Across The Universe With A Giant Housecat (The Blue) (18 page)

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Stephanie Void

From Stephanie Void comes a story of childhood innocence, the corruption of power, and Magic!
 

Halfway

The Beginning of the Wizards and Faeries Series

Chapter 1

Cemagna

It began when I was ten.
 
Things were better then, I think.
 
Those were the days of running along the seashore in the mornings, finding things washed up from the water, pushing my ice-blond hair out of my face, and laughing in the sea breeze.

When you are ten years old, usually, you don’t think about how there is evil in the world. That was how it started for me. Or maybe it was just that I had never even seen the world. Any of it. My whole world was contained in one house on one cliff by the sea. It was all I had ever known.

#

“Temet, catch!”
 

I threw the waterlogged pinecone across the sand to where my brother stood. With a shout, he caught it, the wind twisting the white blond hair on the top of his head. Looking down at the pinecone, Temet, my younger twin by a matter of moments and constant companion, ran his fingers over the rough surface.
 

“One day, I am going to actually see the trees that make these things,” he proclaimed, holding up the pinecone.

“Nessy said they’re called ‘pine trees.’ And they are from far away.”

“But I still want to see them!” Depositing the pinecone on the shore, he ran towards the water, then crouched down to pick something up. “Cemagna, look what I found!”
 

With a happy shout, I ran to him, for I hadn’t found anything nice on the beach myself that morning.
 

Combing the beach every morning was something of a ritual for us. The things we would find washed up on the shore were clues about the outside world, the world beyond the house on the cliff where we lived.
 

He was holding a white stone, perfectly round, almost translucent.
 
It glowed like a night star. “It’s shiny,” he breathed, bending so close his pale curls obscured my view of the stone.
 

“Wow!” I exclaimed, moving closer.
 
“Can I hold it?”

Carefully, he placed the stone in my cupped hands, which were already wet from splashing in the seawater.
 

A fish leaped from the water near us, making a small splash. Temet leaped after it, most likely to attempt to catch it with his hands. This was his eternal goal, one he had not yet succeeded at.

I looked down at my hands again—the stone had stopped glowing! Once more it was just a stone. A pretty stone, but simply a stone nonetheless.

I stared harder at it.
 
Why wasn’t it glowing anymore?
 

Walking away from the water, I sat down in the long grass at the edge of the sand, tucking my dress under me.
 
The stone had glowed for Temet. Why wouldn’t it glow for me? Had
Temet
made it glow?

I heard my brother shriek as he played.
 
He probably was already wet from head to toe, having fallen into the surf like he always did.
 
Then he’d come up, sputtering and giggling, proclaiming to the world how fun that was. I’d chase him and then we’d do battle in the surf. But not today. Today, I was concentrating hard on the stone, wanting it to glow like before.
 
It had been so
shiny
.

“Temet, how did you do that to this stone? How did you make it glow?”

“I wanted it to be shiny, and it became shiny!” he yelled from the surf, splashing water in my direction. “The fish got away, but I
almost
had him! I’m getting better at this, really!”

I concentrated on the stone, wanting it to glow like Temet had. Nothing happened. The stone was just a dull stone. I shook my head.

He yelled my name. “Cemagna!”
 

I ignored him, brushing wisps of hair away from my face and trying to do what he had done to the stone, the sea breeze singing in my ears.

“Cemagna!
 
Look what I can do!”

“What?”
 
Pocketing the stone, I stood up. Perhaps I would try again with it later. I walked towards the water, the sand warm on my bare feet.
 

“Look!” he yelled. I had been right—he was already soaking wet.
 
“Look what I can do!”
 
He pointed one wet finger at the surface of the water.
 
A small plume of water rose up and stood upright, wavering slightly.

I cocked my head.
 
“How did you do that?”

“I don’t know!
 
I just did.
 
Like the stone. I wanted the water to splash me, and it did.”
 
The small plume of water fell down, hitting Temet in the leg.
 
He giggled.

“Make another one!
 
A bigger one!”

He reached outward again, spreading his hand this time.
 
Another plume of water shot up, much bigger.
 
It grew until it was as tall as him.
 
I took a step back.
 
“Temet…”
 

He stood in front of it, entranced.
 
Then he began to laugh.

The water came crashing down, soaking him and the front of my dress.

“Temet!
 
You got me wet!”

“Sorry.
 
I didn’t mean to.” He hugged me, forgetting this made me even wetter.
 

“Temet!” I shouted.

“Sorry.” He wasn’t. I shoved him backwards into the water, which made him laugh even more. “You try it, Cemagna. Try to make the water move. If I can do it, you can.”

I spread my hand in the same way he had and tried hard.
 
I stared at the water, biting my lip.
 
The water didn’t twist.
 
It remained motionless except for the humps of the waves.
 
I narrowed my eyes, wanting it to form into something… anything…

“No,” said Temet.
 
“Don’t… don’t try so hard. Just think of the water moving.”

So I relaxed.
 
The water still didn’t move.

“Here,” I said, handing him the stone from my pocket. “You take it. It doesn’t glow for me like it does for you.”

“Cemagna!
 
Temet!”
 
The voice was Nessy’s, from our house far above on the cliff.

Temet’s eyes widened.
 
“I can’t wait to tell her!”
 
He dashed out of the water, accidentally splashing me again, and ran up the shore towards the path that led to our house.

“Wait for me, Temet!” I ran after him as he began to climb.

The shore where we played was the only sandy patch of beach that bordered the sea for miles. The rest of the shore was lined with rocks—huge rocks and cliffs that the sea angrily bashed on a constant basis. Our house was up among those rocks, a building so tall and pointed that it could be mistaken for a rock itself. Temet and I had lived there all our lives. Nessy, our mother, was the only person we’d ever known. The three of us lived a hidden existence, though neither Temet nor I knew why. We had asked a few times, but Nessy had said she’d tell us why only when we were older.

As we reached the top of the cliff path, I could see Nessy waiting for us. Nessy had the same ice-blond hair as we did and always wore a big smile—not a pasted-on type of smile, but an on-the-verge-of-laughing grin. I knew the difference.
 

Though we were alone in the world, I seldom felt alone because of the library of books Nessy kept, reading to us often until we learned how ourselves.

There was another thing about Nessy that Temet and I knew. In addition to being our mother, Nessy was descended from an old, different race of people—Nessy was a faerie.

“Temet!” she exclaimed, the deep red of her dress standing out against the green all around her.
 
She always wore the same red dress, ribbons lacing up the sides. “You’re all wet!
 
Not that I’m surprised about it or anything.”
 
He tumbled into her arms, and she kissed the top of his head.

“Nessy!
 
I made the water move!
 
I did!
 
I wanted it to move and it did!”

“Really?
 
Show me!”
 
She turned to me, kissing me as she had kissed him.
 
“Did you see him do it, Cemagna?”

“Yes,” I said.
 
“But I don’t know how.”

Babbling about his discovery, Temet led her back down the path to the water.
 
I followed.
 
I had noticed the mask of fear that had come over Nessy’s face for just a moment, before she replaced her usual smile, when Temet had voiced his discovery.

When we reached the shore again, Temet splashed into the water, motioning us to follow.
 
Nessy waded out to meet him, pulling the skirt of her dress up away from the water.
 
I watched from the shore.

“Look!” cried Temet, repeating his water-plume trick.
   

“Well, isn’t that something,” breathed Nessy.
 
“I wonder how you learned it.
 
Now let’s go eat breakfast. I found some more flour in the cellar, so I made moonfruit muffins for us.”

That was what we lived on. Moonfruit grew in trees in the old orchard nest to our house and mushrooms grew in the cellar. Also in the cellar was a wealth of different jars of food, things Nessy preserved from the garden she grew. Temet and I never went hungry.
 

#

By evening, after a day filled with reading in our library—Nessy insisted we should be educated—the sky had filled with clouds. By the time night had fallen the clouds had morphed into a thunderstorm. I lay in my bed in our house on the cliff, listening to the sounds of the storm, my eyes wide. I had never gotten used to hearing thunderstorms.

It is only water, Cemagna. Water can’t hurt you.

Nessy had told me that once, and now when a thunderstorm scared me, I would repeat it to myself until I fell asleep. But today it wasn’t working. Slipping out of my bed, I left my bedroom where Temet slept happily, murmuring to himself as he dreamed. Luckily for Temet, the list of things
he
was afraid of did not include thunderstorms.

I padded over to Nessy’s room, my stocking feet silent. Nessy lay upon her bed, sheets tossed about her in a way that suggested she had been tossing restlessly all night. She murmured in her sleep, and her tone sounded angry.

“Go—go,” she murmured, turning over violently.

I crept closer to her, wondering if she was having a nightmare I should wake her from. I noticed her hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat even though the night was cool.

A small cry escaped her lips as I approached. I jumped back.

“Not!” she yelped, tossing a handful of white sheets into the air as she thrashed for a moment.

“Nessy,” I said, but my voice was a cracked, scared whisper. This was not an ordinary nightmare.

She was still again, peaceful. The only movement over her pale form was a whisper of wind from the open window that let in a tendril of sea breeze.

“Nessy!” commanded another voice as thunder rattled the house. I jumped again, startled, my heart pounding. I looked around, but Nessy and I were alone.

Nessy mumbled something, but did not move. Backing up, I crept towards a corner in the dark, overcome by an overwhelming need to hide even though I desperately wanted to crawl into bed beside her.

“Nessy, wake up,” said the voice. A deep voice.

A pale light began to glow from the mirror in front of her bed, faint at first, then growing.

“Nessy,” said the voice again. “You will wake up now. You are past due. You will wake up and speak.”

Yelping as though she had been struck, Nessy sat up. She didn’t see me in the corner, but only stared at the mirror that glowed with its eerie pale glow.

“Leave me alone,” she demanded in a harsh whisper. “I don’t have anything for you this time.”

Foggily, in the mirror, a silhouette of a face appeared. “Don’t lie, Nessy.”

Nessy reached out towards her bedside table, grabbed a hairbrush that lay upon it, and threw it at the mirror. The glass broke, a spiderweb of shards radiating outwards. One large piece fell and smashed on the floor.

Then came the creepiest laugh I had ever heard. Horrified, I saw that the broken mirror only made the vision worse. Now a foggy face shone from every sliver of glass individually.

“You can’t get rid of me that way,” said the voice, still quiet but magnified hundreds of times as the visions spoke simultaneously, blending together. “You made a deal you must honor.”

“That deal was forced from me.
 
This is my life; these children are mine, not yours.”

“That remains to be seen. Speak, or I will force you to speak.”

“You cannot take them from me.”

“You made a promise! Now speak!”

Nessy was silent for a moment, her face distorted in as if with pain. Then she spoke, a ghostly quality to her voice, her eyes blank. “The children are what they were born as. The boy showed extraordinary abilities today. He moved water. A lot of it. And he performed illumination on a stone. The girl has manifested no powers.”

“Hmm. Very well. We will honor our agreement. Don’t attempt to flee with the boy, either.”

Nessy blinked, then shook her head. Life returned to her eyes. “What did I say?” she murmured, her voice normal again. To my immense relief, I saw that the mirror shards had gone dark, the vision gone.