As it often happened in dreams, I couldn’t remember when I had returned to my bed, but I knew he hummed that syrupy and sublime lullaby again. It felt deliciously inebriating. My eyes closed, and I smiled. It was Ash’s weird way of comforting me.
Chapter 6
Grateful when the first morning birds began chirping outside, I could see a bit of the coloring sky from my window. I could tell what part of the morning it was from the different hues. I never knew how many hues of pink, gold, and blue there could be in the sky.
However, the normalcy of the day angered me. Mother Clarisse would never have that again. Something was clear this morning. A fire had ignited inside me. I felt compelled to make justice, as Ash had phrased it. Whatever killed Mother Clarisse wasn’t going to get away with murder.
Ash’s words lingered. But they will never love you. Not bearing any more sour, crusty thoughts torturing me, I sat over the edge of my bed, just as I had in my dream. I sighed. Why couldn’t I just have regular dreams like the rest of the world? On the bright side of things, I didn’t suffer through another nightmare last night. Although, the dream had been too real.
Or was I losing my grip on reality? Was Ash really my guardian angel or an act of my crazy imagination? Was I on my way to be like poor Sister Clementia?
I had enough troubles between dreams, the Sisters, Tiffany, and being always hungry. My stomach growled, reminding me of the last time I had any food. I was hungry, and my shoulder hadn’t stopped tingling. I wondered how large the thing on my shoulder was. I prayed it had been just another bad dream as I got close to a small mirror on the wall to examine it.
It still looked more like a sprouting rosebud with tendrils swirling and greeting me, with an unnatural silver luminance printed under my skin. I swore it glowed every time I touched it. This was an end-of-the-world kind of thing for a girl. It wasn’t a pimple, but still, it was something weird over my skin. Something that would once again send signals to the Sisters that I was unnatural. What would be the worst-case scenario? What happened to poor Sister Clementia was enough warning. How could I hide it from the Sisters or anyone?
Why was this happening to me?
For a moment, I considered ditching my classes. They didn’t matter anymore. Not that they ever had, since there were neither applications with my name or an existing last name for me. All I had were my grades, which were better than anyone’s at the academy. And the only person who could tell me who I was, was gone—forever. Why hadn’t she let me apply?
I talked myself out of ditching class. A long sleeve shirt and my red sweater would cover the effin thing on my arm, and a voice of caution whispered that first I needed access to my files. And I needed money. And thirdly, I would need to figure out how to get to France. And maybe the best way to get those things was to keep being the same girl everyone expected to see until I came up with the right plan. As described in the letter, I had to find this Father Dominique in France.
Outside our dorm, the morning sunlight washed softly over the red brick walls of the academy. It was built during the first part of the seventeenth century and described often as a refinement of Georgian style, with windows arranged in symmetrical rows of pilasters and window cornices emphasizing decorative moldings that did little to keep out the New England chill. I gathered my schoolbooks and joined the swarm of girls, moving toward the classrooms.
Yellow beams of light beckoned to me from the windows of the classroom. Inside, the air was dank and even colder than usual. The change in the weather made the old wooden floors groan and echo inside Mr. Tarbelli’s classroom as he stepped into the room. He was, as usual, very tall, ridiculously lean, and muscular.
I slipped into my seat by the window just before class began. I was more than a little grief stricken and heartbroken. Gavril’s refusal to help me had hurt more than I thought it could. I was exhausted. The dark circles on my eyes this morning were proof of it. My gaze was occupied by the far-out horizon, beyond the island, wondering if I was ever going to see the world.
Mr. Tarbelli held up his hands to get our attention. “Miss Stewart,” he said to Tricia.
Her face turned bright pink. She barely lifted her eyes from the desk as she brushed her uncombed, mousy brown hair and bit her lip, flashing her unattractive metal braces. I didn’t get the attraction. To me he was just a tall, annoyance—one who threatened my carefully constructed façade that protected me from more torment from my classmates. Mr. Tarbelli handed her a stack of graded essays. I swore she was about to faint.
“Please hand these back to the class.”
My opinion of Mr. Tarbelli was just one more way I was different from everyone else around me. My classmates crushed on him like there was no tomorrow. And it wasn’t just the students, most of the staff—including Miss Valentine—got all blushy, giggly, and doe-eyed around him.
But he wasn’t my problem.
Getting to France was my problem. My stare got lost outside my window. France. I needed identification. I made a mental note and added it to my growing to-do list.
“Everyone else, let’s start with the scene between Iago and Othello. Page one forty-three in your text.”
Everyone took out their books, myself included. But I didn’t even register the words on the page.
I realized, I couldn’t do much of anything right at that moment, but I prayed for inspiration as Mr. Tarbelli lectured about Iago’s motivation and Othello’s apparent gullibility. I could have shortened that lecture for him. Evil existed. Period. Iago was just evil. End of story.
I tuned Mr. Tarbelli and the whole classroom out of my head. The girls in the classroom were practically catching z’s. I struggled not falling asleep myself, but it was inevitable. My eyes closed for a split second, and I fell unaware under Morpheus’s spell. No, no, no. I fought the dream, but it was futile.
A medieval stone castle rose dark and high under the twilight mist of the late night. It was as if I had been transported into some place back in the middle ages. Perhaps the Crusades, judging from the white Tancred tunics with a red cross some of them wore, draped in red cloaks, while others wore a Hospitaller black cross over their blue tunics, draped in blue cloaks. Only a handful of them featured gilded crowns and elaborate robes.
I recalled from history classes that the Templars wearing the red cross were trained militants while the Hospitallers were more political figures and the financial force behind the Crusades. There was music, a psaltery—which looked like a cross between a harp and a guitar—and a troubadour who sang as he played it. There were also percussion and air instruments I couldn’t recognize. Numerous people were gathered in some sort of ancient celebration.
Unpredictably, the troubadour stopped. At first, it was almost impossible to determine who was fighting who. All I saw was confusion after sudden scuffles broke out. The large torches mounted to the walls of the castle casted amber shadows of furiously clashing and thrusting swords, and pain and boisterous battle cries everywhere permeated the misty night, suddenly turning the celebration into a ghastly ambush against the outnumbered and unarmed Hospitallers wearing blue.
However, the way everyone moved was unnatural. As the illumination of the torches became poor and the foggy night gave way to a closer glimpse of the crusaders, I turned around, incapable of comprehending what my eyes were watching.
The Templars and the Hospitallers were not human.
They were creatures that looked like vengeful angels fighting others like themselves. They were also attired in body chainmail armors and brass helmets, displaying large wings and Knights’ Templar Tancred tunics or Hospitallers’ tunics. The latter, who in their effort to protect, had encircled someone with a gilded gold crown in the center. A king.
However, they were not the only creatures in battle. Unlike the angel-looking ones, these other creatures wore no attire, and they had the strangest iridescent blue complexion that resembled the dark of the night sky.
Blue, demonic, bloodthirsty, and fangless w
arriors with long, pointy tails and bat-like wings that made them incredibly fast and undetectable to others, armed with shiny, large swords that dripped red, fought side by side with the angel-like ones, and others fought against each other. There didn’t seem to be any order or logic to the bloodshed. The blue-winged creatures danced in erratic sequence as they went into battle. Some danced in the air, others on the ground. Their dance was well beyond skillfully and deadly perfect.
Although different from the angel-looking ones, they were beautiful, even graceful in their own daunting way, almost like the furies from Greek mythology. My heart beat in an erratic sequence at the outlandish sight.
Oh, I had seen these demonic creatures before… cursed nightmares.
As the battle took place, three individuals slipped like shadows in the dark of night, moving between the high towers and treacherous tile roofs of the castle. The leader leaned back on the far east wall of the castle and assessed the battlefield. On a flick of his hand, two tough guys, each with swords in hand, stepped forward with him into the torches’ light. Their attires made them different from anyone on the new battlefield. It was hard to say which side they were on. On the leader’s signal, the three went toward the cry of battle into a bloodbath against their enemy. The Tancred tunic militants.
Here I was, standing in the middle of a battle, surrounded by otherworldly creatures—some like angels with pointy, sharp fangs and others that moved like blue demonic ghosts—knowing I had never been here before or seen the senseless death of battle before. This was no battlefield exercise. This was real war. I had never seen so much unmitigated fierceness and might. I gasped, knowing I should close my eyes, only I wasn’t afraid but perhaps sick to my stomach and disgusted at the gory violence. Yet despite so much blood, so much loss of life, and so much pain, the master chaos had become an artful sight.
I watched with sick fascination at the three lethal warriors that didn’t fit among the Hospitallers or Templars, standing alone with bloodied swords in their hands after they had survived the unmerciful battle.
But the sick feeling of dread overwhelmed me at the sight of defeated bodies, everywhere, and shook me off my awe. Some floated inside a fountain, inking it in crimson red with their blood.
The leader in chain mail and aegis breastplate armor strode with blood lust, searching for more enemies to fight, while the second warrior that wore scale armor guarded the leader’s back, holding a Dadao sword. Both of them relaxed once they realized it was over, enfolding their wings while they took account of the casualties.
The leader thrusted his cavalry sword against the ground with more strength than he had to. He then took his Roman brass helmet off. I gasped when I recognized his blood splattered face—Mr. Tarbelli. I almost broke into laughter, but I was so shocked and disgusted by the blood.
Mr. Tarbelli was our literature and Latin teacher, not a crusader. Was he? I chuckled in my crazy dream. I was dreaming, and as outlandish as it seemed, it was also too real to be a dream. Then it occurred to me. I was immersed into the disparateness of dreaming about Mr. Tarbelli. I was surely exhausted.
The second warrior took his helmet off too. His long black hair fell out, matted with blood that was surely not his. He was tall but of Asian descent. His dusky-night eyes rendered a masked darkness that seemed almost inhuman. Although his armor had Chinese inscriptions, it looked of Roman design.
The third warrior—the one who hadn’t exposed his wings—was inhumanely faster with his flawless perfect movements that defied speed and gravity. Unlike the other two warriors, he wore an intimidating coat of plates. Its metal plates were riveted inside black leather that suffered not even a scratch, the coat worn over a long, black leather tunic that emphasized the size of his muscles and formidable height. He held a type of curved scimitar, considered radical for a sword—a Shamshir jeweled sword with beautiful engravings, a kings’ sword. He was holding it unwavering against a man’s blue tunic chest.
“Death by sword isn’t for traitors like you. I want to hear your cries as you burn in the inferno of eternal death.” The knight’s chilling tone gave me goose bumps. He pressed his scimitar farther against his enemy’s neck. I wondered what he meant by “eternal death.” Death was death, forever. Wasn’t it? The man under his sword stretched his neck longer to avoid the sharpness of the blade. Long lines of sweat mixed with his blood ran down his cheek and neck.
“Ask Aurous. I haven’t betrayed the kingdom,” the man declared in a higher than normal pitch. He had a large sword cut that bled freely on his cheekbone. His leg bled profusely, too, but somehow, I was not exactly sorry for him. Something about his offensive and most unnerving loathsome smirk was revolting and arrogant.
Suddenly, one of those beautiful, mythological fury-look-alike creatures with iridescent-bluish skin, pointy tails, and bat wings flew next to the knight in a badass leather tunic. The creature held his arm gently, the arm holding the scimitar threateningly. The knight stepped back slightly, yet his body moved stiff as if retracting himself required a hundred men to move him. A man in exuberant blue garments, chain mail, and crown approached him too, stopping the knight from his clear intent. The king.
“I trust Rurikovich,” the king said, putting his hand over the knight’s shoulder.
The knight’s chest heaved up and down with anger as he lowered his scimitar with great difficulty. Abruptly, he turned his attention to the king and flipped the black tassel over his bronze helmet with defiance.
“I wouldn’t put my trust in him if I were you,” he forewarned the king. The knight in black violently thrusted his blade against a wine barrel that had been left unattended, spilling red wine over the ground, making Rurikovich’s upper lip curl with despiteful mirth at the display of anger. The knight walked away, disgusted from his unavailing target—the traitor—who wiped the blood from his face. My gaze lost sight of him in the midst.
I covered my face with both of my hands, praying to wake up from this gruesome nightmare. Those blue creatures would come and… and chase me as they always did, and this time, I was snoring in the middle of Literature class—crap. Everyone was going to laugh at me again—I was so sick of that. Every year, always before my birthday.
What could it mean?
Why were they always chasing after me?
I couldn’t even think about it; I didn’t want to panic. I dreaded these crazy nightmares so much. Why didn’t I think it would happen again? I had been grieving so much that I had kind of forgotten. I realized then that when I did wake, Mother Clarisse wasn’t going to calm my fears or hold me tight to make me feel safe, and that I couldn’t be a baby anymore. It was only a nightmare after all. Right?
I took my hands off my face, praying I was back at the classroom. Crap. No such luck, those creatures were still there.
This time around, instead of running away, I stood there next to the bloody battlefield watching, waiting, until the blue creatures would notice my presence. They did it every single time. My feet stood motionless. I raised my chin and confronted them with the courage I didn’t feel.
I wasn’t going to show my fear.
No. Not anymore.
Suddenly, the castle, the king, the traitor, the dead in blue and red tunics, Mr. Tarbelli, the badass knight, and the Asian dissolved into inky smoke but not the blue creatures. Dozens of them turned to look at me with their curious crystal amber eyes as if just now they noticed my existence. I swallowed hard. I wondered what their purpose was. I didn’t move, not even a flinch.
They approached me slowly but kept their distance, as if they were afraid to scare me as they always did. I quivered, wondering what they would do next. They opened a path through the ranks that surrounded me, and then I saw him—the badass knight—standing and looking straight at me with a casual ruthless air of a pagan king described in old mythological books I had read.
I was absorbed in a way I could only think of as “Muo”—from the Greek, meaning I am closed in—with my heart beating, fit
to burst.
Like in dreams often happened, our bodies shifted toward each other supernaturally. He stood inches from my face, cocking his eyebrow in surprise. His eyes were the deepest brown topaz I had ever seen and stripped my soul down to the core. They seemed to see my fears, worries, and something more I wasn’t able to decipher. Recognition.
Something felt so familiar about him, as if we had met before. I had heard of this phenomenon before. It was a sense of déjà vu. Who was he? Butterflies fluttered in my belly, my breathing was short, and all of a sudden I was self-conscious. I wondered what he saw—a freak, a girl with a sick imagination, or the orphan in her secondhand school uniform with odd large violet-blue eyes. All of them were bothersome. I tried very hard to see his face under the metal mesh armor. The sides of his helmet covered most of his cheeks and nose, while the metallic chain mail covered the rest of his neck. His body was strongly built for a very tall man.
“Finally.” His voice made my insides quiver with certain pleasure.
His sinewy hand reached for my face. I felt every groove and callous as he gently outlined my face with his thumb, as if committing it to memory. His eyes smiled bright and intense under his thick set of black eyelashes that were fixed on my lips. I closed my eyes at his touch.
The sound of cicadas chirping made me open my eyes. I gasped at his transformation. He no longer wore his helmet or his crusader clothes. Instead, he wore casual, everyday denim and a charcoal gray turtleneck. His face, with a hint of a long gone gold tan, was positively masculine. His high and tight haircut reflected chestnut-colored hints in his dark-brown hair.
But unlike the others without wings or fangs, he was human looking and he was handsome. I shied away from his touch with my cheeks burning hot with embarrassment. I turned my gaze away from him, catching another anomalous change.
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