Darkness The Diary of Samantha Owen (12 page)

“What is it? Are you okay?” he asked ashamed. “Do you not like it? If you like I can stop, if you repent
, I understand, you can leave if you wish, just I… <> he wanted to say, but his voice failed as he watched her fearfully, he didn´t want her to leave.

The girl smiled, calming him; he looked at him with a decided fixed expression. She would tell him everything.

“I am fine,” she answered with a sweet voice, as if speaking to a terrified child. “I like it, I love it,” she corrected herself. “All of you, what we have done was marvelous. But I am afraid that I cannot leave with my conscious at ease unless I tell you the motive of my arrival. I cannot leave you without saying anything, leaving you in uncertainty.”

“You cannot go, I cannot let you go. You are that first person I care about, I, I…” he didn´t know what to say for an instant and he saw in the eyes of his beloved the answer.

“I love you too,” these words were a gift to his ears. “I fell in love with you at first sight and I have been with you and without you all this time. Seeing you and not being able to hug you, without being able to comfort you when you fell, nor congratulate you when you got up. I comforted myself, watching you read every night from the window. And when you were asleep, at times I dared to enter and see your beautiful face close up, be able to caress it, and leave at dawn in grief.

“Why have you spent all this time following me?” he asked her confused.

“Because I was told to, you are a strong and brave person, more than others. You know lots of people who could help me to find a wizard that will help me in the future.”

She was quiet so that the boy with the ashen face could assimilate what she had said to him.

“I need you, so that in half a century you find a wizard that will rid me of my curse.”

“What curse?”

“I am not a normal daughter of the night, my mother married a wizard and I am a mixture of both of them,” she lied, “as a consequence I am cursed to live in another body when I turn one hundred years old. I will not remember anything or anyone.”

Gabriel´s face filled with anguish.

“That is why I haven´t been with anyone until now,” she said looking towards the sheet. “I couldn’t bear to lose my loved ones, I distanced myself from my family and nevertheless here I find myself with you.”

“I don´t want to lose you. I don´t want you to go. Tell me what I can do.”

“Within fifty-two years you should search for a wizard called Phoenix. He is very powerful and the only one able to undo my spell. But you must not say that my father was a wizard, or he will not help you. Wizards do not trust each other. I asked a fortune-teller a short while ago and she told me to look for a strong and decided man, and that is you. Only you can help me. I don´t mean to make you suffer, I just want your help.”

“But, I love you. How can you leave with such a burden? If you stay with me I will help you better. How will I not suffer if the love of my life escapes through the windows of my heart?”

Listening to such words of love, Elizabeth´s heart skipped a beat. Nobody had ever said anything so beautiful to her. But she couldn´t stay, she knew this all too well.

“I cannot stay, my curse is very clear, if I love so
meone, that person will suffer, having them beside me will accelerate my change and one day I will wake up and won´t recognize your face,” she smoothly stroked his cheek and allowed her hand to fall on his chest.

“What is more, if I stay with you, tomorrow I might not be me and die.”

She said this with tears about to flow from her eyes. She didn´t want to hurt him anymore and felt that that was the best way. To convince him that he couldn´t be with her.

“Die? No
,” he said anxiously. He couldn´t imagine seeing her dead.

“It is my curse; .” She recited with her gaze far away from Gabriel´s face. “Train, strengthen yourself and search for the wizard that can help me. I trust you.” She bent down and kissed him gently, as a farewell.

Gabriel helped her to dress; he put her shoes one by one, with a heavy heart. When he finished, he helped her get up from the bed and he embraced her strongly. He buried his face in her hair and breathed in deeply. He would do it; he would do anything to see her again.

“There won´t be
any place where that wizard can hide, I will find him, for you and for me,” he said decidedly. “I will search and we will be together again, even if it is the last think I do.”

He kissed her intensely and helped her out.
Without warning, she jumped, falling like a feather to the road below. Elizabeth looked towards the window with her heart heavy and tears flooding her face. She really loved him and yet she had convinced him to find a false remedy, for a false destiny. She was guiding him to a sure death, she thought. She started running without looking back, leaving behind her lover standing in the window full of hope and betrayal.

Gabriel didn´t see her again, although Elizabeth spied on him every now and again, following the orders of her master when he saw her outfit stained with tears when she arrived home. He did it as a punishment, Elizabeth thought, for having fallen in love with the wrong boy. He made her suffer every time he ordered her to watch him to see if he was carrying out the plan. She couldn´t even have him in her mind to see him in her dreams. She could do nothing.

She felt impotent when she thought of how many years had gone by and how her master convinced her time and time again to go against her will. Sometimes she hated him for that and the irony was that it was Ian who had taught her all that he knew, about her history, her body, her powers and how these blended together. She could not leave.

She shut the door again leaving the mailman with the letter in his hand and his words in his mouth, she hadn´t listened to what he said, she never did. She didn´t even say who he had to give the letter to, nor when. She went with a heavy heart to her room. She could no longer contain her tears.

Kenneth
continued waiting for the arrival of the princess. However, as the afternoon progressed he had gathered his belongings and moved them little by little to his other house in the human dimension. He fantasized with parallel words and doubles of people as he went to and fro, dissipating from house to house. Each journey lasted only a second, but for him time was like gold and he always made used of every opportunity to fantasize with his ideas of a different world. He no longer had furniture in his house, only the bath and a room on the second floor. His basement was empty and he had left the sofas to sit on. He spent the day trying not to think about Venice. Although he didn´t like to admit it, he missed her, he missed giving her advice and predicting the future for her. She was his best friend, until the fateful day of the birth of their daughters. He remembered how the midwives of the kingdom helped him, they were experts but she wanted only him to be there. He remembered her face of disbelief when she saw her two precious delicate daughters. She made him swear that he would never tell anyone what had happened, if someone knew that she had had twins, they would separate them and she didn´t want that. However, the warning had no effect. That same night they were taken from her. Nobody knew who it was, although Kenneth suspected that the empress knew very well who had kidnapped them. From that moment she exiled him from her life, after centuries in her service.

He had always kept his oath, but that night he was willing to break it, to tell the truth to one of h
er daughters, because he knew that Elizabeth knew everything about her sister.

He had planned to leave that night, but feared that it was not going to be that way. If they convinced him to, which would be easy to do, he would stay to help the princess with her powers. He was too good to leave.

Chapter
9

We arrived quickly to Gabriel´s house. I felt tired with my muscles cramping. I went up to my room quickly to have a good shower. Feeling the hot water on my body relaxed the accumulated tensions from the long day and it prepared me for what Eric wanted to tell me. I wasn´t sure that I would be a great warrior, you couldn´t tell that I had it in my blood, up to now I wasn´t any good.

I left the bathroom wrapped in a towel, lifting my gaze and found Eric looking at me. I blushed a little and he turned his head away so as not to look at me. I moved forward slowly, led by the desire and attraction I felt for him. I thought that he was going to tell me once and for all what was happening, but he promptly got up and turned around.

“Get dressed, we have to leave,” he said suddenly.

“Go? Where? I though
t we would speak about us, not where we would go.”

“I am going to take you to meet someone. Right now
, this is more important than us.” He finished the phrase with a sigh; I didn´t know if he was being impatient or if something was happening to him.

It hurt me greatly that he wouldn´t even look at me. Sometimes I struggled to understand him. I reminded myself
to be patient and got dressed with him in the room. I didn´t care, the flame that had quickly arisen, was quickly extinguished. I wanted to understand him, but sometimes I found it difficult. I moved towards him and I hugged him from behind, burying my face in his back.

“I really want to know what is happening.
I know that you will tell me in due time, but I cannot bear to be distanced from you, that you don´t look at me or hug me.”

I noted how his back relaxed a little and he turned round to embrace me.

“It isn´t my intention to distance myself from you, I cannot. And the last thing I want is to cause you pain,” he said in a low voice. “But this morning I got a fright when you fainted and this house seems to have ears in the wall. That is why I don´t speak much with you and I am tense,” he looked at me for a moment and kissed me on the forehead. “Don´t worry, soon things will be fixed.”

I grudgingly let him go and we went out the door. He made a gesture for me to be in silence. I didn´t know that we were leaving secretly. We got to the street. The air was fresh and pleasant; it made me feel refreshed.

We walked towards the Council, that great building in which we had been this morning. Eric told me how often the counsellors met; also that it had been a long time since there had been a celebration in the building.

“Since you disappeared, the empress has forbidden it
,” he said in a distracted and neutral voice. I could tell that his mind was elsewhere; from time to time he would look back to make sure that no one was following us.

After a long walk, we left the city and headed towards the forest by one of the paths that seemed to end where the big trees appeared. As we left the city behind, everything looked smaller and more familiar. When we had left everything behind, Eric gave me his hand, intertwining our fingers to my surprise, as he looked distractedly at the trees. I looked at him and he smiled in that relaxed and mischievous way that gave me butterflies in the stomach.

We advanced decidedly in the direction of the forest and went further into it, following the path. After a few minutes a modest two floor house made of stone and natural wood blending in with our surroundings appeared before us. The lights were on, lighting up the trees and the plants closest to the house. We arrived to a wooden porch and stopped in front of the door. Eric raised his hand to knock on it. Before he could touch the wood, a voice was heard.

“Come in Eric, I have been waiting for you.”

I didn´t know who we were visiting in the middle of the forest by night; and my curiosity would not be calmed. Eric had told me nothing, after his brief commentary about the Council and me, I had spent the whole trip thinking about what I was going to find at the end of the path.

We entered into the
house; it was cold and almost empty. There were shades where furniture had been; to the left there was a welcoming lounge hidden by the wall in the entrance. There was a large sofa and a man sitting in an armchair. He had brown hair and a big smile when he saw us. He got up and walked a few paces and bowed before me.

“Please don´t do that, greet me in the normal way.”

I did not like people bowing down before me. I was just like them, they didn´t have to do that.

“As you prefer princess.”

I smiled slightly and noticed a slight squeeze of my hand by Eric, his way of cheering me.

“Eric
,” he greeted, “my condolences, I haven´t spoken to you since.”

Eric made a gesture of understanding and we sat down on the sofa.