Picture is Kale (Tony Oller.
~~~
December 2, 1963
Dearest Coral,
Things are getting much more intense. There are signs of him everywhere. I only just had Jacqueline a month ago and even she's jumpy. She wakes up in the night screaming. Deiter tells me he hasn't spoken to Mother in a long time, but that he is seeing signs of Ember everywhere as well.
Just the other day, I had another one of the dreams. The ones that we all had before the first time- I'm running down a dark hall, and I burst out of the end, just to see a huge lily with a rose on one side and a sunflower on the other, and I have you and Deiter next to me, then the flames light up everything and I jolt awake. You remember those- you always saw a sunflower in the middle, Deiter always saw a rose. It didn't matter what was in the middle, they all ended the same.
How can we take him down a second time? Mother took away most of our powers so we could live "normal lives" but I don't think she realized we can't have a "normal life" after what she chose us for. Coral, it's getting worse- I have headaches all the time. Jon woke up a few days ago to a raging fever, and once he touched the lily Mother gave us he cooled down, but it's not fading much. We need to meet up as soon as possible, before this gets worse.
Please write back soon.
Love,
Lily Allen
A yawn stretched my jaws. It was a quarter to two in the morning and I was still up, reading the letters. I'd gathered a lot of information but none of it made any sense, purely for the reason it didn't seem... Real. There were too many coincidences.
It was only letters from two people: Lily Allen and Deiter Werstein. They referred to their children- Lily's daughter Jacqueline and Deiter's son Lewis. There was something else they referred to a lot: Mother and Ember. Mother, up until this last letter, had just been a figure they mentioned from time to time, someone they'd been close to and went to for advice. But Lily's words, Mother took away our powers, implied there was more to Mother than just a motherly figure. It was obvious it wasn't their actual mother. But the real question is, who is Ember? Why is Ember so frightening?
I'd read letter after letter and I think I've started to piece it together. The problem is, I don't want to, really- Allen. Callista Allen, my first friend here. It just can't be. That guy in the Guns N Roses t-shirt had the last name Werstein. What are the odds I'd meet them today and they'd be this significant to my grandmother? Sure, there could be another Coral Snow- but a Coral Snow from 1963 in small-town Virginia who mentions her one-year-old daughter, Linda, who just so happens to have the same name as my mother, Linda Hope Snow, who refused to change her last name. It's too big of a coincidence. There's something bigger happening here.
And tomorrow, I'm going to find out more about the present-day Allen and Werstein.
At six, I jolted out of bed an hour past when my alarm would normally be set for. I yanked off my pajamas, leaving them on the floor, and dug through my dresser, grabbing the first things I could- jeans and a black Killers long-sleeve shirt. I grabbed a jacket and pulled it on and yanked on some socks before running the brush through my hair- good enough!
I ducked out of my room and brushed my teeth quickly, and then returned to my room, sliding into my shoes before running to the dresser. I applied a quick layer of mascara and gray eye-shadow, and then grabbed my bag. As I was exiting, I nearly tripped on something and looked down to see the box. I gasped- where do I hide it?! If Mom finds it, she'll immediately question it, and I can't have that!
I grabbed the box and looked around quickly. The closet! All it has is storage stuff that I had nowhere to put. I reached in there and grabbed a box, opening it to see a bean bag chair, which I pulled out and discarded, tossing it on the ground. I put the box in the bottom of it and then grabbed the bean bag chair, shoving it back in. It was a tight fit to get the box to close again, but I managed. After replacing the box in the closet, I closed the door and left my room. By now, it was only 6:20- maybe rushing wasn't necessary. School didn't even start until 7:40, and I didn't have to leave until 7:15.
Oh, well- more time for me.
I sat around, wasting time, eager to go to school and question Callista and Charles. Once I had my makeup perfect, a cup of soda running through me, food in my stomach, spearmint gum in my mouth, all my notes studied, my room cleaned, and laundry going, it was finally time to leave for school.
At school, I found Callista in the library and quickly walked in, sitting down beside her at the table she was at, vigorously copying information onto a piece of paper.
"Hey, Callista," I greeted her and she sent me a quick smile.
"Hey, Annie; sleep well?"
"No, did you?" I kept my friendly smile plastered on, trying to find out how to open the conversation.
"Yeah, I slept pretty well. Why didn't you?" Perfect opening- thanks for being a concerned individual, Callista.
"I was up most of the night. I found this box of letters my grandmother left behind in a shack- don't question the shack, it's a very long story. The weird thing is, the letters were addressed to her from only two people- Lily Allen and Deiter Werstein."
The pencil slipped form Callista's hand, landing with a tink against the table. Her eyes widened and she looked up at me.
"L-Lily Allen is my grandmother's name." Callista's voice was blank and shaky. My heartbeat skyrocketed; I knew it! It was one of those things, though, where you kind of hope you aren't right.
"So... What about Werstein? Do we tell Charles? Because I figured I could tell you and it wouldn't be as weird, but I barely know Charles, I met him yesterday and he doesn't seem incredibly friendly." I shuddered a little, still surprised and Callista thought about it.
"We should tell him. Find him at lunch and we'll tell him, he usually sits by himself, drinking coffee," Callista commented. "Do you think we should go back to the shack and search for anything else? What did the letters say?"
I sighed. "Well, they were mostly just talking about the kids- Lily's Jacqueline, Coral, my grandmother, had Linda, and Deiter had a son named Lewis. Then they also all referred to someone named Mother and someone called Ember. You'd have to read it to really understand- it was all really crazy."
"Where did you even find them?" Callista asked.
"Well..." I began and then explained the events of yesterday.
"Alright, we'll go back and look around. I feel like that's what we should do, and then we can tell Charles about the letters Monday. It's actually pretty cool our grandparents were friends," Callista chirped cheerfully. I nodded in agreement and we continued to chat for a while about the odd coincidence and who Ember and Mother could be. I slowly began to let on that Mother was powerful and that Ember was something to be feared. The odd thing about it all was that the letters abruptly stopped in late December of 1963- they just vanished and ended, after a lot of terrifying talk about Ember.
The afternoon couldn't come fast enough. First block was spent discussing the letters further with Callista (including me confessing my nightmare that was just like how Lily described hers, but with a sunflower), and then her showing me her driver's license and jacket- driver's license had her full name: Callista Lily Allen. The jacket she had was left to her from her grandmother- she wasn't even born yet, but Lily had wanted her granddaughter to have the jacket. It was a thick brown parka-like jacket that ended just above her hips. There were two pockets- one on either side of the zipper- each with golden buttons that had a lily engraved on them. Second block, lunch and fourth block I was hit on by Kale, and during my free period in the library I played the make-awkward-eye-contact-and-look-away-quickly game with the cute guy.
Finally, what seemed like sixteen hours rather than eight hours later, school was out. Callista offered to drive since my car was now in the shop, having been towed there yesterday after it broke down. Callista drove by my instructions and we reached the area of road with the strip of trees, pulling over.
"This is a bad, bad area to be in- drug dealers, child molestors, no actual buildings in miles," Callista trailed off, looking around fearfully as we exited the car. I took a steadying breath.
"If anything happens like yesterday, run. Just full on run. For now, though, follow me," I instructed and began leading the way down to the strip of trees, Callista cautious as a doe behind me. We scrambled once again through the thick foliage and Callista followed right behind me to the shack, wherein she looked around in surprise. Neither of us spoke a word, overwhelmed by the energy in the shack. It hadn't felt like this yesterday.
"Do you feel that, too? The pull?" I nodded at Callista's question. There was some kind of magnetism here- there was something here we needed to find. A treasure, of sorts- it was in here somewhere and we have to find it. We have to. If we don't, we'll regret it forever and we'll never be complete. The feeling was inexplicable, powerful, and nearly physical.
"Let's start searching," I said quickly, desperate to find this and have the longing end. It was like a cocaine addict in a room where he knew there was his fix, but he couldn't find it. I checked in the bedroom while Callista scavenged through the kitchen, and it was only after choking on the fumes from lifting the rotting mattress that an idea struck, an idea that should've been painfully obvious.
I exited the bedroom and Callista turned quickly. "Did you find it?"
"No, but I think I might know where it is," I said and dropped to my stomach in front of the couch. "Callista, do you have one of those phones with the flashlight app?"
"Yeah, here." She walked over, and I looked up while she went to it and then handed me the phone. I flashed it under the couch- there! In the corner!
"I think I found it!" I exclaimed. Using one arm to keep an eye on it, I edged under the couch as I had yesterday, plunging my hand through cobwebs and dust bunnies to a tiny scrap of paper in the distant corner. I scrambled for the paper and finally managed to grasp it between two fingers. Huffing and groaning, I inched back out from under the couch and sat up tiredly, setting down the phone beside me and turning off the flashlight.
"What is that?!" Callista asked immediately, dropping to her knees beside me. Eager and excited, I unfolded what I'd thought was paper- it was tan and wrinkled; parchment.
The brittle paper was dropping dust and tiny fragments from around the edges as I carefully unfolded it. Once it was open, Callista and I both stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the paper. On it rested the simple words:
The power of three, a group of flower,
Must defeat Ember before year 51's hour,
Sunflower, Rose, and Lily,
Druidess, Warrior, and Healer-
Each power of each group member,
Must be brought forth to finally defeat Ember.
~Agatha
Neither of us could speak. The wind sent groans through the shack around us and we remained staring at the paper, our thoughts reeling. It was obvious what and who it was about- Lily and Ember gave it away. The sunflower- Coral's box. My dream. Healer, Lily's husband's fever.
But this wouldn't be a prophecy about people who'd been dead for fifty years. Year fifty-one of their death began in a little over four weeks. I have four weeks for me, Callista, and Werstein to figure this thing out and defeat Ember.
The question is, how?