The Royal Stones of Eden (Royal Secrecies Book 1) (20 page)

Sylvia lit a cigarette. The front compartment of her Kia Rio filled with a thick cloud of smoke, in less than just a minute. “Oh, you don’t mind, do you?”—Sylvia did not care for his opinion. It was her way of telling him that she was going to do what she wanted to, regardless of what he thought. Her eyes dared him to object.

“Hey, this rain is pouring down, why don’t we go to my house instead of the bar? We can talk there if you want,” she said as she coaxed him along.

“Of course! Why not?”—Peter thought that he was the victor, but it was Sylvia that had triumphed instead.

Peter ran back to his car while the uncaring rain pounded his head. On the way, he almost fell to the asphalt, but he regained his balance. He cursed the weather once inside his vehicle.

Sylvia, widowed for three years, was hungry to feel, smell, and touch a man. That night she did not use wisdom, discretion, or caution because she unknowingly invited to her house a very disgruntled, selfish, and bitter soul.

Sylvia’s small Kia weaved on the road along the way to her house. There were frequent and sudden gusts of the wind that threatened the vehicle. Peter followed Sylvia in his car, and they both maneuvered through narrow and dark southern roads. The drive seemed longer than it actually was. It was because of the constant and deafening sounds of the chords of rain on the windshield, the endless squeaking of the windshield wipers, and the required and mundane attention needed to navigate the roads safely during a southern summer storm in a small southern town.

The weather was a blessing for Peter. The rain was successful in that it shielded the final minutes of undesirable and detailed scenery while on the way to the boxed home of Sylvia Reeves. He missed the fact that the final road was an entry into a small trailer park. He did not see the unsealed aluminum cans that overflowed with garbage. He did not see the huddled cats underneath the trailers, where there was improperly secured underpinning. He missed the sight of the redneck truck and its oversized wheels that rested in the red mud. It was just a crowded trailer park.

The two cars pulled into the last driveway on the left at the bottom of a hill and parked. The rain and wind had lessened, but it was still steady. Sylvia let Peter in and soon lowered the lights in favor of a couple of candles instead. Again, Sylvia lit another cigarette, and she sat in a fluffy and stained recliner and offered Peter the nearby couch and ottoman.

The air was full of air freshener and smoke, and Peter became increasingly more uncomfortable with his charade.

“Do you have children?”—Peter could hardly believe he chose those words. He was desperate to come up with a distraction as he stood and scanned the 14X70 mobile home. He awkwardly stood for a few moments in front of Sylvia’s tiny couch before he sat back down and stared upward. The low ceiling amazed him.

“Yeah, I got two boys. One’s in the army, and the other’s married,” she said.

This woman is much too young to have older kids, he thought.

When do they marry here? At age ten?

The truth was that Sylvia was simply a beautiful woman that kept her youth and her spirit well, despite her nicotine and binge drinking.

“Want a beer?”—she was at the fridge by the third word.

“Sure. Why not?” Peter said.

“You really have to relax. You are way too uptight!”—Sylvia yawned as she gave him the cheap beer.

Peter felt awkward as he sat on the nearby couch. He was not close enough to his date, and he sensed her to be a woman of independence and willfulness. He watched her turn on her television with a remote that had some unidentified dirtiness on it.

Her painted nails were amateurish and clumsy. Her once white skin, seen in the yellowish and smoky light, was slightly leathery and brown. It was the result of many prolonged visits to a local tanning bed. Regardless, she was a woman of great beauty, and he admired her. In another life, he would have liked her.

“Maybe you are right. I need to relax!”—he stretched his feet out on the ottoman and popped open his beer can. Then he pulled out a .357 Magnum from his jacket. He pointed it at her head, and they both broke out into a tired and boisterous laugh that lasted half of a minute.

“I have a tiny pink one...somewhere,” Sylvia boasted. She had finished most of her first beer, and they again laughed about the gun.

“Sylvia? Where are the stones that Mattie gave to you?”—Peter’s gun still pointed at her, and his smile was gone.

“The what?” Sylvia asked. His actions still did not seem to shock her.

“Mattie gave you a blue stone and a white stone, for safekeeping. Where are they? They are family heirlooms, and I will pay you for them. Where are they, luv?” he demanded in an odd and gentle tone.

“You came here to rob me?” the surprised Sylvia asked. “I don’t have any stones. But you can tear up this place looking for them if you want to. Knock yourself out.”—Sylvia reclined her chair back and flipped through the channels on the television as she totally ignored his threat and his gun.

With a sigh of disgust, Peter put the gun back into a sleeve underneath his jacket, stood up, and explored the living room and then the kitchen cupboards and cabinets.

Peter lost his patience, and her nerves of steel annoyed him.

“Are you sure you knew Mattie?—Mattie?—the girl that played the violin? She was born in North Carolina?”—as he spoke, Sylvia almost nodded off.

“What?”—she yawned and looked back at him with cloudy and red eyes, and then she got up to get another beer.

She came back to the living room, kicked off her shoes, and then peeled off her socks before she sat down. She lit another cigarette.

“Look, first off, you ain’t no damn relative of Mattie. And, second, I don’t have any stones. She didn’t play the violin. She played the piano. She wasn’t born in North Carolina. I thought you were one of her old boyfriends, but now I don’t even care.
(She paused to burp)
Why don’t you just leave?”—Sylvia’s alcoholism was the only winner. Whenever she chain-smoked and mixed her liquor with Xanax, she was relentless, uncaring, and not mindful of her tactless behavior.

Peter gave up, shook his head, and showed himself out the door. The rain was a very gentle mist by that time, and he slowly walked toward his car. Sylvia turned on her front porch floodlight that escorted him to his car. It was to encourage his timely departure. He never met anyone with her audacity and nerve. He was shocked into submission while inside a trembling Sylvia lit yet another cigarette.

He opened his car door and sat down in the seat for a moment before he turned the ignition.

She wasn’t born here. Mattie didn’t play the violin, but rather the piano? And, she was the possessor of the stones at one time. Of course! Mattie wasn’t Mattie at all! Mattie was someone else! Mattie used transference! But where are the stones? Perhaps I shall come back when Sylvia is not here and search her entire place!

Peter backed out of the driveway and headed up the hill, and out of the trailer park. Just before he got on the main road, he noticed a white piece of paper on his dashboard that stirred as he turned on the air conditioner. He read the note.

“Sorry, old boy, but I got to her first! I have the stones now!”

It was signed, “Samuel.”

With resentment and deep anger, Peter drove to his pre-booked hotel. He was determined to leave the South for good after a good night’s rest. As he drove to his old and unkept hotel, his only thought was to get back to Salt Lake City as soon as possible and to find the stones. An imprisoned Haj was there, and he was there for bait. He planned to trap his rescuers, secure the stones, and then fulfill his long-awaited dark goals.

When he arrived at his hotel, just before he opened his door on the first floor, he was approached by two young kids that hoped to score some easy drug money. It was about 2 a.m.

“Hey, why don’t you open the door, man!”—a gun was suddenly pressed against Peter’s jacket with the intimidation of a rookie holdup man.

Peter turned around, and his eyes turned red and glowed at his masked intruders. He heard them shout some expletives that he could not pronounce, or even understand, and they immediately turned and ran in different directions.

Peter went into his room and lay down in his clothes on the bed as his eyes returned to normal. He pulled out Sylvia’s diary out of his pocket. He had stolen it during his brief search of her kitchen. It was underneath some cookbooks in a drawer, along with some knives and plastic bags. Her organizational skills were severely lacking.

The diary told of a very different Mattie and confirmed Peter’s suspicions of her. It also told another story, the story of Sylvia and Mattie.

May 25th No Sex

May 26th No Sex

May 27th Visited Tarot Card Reader, told me I was in love with someone with a dual personality!

Chapter 14

Malkuth Stones of Gan Eden

Part Three

In the Words of Robin

The memories of meeting and falling in love with Marian, in Egypt, often sustained me during a battle or crises. Marian and I lived through so many wars that we were used to being separated during campaigns. We thought that our love would survive anything that would happen in our lives, but that horrible night was a true test of that love. The taste of death itself was offered as a banquet. The rage of jealousy consumed the mind. The power of revenge sprouted its ugly seeds.

I never will forget what happened on that dreadful night—the night that I journeyed back with the others in preparation to meet Medraut. My history of that fatal night that I shared with the others omitted some of the details of my first encounter with Medraut, in the tent of Marian. My shared stories also omitted some of my private discussions with Merlin. Although, I am sure that the priests with their mystics will discern the whole truth one day. The stories that will long be remembered will be the attack upon Medraut, and the banishment and tragedy of Marian. Those stories will be shared frequently among the Guardians.

On the night before the great tragedy of Marian, Merlin confronted me and pulled me aside. John and I had just arrived at King Arthur’s camp. Merlin had figured it out. Earlier, he had seen my emerald stone with the coin embedded in it, and, with that, he had become aware of an episode in my past—by that one keen observation.

“How did you know?” I asked him. We stood in private, away from the camp and behind several trees. I asked John to excuse us, and I agreed to listen to the bothersome banter of Merlin.

“The coin you have embedded in your emerald stone around your neck is from William Rufus, a Norman king of England. I know that because I traded for food over the last few months, and I have seen that coin before.

“Your coin is embedded in a magic stone that allows its user special abilities if held or worn. My golden globe confirms the stone is magic. In truth, that stone you wear allows a person that uses transference to go back, and not just forward, to another time and place. The coin obviously marks the events, or the reasons that you transferred. It must stand for something, I thought.

“So, I began to ponder the reason why you would go back to see or visit King Rufus, and then it came to me. It is said that about one hundred years ago this Norman king, King Rufus, was killed in the forest by an archer. It had to be a very skilled and cunning archer to have shot and killed the king. It is said that you were taught your skills by a Nubian archer, when you were in Egypt, no doubt. That deed would require tremendous skill, and a crafty and stealthy raid.

“I began to speculate as to the reasons why you would go back in time a hundred years or so just to kill a king. Your family must have been wronged—a king must have killed someone that you knew—or maybe it was revenge. I ruled that all out, after I found out that King Rufus was counterfeiting the coinage during his day. I began to think that maybe you were after the king’s money. Then I ruled that out as the only cause as well. It had to be more than money, for you seemed much too altruistic for the singular cause of greed to be true.

“You and Marian were known to be close, so I thought that it might have been love that compelled you to go back— or perhaps all three reasons...love, money, and revenge.

“But you
did
travel back— and you
did
kill the king, didn’t you?—but, why?”—Merlin finished.

I had to admit that I was impressed with this man. It was either his beguiling witchery or his shrewdness that had found me out. So I began to relate my entire story to the sorcerer known as Merlin.
He
seemed to be stranger than
I
was. He also knew of the power of the stones that I thought that only Marian and I knew about.

“It’s seems strange,” I told him, “but I can remember details of lands, and people, in a distant past, even now. I remember more details as time passes by. I remember a time before I met Marian in Egypt, before I trained with the bow in Nubia. It was a very long time ago. I do not know exactly when. It was before our love—before I rescued her from circumstances of a horrid nature.