Coronation: A Kid Sensation Novel (Kid Sensation #5) (8 page)

To my great surprise, I woke up alive. I was parched, with a throat that felt dry and itchy, a booming migraine, and an overall ache that was bone-deep, but alive nonetheless. I was in my bed in the House Nonpareil, tucked in as though nothing had happened.

My grandmother was seated on the bed next to me, holding my right hand. Eyes puffy and red, it was pretty evident that she had been crying heavily. That said, she perked up noticeably when it became evident that I was awake. I gave her hand a gentle squeeze, and was rewarded with a smile from her.

I was initially tempted to clamp down on nerve endings and such in order to get rid of the pain and discomfort. It was what I normally did whenever I got injured (which was rare). At the moment, however, those little hurts and pangs made me feel alive, and I relished the sensations in an odd way. That being the case, I decided to just suffer through for the moment.

A noise above me made me look up. Directly over me, several feet in the air, was Mabazol’s scanner. For the first time, I looked to the other side of the bed, opposite of where my grandmother was sitting, and saw the physician standing there.

Throat still dry, I swallowed and then made a concerted effort to speak. “Doctor Useless, I presume?”

My grandmother giggled slightly, and then leaned over to give me a hug while Mabazol made a sound similar to a harrumph.

“Apparently he’s fine,” the physician said as the scanner floated back to his hand. “I retract my earlier prognosis.”

“What prognosis?” I asked weakly.

“Just before you came to,” Indigo said, “Mabazol was saying that you appeared to be in some type of coma, but all your readings were back to normal.”

“Not normal, Highness,” the doctor corrected. “They were simply in line with what I observed during my initial examination. As I previously told Prince J’h’dgo, I have no idea what constitutes the norm for him.”

“Regardless,” my grandmother said, continuing, “he wasn’t sure if you’d wake up tomorrow, next week, or next year – if you woke up at all.”

“Well, I hope awakening now doesn’t disrupt the good doctor’s timetable for my recovery,” I wheezed, sitting up. “By the way, what happened to me?”

“Yolathan poisoning,” Mabazol responded.

“What? The wine?” I managed to croak out. “It was poisoned?”

“Not exactly,” Indigo replied. “The Yolathan fruit is, in its natural form, one of the most lethal toxins in existence.”

My eyes went wide. “And people drink wine made from it?!”

“The wine is considered something akin to ambrosia,” my grandmother added. “Moreover, if allowed to ferment for an appropriate period of time, it loses its toxicity.”

I thought back for a moment, to just before I drank the wine. “Vicra said it ferments for a hundred years or so.”

“Yes,” Mabazol agreed. “But if imbibed before complete fermentation, the result is death, typically within minutes, if not seconds.”

“I take it that’s what happened to me?” I asked. “The wine didn’t properly ferment?”

Indigo and Mabazol exchanged a glance, and then the latter stated, “It’s not exactly clear.”

“Well, what is clear is that you saved me, so thanks,” I said. “Maybe you aren’t so useless after all.”

The physician cleared his throat. “While I’d love to take credit, I can’t in this instance. I didn’t save you. In fact, by all accounts, you should be dead.”

“Oh?” I said.

“I checked all the logs, all the historical records, all the archives,” Mabazol said emphatically. “I found no other instance of anyone ever surviving Yolathan poisoning.”

I shrugged. “Well, you said it yourself before: anatomically, I don’t fit the mold. Maybe the poison was neutralized by one of my mysterious organs.”

“Unlikely,” the physician replied flatly. “Even a drop of Yolathan is invariably fatal, and you drank an entire glass. Simply put, your survival is beyond a mystery. It defies all logic, medicine, and science.”

“There has to be some explanation,” I said.

“Perhaps,” Mabazol said, “but the princess is probably better able to provide it.”

I turned towards Indigo, but she was looking at Mabazol, to whom she said, “Thank you, doctor. Would you please excuse us?”

“Certainly,” Mabazol said, inclining his head. “But first…”

To his credit, the physician must have realized that I had some level of discomfort. From somewhere nearby (probably the mobile health unit), he produced a stoppered vial of yellow liquid, which he handed to me. I glanced at my grandmother; having just been poisoned, I wasn’t in any great hurry to chug down an ampule full of unknown swill.

Indigo gave me a sincere nod, after which I pulled out the stopper and drained the contents of the vial. I began to feel the effects right away as, a moment later, my thirst started to subside and the migraine receded in intensity. Within seconds, I was feeling like my old, pain-free self.

Mabazol took the now-empty vial from me. Then, with a slight bow, he exited the room.

The door had barely closed behind him before my grandmother, wringing her hands, said, “This is all my fault.”

“Huh?” I said. “What do you mean?”

“The wine – serving it to you was my idea.”

“Okay…” I said, trying to understand the significance of what she was saying.

“Yolathan wine isn’t just a rare, expensive vintage. A willingness to drink it says something about a person’s character.”

Now things were becoming clear to me. “I get it. This is the Caelesian version of eating blowfish.”

“Quite so, and with you, we felt the need to make a bold statement – especially with many of our allies seeming to desert us.”

“So what went wrong?”

“I’m not sure. All Yolathan wine is carefully labeled and tracked from the moment the fruit is pressed. I checked the timestamp on your bottle and it was well past the fermentation date. Moreover, in the twelve hours since you became ill, we had all other bottles from that batch tested. None were toxic.”

“So there’s no real answer as to what exactly happened?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“And I’ve really been out for twelve hours?”

“Yes.”

It was a good chunk of time (which meant it was now the wee hours of the following day), but clearly it could have been a lot worse.

“So, if Mabazol didn’t save me, how exactly did I survive?” I asked.

Rather than answer, my grandmother gestured to a corner of the room. Looking in the direction indicated, I saw what I should have expected.

“The Beobona,” I said, referring to the DNA Luck Sequencer.

“Yes. You were on the ground, near death, when it crashed through one of the castle windows and came pounding across the lawn towards us.”

I nodded, thinking how that explained the sounds I’d heard when I felt I was near death.

“I think it severely spooked the guests,” my grandmother continued. “Half of them were screaming in terror and rushing to get away, even though it came nowhere near them. It would have been comical, if the situation weren’t so serious.”

“Let me guess: it opened its chest cavity and shined a blue light on me.”

Indigo gave me a surprised look. “You’ve seen it before – what it can do?”

“This isn’t the first time it’s come to my rescue,” I said, remembering a previous occasion when the device had saved me.

My grandmother seemed to consider this for a moment. “In all honesty, I didn’t know it had made the journey back with you. I simply assumed it was still on Earth.”

“Should I have left it?” I asked.

My grandmother gave a shrill little laugh. “Don’t fool yourself. The Beobona does what it wills. If it’s here on Caeles, it’s because it wants to be.”

I laughed. “You talk about it the same way Sloe does – as if it’s alive.”

It wasn’t clear whether my grandmother had heard me. Rather than respond, she walked over to the Beobona and then held out a hand towards it. To my surprise, its chest cavity spiraled open, and Indigo reached inside. I remembered then that the original Beobona (again, my grandmother’s was a replica) was supposed to house some ancient relic – a gem of tremendous power.

When Indigo withdrew her hand a moment later, she was holding a crystal that manifested a soft blue light. Scrambling out of bed, I stepped quickly over to my grandmother, who was still staring at the object she held.

The crystal was about a foot long and perhaps two inches in diameter. It was mostly cylindrical in shape, although at one end it took on a conical design that tapered to a fine point. The other end of it – ostensibly the base – seemed to be flat, giving the impression that you could stand it up on a horizontal surface.

“Do you know what this is?” she asked, holding the glowing gem out to me. I nodded as I took it, and then explained what I knew about the crystal that the original device was supposed to contain, as well as how it was used.

“As I understand it, members of the royal family would bring newborns before it,” I said. “The Beobona would then shine its light on them, which was supposed to bring good fortune, as well as cure disease and ailments.”

“Yes,” Indigo said. “To be blessed by the Beobona was an indicator of a long and happy life.”

“So how does that relate to the replica that we have?” I asked, noting that the “flat” part of the crystal wasn’t really flat at all. It was a little rough and uneven, like a portion of it had broken off.

“The Beobona Onufrot is a venerable artifact that traces its origin back to the time of the First King,” Indigo said. “Yet in all of history, you and I are probably the only two people to have ever held its heart, the Beobona Jewel – the source of its power.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, frowning, staring at the object I held. “Are you saying this is the authentic jewel – the gem from the
original
device?”

“Of course it is. Do you think a copy would have had the power to save you from Yolathan poisoning?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know! Up until now I just assumed it was infused with advanced technology or something! I was told it was a knockoff!”

“The outer shell is a reproduction. The Beobona Jewel is not.”

“But if it’s supposed to be in the original Beobona, how’d you get it?” I asked. My grandmother looked pensive, and in that moment I had my answer. “Oh geez… You stole it, didn’t you?”

“Not exactly.”

“
Sxahnin
, this isn’t an area with a lot of room for debate. Either you stole it or you didn’t.”

“Perhaps I should explain,” she said, extending her hand for the Beobona crystal.

“Perhaps you should,” I agreed. “But first a question: what happened here?”

I tapped the “flat” end of the crystal.

“The rest of the jewel seems symmetrical,” I continued, “which implies that this end should be conical like the other. Instead, it looks like a piece of it got lopped off or something.”

My grandmother took the jewel from me and glanced at the area indicated.

“I don’t know the answer,” she said after a moment. “It was like that when I first took it out of the original.”

“So you
did
steal it,” I concluded as my grandmother placed the crystal back inside the device. A moment later, its chest cavity spiraled shut, leaving nothing but smooth metal and no indication of an opening.

“Theft requires taking a possession owned by another,” my grandmother retorted. “I’ve come to believe that the Beobona doesn’t actually belong to anyone.”

“That’s a convenient position to take after the fact,” I said with a wink.

Indigo grinned. “It’s not as simple as you make it sound. Initially, the thought of taking it never even occurred to me. I was focused solely on going to Earth to meet John.”

“Excuse me?” I said, caught completely by surprise.

“John – your grandfather. He’s the reason I came to Earth.”

“Really?”

My grandmother stared at me in frank surprise. “You didn’t know?”

I shook my head. “No. All I ever heard was that you came as an ambassador from Caeles, so I assumed your initial mission was simply to open a dialogue between the two planets.”

“Hardly,” she scoffed. “I went there because your grandfather’s mind called to me, across the vastness of space.”

“What do you mean?”

A faraway look came into my grandmother’s eyes, as if she were seeing a distant place. “It’s hard to explain, but…I felt him out there. As I said before, there are few Caelesians who can match me in terms of telepathy, and it was the first time I ever encountered a mind as strong as my own. But not just powerful, but also brilliant, kind, and noble.”

“How’d you figure out he was on Earth?”

She made a Caelesian hand gesture that signified doubt, saying, “I can’t explain it. I just instinctively knew where he was from the moment I first felt him.”

“Did Gramps feel you as well?”

“Oh, no,” she said, laughing. “John had no idea I existed. That was one of the most frustrating things about the entire situation – that he couldn’t sense me the way I could him. That’s part of what prompted me to make the journey to Earth.”

“Didn’t you find that odd? That he was completely unaware of you while you were so much in tune with him?”

“It was strange, but I have a theory about that.”

“What?”

“The Beobona Onufrot. I think it somehow made me sense John, even across the depths of space.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because at the same time, the Beobona Jewel began calling to me.”

I didn’t bother trying to hide my astonishment.

“What do you mean it called to you?” I asked. “Like, whispering your name?”

“No,” Indigo replied. “It was more akin to being in total darkness, with only a single point of light shining in the distance. Your natural instinct is to follow it. In this case, it led me to the original Beobona Onufrot.”

“So what happened?”

“Essentially the same thing you saw today. The device opened up and I took the jewel out.”

“And no one stopped you?”

“You have to understand something,” she said insistently. “Historically, the Beobona operated just as you described earlier. It was somehow attuned to the DNA of royals, so that when newborns from any of the royal lines were brought into its presence, it would activate. However, after many millennia, it began operating more and more infrequently. Sometimes it would come to life for a royal infant; other times it wouldn’t.”

“What was the problem?”

“Who knows? The general consensus was that whatever power source had animated it throughout our history was now failing. By the time I was born, it so seldom activated that few even bothered to seek it out. In fact, as far as I know, I was the last infant the original device ever roused for. At that point, it was gathering dust in a far corner of the Acropolis, buried at the back of a storage room for queer antiquities. My father had had to make a concerted effort just to locate it.”

“In other words,” I surmised, “there was no one around to stop you from taking it when you were preparing to leave the planet.”

“At that juncture, no one cared enough to stop me, even if they had known it was in my possession. As far as they were concerned, it was a useless piece of junk. They probably would have paid me to take it away.”

“So once you got to Earth, you focused on fashioning a new shell for it, an–”

“No,” she said, cutting me off. “Once I got to Earth, I focused on your grandfather and making him fall in love with me.”

“Like mother, like daughter,” I said with a grin.

Indigo laughed merrily at that. “Not exactly. Unlike my mother, I couldn’t force John to marry me, and he put up fierce resistance.”

“That’s surprising. He always talks like it was love at first sight.”

“It was, to a certain extent. We were drawn to each other in a way that defies explanation – our minds were like two halves of a whole that were always meant to be together. However, your grandfather was sensitive to the cultural norms at the time, which would have frowned on our relationship. Still, he eventually came around.”

“Did the Beobona have anything to do with that – his coming around?”

My grandmother seemed to consider this for a moment, then shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. It doesn’t control your emotions. However, I think it can manipulate those around it. For instance, I believe it boosted my abilities so that I could sense John, knowing that I would be compelled to go to him. It also coaxed me into bringing it along when I left Caeles.”

“Why?”

“Presumably it has its own agenda, but the second I touched it, I knew I had to bring it with me. That said, whatever its own plans or purposes, it has been particularly well-disposed towards our immediate family.”

“Like saving me on a couple of occasions.”

“Not just that,” Indigo added. “You may already know that, biologically, Caelesians and Terrans are not fully compatible.”

“If you’re talking about kids, I know that you and Gramps had to have a little help from science in order for my mother to be born.”

“No, not science,” my grandmother corrected, glancing at the Beobona.

“What?” I asked, following her gaze. “The jewel?”

“Well, by that time I had constructed the replica of the original device using parts of my ship and had placed the gem inside. But yes, the Beobona. It allowed us to accomplish what both science and medicine said was impossible.”

“Hmmm…that explains some things,” I said, reflecting back on Mabazol’s initial examination of me. No wonder he had been surprised that I actually had Caelesian genetic markers; he hadn’t believed my grandparents could procreate. (He probably thought I was a fraud at first.) “So what about my mother? I was once told that she should have been barren.”

“That was the general consensus while she was still in the womb,” Indigo stated, touching her midsection absentmindedly. “But when she was born, I took her before the Beobona.”

“Which did its thing and remedied the problem.”

“Yes – assuming there was anything wrong in the first place – but that was something that would not be confirmed until years later, when you were born. Still, when I was forced to return to Caeles, I was terrified of what life would be like for her if other issues arose – especially if I wasn’t around.”

At that moment, I had a clear insight into what my grandmother had done – a decision she had made.

“That’s why you didn’t take the Beobona back with you,” I said. “You left it in case it was needed for something else.”

“It wasn’t as though anyone here was missing it,” she said. “Of course, that may change now, once word spreads of how it saved you.”

“You think they’ll take it from you?”

“It was never actually mine in the first place. Truth be told, I don’t believe the Beobona can be owned, only possessed – and even then, for only so long as suits its purposes.”

“So you’ll just hand it over if someone comes for it?” I asked, feeling a little distressed. (Not to mention a little possessive. The Beobona had saved my life now on multiple occasions; it was a nice ace to have up my sleeve.)

“Don’t start obsessing over that thing,” my grandmother said sternly. “Don’t get it into your head that it belongs to you, me, or anyone else. Besides, we have more pressing concerns at the moment.”

“The
prexetus
?” I guessed.

“Yes, so get some rest. We leave for the Acropolis at daybreak.”