Chapter Seven
~
Pigeon
Sven sat beside Eynochia’s bed. He tucked her choppy silver hair behind her pointed ears. The motion softly woke her. Tears gathered in her eyes.
“Daddy.”
“Pige.” He kissed her cheek.
“Eynochia, you’re awake!” Xeila exclaimed, as she and Jeremiah rushed to her side. They kissed her cheeks as well, Xeila taking one of her hands.
Orphenn got up and went to the door, opening it. Cinder and Celina were conversing in the hallway.
“She’s awake.” Orphenn said to them. The three came back inside to gather around the bed.
Sven laughed weakly. “Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time in this infirmary. Hopefully it stops here.”
Eynochia sat up very slowly.
“Careful, Pige, you’re exhausted. That was at least a five-day journey you just ran in fourteen hours.” He paused. “Just like your mama.” He smiled.
“I’m so sorry, Dad.” She apologized. “I should have listened to you.”
“No, no. It wasn’t your fault.” He held her free hand.
Orphenn saw the joy in his eyes, and in Xeila’s. There was no sadness there anymore.
After a while of chatter, Sven took Orphenn aside to speak to him in the hallway. Orphenn noticed he had on a new trench coat-and a quite nice one, black and gray with brown straps and silver buttons.
“Thank you, Orphenn.” He said. “You know what’s unique about you?”
Orphenn shook his head expectantly.
“You help people without even knowing it.” Sven put a hand on Orphenn’s shoulder as the boy was brought to tears. “What’s eatin’ ‘ya, Squirt?”
He couldn’t reply, but Sven understood.
“Aw, come ‘ere, boy.” He gave Orphenn a comforting hug. When he pulled away, he said, “You know what else is unique about you? If any other boy brought my daughter home in nothing but a trench coat, he’d be drowned in the fountain before you could say neuroendocinology.”
Orphenn laughed so hard he almost cried again.
Sven looked to the door, as if dropping a hint. “Why don’t you go talk to her? She’ll have to stay in bed for a while with those bad burns. But the rest of us got business to attend to. Wouldn’t want her to get lonely.”
“Sure thing.” Orphenn smiled, hoping his blush wasn’t obvious.
Jeremiah came through the door into the corridor, Xeila, Celina and Cinder behind him.
“Hey, Sonner Boy! You ready to go?” Sven said to Jeremiah.
“Yeah Pops, just have to fetch a few things.”
“Where are you going?” Xeila asked.
“We’ve summoned a meeting in Plenthin.” Answered Celina. “Would you like to come, Orphenn?”
“No, thanks, I’ll pass. I think I’ll keep Eynochia company, eh?” He winked at Sven and reentered the infirmary.
After he disappeared through the doorway, the others huddled together for Cinder to port them all away, leaving nothing but dust in the corridor.
“Hello.” Orphenn said, coming to sit in a chair by her bed.
“Hi.” Eynochia greeted. She looked much like Xeila, with longer, more spiky looking hair, almost a mullet-like style, that was a softer shade of silver, rather than Xeila’s bright white. She had the same left eye as her sister and father, that deep black, her right eye a gentle green. Even without the dark bruises, her skin was just a smidge deeper in color than her sister’s. Xeila obviously took more of her looks from Sven’s side of the gene pool. Eynochia’s features were more subtle, less sharp and angular. She wore a two-piece hospital garment as to make it easier to access the wounds at her mid-section.
“How are you feeling?” Orphenn asked.
“Just slightly nauseous. Probably the aftereffects of Dacian’s poison.”
“He poisoned you too?”
“Just to knock me out-I was ‘interrupting’ Ardara’s little psycho-mind-ritual crap.”
“What a jerk.”
“No kidding.”
Orphenn noticed her picking at the edges of her stained bandages irritably.
“Looks like it’s time to change your bandages. Just a sec.” He retrieved a roll of gauze from the bedside drawer. He unwound the existing bandage at her wrist, and threw the dirty cloth away. He looked at the festering burn with puzzlement. “What happened back there?” he said, reaching into the drawer again and taking out a tube of ointment.
She explained as Orphenn applied it to the wound. “Ardara made herself Enma. I couldn’t just sit there. I found out Dacian had taken Celina’s essence. I was so pissed, I screamed at him. I’m thankful she’s okay, though.”
“Yes.” Orphenn said, wrapping her wrist in gauze. “She drank from the river again. I went with her.”
“That’s amazing.” She smiled.
“How did you escape?”
“Ardara used a new gift-she’s all freaky psychic, so she already knew how to use it, right after she mutated. She heated up the chains she had me on, and they burned me. But that also made the metal softer, so I was able to break it. I slashed the traitor and jumped out the window.”
Orphenn moved on to her other wrist and began to unwrap it.
“It seems like she did that on purpose.” She pondered.
“Let you escape, you mean?” Orphenn queried, applying ointment.
“Yes.”
“How did you even get captured in the first place? And why?”
“I saw Dacian in the woods. I ran after him, even after Dad told me not to. He paralyzed me with a special toxin when my guard was down and took me prisoner. Ardara kept me there because she thought I would know where the source of the Enma was.”
“What was it like there?”
“It’s a big dark metal castle in the middle of nowhere and it rains all the time. Don’t know who in their right mind would build a metal castle in such a moist environment. It’s rusted all to hell.
“They have Enma as their slaves-prisoners of war from years ago. They’re tortured and hurt, and I wanted to help them, but they only respond to Ardara. I was only fed their leftovers. It’s horrible.”
Orphenn began to unwrap her waist bandage, again hoping she couldn’t see him blushing. “But wait-” he said, “if there were so many Enma in her castle, including you, why did Dacian steal Celina’s essence? What was the point of traveling all the way to Denoras? Weren’t they best friends?”
Eynochia growled. “They weren’t best friends. They were always together, I remember. They were in love.”
“That’s despicable! Why would he go out of his way just to hurt her? What’s his deal?”
“I don’t know. He’s such a horrible man. I hate him.”
Orphenn paused, thinking. “What if….He’s not? What if he’s only following orders?”
“Only a horrible person would carry out those orders with a smug grin on his face.”
“I guess you’re right.”
After a moment of silence, Orphenn lowered to re-bandage her ankles, and said, “So, Cinder told me about the war, and how few rebels there were. That even children had to fight…” he looked up at her. She looked down, knowingly, yet passively. “Were you one of them?”
“Yes.” She answered sadly. “And Xeila too. It must have been so hard for Dad, to watch his own children be mutated.”
“I can imagine…I was put in the hospital for my first week at the orphanage. They thought I had epilepsy or some strange parasite that changed my eyes. When they found out I was perfectly healthy, the doctors were stumped. Especially about my eyes. They thought I should be blind, at least. I don’t think they ever once thought to check for DNA mutation. ‘Course I guess an orphan didn’t merit that much effort.”
“Interesting…” she folded her legs up onto the bed when Orphenn finished her last bandage. Tapping her chin thoughtfully, she asked, “So what’s your story?”
“Well,” he began, perching on the bed beside her, “I stayed in the Kinder Rose Orphanage for ten years. I only had one friend. His name was Sam. The other orphans didn’t take too kindly to freaks, nor did any of the adults. Even the social workers hated to work with me.
“When Sam was finally adopted, I had no one but myself. I would never be adopted, not even fostered, so I just ran away. No one missed me, as I expected. For a year or so, I lived on the streets with the homeless. I let my hair grow out to cover my eyes so no one would ask about them. Regularly I went to soup kitchens and other charities for food-I refused to steal. Granted, that probably gave me most of the hunger pains, but it wasn’t worth saddening someone else’s life.
“Only a few days ago, I saw Sam again. I helped him catch a criminal-he’s a cop now. Right after that, Cinder found me and took me here.
“Then your Dad brought my memory back, and I remembered everything. I’ll always be grateful to him for that.”
“Hm…” She thought. “My father says you’re quite talented. Though none of us have seen much of your gifts. I can’t help but be curious. What kind of things can you do? Apart from your wings.”
“Well…” Orphenn hesitated. “I can’t say that I know much more about it myself, yet. I could somehow speak to you, when you were a wolf, but I don’t know what that means.”
“Hmmm…I’ll make you a promise. Once I’m well enough, I’ll be your mentor. But until then, I’m sure Dad will be up for it.”
Orphenn couldn’t comprehend the reason for the sudden oath, but he nodded and smiled. “Training? Perfect.”
The portal hurled them back to Denoras in a maelstrom of black mist, all with eagerness and subtle nostalgia in their hearts. As they returned to the palace, Cinder drifted from the group, as she often did.
She strode across the white cobblestones and scaled the hedges that bordered the courtyard with ease, touching down inside the garden. She traipsed through the foliage and flowers, and came to a point where she could see her little brother beneath a drooping Wisteria. She went to sit beside him. “Hey Bro.”
“Cinder! I thought you were at a meeting in Plenthin?” Orphenn picked a bloom from the blue wisteria and flicked it at her playfully.
“I was.” She said.
“What did you guys talk about? Who else was there?”
“It was just us.”
“Just the four of you? Then what was the point of going all the way to Plenthin just to talk to each other?”
“Plenthin is a desert oasis in the southern hemisphere. It’s in the middle of the Desert of Mara that’s famous for its scary inhabitants. You know, monsters and creatures, most of them carrying deadly poison. No one goes there, not even the Ardarans. And there’s no indigenous people either. Absolute privacy. There is one air dock for passing ships, but we preferred to talk in the jungled areas beyond it.”
“What about….The monsters?”
“Jeremiah put up a barrier to keep them away from us. That’s why we brought him.”
“He can do that?”
“Oh yeah. Just one of his gifts. As for what we talked about, I think Celina would be better at explaining it.”
“I see.” Orphenn began to absently pick at the grass at his feet. “So…The Enma….We still have an army, right? I mean, just wondering…What with Eynochia saying she heard Ardara’s plans for a comeback. Are we prepared?”
“Of course we are. What do you think Sven is here for?”
“You mean you have ranks and combat training and everything?”
“I should think so.”
“What is Sven’s rank? Like General or something?”
“Even higher up. Sven’s our Field Marshall. Right below Supreme Commander.”
“Oh wow. How long did it take him to get there?”
“Well, the war only lasted a few years. Celina actually chose the best from our rebellion to be the higher-ups. She hand-picked the Enma with the most powerful or practical gifts, and the rest were just soldiers. But really, the ranks don’t matter to anyone much. Celina never was very organized.”
“Who were all of the higher-ups?”
“Most of them are dead now. Sven wasn’t always a Field Marshall, in fact he once was just a Captain. But that first year was totally chaotic. Many of our ranks were killed. He was promoted eight times in that one year.”
“What a sad way to be promoted.”
She nodded and continued, “Now, Jeremiah is Major General, Xeila is Lieutenant General and Eynochia is Staff Sergeant.”
“What are the powers of those? And the lower ranks?”
“Most of them transform into animals, including Xeila and Eynochia.”
“Oh! Speaking of Eynochia-she said she wants to put me through some training…And guaranteed that Sven would volunteer to mentor me until Eynochia’s well enough.”
Cinder pondered for a moment. “Well, training is certainly what you need.”
“Do you know where Sven is?”
“Let’s go find him.”