Sacred: Eslura's Calling Read online

  “I said…” Bea looked up and leaned across Ava to get face to face with Wren. “Give. It. Back!” She reached for the book, but Ava slapped her hand away.

  “Hey!” Wren recoiled, clutching the book to her chest. “Don’t be so rude. I’m not done with it yet. I haven’t had enough time with Ms. Tidal.” Wren pursed her lips and lifted the book to her face. She cleared her throat as if she were about to begin reading. “After all, she spent her whole life hiding away in the woods.” Bea grit her teeth. If the world wasn’t full of nasty witches like you, maybe she wouldn’t have been hiding in the first place.

  Bea never thought to question her mother’s way of living. She never considered it out of the ordinary, either. It wasn’t until she moved in with Fran and Joe that she got her first taste of the outside world and its overly harsh judgements and single-minded nature. She despised it more than anything. She had all she needed in the woods with her mother and didn’t have to deal with the likes of the trio while she was there. To her, there was no better way to live than in the woods alone with her mother.

  A flash of lightning splintered through the sky, and the lights of the mess hall flickered on and off. A few of the younger campers screamed, then giggled and went back to talking.

  “You know what they used to say about your mother, Beatrice?” Thunder clapped, and Wren continued, “They used to say that the reason she chose to live all the way out there in those woods was so that the world wouldn’t have to deal with her freak show of a daughter.”

  Bea leapt up and lunged at the book. The lights flickered again, and Bea grabbed the front cover and pulled with all her weight. Wren clung onto the back cover, laughing and pulling. The book ripped in half and Bea felt like her heart did the same.

  “Oops.” Wren smiled and threw half the book on the table.

  “Wren!” Reagan called. Oh, now you’re here.

  “C’mon, let’s go!” Wren snapped at Ava and Krista. They got up and ran to the bathroom.

  “Hey!” Reagan yelled again, running after them, but she stopped halfway and turned back to Bea.

  Bea picked up the back half of the book and ran out the fire escape. The alarm rang, but she didn’t care. All she could think was to run. Fast and far. Into the woods, and out of sight. She wanted to be away from Camp Tossbridge, away from those wenches.

  Despite the darkness of the black storm clouds blotting out the sun, Bea felt safer in the woods. They reminded her of home, of her mother, of her childhood, of her…everything. Everything she knew was in the woods.

  She ran. Ran through the rain, which started as a trickle and turned into a downpour, soaking her hair flat to her head and running down her cheeks like tears. No, not tears. She was stronger than that, she told herself. Stronger than them. Stronger than their cruel words. They didn’t matter. And she didn’t care. She wiped her face. Wiped the rain, not the tears.

  She ran down a game trail, jumping over roots, slipping on wet leaves, slapping branches away from her face. Lightning lit the trail and thunder rolled overhead. After she’d run a good while, she tired and leaned against a tree trunk, panting as rain poured over her face and off her nose. She glanced up and spotted a cave beyond a couple of birch trees.

  With nowhere left to go, she pushed through the wet leaves, entered the cave, collapsed onto a large smooth rock and closed her eyes, not sure she ever wanted to get up again. She lay there until her breathing slowed then tried to wring her clothes free of their weight. The storm continued to rage outside, lightning spider-webbed across the sky lighting up the mouth of the cave, and thunder crashed overhead, shaking the rocks around her.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw stalactites hanging from the ceiling like crooked teeth. Rotted vines and overgrowth, pale grey from years in the darkness, draped the walls and snaked across the ground. At the back of the cave was a tunnel that led quickly into blackness. Although the musty smell of the cave made her wheeze, it beat standing in the thunderstorm soaking wet.

  Bea sat up and buried her face in her hands. She began to sniffle and wiped her nose with her sleeve. As much as she hated to admit it, she did not want to be alone any longer. That’s all. She just wanted to be with her mother again, to feel her arms around her again. A year and a half was too long. Where the heck was she?

  She cursed the stupid storm, which responded with a powerful gust of wind that whipped through the cave. She wrapped her arms around her to ward off the chill. Then, in a fit of anger, she clenched her fist and slammed it down on the stone. Pain soared through her hand and wrist and up her arm. She clutched her wrist and pulled her hand up to her face to examine the damage. A deep gash welled with blood, throbbing with the beat of her heart. She stared at it for a moment, wondering if she would need stitches, until she suddenly realized that everything around her had gone completely silent.

  An ambient golden glow slowly filled the cave. She looked toward the mouth of the cave to see if someone had entered with a flashlight, but no one was there. Bea thought that maybe she was finally going nuts. It had been a long time coming, but she’d expected it, nevertheless. She turned back toward the tunnel to see if the light was coming from the darkness within. A figure stood there, barely visible, but surrounded by a golden aura. Suddenly, Bea smelled a familiar scent, lemon drop, perhaps, with something else like…home.

  “Mom?” she asked aloud before she’d had a moment to think of how absurd it sounded. She stood up from the rock and listened as the figure called out, “Beatrice,” in a disturbingly familiar voice. Then the figure and its aura turned and began shrinking away into the darkness of the tunnel.

  “Wait!” Bea hollered. And then again, “Mom?” She sprinted toward the tunnel, following the diminishing golden glow as it wound into the darkness. She ran as fast as she could, barely able to see in the fading radiance. She stumbled over some loose rocks, nearly bashing her head on the jagged stone wall, and kept on running.

  “Wait!” Her voice echoed through the tunnels. She was losing the light and realized she would be hopeless if she’d let it completely disappear. “Wait! Mom!”

  Mom…mom…mom…echoed back to her from the dimness ahead. And then the light disappeared.

  Bea pressed ahead slowly. At first, the tunnel was straight and then it seemed to enter a series of twists and turns, left, right, up then down until she no longer had any idea which way she was going. She thought about turning around, but the way back was cloaked in complete darkness. The golden glow must have gone somewhere, she thought, so she pressed on, feeling the blood trickle down her forearm. It was a stupid thing, she decided, to follow a light down a tunnel. She began to doubt if she’d even seen a light at all, when the tunnel seemed to make a tight downward spiral and a diffused light appeared on the rocky wall ahead. She stumbled forward a little faster toward the light. As she came into it, the rugged rocks became smoother and the tunnel opened up into a large, circular stone cavern, lit by a nearly blinding golden glow emanating from its center. Sure enough, from the depths of the golden aura, Bea’s mother emerged, arms spread and waiting.

  “Beatrice,” her voice, flowing like honey, filled the stillness of the cavern.

  Bea stepped forward…her mother disappeared.

  “No!” Bea fell to her knees on the hard stone.

  The smothering darkness returned, swallowing Bea, and leaving her in the pitch-black void.

  Bea knelt there exhausted, not knowing what to do. Her dress was stiff, its once loose hem now chafing her thighs. Her fist ached and throbbed. She dabbed at her wound with the cloth of her dress but found that doing so made it hurt even worse.

  She sat back on her bottom and thought about what to do. A small part of her hoped Reagan, or someone, would come find her and bring her back to her cabin. But she also just wanted to be alone with the bats and the spiders and whatever else lived in the dark cavern. She almost wanted to be a bat herself. Life in the darkness could be an escape of its own.

  Suddenly, though, a d
im light seemed to illuminate her left knee, scraped and bruised as it was from running through the woods. The light came from the wall of the cave to her left where a golden glowing symbol stretched across the surface. Five, intertwining circles. A five-fold. The symbol.

  “No, it can’t…it can’t be.” Bea shook her head and looked at it again. Still there. She rubbed her eyes until they watered, and yet it remained pulsing, dimmer then brighter, again and again. She couldn’t pull her eyes away from it. It was so out of place, yet it was so appropriate that the darn thing would follow her here. She stood up with a groan and walked over to it. It seemed to flow with an energy of its own. As she got closer, a golden mist cascaded out of the wall where the symbol was inscribed. Bea could feel its extreme power on the tips of her fingers, on her face, on her bare arms and legs.

  A bright light emanated from the vibrating symbol, forcing her to clamp her eyes shut. She reached out to touch its glowing rings, unable to help herself. The cavern began to tremble, and tiny cracks ran through the once smooth stone walls. She touched the glowing symbol and a shock like lightning ran through her. Her muscles froze and she screamed. She looked down at her hand and realized it was sunk into the stone up to her wrist, the bright glow rising up her arm. It was pulling her in, into the stone wall. Impossible! She put her foot to the base of the wall, tried to pull back, but she was in past her elbow. She wanted to cry for help, but who was around? Who would even believe it? They’d send her back to Mountbridge for ‘treatment.’ No!

  The light flashed, blinding her. The wall had eaten up her arm, and her face was nearly pressed against the cold stone. Shards of wall crumbled from the trembling ceiling and the ground vibrated beneath her feet. She clenched her teeth, pushed with all her strength against the wall with her knees and other hand, but she could not pull away.

  “Bea!” a familiar voice shouted from behind her. Bea could barely turn her head. It was pressed so tightly against the wall all she could do was roll her eyes around to see Reagan reaching for her free arm. “Grab my hand!” she yelled. Bea extended her arm back and Reagan grabbed it and pulled. Bea thought her shoulder was coming out its socket, but the rest of her did not move. She felt her cheek against the stone and gritted her teeth…and heard a loud pop.

  She was tumbling in a black void, plunging into darkness. A roaring wind tossed her around like a leaf falling in an autumn storm. All she could see was the absence of light. She tried to scream, but no sound came out her mouth. She flailed her arms, grasping at emptiness, anything that might stop her fall. She knew that symbol would eventually be trouble. She should have—

  A huge flash of golden light nearly blinded her, and she plunged into icy-cold water, a lake, an ocean, or a pond, she knew not which, but it was cold. She was no longer floating in emptiness—she was submerged in water—and that had to be good. She held her breath. Now she just had to find which way was up.

  5

  Little Dragons

  Far in the north and nestled between a range of towering peaks, the floating city of Galecrest never escaped a day without a little snow. The silver buildings were cloaked in white, except their spires, which rose up into the low-hanging clouds. Several dozen windmills churned in the wind, and their loud, yet calming sounds masked the commotion of the midday hustle.

  Millennium took a deep breath and tucked her chin into her scarf. She stood on her bedroom balcony, her hands resting on the rail, cold wind whipping through the air, and gazed down at her kingdom. Then, she looked to the sky. The winged beasts who normally zipped through the clouds like blurs of red, blue, and green, were nowhere to be seen. I wonder where it is the dragons have all disappeared to?

  “Millennium,” Ferhant called her from the doorway, “the children have arrived.” He stood with his hands clasped behind his back. Though she had known her loyal Sacred Guard since her choosing ceremony, she had yet to see what he actually looked like. A dragon-horned mask covered his face, and long, grey robes draped his figure.

  “Excellent.” She smiled and pushed the thought of the dragons to the back of her mind. She had other dragons to attend to. “Show them in, please.”

  Ferhant bowed and left the room. A few moments later, he returned with a gaggle of children—her “little dragons.”

  Each new moon, the children visited her castle for a recounting of some of Eslura’s ancient tales.

  “Welcome, little dragons!” she said in greeting. “How are we today?” She opened her arms in a broad gesture of welcome. The children responded by rushing to claim a cushion from the six Ferhant had set out in a circle that morning.

  “Easy,” Millennium laughed and walked to her stool in front of the cushions. “There’s a spot for everyone.” She waved Ferhant over and he handed her a large, moss-colored tome and left them to their stories.

  “Now, where were we again, my little dragons? My old brain cannot seem to recall.” Millennium rubbed her chin, cracked open the old book, and flattened its yellowed pages. The children, each one eager to answer her, jumped up and down and flailed their arms.

  “Well, all right, all right. We’re all a little excited, aren’t we? Why don’t we just pick up at the beginning of chapter two? How does that sound?” The children cooed with pleasure at her proposal and shuffled to get comfortable on their cushions. Once they had settled, Millennium cleared her throat and began:

  “One sour morning, the skies parted ways and opened up to let fall the stone—a gift from gods greater than even than the gods themselves, a tool for creation, but, alas, for destruction as well.”

  Millennium was just getting her voice warmed up when Ferhant opened the door and entered the room once again, his eyes wide through the slits on his mask.

  “Yes, Ferhant?”

  “Millennium, please pardon the intrusion, but we must talk…urgently, I’m afraid.” Millennium stood from her stool, set the book on it, and followed Ferhant to the hallway.

  “Best close the door, madam,” the steward said.

  Millennium turned to close the door, spying a few of the children flipping through the pages of the book. Impatient little things, she thought and clicked it shut.

  “What is it, Ferhant?” she asked.

  “It’s the dragons.”

  “What about them? They seemed to be absent from the skies this morning when I took air on my balcony.”

  “Indeed. It appears as though they’ve fallen into a…a predicament.”

  “A ‘predicament’? Ferhant, please spare me the trouble of deciphering your true meaning, if you would be so kind.”

  “They are dying.”

  Dying. Her heart nearly stopped beating, then picked up thrice as fast.

  Millennium dashed down the stairs in a flurry. She ran out of her castle and weaved her way through the bustling city square, shifting her scarf so its soft fibers concealed her identity. Now was not the time to stop for a chat with the locals; under any other circumstance, she would be more than willing to entertain them.

  She arrived at the dragons’ nests in the lower quarter of the city and found the dragons huddled together and grim faced.

  “Oh, my sweet darlings.” She knelt beside a yellow and green pair closest to the mouth of the cave and brushed her hands over their scales. They were icy cold to the touch. “Oh my goodness! What’s happened?” Every knowledgeable Galecrestian knew that a dragon’s scales were naturally scalding. “You poor things. You’re freezing. You must be so scared.” As a dragon shifter, the Sacred Ruler of the Book of Air, Millennium could feel their pain.

  “They look confused,” Ferhant said behind her. He appeared to be quite out of breath, leaning his hands on his knees and panting like a dog.

  “Ah, Ferhant, you startled me.” Millennium put her hand over her heart. “I didn’t know you’d followed me.”

  “My apologies,” he said with a bow. “I assumed you would know, considering it is my duty to do just so.”

  “And the children?” she asked, realizing
that she had left in such a hurry that she had forgotten to make arrangements for their supervision.

  “Taken care of,” Ferhant told her with another bow.

  Millennium trusted her Guard implicitly and she turned her attention back to the dragons. “They’ve lost their powers. They’re as cold as stone.”

  “Impossible.” He knelt and cautiously touched the green dragon with his index finger. “This cannot be.”

  Millennium wished he was right but knew better than to give herself false hope. She stood and looked west toward Zybersia from the cave mouth. “Something has happened to the Book of Fire. Do you agree?”

  “There can be no other explanation,” Ferhant replied. “Something must have cut them off from the book’s energy.”

  “Have you received any gullys from the Sacred Guard in Zybersia?”

  Ferhant shook his head. “No.”

  Millennium rubbed her chin. With no Sacred Ruler currently presiding over Zybersia—the last having been murdered by the usurper, Obellius Kalaar—it would only be a matter of time before the city fell victim to the shadows. Without the power of the Book, there would be nothing to protect the city against the darkness—the same darkness that threatened to take the lives of the dragons lying before her.

  “I must alert the other Rulers immediately. This is far too dangerous to send word by gully. The gods only know what chaos would ensue if that message were to be intercepted. If our assumptions are true, the city must be in complete disarray.”

  “I fear for the worst,” Ferhant said, gazing into the distance.

  “Keep watch on the dragons,” Millennium told him. “If the situation worsens, send for me immediately. Understood?”

  Ferhant bowed, and she left him in the cave’s mouth.

  Millennium walked hurriedly down the short path toward the lower edge of the city. She decided she would fly to Blighburrow and Ovallia, too, but first she would check on the Book of Fire in Zybersia. At the ledge, she closed her eyes and let herself fall off the ledge, plummeting toward the earth. She felt a surge of energy rush through her as the power of the Book of Air took hold of her.