Awakenings (A Witch's Coven Novel Book 1) (21 page)

The wildflowers came up to my shins, and we walked through the field toward the house. Butterflies fluttered about, going from flower to flower, staying for only a few moments until they moved on to the next. We walked up to the front door of the house but could see no one inside. Only a few chickens ran about pecking at the ground eating some dried corn.

“I can see a man in the back. Let’s just go see him.” She covered her eyes to block out the glare from the sun. “Looks like he has a scythe. See?”

I squinted, trying to see, but my eyesight wasn’t as good as it used to be. “He’s too far away. I can’t see much except for a big blur.”

“Hello!” Alessia called out and bounded ahead.

“Wait.” I went after her, but she had already taken off toward the man. Walking as fast as I could, I went after her.

I could see the two of them talking up ahead. When I came close enough, I smiled. I recognized him by his hair and the mole on the right side of his back. He wore no shirt and his skin glistened in sweat. Alessia saw me approach and waved me over. “He says that he can help us.”

He turned to greet me, and a bewildered look crossed his face. He stammered a hello but I went up to him and hugged him fiercely. He returned my hug and then let go and took a step back.

“Sabrina?” His question asked many things. “I thought that you had to go away with your house lord for a bit and that we would see each other next week?”

“Yes, Stephen, it’s me.” I hugged him again and then let him go. “There has been a change in plans.”

“But how did you get here to my aunt’s? It’s more than a day’s walk from the city.”

“It’s a long story.”

He stared at my face and said, “But my lady of rags, you look older. A lot older.” He caught himself and changed the topic. “Who is your charming friend here?”

Alessia blushed and smiled, but kept quiet.

“I have some news to tell you that you might find upsetting.” I did not know how to begin. “Maybe we should go inside?”

“Why are you acting so strangely and look so different? Has something happened?”

“I don’t know how to tell you this …” I was at a loss for what to say to him.

Alessia pushed past me and said, “My mother is a great illusionist, and we’ve come a long way to come talk to you.”

Stephen scratched at the back of his head. “Mother?”

I could stall no longer. I grabbed his hands in mine. “But there’s more. Alessia here is our daughter. We’re both from a time yet to come and have come back for your help.”

He took a step back and then scratched his head. “Brina, how is all of this possible? I just saw you last week.”

Only he ever used a nickname for me. I was known to most as the Sapphire witch and to my closest confidants, Sabrina, but only Stephen ever called me Brina. His using the name melted away the years, and I could do only one thing. I rushed forward and hugged him again. Alessia watched us, and I whispered in his ear, “It’s all true. All of it. No matter how improbable it might sound.”

He pulled himself out of the hug and turned to Alessia, “How old are you?”

“I just turned eighteen.” She put her hands behind her back and asked in return, “How old are you now?”

“I have twenty years.” Stephen shook his head in disbelief and looked at me. I could see him taking in the wrinkles around my eyes and the gray in my long red hair. “That makes you thirty-six. My lady of the rags is ancient!”

He took my hand in his and dropped his joking. “You know how the war turns out. Whether we win or not. I plan on heading back out to go fight.”

“You cannot go.” I reached for his hand. “You must come with us. We need your help.”

“But the Southerns, if we don’t fight they’ll overrun us and the entire city will be taken. I can’t walk away from my duty.”

I put him on the spot. “Do you love me?”

“Of course I do.” He didn’t even hesitate.

“Then I need you to trust me as well. The war will not matter in eighteen years. There are other events of greater importance that shape the Realms.” I looked over at Alessia and said, “Show him the gem.”

Alessia pulled the Moonstone from a pocket in her robe and presented it to him. Stephen took it from Alessia and held it in his hand. “Looks normal to me.”

“This gem contains powerful magic that brought us back in time to see you.” I could see him already become disinterested.

Stephen rolled the stone over in his hand, but then quickly ignored it. He turned fully to Alessia and asked, “Are you truly my daughter?”

She nodded, unable to speak for fear she might cry.

“I never thought to have a child. I didn’t think it possible. All my life, I’ve wanted, other things, but to see you now and know that you are here brings me great happiness.” Stephen pointed to me. “I would do anything for your mother. I truly would. I love her like she’s my lost twin. Well, not exactly like that, but I think you know what I mean.”

I smiled at him and took the Moonstone out of his hand and gave it back to Alessia. “I do. I’ve always known what you meant. Now I need you to trust me. We need to go on a journey and find the other half of the Moonstone before my house lord does.” I looked to both of them. “Having both pieces of the gem will give us the power to stop my house lord.”

Alessia stopped me and said, “That’s why the house lord chases you. He has the second stone, the dark side of it. Like the moon, there’s the light and the dark. Together, they make one powerful artifact.”

I nodded and said to Stephen, “In a few days from now, I try to kill the house lord and steal the light side piece of the Moonstone. I run off and give birth to Alessia, but he uses the dark side of the Moonstone to keep his spirit locked into his dead body. He becomes a mummy, a shade, or worse. And he will chase after me, until he finally finds us. The problem is that he’s hidden the dark piece of the gem. We must find it before he does.”

Stephen shielded his eyes from the sun and glanced off in the distance. “And then you’ll unmake him, and he will no longer chase after you.”

“I need to undo what I have done. I might need to stop myself from killing him. I might need to make different choices and live a different life. I need to find a way to stop him from becoming the shade that chases endlessly after us.”

“I will help you. But I don’t know what I’ll be able to do. I’m not a wizard or have magic. I only have a sword.”

“And that’s something we have need. We can use your arm and your wit. We will go off and find the dark piece of the gem and then right what was made wrong.” I grabbed Alessia’s hand and squeezed it. “For her sake, our daughter’s sake.”

“This might not be the best time for me to bring this up, but isn’t that him right there?”

I whipped around and, walking alone in his dark robes, my house lord came up the pathway from the road to the farmhouse. Alessia glanced at me in fear, and I tried to hide my concern from her, but could not. He strode toward us, confident and free from worry, waving a white handkerchief above his head. I did not stop to think and cast a protective spell around us.

My house lord walked right up to us and continued to wave the white handkerchief. “I am here to help. Please, I am not here to harm anyone.” He appeared fine, alive and well.

Stephen brandished the scythe in front of him, protecting us. “Stay back!”

Thaddeus used his handkerchief to dab the sweat off his head and ignored Stephen but faced me. “You’ve grown into a powerful witch. And is this your daughter?”

“What are you doing here?” I asked. I silently prepared another spell, but still he made no aggressive movement toward us.

“I want to come with you. I can help you all and you can help me in return.” He turned to face Stephen. “Please, lower the scythe. Do you truly think I would walk up here without help and try to attack you all?”

“How did you know that we would be here?” Alessia asked. She positioned herself behind Stephen and kept her hands at the ready.

“I am a wizard and can see into the future and the past.” He rubbed his chin and then put away his handkerchief. “I had a vision of the future. It seems that your younger self will kill me in a few days’ time and I will die, but an evil spirit takes possession of my body, and I think you know the rest.”

“And so you’ve traveled from your home, on foot, to come meet us here to simply convince us that you want to join us on our adventure? I know you. You are manipulative and a master strategist. I doubt that you suddenly have good intentions and want to help right a wrong.” I pointed at him and prepared my spell. “Why should I not kill you now?”

“Because killing me here will not stop the mummy from chasing after you. He searches for you still. The Moonstone may have brought you back to the past, but it’s only a matter of time before the mummy sniffs you out and finds you here. Then it will use the dark part of the Moonstone and come for you.” He offered his hand to me in peace and shook his head. “And I don’t want that to happen.”

Alessia turned to me and asked, “Is he telling the truth? If we don’t kill him now, what would happen?”

I weighed what my house lord said to us. “I thought that if I could stop my younger self from killing Thaddeus that we would be saved, but it might not be that simple.”

Thaddeus shifted his weight onto his right leg and smiled. “You are right. If a few days from now, you could stop your younger self from killing me, that would not stop the evil spirit from possessing my body. It would try again and again to kill me. Over time, it would win and defeat me and my dead husk becomes the shade that chases you now.”

I could not contain my fear. My hand shook so I clenched it and hid it in my pocket. “How do you know this?”

He turned away for a moment and took a deep breath. “Because this isn’t my first time trying this.”

Alessia understood what he meant and asked, “And you failed all those other times before?”

“Yes, we have.” He did not lower his gaze and chose his words carefully.

Stephen took a step forward. “But if this is not the first time you have met up with us and we have failed on the quest … I don’t understand how that is possible.”

He smiled at Stephen and said, “Time is relative. It will ebb and flow like a wave breaking onto the beach. The future is being changed all the time, but we just don’t recognize it. There are those more powerful who can float through the planes and through time.”

Alessia said, “You speak of Mohan the Wise. In all our books, he is mentioned to be our greatest living wizard.”

“Exactly. He has the ability to shift through time as do a few others.” My house lord folded his hands behind his back and asked, “That is why we sometimes have déjà vu or can’t remember a name or place. Time is being shifted around us. If you do not kill me a few days from now, then maybe you steal the Moonstone from me anyway, or the evil shade possesses me another way. Somehow there is a shift in time, and when you return to your own period, you might not remember this conversation, but events remain the same. But now I know what we need to do to right all the wrongs. I need you all to trust me.”

Stephen put down his scythe. “All this talk of wizards and time has me confused. What do you think we should do, my lady of the rags?”

I smiled and squeezed his arm. “I have missed you so. You always found a way to make me laugh.”

Alessia turned to me and said, “I think we should trust him. I do not detect any magic around him or obfuscation. He’s not lying.”

“Are you so sure?” I kept my hand out, ready to cast a spell. “He is a master at his trade. But I agree, if he had wanted to harm us, he would have by now.”

My house lord looked to me and asked, “What do you think?”

“Thaddeus, I must ask you for the full truth.”

At the use of his true name, he paused and pulled back from me. “How do you know my name?”

“I know many things, and now I need you to tell us the real truth and not just what you think we need to know. If we choose to help you, I cannot have you against us. I have power over you.” I faced him, and now that I was older, he watched me and then lowered his head.

“I understand. Then we will forgo all these games.” He threw open his robe and something looked different about his body, but I could not place it. He waved his hands over his torso and his body shimmered, if but a moment, and we could see into him as though his skin had become translucent. “Look at me like I truly am.”

The bright sun faded from view as though a dark cloud passed in front of it. In the darkening sky that grew around us, Alessia let out a gasp of fear. She pointed at his body and said, “It’s not real. What are you?”

Stephen had the hardest time seeing through the illusion Thaddeus kept up but then recoiled and held the scythe tight in his hands, ready to fight once he did see the truth. “Your bones are like metal and there are gears attached to them.”

Thaddeus made the façade all fade away from himself and stood in his true form. “I am a clockwork man, having been broken and battered, with only parts of me left. I have fought to survive for many years.”

Now I understood. “And when I kill you, the dark spirit takes over the automaton that you are. I see now. Your body is more than flesh and bone. When I kill you, I only kill the man, but not the clockwork body.”

Thaddeus nodded. “Exactly. I want us to work together because I want back what’s mine.”

Stephen lowered the scythe. “You want to bring us back to when you lost your body and then win it back.”

My house lord shook his head. “It’s not that simple. But, yes, I want to never lose what I have lost. We need to go back before the war, back when I was young, to face my master and to win back the dark side of the Moonstone. And I can take you to where and when that is. But you’ll have to trust me.” He put his hand out for the Moonstone.

Alessia refused and looked to me. “Why would he help us? And why would we trust him?”

“Because he does this for love.” The words fell out of my mouth and Thaddeus’ face lit up.

“Yes, you have guessed right. I do this for the one I love.”

“Ada.” I said her name to show that I had more power over him than he knew. He could not fool us with his charms.