I woke several times that night, each of the opportunities trying to escape and run as far away as possible. But whenever I tried to walk around an invisible force pushed me back against my will. The last time I awakened and tried to break free of this nightmare, I saw the dark-skinned girl. Her wooden necklace glinted in the moonlight coming through the windows. Something seemed a little odd. We were sleeping on the floor. Comfortable on the mats. That was pretty normal. Jonathan, the curly-haired boy, and Flavia snoring in their dreams. That was pretty normal too. But then I saw Nubia, the dark-skinned girl. Her necklace was rather odd. Was it because she was wearing it at night? No; I was wearing my locket too.
Ah. It was because the wood was glowing. What-this didn’t make sense. I sat up trying to put together pieces of my mind to let me understand why her necklace was that way. THUD! I fell back against my mat with a bang, cutting my head in the sudden movement.
“That wretched spell again.” My mind clicked and I abruptly knew why I couldn’t sit up or walk on my own two feet. That mysterious man. He had offered me a funny-looking drink and I had greedily taken it, as my need for liquid to run down my throat was too immense for me to refuse. I gulped it down swiftly and waited for the man to offer more. But instead of putting forward the suggestion of supplementary fluid, he turned and left me on my own in the dark room. Later I had departed from the room and joined the other children downstairs. There must have been something in the drink, I told myself. I rolled off my mat along the polished marble floor and over to where Nubia lay. I unclipped her necklace gently and rolled back over to my mat. I studied it hard and took in every detail of the African carvings. On one piece of wood, it read, AURORA. I wondered why and then I saw a spectacular and unreal sight. Nubia’s face was in the sky.
I shut my eyes and rubbed hard. I looked again at the sky and still the face was there.
It was a while after, while I was thinking all of this through, that the same sharp pain that had invaded my mind earlier was attacking it yet again. I heard the man’s voice inside my head.
Child, you have seen what you ought not to have seen. It has left you puzzled, confused. It has not let you retire from alert consciousness to half consciousness. Please let me draw the memory from your mind-
NO! I screamed at him. Although I didn’t know it I had not only shouted in my mind, but out loud to the silent townhouse too.
Flavia, Jonathan and Lupus, the boy that was the youngest of the four, woke at the sound of my troubled voice. Only Nubia slept on into the coming
YOUNG ONE, YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE MEDDELING WITH! THAT WAS NOT FOR YOU TO SEE.
Then why did I see it?
Because I didn’t give you the right amount of the sleeping liquor.
Then that’s your problem.
Yes, it is. But all the same, that-vision was not a thing you were meant to have observed.
Stay OUT! I pushed him out of my mind and, for hours, stayed with the metres high stone wall.
I soon became weak and the stone wall fell into a heap of rubble on the floor of my head. The man entered and I could not stop him from trying to take the memory of Nubia’s face in the clouds away from me. But it seemed he was content, for the time being, of putting it to the back of my thoughts so that I would not access it for a long time. And so life went on, as it had only a few days ago. Sleep, wake, eat, play, learn, eat, learn, play, eat, play, snack, sleep and so on.
We learnt things I did not use to learn. About geography and basic arithmetic, famous emperors of Rome etcetera. Then we learned about potions, anti-dotes and cures. It was all very...unusually targeted. But it was the lesson about the Aurora that I remembered most. It was while I was getting private tutorials.
“Aurora is the roman word for sunrise, dawn, whatever you want to call it, and one of the girls in the world that are called Aurora rules the time and speed the sunrise raises.”
Click! again. AURORA was engraved in Nubia’s wooden necklace. Her face was in the sky. Her name was Aurora and she was the chosen Sunriser.
“My memory!” I say, quiet enough for the man, whose name I found out was Dr Mordicai, to hear only a mumble.
“Sorry?”
“My-nothing.”
“What is it young one?”
“N-nothing.”
He invaded my mind again. I had grown used to this and it didn’t hurt anymore. I put up the defensive wall and felt confident as I could hold it for more than an hour. He stopped attacking my mind.
“Who chooses the Sunriser?” I asked.
“The Sky God. Whoever he picks will appear in the sky, and something valuable to them will glow.”
The necklace.
So Nubia, or Aurora, was the Sunriser. And, as I was about to find out, the necklace was the tool she used to control it...
thanx
poppixie
part 3 soon
i am trying 2 cut down in size 'cos i luv creating stories and i am used to writing LOOOOOOOOOOONG ones
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