Read The Royal Stones of Eden (Royal Secrecies Book 1) Online
Authors: Rae T. Alexander
The Royal Stones of Eden (Royal Secrecies Book 1)
T
HE
R
OYAL
S
TONES OF
E
DEN
R
AE
T
.
A
LEXANDER
Copyright Beary and Blevins Publishing, 2015
All Rights Reserved.
To
Thomas Childs
TABLE OF CONTENTS
HOW MATTIE AND DAVID FIRST MET
THE SHORT TALE OF SYLVIA AND PETER
THE WITCH, THE SWORD, AND SAMUEL
Acknowledgments
A book can seldom by accomplished without the patient assistance and encouragement of friends.
Thank you to all of the “gang” at the “morning show.”
Introduction
This book pays tribute to several broad and historical writing styles. The first is a modified style of repetition, often found in poetic or ancient writings. In a pompous and grandiose style, words and phrases are frequently repeated to show emphasis and clarity throughout a paragraph. This is not meant to demean the reader. There was a time that we did not have the advantage of bold print or italics. This book also pays tribute to the art of storytelling and the imperfections that come along with it. The story will have passive voice, repetitious phrases, and redundancy like most storytellers tend to have. Several characters lead an entire chapter by telling their version of the story. The additional element of repetition may be seen as it is from the point of view of different people.
This is a huge story to tell. And while the book is not always linear, eventually all of the stories come together toward the end.
Enjoy the ride, and remember this: Time waits for no one!
-Rae
A Prologue by Mattie
San Francisco, 1906
As God is my witness, the words I write to you are indeed truthful. I believe that I know the truth very well, but I know of no one who truly knows what the composition of it is. Who knows what is imagined and what is real? Our memories, with their limitations, contain all we are and all we know. We remember, and we know. We know, and we remember. And I remember so many things and forget so many others.
Mine is the story of the transformation of a country girl into a modern woman, the recollection, and retrospection of painful and forgotten memories, and the assimilation of the knowledge and the wisdom of the past. A new memory becomes alive within my brain with each passing second, and every day I remember and understand even more.
I remember the day when the blood on my hands, face, and chest mixed with my sweat, which caused a nauseating smell to perfume my once unstained dress. Jagged rocks tore the once elegant lace of my mid-Victorian blouse, and soot blackened my once beautiful red hair. I stood on Market Street, and I cried and felt so dreadfully alone while I heard the sounds of thousands of women and children as they screamed and shed their loud tears of distress.
The vociferous sounds of the city permeated the air, and disaster was everywhere. People were trying to run away from the stench of the ash and smoke, fearful of yet another building falling, as hundreds, perhaps thousands, had fallen that day. One of those buildings nearly fell on me as it crumbled, but I narrowly escaped death and successfully evaded the numerous bricks that rained down that day. My hands bled as I pushed away the sharp debris that tumbled over my head. If it did not fall, then it burned, it seemed. Old San Francisco died that April day in 1906.
I felt more alone than the time my husband left me two years earlier.
Where are you now John? I thought. You left me two years ago. Why did you leave our two sons and me alone back in Sacramento? Did you leave our home only to go out on another binge of drinking and gambling?
My husband, so-called, was not only an alcoholic and womanizer, but he was also a dreamer as well. He always looked for the big strike. After all, his daddy had lived near Sutter's Mill during the Gold Rush of '49. He got his dreamer quality from his daddy, but I loved him. It was on that tragic day, the day of the earthquake, that I missed him the most. I missed him terribly. It was not something a modern woman was supposed to do.
In 1906, San Francisco was a different world. It was a world of both freedom and oppression, of great opportunity, and great poverty. Music was gay. African-Americans were the colored race. Morphine and cocaine were available as pain remedies by the droplet, for infants that suffered from teething pain or in greater quantities as a suicide method for the adults.
Our newspaper reported on several suicides by both men and women who overdosed on morphine. Once, I read about two middle-aged women who committed suicide while they held hands on a warm summer day. They collapsed after they sipped their tainted tea, deadly laced with morphine. Another morphine death that I heard about involved a man overcome with guilt. He could not reveal to his wife that their love was dead. He had found another woman to love and killed himself because he could not live with his choices and the consequences. It was an era of shame and ignorance.
It was on the day of the Great 1906 Earthquake that I pulled out the two stones that I had in my pocket, and I pondered an illusory escape. It was a great day of personal tragedy. I wondered—was this the day that I would use the two gifts from my mysterious visitor who recently came into my life for a second time? My visiting friend advised me that I could use these stones in my greatest moment of tragedy. He said that I could avoid any harm, including death. The stones radiated a glorious blue and white and seemed to be magnetized as they clung to each other in my palm.
I found comfort from a friend that day in one called Aysha, and her brother Nikola Vranich. Their parents had migrated to Sacramento from Alabama in search of gold in the 1850's. They stayed in that golden California city until a mining accident killed their father. Then they traveled with their mother to San Francisco via the Overland. They used their entire savings to start a new life in San Francisco, in 1905.
Unlike the Vranich family, I could not afford a train when I left Sacramento. I traveled, along with another family, by wagon, with my two children, Tommy, and Timothy. I had heard there were opportunities in Vaudeville on the coast. I dreamed of being a performer. I wanted to be a singer.
My husband had left our children and me after a presumed night of gambling in Sacramento. I assumed that he no longer wanted the responsibility of a family. I waited for months until I realized that he was never coming back. San Francisco represented a chance to start a new life.
It was on that fatal day in April, the day of the earthquake, that a comforting Aysha Vranich came up from behind me and put her arm around me. She led me away from the piles of rubble and fire. She told me, “Everything will be better tomorrow. Everything is always better tomorrow.” And I believed her. Somehow, I connected with her, on some undetectable level. I did not resist her strong young arm because I instinctively felt that it guided me to a safer place. I trusted her. Aysha displayed a genuine kindness, or at least it seemed like it. I did not question her sincerity.