Aella 7, - Shadows of the Past
Aella lay as still as she could in the darkness, trying not to make a sound. She couldn't say what it was that had awoken her, only that a vague sense of uneasiness seemed to linger in the night air and that from the moment her eyes had snapped open every instinct in her screamed that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
Slowly her eyes adjusted to the dark and she dared to turn her head to scan the room for danger. If there were any monsters poised to eat her they were not immediately apparent in the half-light. Fighting not to scream she reached out for the lamp on her bedside table, fumbled with the switch and winced slightly as the harsh, electric light shredded her night vision. Nothing pounced on her from the shadows.
For a moment the idea of staying as she was seemed temptingly easy. The fear that threatened to paralyse her rushed in to flood her mind with images of shadowy attackers waiting around every corner. But if she didn't move, she reminded herself, then she would still be faced with the same problem in another second's time. Drawing on every shred of courage she possessed she dragged herself to her feet.
As she rose she saw movement out of the corner of her eye.
Heart thudding, Aella spun around, only to come face-to-face with the full length mirror set into her wardrobe door. The familiar reflection stared back at her: a slim nine-year-old with long dark hair and eyes that echoed the sea, years away from the lonely teenager on the windswept beach. Tonight she had no time for admiring herself though; tonight the face which adults often commented would be beautiful one day wore an expression of terror.
Nothing in her room was out of place; there was no reason for her to fear. Then why did she fear? The child could not explain her terror, yet it all but froze her to the spot. She struggled not to throw herself back into her bed, pull the covers over her head and hide, that was what an infant would do and she was no longer an infant, she knew now that to give into her fear like that would do nothing to dispel it.
Outside her window an owl called.
The girl's heart jumped uncomfortably in her chest and she was painfully aware of the sound of her own breathing echoing in her ears. For a second she didn't dare move a muscle, just listened with all her might for any sound out of place, she would have closed her eyes to listen better had she trusted herself to be able to open them again.
All she could make out was the whispering of the wind and the gentle murmuring of the sea. She had always loved the sound of the ocean, it spoke to her heart of mystery and adventure, comfort and safety; it reminded her of all the reasons she had to be strong, to be brave.
Calm now, but still shaking, the girl resolved herself to locate her mother. It was late at night, and an icy chill seemed to have seeped in from outside. The nine year old shivered as she descended barefoot down the stairs.
She paused for a moment at the foot of the stairs to try and pin down the overwhelming feeling of danger that seemed to be hanging in the air. It was like the sensation that came just after waking from a nightmare; as if the shadowy darkness of the dream was still clinging on to its victim or the menacing horrors of slumber could yet claw their way through into the land of the waking to hound her yet further.
But there had been no nightmare.
In the light of day at she may have dismissed the unfounded feeling, but that moment in the dark cold of the moonless night the girl believed in this dark forewarning with all her heart. Yet she could find no cause for her unease.
Lamplight spilled through the crack under the living room door. The child crept apprehensively forward and reached for the doorknob. She paused, uncertain, filled with the certainty that something dreadful was waiting to happen, then she was unexpectedly washed with the equal certainty that nothing bad awaited her in the room she was dithering outside of. She pushed the door open.
Her mother was curled in the chair by the full-length window, book in hand, surrounded by the soft halo of light cast by the lamp next to her. She was beautiful. Her hair fell down her back like a midnight curtain and the same ocean-like mystery rested in her eyes as did in her daughter's, around her wrist hung a shining sliver key that seemed to radiate its own illumination. The girl ran to her.
"What's wrong, Sweetie?"
"I don't know."
With her mother present the fear seemed less real, less tangible, but a nagging part of the girl still insisted that something wasn't right. Danger, that silent alarm bell seemed to be whispering, Be wary, you are in danger. She couldn't ignore that warning.
Being right next to the window didn't help. It was a new moon and pitch black outside, with the lamplight casting reflections in the glass the child was uncomfortably aware that someone could be standing just behind the window unnoticed watching her that very moment.
As if in answer to her unspoken fear the glass shattered suddenly, revealing a menacing figure looming outside.
Aella screamed.
Her mother was on her feet in an instant, pushing the girl behind her as she backed cautiously away from this threatening figure. Her voice was hard and betrayed no fear, "What do you want?"
Cold black eyes stared piercingly back at her, meeting her gaze. The interloper strode through the window frame slowly, black out-dated robes billowing in the wind. Everything about him screamed to run away as far and as fast as possible, "I imagine you could hazard a guess."
Silence reigned over the dramatic tableau or a heartbeat. Then the girl's mother moved, pulling her daughter with her, dodging around the shadowy stranger and out the broken window. Cold terror filled the child as she felt the soft sea breeze brushing past her icily; something in it spoke of realness, warned her chillingly that this was no dream.
She tripped suddenly as the world around her disappeared, torn away by a merciless darkness. The ground met her with painful hardness and reassuring solidness before she was pulled back to her feet by urgent hands and guided onwards. There was no time to pause or even gasp for breath as she desperately stumbled onwards.
"Where are we going?" The girl managed to pant, realising that running blindly – or more blindly – would lead them nowhere.
"The ocean," her mother whispered, "If we can just get that far!"
Then the darkness shifted. The child blinked in surprise as she found herself able to see again and then cried out in horror as she caught a glimpse of something pursuing them. No, not one, some-things.
There wasn't much time for Aella to examine the details of the things behind her. She was too busy trying to keep them behind her. All she saw was that they were blacker than the night, and had far too many claws and teeth.
What she didn't see was the twisting shadows at ground level, swirling about her feet, slowly overtaking the fleeing pair.
The ground Aella was running on suddenly changed from soft grass to hard concrete. It took the terror-driven girl a moment to understand that her mother had guided her to the tall steps that acted as a short-cut from the house on the cliffs to the small sea-side village that sat at the bottom.
Something dark and gruesome lunged at her.
The nine-year-old barely dodged, throwing herself forwards and into the painful metal guard-rail at the last moment. Only her screaming survival instinct to grab onto the cold bar kept her from tumbling headfirst down the drop.
Neither she nor her mother noticed how the icy blackness that had at one point kept pace with them had now slipped ahead and was rolling slowly down the steps before them.
Whoever had built the stairs hadn't done so with the thought in mind of someone fleeing for their life down them. The slowly descending zigzag was too slowly descending and the things on the pair's trail weren't above climbing over the guard-rail to follow the most direct path to their quarry. Aella's mother had to pull her only child after her through the bars time and time again to keep any sort of distance between them and the monstrosities not far at all behind. The child was jolted with a shock of pain at every short drop.
At the bottom of the steps the animate shadows paused for a moment before drifting silently down an overgrown footpath in the direction of the sea.
Aella and her mother were almost at the end of their perilous climb down the cliffs when one of the horrors leaped over them to land directly between mother and daughter and their only chance of escape. The girl tripped and fell in shock, crying out as her mother's hand was torn from her grasp. The steps were hard and cold and when the shaken child came to a halt she found herself at the base of the cliff with something terrible and deadly between her and her mother.
Blood red eyes transfixed her.
But her mother had slipped past it while its attention was elsewhere. She grabbed the girl by her nightdress and hauled her to her feet. Aella heard a snarl from behind her and saw a blur of movement out of the corner of her eye as the thing that had almost caught her lunged at. She had no time to take it in though as she was once more racing for her life.
The woman with the key and the girl who was her daughter pelted onwards along the path which the shadows had disappeared down not long before.
It was impossible for the girl to tell how long she'd been running, only that her heart was pounding even more painfully than her footsteps and that she could hear her mother gasping for breath as she too struggled to keep moving in spite of her exhaustion.
Suddenly they were in the park. Aella felt a burst of elation as she remembered that the other entrance led directly to the beach. Safety?
Then elation turned to despair and she stared in horror at the solidified shadows that ringed the fleeing pair, blocking off any chance of escape.
Aella's mother gazed at the darkness and realised that there was no way around the twisting black shadows which had first blinded and now ambushed her and Aella. She felt her heart slow until it was beating normally again and the adrenalin drain out of her. This was what defeat felt like.
Of the menacing stranger who had conjured this trap, she could see nothing. For now.
Her daughter began to cry.
"No," gentle fingers wiped the child's tears away and her eyes cleared to reveal her mother crouched in front of her, a heartbreaking expression on her face, "You mustn't give up, not now or ever. It's hard, but you must be strong."
Hopelessness echoed emptily in the girl's eyes, "Why shouldn't I give up?"
"Because this isn't over yet. Not for you." The silver key was cool and comforting as the cornered woman gazed at it sadly for a moment before meeting her daughter's eyes again, "Do you remember the story I once told you about this? That the Key is in our guardianship and must never be entrusted to anyone who would misuse the treasure it opens the way to?"
"I remember."
"It's the Key that he's after, not us, but he can't take it. No-one in the world can take the Key from its guardian unless she lets them. No-one. And there will always be a guardian, we pass it down mother to daughter, now me, one day you. Maybe you sooner than we might wish it."
"What if there's no-one left to guard it?" Any question was easier than facing implications of what she had just said.
"No-one knows. Maybe the Key would just find a new guardian, or it would vanish, or it would just not work at all. The Key is more than just metal you know." Now. She had to say it, had to fulfil her duty, "If anything happens to me, you must guard the Key instead. Keep it safe, because if he gains the treasure which the Key unlocks then the entire world will be in danger. That must never happen."
"Why does he want this treasure?"
"There's a prophecy, it explains how the treasure will one day be found. I had wanted to wait until you were older before telling you it. He must believe that the time it speaks of is approaching."
Something in the girl had shifted. Without realising it she had moved from despair to determination. Now she needed to know as much as possible to understand what was happening, "What does this prophesy say?"
"Ancient treasure beneath the sea." Her mother's words were quiet and melodic.
"Resting where it's dreamed to be." The spinning shadows surrounding them slowed, as if listening.
"Tides shall tell its secret." The crashing of the sea in the distance seemed almost in tune with the cryptic rhyme.
"A whirlwind will seek it out." Something in Aella's heart reverberated at the sound of the odd riddle her mother was whispering.
"The ocean's gift disguised." A gentle salt breeze was drying her tears, its soft touch somehow encouraging her to listen.
"Allows those who search to find." High above the silver stars watched in silence.
"The time shall come." The silver key was like a star of its own in the darkness.
"Then all shall see." Now it was her mother who was weeping, crystal tears escaping silently as she spoke.
"The girl holds the key," To the young girl it felt like the whole world was, for that moment, centred about what her mother was telling her.
"The girl is the key."
"Oh." Aella couldn't think of anything else to say. There was no way the child could understand the strange prophesy but somewhere deep down she comprehended its importance. To her child's ears it made complete sense, she just didn't know what that sense was.
She felt older some how. In that moment, in that one syllable, she had accepted her destiny.
"That was entirely unnecessary," commented the man who had invaded the living room, "The running I mean. It hardly did any good."
Aella's mother was silent. There was nothing to say.
"Now. The Key."
"No!"
It was her mother who said it, but the word screamed in Aella's heart as well. All her life she'd known that the key was special, on some instinctive level she'd realised it was important; now she understood why. Partly. For generations her family had defended the key. Now the very blood in the young girl's veins sang that it mustn't fall into this man's hands.
Then the man gestured once and the circling shadows spun into black lighting, racing inwards towards the centre of the ring they had once formed. Aella screamed, the stranger laughed just once in cruel joy, and the woman who held the key collapsed as the burning darkness struck her.
An odd hiss of triumph escaped the stranger as he revelled in the destruction he had just unleashed.
Aella felt tears burning down her cheeks as she fell to her knees beside the broken body, desperately calling out to the dying woman, taking the hand of the only member of her family she'd ever known.
Her mother squeezed her fingers and turned her head silently to look at the daughter who she'd never see grow up. The life in her eyes faded and her hand relaxed.
Aella had never before experienced the pain of loss, but through the burning anguish her duty remained. There was something she had to do.
Summoning up what strength she could Aella unlooped the key from her mother's wrist and held it tightly.
Its previous guardian gave her last sigh. Then she was gone.
"That was also unnecessary," the murderer observed coldly.
The orphan slowly pulled herself to her feet and turned to face her mother's killer. She didn't say anything. She couldn't. She was lost and she was lonely. She was bereaved and confused. She was furious, disbelieving, grieving. She was terrified.
She was painfully aware of the key in her hand and her newfound guardianship of it, aware in her very heart that she was now part of its power, aware that her mother had died to protect it. It was a crushing burden for a child so young.
The girl instinctively slid her hand into the ribbon the key hung on and wrapped it around her wrist with a twist of her hand.
"Child." He sounded amused. "It would do your wellbeing a world of good to be co-operative right now. Give me the Key."
It was tempting; she had never feared or hated anyone more in her entire life. "No." The last word her mother had ever spoken.
Aella braced herself and prepared to die.
The darkness raced in to claim her.
"The memory of that terrible night still stalks through my dreams, mercilessly pursuing me like the shadows which stalked me then. In a single night my entire life was torn apart. How can I ever be free of that?
I had honestly expected to die back then. But my nightmare was only beginning.
When I awoke I was surrounded by water, part of it, cursed. For a moment my horror almost suppressed my pain at my mother's loss. Almost. If it hadn't been for the constant, reassuring presence of the Key about my wrist I doubt that I would have survived that awful moment sane.
There was just enough time for me to panic before the curse spat me out and onto a strange shore. He was waiting for me.
Even now I can recall the horror that I felt as he explain the full hopelessness of my situation to me. Alone, cursed and entirely at the mercy of an insane murderer, my doom is to spend my life in isolation unless I give him the one thing I possess of any value to him. It was the start of a chain of moments of crushing realisation as I came to understand that there is no escape from this trap nor ever will be.
I refused to surrender the Key to him that first night on the beach and to my surprise he simply left it at that, content for the time being to be patient until my strength runs out.
A waiting game began."
Aella
More stories by me can be found at Rhiannon's Stories.
Rhiannon Rose Watson.
Concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2006 reserved by Rhiannon Rose Watson. The right of Rhiannon Rose Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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