The Keeper's Curse (14 page)

Didn’t
Emmy hear Breckin say that name when she was in his
head?

“
Weirdly enough, Thoreoux would have been the next Eldoir, if
he hadn’t renounced the position.”

Emmy
began pacing back and forth across the kitchen, running her
quivering hands through her hair. “I thought you said the last one
has to die?”

“
A curse was put on the Eldoir position a few hundred years
ago after one – well – tried to go through with a human genocide.
Since the curse was first initiated, they always died before their
nineteenth birthday, until Thoreoux.”

“
How did he break the curse?”

Jade
shrugged. “Nobody has any idea. That curse has been long gone for
ages now. The fact that he found it is pretty incredible,
especially considering he was only seventeen or so when he did.
Anyway, Thoreoux hates what he is and fled once he freed himself
from the curse. He’s made it his life mission to try and destroy
the crafter race. Nobody thinks he’ll actually do it
though.”

Emmy
stopped her pacing. “Well, why would he? He’s one
himself.”

Jade narrowed her eyes, trying not to appear confused as to
why Emmy was so interested in all this, but complied with an
answer. “His family was in a sect of crazy fanatics that thought
crafters shouldn’t be allowed to exist. From what Breckin told me,
when the cult found out Thoreoux was the Eldoir, they tried to beat
it out of him, burn it out of him ...
rip
it out of him.” Jade shuddered.
“I mean, we all know that humans deserve to exist more than we do
–”

“
They really don’t,” Emmy said.

“ –
But to
kill
us all? We mostly agree being kept away in the
orbs is punishment enough. Anyway, that’s why he wants to kill
Breckin. Breckin represents crafters as a whole. Plus, he’s
terrified that Breckin will do exactly what Romulus Mallet did –
who was the Eldoir who tried to rid the world of non-crafters
entirely. He nearly exposed our secret life.”

Emmy
remembered Alex telling her a bit about this. “A few hundred years
ago ... was this the reason the elemental crafters created the
orbs?”

“
Yeah. The Eldoir nearly had us kill millions of people. Plus,
we always had to live away from civilization because we were always
so out of control. It was the best solution to just stay away from
people altogether.”

Emmy
shuddered at how calm Jade said all this. She wouldn’t be surprised
if this was the most basic story of crafter history, the one her
teacher always seemed to refer to offhandedly.

“
It’s ridiculous of course,” Jade said, breaking the silence.
“If you know anything about Breckin, you’d laugh at the idea of him
trying to hurt humans. It doesn’t matter to Thoreoux, though. He’ll
spend the rest of his life trying to kill Breckin. Trying to kill
us all, really.”

“
Where is he?”

“
No one has any idea. People suspect he’s built his own orb,
for him and his followers.”

“
People
follow
this lunatic?”

“
Other radicals, yes, who think we’re bad and should be
exterminated.” Emmy must have been wearing a look of sheer horror
because Jade placed a hand on her shoulder. “He’ll never do it,
okay? He hasn’t made a move for years, now. Most people think he’s
just full of it.”

“
Still, that’s pretty scary. Someone who has all the powers of
an Eldoir but with no intention of serving his people? Who wants to
kill them?”

“
I know. Trust me, most people just avoid the subject. Breckin
especially, so please don’t mention it around him.”

Emmy
shook her head. “No, of course I won’t.”

Jade
returned to a mask of composure, as if all they had been talking
about was homework. “Look, I’ve really got to get back to work
–”

“
Go ahead.”

Jade
patted her shoulder and scampered back off to work. Emmy stood in
the backroom for a while, soaking up what she had just been told.
She wished she had waited until Jade was done her shift so she
could answer more questions. Whatever she had expected her to tell
her about Breckin, that was not it.

When Emmy
had finally calmed down enough to even consider doing homework, she
made her way up the stairs, thinking of Breckin, not knowing
whether to be scared of him or scared for him.

***

Emmy was
on tenterhooks the whole next morning, tapping her foot throughout
her classes and watching the clock every minute. She couldn’t wait
until lunchtime for her session with Willow.

At long
last the time came.

She
bolted out of her Anatomy class with an abrupt goodbye to Jade,
Persephone, and Teddy. She had to stop herself from running through
the tapestry-clad corridors to the front office, and barely
managed. Ms. Spillet gave her a slight nod indicating she could go
through the back to which she did. She was right on the minute, but
Willow was already seated in her plush chair, reading one of Emmy’s
journals.

Once she
saw Emmy, she placed it on a mahogany stand beside the chair. “You
certainly gave me quite a bit of reading. I barely got through the
last three.”

Emmy
flung her bag to the side of her chair and plopped down. “You read
them all? I thought we were going to go through them
together.”

“
I thought I would save us the time. I highlighted the more
unusual dreams, but I have to admit, that doesn’t give us a lot to
go on, as dreams are in themselves unusual. That being the case,
all I can do is search for patterns and themes, and then find a
break in them. Most of these breaks are farther back in your
eleventh year or so.”

“
That makes sense. Most of what I wrote back then was pretty
much just jot notes immediately after I woke up. If I did dream
about what I saw, it would be in the earlier ones.”

Willow
nodded. “Yes, and that was what I wanted to talk to you about.” She
reached over to the side of her chair where all of Emmy’s journals
were, stacked in a small tower. Willow took the one on top, a
tattered little ringed notebook that must have been one of her
oldest ones. There were coloured tabs sticking out of several
pages; Willow flipped to the first one.

“
Alright, so, despite your jot note method, I’ve noticed most
of your entries are fairly coherent and your writing is legible.
Once in a while though, you’ll have an almost frantic entry and I
can barely make out what you’re writing, despite there only being a
few sparse words.” She handed Emmy the journal to the page that was
marked.

Emmy
narrowed her eyes to read, and she could see Willow’s
point.

In a dark room.
Blood on the floor and walls.

Some light – a
candle?

The face. Staring
at me.

“
I’ve also noticed, despite the handwriting and tone, the
subject seems to be different,” Willow said. “Most of your dreams
are like anyone’s, just random events in your life jumbled
together, but it always seems to be the same dream. Turn to my next
marker.”

Emmy
obeyed.

I’m in a cold
room made out of stone

Shapes on the
wall – red – probably blood

Screaming in the
background

“
Now, I don’t know you, Emmy, but this does seem slightly
troubling. Did you read scary books when you were a
child?”

“
No, not really.”

“
You were never hurt by anybody?”

“
No,” she said firmly. Emmy found herself squirming in her
seat; she could see how Willow could be drawing those conclusions,
but she had lived a very normal childhood.

The
counsellor sat back in her seat, her eyes still fixed on her. “All
of the entries I read in this fashion are similar. There always
seems to be a dark room, candles, blood on the walls, and a face
staring at you. You have no idea where you could have gotten these
thoughts?”

She shook
her head, trying to appear as convincing as possible. “Trust me,
nothing’s ringing a bell. I don’t think about stuff like this. From
the sounds of it, it seems like what I was seeing was some sort of
ritual.”

“
That’s funny, because that’s exactly what I was thinking.
There are rituals like this that exist in the crafter world, but
how could you have possibly known that since you knew nothing about
crafters until a few weeks ago? And besides, how could you have
witnessed it if you weren’t present?”

These
were questions Emmy was obviously not expected to answer, but she
shrugged anyway. The counsellor pressed her lips into a thin
line.

“
If you would like, I can put you to sleep, and we can attempt
to resurface these thoughts and download the dream. This isn’t a
lot to go on, but maybe your inner mind has it buried, and I can
attempt to bring it out. Would you like to try?”

“
If you could,” Emmy said. She didn’t want to wait another two
weeks before seeing her again.

“
All right then,” Willow said, rising from her chair. “I will
be right back with a sleeping draft.”

Her
billowing clothing dragged across the floor as she left, closing
the door and leaving Emmy by herself. She took the few minutes
alone to eat her lunch, but found her stomach had no interest in
food. As desperately as she hoped this bizarre method would work,
she couldn’t see how it would. Even worse, she couldn’t see how any
of this had to do with Breckin talking in her head, which was
something she was much more interested in.

Willow
returned with a small vial, a cord with a small suction, thick
cream paper, and a pen. Emmy was thoroughly confused.

“
What are you using to download my dream?”

Willow
dumped the contents in her hands on the stand. “I write it, and
then play it on a special wall – the palewraiths will show
us.”

Without
explanation, Willow headed over the wall behind Emmy, where she
noticed for the first time a thick, canary-yellow curtain hung.
Willow pulled it back, and Emmy gasped.

A glass
wall was behind the curtain, filled with a bluish liquid. This was
not the weirdest part – floating through the liquid were
palewraiths, gliding with leisured grace, flashing their light
against the glass causing beams to lance across the rooms at
certain angles, like edges of a diamond. The sight reminded Emmy of
a fish tank full of eels.

“
How do you get them to stay in there?”

“
The glass is frenum. There’s also a little bit of powdered
frenum inside the tank, just enough to keep them
languid.”

“
But how will they know what to do with a written account of a
dream?”

Willow
smiled. “When I put on the suction cup, and connect myself to the
souls, I will go into a state. I’ll begin writing in the palewraith
language. It’s the only way for them to understand
words.”

Emmy
wondered if she was ever going to catch up with everyone else in
Methelwood. “There’s a palewraith language?”

“
The language of the dead. We don’t understand it, really,
because every word in every context has different signs – there
isn’t such a thing as twenty six letters. On top of that, it isn’t
just the words said, but motions and rituals that go along with it
that help us communicate with them. There are several spell books
in the palewraith language that would explain how to communicate
with them; however, they are lost to us.”

Emmy
recalled Jade just yesterday talking about a spell performed on
Eldoirs – could that have possibly been from a spell
book?

“
But that’s a conversation for another time.” She handed Emmy
a vial filled to the brim with a greenish liquid. A sleeping draft.
“You may want to go lay down,” Willow added, holding out her arm to
the flowered couch off to the side.

She did
as she was told, making herself comfortable as Willow pulled up a
chair near her head. Emmy looked over at the woman, someone she
barely knew, trusting her with so much, so quickly. She hesitated
for a moment, before the fierce stubbornness in her returned; she
remembered she had to fix herself.

“
Ready?”

Emmy
didn’t answer. She swallowed the vial instead, the sweet, cool
taste tingling her taste buds. She was asleep before the drink
reached her stomach.

She was cold.

“
A cold, stone room.”

Cold and uncomfortable.

“
Emmy, listen now – you’re in a cold, stone room. There are
signs on the walls drawn in blood.”

She tried to roll over.

“
Pay attention. You’re in a cold, stone room with signs on the
wall. Do you understand?”

She tried to raise her head, but it was so heavy. Where was
she?

“
In a cold, stone room with signs on the walls. You’re on the
ground. You look around, and there you see signs on the walls, that
are written in –”