Clan of Redemption (26 page)

“
How did you know my size, and the
clothes, this shirt is beautiful?” I said as I grabbed the warm
cup.

“
You could say that I helped raise
your mother,” she said as she took a sip knowing that I would want
to ask her more questions.

“
You knew my Mother that well? I
asked, wondering about this mysterious lady sitting in front of
me.

“
I practically raised your Mother;
I lived in your grandmother’s house from the time that she became
pregnant. Your grandmother was very concerned about her pregnancy
and wanted to make sure that everything went well. I was close to
your grandmother until you Mother was born and then something
changed, but I did become very close to your mother,” Sydney said
as I saw her stare out the window with grief in her
eyes.

“
I’m sorry, but she didn’t talk
about her life here, at least not that I remember. I do remember
some memories but she would tell them as stories at bed time, but
after she died I tried to remember the stories but couldn’t. I’m
sure that you meant a lot to my mother, but from what I gathered,
she didn’t want to have anything to do with this life,” I said as I
realized my stomach was making really loud noises.

“
Here, have some stew, let’s try
to calm that stomach of yours. The stew seemed to agree with
Logan,” she said as she pointed to Logan sleeping on the
floor.

Mmmm, this is really good, I’ve
had stew like this before. My mother use to make it, especially if
I had a bad day. I would come home to this smell. It was almost
like she knew when I’d had a bad day,” I said as I continued to
eat.

“
Jayden, you and I have a lot to
discuss, but we’ll have time for that later, what I need to know is
what you know about what you’re doing here?”

I told Sydney the story of Logan’s
death, the letter from my Mom, with the ring, the necklace from
Sully, which really made her eyes light up. She sat and listened
very intently while I told the rest of the story, leading up to the
moment that she found us in the woods.

“
Well Jayden, you sure have been
through quite a bit over the last few weeks, but I want to warn
you. If you intend to find the answers that you are searching for,
you need to know that this is only going to get harder and more
painful. The first question that you need to ask yourself is, do
you really want this for yourself, are you prepared to take on the
responsibility that it comes along with? If you want to walk away
as your Mother did, you need to do it now before you get to
involved. Your Mother had to give up all the people that she cared
about the most. Many people felt that she abandoned them, and it
divided us as we are today. She went through years of guilt to make
sure that you had a normal life, but what she failed to realize is
that you can’t change destiny, but you need to make that decision
for yourself.

“
Did your mother give you anything
else besides that letter and ring?” Sydney asked me.

I know that the look on my face was
giving away the answer before it even came out.

“
Do you not trust me, can’t you
feel that I mean you no harm,” she asked me as she reached over to
touch my hand.

When she touched my hand, I had a
flash memory of my Mother at the age of 4, playing hide and seek in
my grandmothers’ house. Sydney was there with her eyes closed and
my mother was the one hiding.

“
Did you use to play hide and go
seek with my mother?” I asked her.

“
We did, it was one of her
favorite games. Did she tell you that?” Sydney asked me.

“
No, I just got what seemed like
one of my Mother’s memories, of the two of you playing the
game.”

We were about to continue our
conversation when the falcon flew in the window and landed on the
arm of Sydney’s chair.

Sydney took the message off the leg
of the falcon, bowed and thanked him again for going out of his
way, and then the bird flew off.

“
Jayden, this message is for you.”
Sydney handed me the tiny message rolled up. I opened the message
and it read:

My Dearest Jayden,

Sully and Thornton told me where
you are, and I am comfortable with you being there, but I need to
talk to you before you see your Grandmother tomorrow. Meet me at
your mothers’ favorite hangout around 8am tomorrow morning. And
please tells S that I am thankful to her for her
kindness.

Your Grandfather

“
But I don’t know where my Mom’s
favorite hangout is?” I said as I looked up to Sydney.

“
Oh, that’s easy I can tell you
that. There’s a book store in Long beach called BLANK. She loved to
go hide out there with a cup of coffee and read her books,” Sydney
said as she took my empty cup from me.

“
Why was Grandfather so cryptic in
his letter?" I asked.

“
Because, just in case this note
was intercepted, he didn’t want anyone to know where you are or
where you’d be meeting him. He is going against his wife by talking
to you in private. If he was to get caught, he could be killed,”
Sydney said as she came back out of the kitchen.

“
Killed! For what?” I asked with
horror. Who are these people, what did I get myself into by coming
to find my family? Shape shifters, magic, it all seemed like I
stepped into a fantasy book. I did tend to read those. Could I have
hit my head and I'm in a hospital bed and this is all a
dream?

“
For what you would know as
treason, I guess you could say, for going against Catherine’s
wishes,” Sydney said.

“
So, why are you not worried about
yourself, won’t you get into trouble too?” I asked with
concern.

“
Catherine doesn’t scare me, I use
to be more powerful than her, but over the last 19 years I haven’t
practiced as much and I’m a little rusty. Plus I have a spell cast
over my house, actually it surrounds my house by several miles in
every direction so she wouldn’t even know where to find me. Don’t
look so worried Jayden, she can’t hurt this old battle ax,” she
said as she handed me a jacket.

The jacket reminded me of one that
mother had when I was just a girl. It looked like it was made out
of deerskin, almost Native American.

“
This jacket will help protect
you, wear this jacket with pride, the buck that gave his life did
so with honor. And yes this is the same jacket that your Mother
wore.

“So you were in contact with my
Mother before she died?” I asked her.

“
Yes I was, but we can talk about
that later, you need to get going. I have something I want to give
to you; actually your mother gave it to me to give to you.” Sydney
walked over to a dresser and pulled out a pouch of some
sort.

Sydney handed me a pouch tied at
the top.

“
What is this?” I asked as I
started to open it.

“
NO, don’t open that, keep that
attached to your belt loop at all times. Your mother made that for
you and asked me to give it to you when you came one day. I don’t
know what’s in it, but once you open it you have to use it. All she
said was it was for an emergency and was only used when there is no
other option,” she said as she helped me tie it to my belt
loop.

“
Ok, I won’t open it, I guess, but
I’m still so confused. Everything seems so…. Well, kind of like a
dream,” I said as I walked over to wake up Logan.

I bent down and stroked his back.
“Logan, wake up, it’s me Jayden, time to go. Logan, are you awake
yet?"

Logan slowly started to open his
eyes. “I’m awake, a little groggy, but awake. Are you ok, you're
back to your human form? I am so glad.”

“
The grogginess will go away; you
were just so exhausted you didn’t even know it. I would try to
sleep tonight; tomorrow will be a big day for both of you,” Sydney
said as walked over and opened the door.

As we were leaving, I was compelled
to hug Sydney. I could feel, like she had said before, that she was
there to help and meant us no harm.

As I hugged her I felt sorrow
myself for my missing mother, I wish that she could be here with
me, I miss her so much and these strangers that I’m meeting are all
I have left of her to hold on to.

Sydney told us to go back the way
that we came and we should find our way just fine. As we walked all
I was glad to be back in my own form, not that experiencing those
animals wasn’t the most amazing thing, but I missed walking on two
legs. I watched Logan and he seemed to be in deep concentration,
but also listening on high alert. What kind of life must he have
had, always having to protect me? What if he found someone that he
wanted to be with? Is he aloud to do that or does he have no choice
but to stay with me? That was something I will bring up to him
later, but for now, I just want to get back to the cabin and relax
before my two meeting’s tomorrow.

Grandfather

We ran for almost an hour; I
hadn’t realized how far we had actually gone away from the cabin.
When you’re a dog and running, you just seem to glide, distance
isn’t measured the same.

I hoped that Sully isn’t too
worried about us, I can’t imagine how bad this has freaked her out.
Even though she seems tough, she has a very sensitive side that no
one really knows about. I remember once when we had a project at
school we had to help some kids out that were living in an
orphanage. Sully almost refused to go. She tried every excuse in
the book until Mr. Hall told her that if she didn’t show up that
day she would fail the class. She did show up and was put in charge
of the horse shoe toss. We wanted to do some sort of fair type
games for the kids. It was a fund raiser to make sure the kids had
funding for the year, not that our small fair would touch their
budget, but we all did our best. I watched Sully a few times when I
wasn’t surrounded by kids asking me to paint their faces. Sully had
gone over and encouraged a girl to come do the horse shoe toss. The
girl ended up winning a few prizes, and by the end of the day, the
necklace that Sully had given her as one of the prizes was like a
jewel that be cherished. She wouldn’t leave Sully’s side until the
bus came to take them home. If you were to ask Sully about that day
she would tell you it was worse than having her finger nails pulled
out being around all those snotty noised kids.

When we got back to the cabin,
Sully was sitting on the stair listening to her music.

“
So, you guys finally decided to
come back, I thought you were only going for a little walk in the
forest,” she said with a little sarcasm. Her body language said
that she could care less if we were gone awhile but I knew inside
she was screaming with worry.

“
Sully, it’s really good to see
you too. And it was only supposed to be a little run actually, but
something happened out there and then I was a falcon, and there was
this lady, and then the horse and well it’s really tiring to think
about.” I said as I sat next to her on the stairs. I watched Logan
go and lay on the porch; I think he wasn’t ready to give up
protecting me for the day yet.

“
You turned into a falcon, and a
horse. Well it’s good to see you back as your old self, how did you
manage that one,” she asked with her mouth hanging open.

“
No, not a horse, the horse was
the one that, oh I’ll tell you whole story, let’s go inside, I’m
really tired,” I said as I got up to go inside.

Logan and I told them both what
happened over the last half of the day. Thornton laughed a few
times, but I don’t think Sully found it amusing in the least bit.
Thornton was intrigued at who we met; he seemed to know who she
was.

“
Well it sounds like you all are
going to have a very busy day tomorrow, so we should all head to
bed, but I will be up early cooking some breakfast. Are there any
requests for breakfast? I was thinking about making French toast
and bacon, if that’s alright,” Thornton asked as we all stood up to
go to bed.

“
That sounds wonderful, Thornton,
and thank you for being such a great host,” I said as I walked up
stairs to find the bedroom that I was directed to by
Thornton.

We all found rooms with beds and
slept, except Logan. I was laying in my bed and Logan was laying at
my side and I had a feeling he wasn’t sleeping.

“
Logan what’s wrong, why aren’t
you sleeping.” I asked as I turned towards him knowing he was
awake. I could hear his dog breathing.

“
I just can’t seem to sleep, am I
disturbing you?” he asked. I could hear from his tone that
something was on his mind.

“
No, but I am worried about you,
you’ve been quite ever since we left Sydney’s. Is there something
on your mind that you want to share?” I asked, I leaned over the
bed so I could see him better.

“
No, I’m fine, just get some rest.
I do think we're going to have a very long day tomorrow,” Logan
laid his head down on his paws.

Even though he wouldn’t talk about
it, I could tell that there was something wrong, was he tired of
being with me, was there something he wasn’t telling me?