Book 7, Chapter Twenty – Tomb It May Concern

Pierce spun the shiny top his father had sent him for his sixth birthday. It was fun, and of course he’d sent Father a thank-you letter, but he wished Father had been able to come in person. Mother had explained that his father had a lot of responsibilities, and that he was taking care of Pierce and everyone else, but even now that the war was over, Pierce barely ever saw him.

The top wobbled and began to tilt. It would fall soon, and Pierce found that he just didn’t care enough to catch it. He sighed, starting to stand, then jerked back as a pale hand with red nails plucked the top from the ground. He stared up, mouth agape. A strange woman stood in the middle of their private garden, where no one should have been able to enter. Nox didn’t allow anyone onto the grounds without Father’s permission.

Her hair was as black as Pierce’s, which was rare in the new West Altheric, and trailed down over her too-white skin, which almost seemed to glow faintly, even in the fading sunlight. There was a lot of that skin visible, too, because the woman didn’t have any clothes on, and Pierce was just getting old enough to realize that that was very, very strange, and probably meant that he should go tell someone that she was here. But he just couldn’t tear his eyes from her. There was something familiar about her, even though he was certain he’d never seen her before. She reminded him of… His fingers crept into the pocket of his short pants, curling around the object hidden there, and the woman’s lips curved up in a smile.

“What do you have?” she asked, but he was certain she already knew.

Slowly, hand trembling, he withdrew the rock from his pocket. He should hide it. He should run. He definitely shouldn’t talk to a strange naked woman who was in a place that should have been safe. But she didn’t try to take the stone, just looked at it, her dark eyes glittering oddly, as if light went into them, but not all of it came back out.

“It’s pretty,” she said, and held out his top. For a moment, he thought she wanted to trade, and he nearly offered her the stone out of nothing more than the respect for adults that his parents had drilled into him. He couldn’t do it, though. His fingers stayed closed around the stone, gripping it so hard that it hurt his hand.

She tilted her head, as if his reaction had confused her, then crouched and pressed the plunger down on the top, setting it to spinning on the smooth, flat section of dirt he’d cleared for it. “I… I just wanted to meet you,” she said, watching the top, her arms resting across the tops of her knees. She looked younger now, not that much older than he was, and was she wearing a thin, white dress? He couldn’t tell if that was fabric, or just her skin.

“My name is Pierce,” he told her, though he thought she already knew. She nodded anyway, but didn’t give her own name, which wasn’t very polite, but he hurried to fill the silence, somehow compelled to explain.

“I’m not supposed to have the stone, but it is pretty, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for confirmation. She’d already said it was. She understood. “Father just leaves it in its box. But it doesn’t… it doesn’t like that. So sometimes I take it out. Just for a little while. I’ll put it back before supper.”

Mother checked on it every night. She had since Pierce first took the stone, before he realized it wasn’t just another ‘Look but Don’t Touch’ expensive thing, and people actually cared if it went missing. Mother had hidden it after that, but it was always in the house somewhere, and Pierce always found it.

“No,” the girl – why had he thought she was an adult? – said softly. “It doesn’t like that.” The top slowed and fell, and Pierce shoved the stone back in his pocket so he could pick it up. When he looked up again, she was gone, not even footprints remaining in the dust.

Ɛ\⁐\>    ˖Ი𐑼⋆    </⁐/3

Pierce saw the girl many times over the following years. She came only when he had the stone, and never when others might see her. She listened as he poured out his childish secrets, or watched as he played with his toys. He had to teach her the simplest things, like how to play tiles, and she never, ever appeared inside the house.

When he was more than old enough for a natural revelation of his magic, his father showed up just long enough to use an essence stone to reveal that Pierce was a Dark mage. By this time, Pierce was in school, and everyone there knew that they had just fought a war against an evil Dark elementalist. Most of the students had lost a parent or a cousin or an older sibling in the fighting or to one of the diseases that swept through the refugees in spite of the efforts of Queen Nora and the few remaining Light elementalists. Pierce was not popular.

He grew more and more unhappy. He loved and hated his absentee father in equal parts, and while he adored his mother, she, too, had less and less time for him as he grew older. Lady Avington was not the kind of soft, gentle mother other children had. She was nearly as fierce as her husband, though she stayed closer to home, and the battles she fought were much less literal.

His playmate grew along with him, and when Pierce was about eight years old, he finally realized what she really was: an elemental. His elemental. Except that she wasn’t. She was a wild thing, coming and going as she wished, but she was also his only friend, and he longed for her to be there always.

When he was ten, he contracted a Tenebron, and the next time the girl appeared, he showed off the elemental, which he’d named Shadow, and very politely asked, “Would you like to form a contract with me?” She gave him a look of terrible sorrow and disappointment, then vanished.

She didn’t return.

Pierce grew from a silent, lonely child to a silent, angry one. He pushed away anyone who got close, certain that they, too, would abandon him. Until Clarice. She was a year younger than him, and painfully shy, but gentle as a butterfly. He was fifteen when his mother died, and Clarice was the only one who dared attempt to comfort him. Her fragility forced him to be gentle with her, and over time, he fell in love.

They married on her eighteenth birthday, immediately after graduation. Their son, Giles, was born a bit less than a year later, and little Pandora a few years after that. From the moment Pandora’s baby blue eyes shifted to brilliant green, Pierce could only see the mother he’d lost in her. He cared for Giles, but he didn’t know how to be the kind of father he wished he could be. It came naturally to him when he was with Pandora, however, which left gentle Clarisse to raise their son.

When Pandora was eight, she fell ill. Terribly ill. It wasn’t contagious. No one else around her got sick, and even though Pierce and Preston – now mostly retired from his public role, and the kind of doting grandfather Pierce had longed for when he was a child – brought in the best of every kind of healer, none of them could figure out what was wrong. They knew by then that she was a Dark mage like him and his father, so Light healers – the only ones who could fix almost anything, so long as they had enough strength – couldn’t attend to her. She would get better for a day, a week, even a month, and then succumb again, growing weaker each time.

Finally, when everyone had given up hope, and Pandora lay in bed, wasted and unconscious, Pierce sat by her bedside and prayed. Not to Ismara, who was a goddess of Light. Light did not aid Dark. But Preston and Pierce had finally grown a little closer over this tragedy, and the older man had told Pierce of another god. Zheraphon. Pierce thought Preston had meant it as a warning, but that was not how Pierce took it.

That night, a man came to the door. Pierce no longer lived at Avington House with his father. It would be his again someday, but he couldn’t bear to walk its quiet, empty halls or live beneath the same roof as Preston, who had failed him so thoroughly, so this was just a normal house: walls and roof, doors and windows, with no magic, no elementals contracted to it. A servant answered the door, and came to tell Pierce that a new healer had come.

Normally, Pierce would have sent this random stranger away, but he had grown desperate enough to listen to charlatans and con artists, even when he was very nearly certain that was what they were. Because very nearly wasn’t absolutely certain, and he wouldn’t risk ignoring someone who might be the miracle he needed.

And miracle it was. The healer – who wore a dark, heavy cloak that showed nothing of the person inside, and who spoke in a husky rasp – bent over Pandora, and the girl opened her eyes. For the first time in more than a week, she showed no signs of delirium. She recognized her father and her brother, and demanded food. Real food, not watery broth. While everyone fawned over her, the healer vanished.

This time, Pandora truly seemed well. For the first time in over a year, she was able to go to school. She played and laughed and seemed entirely herself… for six months. Then, without warning, she collapsed, and could not be woken.

Pierce searched for the cloaked healer. He posted ads and put up fliers. More tricksters came to claim the reward, but none could wake the dying child. Again, Pierce prayed, and again, the healer appeared. Pierce led the mysterious figure to his daughter’s bedside, where once again Pandora opened her eyes, sitting up and exclaiming about how hungry she was.

This time, Pierce kept his gaze on the healer. When the figure stepped toward the door, Pierce followed. When the healer went down the stairs, Pierce drew closer. When the person within the cloak reached for the handle of the front door, Pierce caught the cloak and pulled it away… revealing his childhood friend, grown again into the woman he’d first seen, who gazed back at him with the same kind of sorrow he’d seen in her eyes when he asked her to form a contract with him.

“Get the stone,” she told him. “So long as she wears it, she will be well.” The cloak fell to the floor, empty.

Pierce hadn’t thought of the stone in years. His mother had hidden it somewhere even he couldn’t find it, and after her death and his marriage, it had simply slipped his mind. But that very night, he sent a message to his father, telling him of Pandora’s recovery. When Preston came, insisting upon spending time with his precious granddaughter, Pierce welcomed him. Then, that night, he snuck out, going back to Avington House to search. The elementals knew he was there, of course, but he was the next Lord Avington, and when he told them to keep his presence secret, they obeyed.

The stone was in his parent’s bedroom, in his mother’s jewelry box, which still sat on her vanity, exactly as she’d left it. She’d had it set into a necklace, and when Pierce picked it up, he felt none of the familiar, comforting coolness he remembered from childhood. Using a knife, he pried it from its setting, and when it landed in his palm, he felt a rush of an alien emotion – deep, triumphant satisfaction.

He returned everything else to the way it had been, then slipped back out into the darkness, returning home. Some instinct – like a voice in the back of his mind – told Pierce not to bring the stone too close to his father, and he listened. Pierce hid the stone at the very edge of his property, then returned home as if he’d never left.

Preston stayed for two days, then hugged his grandchildren and went home. That night, Pierce slipped back out beneath the starry sky and dug the stone from where he’d hidden it, between the roots of a tree. When he lifted it from its resting place, his childhood companion reappeared… but this time, she wasn’t alone.