WARNING!! -- this is old, and while recently updated with minor edits and the last of the chapters i never put up back in the day, it shall never be updated...enjoy it anyways!
...since a lot of you seem to keep doing so o-o ...
- Created By itsumademo
Prologue
The Catalyst
The Prologue
“Jade, do you remember the story I told you as a little girl?” My grandmother gently held my hand between her own, her soft aching whisper carried on the heavy smelling air of the room she had been in the last few weeks of her gradually worsening illness.
I nodded slowly and placed my other free hand over our entwined ones. Her hazy gray blue eyes still held the youthful glimmer I always used to see when she looked at me as a girl. A small grin pulled at her delicately aged face and then she nodded as well, disrupting her pure white hair, which flowed in soft waves all around her face and head.
“Jade sweetie, can you hand me the box over on the vanity.” I rotated my waist toward the small table near the bed. The container was about the same size as a ring box with a strange greenish metal or stone lining the edges and forming in the center of the cover to create a strange design. It appeared to be a hand.
I placed the package in her open palm and watched as she stroked the unique design on the top. Tears flooded her eyes and her breath shook slightly as she ran a finger across her cheeks.
“Are you alright?” I moved forward to make sure everything was normal.
“I’m fine sweetie, fine.” She eased herself up against her pillows along the headboard while still cradling the box in her hand as though it were the most precious thing in the world. “Jade, remember how in the story the simple girl ended up in a magical world and met the man of her dreams?”
“Yes,” I quirked my brow in confusion.
“The story is actually…very different.”
“I don’t understand, what do you mean different? Why does it matter?”
“You see, the story is true but not exactly how I told it.”
I shook my head. “But—”
“Jade.” Her quiet voice interrupted my question, “I feel that it may be time to tell you the real story, or at least how it really began, but I warn you, it’s not what you may think.” She chuckled a little, “You probably won’t believe me, if you ever even did before.” A small smile stayed on her face for a moment, as if she were reminiscing on something, but then her expression drooped a bit, “…just, please, wait until I finish telling you. ”
I nodded somewhat reluctantly and repositioned myself as she took a deep breath in order to begin speaking.
“Back in the 1600’s, around 52 years after the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims had settled into their lives somewhat, I was born. It was the 21st of June 1672 that I was born as the second daughter of a prominent family among our colony. I grew up like all children did in that time, however I had always felt…different. And some of my interests were likewise. Unfortunately many of those were things our families, my family, would consider evil. Around my 18th birthday I decided to start quietly voicing these interests, which caught the attention of a small group of three woman and two men in our town. It turned out they were what our village dubbed as witches, though, despite everything I had learned and heard and been forcefully taught since I was an infant, I simply didn’t see in them the qualities our reverend had described. I worked with them for about a year, learning and discovering all these incredible things I never knew but felt I was somehow always meant to know. It was so, fulfilling, so wonderful that I was,” she chuckled “I was over the moon. And in all the haze of acceptance and confidence in myself, I stupidly decided to try and tell my parents who I really was. What I really loved and wanted in life.”
For a minute she paused, looking off, her lower lip slightly quivering before she pulled in a deep breath to continue.
“They disowned me; called me a devil worshipper. I spent two weeks living in that horror from not only them, but soon the whole of our town. You know, back then, the world wasn’t like it is now. There really wasn’t anywhere I could go, and even if I could, this place was my home. Our sense of community was so strong, so, completely normal, that when it was stripped from me it was hard to live.” She sniffed a bit as a few tears ran down her mildly flushed cheeks.
Clearing her throat a tad, “Well, not long afterward all of this happened, it had been decided that two of my spell-casting friends and myself were condemned to be burned at the stake. The remaining three of my friends were kidnapped for a time but were able to escape, and as far as I know they lived safely for the rest of their lives. Oh, and just so you know, this was close to the time when the famed Salem Witch Trials occurred. I guess we sort of gave the final spark to that flame.
“Anyway, back to before that happily ever after my friends hopefully managed, these three appeared the night before our death, and rather stealthily rescued us from where we had been confined. Thanks to their excelled skills, they were able to burn a hole in the wall so that my two captive friends and I were able to slip out into the woods unseen. We were on the run for three days, and while I knew that I shouldn’t feel badly, I reached a point where I finally couldn’t stand the guilt that welled up inside me. The main problem was that I missed my two younger brothers terribly. They had always played with me, and called for me and not my mother when they were scared or sick. So, after a great deal of tumultuous thought, I eventually decided to leave my company and went back to my cottage home.”
She exhaled a small sigh, “It was about one in the morning when I arrived, so I crept in through a window and, as quietly as possible, headed to my brothers’ bedroom. They were asleep together in their one bed, their shiny black hair rustled on top of the pillows. I was rather eager and wanted to run over, hug them, and never let go again. But I had to be quiet, so I went over and gently tapped them awake. Neither were too surprised to see me; they were always rather mischievous and not easily scared little boys.” Grandmother smiled sadly at the thought.
“The boys both sat up and, instead of a warm reception, I was met with cold glares. They had these big green eyes, so full of expression, almost just like yours actually,” she grinned lovingly, though her own eyes were still saddened, and brushed her thumb across my cheek. “In the beginning, I thought…I-I was so sure they would find me more exciting due to their rebellious nature, but when they looked at me, I could see so clearly that they were very angry. I wanted to ease my way to them and so softly spoke their names, but…in return th-they spat at me and turned their faces away, calling me a...a devil worshipper.” Several tears were streaming down her cheeks, “I-I was stunned. Of everyone, I thought that surely they would still love me, as young and stubborn as they were. But, I was wrong. They shunned me, in every way. My family and other friends had refused to acknowledge me, the entire colony rallied together to burn me alive; throwing me away like garbage. And yet, I never allowed that to seep in, not all the way at least, because I still had my brothers. Then, suddenly, with that one moment of pure hatred in their eyes, I felt the weight of all the rejection I had ever received for so long run me over.
“I walked away like a dazed ghost, sweeping easily through the hall, and eventually I stopped in the kitchen, or well, what was as close to a kitchen as possible nowadays.” Her lips quirked a little, her eyes having shifted to the little box in her hands.
“Everything seemed empty, I felt so alone, completely worthless. A broken shell that had been discarded by every person I had ever known and ever loved. The feelings that had before plagued my mind now came flooding back to me. Horrid, evil things, but I soon found I didn’t care, I didn’t feel much of anything the longer I stood in the light of gentle darkness. I slowly searched the area until I clutched a smooth wooden handle and I slowly picked up a surprisingly clean blade, which my fingers excitedly held. I knew my people’s ideas in regards to killing oneself and, honestly, a part of me wanted to spite them. My life was over no matter what I chose to do in the end and without the love of my brothers; I just saw no life to be lived. Why not curse their precious ideals? So,” she exhaled, “I quickly ran the blade through my skin and severed the veins. There was a strange mix of sharp pain, then a tingling, dizzy numbness drowning my senses, and then back to sharp, now throbbing pain. I sat down and soon fell to my side, my entire arm felt as though it were being simultaneously strangled from blood flow and flooded with biting fire, all the while attempting to recite the Lord’s Prayer. I remembered that just before I was gone, basically lying in my own blood, there was a faint red glow dancing in front of my blurry, tear-filled eyes. The next thing I recalled was bright sun, it was like a sudden jerk from a second of unexpectedly tripping into sleep.”
I watched as she took a long, deep breath and sighed, sniffling a few times.
“It turns out that this little box was opened beneath where my wrist had landed, catching the blood as it went through the wood of the floor. The ring this holds was just waiting for it to come. You see, to work, the clear gem needed to absorb fresh blood and once full, it would glow that scarlet I saw before everything was supposed to go black. Forever…” Her words drifted off.
“Grandmother?” I placed my hand on her shoulder, worry in my gaze.
“Hmm, oh, I’m fine. Just tired, sweetie.” She nodded, patting my hand calmly.
Clearing her throat, “now, I stayed in this new world for a while and found it to be quite pleasant, somewhere freeing, although I never did hear of a name for it. In that place I was able to practice my witchcraft and study many more different types of magic, most were things I had never heard of before. It was a dream come true, one I never could have been able to imagine coming from where I did.” Her gaze had grown a bit happier as she spoke of the fairytale world I grew up on.
“About a year into my time there, I met him. The Skeleton Man is what many referred to him as; others simply called him the Immortal.”
I nodded at that, recalling his title name since he didn’t seem to have a real one. This story was now beginning to come to what I remembered as a child.
“I soon began to work with him. He opened doors into dreamlike wonders my old friends and I could have never imagined, never thought could even be conceivably possible, and soon I was able to create an elixir, which, in a way, could make a person immortal.”
I furrowed my brow at this. She never talked of creating a way to be immortal; actually, all the magic in her story felt a lot more like the kind of magic you read in books or on.
Despite my being caught up in my thoughts, she continued, “In reality it merely prolonged life depending on the amounts of certain ingredients added to each portion.” She paused, her lips growing into a smile like I had never seen before. “We spent a great many years together, more than two centuries. Not only working together, him teaching me ways of this world and it’s magic that I would never have been able to learn on my own, but also just…being with each other like friends, the closet of friends. It wasn’t too long into our meeting and working that we found we had fallen in love.” She exhaled a laugh, “It was literally like a fairytale, the fairytale that I would later tell you off in my many tales of our life. Yes, we were very happy for such a long while and one evening I discovered some exciting news, something I couldn’t believe and was dying to let out, so I left in search of a friend to tell as quickly as possible.”
Unexpectedly, that smile I had never known fell away, “I was running through the woods I had originally appeared in when I first arrived, but then, suddenly the soft sounds of my feet on the moss and grass changed, the air became heavy and thick with moisture, and the scenery was now quite different. The forest I had grown to love so dearly was no longer there, instead there was numerous dreary buildings coming up all around and a rain drenched cobblestone road spread beneath my running feet.” She shook her head, “I felt like I had gone mad. This completely foreign city had just appeared without the slightest warning, the shift had been so smooth, even beyond when I had first arrived in that world I loved. When I realized I was no longer there, when my efforts to saturate my ring refused to work, I fell to the filthy wet ground and cried harder than I could have that humanly possible.”
Tears had been falling silently as she spoke, like she had given so much to her mourning already that her heart couldn’t give anymore effort beyond those instinctive tears.
Ignoring the salty water drying on her face, “I discovered that I had landed in 1798, on a city road somewhere in Massachusetts. A lengthy while afterward, I mean well beyond my life in that early time period, I was able to do some accurate research and found it to have been around my hometown of Plymouth now called Plymouth County, Massachusetts.
“In any case, after spending what felt like ages trying to find whatever possible job I could procure as a pregnant single woman with no family or money and a little over nine months later on February 23rd, 1799, I had twin boys whom I named Crispyn and Gabriel.” A tony smile tickled the edge of her mouth, “I remember, just like it was yesterday, both my boys had black hair and shared each other’s eye colors, one grey blue like mine and the other violet like my mother’s. They were so handsome, such good, strong boys, and I loved them more than anything. However, on their 21st birthday they made a joint decision to leave and explore the world.” She huffed, “Crispyn was always very stubborn and adventurous, and Gabriel, oh sweet little Gabriel, he never left his brother’s side. So, regardless of my protests, he gave up his artistic talents to go with Crispyn. I knew I couldn’t hold onto them forever, and I knew just because they did so didn’t mean it would be forever. But still, it…it broke my heart the day they left. When my boys never returned…I died a little inside.”
She made no expression like I thought she might, but simply looked at her hands calmly.
Sighing, she grinned and began speaking again. “I spent decades waiting, but deep down, I knew they weren’t coming back to me. So I left our little home and decided to travel as well. Sometimes I went places as a mere tourist and other times I traveled on my own, usually only when I was low on cash.” She giggled girlishly. “Oh, then when I had the appearance of a twenty five year old I met your biological grandfather, my first husband. I loved him very much and we lived quite comfortably. It was during my time with him that I had my first three children, your eldest two uncles and your mother.
“Unfortunately, disease came for him, crept up so fast that before we knew it, it was too late and he died. The doctors never found a reason for it, which only made things so much worse. I had a hard time after that, again a single mother, dealing with medical bills and funeral expenses on a teacher’s salary. Through my years of working to keep food on the table, I inadvertently developed a close relationship with a co-worker and friend of mine. That man would become the grandfather you know, Kalen. We were just as happy as I had been with my first husband, and soon had many more children. Then of course, as you know, he died the year before last.” She sighed again, nearly out of breath from her long story. “Now, that was the short version. Maybe some other time I’ll tell you the long one.” Her smile stretched across her face in a mischievous way and her eyes glittered happily.
“That’s the short version?” I blinked with confusion, “…wow, but that was so long.” I shook my head as the normally internal thoughts finished slipping from my mouth.
“Dear, you’re speaking out loud again.” My grandmother patted her hand against my arm.
“Hmm?” I looked up at her, “Oh, sorry,” I shyly mumbled, my cheeks mildly pinkened in embarrassment.
“Now back to this little box of mine.” She stroked the small container with a smile. “This is my friend. I have carried this with me everywhere, but when I remarried to Kalen I promised myself that I would say goodbye and never wear it again.” She gently popped open the top, revealing a stunning thin shaft of a clear diamond. “I want to die, Jade. I want to be with my husbands, my brothers, everyone I loved and lost once again.”
A light, sad smile barely tugged at her lips and she turned her tearful gaze on me, a hint of something unspoken reflected in her eyes, but I couldn’t tell what it meant. “Here,” My grandmother placed the small box in my unsuspecting hands.
“W-why are you giving me this?” I jerked my gaze back and forth from the box to her then her to the box.
“It’s your birthday gift, my last to you, and also the most precious thing you’ll ever own.” Her grey blue eyes twinkled at me. “Now sweetie, why don’t you go read your books.” She yet again brushed my arm lightly as she lowered her eyelids to sleep.
I kept the box palmed as I walked out of the room, my face still held a slight hint of stupefied awe and immense confusion at what was going on.
Later that evening, my grandmother went to see her family at long last.
End
