The Unwanted Winter - Volume One of the Saga of the Twelves (39 page)

“
How… I mean, how, were
you able to get away from it?” wondered Elena.

Mikalah remained
transfixed by the cast of her brother’s visage. She didn’t
move.

Anthony shifted to look at
Elena, some semblance of the boy she knew returning. His expression
softened, the angles and cutting lines disappeared. “That’s just
it, kid. Nixy said something to it in some strange language and the
thing just moved to the side. Andrew and I had a clear way to leave
the area.”

“
But, why would she do
that, though?”

“
She said we were to be
unharmed. Actually, I think she used the word ‘unspoiled’. Yeah,
that was it, we were to be left unspoiled for the Lord of the
Storm, which I am guessing is a title for this dude she called,
Nihhûs.” Anthony shrugged, looking overwrought. “She said there was
something coming, something we had to survive, a ripping or tearing
of something, but I know I’m getting it all wrong. I was so scared
I really don’t remember exactly, but she did say it would happen
soon. It would involve Andrew as well. She said it didn’t matter if
she let us go. She said, whether it was now or later, we would all
fail, that Nihhûs would watch us all die.”

They were all silent for a
long time, only the pounding rain, the occasional flash of
lightning and the delayed peels of thunder were heard over their
three thumping hearts.

“
Did you see anything
else?” murmured Elena in the void, her query voiced as though she
speaking from the bottom of a well.

“
Only her teeth, her
sharp, pointy teeth had transformed right before my eyes, right
after she told us to go. So, we booked the hell out of there no
questions asked,” he replied as he glanced down at his Mp3 player,
turning it off, tossing it up on the bed behind him.

Silence befell the
room.

“
I think it’s what all of
this implies is the important thing right now. It’s this
implication we have to focus on, at least, until this tearing or
ripping thing happens,” surmised Anthony after wiping the tears
from his face and staring up at the ceiling for a while.

“
I think you are right,
Tony,” confirmed Elena, crossing her arms about her small
chest.

“
Why?”

“
Because, Mikalah,” began
Anthony for Elena, “this entire thing, when you put it all
together, means only one thing. Out there, in the world right now,
is a group of people or creatures who are allied against us. For
some reason, they were put here, specifically to keep tabs on us on
the orders of this Lord of the Storm. It doesn’t get any more plain
than that. We have enemies that would’ve already tried to kill us,
if Nihhûs hadn’t put his ‘hands-off’ tag on us. Quite frankly, I’m
not so sure we even stand a chance against them the way things are
right now.”

“
We’ll
just have to be real careful, more careful than we are when
are
trying
to
careful,” stated Elena, adamant. Nothing was going to happen to her
siblings as far as she was concerned.

“
Yeah,
we will
all
have
to keep an eye on each other,” echoed Mikalah, half-smiling,
thinking of Anthony’s long-term reaction to having his sisters
around him all of the time.

Anthony smiled at Mikalah
as if reading her mind. “I never thought I’d say this, but it
appears like we are going to have to stick together on this, us and
Andrew, and, of course, anyone else we might have to
save.”

Elena seemed to think hard
for a spell, her small right hand cupping her chin. “Tony, how come
you think this is going to involve more people than just us and
Andrew, and maybe mom and dad?” she asked, her a typical determined
demeanor expanding throughout her tiny frame. Once she had a
mission, she was indomitable.

“
Not
sure really, just call it a hunch, but I think something
is
coming, something big
and mean. Whatever it is, it intends to enslave us all, maybe all
of mankind as well,” he replied cryptically.

“
How come?” questioned
Mikalah, pushing the subject.

Anthony glanced at both of
them, making sure they were paying attention. “If you two had seen
the Isighünd this might be easier for you to understand, but I will
try anyhow. Anything that could control a creature as terrifying
and as massive has to possess tremendous power. Nixy did it with
ease. Now take that thought one-step further and try to imagine
something that could control Nixy. I’m here, right now, because
something
else
,
something even more powerful than her told her, ‘no, wait’. It
commanded her not to harm either me or Andrew. What kind of power
could something like that possess?” he asked
rhetorically.

Elena answered as if he
had spoken literally. “Something like a god…”

Anthony’s gaze shifted
toward her quickly. “My thoughts exactly.”

Mikalah’s eyes could bulge
no further out of her head.
A
god…?

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

Escaped!

Tuesday, November
23
^rd
,
4:55 pm…

She had finished her
homework and was eating her customary afternoon snack when the
thought hit her like a ton of bricks. With all of the excitement
and planning between her and her siblings,
no one fed had Mr. Patas yesterday!

Why are we always
forgetting to feed him?

Jumping up from the
breakfast nook in the kitchen, she rushed over to the cabinet where
they kept the rabbit food and began rummaging for Mr. Patas pellets
and vitamins. She found them quickly, snatching them, making her
way through the dining room and then the playroom. Eventually, she
was out of the house, standing on the patio, peering at the
backyard beyond. She looked both ways to make sure the way was
safe. It was. Still, she waited another ten seconds before she
moved again.

Mikalah had just closed
the sliding glass door, about to speak in the high-pitched voice
she always used with Mr. Patas when she was going to feed him.
Instead, she stopped. She looked at his cage. She noticed something
was wrong with it.

It didn’t look
right.

She leaned over to the
light switch beside the glass doorway and turned on the backyard
lights. All along the cinderblock wall, tiny spotlights came to
life, illuminating the entire parameter of the yard. Overhead, two
evenly spaced florescent floodlights bathed the patio in a soft
white glow.

She peered again at Mr.
Patas cage, through the steady rain. It had continued to fall all
through the night and day without any sign it was ever going to
stop. She realized the problem. Their pet rabbit of four years was
gone.
His cage was empty.

She was about to take a
step toward the now vacant cage, when she noticed a second detail.
This made her stop in her tracks, for the second time, in as many
seconds.

On the right hand side of
the wire and wooden structure was a very large hole, but not just
any old run of the mill hole. The wire bent outward from the middle
on that side of the cage. When she studied it, inspecting its’
strange configuration for a few minutes, she realized she wasn’t
looking a hole caused by someone or something breaking into the
cage. Rather, she was looking at a hole caused by something
breaking
out
.

Comprehension stunned her.
She reacted before she thought, and frantically swiped at the light
switch, turning off the lights. The backyard was plunged into soggy
darkness, as she rushed through the plated glass door, slamming it
behind her. Twisting a small locking mechanism with her thumb and
forefinger, she ran from the door.

With all of the strange
activity lately, she couldn’t afford to ignore this. This was
almost as weird as the ugly old man or the Isighünd Anthony had
cried about when he’d retold his story. As she put the rabbit’s
food away, she had already made up her mind, she was going to tell
her siblings… they needed to plan,
something, anything
… this whole
situation was spiraling out of control. It was moving too damn fast
for even the three of them to keep up with. Their enemies were now
playing mind-games. They weren’t being fair. They’d stolen Mr.
Patas.

Or, had they?

She was nervous. Somehow
the disappearance of her pet made it all worse, a seemingly
insignificant event threatening to overwhelm her. She knew this,
and yet, the image of his cage was burned into her mind. It was
unnerving, because the more she thought about it, the more she was
certain - Mr. Patas hadn’t been taken from his cage. He had
blasted
his way out of
it.

What happened to you Mr.
Patas? Where are you? I hope you are you ok?

~~~~~~~~<<<<<<{ ☼
}>>>>>>~~~~~~~~

Transformation

Tuesday, November
23
^rd
,
One Minute Before…

He never had much of a
memory of anything that had occurred in his short life. Always, it
had been what was in the now, in the moment. Whether it was hunger
or thirst, fear or wakefulness or sleep, it had always been in the
immediate. If he was hungry, there would be food. He ate. If there
were no food, he would call for it by tapping against a small bell
the
others
had
put in his cage. Within a passage of time, there would be food. If
he needed a drought of water, it was always available, so he
partook of what the
others
had left for him, quenching his thirst until the
urge to drink vanished altogether. Seldom had he felt fear, as
protected as he was by his large cage. But, whenever he had felt
it, it was always something new, something so startling it often
made him vacate his bowels, which somehow seemed to calm him. He
would back up against his cage and do the very best thing he could
do in such a situation. He would quiver and stay still, his eyes
and ears on full alert.

Sleep had always snuck up
on him, expectedly and without notice. One moment, he would be
awake, smelling the thousands of scents in the air, on the ground
or hearing the multitude of noises about the landscape. The next,
he would be in another place. A faraway place, a place of color,
smells and tastes, though those didn’t seem quite right. Images
came quick, piled fast one upon the other, repeatedly, again and
again, until he awoke. Once more, he would find himself in the
world of the now, in the place with the
others
.

All of that had changed, a
few minutes ago, when he had seen the light before his eyes (or was
it in his head?). He couldn’t discern which was which, but it
didn’t matter, because it wasn’t important. What was important was
he
remembered
the
light. After the light had come and touched him, and defused into
every cell of his body, it spread throughout his hunched form. With
it, had come the pain. That was when he felt fear unlike anything
he’d experienced before, so profound, so incalculably meaningful he
couldn’t merely sit at the back of his cage and shake with
it.