Midnight's Song (33 page)

“Why is that?” I
challenged again.

“You simply
won’t!
Because I am the
Magistrate!” He shouted. “I was going to give you grace, Elissa…I
was going to send you back into your caste to live the rest of your
life peacefully. I have seen your true colors, and I’m not inclined
to leniency. I cannot tell you much…but I can tell you this: if you
breathe a single word of this, I will kill everyone that you have
ever loved. Every friend, every family member – whether young or
old
.
You will die
too…but your death will come last. Speak of this once, and I will
execute them at your feet.”

I was overcome with the most sickening
feeling. Even if he had no power over me – he could unleash hell on
my loved ones. My skin went cold and dead. My expression hardened.
That was when his eyes finally met mine.

“Will you do as I say now?”

I nodded.

“Good girl.” The man sat back, his
personality shifting into an unusual and inhuman calm. “Now go out
to your family. Tell them nothing of this, and be wary of your
actions. I will be watching you every moment.”

Just like that he waved me off. I
walked out of the room in cold shock, not realizing that his tirade
had left a welt on the side of my face. Wren and Winston were
standing on the other side, clearly unaware of the altercation.
Wren looked up at me, her face overwhelmed with concern.

“How was it?” She hurriedly asked
me.

“Excellent,” I lied, choking. Wren
caught a glimpse of the red marks on my face and winced.

“What happened to your face,
dear?”

My lower lip quivered. A guard hovered
overhead, ready to tell the Magistrate about my slightest whispers.
I couldn’t understand it – why must I have been so hated? I
wouldn’t dare think of it now. This was not about me anymore. There
were others to protect.

“I walked into a banister and fell.
That’s all.”

No one believed it, but no one
questioned it. The party jovially shook it off, faking their way
back into security.

“I suppose you were just awestruck!”
She artificially laughed. “Let us head home and
celebrate.”

The concern was unspoken but
unanimous. Winston escorted us out as quickly as he could. We were
ushered back into the carriage without any kind of farewell. Even
when we had pulled out of the drive and away from the palace gates,
I didn’t feel safe. Nothing I said or did could save them now. It
would only impale them further.

Meanwhile, the Magistrate insecurely
gloated from his throne. Truthfully, the man had been overcome by
something much more sinister than simple pride. His mind was sick,
his soul unwell. I didn’t know this, but after I left – he began
ranting in an empty room. He argued with himself in mad
bellows.

“
You fought me, Julius,”
a deep voice
boomed from the mouth of the Magistrate, clearly not his own.
“
You were prideful, haughty! You let her
go! Why must you let her escape me so easily?”

The Magistrate continued
an insane murmur in his empty throne room. Though – the voice still
wasn’t his. It was something else…something within him that knew
something about me that no human could. It was something that
caused it fear and hatred. And now, the Curse communicated this
audibly to his human puppet. Back and forth, they argued with each
other. But, the Curse was the one in command.

“But, I will soon have her. I did as
you instructed – now we will have her in good time,” the Magistrate
pleaded in reply.

“
No! You have disobeyed me, human. I am the giver of your
power. If you would have only given me complete control, I would
have been able to take her right away. But now, you must wait. The
time was right then, but now it will not be right again for quite
some time.”

“Why are you so consumed with her?”
The Magistrate exclaimed at the top of his lungs when he heard
it.

“Julius, I can see
what you humans cannot. It is your duty to obey me!”
It asserted in reply.

“But what has she done?” The
Magistrate again begged, but before he could argue any further a
great pain struck through him. This time he was speaking for
himself, expressing feelings of objection and doubt. But, this
darkness would allow this slave no control.

“Silence!”
It commanded.
“If you
disobey me…she will bring us both death! She is not as frail as she
may look to your human eyes. I can see with eyes unseen that she
will be the end of our reign forever.”

“What will she do to us?”
The Magistrate answered, his defenses becoming numb after the pain
dissipated. His will eased back, and the will of the other in turn
quickly came forward and began to consume him.

“
She will destroy me; the one who has given you power and
protection! She will destroy the two bridges; first the one that
keeps the people here separate, then the one that keeps the Other
World from this one.”

“Should that not cause
your power to be greater?” The Magistrate dazedly answered, his
skin pale and his eyes glazed and hazy. “If our worlds are no
longer separate, we might rule them both.”

“
No, you fool! My foothold is here and it is there. If the two
worlds become one, I will be reduced to one also. When the people
gain knowledge of each other, we will surely be vanquished! And if
their people become one with the others, there will be too many to
stop! I must be kept here in you, and my other presence must be
kept there in him. It is the only way.”

“Then what must I
do, Great Power?”
He proceeded to ask,
falling into a hypnotic trance as the Curse began consume him yet
again.

“Do not allow her power.
Extinguish any chance she has at gaining a foothold.”

“I have already done that, Master.”
The man replied, suddenly regaining a part of his consciousness. “I
have told her not to take the fortune! I have exercised my might
against her.”

“
No, fool. That is not enough!”
The
darkness growled. “
You can only make her
fear you for a little while. She has stronger allies on her side
than we understand. They will convince her that she can stand up to
us, and then we will be left without defense. As long as she is
alive, she could realize her power. As long as she is alive, she is
a threat to us both.”

“Then what must I
do?”

“
You must kill her!”

“When, oh Master – when
shall I kill her?”

“You shall not kill her
yet. We must not reveal ourselves to them while the grandmother is
still alive. She has the girl’s same power – only she has realized
it! You must not go near her! No. This is what you must do: watch
her closely. When the wise woman dies, take the girl. Do not wait –
if she still lives, kill her while you can. I have already summoned
the forces needed to begin destroying her from the Other World.
They may take her before you need even lift a finger! Only do as I
say, and you will not fail me.”

“I will not fail you,
Master. I will do more than succeed. I hope that I will also please
you!” The Magistrate sinisterly responded in reply. “I intend to
make things difficult for her. I will take her and do as you say.
Summon who you must summon in order to carry out your plan. When
the time comes to kill her, she will already wish that she was
dead.”

When I got home that day, no one in
the entire house said a word to me for hours. It’s best that they
didn’t, because had it not been for the fact that I knew I had to
watch where I was stepping it would have been obvious that I was
completely shell shocked. The moment that I walked through the
door, they could all sense that something unspeakably bad must have
happened to me. It caused a wave of distress to silently resonate
across the entire household.

“…I don’t know what
happened,” I could faintly hear Wren whispering to Grandmamma in
the other room that evening. “After he asked to see her alone, they
took us away from the door so that we couldn’t hear anything that
was going on.”

“She has done all that she
could do. And you, my dear – have done all that you could. What’s
done is done. All we can do now is pray.”

The door was cracked open just the
slightest bit for her to see me standing there in the corner of her
eye. She beckoned for me to come in and sit at her bedside, and I
shuddered. Grandmamma questioned me about today, asking me this and
that even though she was clearly aware that I was too apprehensive
to say a word. Her feeble hands trembling, she gently used her
fingers to comb back the loose strands of hair that had fallen into
my face. But, I pulled away. I was better off dead than here. As
long as I was alive, I would be forced to remember that at any
moment the Magistrate could rip her life away.

“Dearest, please don’t be afraid,”
Grandmamma whispered. “No matter what has happened – you have made
me proud. You’re stronger than this.”

No I wasn’t – and
Grandmamma didn’t know what she was talking about. I was hated for
reasons I simply couldn’t fathom, and no amount of courage or
bravery could save them. She urged me to calm myself and have
something to eat, but there was nothing I could stomach right now.
So, I excused myself from dinner that night and took a walk in the
garden.

I took in a breath of the
fresh air. The beauty of nature was only a small bandage to me at
this moment; a small, useless bandage over a mortal wound. What had
I done to deserve this?

I escaped the courtyard
into the maze, as I always did. This time the entire atmosphere
felt void. I wanted to think that I’d find Rhys here – but the
rational part of me completely condemned the thought. Right now any
such hope seemed bleak and useless.

I wandered through the silent
nighttime gardens, every leaf on the trees that hadn’t fallen to
the ground lit by moonbeams that gave them each a silvery glow. The
remnants of their shedding existed all over the ground; my feet
crackling over each of the dead leaves as if they were the
instruments in a symphony being conducted from below. I bent down
and picked one up and held it in my hand, holding it up to the
moon. I felt a wave of irrational guilt sweep over me when I saw
that I had caused part of the leaf to chip off when I stumbled over
it.

“Oh no, I’m sorry!” I confusedly
uttered, not realizing the fact that I was talking to a
leaf.

Now I must have honestly been going
out of my mind. Despite that, I noticed something about the object
I held in my hand that I had never really thought of before. I had
never stopped to think about how intricate it was – with all of its
veins and spiraling patterns going across its dry, copper surface.
It was dead, but seemed so very alive.

If something as simple as a leaf could
be so detailed, what about a person? How could something much more
intricate than even this precisely detailed leaf be so easily
disposed of by another one of its own kind? I dropped the leaf,
allowing it to gently float its way to the ground as I moved
forward.

I wound my way through the maze and
even was daring enough to move past the clearing. The distance I
went no longer mattered – in fact, the farther away I wandered from
this place the better off my family would be. I walked to the gate
and unlatched it, carelessly wandering off of the path and into the
uncharted wood. I ran my fingers over the surfaces of the leaves
and traced the dim outlines of the tree bark. It gave me an odd,
childlike sense of comfort over the entire situation.

In the next breath I stumbled back
onto the part of the path that was lined with cherry blossom trees.
Now they were barren, but their memories still stood. That one
single memory of their glory last spring was one of the few
memories I had treasured in my heart. When I thought of it, I could
feel no sorrow or pain. It could only bring me comfort and
joy.

I closed my eyes and thought back to
that moment, and when I opened my eyes again I was truly reliving
the moment. The forest was light again, and the fragrant blossoms
were raining down all around me. They collected on my shoulders and
brushed the tip of my nose like snowflakes. For a moment I had
forgotten about the fear I had been feeling, and I opened my eyes
in lieu of the moment.

As I opened my eyes again, I saw that
the world was dark.

There was a sudden,
strange rustling that I could hear in the bushes. Now my heart was
like a child’s again. I felt the glimmer of hope come back, the
untrustworthy instinct that anything going on around me was
something that I could trust. After I heard the rustling once, I
looked toward the place from which I thought I’d heard it
echo.

“
Rhys?”
I instinctually called out,
the hopefulness bursting forth from inside.

I hadn’t really
meant to ask if he was specifically there – and exactly why I
pinpointed his name at that moment I don’t know. It just sort of
slipped out. As soon as I uttered a word, whatever was there seemed
to freeze. The childlike trust within me suddenly faded. What if
this was a hungry animal waiting to prey on me? Or perhaps it was
someone sent by the Magistrate
to make
me
his
prey. I
froze in place, careful not to make any sudden
movements.