The Mystical Knights: The Sword of Dreams (9 page)

A loud thump sounded from upstairs, followed by the creak of door hinges.  Footfalls bounded down the stairs, some two at a time, and Kenzie’s head popped into view.  She was dressed comfortably, sporting a gray tee-shirt and black sweat pants, her long hair now sprawled past her shoulders.

“Hello!” Kenzie waved, grinning from ear to ear.  “We’re upstairs—don’t be shy!”  Kenzie reached forward and grabbed the sleeping bag from Nia’s arms.  She arched her foot just above the step before pausing briefly to gaze at her mother.  “Fi and I would like a cheese pizza.”  Kenzie’s eyes found Nia’s.  “What kind of pizza would you like?”

“Cheese is fine with me.”  Nia smiled gratefully.

Helen smiled at Nia before looking back at her daughter.  “Did you ask your brother what kind of pizza he wants?”

Kenzie—to Nia’s surprise—rolled her eyes.  “He said he didn’t care.  He always wants the same thing anyway.”

“Pepperoni it is then!”  Helen stroked Kenzie’s hair with a look of complete adoration.  Nia felt her heart pang a bit at the sudden longing for her own mother.   

Nia followed Kenzie up the stairs, shuffling through the pink carpet while mildly looking at the blur of pictures that lined the stairwell as she passed.  At the top of the stairs, the small hallway forked; there was a door to the left and a door to the right with a bathroom placed conveniently in between them.  Hanging on the wall to the right of the bathroom was a picture.

It was an older picture—in it, was a young Kenzie, grinning a toothy wide smile that lit up her entire face.  She had her thin arm wrapped around a tiny boy who looked to be about a few years younger than she had been.  He was smiling too, his Charlie Brown cheeks sweet and rosy.  A man was standing behind them, embracing them tightly.  He was handsome—olive skin, dark hair...his eyes were the exact shade of blue as Kenzie’s.  The people in the picture looked happy enough to the outside world, but Nia could see an unwelcome darkness hidden within the shadow of the man’s eyes—it caused a shiver to tingle down Nia’s spine.

“Hey—I’ll be just a minute.”  Kenzie placed the sleeping bag on the floor and gestured to the door on the left.  “You can go right in—Fiona’s in there.”

Nia had to fight the urge to wrinkle her nose.  Instead, she gave Kenzie a reserved smile as she disappeared into the bathroom.

Nia sighed, her eyes gluing themselves back to the family portrait.  She absently shuddered again and hesitantly looked away.  The door to the right was open half way.  Curiously, Nia inched towards it like a sleuthing cat.  Sitting alone in his room was a boy who looked only a couple years younger the she was.  Laid out before him was a simple deck of cards.  The boy carefully looked up and caught Nia’s wondering gaze.  His bangs tumbled lazily into his youthful face but they didn’t hide the unhappiness that Nia felt washing away from him like fallen leaves tumbling through the wind.  Nia offered him a friendly, yet sympathetic smile, but the boy’s look of chagrin intensified.

From inside the bathroom, the toilet flushed.  Nia could hear the faucet rattle as water poured from the spout.

“What’s your name?” the boy asked softly, his voice flat and apathetic.

“Nia.”

The boy reached out and flipped over a card.  The Queen of Clubs.  He shook his head, shifting some of the fallen hair from his boyish face.  “This is you,” he stated, laying the card on his left.  He reached out and flipped over another card.  The Ace of Hearts.  “Love is in the air.”  The boy was whispering so quietly, Nia had to crouch forward to listen.  His hazel eyes cautiously looked up into Nia’s face.  Tediously he pushed the cards towards Nia.  “Pick one and flip it over.”  Nia quietly reached out and flipped over a card somewhere in the middle, her eyes never leaving the boy’s soft face.  The Four of Clubs.  He raised his face, staring at Nia square in the eye.  “Be careful; you have to think before you leap.  A storm is coming.”

Nia’s mouth parted in confusion as she stared at him.  Brow furrowed, she meant to ask what he meant, but he continued on with, "Did you know that for centuries, people have been told tales of caves and tunnels deep inside the Earth?"

"No, I didn't," Nia replied quietly, staring at the boy in awe.  He hesitantly raised his eyes into her purple ones and gently reached out and touched her hand.  The bathroom door swung open.

“Nia—you could have gone in my room!”  Kenzie bent down and picked up the sleeping bag once more.  She paused when she saw the two of them in the door way and her eyes widened in disbelief.  Nia straightened up, pulling her hand away from the boy's and quickly scuttled out of the room.

The boy’s eyes narrowed at seeing his sister and he slowly reached out and pushed the edge of his door, swinging it outwards so that it closed with a snap.

Kenzie agitatedly sighed.  “Wow.  I'm surprised he actually let you in his room.”  She glanced at the door and hugged the sleeping bag to her chest.  “Lance doesn’t know how to associate socially with people too well.  He’s autistic.”

"Is he?  He didn't seem it to me.  He read my cards."

"Really?"  The look of disbelief on Kenzie' face turned into fascination.  "That's huge for him.  He must really like you Nia.  You should feel privileged."

Nia frowned slightly, her eyes still staring at the blue painted door; on that door was a tiny sign that was still swinging back and forth with an air of portend, that read:
Fortunes Read, 5 cents.

* * *

“
I
think Brenden Shanahan is the most handsome man in the universe,” Kenzie sighed, stretching her leg against the frame of her bed.

Fiona snorted.  “He's a hockey player.”

“So?”

“
So
?” Fiona propped herself up onto her elbows and stared incredulously at Kenzie from the floor.  “
So
?  He's a hockey player!  He's not going to have any teeth by the time he's forty!”

“Teeth, Fi?”  Kenzie paused and breathed slowly through her nose.  “I don’t care if he doesn't have teeth—” she continued, the hint of a smile in her voice, “-he's still a
hunk
...”

Fiona made a strangled noise of disgust underneath the sound of her laughter.

Nia breathed slowly, in and out, staring out at a piece of the moon while listening to the other girls’ mindless banter.  It was strange—she had been expecting to talk more about the Mystical Knights talk or about Axel—or minions.  But not a whisper had been mentioned about those things.  Nia had half anticipated the three of them to huddle together and talk more of the attack at her house, but it was as if the battle had never taken place. 

There had been a lot of laughter tonight; even Fiona cracked multiple grins throughout the evening, throwing in a few jokes here and there.  Way more emotion than Nia had expected to get from the silvery eyed girl.  She wondered if the boys had gotten along just as well during their bowling match. 

“Nia?”  The bedsprings creaked quietly as Kenzie’s head loomed above her, a silhouette in the darkness.

“Yeah?”

“Did you have any premonitions...about meeting us?”  The way she was whispering made the question sound as if it were very personal.  It was asked in the way one might ask to use the restroom during an exam.  Her face suddenly became bright red.  "Oh, I'm sorry.  You probably get asked silly things like that a lot.  I was just curious."

"It's okay.  I don't get asked a lot about this.  To be honest, not many people know what I can do."  Nia pursed her lips thoughtfully, her forehead crinkling.  “I don’t think I had any premonitions.”  She racked her brain, trying to remember the weeks before her mother passed away.  But every premonition she had during that frame of time was about that tragedy. “I was distracted by something else going on...” Nia rested her cheek against her palm and looked around at the girls.  “Did either of you know,” she bit her bottom lip, “about all of this?”

“I moved here in the seventh grade.”  Nia could hear the contemplation in Kenzie’s soft voice.  “Not from far away—I used to live in the Berwicks back when my parents—” she hesitated, inhaling a tiny gasp as she did so.  When she began to speak again, her voice sounded heavy.  “I met Fiona on my first day here—we sat next to each other in science-”

“She had no idea what was going to happen,” Fiona interrupted briskly, cutting Kenzie's story short.  “Neither did Quinn, and he moved to Willow Creek when he was eight.  I knew him then—we had the same teacher—”

“Did
you
know, Fiona?” Kenzie asked.  “I've never asked you this before—but did you know when you met Quinn what we really were?”

Fiona was silent and whether it was in thought or for dramatic effect, Nia couldn’t tell.  She could just make out the lanky shadow of Fiona’s thin body lying next to her own, hands clutched over her heart as if remembering something that had caused her great pain.

“When I met Quinn,” Fiona began, “I was young—too young to understand, too naïve to care.  I had always known I was
different
,” she said frankly, shrugging her shoulders where she lay.  “I couldn’t discern what different meant.  I thought I felt the way I did back then because I had been adopted.  But my assumptions never explained why I would wake up screaming in the middle of the night—frightened out of my wits by dreams that were just...out of this world.”  In the dull moonlight, Nia watched as Fiona shut her eyes, remembering her past as though it were the present.  Nia sympathized for Fiona in that instant; she knew what it was like to wake up, cold and alone, terrified about dreams that would soon come true...

“It was the summer before seventh grade when I realized that both Quinn and I were a part of something bigger than all of this.”  Fiona blindly motioned around the room with her hands.  She sat up, stretching out her back.  Her eyes looked to Nia and then Kenzie.  “Did you know that in my entire life I’ve never been sick?” she questioned indifferently.  She shook her head side to side almost regretfully.  “I never had the flu—never had the sniffles.  No chicken pox or measles or mumps.  My parents,” and she chuckled as if it were a joke, “thought that I had a very efficient immune system.  They brought me to doctors of course—for yearly physicals and such—and the doctors always said, ‘My, what a healthy little girl you have.  You’re so lucky.’” Fiona smiled grimly, clenching her jaw tight.  “I never scarred—never bruised.  Sure, I took the occasional spill off my bike or fell while wrestling in the yard with Quinn.  I always assumed I just healed well—or my mom knew what she was doing when she did my bandages.  I never once considered that I was what I am.  But the dreams...every night, I would wake up screaming—and as I got older, I learned to hide the screams.

“The summer before seventh grade, Quinn and I convinced his grandmother to let us go to Crest Pond. We had went there with our class just before school let out once and we had heard about older kids jumping from the Leap.  Amateur cliff diving, if you will. 
That
was our intention that afternoon—we were young and adventurous; always willing to find the thrills and spills in our tiny lives.  So Quinn’s grandmother dropped the two of us off and we waited until she drove off before racing across towards the trails.  We laughed, skipping and roughhousing all the way through woods...I shoved him off the path a time or two, he’d clobber me in the head with the beach bag—you know, good old fun.”

It was hard to imagine Fiona—who was so controlled and levelheaded—as a little girl; no less, a rowdy, giggly little girl.  Nia tried to create an image of a tiny Fiona in her mind, but it was like looking through murky water.

“...we broke through the forest, and there we were—high above this pool of water.  There were some older kids there, jumping off the rocks carelessly.”  A small smile was unfolding across her lips, a faraway look in her eyes as she spoke, remembering.  “I remember that we were laughing—hysterically almost.  We were going to jump off, and it would be our little secret—just ours and ours alone.  God, if only our parents knew—the trouble we would be in!  I wanted to jump first—I always wanted to be first for things like that—and Quinn let me, being the gentleman he is.  So I took off my shoes and socks and inched my way over to the edge.  The older kids were barely paying attention—a lot of them were on the other side, farther away from us—that’s important to remember.  They were farther down from the ledge.  It was my idea that we jump from the highest peak.  I took a deep breath and leaped outward, and I fell.

“I didn’t fall straight—not that it would have mattered anyway,” she swallowed hard and let out a trembling breath of air.  “I screamed as I flipped downward through thin air—it was the most intense rush of...
adrenaline
I had ever felt in my twelve year old life.  The wind was ripping past my ears so loudly, I couldn’t hear the screams and hollers from above.  There is a trick, you see—a trick I didn’t know about jumping from the Leap.  There is a sandbar, directly under the highest ledge.  If you don’t jump far enough out...you’re in trouble.  I was small—there was no way I would have been able to make the jump even if I tried.  But I didn’t know.  The older kids were screaming, trying to get my attention—but I was freefalling, caught in a world that was all my own.  Even if they had managed to catch my attention, it wouldn’t have done any good.

“I felt myself falling forward—I didn’t even put my hands up to brace my fall—
why would I need to?
I thought.  The top of my head touched the surface of the water.  I sucked in all my breath and squeezed my eyes shut—” Fiona did just that—squeezing her eyes tight.  Nia saw the shudder of her shoulders in the darkness, saw the grimace ripple across her face as she whispered.  “I heard the crack—everybody did—the crack of my neck as it snapped on impact.  I heard it—but I didn’t feel the pain I expected to feel.  I knew something was wrong—I had opened my eyes and saw the clear water tinged with red.  I tried to move, tried to sit up to tell Quinn that I was okay.  But the harder I tried to move my legs, my arms...the more numb I felt.  I couldn’t even feel my chest burn in protest as I drowned in a little more than an inch of water.  I know I must have choked on the water—I can remember smelling the metallic taste of blood as I laid there, not even feeling the tremor of water splashing around me, the older kids reaching me before one of the adults could.