Winged (Aetharian Narratives) (15 page)

“This isn’t possible,” she said. “You
can’t
be the Dragonfly.”

The tapestry next to her left shoulder caught my attention. It was strange when compared to the other tapestries in the room because of how different it was from them; it was nearly blank. I tore my eyes away from the tapestry and looked back around at Ms. Riley.

“You pushed me off the landing.”

“Look, Emma,” Mom said, “I know all of this is a little odd, but—”

“
Odd
?” I said in a raised voice. “I could have died.”

“Emma, we wouldn’t have let that happen,” said Mr. Amest in surprise.

“Then why did you let her push me from the second story landing?”

“Because of this,” Ms. Riley said, indicating the green tissue paper again.

“What
is
that?” I said, tears gathering in my eyes. “And what the hell is all of
this
?”

I kicked at the powder on the floor more furiously than I had before. Ms. Riley walked into a side room and came back out with a broom.

“It’s dust and dirt,” she said.

She gently brushed a little more off my shoulders and starting to sweep all of it toward the front door.

“And a bit of cobweb I should guess. Doesn’t the room look different to you?”

“Oh? Does it?” I snapped, fighting back my tears. It was hard to make out anything at all through the blurriness.

“Honey,” Mom said, “it’s cleaner. Didn’t you wonder where your wings came from?”

“What wings do you keep talking about?” I said. I knew I was starting to sound hysterical.

“They were green and a pretty decent size,” Mrs. Amest said. “You couldn’t have completely missed them.”

I remembered the green things I saw out of the corners of my eyes. They could see the realization on my face.

“Those … those were wings?” I said.

I looked around myself and turned on the spot, much like a dog chasing its tail.

“They’re gone now,” said Mr. Amest, “but yes, they were there.”

I looked over at Ms. Riley and the green paper in her hand. “And that’s…?”

“A scale off of them,” she said with a smile.

I looked around again. “Where did they go? I want to see them.”

“I just swept them out the door,” she said. “Your wings don’t just appear and disappear out of thin air. Something needs to form them. When you call upon them your body acts like a magnet and gathers up whatever is around you to build your wings. You haven’t learned how to do this properly yet so your wings are called out of panic and stress right now. Neither of those emotions is strong enough to call much more than dust and dirt to you. But I must say that they were pretty impressive. You got them a good six feet long.

“But then again,” she said as she handed me my scale, “this wasn’t your first time.”

“They can call more than dust and dirt?” I said, looking at the scale.

“They can call anything if you have enough willpower and strength. Believe me,” she pointed over her shoulder to the painting, “I know.”

I looked up at it. Behind the younger Celeste, what I previously had thought was just a background, were a pair of yellow dragonfly wings.

“You have them, too?”

She nodded. “All royalty have a pair of some sort of insect wings,” she said, gesturing back to the tapestry with my name on it.

Above my name a branch wound up the tree then broke in two. On the right side was Mom’s name, Cordelia Larnex, with nothing behind it. On the left side was another name, Javid Larnex, with a blue butterfly behind it. My eyes wandered up the tree to the various groups of family members I hadn’t known I had. Most of them didn’t have an image behind their names though at least once in every group I came across a bee, or even more rarely, a colored butterfly.

“Javid Larnex?” I said. “Is that…”

“Your father,” said Mom.

“Why is there a butterfly behind his name?”

“As I said,” Ms. Riley said, “insects signify royalty. Butterfly wings are what kings and queens don.”

I stopped breathing. “My father is a
king
?”

“Yes,” she said, “Javid Larnex, reigning King of Aetheria.”

I stared at her. “Does that mean I’m a…”

“A princess?” Ms. Riley said.

I nodded. The thought was like a childhood fantasy come true.

“No, I’m afraid not, sweetheart,” she said, pointing to the blank tapestry next to the one I was looking at.

I looked at it again. Of the very few boxes on it only two had an image behind the name. A box with the name Celeste Riley had a yellow dragonfly. Over and a little lower another one had the name Arabella Riley in it. A scarlet butterfly decorated the space behind the name.

“Princesses and princes are future queens and kings so they too would have Butterfly wings,” she said. “
You
have Dragonfly wings.”

“Arie’s going to be the next ruler?” I said.

They nodded.

“So exactly what does that make me?”

“It means your destiny is not to rule,” Ms. Riley said. “You’re meant to protect.”

“A Protector?” I said. “So that makes me a royal bodyguard or something?”

I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or cry from the weight of all the new knowledge I had been given.

“Not exactly, you are the
People’s
Protector,” she said. “One is born in a time of great need and lives until the next one is ready to take over.”

I looked at her. For the first time there was relief in her weary eyes. My throat went dry.

“Does that mean…”

“Yes,” she said without me having to finish the question. “When you are ready to take the position upon your shoulders, I will not be needed anymore.”

Mom bowed her head. Mrs. Amest placed her head on her husband’s shoulder and he patted her arm.

“You’ll … you’ll die?” I said. The whole situation was very hard for me to conceive. “I’ll kill you?”

“No, dear,” she said with a smile. “You will not do a thing. My time will simply be over.”

I shook my head.

“I’m very old, Emmeline,” she said. “I protected the people of Aetheria when I was called. It’s about time I moved on to whatever awaits me next.”

“I couldn’t do that to you,” I said, shaking my head again.

She placed her hands on both sides of my head and held it still. “You won’t have to. It will just happen. All of this is completely natural in our world and should not be fussed over when there is a greater need at hand. And there is. That is why you’re finally here.”

She put her index finger to my neck and hooked it around the chain of my necklace. She pulled it from under my shirt. Everyone watched the stone glow purple.

“All the signs are telling us so.”

* * *

Mom gasped, “Oh, my. Emma, did you notice it was purple? How long has it been that way?”

“I—I don’t know,” I said. “It changes periodically. I always figured it was the way light hit it or something.”

Ms. Riley smiled. “I was hoping this necklace would come in handy one day.”

I remembered Mom telling the Amests that the necklace was made for and given to me by someone named Celeste.

“Do you know I made this necklace for you?” she said. “Your mother provided me with a large chunk of stone. I broke off that tiny piece around your neck, wrapped it, and hung it off a piece of silver, and convinced her to give it to you when you were old enough to wear it.”

“What does this mean?” Mom said.

“It means Emma has been eavesdropping on conversations in Aetheria,” Ms. Riley said.

“What?” I said, shocked that anyone could think such a thing. “No, I haven’t. How can I—”

“I remember when your mother left Aetheria,” Ms. Riley said. “She gouged out that chunk of stone from a wall in the palace before she stormed out of it.”

“This whole time you’ve known where that chunk of Star Stone came from?” Mom said.

“You defaced royal property?” I said.

“Technically,
I
was royalty,” she said, jabbing her thumb at our tapestry. “So that wall was pretty much mine to deface.”

“Exactly which wall did you vandalize?” said Mr. Amest.

“That’s what doesn’t make any sense,” Mom said. “It was just a small dark corner of the dining hall.”

“The walkway between the dining hall and the back entrance to be exact,” Ms. Riley said. “Small dark corner it is, indeed. Perfect place for small, secret meetings that you don’t want overheard.”

Everyone looked at me.

“I still haven’t been eavesdropping if you’re still accusing me of that.” I said. “How would that even be possible?”

Ms. Riley looked down at my necklace. “We know you don’t mean to, but…”

“The gouge in the wall,” said Mrs. Amest.

“Yes,” said Mr. Amest. “The echoes of the voices in the vicinity of the hole must resonate into it and somehow find their way to the piece on Emma’s necklace.”

“We are technically in another universe, separate from that of home,” said Ms. Riley, “so the physics of either world wouldn’t apply to each other. If the necklace were in Aetheria or if the wall with the missing piece were in this world none of this would be possible in the slightest. However, since the necklace and the wall are separated by a dimensional divide what has resulted must be possible.”

“Emma,” Mom said, “you mentioned the voice you heard on Monday called you daughter.”

“Right…” I said

“You also mentioned that it wasn’t the first time you’d heard the voice.”

“I did.”

“What exactly happens when you hear these voices?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Just some strange stuff…”

She kept looking at me. “What do you mean ‘strange stuff’?”

“You know,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Voices. The stone changes colors … and vibrates.”

“Emma, how could you not tell me this?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought I was going crazy; I didn’t want you to think I was, too.”

“Oh, Emma,” she said, shaking her head.

She grabbed my head and planted a kiss on my forehead.

“Okay, what’s going on over there, Celeste?” she turned from me and looked at the Amests and Ms. Riley.

“They are pretty much on the brink of war,” Ms. Riley said.

Mom swung her head around to look at the Amests. “War? Things were bad when I left, but now there’s going to be a
war
?”

“Did Arian not tell you that?” Mrs. Amest said with a nervous smile.

Mom looked at Mr. Amest who had busied himself with kicking around something invisible on the ground.

“No, he seems to have forgotten to mention that,” she said.

“I was waiting for the right time?” Mr. Amest said, not looking at her.

“Okay,” she said. She rubbed her forehead with her hand. “So the country is at war, my daughter is the next coming. Anything else anyone wants to mention?”

“Um, we need to get her over there relatively soon,” Mr. Amest said in a hurry.

Mom shot him a dirty look and he went back to watching his feet kick around nothing.

“I see,” she said, “and soon would be…?”

“Preferably now,” Ms. Riley said.

“What?
Now
?” Mom said, turning to her. “She’s just now learning about things. She hasn’t had any training. You were twenty years old when you had to take action, Celeste.”

“There are people waiting to receive and train her,” Ms. Riley said. “Age is not a matter right now; a need depends upon no one person. And as for her just finding out about things, that really isn’t
our
fault, now is it?”

Mom turned red and looked away from Ms. Riley.

“This is exactly why I left,” she said to the ground. “I didn’t want her to get sucked into the mess that I could see growing. And now look at what is happening.”

“Her hair is
red
, Cordelia,” Ms. Riley said. “You had to know from the beginning, at least a little bit. Especially knowing what you married into and what kind of bloodline she is descended from; you had to have had an idea of what her future would hold.”

“There is a difference between
red
hair and
purple
hair, Celeste,” Mom said in a voice that was steadily growing louder. “Red is a normal color for hair in this world.”

“In
this
world,” Ms. Riley said. “She is not from this world. She is Aetherian. Even though you tried to get away from them, she cannot escape her roots.” Her head jerked to the tapestry behind her.

Tears gathered in Mom’s eyes.

“I had to try,” she said in a much softer voice. “I couldn’t stand the thought of my little girl having anything to do with what that place was becoming.”

I walked to her and put an arm around her.

“You really thought she could escape who she was?” Ms. Riley said. “You were okay with her turning her back on the people that need her to be exactly what she is?

Mom sighed. She looked at me and gave me a hug.

“As long as it kept you safe and whole,” she said to me. “I thought I could change circumstances and avoid the person I saw you growing up to be.”

She let go of me and hooked a finger around a strand of my hair.

“I’m not whole, Mom,” I said. “I’ve always felt broken and out of place. Only lately have those cracks inside of me felt like they were finally being filled.”

“I thought being born here would negate your powers,” she said. “When you were born I saw that red hair and breathed a sigh of relief. I thought you were free from being one of us. That you had truly escaped.”

Mrs. Amest put a hand on Cordelia’s shoulder.

“Cordelia,” Mr. Amest said, “the red hair didn’t panic you for one second? Knowing what you do about the color of hair in our world, it didn’t make you wonder?”

“For a second it might have,” she said. “I’m sure there was a time when I did. But I quickly put it out of my mind. I didn’t want to even consider the possibilities. I was just so happy. But then those lumps appeared on her back…”

I shifted nervously.

“Those lumps seemed to seal the destiny I had been trying to fight. After they first started to appear I knew that no matter what would attach to them, she would be called back one day. It was merely denial and procrastination on my part.”

“I’m not sure I completely understand all of this,” I said. “Exactly what is going on there?