by J. Naomi Ay
"To my family, and our dear friends who are joining us here tonight," she began. "Who, only days ago, had no idea that our paths would cross. Fate has brought us here to comfort each other, and bring solace into our lonely lives where it was missing. I am truly blessed that you are here to fill up these cold and empty rooms, and I hope you shall choose to stay here with me for a long time. I know that one of you young men, Ber, Loran, or Marik, each so like your grandfather, my beloved Berkie in so many ways, one of you shall win the Emperor's favor and earn this duchy again."
"Here here!" the table erupted with a chorus of cheers.
They all picked up their forks and knives to enjoy the banquet before them, and the delightful, loving atmosphere of Luci's manor house.
The appetizer course was delicious, and the truffle soup even better than that. Salads were eaten, followed by sorbet. This cleansed the palate and aided everyone’s digestion so they could enjoy the twenty-five pound turkey with Myra’s special stuffing, her signature dish.
Myra carried the roasted bird to the table, immensely proud of herself for managing to pull off this amazing culinary feat. It was perfectly roasted to a golden hue, oozing clear juices, and smelling absolutely divine. She set it before Vinz, the new master of the table, who took up the carving knife, and made to cut.
"Excuse me a moment," Duchess Luci said, impulsively bolting to her feet with a sudden thought.
"Shall I stop?" Vinz called, his carving knife and fork poised in mid-air.
"No, it's quite alright. Go ahead and eat without me. I'll be back in half a minute.”
Luci scurried out the door to the back porch.
For some strange reason unbeknownst to Luci, the strangest feeling washed over her soul. She had a craving as intense as breathing. It was almost like she was underwater without air flowing into her lungs. She was going to drown. She was going to die, right this moment.
Luci had to have a cigarette, although she had never been a smoker in her life. Never ever. Not once, did she ever have a puff. Yet, there she was in the manor house's circular drive, begging a cig off the pimply delivery boy.
“Please,” she implored the kid, just as Vinz stabbed the turkey with his knife, ending the brief Happily Ever After far too soon.
When the metal of the carving blade touched the overheated sulfuric acid powder, the erroneous spice in Myra's stuffing mix, it caused a chemical reaction, an event the engineer, Vinz would have fully understood, had his brain not exploded only seconds later.
In fact, everyone sitting around the dining table perished in the resulting blast of metal hitting acid heated to two hundred fifty degrees. If they didn't burst like the turkey, they died moments later from inhaling toxic fumes, which left only a single person alive at the table.
The sole survivor was a young man with clear gray eyes reminiscent of the first Duke, Berkan Korelesk. Prior to this horrific accident, the young man was said to look a great deal like his forbearer, although now with his face so damaged, no one could tell. Forever after, this young man's face and head would be scarred by burn damaged skin, despite the many surgeries he would undertake.
On his cheek, his scar would be so prominent, so red and well-defined that people would often say it was reminiscent of a wing. Indeed, it was. The imprint on his face looked exactly like the large turkey wing, which had landed across his mouth and nose. Although it scorched his face and scalp with hideous burns, it prevented him from inhaling the subsequent toxic fumes, keeping him alive, although forever in great pain.
Every day when he looked in the mirror, the man could not but recall that moment at that table when fate was fickle, and happiness vanished like a wisp of smoke. For in truth, fairy tales never have happy endings. Children are eaten by witches, and princesses die, for a kiss is not enough to make them wake. Like giant eggs, families fall off walls and break into a million pieces, while all the King’s horses and men can’t do anything to put them back together.
Epilogue
After the Imperial Palace was destroyed, the Imperial Family, what few remained, removed itself to the villa in Takira-hahr, Rozari. Arsan was fifteen mortal years then, and at that time, fully aware of who and what he was. He also understood why his brother had brought him down. Although the boy wasn't particularly excited about his future tasks, he had learned over time neither to question nor disobey his brother's directives.
However, at this point, being a teenager was quite enjoyable to the lad, and he was perfectly content to live and grow. Were it not for the fires, deaths, and destruction raining down upon him wherever he went, Arsan might have said that this life was one of his best.
Certainly, it was better than the previous, or even the one before that when his brothers warring caused him the most horrific death. One day, he was an innocent pterodactyl, and the next, raptor flambé, to be used many centuries later to power someone's car.
Being a positive sort of fellow, Arsan was looking forward to living on Rozari, especially after returning from that daunting and failed task on Earth. He had never been to the neighboring planet, which was filled with promise, as well as mild weather, good restaurants, shopping malls, and game arcades. Commerce flowed and nature bloomed, although there was still that minor issue of lingering radioactive isotopes.
The radiation was the by-product of yet another of his brothers' wars. That one had occurred a thousand years prior at the behest of two mortal kings, who for reasons unknown to all, blew up their planet. Now, his brothers were concentrating their efforts on Rehnor, working hard to destroy it as well. To Arsan, this seemed a sorry waste of all the creatures who lived upon it, but he wasn’t about to bring that issue up with his brother.
Arsan had lived on Rozari for exactly three months, in the same private boarding school in Donika-hahr with his mortal half-sister, Sara. He was studying math and chem, playing volleyball, and trumpet in the band, as well as working on a relationship with Sara's step-sister, Carolie Psfa-a-a-a.
Although, the boy knew he wouldn't be long in this location, that soon his brother would call upon him to go somewhere else, being fifteen he was filled with hormones, and his mind wasn't always in charge. When at first that important call came, the boy was too preoccupied to notice, and in any case, far too busy to respond.
The first thing that happened was a scream, but Arsan wasn’t listening and missed from whence it came. He and Carolie were in her dorm room, a clear violation of school policy and rules, something that had it been discovered, would have expelled them both.
Not only were they alone in the room, but they were in her bed, a tiny twin bunk with a pink, floral blanket, across from Sara's. Sara was at play practice, acting up a storm on the school's stage, and unlikely to return for several hours.
It was with this knowledge that Carolie and Arsan had dared to experiment with touching each other in a reclining situation, as their previous gropings had been confined to chairs, or the very public center of a dance floor. Although they both were fully dressed, pressing thick denim against each other's parts, their hands were roaming wildly in search of something.
"Oh Arsan!" Carolie breathed heavily, at the exact same moment as the boy heard the second of the aforementioned screams.
Initially, he tried to ignore this one too.
"Arsan!" a girl's shrill voice called his name too loud and too brash not to respond.
"Huh?" the boy bolted upright, looking towards the door.
"What?" Carolie echoed, quickly pulling down her shirt.
"Arsan," the mysterious voice repeated for the third time, none of which Carolie heard.
The boy, however, did, and while trying to calm his heart and other organs, glanced around the tiny room locating the sound. There, hovering in the air above Sara's dresser, as faintly visible as uneven coat of paint, the monkey girl, Gani held out her arms.
"Arsan, I'm dead," she declared. "Help me!"
"I can't," Arsan replied. "I'm really sorry. I’m useless once it’s already d
one."
"You can't what?" Carolie demanded, pushing him out of her bed.
"Please," Gani begged. "I really loved you. I can love you again."
"I don't want your love," Arsan said. "And, it's final. Just like with Goom, I can't do anything more after he’s gone off."
"Who's Goom?" Carolie shrieked. "And, what did you do with him?"
"Please!" Gani cried, as she began to fade.
"Don't worry," Arsan replied. "You'll go on to someone else."
"You dickhead!" Carolie screamed, and slapped Arsan’s face. "Get out of my room. Get out of my life. Don't speak to me again."
"But?"
"Get out!" Carolie soundly slammed the door.
Arsan, in his own state of minor distress, tried to hurry across the dorm before he was spotted. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, the girl's hall monitor spied him entering the lift, immediately confining him to the dorm's equivalent of the jail.
For the next few hours, Arsan was in the kitchen peeling potatoes for the entire school's upcoming meal. His hands were red and raw as using a peeler was skill he hadn't yet mastered. On top of this, Rozarian potatoes, in their fertile, radioactive dirt, grew extremely large with thick, tough skins.
Altogether, that day was one of Arsan's worst, but that was the least of it for that night he had another visitation.
It was the cherub, his youngest brother, delivering a message by shooting a supernatural arrow in his butt.
"Mika summons you," the baby said. "Be there tomorrow."
The next day, after Arsan finished two midterms and a volleyball match, he checked himself out of school and headed to Takira-hahr. He arrived in the middle of the night, as he had travelled by public transportation, and the busses only ran that route on certain hours. He could have flown, but the boy made a practice not to do that sort of thing.
He also didn't want to appear to be at his brother's beck and call. He was a teenager, and naturally belligerent. Attempting to assert himself to the man who called the shots, Arsan took his own sweet time, and arrived quite late. Naturally, his brother was very annoyed.
Arsan found the man on his bedroom balcony, smoking a cig, and looking out upon the water at a small sail boat that appeared to be rolling around adrift.
"You rang?" Arsan snipped haughtily. "You know, I'm busy at school. I can't just come and go whenever you want."
"Get down," the Big Man snapped, pointing his finger at the boy, prompting Arsan to have a sudden recollection of a hot flames.
Quickly, Arsan took a knee, although the ferocious, teenage sneer remained on his over-burdened face.
"You've become as evil as our other brother," the boy spat. "I can't tell anymore which one of you is which."
“I am who I am,” his brother declared. “This has not changed. Tell me, Rafa, is it evil to rid the universe of fools before they cause more damage to that which they were given?”
“I don’t know,” Arsan replied. He hated it when his brother challenged him with deep, theoretical thoughts, especially when he was kneeling on the floor in supplication.
“No, you don’t know.” The man’s eyes flashed with a menacing silver spark. “However, I do, which is why I make the decisions. Mortal men are complete fools, and I shall eliminate them selectively if I do not receive Permission to destroy them all. Thus, I have begun with the most fatuous of the lot, the traitorous descendants of the House of Korelesk.” Then, he indicated the distant boat, which was struggling its way out to the sea. "My sons have departed for Earth. You are to join them, and assist them in their task. None of you shall return until you have found her, and bring her back."
“What if she doesn’t want to come?” Arsan asked, turning his face away from his brother's gaze in case fire shot out in his direction.
His brother did not deign to respond. In fact, at this point, he clearly wanted Arsan's presence gone. With a dismissive wave of his hand, the Big Man sent the boy on his way.
This was how Arsan came to be aboard Jimmy's Chariot with his mortal father, Steven and his uncle Rent, as they sailed across the galaxy enroute to planet Earth. This was also why he was on location when the plane became a firey, burning ball as it plummeted, and crashed into a frigid northern Idaho lake.
Well, there we go. We’re all caught up, our loose ends are tied, and we’re ready to bring this baby to a close.
Now, we’ll head back to Rozari to find Senya in a drunken stupor, somewhat shocked and dismayed that he’s not been granted Permission to destroy all of mankind.
In the meantime, Katie and Gabe have just been interrupted in their ill-advised moment of passion by the crash of a space plane, which just happens to be Jimmy’s Chariot.
Find it all and much more in
The Two Moons of Rehnor, Book 16
Gone for a Spin
Only on Amazon.com
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