Chapter Eighteen
A Home Away From Home
Chloe knocked on the door and bounced up and down on her toes while she waited for someone to open it. Nigel and I stood behind her. Something buzzed near my ear and I found myself clutching at Nigel, while covering my ears with my hair that still dangled around my head like a curly red mop.
Luke answered the door finally, his smile wilting like a neglected houseplant when he saw it was just us, and grunted by way of acknowledgement before he turned wordlessly back into the room and over to what was obviously a living area. My first impression of our new living quarters was one of rugged space. The height of the room went up and up into the darkness of a ceiling hidden from sight . A balcony ran the length of the room over my head, keeping the proportion of open spaces in balance and was such a contrast to our little duplex shanty back on earth I felt like I was in the presidential suite of some mountain retreat by comparison.
Two straight-backed, hide-covered couches faced each other like soldiers across a battlefield forming the arms of a U-shaped sitting area. Luke silently walked over and plopped down on the far couch like he was used to such a luxury of space. All this big masculine oversized furniture was a far cry from the slim settee and one lazy boy that comprised the living room furniture in Uncle’s shanty. I felt I could take very deep breaths in this room.
Two mammoth chairs sat side by side, opposing generals at the head of their troops, completing the U-shape that faced the true focal point of the room—a black stone-mantled fireplace. Sheesh, a real fireplace. They may have to pry us out of this house. The mantel was huge, and carved all over with the same kind of runes as the ones on the frieze that surrounded the top of the gateway. It looked like the same black mineral as the black stones on my necklace. What had Dr. Spinner called it? Onyxi-something?
Chloe’s exuberance could not be dampened by Luke’s lack of greeting. She spied Andrew kneeling by the fireplace about the same time that he looked up and saw her. His face lit up. “Hi, Chloe,” he grinned, totally ignoring me and Nigel. Of course he didn’t know Nigel yet, anyway, but come on. I was his sister. “Do you know if they have any wood stacked around here anywhere?”
I didn’t even realize that Nigel and I were still holding hands until Luke looked at our hands and then back up at me with a raised eyebrow. Okay. Payback for my teasing him about the princess earlier. Blushing, I slipped my hand out of Nigel’s and crossed my arms over my chest as I took a step away from him. I didn’t realize how chilly the room was until I no longer had Nigel’s warmth near me. No wonder Andrew was trying to get a fire going. This place was like a cave.
Chloe practically skipped over to my brother. Nigel and I followed her into the room. Chloe squatted down by Andrew. “Whatever do you need wood for?” Chloe asked, truly baffled.
“I thought I would light a fire, it’s a little chilly in here. But, I can’t find any wood to burn.”
“You would burn wood just to keep warm!” Chloe drew back, horrified.
“Jeez, chill, Chloe. You’d think there’s a law against it or something, the way you’re acting.”
“Well, as a matter of fact,” Chloe huffed, perching her fists on her hips, “There is!”
“A law against burning wood?” Andrew looked at Chloe askance. “Right. What kind of law is that, for Pete’s sake?”
“It’s a law designed to protect what little forest we have left on this planet. That’s what kind of law it is! I don’t know about where you come from,” Chloe retorted, righteously indignant. “But we protect our natural resources here. Our wood is so precious it is practically sacred! You can’t just burn it!”
“Well, if you can’t burn wood to light a fire, Miss Tree hugger, then how else do you heat this place?” Andrew was suddenly as irritated as Chloe. “I’m cold.”
“You use the crystals, of course.” Chloe scornfully accused, getting right up in Andrew’s face. “Try the ones in the fireplace!” She finished, her nose practically touching Andrew’s.
I was as bewildered as Andrew. I looked over at Luke, and from the look on his face, he was drawing a blank, too.
I glanced at Nigel. He watched the fireworks between Andrew and Chloe with amusement. I wondered what he found so funny, but before I could ask him, Andrew and Chloe continued their verbal sparring, and I would have laid bets on Chloe, rather than my brother.
“Do I look that stupid?” Andrew retaliated. “Whoever heard of burning crystals or any other kind of rocks—unless they’re some weird form of coal?”
“You don’t burn them, Andrew,” Chloe spoke more calmly. “Watch,” she said, stretching out her hands over the pile of black crystals in the dark depths of the fireplace.
She closed her eyes, and concentrated. Suddenly a light appeared inside the fireplace. The crystals in the heart of that huge fireplace began to glow. Once they began to glow, Chloe drew her hands back and tucked them into her lap, squatting back on her heels. Now that she had proved her point, she became suddenly shy. Perhaps it was the way my brother was looking at her in amazement.
“Wow! I can’t believe you did that?” Andrew marveled. “How did you make them burn like that?”
“I used inborn magic. But, crystals don’t burn, silly, like in the sense you mean, of burning up, they glow,” Chloe answered, changing the subject. “Onxytite crystals are the main heat source on our planet. If they burned up every time we set them to glowing, we would soon be out of crystals, like we are out of wood. Though it wasn’t us that destroyed the few trees on this planet. It was the Masters, of course, that did that. I forget you don’t know these things. Forgive me for yelling at you?”
I couldn’t help myself. Unconsciously, I had been slipping closer and closer to the fireplace. It was beautiful and hypnotic watching each separate crystal glowing like a wiggling tiny flame had been captured inside the heart of each one. It was weird too, because I could feel the magic, well, whatever this force was, that made them work, that I was feeling inside the crystals.
I kneeled down by Chloe. “Can you show me how to do that?” I asked her, awed by her ability.
“You can feel it, can’t you, Storm?” she asked softly.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“That’s the magic you feel.”
“Can I do it?”
Chloe suddenly looked doubtful, her brown eyes studying me intently. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so. Not so soon, Storm. You just got here today.” She looked at Andrew, then behind her at Luke. He still sat on the couch, but was interested now
Luke leaned towards us from where he sat on the couch. “Is it really magic or is it some kind of telekinesis, or something, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask my dad or Julius.” Chloe shrugged. “I’ve been able to do it since I was a baby. That’s why my mother and father brought me here and let Dr. Spinner adopt me.”
“”Your parents gave you up for adoption,” Andrew asked, shocked.
“That’s awful,” I said. “Don’t you miss your real mom and dad?”
“No. Not really. I’ve always been here at the monastery as far back as I can remember. Leon has been the only father I’ve really known. My life before I came to the monastery feels like something that happened to somebody else, not me. Although I did meet my birth parents, once. I could tell from reading their minds that what they did had taken a tremendous amount of courage for them, and what they did, they did it out of their love for me. That just made me feel more loved than ever, because, of course, I can feel the love Leon and Julius have for me. And, of course, my sister, Brishanna, when she was here….”
Nigel came over and kneeled down near me, balancing his weight on the ball of one foot while he used the other to prop his arms on. Chloe stopped speaking suddenly, clearing her throat like she was choking on an old pain.
Chloe looked around at everyone’s faces. I guess whatever she saw on our faces prompted her to share what had happened and why. I didn’t think about it again until I was alone in my assigned bedroom staring up into the dark, that I never got to ask Chloe about the sister, Brishanna, that had made Chloe so sad.
“You see,” she began, looking relieved to change the subject again. “All the crystals--Onxytite, Azulitite, and Rubizinne--all of them affected me.” While she talked, she sat down on the floor, leaned her back against the raised hearth, and crossed her legs in front of her. She looked like a fairy almost, sitting there. All she would have needed to make the fairy picture complete, was a flower to be sitting upon.
Chloe took a deep breath, then poured her story out to us:
“I was born in a tiny village in the northern part of Eurmica, near Nurdo on the north coast. I was born with such strong intuitive magic that my parents couldn’t control it or me. Can you imagine an infant being able to pull the electromagnetic currents being emitted by crystals out of the air and shape it to their will? Can you imagine how dangerous that would be?” She paused a second to let us think about that before she continued. “I could do that before I could even sit up. Worse, I had no ability to control it whatsoever. Anything I wanted or could imagine, I could have, whether it was dangerous for me, or not.
One day I watched from my crib while my mother stood cutting up vegetables on the kitchen table with a knife. She told how, that quick,” Chloe snapped her fingers. “I pulled the knife into the crib with me.” Chloe held up her hand to show us a ragged scar etched into her palm.
“Another day I did the same thing with a fire that caught my attention. I caught my crib on fire, but thankfully, blankets saved me from being burned before my mother’s next door neighbor, who was visiting, got to me.”
“Wow!” Andrew interrupted. “On earth we call that telekinesis.”
“Exactly. Before long, there were people in our village who wanted to kill me. Others wanted to steal me, thinking I might be the firstborn.”
She stopped for a second to catch her breath. This was harder for her than she tried to let on. Andrew scooted next to her and put his arm around her. I could have hugged my brother for that kindness. Chloe leaned against him, and with a small sigh, continued her story.
“Rather than let me fall into the wrong hands, my parents smuggled me to Witches Isle and begged Dr. Spinner to take me in. It was a long dangerous journey. I still wonder that they made it without being discovered.
“Leon invited my parents and I to stay here so he could study me for a few days. After seeing what I was capable of, and that I was truly a danger to myself as well as others, he agreed to keep me and train me to use my powers. He also recognized the danger my family and I were in from religious zealots who wanted to set me up as the Firstborn.”
“Why did people think you were the firstborn?” asked Nigel, regarding Chloe intently.
Chloe shrugged again in her special way she had of lifting her shoulders so they were almost touching her ears, and her palms open and face up. “I guess it was because I was manifesting powers so early.”
“Anyway, Leon offered to adopt me. My parents let him adopt me legally so I wouldn’t even have the same family name as my birth parents. They moved to another village near the southern tip of Eurmica so no one could trace their whereabouts.”
“I’m sure that was necessary, too. Your powers, of course, would have reinforced the hope of the prophesy, if you had lived anywhere but here.” Nigel commented like he was thinking out loud.
“Yes. Everyone rather expects unusual abilities from the students here. But, just to be sure to keep my anonymity, Leon re-named me Chloe--after his own mother, actually--so that any trace of my real name, or former life completely disappeared.”
“Yes. That was good thinking, too.”
“Eventually, rumors about the extraordinary baby born in Eurmica died down. Leon has been a father to me all these years, and I have been happy and safe.”
“Did that stop talk about the prophesy, then,” Nigel persisted.
“No. People still cling to that old wives tale. I think it’s hope more than anything. I know you don’t know about it, but The Lithian Wars started the year I was born. Many people still believe The Lithian War was the beginning of the fulfillment of the prophesy about the Firstborn.”
During Chloe’s entire story, Luke, Andrew and I had kept quiet. I was seeing another side of this normally vivacious young woman. She could be serious when she needed to be, and I had certainly underestimated her intelligence. I looked over at Luke, and when our eyes met, I could see he had picked out of my brain what I was thinking, and agreed with it. Andrew kept his arm protectively around Chloe’s shoulder, even after she had finished her story. His worshipful look never wavered.
“Do you intend to stay here on Witches Isle the rest of your life, then?”
Nigel’s question interrupted my train of thought, and brought me back to the present conversation. I couldn’t help but wonder why he was so persistent in pursuing questioning Chloe about something that was obviously some superstitious drivel about a mythical Firstborn—whatever that was supposed to be.
Chloe didn’t seem to be bothered by Nigel’s question, pondering it a moment before giving him an answer. “No. I don’t think so. I’m almost finished with my fifth level apprenticeship. When I’m done, I will be a full-fledged Wizardess. I was thinking about traveling some. Fire starters are always welcomed on Caravans. I could support myself just doing that while seeing some of Dardara. I’ve always wanted to see Analozi. I’ve heard Blue Desert Lake has the most beautiful landscape on all of Dardara. I might train while I’m there to be a Queen’s Ranger. That might be exciting and interesting.”
My mind was so churning with questions I didn’t know which one to answer first. It turned out I didn’t get to, because just then, we were interrupted by a knock at the door.