The Seer's 7 Deadly Fairy Tales
A Compendium
by
Elizabeth Marx
Copyright 2012 Elizabeth Marx
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.
Digital edition by: GoPublished
www.gopublished.com
CONTENTS
ALL’S FAIR IN VANITY’S WAR
PROLOGUE
WHILE AT BLESSINGTON
THE SEVEN PRECEPT OF AMERGIN
COMPENDIUM
NAMES AND THEIR MEANINGS
THE STOLEN BRIDE
WORDS OF CAUTION
PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ALL’S FAIR IN VANITY’S WAR
PROLOGUE
October 2008
“I feel like a pork-chop going to a bar mitzvah,” I said, as my seatbelt pinned me and the pink chiffon I was encased in against the back of the leather seat. Otherwise, I might have tried to combust out of the ridiculous cotton-candy confection.
We’d left the sprawling mansions of the historic McIntyre district in our rearview mirror and were speeding past bungalows and Halloween weirdoes as we made our way to the outskirts of Salem village.
“Those sweet sayings are starting to keep me up at night.” Locke’s dimple crested his cheek bone.
Then his lingering look stole my breath. “Relax.” His eyes crinkled at the corners. “It isn’t as if they’re going to perform a human sacrifice. It’s just a party.”
My lashes swept my cheeks as his peppermint-flavored lips brushed mine, sending brief images through my mind. The satiny softness of Locke’s breathing across the inside of my ear. His woodsy evergreen scent that always seemed to envelope me. When he came to pick me up for the Halloween bash tonight his eyes danced with a mischievous brilliance. I looked up through the windshield to gauge how much longer we’d be alone on the deserted road and caught the blinding high-beams headed right at us.
My scream spiraled off the pavement with the car, and we broadsided the brick wall. Everything slowed to a cryptic pace as I cart-wheeled through the shattering glass, through the tops of the evergreen trees and landed with a thud, before sliding across the damp grass. Every ounce of air was knocked out of me and my head throbbed as chaotic images burst red and black against my corneas.
My arms felt like dead weight as I tried to shake the slimy leaves from my hands by brushing them across my legs. When I touched myself I was shocked, not by the sight of blood, but by thousands of pinpricks of light that raced through my limbs, electrifying every hair on my body as if I’d plugged the vacuum into that outlet that always overloaded and gave off a little jolt. I held up my arm, trying to see if the blast of current had seared my skin, but a trail of blood raced the shower of light sprinkling the ground from my body. My body had conducted electricity and I was now shedding sparkles.
I managed to get my tingling legs under me, but instead of going back to the fence and trying to get back to the scene of the accident, something pulled me through the graveyard with such force that I dropped the silvery wings of my costume between a Celtic cross and a crumbling obelisk. The halo was torn from my hair when I’d been hurled out of the car. I pulled the last hairpin from my scalp, and my elbow-length hair danced around my shoulders like a black veil. Being crowned with a corona on the night that decadence and debauchery ruled Salem was about as likely as a red-horned demon dropping into an Easter parade anyway.
I was maneuvered through the minefield of monuments, some unseen force directing the course of my electrified body, as if searching the tombstones for one in particular. I came to an abrupt stop and my knees buckled, pulling me to the ground as my fizzling fingertips were forced to score to the headstone. I felt like a marionette as I traced the letters of the epitaph. “Death’s cradle straddles all our graves, lulling the elderly, while catapulting the young to their eternal rest.” The first time I read it last summer, I knew you’d need more than tenth-grade honors English to understand, but now I’d been cannon-balled out of my own body, and Gram’s words raced through me as if they were adrenaline.
I gasped for air.
I looked down at my puppet-like body: it was misty white, ethereal even, and it burned as if I’d stayed in the sun too long without enough SPF 30.
My blurry-eyed mind wondered if I should be concerned about being spotted. It’s difficult to believe, but on Halloween night in this peculiar town stuff weirder than a specter prowling a cemetery is happening. Although, I do expect the accident to make the front page of the Salem Evening Journal. Last year, “Buffy Stakes Elvira at Broomsticks Bistro” was November first’s headline. Tomorrow’s caption will read, “Homecoming Queen and Quarterback Eternally Separated in Horrific Crash.”
The realization dawned on me like the headline shouting off the front page: I was dead. I was sparkly and burning and dead. My mind started to race. I couldn’t be dead. I couldn’t be gone. I couldn’t lose Locke. I couldn’t breathe without Locke.
The thought of a final separation was too much to bear, so I tried to ignore the pain by pulling forth flickers of the past. His brushing sand off my hip at the beach last summer, the way he’d eyed me through his sunglasses in anticipation as his fingertips rested there. The way he’d squeezed my hands when I’d snuck into his barn a couple of weeks later, refusing to let me unbutton my shirt as he whispered “Wait,” between kisses that said “Go.” The way his body arched against mine in such desperation as we moved in tandem just a few nights ago at the Witches’ Ball, only again to whisper “Soon” along my ear.
I brushed Gram’s headstone again, bringing forth the image of her as she eyed Locke from her squeaking front porch rocker for the first time and said, “That boy will lead you down the wrong road.”
We were only twelve then and I had no understanding of what she could possible mean, so I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t Locke’s fault that his square jaw and angelic features were perfectly proportioned. Or that his piercing violet eyes could burn almost obsidian in a moment of annoyance, and then turn to laugh at you with the sparkling majesty of purple robes. Or that his hair was as thick and rich as the sable collar of that imaginary robe. Or that his face was the one that could stopper the hole in my heart that the loss of my father had created. Or that his face was the only one, beyond those of my own family that I loved.
“Mind me, granddaughter. Pretty is as pretty does.”
I loved my Gram. Her wrinkled face, mapped with both pleasure and heartache, had always staunched the pain before Locke came along. Her gnarled hands spoke words most eyes never comprehended. I worshiped slices of her buttermilk cornbread, slathered with sweet-churned butter. She’d been raised so deep in the South that sushi is still called bait, and she never feared karate-chopping us Massachusetts Yankees with her southern-style wasabi tongue.
As her worried eyes perused him I asked, “You don’t think I’m pretty enough?”
“Pretty beautiful, and pretty apt to stay that way,” she scolded. “You are eternally beautiful. Your hair as silky as falcon’s wings, they’ll carry you on, where his road leaves off.” Echoes of her southern drawl rang in clear contrast to Locke’s upper-crust articulation screaming my name in the distance, his voice filtering through the curtain between worlds as if summoning me to my finale.
I used the tombstone to pull my heavy body up. I dragged myself toward the sound of his voice as if it was a beacon in the blackest moment of the night. I struggled to pull my shimmery self over the brick wall. Thick fumes of gasoline and fizzled wiring pulsated through the atmosphere, tickling the back of my throat
. The knock and hiss of Locke’s car scratched against my iridescent skin, hardened bark electrocuting satiny flesh. The cars stood hood-to-crumpled hood, each burning angry steam out its radiators’ nostrils. I expected the tires to paw the ground and tear out against his armored opponent, as if dueling to the death. My death.
Tears saturated my lashes, their black sheen dripping from my chin, as papers pirouetting though the air drew my attention to my shredded book bag hanging from a sapling. I watched in horror as my English book opened, the pages fluttered, and my term paper—Bronte vs. Austen: Battle of the English Heroines—, floated through the air as easily as I had during my last dance recital.
Which reminded me, I was out past curfew. My mother would be perturbed. Whenever I came home late, which was always Locke’s fault, she would say, “I was afraid you were lying in a ditch somewhere.” If she thought I was lying somewhere, she wasn’t imagining a grassy knoll, but a reclining bucket seat.
The bright side is I no longer have a curfew. The downside is I think I’m almost invisible, motherless, and—oh yeah—dead! I couldn’t believe I wasn’t freaked out. I’m in deep denial.
The sharp screech of metal on metal expelled the bald headed driver out of the other car furiously. He then raised his smoke-clogged voice to the heavens and twisted vile curse words together; they gave me head pains and wreaked havoc with my heartbeat. He beat on his chest in conquest and the earth gave a slight tremble. His bloodied hand went to his skull, pushing a piece of torn flesh back, but spiked scales rose in response to his darkening skin. He sluiced out of his leather vest and pants like a snake shedding his skin. His features grew ecstatic as his nose elongated, and his mouth chomped the smoky air exposing two rows of teeth. Talons formed from his fingertips, as his ears slid up the sides of his head, becoming a miter-shaped crest and frill.
I shuddered and backed away. Biker man turned into a lizard. No, he was too huge. He was a crocodile. Rather, a basilisk, king of serpents. I’d read about them in my myths and legends class. They’re not living, breathing entities. I looked down at my ethereal self. Oh…My…God, I’m a myth, too.
The basilisk cracked the vertebra in his neck, sliding to the pavement on all fours, snorting a noxious steam that laced the air with the taste of mildewed sludge. The tang was so potent I’d swear he’d been birthed from a biohazard-bog.
Locke’s upper lip furled, not the whole thing, just the center—as if his disdain was so completely focused that he couldn’t be bothered to let it slip to the corners of his mouth. Words erupted from his contorted mouth, slithering and ebony, and beyond my comprehension.
In response, a nostril blast streamed from the basilisk’s snout, knocking Locke on his backside. Locke’s outstretched fingertips glowed blue, and then blazed red as a globe of fire exploded from his hands towards the creature. The fireball just missed the crest of the basilisk’s head and hit the blacktop, rolling along the tar-smeared asphalt until it tickled the tire treads.
Locke winced, but started again. It reminded me of how he’d determinedly throw a long pass the next chance he had after an interception on the football field. The snarling beast was bearing down on him like a blitzing linebacker sniffing an easy sack, but Locke’s focus didn’t falter as he spiralled another fireball right at his target. The basilisk gagged, before the red flame sank into his gullet, and ‘boom’ he imploded into confetti-sized ash.
I offered a silent prayer, thankful that he didn’t burst into chunks of filet-of-crocodile. I didn’t know if a ghost or apparition, or whatever I was, could hurl, but I didn’t want to barf on this darn dress. I was vain enough to admit I didn’t want to wear my mom’s frilly twenty-five-year-old prom dress with sweet-and-sour vomit stains on it for an eternity.
The basilisk’s car exploded, and the blast startled me as the blaze beckoned and mesmerized me. Even Locke screaming my name couldn’t call my attention away from the inferno leaping across the hood of Locke’s car and over the empty shell of my lifeless body.
Cremation didn’t bother me, but I didn’t expect to have to witness my flesh quiver and roll, and then disintegrate. The putrid scent brought me to the blacktop, where I prayed that it would be over soon, that the white light would come for me.
Tears rolled down Locke’s cheeks. “Ashes to ashes,” he choked out, as he crumbled forward in agony. As if answering his call, an errant tissue of flame danced along the chilly breeze and landed on Locke’s shoulder. In an instant, it ignited the tar on his collar, and the greedy flame raced up the right side, burning his face. He remained alert long enough to emit one last shriek of my name, before he collapsed onto the pavement.
I crawled over the shattered glass to Locke. I touched his beloved fiery flesh and his unconscious form fizzled through my fingertips. His woodsy evergreen scent swirled around me as I tried in vain to extinguish the flames.
The squall of sirens startled me. I looked up to see flashing lights and firemen sending showers of water over the vehicles and the paramedics racing toward us. I stood up to greet them, forgetting that I wasn’t me anymore and the first man there walked right through my iridescent spirit. The pain was immediate and so intense that I screeched, but it didn’t draw any attention except for some birds rustling in the trees overhead. I tried to reach out to the second paramedic who was inserting an IV in Locke’s arm and my cold electrified flesh rose gooseflesh on his arm, but no other response.
I dropped to my knees again on the solid yellow lines in the center of the road and cried bitter tears as they loaded Locke into the ambulance. A white van pulled up on the shoulder along a squad car, and the police officer greeted a man as he exited the van, pulling on a wind breaker with CORONER emblazoned on the back.
“Dr. Sliquest, she’s over there.” The officer pointed toward Locke’s demolished smoldering car.
“Her mother is going to be devastated.”
“She should have kept her daughter away from their kind.”
“Myrtle, you’ve got to let it go,” Dr. Sliquest said sternly. “Who was in the second vehicle?”
“That’s the thing, doc, there’s not a trace of anything,” Myrtle responded, leading the coroner away.
The finality of the removal of my charred remains from the car made me yearn for the serenity that only Gram’s sentiments would offer me. I’d always gone to her with my troubles. That hadn’t changed with my father’s death—or hers. Or even, it seemed, with my own.
I tiptoed around tombstones and skirted the edges of monuments making my way back to Gram’s grave, with a certainty that I would find my rest alongside her and my dad for all eternity. As I approached, a woman in a long garnet-colored robe looked up from drawing a white circle around their markers. At her feet was a black cauldron, spewing vapors scented of camphor and rose petals, which she billowed into the air with a sweep of her hands as if she were conducting a symphony.
She motioned me to come to her with a firm nod of the head. When I stepped in front of her, she raised her arms with a sweep of her cape and she wrapped me in a cloak of feathers. The weight made me stagger back a step, but then they seared into the sensitive skin between my shoulder blades and made my ethereal form jolt closer to her again.
Who are you? The words slipped through my wandering mind as I examined the plumage at my back suspiciously.
“I am the Mother. I am here to instruct your ExtraOrdinary journey.” She ran her fingers over the length of my hair.
You can hear my thoughts?
“Only the thoughts you choose to project.”
I’m supposed to be with Locke.
“No, he has always been intended for another, someone ExtraOrdinary.”
I assure you, he thinks I’m extraordinary.
“But you are not one of us and thereby unacceptable to the Order.”
I brushed my tears into my hair. What exactly is he?
“He is a human mortal who has magical and mystical gifts. You were not born thus, even though it was in yo
ur blood, but now you have been reborn.”
I’d ignored the whispers about my childhood sweetheart. The grudging fearfulness he was often shown, his Harry-Houdini appearances out of thin air, his barn cloaked in an air of mystery, and the strange repetitive phrases he used sometimes.
He was some sort of a magician. He never told me who he really was. I mourned the loss of that truth between us along with the passing of my own body, as the ashy bitterness of a new reality clung to my tongue. What do you mean, ‘in my blood’?
“All will be revealed. For now, all you need to know is that you have been sacrificed as the ancient rites of the Order demanded.”
Sacrificed? I don’t want to be sacrificed.
The Mother eyed the grave marker. “But the cradle has chosen you.”
How can you see me when the paramedics didn’t?
“Let’s just say, you are on a different frequency now and I am able to see that frequency when most others can’t. Even ExtraOrdinaries won’t be able to see you, only those of us with OtherWorldly abilities.”
I can’t die. I’ve barely begun to live. I started to tear up again, I still have a curfew.
“Through your sacrifice, you will help save our worlds.”
Suddenly, I recognized the Mother. I’d seen this woman, Ilithyia Wyrd, in town once when I was a little girl, and Gram warned me to stay clear of her and the other Wyrd sisters. Since then I’d run into her from time to time with Locke and she always seemed displeased that I was with him. Locke and I were headed to a party at her house when the accident happened. I’d had a bad feeling about it since I sensed Ilithyia didn’t like me. I should have listened to the gooseflesh whispering in my ear when he begged me to go. I should have listened to my mom insisting that she didn’t think it was a good idea. I should have heeded Gram’s final warning etched in stone.
My flight response kicked up and the plumage at my back twitched in anticipation. I thought through the conversation knowing that Ilithyia was speaking in riddles I’d have to decipher. What exactly am I supposed to save our worlds from?
“From our own vanity,” Ilithyia said solemnly, turning away.
My nails scored the velvet sleeve of her gown. Wait a cotton-picking minute, what exactly am I?
“At the stroke of midnight, you will become The Seer.” Ilithyia’s voice slithered over the cemetery fence. “An ethereal body able to travel the nine worlds.”
Why would I need nine worlds? I can’t even keep the continents straight in this one? I stuck my finger in the brick wall, trying to find a crack. I jumped up to catch the ledge to pull myself over again, but the wings messed with my balance and I landed in a heap and kicked the wall for good measure, stubbing my toe.
I sighed, which caused a sputtering of my wings before a misguided take-off. My wings took me to the height of the wall and just as I cleared it I looked down and hissed. I hate heights. My wings collapsed like a mosquito dropped by a four-thousand watt black light bug zapper. I nose dived head first. I need flight school.
Ilithyia leaned over me, and helped me onto my bare feet. “There is youthful immortality in the nine worlds.”
Immortality like this is about as useful as sunscreen on a submarine. It was rotten from the edge of my ebony wings, through the magic plasma I could feel pulsing through my quills, to the new pair of lungs I’d received the moment Ilithyia wrapped me in the plumage.
I bent over, certain I was going to hurl. How come I feel like death sucking a sponge?
“Your East Coast vernacular is ruined when you’re upset, your speech reverts to southern-fried-chicken,” Ilithyia finished, as if she didn’t care for my complaints.
Ilithyia slipped into the trees behind the marble orchard, and I traipsed along behind her, mumbling complaints until I came to a halt at the edge of the woods. No one I ever knew stepped into this clearing or ventured a hike through the ancient moss covered oaks beyond.
“You’re the first of your kind in generations.” She nodded me across. “You will be the keeper of secrets and the recorder of events.”
I’m good at divulging secrets, but I hate paperwork.
Ilithyia turned a raised eyebrow, much the way my own mother would; okay, so maybe I wasn’t completely motherless after all.
I used to be at the top of the social ladder at Salem High, I called out, refusing to go farther.
“Your adolescent pecking-order is irrelevant now.” Ilithyia reappeared, right in front of me, brushing twigs from my wings.
I want my money back, a refund for reincarnation as ‘The Seer’, or at the very least, a white-light intervention. I whined as she drew me into the clearing. As soon as my bare feet touched the packed earth, a tingle started on the bottoms of my soles and fizzled up my legs and across my torso, stretching the length of my arms and up the back of my neck until it singed my scalp.
I shook my head and my hair danced around my head like the Bride of Frankenstein during a shock therapy session. Is this freakish frequency I’m on going to keep me invisible?
She eyed my hair, pointedly, and then my dress.
Okay, maybe invisibility was for the best. The pink chiffon was ripped, singed, and dive-bombed-dirty. Hey, flying isn’t as easy as angels make it look.
How long has this hocus-pocus Order been in Salem?
“Long before the witch trials happened. The Order hides in plain sight, where witches congregate.”
That’s what I was now, hidden in plain sight. Why didn’t Locke tell me?
“It is forbidden, unless he planned to bring you into the Order,” Ilithyia sighed. “His mother informed me he was going to ascertain your feelings about such things.”
The feathers at the back of my neck twitched, stroking at my mind, but the force field pressing around me was making it hard to think. What’s a seer supposed to see?
“Not just see, but record.” Ilithyia placed a beautiful red-beaded chain over my head; a little black book, its soft leather cover worn and pliable, dangled from the end of the beads. “Seers’ bear witness to epic events. Carry the book with you always and record what you see fit, but remember you are helpless to intercede with Ordinary or ExtraOrdinary proceedings.”
We’ll just see about that! Maybe I was on the highway to Hades, but my wings made me think about the footpath to paradise. I may have ended up on the wrong road, but I certainly wasn’t going to give up on Locke without a fight.
WHILE AT BLESSINGSTON
May 2009
After my death Locke was angry and consumed with finding whoever summoned the basilisk that caused the car accident. He started digging around in dark corners of Salem. And because I was from the Ordinary world, I had no idea there were backrooms where black magic and voodoo were the only magic practiced. The Sister’s gave him a stern warning to stay away from such practitioners or more harm would come to him. But Locke only gave up his search when he wandered behind the counter of Hellsbane’s Curiosity Shop and a hefty fist to the gut encouraged him to never return. Then Locke’s pursuit of information turned to scouring the internet, where he spent hours of quiet contemplation digging through the vast black holes of cyber space.
Once the Order sent Keleigh to Salem, Locke became moody and withdrawn and he spent most of his free time under the hood of his hot rod. Locke and Keleigh fought like cats and dogs when no one was around, and at the end of the school year, during finals there was an ultimate blow up between them. So after graduation his parents sent him to school in Ireland, months ahead of schedule.
I flew across the Atlantic in the cargo area of the full flight because I was unable to gain access to the passenger cabin. In the course of the 9 hour trip to Ireland, I prayed that there was someone at Blessingston that could reach Locke and help him diminish his anger. And I hoped to find an explanation about the purpose the Sister’s insisted I would serve. How could I help anyone? When only a few people could see or hear me.
After arriving in Dublin, Locke was picked up by a
tall, muscular blonde who opened the back door of the limo and introduced himself as Tristan.
Locke stalled outside the car. “He’s the tragic knight from the fairy tale?”
“That would be for whom my mother named me,” Tristan responded with a brogue so thick you’d need a gas powered tool to slice through it. For some reason, Tristan’s voice sent a chill up my spine as if Jason from Friday the 13th was revving his chain saw high over his head and chasing me in hot pursuit.
Once Locke and I were situated in the car, it felt as if Tristan’s golden eyes were watching me through the rearview mirror. I was invisible to almost everyone, so I stuck out my tongue. Tristan frowned. I brought my thumb to my nose and wiggled the rest of my fingers. Tristan narrowed his eyes and made a slicing motion across his throat with his own nimble fingers. OMG, he could see me. I projected my thoughts at him. What, exactly, are you looking at?
Tristan’s gravelly drawl responded, “This is not your place.”
Locke was peering through the tinted windows at the darkening landscape that shrouded the winding road when Tristan spoke Locke flinched. Locke, still unaware that I was with him and that I was the cause of Tristan’s words, looked up at Tristan and shrugged before saying, “With a face like this the only place I belong is in a freak show.”
Tristan’s words addressed Locke, but his eyes addressed me when he said, “You have much to learn about your place.”
The car sped north along the coastline as twilight surrendered to darkness. When the moon took to the heavens its half-full sphere showered illumination over the rolling countryside and with my bird-like clarity I could see twinkling lights in the distance and then a vast expanse of blackness beyond. Finally, I was able to make out the outline of a building, the jagged edges of what appeared to be ruins mirrored the rugged cliffs, the stone pinnacles of the edifice glowed with an eerie tinge of green and I could see sprouting peaks of architecture through patches of misty fog. We were headed in the direction of the imposing ruined castle that sat on the very edge of a steep ridge; it seemed as if one great shove would send it slipping into the ocean.
The road turned sharply and we drove through a pair of oaks as wide as buses. I looked behind us at the trees as large as California redwoods and the road that we had been on evaporated in the exhaust. I turned forward in time to see the headlights reveal a narrow bridge and a two story gatehouse built of rubble, but it was in such pristine condition one would think the cornerstones were cut yesterday, not hundreds of years ago. The drawbridge unfurled on the clanging of metal gears and met the road with a resounding clap. Two men clad in dark colored robes that matched Tristan’s, their faces concealed in the folds of roughly woven material, motioned the car through the gatehouse.
The car lumbered through the stone courtyard and came to an abrupt halt. Locke got out of the car before Tristan could open the door for him. I was able to escape the car when Locke gave an impressive stretch and yawn hanging onto the open car door. I took flight and landed near a pair of doors crowned with a perfect Tudor arch and heavy iron filigree decorations and fittings.
Tristan startled Locke out of his stretch when he spoke. “It must have been difficult to leave the lady Keleigh behind.”
“Why would that be hard?” Locke grunted, but wouldn’t meet Tristan’s eye. “She’s nothing all that special.”
“Oh, well, on that point we will agree to disagree, though I am sorry to hear about your friend dying in the accident.”
Locke cocked his chin angrily and then pointed toward it. “This was not an accident.”
“No, then what was it?” Tristan asked.
Locke kicked at the loose stones scattered over the pavers with his boots. “Nothing,” he said storming away toward the massive oak doors.
The green lichen on the stones over the entrance seemed to be moving like millions of caterpillars over the walls. Blessingston was way creepier than the Sister’s property, maybe it was cold and foreboding because it was hundreds of years older. Or maybe it was because all the buildings were surrounded by a wall thicker than the hull of the plane we had taken here and I wondered what was inside this compound that needed this kind of security. I shivered as I tried to count the number of structures. Sometimes the buildings appeared to be newly built and match the gatehouse to perfection, but then the stones seemed to shimmy in place and all you saw were the outlines of ancient ruins. This place had one heck of a cloaking spell on it and I had to wonder what sort of magic could conceal something so large. One of the buildings across from where I was standing was the size of a cathedral; actually, it looked very much like Notre Dame in Paris. My flesh ran to gooseflesh that tickled the nape of my neck as I considered just how powerful the magic or magician was that concealed this place.
Before I left Salem the Sister’s made all sorts of appeals to get me to stay, finally warning me that Blessingston was a dark and devious place and I felt the reality of that settle into the quills of my feathers.
Locke walked up a few stairs and stepped into a large hall with heavy oak paneling encasing the perimeter, the carved woodwork rose to a height over his six-foot tall frame. Tristan followed behind, carrying Locke’s bags and nodded in the direction of a massive dining room with an oak table long enough to seat 20 people to a side. “This way Cavanagh.”
Tristan passed through the dining hall and into another chamber that was empty except for a large carved chair sitting in the center of the room, elevated on a dais. The parquet floors were covered with a beautiful carpet and the wall of windows was intricately pieced stained glass that reflected the firelight illuminating the room. Tristan didn’t take to the stairs instead he started down a long gallery that felt like it was the length of a football field. This narrow corridor was about 15 feet wide and had a wall of French doors on one side and across from it, from polished floorboards to the crown molding, hung hundreds of portraits. Locke’s boots clunked along the wooden parquet floor and as he moved along the candles down the length of the wall came to life like runway lights, one after another. When we reached the end of the gallery Locke turned back and with the slightest movement of his chin the candles extinguished, the only remnant of life was the smoke filtering through the moonlight.
Tristan, Locke and invisible me were squished into a windowless room the size of a Starbucks bathroom. Tristan stacked Locke’s duffle bags against one wall and said, “Wait here, I will see if the Elders will see you tonight or in the morn.” Tristan looked back over his shoulder at me and frowned, before disappearing through a pair of black, iron-clad doors decorated with Celtic symbols.
Locke paced back and forth in the confined space. The room was so tiny that he kept walking through the edge of my ethereal being. The pain was immediate and fierce. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t want Locke to touch me, but now it was too painful, both physically and mentally. Locke pulled up short, rubbing his arms along his biceps before blowing his own warm breath into his fisted hands.
The door to the room beyond opened and an old man, hunched and crinkled beyond the age of anyone I’d ever seen, smiled at Locke. Then he grinned and giggled like a little boy. My feathers twitched at my shoulder blades when the old man’s chalky eyes fell on me. He angled his head in my direction and acknowledged me with the slightest movement of his jaw. I started to project something to him, but a sharp pain vibrated from one of my temples to the other and I fell forward on all fours in agony.
“Your lessons will begin on the morrow. For tonight, we will have a wee bit of a chat,” the old man chortled. He motioned Locke through the thick doors as I managed to regain by bare feet. I started to follow Locke, but the old man slid back into the room and with a flick of his wrist he summarily slammed the massive double doors in my face.
That was my introduction to Blessingston and so the warm welcome I dreamed of never happened. And in the months to follow, I learned there was no other way to gain access to Colloquy chamber, even through the chimney stack. I??
?d been desperate enough to try that once when I wanted to hear what was being said on the other side of those doors.
During the next year and a half that scenario played out over and over again. Locke would be summoned to the Elders for some infraction and I’d be trapped in the little chamber, like a caged bird, but the bars of my cage was my invisibility and my call for help fell like birdsong on sleeping ears before dawn. I would stand waiting and wondering what sort of punishment the Elders had dreamed up for Locke’s shenanigans this time.
Locke learned many magical and mysterious things while at Blessingston, but most importantly, both Locke and I grew up. Someday I’ll share more of what my life was like there with you, but the first months were so painfully lonely for me, it’s hard for me to talk about. But I followed the younger children and eavesdropped in their classrooms to learn about the ExtraOrdinary world that I’d somehow found myself trapped in, taking a crash course in everything magical and mythical and these are some of the things I learned.
The Seer