Carnelian

  “You mean my healing?” Seth asked.

  “Yes, that would be a classic superhero ability,” I said. At least he was admitting it today.

  “Not mutated,” Seth said. “As far as I know my DNA is completely the same and nothing changed. At least I wasn’t told if it did. I’m human. Just an ordinary human, nothing fantasy or otherwise.”

  “Then how, Seth, how?” I asked, getting a bit frustrated. He was admitting to being different, yet not. It was getting just confusing enough to make me a little short with him.

  “Well, since you were about to believe I was some sort of monster creature, this might not be as hard to explain as I thought. Just let me explain everything before you ask questions,” Seth said as he ran his hands through his hair with a sigh. He stood and moved over to sit next to me. He nodded at the spot next to me as if asking permission. I nodded back, and he sat back down. He was very close now I could feel little goose bumps on my arms anticipating his touch. Seth turned and faced me to pick up my hand in his. He drew circles on my hand as he gathered his thoughts.

  “I come from a place filled with war and turmoil.” Seth paused a bit. I waited patiently for him to continue. “There’s fighting at my country’s borders and fighting within. Our current king was not born king. He got the job after the last king died at nineteen without an heir. Some don’t feel he’s the legitimate king. Others feel he doesn’t deserve the throne until he produces an heir to keep the conflict of the next king at bay. Either way, his rule is challenged.” Seth paused again. “I really don’t know where to begin telling you. There was trouble in my country before I was even born, and the past king had tried to right some of it. It cost him his life, and his family’s rule. Our current king took over, and although he’s a just man and rules greatly, there are just too many problems to solve. He had the nobles all upset and warring within the borders; and several countries saw this as a time to strike our county borders. There are four nations we’ve fought with for as long as our history goes back, and we had been at peace with them. We are no longer at peace with them. We are at war.”

  “How do you fit into this?” I asked, and then covered my mouth with my free hand. I wasn’t to talk. I couldn’t help it. Seth just smiled.

  “I was surprised you let me get out as much as I did before you needed to ask.” Seth smiled. “I was a warrior for my country. I was born the oldest son of my nation’s highest military leader. My father heads the military and is the right hand man to the king. I first went off to war as an assistant to my father when I was fourteen. By the time I was seventeen I was given control of a branch of our military.” By the time he was seventeen made no sense. He was supposed to be adopted and living with the Sangre family at that age.

  “Okay, then how did you end up with Sangre?” I asked, and again covered my mouth.

  “I think you want me to get to the point,” he teased me. He didn’t mind at all that I had interrupted him twice now. “I had to do something or my country would fail. My father had assigned me to scouting missions, and I took that upon me to find an answer to our problem.”

  “And one teenage boy could stop the wars?” I asked in disbelief. Seth smiled and nodded his head.

  “Maybe I’m a bit of a dreamer, but yes, I thought so,” Seth replied. “Any more questions before I continue?” he teased.

  “Nope, I’ll try to wait,” I promised. Waiting was a bit hard now that I was getting answers, even if they seemed to mean very little right now. He came from a war-filled country. That was going on around the world right now. I wasn’t too up to date on what was happening around the world, but I had heard of conflicts. There were always conflicts and always war.

  Seth grinned at me and shook his head. Guess he doubted I’d stay quiet as much as I doubted I would. “Along the way, I heard tales of a goddess that would help those that prayed to her. I had searched each community we passed through and found the type of stone the goddess liked to take to her. No one could tell me who the goddess was, only that she could help me. I went to a cave that the locals told me about and prayed to her. She heard my prayer, and she took me here. She said I’d find the answer in a girl.”

  “Any girl?” I asked.

  “No, one in particular,” Seth replied. This time he didn’t continue, but waited for me to reply.

  “And that girl is me?” I whispered as I got the hint.

  “Yes. It’s you. I could tell the first time you touched that stone. You reacted to it. The goddess’ stone picked you.” Now it was getting harder to believe him. How could a stone pick someone?

  “And you were sure because I got poked by that necklace.” I shook my head in disbelief. Another thought came to me. “Is that why you’ve dated so many girls?” I asked.

  “Yes, I was looking for the girl the goddess said would help my country, but I didn’t show the stone to any of them. The goddess stone just confirmed what I already knew. The goddess said I’d know who the girl was when I fell in love with her.” I took a deep breath. I wasn’t completely sure how to interpret what he had said. Was Seth in love with me?

  In order to change subjects, I asked, “And I’m to help your war torn country how?” Seth seemed to notice the subject change, but he didn’t stop me.

  “I don’t know. She didn’t tell me that. She just told me to find you,” Seth replied. He honestly looked confused as to how I was meant to help him.

  “I don’t even know where you’re from,” I replied. How could I help him when I hadn’t clue what country the Sangre family took him from?

  “I don’t know where or when either,” Seth replied, shrugging his response. “I wasn’t allowed to know.”

  “When?” I asked. Did that mean he had some sort of memory loss too?

  “Sangre told us once we got here not to look into what time we came from. The goddess transports people into the future or past to accomplish what they are looking for,” Seth replied. Things just got a bit more surreal and very complicated.

  I glanced at him. He was telling me he wasn’t from my time. “Then you are, like, hundreds of years old or something?” I was not up for falling for someone my grandfather’s age.

  “No, I’m just a twenty-year-old guy. I am completely a normal human. Just not from this time. That’s why I heal fast. When you’re living in a time that isn’t your own, you can’t be killed as that would upset the time balance or something.” Seth laughed. “I figure I’m at least from thousands of years ago. Chariot fighting went out of style quite a bit ago from everything I read; and, no, I am not thousands of years old. I really am twenty. I was seventeen when I left my country, and I have been here three years. I wasn’t left in a cocoon somewhere for a thousand years waiting to come out.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “Because the goddess said we would return to our time within moments of when we left. She brought us here to find you, and she will put me back when I find out how you’ll save my people. It’s more of an instantaneous process, blink your eyes and you are there.”

  My head swirled with thoughts. “Then you’ll be leaving soon?” I asked, hopeful it would be a no. Even with all the strangeness, I couldn’t deny I liked Seth.

  Seth sighed. “I have to go back. This isn’t my time. I’m needed back home.” I pulled my hand back from his. Turned out that Seth Sangre was just like all the players. Once he got what he wanted from me, he would be gone. “It isn’t that I want to go back,” he quickly corrected, but I had already pulled away. He stared at me, but I let my gaze fall to the floor. I hated that I liked him. He was just going to break my heart. Maybe he already did. Seth stood and started to pace the room.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he complained as he walked. He mumbled a few words I didn’t understand and kept pacing. “Why’d I have to fall for her to find her? You could have just told me her name.” Seth talked to the space above his head. I wondered if he was actually crazy. He talked to the air like the goddess would
just appear.

  “And if I had done that, you would have never accomplished your goal,” a deep female voice came into the room. The voice surrounded us as she continued to talk. Seth made his way back over to the window seat and sat down, like he needed to respect the goddess. “You had to fall for her for her to save your people. I didn’t just send you into a new world to chase any girl. Marcella Navina is a very special girl.”

  I shivered at the voice. She wasn’t that scary with the rich female tones surrounding me, but it was more just that it was real. Seth hadn’t been telling me a story. It was easy to just distance myself and treat it as a tale. Even easier to believe he was going crazy. But now it was real. I felt the heaviness in the air. I felt her voice reverberate around us. I felt the goddess.

  My heart rate picked up as I went into a fight or flight response. I was weighing my options. I was closer to the door than Seth. Would he chase me?

  “Child, I am not here to scare you,” the voice said kindly. Between Seth and me, a haze began to form. I couldn’t move. We were sitting inside, but it was more like being outside on a foggy day. The fog swirled and the particles making up the fog sparkled. The sparkles slowed down until the form of a woman in a long flowing dress stood before me.

  The goddess smiled as she floated near me. I stared in awe. I had just been paralyzed by fear, but that melted away at the sight of her. I still couldn’t move, but now I didn’t want to. She was beautiful and magical. “It has been a long time waiting for you to come. That is the problem when you can see the past and the future. Sometimes the future can take longer than you ever imagined,” she joked. The goddess actually joked with a jingling laugh to go with it.

  “You’ve been waiting to meet me?” I squeaked out. My voice seemed loud in the silent room, yet very quiet next to her.

  “I have to wait to meet all my children,” she replied. Seth sucked in his breath at her reply. “Yes, Seti. I did not just send you off to find a girl. I sent you off to find one of my children, a child of time.”

  I stared up at the flowing, white, shimmery figure. She was watching me, and now Seth was as well. I had no clue what she was talking about, but they seemed to.

  “I’m pretty sure I have a mom,” I answered once I realized they were waiting for me to respond.

  The goddess laughed again. It was almost musical in the silent room.

  “Yes, you have a mother, but all those blessed by two times are my children. If you choose, you can have the same abilities as all my children; the ability to walk through time.” She reached out and caressed my face. Her touch was light as a feather, and while I thought it would tickle, it did not. “You are younger than I remember.”

  The gentle touch felt like the breeze. I felt like my internal alarm should be going off with the weird ghost in front of me, but something about her was peaceful. I wasn’t scared of her.

  “Then you already know my future? Why not speed things up and tell me how to help Seth?” I asked, still barely only a whisper. I felt like a child questioning authority. I looked up to her beautiful eyes and waited for an answer. If my fate was already determined, then why would she send him on a quest to find me? How could I help him on his way when I knew that he would leave me and break my heart? I didn’t want to fall more in love with Seth. He needed to go home.

  She smiled as if she heard my thoughts, and looked back over to Seth.

  “As I told Seth when he came here, nothing is set in stone. The past and the future are ever changing. I know the paths you might take on your journey from here, but I am never sure which you will choose. You future is truly your own. You have free will to make your own choices, and to live by the consequences. I told Seth that if he chose to come here, he might find his answer and he might not. That was all depended on what you chose to do. Now he has found you, but that does not even mean the future I see with you two together will occur. There will be hardships and choices, but if you want, you can have a future together.” She was looking back at Seth, answering his silent question along with mine.

  “I brought Seth to you, and you brought yourself to Seth. Your paths were always meant to cross, that much was determined, but how has always been up to you two. In every future I ever saw, I saw you together, whether by choice or not, but you did not always belong to each other. Even the future from here on out can change.” The goddess almost floated in place as she looked between us.

  “Why?” I asked. I needed to know more.

  “Why are you meant to be together?” she asked with a knowing smile. That was the why I was asking. “Because you were always meant to love each other. I don’t make those feelings appear. That was always fate.” She watched me blush. Even if I did have feelings toward him, no way I was going to admit how I felt to Seth now. He was a man from another time, of which he planned to go back to. “Or, why are you a child of time?” I nodded again. That was my other question. How did I end up in the mess after all?

  “I have the ability to take people from one time to another. I take someone to a new time for days, week, or years, however long they need to achieve their goal. That is my role. But sometimes there are children born from two times.” I shook my head. That made no sense whatsoever to me. “The one rule in traveling between times is that you have to go back to the time you come from to die. Seth’s ability to heal comes from the fact he cannot die in this time. He has to go back to his time to die. If Seth stayed here and got married, the children he had would be from two different times, yours and his. Where would that child belong? Eventually Seth has to go back to the past, but your child does not. Children like that are rare, and you are one of them.”

  “You’re saying I’m born of two times?” I asked. “Is my father from the past?”

  “I cannot give you any answers. Those are for you to find. My job is to guide you on your journey,” the goddess shimmered between us as she formed her reply to give us both the same answer.

  “Then what am I to do?” I complained.

  “That’s all I can tell you for now. I am always here and always listening. If you are in danger or need help, I will come to you, child of mine. Follow your heart and your journey will be yours.” The goddess shimmered some more as she leaned down and kissed my forehead. She smiled one last time as she vanished into thin air without giving me more details. A pile of sparkling dust coated the floor where she had been.

  Seth stood slowly and walked over to me sitting on the bed, still staring at the floor where the goddess had just been. Without all the dust left behind, I might have imagined it all. Seth’s feet left a trail in the sparkle as he neared and sat down on the bed beside me. The bottoms of his feet had to be sparkling from the dust.

  “Something was different about you, but I didn’t expect you to be a child of time. I would have warned you more about the goddess if I had. I know it’s a bit shocking the first time you see her. Heck, it’s shocking the second and third times, too. I’m very sorry I didn’t say more before she arrived.” Seth looked to me, pleading for forgiveness with his eyes. I slowly nodded as everything the goddess said swirled in my head.

  I was a child of time, whatever that really meant. No wonder my mother never mentioned who my father was. Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she did know and knew he would never be coming home. She always told me that he was gone and could never come back. I bet she knew. She had kept that from me all these years. I always thought something bad had gone down between my parents, and one day I would find something with his name on it. Then I could track him down and get to know my real father. But that would never be now. My father was truly gone, like she always said, because he was only here for a short time.

  “Can we please just start over?” Seth asked hopefully. His voice broke my thoughts. My hands were resting in his, and I felt the buzz through my arms. “We can pretend that it’s last weekend, after CRUSH, when I brought you here. Please give me a chance to start over and do this how I should have.” I nodded slowly, still partially
lost in my own thoughts.

  Seth smiled widely. He pulled my hands to make me stand and led me over to the bedroom door. “Welcome to the Sangre house.” He smiled again while wiggling his eyebrows. He spread his arms wide, like he was showing off the place to someone who planned to buy it. He meant to start over right at that moment. “Is this everything you imagined a college guy and his brothers should have?” He really wanted to start all over. I smiled and shook my head.

  “When you come from that family, it seems a bit small,” I replied, playing along like we had just arrived here. In a family worth millions, a couple-thousand-square-foot house was a bit small. I’d would need time to process everything Seth and the goddess told me, but for now, this would be a relief to pretend to start over.

  “Hmm, I suppose so. But this is all we needed. Not like we came from much,” Seth replied, ushering me into the room and the window seat.

  “And where would that be?” I asked innocently.

  “Well, crazy you’d ask that,” Seth continued to grin. He sat down and took my hands in his own. “Seems I come from the past. Don’t ask me where or when as I don’t know. But I do know that it was long ago. This world is completely strange and foreign to me.”

  “Really?” I asked, feigning shock. “What is different? No people where you come from, just dinosaurs?”

  Seth smiled. “I’m not that ancient. No dinosaurs. There were people, just no electricity and gadgets. Our technology wouldn’t even be considered technology.”

  “Come on. Even the Egyptians and their pyramids are amazing technology, and they are thousands of years old. Researchers still debated how they were made, and the workforce that was used.” I nudged his shoulder.

  “Yes, the pyramids are amazing, but they don’t compare to even the simplest things you take for granted,” Seth replied.

  “What do I take for granted?” I asked, pretending to be appalled.