Sapphire (5 page)

The woman snarled like a feral animal. Shawna arched
her neck, trying to see her. She saw something glint on the woman’s
chest, and her young eyes were enchanted for a moment.

“Warwick,” the woman whispered. “Please, believe me.
It was for all of us.” Her voice dropped lower. “There was no other
way. It was out of love for our people, my—”

The force of his shout made her step back.

“Love?!”

His worn, but still handsome face, was contorted by
rage. “You know power. Even your own sisters knew that.”

The woman’s voice was now tinged with desperation.
“Warwick, think of what our world has gained from—”

“Think of what it has become! You will never touch
her.”

His lips then soundlessly started to form powerful
words. The earth quaked as a dark creature, flashing with silver,
erupted between them. Swirling white fire flew from the unicorn as
it reared out of the ground. The woman screamed, and Shawna wailed.
Everything was falling from her. She was falling, falling from
those protective arms.

She jerked and opened her eyes to the cottage and
rolling hills again. Grass tickled her wrists. She raised herself
from the ground, shaking from the vision.

“Was that my memory?”

“Yes,” answered the unicorn. “I allowed you to truly
see it clearly.”

Shawna slowly touched her head like it was something
alien on her shoulders. As impossible as it seemed, she knew to her
core that the memory was true. Her eyes flicked up to the unicorn.
“And that was you?”

“Yes. I protected you and your father then, and
later discovered where you had been sent.”

“But you were a statue that night at my—” she paused
at
house.

“I had to be enchanted. I could not be my actual
form in that world for long without losing the power I needed to
return us. Capella’s spell would break only when the molochs
came.”

“Mo-locks? You mean those monsters? You were waiting
for them? What are they? What do they want?” She felt dizzy and let
herself sink back down into the cool grass.

She blinked and rubbed a hand over her face like a
gauze covered it. “This…isn’t a dream. This is all real. What my
par…what they were saying…It’s all real?” She felt by saying the
words over and over she would be able to believe them.

“They?” The unicorn laid back her ears. “What do you
mean? Who are ‘they?’”

“John and Mary, my…the people that raised me.”

She didn’t like sitting under the unicorn’s gaze.
She stood up, though her legs felt weak.

“I heard them talking about me. They talked about
those things coming after me when I turned sixteen.”
I’m
sixteen! Some sweet sixteenth.
Then she said aloud, “And
something about their reward they were promised.”

Shawna almost fell over again. It was more unnerving
to hear a shout directly in her mind than out loud.

“Reward?!”

“Uh, something like that.” She was eyeing the
unicorn. “That’s why I was leaving.” Her heart started to pound
again. “Those were the things, right? I mean you…you’re not?”

The unicorn shook her mane. “I am not the one you
need to fear. The molochs are what they were talking about, of that
I’m sure.”

“What
is
a moloch?”

The unicorn remained silent, looking into the
distance. When Shawna received no reply she tried to gain an answer
with another question.

“So, they were going to give me to those moloch
things? Why?”

“I don’t know. They shouldn’t have known anything
about you.” The unicorn was tearing up the ground with a front hoof
then began speaking as if to herself. “Yet, that is the only
explanation as to how the molochs found you. She must have used it
to eventually open a portal there.”

“It? She
who?
”

“You’ve had an exhausting experience,” said the
unicorn, dodging the questions. “I think right now you need to
gather yourself before anymore is revealed.” She pointed with her
nose. “And listen to Capella.”

“Now, now, my little mouse dropping,” Capella cooed,
coming up behind her. “Eat this, quit whining, and help me get the
Troll out of the house.” She shoved a shimmering white apple into
Shawna’s hands.

“What’s this?” she said, staring at the strange
fruit like it was about to sprout legs and leap from her palm.

“It’s a pomum, nitwit. A pomum a day keeps torment,
and suffering, and doom away.”

“Pomum?” It looked like a white apple to Shawna.

A crash, then a tiny scream, and a huge belch came
from within the teetering hovel.

“Capella!” screeched Lula, zipping outside. “This is
the twelfth time we’ve been infested with Trolls insisting on tea
and toe-jam! If you don’t clean up this filthy goblin-hole I’ll do
it my
self
.”

Capella chuckled and yelled, “Well, don’t be rude,
you prissy little gnat, and put the tea on.” She slowly hobbled
towards her home, pulling up her ragged sleeves.

Lula yelled again from the window, “I swear I’ll
turn everything into pink lace!”

Shawna had never seen an old woman move so fast. She
looked down at the snow-skinned ‘pomum,’ and touched her tongue to
it. Seeing that she was still alive, and un-poisoned, she took a
bite. It was the most delicious, and vibrantly red fleshed, fruit
she had ever tasted. Tranquility washed over her like warm rain as
she felt the weight of everything dissipate. She took a deep
breath.

“Do
you
have a name?” she asked the unicorn,
who had been watching her quietly.

“Mira.” She inclined her head, her long black mane
waving slightly in the breeze. “I will be your guide and guardian
on this journey.”

Guardian? Journey?!
Shawna almost choked on
the pomum.

Mira arched her neck, and raked the earth with a
silver hoof. White flame flashed and burned where the ground was
torn. Shawna stared at the unicorn, who she now saw more as a
fire-breathing war-horse than a sparkle-pooping pony. Five feet
from hoof to shoulder at least, she was well muscled with a noble
head. Her mane and tail looked like wavering black flame, and long
hair feathered around her hooves that could easily crush a moloch’s
skull. Mira turned towards the cottage while Shawna watched her go,
still holding the crimson-fleshed pomum an inch from her lips. She
looked at it and remembered the apple she’d dropped while talking
to Tara. Clutching the ghostly fruit, she followed Capella and Mira
to the cottage as another giant belch rattled the windows from
within.

“So, then…I’m like a princess?” said Shawna, looking
across the dusty splintery table at Capella.

Lula was busy outside turning flowers pink, despite
that every time she changed one and floated away Capella would make
it wither and die with a flick of her fingers. Yesterday had felt
like a million years ago, the shocking truth another lifetime, but
unfortunately none of it a dream. The ogre had only been another
solid and smelly reminder of that. They had finally shooed it away
by threatening to sing peppy nursery rhymes.

“A
princess?
” sneered Capella. “Who said you
were a princess?”

“Well,” she stuttered. “I…I just thought, because
you said my real parents here were—”

“I said they were sorcerers, you stammering
bee-brain, and most likely better ones than you.”

Shawna blushed, then glanced down at the furry thing
on her shoulder. Sparkle, the hideously pink bat, had taken quite a
liking to Shawna. He clung precariously to her shirt with a
vacantly pleased look about him. She scratched his chin, deciding
he was quite cute with his black little fox-like face, black pointy
ears, and adoring brown eyes. He had a little rune with a symbol
resembling a Y tied around his neck, and she wondered what it was
for. Sparkle squeaked with pleasure when she scratched him under
the leather string.

“You are powerful indeed,” Capella said with a
snort. “That bat likes no one. He’s your pest now.”

“You
are
powerful,” said Mira, craning her
neck through the nearest window. “You were born of two very
powerful sorcerers, Warwick and Adhara, but they did not realize
how powerful you would be, or what your birth would truly
mean.”

“I doubt I’m powerful,” Shawna said defiantly,
clutching the cracked tea cup in her hands. “Is that really why my
mother, my real mother, she tried to—”

“Of course,” interrupted Capella. She started
rattling away like an auctioneer. “Sirrush blabbered something
about annihilation and salvation, and you and some other brat
having something to do with it. Your mother disappeared. Your
father sent you to safety. You were then discovered by the molochs,
and now here you are wasting my time and my tea.” She inhaled, and
took a sip of tea, while the frog croaked from somewhere in her
matted hair.

Shawna still couldn’t believe it, even though
Capella had explained it all earlier that morning. How could such a
thing be true, and how could her own mother have…
have wanted to
kill me?!
It made Mary seem like a saint in comparison. She
gripped her tea-cup tightly in her hands.
At least my father
tried to protect me from her and those things.
A tingle
skittered up her back.
Molochs.

“So, who’s the other one?” she asked.

“Other what?” said Capella. “Really girl, trolls use
more words than you do.”

“The other
brat
.”

“Don’t know.”

Shawna bit back a retort when Mira looked at her and
snorted.

“Fine. Don’t tell me,” muttered Shawna. “Then tell
me…please, what happened to my mother? Where’s she now?”

“I’m afraid we do not know,” said Mira. “An
uncertainty that provides great risk.”

A large blue butterfly fluttered in from the window,
and Capella snapped her fingers. It
poofed
into flames, and
little ashes fell to the table top. Shawna looked aghast at the
tiny pile of ash.

Capella wrinkled her nose. “Nasty little
blood-suckers.”

Lula flew in from behind Mira’s head, looking very
irritated in all her golden glittering glory.

“Stop killing my flowers!” she shrieked.

Capella didn’t even blink. “They smell like
vomit.”

Lula stamped the air with her foot, and looked ready
to turn her into something fluffy and pink.

Remembering a name from earlier that morning, Shawna
turned back to Capella. “Can you tell me more about the La-sash
person?”

“
Lesath
,” said Capella, impatiently. She
exchanged some silent looks with Mira before turning back to
her.

Shawna wondered for a brief moment what they had
said, and didn't appreciate their secrecy.

“Lesath is a very ancient, very powerful, creature
that has been trapped in a Shielded Realm—”

“Shielded Realm?”

“Do you want me to talk, or hear your
self
talk?”

“Sorry.” Her face felt warm, which made her flush
even more.

“As I was saying, Lesath is a very powerful being of
a Shielded Realm, one of the five you must travel to. I am not
going to explain all that realm nonsense because I don’t feel like
it.” She held up a hand when Shawna opened her mouth. “Ach, no.
Battles, and babbling, and bellyaching bore me. All I will say is
that the only one who now knows the entire curse, or prophecy,
whatever you want to call it, is Sirrush, the silver dragon. That’s
how that wriggling tail of a rodent, Adhara, heard of this
doom.”

“She talked to a dragon?”

“
Talked
to a dragon? Are you madder than an
Ogre in a dress? You don't talk to dragons. You grovel in the dirt,
and hope they don’t eat you.”