Keeper of the Winds

by Jenna Solitaire

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  PROLOGUE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  EPILOGUE

  THE MAKING OF THE BOARDS …

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  KEEPER OF THE WATERS

  Copyright Page

  This first part of my story is dedicated to every girl or woman

  out there who has ever felt alone and yet found the strength

  to carry on, even in the face of certain defeat.

  You all have my admiration.

  —Jenna Solitaire

  PROLOGUE

  “I can’t let them have it!”

  My voice is a bare whisper, a faint gasp in the dark, stone stairwell. I follow the cold steps down, spiraling along the wall of the castle. Inside, voices rise and fall in sudden alarm, echoing around me. They know I am gone. They know I have taken the Board.

  I’m almost running now, my long white gown tangling in my feet, making me stumble as I flee. An ache stabs my side as I pant for breath, but I clutch my treasure tighter to my chest and keep moving. If I can find a door, a way outside, I can escape. The winter night, the thin crescent of the moon, will hide me.

  Faster down the stairs, brushing cobwebs away from my face, and faster still, until I see the faint outline of a door at the bottom of the steps.

  I grasp the iron handle and shove with all my might until the door opens, letting a blast of cold air wash over me. My hair whips across my face, long red tresses loose in the winds that swirl around the castle. The winds have been blowing for days, ever since I arrived here with my father. The man who betrayed me and gave me, and the Board, to them. From that sin, there can be no redemption, and the rumors I have heard that the Mother Church is calling him to a reckoning will only be the beginning of his tragic end. Of that, I am certain.

  My body is chilled, yet I am sweating. My breath comes in painful gasps, yet I am strangely exhilarated by the chase, by the possibility of freedom and having the Board to myself.

  Behind me, I hear excited voices growing louder, echoing down the stairs. The knights have found the secret passage I used to escape my room. They are coming—and this time, I know they will take the Board from me, tearing it from my broken fingers if they must.

  I leave the shelter of the castle, ignoring the icy sting of snow on my bare feet. Running again, the winds swirling around me, my gown in a white billow snapping like a sail, my hair a red, angry cloud around my head. As I reach the wall surrounding the courtyard, I call upon the Board, and it answers. Its voice is a familiar, sibilant whisper in my mind, yet its power is in every syllable. It knows what I desire before I can even articulate the thought. The wind strengthens again, twisting like a tornado, wrapping around me and putting me in the center of a vortex. The force of it levitates me up and over the twenty-foot high stone barrier between myself and freedom.

  I hear my father’s voice cry out a name. Elisabeth.

  My name? I do not recognize it. Is it my name he calls or someone else’s? His voice sounds strange to me. As if he’s not the same man who used to sit me upon his lap and sing songs during Yuletide. It matters not. All that matters are the winds dancing around me now, protecting the Board and myself and ensuring our escape.

  The island we are on is small and the harbor is near. I smell the salt of the ocean and hear the waves whispering like icy razors against the rocky shore. The voices following me grow distant as they try to find my trail. The winds carry their words away. The Board knows me, knows my wants and needs, and the winds wrap around me in a protective cloak, holding me up and carrying me toward the sea. I do not believe the Board will lead me to harm, though I have only the smallest knowledge of its powers.

  Something is wrong, though I do not know what it is. The sky is a dark green, almost emerald, and the clouds are boiling. Stars flicker in the distance. The Board is somehow both hot and cold in my arms. The winds carry me closer to the water. That is where I will escape. The Board tells me that they must think I am dead, never to look for me again. I do not have a plan, but know that if I listen to the Board, it will save me.

  Looking down, I see a stone pier, jutting out into the night-black water. Without warning, the winds cease. I drop into the dark waters beyond the pier like a stone. I do not have time to breathe. I clutch the Board, my skin pricked by a thousand icy needles.

  I am afraid.

  I am not afraid.

  I try to swim, but my gown is waterlogged and encumbers me almost as much as holding on to the Board does. No matter what, I must hold on to the Board.

  Sinking faster, the water rushes past me. Into my nose, my mouth. I want to breathe, scream, the pain in my limbs stabbing like knives. I cannot stop myself.

  I inhale; the cold rush of water fills my lungs.

  The sensation is both terrible and wonderful. It burns deep inside me.

  The Board is slipping from my hands. I can’t let it go. I must not let it go.

  And that is when I scream, “I can’t …”

  But my voice is nothing, silenced by water, and all I see are the muted bubbles of my desperate words rising to the midnight surface of the windswept harbor.

  1

  “Forgive me, my Lord—”

  “I trust you have an excellent reason for disturbing me at this unholy hour?”

  “We have found a lead. This obituary was located in the website archives for an Ohio newspaper.”

  “Solitaire? The Margaret Solitaire?”

  “The same, my Lord.”

  “Get your team to this … Miller’s Crossing … immediately. You know what to do.”

  “I can’t let it go!”

  The words were torn from my throat in a gasping scream. I shot out of bed and the blankets that entangled my legs flew everywhere. The images had seemed so real. It felt like I was drowning, my lungs filling up with the dark waters of my dream.

  I took a few steadying breaths, feeling sweat cool on my aching forehead. I had always been plagued by bad dreams, vivid and filled with powerful winds and storms, but I usually knew I was dreaming. This one had felt more like an out-of-body experience, like it had really been happening to me.

  A sudden blast of air was followed by the heavy splatter of raindrops on my window. Dim light filtered through the curtains, and I tried once more to grasp my dream—but a sense of wind and water and a cold castle filled with angry knights were the only images that came to me.

  Outside, the early spring sky was gray and fog hovered close to the ground. Perfect weather for a funeral, I thought. A glance at my bedside clock told me that if the sun were going to burn off the mist, it would have done so by now.

  Today, regardless of the poor weather, I would bury my last known relative. My grandfather. The man who raised me, and who had always been my source of comfort when the dreams had woken me screaming in the night. Now he was gone. And with the exception of my few friends, I was alone in the world. A perfect fit for my name. Jenna Solitaire. Jenna Alone.

  I grabbed my robe and shoved my arms into the patterned sleeves. I couldn’t afford to feel sorry for myself right now. Sighing, I headed downstairs to brew coffee before I had to face the day and the first of many decisions that I would be making on my own. Wisdom, I realized as I went down the steps, was one of many qualities I would miss about my grandfather.

  “From dust we came and to dust we return. Yet no one is ever truly gone. Lord, we ask that you help us to fi
nd comfort in knowing that our good friend Michael McKay is not gone either. He is lost to our sight, but not our hearts, and one day we will all be reunited in the kingdom of Heaven.”

  Father Andrew’s words were supposed to be comforting, but I felt like my life had taken a sharp left turn into the surreal. Everything moved in slow motion, and it felt like I’d been in a trance from the moment I’d found my grandfather slumped over in his favorite chair—dead of a heart attack that had come without any warning signs at all. Ever since, it had felt like I’d been walking under water.

  I shuddered, the thought of being under water bringing back the last moments of my dream. Even the headstones around us reminded me of it: the granite was the same greenish-gray as the pier stones had been. The small cemetery behind St. Anne’s church, where I had gone to Mass every Sunday growing up, looked even more gray and dreary in the rain. The church itself wasn’t a gigantic Gothic cathedral in the true Catholic tradition. It was a large brick building, plain and unpretentious. The most striking features were the stained glass windows over the door and along the walls, surrounding the area where the congregation would sit during Mass, and the garden that was planted in the sheltered corner between the church and the rectory.

  Father Andrew had fallen silent, and I suddenly realized that he was looking at me. The mourners—friends of my grandfather’s, for the most part—were all staring at me, too.

  “Oh,” I whispered. “Sorry.” I stepped forward and laid a white rose on the casket. Others followed behind me, leaving flowers as well. Old Mrs. Bronson, one of our neighbors, left a yellow carnation, pausing to kiss a small, golden crucifix around her neck before moving on. Dale Harkins, the Realtor who owned the house behind ours, stopped and crossed himself briefly. Several more people my grandfather had known—friends and neighbors and even occasional acquaintances—passed through the line, offering a flower or a silent prayer for his soul.

  As I watched the mourners file past, I felt the weight of someone’s gaze, and glanced around the cemetery. A well-dressed man on the far side of the access road matched my stare. I didn’t recognize him, but then again, I didn’t know all of my grandfather’s friends. Still, the man stared at me so intently that I wondered if he knew me, but before I could place him or figure out what he was doing there, I heard Father Andrew clear his throat quietly.

  He gave me a subtle nod, and I moved to stand next to the coffin as it was lowered into the ground. It was early spring, and the open grave looked like a raw, gaping wound. The rich, loamy smell of the disturbed earth made my empty stomach roil. The coffin settled into place with a thud that I felt in the pit of my stomach. And in my heart.

  “Heavenly Father, we send you our friend Michael McKay and ask that you receive him. Comfort those left behind with your presence and with the knowledge that in your realm, there is only peace. Amen,” Father Andrew concluded. He gave me a final nod, his thinning blond hair stirred by the wind, and his blue eyes magnified by the round lenses of his glasses.

  I bent down and picked up a clod of cold soil from the mound next to the grave. Unshed tears stung my eyes as I crumbled the dirt in my hand, slowly letting it fall onto the coffin. The sound it made as the dirt settled in the flowers on top of the casket made a strange harmony with the rain that drizzled Onto the tented roof overhead.

  I stepped away from the grave, and as tradition dictated, the mourners all lined up quietly, waiting to say a few words to me that were supposed to be comforting.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss, Jenna,” Mrs. Bronson said. Up close, I saw that her black dress had tiny, almost invisible little white flowers patterned on it. It seemed disturbingly out of place at a funeral, as though deep down, she were celebrating her ability to outlive yet another person.

  “He loved you very much, Jenna.” This from Dale Harkins who’d at least had the grace to dress properly in a sober black suit and blue paisley tie. He offered his hand and I shook it. “If there’s anything I can do?” he said, his voice so low I almost missed it.

  “No,” I said. “Thank you. I’ll be fine.”

  He nodded and moved away.

  I continued to thank people, when all I really wanted to do was cry. Or at least ask them to shut up—there were far more empty platitudes about death than I’d ever realized. My best friend Tom Anderson, and his girlfriend, Kristen Evers, had also come. They waited until almost everyone else had offered their condolences before coming forward. Tom and I had been friends since grade school, and he didn’t speak, didn’t offer a platitude, but simply stepped forward and wrapped me in his arms. He was taller than I was, and though he was a computer nerd to the core, he had a lanky frame that was surprisingly strong. My grandfather had said he had “whipcord muscles.”

  He practically lifted me off my feet and just held me. After a few moments, he stroked my hair and whispered in my ear: “You loved him very much, Jenna, so it’s okay to cry.”

  And then I did.

  I hated making a spectacle of myself, but I knew I was. The sobs shook my body and all I could manage to do was bury my head in his shoulder and wait for the storm to pass. A memory of my grandfather telling me long ago that the Solitaire women never cry in public passed through my mind. I felt Tom stroking my hair, and Kristen patting me gently on the shoulder.

  Finally, as my tears started to subside, he let me out of his embrace. “Better?” he asked.

  I nodded, sniffled, and managed a weak, “Yes.”

  “This will help, too,” Kristen said. She handed me a shard of quartz crystal shot through with amethyst. “It’s a healing crystal. I got it at the Rainbow Cauldron Connection and the lady there said it was sure to make you feel like a new woman …” Her voice trailed off and she paused, turned to Tom, then added, “Or was it sure to make you feel up a new woman?”

  She said it in such a serious tone that for a moment, I didn’t realize she was joking. Kristen was a sweet-natured girl who believed in absolutely everything, including the story she often told about being abducted by aliens at the local Holiday Inn. Her voice was what I tended to think of as “softly lost in space.” She smiled at me, and I couldn’t help myself. I started to laugh. “Oh, Kristen, what are we going to do with you?” I asked, crying and laughing and trying my best not to snort all at the same time.

  “You can buy me a crystal sometime,” she said.

  “Done,” I replied. “But after I’ve gotten through all this.”

  She nodded. Kristen and I weren’t close, but she handled the friendship between Tom and me very well, never saying a word even though anyone with eyes could see he wanted more from me. I didn’t, and was just happy to have them both as friends.

  “I’m glad you came,” I said to them. “It means a lot to me.”

  Tom nodded, and said, “That’s what friends are for.”

  “You’re welcome,” Kristen said, pulling on her gray gloves and smoothing out the sleeves of her wool jacket. She looked around the dreary scene, her blonde hair pulled back in a tight ponytail that glistened with raindrops. “If it’s any consolation, your grandfather has got to be in a better place than this one, anyway.”

  I was forced to agree. Miller’s Crossing, Ohio, was never going to be more than a wide spot in the road with a small college and an even smaller mall. “Yes, I’m sure he is,” I said.

  “I’ve got to get to work,” Tom said. “They’ll kill me if I miss another shift, but I can come by later if you want.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’m just glad you could be here today.”

  “You’re sure?” he asked.

  I gave him another hug, and nodded. “Yes, I’m sure. I think I want to be alone for a little while, you know?”

  “I understand,” he said. He took Kristen’s arm. “Ready?”

  “Yes,” she said in her soft voice. “I’ve never been fond of cemeteries. All those wandering memories.” She shuddered and I chose not to ask what she meant. Kristen was a strange girl in a lot of ways.
>
  “Try to take it easy today,” Tom said, and then they wandered off toward her car. The last few mourners passed by, offering condolences. I knew only a handful of them by name, and that was a testament to how many people had known my grandfather. As the last of them left, I moved back toward my grandfather’s grave. I wanted to say one last good-bye.

  Thinking I should say something to Father Andrew, I turned to look for him and noticed the well-dressed stranger again. The man wore a long black topcoat that draped him perfectly, and his hands were sheathed in skin-tight black leather gloves. His entire outfit screamed “expensive.” He stood next to a large memorial statue and was pointing something in my direction. A cell phone? It took a second for me to realize that he was using the built-in digital camera to take pictures. I didn’t know who he was, but my already frayed nerves snapped.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Hey you!”

  People turned to stare, first at me, then at the stranger. His dark hair was perfectly styled, even in the rain, and was touched with silver at the temples.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I yelled, moving toward him.

  The man turned and walked away, but before I could chase him down and find out what he was doing, Father Andrew grasped my arm. “Easy, Jenna,” he said.

  I took a deep breath. “Do you know that guy?”

  Father Andrew shook his head. “No, I don’t,” he said in his quiet voice. “But I’ve seen his type before.”

  “His type?”

  “Some people are fascinated by funerals,” he explained. “They generally don’t mean any harm.”

  I thought of the stranger’s dark stare, his hooded gaze, and shivered. “I don’t think he was here because he’s fascinated by funerals,” I said. “He was staring at me like he knew me.”

  Father Andrew turned and looked in the direction the man had gone. “It’s not worth chasing after him, Jenna. I think you’ve had enough strain for one day.”

  I looked at where the workmen were leaning on their shovels, waiting for everyone to leave so they could fill in my grandfather’s grave. Nodding, I said, “You’re right, Father. It’s time to go.”