Read The Seal of Oblivion Online
Authors: Holly Dae
The Seal of Oblivion
THE SEAL OF OBLIVION
by
Holly Dae
Text Copyright © 2012 Holly Dae
All Rights Reserved.
This book
contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties.
Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this
book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system without express written permission from the author
THE
SEAL OF OBLIVION
Table Of Contents
Chapter
Four—
The
First Staff Piece
Chapter
Seven—Rocks Fossils and…
A Staff Piece?
Chapter
Eleven—Fight for the Last
Chapter
Fourteen—Lady Sahajah’s Castle
Chapter
Fifteen—
The
Seal of Oblivion
Chapter
One
Nightshield
The girl was almost beside herself
as she stared at her friend, who, though very aware of the girl towering over
her with all of her four feet and ten inches, continued what she was doing, one
leg propped under her thighs. This did nothing to quell her friend’s ire.
“We bring you to one of the largest
malls in the USA, and you disappear on us to sit in a food court and draw,” she
exclaimed running her hand through brown hair with blonde streaks in her
frustration.
“Leave her alone Sakura. She comes
from Miami with the sun and beaches and hot guys and—”
Sakura rounded on the third girl,
with dark skin and black hair. “Adria, does Miami have a mall with over four
hundred stores in them?”
“We should have gone to an art
museum or something,” Adria suggested.
“I don’t do art museums.”
“Art is art Laqiya,” Sakura said.
“There is no difference between one picture of a rose and another.”
“Hm,” Laqiya hummed continuing what
she was doing and just as Adria and Sakura sat next to her, she stopped drawing
and sat straight up looking across the food court, eyes narrowing.
“What?” Adria asked sitting next to
her.
“Nothing,” Laqiya replied and
leaned on her arm while twirling a lock of her golden, dark brown hair. “It’s
nothing…”
“I’m going to get something to eat,” Laqiya
said suddenly.
“You two hungry?”
“Yeah,” Sakura said taking Laqiya’s
sketch pad. She began to flip through the sketches. “I’ll buy us a pizza.”
“I can buy it,” Laqiya said walking
off.
“Bring me a drink too,” Sakura
shouted after Laqiya.
Laqiya waved her hand behind her to
let her know she had heard and got in line, an annoyed look plastered on her
face as she waited. It was only a matter of time….
“Boo,”
came
a dry unenthusiastic tone that scared Laqiya out of her wits.
She whirled around, quite possibly to
perform a quick jab on the person, until she realized who it was. She
suppressed a groan. If it weren’t for the fact that she liked Adria and Sakura,
she would have tried to hide from the woman. And Laqiya was beginning to get
the feeling that was what Katherine wanted.
“Why do you insist on scaring me
like that?” Laqiya demanded.
“Because it’s
funny.
You always sense me long before I show myself, yet I always
manage to surprise you.”
Laqiya turned back around and
groaned, looking at the tall dark haired woman out the corner of her eye. She
looked the same as always; hair cut short in a way similar to the style that
singer from the Caribbean (Laqiya couldn’t recall her name) used to wear, and
off-shoulder sleeved shirt , which showed of the black cat tattoo on either
side of her shoulder, and straight jeans in her usual favorite color, black.
“Do you always have to wear black?”
“No. I just like to,” Katherine
said shrugging.
“I would think you wouldn’t be able
to follow me even after I move eight hundred miles away,” Laqiya snapped.
“Seven hundred,” the woman
corrected. “If you had gone all the way to Atlanta, it would have been eight
hundred. And I always knew you would end up here. It’s no coincidence that your
mother moved you all here.”
“Sure Katherine,” Laqiya said
walking up to the front of the line.
“Still don’t believe it?” Katherine
asked.
“It’s been six years.”
“You’re thirteen now.”
“That’s the point,” said Laqiya.
“And yet I’m still here…”
“I don’t even know what I’m
supposed to do.”
“Yes you do,” Katherine said. “You
feel something. You’ve noticed it. You know there something you have to do, but
you don’t know what.”
Laqiya didn’t reply directly to the
comment, but she did ask, “And just what is it that I can do huh?”
“You know exactly what you can do.”
“What? Cause a nice breeze every
now and then?”
“Wind and air are fickle things, so
they’re easy to control,” Katherine pointed out. “The other forces aren’t as…
unyielding.”
“So I’ve noticed,” Laqiya said to
her and then sighed. “Look you. You’ve got the wrong girl.”
“So you don’t believe it?”
“No! I don’t!” Laqiya exclaimed as
she got to the front of the line and ignored the woman as she ordered her
pizza. When she was done, she turned her attention back to Katherine. “There’s
no way I’m some… some warrior who can wield the forces of nature.”
“Yes there is,” Katherine said in a
matter-of-fact tone.
“Katherine…”
“It’s too late to reject it. It was
too late when you took on that name.”
“Someone forced that name on me. I
didn’t take it!”
Katherine ignored her and
continued, “Hell, it was too late when you were born.”
Laqiya was silent again as she
crossed her arms. She was not meant to be a warrior. She was not meant to be a
hero and above all, she could not
control
the forces of nature.
“Just watch,” Katherine said
suddenly. “Things will start to happen. You won’t be able to deny it for long.”
Laqiya continued to be stubbornly
silent.
“I bet it’s already happening.
You’re have a strange feeling that something isn’t right, that something’s
about to happen. It reminds you of before when they used to watch you.”
Laqiya shuddered. It was like an
adventure when she was younger, but it creeped her out now that she was older.
She would never admit that Katherine was right though. There was something
about this city. Something was here and that dream was back, a memory really.
Generally, Laqiya kept it out her head, the memory of red eyes and shadows. But
it had returned, its reoccurrence in her dreams taking its toll on her.
Laqiya sighed and looked back up,
intending to ask Katherine what she meant, but instead she found the pizza
employee shoving a pizza box in her face and Katherine… Laqiya looked around.
Katherine was heading towards the exit in that strut that had reminded Laqiya
of a cat since she first met the woman when she was seven, not long after…
Laqiya shook her head. She’d rather forget that night for more than one reason.
Red eyes and shadows.
Something was wrong. She could
feel it in the atmosphere. Laqiya suppressed a groan as put the pizza on the
table in front of Adria and Sakura. Suddenly, she didn’t feel so hungry.
******
Laqiya didn’t see Katherine again,
but that didn’t stop her from thinking about it when she was at school or for the
rest of the school week. Just the thought of Katherine being here was mentally
draining. That meant that there was something to protect her from… again. The
morning sun in addition to the sounds of things being moved downstairs kept her
from sleeping, and so she pulled the comforter over her head in effort to block
the disturbances. It didn’t work. So Laqiya got up, did her morning hygiene
ritual, dressed and went downstairs to see what was going on. When she got
downstairs, her mother was coming out the foyer area under the stairs.
“Finally you’re awake. That move
was a little tiring though. So I let you sleep,” Miss Robins said. “But now
that you’re awake, you can see who’s here.”
Laqiya raised her eyebrows in
surprise as descended down the stairs and poked her head around the corner to
see who it was. Laqiya and the girl sitting on the couch locked eyes.
“Isis!”
“Good to see you too Laqiya,” Isis
said in the soft elegant tones Laqiya remembered all too well. Isis always had
a certain grace about her in speech and movement. Not a thing out of place. Not
even her straight brown hair was ever unruly, unlike Laqiya’s which had the
tendency to curl and frizz at the ends.
“What are you doing here?” Laqiya
asked as she looked from her cousin to her mother and back.
“She’ll be staying with us for a
while.” Mrs. Robins replied
“Why?” Laqiya asked, her voice
going up an octave.
“My mother thinks that since
Roselyn is an international city, it would be a great cultivating experience,”
Isis said softly.
“Why are you really here?” Laqiya
asked again.
“Laqiya,” her mother warned.
Laqiya looked Isis in the eye and
the other girl’s state of unease under her glare only confirmed her suspicions.
Katherine had put Isis up to this. Laqiya just knew it.
“That’s alright Aunt Shekinah,”
Isis said standing up, nonplused by Laqiya’s gaze.
“Well if you two are this excited
about seeing each other, I know you’ll be excited about what I have to say
next,” Miss Robins said acting as though she didn’t sense the animosity between
the two. “Since the rooms downstairs aren’t quite done, you two get to share a
room.”
Laqiya looked at Isis and then back
at her mother. “I’m positively ecstatic,” she muttered to herself knowing she
couldn’t challenge the order by asking why Isis couldn’t share with one of the
twins. Laqiya’s room was about as big as the master bedroom and could easily,
not to mention comfortably, fit another bed in it.
Laqiya managed to keep her
composure and hold her tongue just long enough to make her way to her room and
wait for Isis to come behind her. Isis barely stepped out of the way of the
door before Laqiya’s bedroom door appeared to shut on its own. Both knew better
than to believe that though.
“Katherine sent you here didn’t
she?” Laqiya asked.
Isis ignored her and instead went
to a picture hanging next to the Laqiya’s personal bathroom door.
“You still draw?” Isis asked
looking at the picture.
Laqiya started to reply but Isis
continued, “It looks just like her.”
“What?” Laqiya asked forgetting her
aggravation at her cousin, who was no doubt sent to convince her to accept her
“destiny.”
“That woman in the background looks
like Katherine,” Isis pointed out.
Laqiya started in surprise. Not
many people caught the group sitting in the far distance of the field
surrounding the palace in the picture.
“She sent you here didn’t she?”
Laqiya asked again.
“No,” Isis said after a moment and
then added, “Mom did.”
Something flashed in Isis’ eyes.
Worry?
Resentment maybe?
Laqiya raised her eyebrows.
Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t heard from her aunt in a while.
“Why?”
“She’s having problems,” Isis said
vaguely in an icy tone.
Laqiya got the point.
“Again?”
Isis nodded. “But Katherine—”
Laqiya huffed and said in frustration,
“I don’t want this. Why won’t she just leave us alone? Maybe if we both push
her away she’ll stop.”
“I tried. It doesn’t work. You’ll
be forced to accept it. It’s already written,” Isis said sighing as she walked
past Laqiya to lift something off the bed.
“What’s—” Laqiya stopped as Isis
turned around, a black cat in her arms.
“Nightshield.”
The said cat leapt out Isis’ arms
into Laqiya’s. Laqiya scowled down at Nightshield as Isis looked past her at
the picture again.
“You still dream about that place?”
Isis asked looking at the picture of the crystal palace again.
Laqiya was silent. To admit that
she still did would be like admitting that Katherine was right. She had always
had… powers. But this was too much. The most she was prepared for was to be a
mutant and go to some school for the gifted; however, to be predestined to do
something (she wasn’t even sure what)? It was unnerving.
Isis only made a small humming
sound as she made her way out the room. Laqiya dropped Nightshield and followed
shortly. She found Isis in the kitchen talking to her mother. Nightshield made
a low purring sound from behind Laqiya, and Isis turned to look at her with an
elegance and grace Laqiya could only hope to grow into one day. Isis had always
been that way, and it was only a few years ago that they found out why, the
reason they didn’t get along as well as they used to.
“I’m going to a friend’s house with
another friend from next door. Want to come?” Laqiya asked grudgingly.
Isis didn’t reply. Laqiya rolled
her eyes and grabbed Isis by her arm pulling her out the kitchen and to the
front door so they could leave.
She pulled her down the path
ignoring the soft spoken girl’s quiet protest.
Isis finally yanked her wrist from
Laqiya’s tight grip. She rubbed her left wrist and said softly, “I don’t want
to go.”
Laqiya looked at Isis. “I may not
agree with you on this destiny thing, but I’m not cruel. You may occasionally
get on my nerve, but Adria and Sakura might like you.”
“Occasionally?”
Isis asked raising her eyebrow.
“You only get on my nerve when you
start going on about this destiny thing like Katherine does. Any other time,
you’re alright,” Laqiya said with a quick wink as she led Isis to Adria’s
house.
When they first met, Laqiya thought
the dark skinned girl had been stalking her and tried to figure out in what
magazine her designer and former model mother might have allowed a picture of
Laqiya and the twins next to her. But thankfully she hadn’t been a stalker, for
Laqiya had genuinely liked her. She just happened to live next door, and they
took the same routes home.
Laqiya followed Isis and went up
the path to the door of the house that was significantly smaller than the large
house next door. Laqiya’s own home was custom built by the previous owners and
later added onto and customized by her mother. So while the house was easily
worth a million (probably more), because of the average neighborhood it was in,
it was valued at a lot less.
“Can I help you?” a plump woman
with dark skin asked Laqiya.
“Is Adria home?” Laqiya asked her
friend’s mother or at least that’s what she guessed.