If I hated my ghost guard, as I came to think of William Helm, I came to loathe Sundays, my supposed day off. That was a joke. Sunday was the day the Hermits gave me what they politely referred to as ‘private’ lessons. The rest of my family—the cowards—fled the castle for the monastery to have some free time with their new-found friends. This routine went for a month and I was not making very much progress in my lessons.
To say I woke up one particular Sunday morning on the wrong side of the bed would be putting it mildly.
The last thing I wanted to see today is geriatric wizards, or William Helm. I was feeling sorry for myself as I came down the stairs. My cat, Luther, trotted down the stairs right alongside of me as if he owned the place. I could have sworn I had closed my bedroom door behind me when I left my room. I would have to double check next time. No use aggravating the Hermits unnecessarily. There had been a couple of unfortunate incidents over Luther marking his territory against the bedroom doors jambs of Natos, Vorst, and Varak.
I darted a glance behind me. Of course, William Helm was right behind me, too. Could he have let the cat out? Nah. William Helm definitely did not look like the cat type, I concluded, turning away from the sight of that scowling visage.
He didn’t look in any better mood than I did. How he always knew when I woke up of a morning, I couldn’t figure out. Did he have some kind of magical alarm that went off whenever I woke up?
Uncle, Luke, and Andrew were talking excitedly, gobbling down First Meal like a rowdy bunch of tailgaters when we came into the dining room. They were ready to get out of the castle for a few hours and were practically bouncing off the walls in their enthusiasm. I sat down at the other end of the table from them and glared in their direction. A warning, if they needed one (and they didn’t) that I was in a foul mood. I felt Luther curl up around my feet under the table as I stab viciously at a roll. His presence calmed me down.
I grabbed a small corn palm pod, and listlessly began picking off the tiny fruits, popping them into my mouth. Natos came in and sat down by me. He brought a cup of Farrow Fruit Tea with him to sip.
He avoided eye contact with me. he was uncomfortable around me this morning and it was my fault.
I liked to climb up on the parapet in the evening, just to remind myself there was another whole world outside these barren castle walls. I hadn’t set out to interrupt Natos quiet time when I had followed him up onto the parapet the evening before.
The many times I had been up there since our arrival, I had not noticed the blocks of wood sitting along the edge of the walls. Apparently they were for the Hermits to stand upon. They were too short to see over the walls, otherwise.
Natos was standing on one of the blocks of wood, staring longingly over the wall towards Eurmica’s faint coastline. I came up beside him without thinking a thing about it.
William Helm came up the ladder behind me, but Natos gave him a signal, and he veered off in the other direction, heading towards the nearest guard tower. He soon struck up a conversation with the two Nintuks on duty. They spoke companionably in a language I had never heard. Then the three of them disappeared into the tower.
“Do you miss it?” I had asked Natos kindly. I never thought about any of the Hermits as real people until I saw the wistful yearning in Natos’s shoe-button eyes. Loneliness was written in the lines of his wrinkled face.
“I suppose I do.” He glanced my way. “It’s mostly the people I miss. Most of them have vanished into the mists of time. Very few I can even recall by name, yet the memory of them still remains. The memories bother me more than I wish.”
He turned back to his studying the coastline. I wondered what he was really seeing. It eventually dawned on me that he was having a private moment that I was intruding upon. I bowed to him, and left, embarrassed. I’m not sure he even noticed. I had learned something significant. I just wasn’t sure what it was, yet I felt it in my being.
I studied him silently now while he sipped his tea. Natos gave the impression of being more of a gentle scholar than a 10th Level wizard. He was thin almost to the point of emancipation. His long gray hair and beard made him look top-heavy. He was the only one of the Hermits who had been married once upon a time. I remember him telling us that one evening during our after Last Meal lessons. His wife, Keerie had been her name, had died a couple hundred years previously.
It still seemed so odd to think in terms of life spans that stretched across centuries instead of decades. The Hermits assured us that it was a typical affect of the crystals—to extend life. Actually, the crystals constantly renewed life, cell by cell. So, in other words, if we stayed here, we could expect to live a lot longer than if we went back to earth. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Natos looked up at me, feeling my gaze, and smiled at me secretively, and I knew I was forgiven. I smiled back at him, relieved. His black eyes snapped and sparked with excitement. He couldn’t wait for my family to leave so we could begin my lessons.
Learning to control my abilities—the whole reason my uncle, brothers and I were here—left me drained in a way I can’t begin to describe. I felt like the Hermits new toy. I was glad when Natos picked up a cold roll and began dipping it into his tea. It exhausted me just thinking about the day ahead, and I could not share Natos’s enthusiasm.
Breakfast was self-serve on Sunday mornings because it was the servants one day off. Uncle, Luke and Andrew finished their breakfast and unapologetically rushed out of the dining room with only mumbled good-byes to me and Natos. They were hitching a ride to the monastery with Isaac, Marta, and Britta, the cook, in a wagon that belonged to the Castle.
They no longer asked me if I wanted to go with them. I had turned them down every Sunday for the past month. I couldn’t tell them the truth of why I didn’t go with them, of course. I’m sure they didn’t believe my excuse of wanting to rest. But the Hermits tampered with their minds so that they forgot they wanted to ask me about why I didn’t want to go with them.
No sooner had William Helm locked the outer gate behind the wagon, than Natos and I joined Vorst and Varak in the courtyard, and the lessons began.
The shielding I was being taught this morning wasn’t the regular shielding I was being taught in class, which was a defensive shielding more useful in battleground situations. This shielding was more of a stop-leak for radiators, only of the mind. Not a perfect analogy, but close enough. I had to learn how to protect my mind so no one could get in and take over. I was as anxious as they were to prevent that!
It was a two step process. First, I needed to recognize someone was trying to enter my mind—no easy task. Someone entering my mind was such an intangible feeling that suddenly--pop—and they were just there with me inside my mind. Thank goodness, so far it had only been Julius, Dr. Spinner and the Hermits who had taken up space inside my head.
This morning, the Hermits were trying something new. Sensory deprivation.
“Just sit here quietly. No need for alarm,” soothed Jung as he reached up and placed a black, cloth, bag over my head. I could sense him moving away from me as he stepped back to complete a small circle around me.
I was left sitting there in the middle of the courtyard while they moved around out away from me, moving in random increments around the courtyard.
They were hoping closing out the sensory perception of sight would make me more sensitive to their touching my mind. Wrong. I could not feel them enter, the same as always.
I soon had a whopping headache from the mental strain. I would kill for some Tylenol. I was ready to quit when I suddenly felt a tiny nudging at the periphery of my senses.
“Oh my gosh! I can feel one of you,” I called out excitedly.
“In Azul’s name, Knight! Stand down,” Vorst ordered William Helm. I was guessing my crying out had made his over-sensitive alarm bells go off.
“From which direction do you feel the presence, child?” It was Natos. There was a clipped, sharp tone I didn’t understand in his voice.
“From the right. In front of me. Now you are coming towards me.”
“Is the one you feel tall?” Varak was the tallest of the Hermits.
“No. It’s someone short. Very short. Jung? No. That’s weird. It must be something else I’m feeling. None of you are that short.” I started to pull off the bag.
“No. Wait, Missy,” Jung said. “Can you describe what you feel for us?” he queried. He was obviously the shortest Hermit.
“Yes….I think so. It feels like the tip of a…..finger?..... touching my brain. “That can’t be right, can’t it?”
“Do you think you would recognize the feeling again?” It was Vorst’s gruff voice.
“Of course. Oh!...” I was startled when Luther jumped up into my lap. I snatched the bag off my head. Blinking against the too-bright light, I discovered all four wizards staring down curiously at Luther and me.
Behind them, sword drawn, stood William Helm, glaring daggers at Luther. Luther turned towards the knight and hissed dramatically before he turned back to me.
“Luther, was that you I felt?” I asked the cat scratching behind his ears. He purred loudly and touched his nose to my lips.
I looked around at the Hermits in bewilderment. “You mean I can feel this silly cat but not four of the most powerful wizards on Dardara?” I asked, laughing at myself--and my silly cat--while I stroked Luther’s back.
“Cats are mysterious creatures,” Natos admitted. “They are very close to the magic. It draws them. The crystals affect them sometimes more than us.”
“They are too close to the magic,” allowed William Helm. I heard his sword sliding back into its scabbard with a loud snick. Luther turned to glare at him and growled low in his throat.
“Too bad he can’t talk,” Vorst said sourly.
“Even so, he may be able to help,” added Natos.
“Are we reduced to using familiars then,” Varak growled unhappily, “Like a coven of old witches?”
Luther appeared to like all the attention he was getting. He meowed loudly, as if agreeing with the Hermits. He curled himself in my lap and lifted his leg to wash it.
Jung was right, however. Luther had helped me to recognize the feel of someone touching my mind. I soon had the hang of feeling any of them even touching my mind.
By the time we were ready to break for lunch, I had not only learned to recognize that someone was touching my mind, but learned that each one of the wizards had their own special feel that I could identify. Still, Luther was the easiest to recognize—if only because he was so different.
The Hermits thought it was because he was an animal, whose instincts were less inhibited than a person’s. Needless to say, Luther earned him a place in the Hermits esteem for this morning’s work.
Pumped up with my success, I challenged William Helm to try to attack my mind. I sensed he had the ability to enter at will if he chose. He flat refused, however. It took the Hermits several tries before he reluctantly agreed.
A unexpected flash, so sudden, I felt I would bow under its weight, pressed against my shields, and then he slipped past my guards as if there weren’t any, and I was stunned by the force of the anger seething inside the mind inside my head with me. It was unfocused anger, however, and not directed at me. And then I saw something else that he was attempting to hide from me.
Shocked, I felt him withdraw from my mind. I tried to hold on to the wisps of what I had discovered but it was useless. His will was too strong. I felt the familiar ‘pop’ and he was gone from my mind as rapidly as he had entered it.
I sat there stunned. “You’re married to Chloe’s sister? Brishanna’s your wife?” I asked him. “She’s been kidnapped?”
His eyes slid away from mine, and I felt confused and disoriented.
“The child is not ready for this, Wizards,” he spat. “She needs more time.”
“She has no time, Knight!” Vorst’s always volatile anger flared and he drew his wand.
“I am not the enemy, Wizard. Remember that.” William Helm glared down derisively at the wand pointed at him, then turned his back on Vorst deliberately and walked back towards the castle.