3. Chapter 2
Chapter 2
I stood inside my house and tried to focus my thoughts. I kept thinking about the hospital, being there with Emma, and I needed to stop. It was making me miserable. My house was cold, even though there was no chill in the air. It was dark, even with all the curtains wide open in the middle of the afternoon, and the few pictures which hung on the walls meant nothing to me. It was better than the hospital room, better than the blinking lights. I was grateful that, at least, that difficult time in the hospital was over and done with. I needed to focus on the next phase, the next task at hand. I placed my head in my hands and felt the cool surface of the counter seep into me, only making me colder as I inched my face closer and closer to the stone. The quiet around me only aided in attracting her melody from next door; it pierced through my consciousness. Maybe, that is the reason why people of this realm do things to numb their bodies—are they numbing themselves from this kind of pain? I leaned back on the kitchen chair, abruptly, running fingers through my messy curls in annoyance. I couldn't just sit there in that quiet, sterile place that I was supposed to call home .
I had a home once–but that place was not it. I stood and walked to the living room, sank onto the black leather couch, and turned on the TV. I turned up the volume so loud that I wondered if my neighbors could hear. Neighbors?—Emma.
"Gah! Curses!" I swore. No matter what I did, I couldn't escape experiencing the horror Emma felt because of her parents’ deaths; it emanated so loudly from her home, next door, and settled directly into my soul. I had things I needed to get done. I had things to figure out so that I could keep her safe. I had become so distracted. I closed my eyes and remembered that Mary had said that processing it could help my swirling mind, so I breathed in deeply and thought back.
I wasn't sure if Emma remembered the night I took her home after she was released from the hospital. I was happy that Mary let me drive her home. I inhaled and let those memories rush through me.
This better work, I thought.
I drove her in, what I told her was, my fathers car. But I had no father there. The roads were deserted; still, I was too paranoid to have even a moment's peace during that twenty-minute drive home. Emma was asleep. When she wasn't crying—she was sleeping. As I pulled up to her house, their house, I turned off the ignition and looked at Emma's face.
Lamont and Ara knew that shielding her soul would change her from who she was meant to be, but the risk in her being discovered was too great. I helped to convince them to do it. I didn’t want Prince Shad to find her, either. I felt a small ounce of guilt at that but pushed it aside. Just the thought of him believing for even just a moment that she belonged with him made me angrier than most things in all the kingdoms could. I was protective of Emma, and how could I not be? With a melody like hers, Terrans would come across the country to find her—across realms. There had only been one other time, other than just after her parents’ deaths, when her melody had been released in its pure unshielded or unguarded form: the moment she was born.
I pulled up the driveway and sat there, unable to move. I looked at Emma's sleeping form, and like always, I was transfixed by her, just like I was at the moment I first met her.
I took in a sharp breath, opening my eyes, looking around the living room where I sat. I looked at the screen in front of me and thought about Emma and the day she was born.
Yes, I had been there.
The day when Emma was born, was a much happier moment than the present, and I let myself reflect. I would never forget that day; my second chance.
Something nagged at me as I reflected on that memory, a small, little tug inside my mind. It had happened before, and it was common from time to time for me. Like always, I pushed the nagging feeling away. It was as if my mind was filled with boxes, most of them all connected with strings, one thought triggering a memory, or another thought or even a feeling. There was one box, however, that I didn’t dwell on. All of the horrible and bad things that had happened to me were locked up inside it. That box was unlike all of the others inside my mind. It was old and dusty with chains and locks around it, a clear sign to stay away. When I felt the nagging, the tug, all it meant was that something must have happened that made Emma's birth difficult for me, but I didn't want to remember. I had put whatever it was in that heavily locked box for goodness sake. That was the entire reason for the box—so that I could live my life and not think about all of the misery I had experienced.
If only the memories of Ana would not leak out into my consciousness.
Living such a long life, as Terrans did, that wasn’t uncommon to compartmentalize. Our melodies were a combination of our minds and hearts, and our souls were trained from birth. We were trained to use our minds to keep us safe. I kept myself safe from pain by having that box with the darkest moments and memories of my life locked away inside. I knew that, eventually, I would probably have to put the loss of Lamont and Ara in there, too—but some of the feelings, the pains, I still needed fresh in my mind. I needed to feel that pain in order to move me forward. That pain, it served my purpose; the other pains inside that blasted box no longer served me. I couldn't fix them, and I definitely couldn't change them—so I didn’t dare open it, even when it begged to be unlocked. Of course, I didn’t remember exactly what I had put in that dusty, locked box, which was the entire reason that box in my head existed at all, and it was clearly doing its job for the most part. It still didn't stop the reality that every once in a while, if I let myself ponder too long on things, like right then, it would shake and rattle, begging to be allowed into my conscious thoughts, to be on center stage in my brain. I pushed the box away one final time and focused on Emma.
I smiled as I remembered Lamont being a wreck. I had never seen him so unkempt and rumpled: his shirt untucked, his hair sticking up—yep, he was a worried mess. He quickly returned to the delivery room.
Ara was a quiet, sweet person. She wasn't shy or necessarily fearful, but I assumed that she preferred to watch and observe rather than to be involved in a discussion. However, when she did give her opinion, you bet she had everyone's attention.
When Emma was born, Ara screamed, and I remember looking at Mary who had been in the hallway on an errand from Lamont. I was obviously shocked that such a sound had come from Ara.
"I told you, Rykerian. She is not always soft-spoken and quiet." Mary walked over and sat beside me, nudging my shoulder, as I ran fingers through my hair.
"I guess you were right," I said. We were quiet as we listened to Emma’s baby cries and a melody more strong, more perfect, than any other melody I'd ever heard. Mary's melody reached out to mine. She shared feelings of awe and wonder, and I sent the same astonished feelings right back to her. We smiled at each other, as two happy aunts or uncles would, and then dread filled me. She read my feelings and my worries for this little girl’s strong melody, through my melody.
"We must tell Ara and Lamont what you know," she whispered, reading my soul’s melody’s fears of a prophecy foretold, long ago, of a dark prince, finding a child with the brightest melody ever heard of. Could Emma be the one?
When I saw Emma, I thought that she was adorable, wrapped in that pink hospital blanket. She was my best friends’ child, and I instantly adored the little girl. Lamont’s soul’s melody also sang very loud that day; he was so proud of his little baby girl.
I had known of countless births but very few deaths. In Earth’s realm, humans lived one very short life span, and then, once their bodies withered away, they died. On Terra, people lived multiple of the Earth life spans. Once we reached the age of maturity, we aged very slowly. It was a common thing for couples to meet and fall in love with drastic age differences between them. My father met my mother the day after her birth, for example. Finding one’s match, the person to share life with at such a young age, was very rare without a searcher. But I was sure that these "searchers," as myth described them, were just that: myths. A searcher had not been heard of in hundreds of years. Sure, Terran storybooks told about them, and spoke of people who could find their song, but those were the fairy tales of our world, along with other tales—some of which had shocking similarities to this realm’s fairytales. Cinderella, on Earth, goes to a ball and the prince finds her by trying on the glass slipper on each maiden in his kingdom. On Terra, Cinderella was a princess who had her kingdom stolen away, and through secret identities and the help of the Ancients, the prince from the enemy kingdom fell in love with the lost princess, and they married, combining their two, war-torn kingdoms into one of peace: Solalune . But that was so long ago.
Thinking about those midnight flower fields made me miss Terra in a way I did not need at that moment. Lamont wanted me to look after Emma. Being a guardian and friend to her made sense. I would blend in with Earth ways and be with Emma as she grew. She was my mission from the Ancients, and when I took the vow to be at her side, to be anything and everything that she needed only days after her birth, I was happy to fulfill my role, my place in the worlds. I had never known exactly what loving Lamont and Ara would make me do—never knew exactly what being everything Emma ever needed truly meant. I would never have guessed that only a few days later what Lamont and Ara would offer me—what the next vow was that I would take, and what it would bring back to me;
Hope, a second chance.
I shook my head moving on from that train of thought. I couldn’t get stuck there, hearing the box rattling again, I opened my eyes.
I moved my hands over my face as I breathed in and out slowly, feeling the rise and fall of my chest in order to help me calm down from my memories and feelings. It is hard to explain how the Ancient magic works. For the guardian knights, we are gifted magic for our the royal heirs whom we protect; however, we do not have the ability to use the magic—it is acted upon us. Being transformed back into my childhood body had to have been the most insane magic I had ever experienced. I was always myself, but the magic made me appear her age. I attended school with her, watched over her, and I grew to love her.
Yes, I loved her. She was light in darkness.
Magic was usual for us guardian knights. It pulsated through us, and if we needed to feel peace, love, or fear, because feeling it would help the royal line we served, then we felt it. Even though I was supposed to be there for Emma, to protect her and do whatever she needed me to do, I did know one thing: my devotion to her, for Emma, was real.
Lamont and Ara were the best of people, and Emma would never really know them. That had always been a real possibility, and Lamont and Ara had made their wishes known if they were both to die. And although I told myself it would never happen. I would never allow their deaths. It was my entire purpose to keep them safe.
And you failed.
Pain pulsed through me at the loss, of my failings. Ancient magic let me know.
I looked at my hands in my lap and squeezed them into fists. Lamont had expressed that if they could not continue to shield her soul, she would need to be told about who she was, and most likely taken back to Terra—if such a thing could be done. I had searched for the cave where the portal to our realm was, and had never found it. There was a chance Prince Shad might know where it was, but I could not chance seeing him, and having him read in my soul that I had kept Emma from him.
He had been searching for her, his entire life.
It would only be a matter of time now, Shad was coming. I knew it was only a matter of time. When Emma’s parents died, every Terran on Earth could hear her. Including Prince Shad.