The Otherkind Book One:Heart

~*~ 42 ~*~

She inspected it closer. The burn covered nearly the whole back of my left hand. Holding her hand out to me she nodded towards my hand. "Give me your hand Rowan" Placing my hand on hers she held her other hand just above the burn closing her eyes. "What happened out there?" she murmured as she concentrated on healing my hand.

I told her everything, every word, all the pain, the heartache. I told her of the black thing I sensed inside of Grayson, of me yelling at him. I told her of the attack by whatever that black thing was that I could feel whenever it was near.

"The House of Lords" she whispered.

What was it that I had heard of them before? I struggled to remember. Something. And then I did. I gasped as I remembered all of my dream slips and also what Tina and Archer had told me. "Oh Grams—-" I shuddered. "What is going on?"

She sighed and struggled to get a handle on her own concerns. Healing my hand hadn't worked. She was now rubbing a salve onto the angry redness very gently. "You know, this is not how I intended to introduce you to your heritage and birthright. Not by a long shot." She inspected her handiwork and then looked at the tree winking brightly. For us, the cheer had vanished as our friends and loved ones had gone off to battle something dark and evil.

"Have you ever suspected that, I don't know maybe you didn't fit in? That you were—- different?" She was looking at me intently. I could tell she was weighing her words carefully.

I nodded my head. "I've known that for a little bit anyway, but before that, when I was little, I knew that I was not going to be like everyone else, that I was different somehow."

"That's because we are." she whispered. "You are the newest daughter of the forest, sister of the moon. To you goes my post when it is my time to go."

'Daughter of the forest, sister of the moon', I'd heard these words before. But the last thing I wanted to hear was talk of Grams dying. "Stop!"

"I mustn't. You have to know."

I stood up walking to the window staring out at the darkness. My heart wrenched with a foreboding sense of danger. Tentacles long and icy were reaching in, enmeshing it in a relentless grip, making it hard to breath without gasping for breath.

Grams insisted on the telling of it, putting aside my own feelings of horror. "You are the keeper of all this, the 'yard' as I've always called it. The heart of it is the forest that we were at tonight, that beckoned you the other night." She plucked at a couple lint balls on the blankets in a haphazard pile beside her, then idly smoothed out the wrinkles. "Don't fret so honey, my time is not for a very long time. Please? Come sit and let me tell you things that of necessity must be told now, rather than later, for you to understand what is going on."

I stood still watching a twinkling star and then finally turned back to her.

"I'm going to be blunt and just dive in okay. I'll tell you as much as I can right now."

I nodded my head for her to go ahead. Hard truths would be a refreshing novelty.

"You are," she took a deep breath steeling her own resolve. "You are not fully human Rowan."

I blinked stunned. "What?" I whispered. This was not even remotely like anything I could have conceived of coming from her.

"You are Otherkind as well."

"I've heard that word before. Which kind of Otherkind?"

"You are born of a long line of witches and elven, among others." she looked at me intently as if assessing my ability to handle this.