The Prince: The Pentacle
I have to explain something at this point in the story. Souls age. Souls age in the body and souls age on their own after they are separated from the body. If a child dies, their soul continues to get older until they reach a certain point. Then their soul continues to age, but it gets "younger" until it is a child again. These "baby" souls are then given a body and are born again. For example, if a parent had the ability to talk to his or her ten year old child who died four years ago, he or she would see his or her son or daughter at age fourteen. So it doesn’t matter when they died, they would still be the equivalent age that they would be if they were alive.
Lady Devlin smiled, but her face kept its melancholy seriousness. “The ceremony has to be preformed by one of kin to the deceased to be taken in place of the body restored.” She patted Teagan’s knee and stared out at the crowd, tears starting to fill her eyes. “Devils are very possessive of their soul collection.”
“Well, if that’s my part, how am I related to this prince? I was the daughter of a miller who wanted his daughter to have a better life than he did. That’s what Lady Watson told me, anyway. I suppose that’s not it at all, anymore.”
“This house has so many secrets, I’m surprised it hasn’t cracked much earlier than this. But no one knows how much longer it could last,” she stood up and carefully brushed the tears off her cheeks. “May I show you something Teagan?”
Teagan agreed heartily and followed Lady Devlin out of the parlor. Lady Devlin closed the door behind them quietly and then hurried into the library. She pulled out a key from a ring of keys around her neck, and unlocked the door, returning it to its shut position before walking over to a particular shelf near the ground.
“Teagan Miller,” she said thoughtfully as she pulled a large book from the shelf and put it onto the spotless table. The tome was stuffed carelessly with various papers of ownership and borrowing. She opened up the book and flipped through a few pages until she found a certificate of birth. She handed this to Teagan. “Teagan Miller is in fact Teagan Devlin. Given up by her parents to become a maid in their very house so that she could be kept safe from prying eyes,” Lady Devlin walked over to Teagan and put her arm around Teagan’s shoulder. “Teagan, people were furious at the king and his descendants and we were afraid that if things got difficult someone would come to kill you as the niece of the king. We didn’t just want to give you up to a peasant family since we didn’t know whom to trust; anyone might be turned by some money. Besides, we couldn’t be sure that the family we would give you to had completely sincere claims. We thought it best to keep a strict eye on you, so your father and I let Lady Watson take care of you until you were old enough to do chores around the house. I’m sorry to tell you this way, but I had no idea this entire affair was going to unravel around us.”
The door opened slightly and Lord Devlin came in, quietly. “You told her, didn’t you?” he said closing the door behind him and locking it. “I’m sorry, Teagan.”
Teagan looked from Lady Devlin to Lord Devlin, but neither one would return her gaze. Her childhood fantasies of a father who cared conflicted with the facts she knew, but she stood up and took a deep breath. Despite an intense feeling of despair, she felt no need to cry. She sighed. “I must do what my duty demands of me,” she said diplomatically. “Let’s go to the conservatory and see what’s going on.”
Lord and Lady Devlin exchanged looks, but made no sign of protest. Teagan unlocked the door and started making her way down the eerily silent hall. She felt as if she was walking through water that slowly turned to ice. When she lost feeling in her fingers and toes, she turned towards her parents, but couldn’t see anything beyond the slowly dissipating image of the hall. Her heels didn’t even click on the polished surface as she continued to walk through the pool of silence. She arrived at the conservatory with surprisingly no fear and opened the door.
Sir Drummond had set up a large purple pentacle in the center of stone floor. The five points of the star had candles burning steadily with a purple flame. At her entrance they flashed and slowly spread along the circle of the pentacle like someone had spilled the flame on gunpowder. She looked around the room, but found her self utterly alone. She stepped over the low flame of the circle, careful to not smudge the chalk and sat down in the middle of the five-pointed star. All at once a ripping sensation over came her, and she made motion to scream. It was unlike anything she had ever felt before, but she didn’t feel any pain. Only when she opened her eyes did she realize she closed them and almost instinctively she looked up at the moon. She became enticed by the ethereal ocean of light. Reaching a hand out to touch the liquid beams she realized that her soul was now outside the graveyard and her body was, presumably, still in the pentacle. Her skin was a transparent purple like the chalk and she could see through her hand to the corporeal world beyond. Taking a deep breath, Teagan walked into the cemetery.
Gravestones with cold angels loomed over her sobbing in the pale moonlight. Their tears were held fast to their cheeks where the artists had tried to capture the essence of rolling and their faces were warped into what one might have thought of as sadness, but came to her as anger and fear. Out of nowhere, she tripped over an invisible thread and landed on a large tombstone on the ground. Her joints were jarred from her fall, but otherwise she was, unsurprisingly, not hurt. Neatly wiping imaginary dust off her skirt to regain composure, she glanced at the stone. “Here sleeps the body of Prince Aidan Breckenridge, son of Duke Eric of the western empire and Queen Nostariel of the woodland fae. May his soul be held with peace he never found in this world.” At the bottom of the stone was the royal seal of both the woodland fae and the king. Teagan was compelled to press the seal of her king and all at once the tombstone rose up lifting a crude elevator with it. With a loud click of mechanics, it stopped at the ground and swung open its door for her. Her first instinct was to be afraid of the rickety vehicle, but that was soon replaced by the rationality that her soul couldn’t die, nor be harmed. With a final look over her shoulder, she stepped into the elevator. The door closed behind her and the elevator started its descent.
The elevator stopped at the bottom on a mat of moss with the same click of mechanisms that it had previously sounded when it arrived to retrieve her. The door swung open to let her out before disappearing into the darkness. Strange, she thought, though she couldn’t fathom why. A disappearing elevator seemed to be the least strange thing of the evening. She herself emitted a bit of purple light, but not enough to see by as she groped forward in the dark. Still, she kept walking forward into a steadily increasing green light.
“Lady Teagan?” a man’s voice sounded from behind the light source. He sounded tired and young, but a little wary of the ethereal intruder to his resting place.
“Yes,” she answered, blocking her eyes from the now white light.
“Oh, thank Gods,” the voice answered. All at once the light dimmed and she could see a glowing blue figure like herself. The man who came forward looked much like Lady Breckenridge with small pointed ears and defined bone structure, but mostly like his father with very muscular features. She shifted weight nervously as this stranger, who she presumed to be her cousin, came forward and embraced her. “They said you would come,” he said holding her at arms length and looking into her eyes as tears rolled down his cheeks. “Ah, forgive me,” he said glancing at her expression and letting his arm drop to his sides, “you never knew who I was.”
“Well, neither did you. Unless I am mistaken, we’ve never met.”
“Never in person. Not any time you would remember,” he stepped away from her and looked at the green light. “The Forces argued a lot about my death. They kept saying that it was never supposed to happen and that I was supposed to stay alive. Lots of them argued with each other. When they agreed to bring visions to the local priest and tell my parents to bring me back, they started talking a lot about you. They would let me go up to the corporeal world as a spirit and see the things I was missing. So that when I come back, I would…” his voice trailed off and his tears started again. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered and slumped down to a crouch. She stood above him looking into the dim green light listening to his sobs.
Teagan felt sorrow, not for her fate, for his. She felt his despair as he fathomed the possibilities of coming back to life at the cost of a family stranger and how when he came back, war would break out again. She felt his anger at everything he knows will happen at his return and after everything he’s heard from the Forces, that they would allow the worst to happen. She felt pain as she realized he was becoming one of the Forces, one of the Gods, to fulfill a fate that he might not believe in. She realized that the only thing he could control were his own tears. She fought back her own tears and lent her cousin her hand.
“Please stand up,” she said, “if I’m going to stay here for you to fulfill your fate, then you must go back. I refuse to die for you if you won’t change things for the better.”
He grabbed her hand and propelled himself so he was standing up. He gave her a small smile and wiped the tears from his cheeks. “I won’t let you be forgotten,” he said and kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll be back for you, Teagan.”
Teagan nodded and watched him go back into the darkness. She sat down on the ground and finally, cried.
