Return To Sky Raven (Book 2) (15 page)

“I am truly sorry, Rosa, but if I hadn’t pushed you to seek the shore, you would have died.”

She wiped away the rest of her tears and let go of Maya. “I understand you were acting to save my life, and I am very grateful. Alex has reminded me that while it may have led to the worst parts of my life, it also led to the best, and I would do it again to stay with them if needed.”

Mother smiled gratefully. “Thank you, Rosa, and please know that we will never ask you to be alone like that again.”

She turned her attention to Dawn and Dusk, shook her head and waggled a finger at them affectionately. “You two already know what I did for you.” They both bowed respectfully. “But I must say, I was rather shocked at the way you introduced yourselves and that you almost left two of my wonderful babies alone in the forest.”

Their faces fell, and they squirmed uncomfortably in their chairs. Immediately, they spoke in their eerie unison voice, “We are very sorry; please forgive us!”

She chuckled a little. “Don’t worry, I’m not mad at you, I’m just glad you both decided to stick around.” She then looked at Maya, but her eyes lost focus, and I knew she was speaking to Winya. “I’m sorry about my joke from earlier, I truly didn’t mean to offend. But, yes, I will admit that I was the one who talked with you and predicted you would again serve a queen someday.”

“
Then you have my humble thanks.”

Mother nodded respectfully before my father started to speak. “I, too, have interfered. Julia, the day your parents were attacked, I found you leaning against a young rowan tree. You had been stabbed and left for dead by the bandits who killed your family and stole the wagon that had been your home. You still have a healed scar on your right side that marks the wound, but you’ve never been able to remember where it came from. Anyway, when I arrived, you still barely clung to life. Even then, you were a survivor, an eternal optimist and a fighter, and I found great nobility in that. I sealed your injury but left the scar as a reminder. I checked on your parents, but they were beyond healing, so you and only you would survive. I carried you when you were sleeping and placed you in the forest where the woodcutter who found you had been working every day. I watched over you until he arrived, even though there was no animal in that forest that would ever have dreamed of harming you. I am glad you have grown up to be a very powerful druid; in fact, that was why we were drawn to you in the first place. I am very proud of you.”

“Julia,” my mother added, “I am proud of you as well. I am sorry for what you had to endure at the orphanage, but ultimately it led you to Alex and Xarparion. You might be happy to learn that right after we had the opportunity to reveal ourselves to Alex after his birthday, an anonymous donor made a big donation to the village’s orphanage fund on the condition that Miss Stal be replaced immediately by a more compassionate caregiver. I believe Merilda Martin was the unanimous choice by the village elders.

Julia was in the process of drying her tears after the revelation about her past, but she perked up and smiled happily. “Mrs. Martin is in charge of the orphanage now? That is awesome! The others will be so grateful, thank you!”

“Lin,” Father explained, “I was the one who got the testing wizard lost so that he wandered around in the wilderness for three days before stumbling upon the remote farmhouse where your family lived. If that hadn’t happened, he would have missed testing you and gone on to the next village looking for candidates. You and Julia needed each other, so I put things in motion to make it happen.” She nodded, even as tears began to run down her face, but she looked happy.

He looked at Maya; in fact, both of them did, then exchanged awkward glances. “Maya, I’m afraid it’s to you that we have the most to apologize for.”

She was looking very worried now. “For what?”

Father looked troubled. “For every force of good, there’s a force of evil, and we are no exception. But unlike the gods and man, we cannot face off against our foes directly. That is why we created the nebulia and our enemies created demons. And like us, they too know of the prophecy.”

“We took great pains to hide Alex and protect him from being noticed by the evil. For the first twenty years of his life, they were unable to find Alex in the real world and unable to reach him in the dream world. Unfortunately, with Maya being born out of our control, she had no such protection, and the Lifebane’s seers and spies marked her as the likely Child of Darkness when she was barely out of the womb.”

“So why didn’t they just kill her then and be done with it?” Rosa interjected.

My father looked pained but continued, “Several reasons; prophecies are always cryptic, vague, and usually written by crazy old coots in a loincloth at the top of a mountain somewhere. The evil couldn’t be a hundred percent sure Maya was the Child of Darkness until the Child of Light appeared as well. If they took her life before the Child of Light manifested, the universe might just spawn another Child of Darkness to take her place, and they might not be able to find the replacement so easily. Also, the long life span of an elf versus a human was another problem for them; they had no way of knowing if the Child of Light would appear in Maya’s twentieth year of life or her three hundredth.”

He took a deep breath and went on, “So the forces of evil decided the best course of action was to allow her to live until such time as the Child of Light made his appearance. At that point, she would be expendable.”

“The assassins,” Rosa gasped, covering her mouth with her hand.

“Yes,” my father confirmed, “but that’s not the worst of the story. While the evil needed her body to survive to wait for the arrival of the Child of Light, they had no such care for her mind. It became their goal to break her spirit, her mental processes, and her ability to ever be a threat to them. Maya, your dreams, your nightmares, the relentless images of the undead - it was all due to them, and they nearly succeeded.”

Maya had slid her chair closer to mine so she could lean on me and I could hold her. I could see the rage in her eyes and feel the tension building in her muscles.

“Was there nothing you could do to help her?” I questioned angrily, looking up from my attempts to comfort my dark elf.

My mother’s eyes softened and looked hurt when the tone of my voice registered with her. “We could not intervene directly; she was being watched intensely by the Lifebane’s minions for any sign of the appearance of the Child of Light. If our interest in her had been detected, it might have been the validation they sought that Maya was indeed the Child of Darkness, and they may have ended her existence immediately despite the risks.” My mother’s voice lowered to a bare whisper as she continued, “You’re right, Alex, it was unconscionable for us to do nothing, so in the end, we did the only thing we could. Maya, I sent you the knight.”

Startled, Maya’s eyes flew wide open and she pulled away from me in anger. “Why…why did you make him look like Alex?”

“I didn’t. The image I sent to your dreams was of a golden nebulia with a greatsword, similar to Alera’s protector. As nebulia are legendary defenders of the weak and innocent, even in your people’s mythos, I thought it would give you comfort and strength to persevere. The emergence of the white knight with the fearsome hammer and shield all came from within you. Your mind, in trying to defend itself, sought out its greatest bastion of hope and courage and somehow Alex was the answer.”

“But…how? I started getting those dreams even before he was alive!”

They both smiled. “To that question, we ask you this - how would even we know about the son who hadn’t been conceived yet? I know that this is not what you want to hear, but it’s the truth; we didn’t create the white knight in your mind.”

“But you know why it happened, don’t you?”

My parents exchanged uncomfortable glances. “We…have a theory, but we can’t prove it, yet.”

“And that is?” she demanded.

“Star-crossed lovers,” they blurted in unison, followed by a synchronized “huh!” from all the rest of us. “Well, that’s what humans call it anyway.”

“And what exactly does that mean?” I asked.

They smiled nervously, but my father answered,. “Please don’t misunderstand, the only reason we didn’t want to tell you is because we could be wrong, and that would be an absolute tragedy. But if you must know, each and every one of you has a string of fate that every creature with a soul follows like a thin cotton thread through a dark forest. For some, the thread leads them into the light.” He paused briefly and smiled at Alera. “And for others, it leads them into darker and darker places until there is no hope of redemption. Sometimes, if an individual is very fortunate, their string will meet up with other compatible strings, intertwine, and continue onward to their ultimate destination together. This can be a company of soldiers going into battle together, sisters or brothers in a family, or even a band of friends united for a purpose,” he said, nodding calmly at our group. “Typically, this intertwining is transient in nature - until the battle is over, until the family members marry and form their own family units, or until the mission is accomplished and fate takes them in another direction. But on very rare occasions, two strings will bind together so tightly that there is no possible way to tell where one starts and the other ends.” He pointed at Maya and me. “You two are almost a single strand as we speak; soon your fates will be so forged together there will be no turning back. Something like this does not happen randomly, it is one of the universes little mysteries that even the Nova are not privy to.” He reached over and gave my mother a kiss on the cheek, and I could see there was real affection between the two of them; in fact, I’m pretty sure if their fate strings were examined, it might be the same for them. “Anyway,” he continued, “back to the story. No matter when either of you would have been born, one of you would have found a way to get to the other. And in your relationship, that would seem to be you, Maya.”

“Me?” She looked from them to me.

“Yes, do you remember when you left your village? Do you remember talking to yourself? We do; you were contemplating going to another dark elf village far away, but instead, you felt a pull to wander aimlessly, living off the land, until you discovered Rosa. Coinciding with your leaving your home, Alex and his foster family were also on the move. You had no idea why, but you were compelled to be closer to him, the move to Xarparion was a step in that direction. But after a short while, even that wasn’t close enough, so you did the only thing you could think of to see more of the area, you volunteered to join the guard on patrols just to ease the itch you could never scratch.” My father grinned knowingly. “And tell me, Maya, which portal patrol did you end up going on more than any other?”

“Portal Seven, the Foalshead gateway,” Maya answered hollowly, her mind turning over every motivation and turn of events that seemed relevant.

“Exactly, and one more question; have you ever felt the need to leave on one of your patrols since you met Alex?”

She looked down at the floor and I could see tears falling and staining her suit. “No, I haven’t.” She looked up at me. “And I never seem to be able to get close enough unless he’s holding me.” Her voice cracked with emotion.

Seeing in her eyes what she needed, I got up, scooped her up and sat back down in my chair so that she was sitting across my lap with an arm around my shoulder and her head resting against me. “Much, much better,” she whispered in my ear.

Mother wiped away a stray tear that was running down her face. “I hope you will forgive us if we are wrong.”

“I don’t care anymore; I have Alex and he’s all I need.”

Father then looked at Nia, who was literally biting her nails, knowing she was the last one. I could tell that he was thinking about saying something about the attack on her people, but it appeared that he changed his mind at the last instant; maybe he sensed that she wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. “Nia, I know you have long wondered why you are not like other pixies. The truth is rather simple; you, young lady, are a wizard.”

Her wings and jaw dropped. “Whoa, what, Mister Alex’s Dad?”

“Just as Rosa said, you are somewhat of a throwback to the time before magic was split and segregated like it is now, back when wizards could cast any spell they could conceive of and handle.”

“So what does that mean?” she asked meekly.

He laughed, “Oh, are you thinking that this is a bad thing?” She nodded slightly and he smiled sympathetically. “My poor girl, there’s nothing farther from the truth! With age and practice, you will be able to cast almost any spell, aside from some of the druid ones, anyway.”

She looked sadly at the floor. “But I’m already almost three years old; I don’t have that much time left, twenty years at most.”

“And you are already forgetting what you are?” She looked up at him in puzzlement. “With the amount of magic you have, I would say you will live for a strong six hundred years, probably more.” Nia flew up near my mother’s face and watched as she smiled and nodded in affirmation.

Her eyes lit up as she darted over and hugged my face as she always does. “I get to stay with you forever!”

Nia’s maiden tried her best to get Nia back in her spot, but she was way too happy to go anywhere. Nia decided she wanted to sit on my left shoulder so she was close to both me and Maya, much to the confusion of all three of our maidens, who ended up standing rather close together, vying for the one spot.

Mother, who was laughing the entire time, finally calmed herself and clapped her hands together briskly to get everyone’s attention. “Ok, can we please move on to more pleasant conversation now? I don’t think my heart can take much more of this sadness.”

Almost instantly the mood in the room brightened, and everyone seemed to actually enjoy the wonderful food that was placed before us. I was even able to taste the last three courses of delicious, but still unidentifiable food.

The maidens were a big help; it seemed that two of them knew common and were able to rotate around the room and tell us what we were supposed to do with everything. I was pretty sure some of the items weren’t even from our planet based on the puzzled table talk between Jules and Lin; one vegetable tray even brought out the sketchbooks from their robes.