring refused to work, I fell to the filthy wet ground and cried harder than I could have that humanly possible.”
Tears had been falling silently as she spoke, like she had given so much to her mourning already that her heart couldn’t give anymore effort beyond those instinctive tears.
Ignoring the salty water drying on her face, “I discovered that I had landed in 1798, on a city road somewhere in Massachusetts. A lengthy while afterward, I mean well beyond my life in that early time period, I was able to do some accurate research and found it to have been around my hometown of Plymouth now called Plymouth County, Massachusetts.
“In any case, after spending what felt like ages trying to find whatever possible job I could procure as a pregnant single woman with no family or money and a little over nine months later on February 23rd, 1799, I had twin boys whom I named Crispyn and Gabriel.” A tony smile tickled the edge of her mouth, “I remember, just like it was yesterday, both my boys had black hair and shared each other’s eye colors, one grey blue like mine and the other violet like my mother’s. They were so handsome, such good, strong boys, and I loved them more than anything. However, on their 21st birthday they made a joint decision to leave and explore the world.” She huffed, “Crispyn was always very stubborn and adventurous, and Gabriel, oh sweet little Gabriel, he never left his brother’s side. So, regardless of my protests, he gave up his artistic talents to go with Crispyn. I knew I couldn’t hold onto them forever, and I knew just because they did so didn’t mean it would be forever. But still, it…it broke my heart the day they left. When my boys never returned…I died a little inside.”
She made no expression like I thought she might, but simply looked at her hands calmly.
Sighing, she grinned and began speaking again. “I spent decades waiting, but deep down, I knew they weren’t coming back to me. So I left our little home and decided to travel as well. Sometimes I went places as a mere tourist and other times I traveled on my own, usually only when I was low on cash.” She giggled girlishly. “Oh, then when I had the appearance of a twenty five year old I met your biological grandfather, my first husband. I loved him very much and we lived quite comfortably. It was during my time with him that I had my first three children, your eldest two uncles and your mother.
“Unfortunately, disease came for him, crept up so fast that before we knew it, it was too late and he died. The doctors never found a reason for it, which only made things so much worse. I had a hard time after that, again a single mother, dealing with medical bills and funeral expenses on a teacher’s salary. Through my years of working to keep food on the table, I inadvertently developed a close relationship with a co-worker and friend of mine. That man would become the grandfather you know, Kalen. We were just as happy as I had been with my first husband, and soon had many more children. Then of course, as you know, he died the year before last.” She sighed again, nearly out of breath from her long story. “Now, that was the short version. Maybe some other time I’ll tell you the long one.” Her smile stretched across her face in a mischievous way and her eyes glittered happily.
“That’s the short version?” I blinked with confusion, “…wow, but that was so long.” I shook my head as the normally internal thoughts finished slipping from my mouth.
“Dear, you’re speaking out loud again.” My grandmother patted her hand against my arm.
“Hmm?” I looked up at her, “Oh, sorry,” I shyly mumbled, my cheeks mildly pinkened in embarrassment.
“Now back to this little box of mine.” She stroked the small container with a smile. “This is my friend. I have carried this with me everywhere, but when I remarried to Kalen I promised myself that I would say goodbye and never wear it again.” She gently popped open the top, revealing a stunning thin shaft of a clear diamond. “I want to die, Jade. I want to be with my husbands, my brothers, everyone I loved and lost once again.”
A light, sad smile barely tugged at her lips and she turned her tearful gaze on me, a hint of something unspoken reflected in her eyes, but I couldn’t tell what it meant. “Here,” My grandmother placed the small box in my unsuspecting hands.
“W-why are you giving me this?” I jerked my gaze back and forth from the box to her then her to the box.
“It’s your birthday gift, my last to you, and also the most precious thing you’ll ever own.” Her grey blue eyes twinkled at me. “Now sweetie, why don’t you go read your books.” She yet again brushed my arm lightly as she lowered her eyelids to sleep.
I kept the box palmed as I walked out of the room, my face still held a slight hint of stupefied awe and immense confusion at what was going on.
Later that evening, my grandmother went to see her family at long last.
