Chapter Three
~
The Day Star
Celina woke at the break of dawn, just before the trill of the tower bells. She stretched in her elegant, massive white bed.
She hastily dressed, and galloped to Cinder’s practically unused chambers. She broke through the double doors, not caring to knock.
To her devastation, the room was empty. Not to mention the bed sheets that were strewn haphazardly across the mattress. Cinder hadn’t even had the consideration to tidy up before she ran away-which she usually did on the almost nonexistent occasions that she stayed in the palace.
Which meant it was still possible she hadn’t gone yet. Celina could still catch her before she left.
She hopefully sprinted down the hall, down the stairs and out of the palace. She was filled with relief at the sight of Cinder’s bike still standing at the steps. She shaded her eyes with her hand to squint across the square.
There she was. She was standing below the monument with a tall man with long crimson hair, a scarred face, and tears in his eyes.
Orphenn was having his usual dreams-but this time, strangely more vivid. He could see two of the angels clearly now: Cinder and Celina. But the third was still a blurry silhouette along the skyline. He relived the experiences of the previous day, mainly Cinder’s calm voice. Random bits of what she’d said to him reverberated through his subconscious.
You’ll see when we get there………
He’ll help you remember………Maybe you’ll demonstrate……
……… Our eyes should be proof enough.
Nobody’s normal…………Promise.
Home.
Home.
Orphenn? You doing okay Orphenn?
Orphenn. Get up.
He’s here, wake up.
“Orphenn!”
“Wha-huh?” Orphenn shot awake, almost butting heads with Cinder in the process. Cinder laughed, holding him steady. “Sven’s here.”
Orphenn rubbed his eyes and smiled, bubbling with excitement. She said before that this Sven would help him remember. Now that he was absolutely sure this whole adventure was not the result from the bottom of his vodka bottle, he was so ready to remember.
Celina let herself in through the already open double doors, holding a bundle of leather. She threw it to him, and as he caught it, she said, “Your suit’s ready. Try it on.”
Orphenn met his sisters in the parlor. When he entered, they nearly squealed in delight.
“Orphenn!” Celina cooed, “You look strapping!”
“Yeah!” Cinder agreed, “You look like my Baby Brother again, instead of a little homeless boy!”
His suit was black and gray leather, and expertly tailored. Even he thought he looked good. He thought he looked like something from a Matrix movie.
And then he noticed the tall man at the fireplace, with his back to the rest of the room. He wore a long, high-collared, black trench coat. It was then that Orphenn realized: “I miss my trench coat.” Without realizing he had said it out loud.
The man chuckled, turning to face Orphenn. He had deep crimson hair that was shoulder length and slicked back, the ends frayed and spiking out around the base of his neck. There was a loose strand that rested on the bridge of his nose. His face had sharp, hawk-like features, and pointed ears, accented by a wide scar that stretched across the right side of his face, starting at his jaw line, painted across his right eye and splitting his highly arched eyebrow. “So this is the Orphenn I’ve heard so much about.” He assumed, stepping closer. His voice was deep and grumbly, like boots on gravel. His pale skin was covered in other scars, pointed ears like an elf, and his eyes were harsh, like they could bore through steel. His split-pupiled eye was a black that matched his trench coat and the slitted one a snake-like yellow.
Orphenn nodded. “And you’re Sven?”
Sven’s scar cracked his smile. He had sharply pointed canines.
Orphenn was not intimidated by Sven, for the sole reason that he was overwhelmed with eagerness. He stomped closer and gazed hopefully up at the striking man. “You can help me remember?” The boy nearly shouted, never taking his eyes from Sven’s.
Sven’s frightening disposition abruptly changed. Now he smiled with an air of kindness. “How can I deny that face?” He said.
Orphenn suppressed the urge to do a happy dance, and waited.
Cinder and Celina watched, grinning, arm in arm, as Sven pressed his palms to the sides of Orphenn’s head, thumbs meeting at the boy’s brow. He looked in the teenager’s eyes with the commanding force of a god, reaching into his memories and breaking the chains that bound them.
When Sven’s eyes shut, Orphenn’s opened wide. He didn’t see what was before his eyes, only what was being liberated in his mind.
He drew in a sharp breath. Memories and flashbacks were flowing across his vision like someone had opened the flood gate in his brain.
He remembered so many things at the same time, countless things-already his head was prone to burst.
He remembered his old house, his parents, his favorite toys. A familiar flash of space and stars, the Earth.
He remembered the third angel. She was beautiful. She was the third identical sister. She, Cinder, and Celina were triplets, and she was the youngest. He remembered her name. Cira.
He remembered being in Aleida before, years ago. He remembered a sparkling river. It was colorful-he remembered thinking it was like diamond water, comparing it to the rainbow colors in a puddle of oil in the parking lot. He remembered drinking the water.
And then nothing.
Orphenn staggered backward. It happened so fast, so much to take in at once. He began to ramble, his head throbbing. “Ugh…The third…Angel…Cira…” His eyes clamped shut, brows furrowed, pulling at his hair. “Sam…” He felt a hand grasp his wrist, and he jerked away from his fit, blinking.
“I’m sorry.” Someone said.
His vision dripped back.
He had fallen to a sitting position on the floor, Sven holding one of his hands, and both his sisters holding the other.
“I know it’s a lot to take in.” Sven grumbled, “You had quite the stash crammed back there, kiddo.”
Orphenn shook his head to clear his thoughts. “I remember you!” He looked at his sisters joyously. “And I remember you, Sven…” For some reason he felt a bit like Dorothy in Kansas again. “I saw you with Celina, by a big tree once….” He stared off absently. “I remember Mom and Dad. Mom always smelled like lavender and her clothes were always warm…..” He gave Cinder and Celina an intense glance. “I remember Cira.”
The two looked almost hurt.
Orphenn gasped in realization. “She’s the one that spoke to me in the alley….She wanted me to sleep….” He gasped again, face puzzled. “Why isn’t she in the monument outside the palace? Where is she?” He finally grew silent, but neither of them replied.
Sven at last said, “Looks like we got a little story to tell ‘ya.”
“Where do we start?” Asked Cinder incredulously.
“The beginning, perhaps?” Sven chimed.
“I can show him everything.” Celina reminded.
“That’s right.” Sven nodded. “Forgot about that gift you have.”
“What was it again?” Cinder inquired, “That television one?”
“If you’d visit more often, you’d know what it was called.” Celina retorted with her nose in the air.
Orphenn began to feel a tad left out. He had seen an amazing ability from two of the three people there with him. Cinder could create and travel through portals; Sven had the gift to reach into someone’s memory, and Celina was about to brandish her power. No one had seen yet what the orphan could do. But he practiced his patience. Now, it was story time.
“I call it Dreamfasting, or Memoryfasting.” Celina informed. “I need only to touch you.”
As the group helped Orphenn to his feet in order to join hands in a circle, Cinder noted, “You know Celina, when you’re not being totally annoying, you do make things a lot easier.”
Just as she ended her comment, the parlor room around them spun into nothing, a children’s play park taking its place.
Orphenn could smell the wood chips, the grass, feel the breeze through his hair. It was almost like they were there, inside Celina’s memory. It was precisely as she described it. She was showing him the story.
“We lived on Earth.” Celina’s voice came to their ears slowly, like they all were underwater, yet it reverberated, like they were in a tunnel.
Three young girls, maybe ten or eleven years old, faded into view. They were playing on a see-saw, one on either side, the third in the middle. They all had the same glacial blue eyes, and their mother had obviously dressed them up to match that day. Orphenn couldn’t tell the difference between them.
“How precious.” Sven’s voice echoed like a rock thrown into a cave.
“On this day, our lives would change forever.” Said Celina.
The sun was low in the sky. Its light seemed to spiral and swirl, until a figure began to form from the rays.
A glimmering woman made of bright orange light slowly flowed toward the triplets, every movement she made correct, and fluid. She had robes of golden light, and eyes like shining topaz. A sparkling trail of dust followed her every motion. She looked like some Greek goddess.
The sisters were frozen by awe. They looked on in fear, but also in reverence. She was the most beautiful thing that had ever come to their eyes.
Her hair and her robes appeared to float, as if the laws of gravity did not apply to her.
When she spoke, her words were like molten gold. “There is something I need your help with.”
“What is it?” Asked the bravest sister.
“It is my daughter. Your Mother Earth.”
“Is she sick?”
“And in grave danger.” The being of light kneeled to the girls’ level.
“In danger of what?” Asked the sweet sister.
The sun maiden pointed to the sky. It was the Day Star, as the sisters had named it. It was so bright, it didn’t have to be dark to see it twinkling against the sky.
“The Day Star?”
“She is a very powerful star. And she is very angry. She is about to die. And when she does, Earth will die with her. More of us as well.”
“You mean a Supernova?” Asked the most intelligent sister. “A star at the end of it’s life cycle could take out an entire galaxy!”
“Her death could mark the end of the Celestial Family.” Said Mother Sun.
As the sisters began to look worried, Celina came in: “She assured us there was a way to save the planet. When we asked how, the sun set and she was gone.”
Mother Sun gazed behind her, and she faded away with the setting sun.
Celina continued. “When the sun disappeared behind the mountains there was a strange flash of white. Our bodies were wracked with pain.”
The three little girls were writhing in agony, wood chips flying.
“What did she do?” Orphenn demanded. “Why did she hurt you?”
“She started everything. She gifted us.”
Screaming, the sisters began to sprout wings.
“We mutated.”
Blood and black feathers lay among the wood chips.
“At the last breath of twilight, we heard her whisper. ‘Save her.’ She said.”
The memory faded, and the scene changed. They were now floating high over Staten Island, sky above, ocean below. The girls were practicing their gifts.
“We all were gifted with flight. I had gentle powers of telekinesis and some telepathy.”
The triplet that was absolutely Celina burst from the ocean and flew to the other two, ripping the oxygen mask from her mouth.
“Cira was gifted with fire. She was telepathic and telekinetic as I was, but much more powerful, having one of the elements on her side. She also had frequent premonitions and was a talented psychic.”
Random hunks of metal, plastic and wood floated around young Cira—objects her mind was moving, like puppets on strings. Flames licked up her arm and formed a ball of fire above the palm of her hand.
“Cinder had…”
Celina and Cira turned on the other, synchronized. Celina’s scuba equipment shattered to pieces of sharp metal to mingle with Cira’s sharp-looking collection of debris, hers happening to be on fire, and they aimed their elements at Cinder, and in unison they hurled blazing fire and metal at their sister.
“I guess…Everything in between.”
Performing an aerial spin, Cinder’s body twisted into nothing and out of sight, dodging the attack. She reappeared fluttering between the other two, startling them. They laughed, the Day Star shining brightly over their heads.
“She could disappear and reappear in the blink of an eye. Only later did we recognize it as teleporting between dimensions. She could even port to the other side of the world and come back seconds later.
“It had been a few months since these gifts were ‘bestowed’ upon us. We hadn’t told anyone what we could do. And we never did.
“A few years passed. There were days when we worried about the Day Star, and thought about Mother Sun. But nothing ever happened.
“Until the twilight on the eve of our seventeenth birthday. We saw her again.”
“I remember. She had touched my shoulder. She was so warm.” Cinder added.
“Yes. She had told us only that ‘It was time.’ And pointed to the Day Star.”
Cinder began again. “My sisters were confused at first, but Mother Sun looked at me, and I knew what to do.
“The sun set. I took Cira and Celina by the arms and ported, with the Day Star at the forefront of my mind.
“In a split second, it had grown completely silent. We could breathe, and we felt fine. Just has Cira had predicted: Mother Sun had protected us from the cold outside the sanctity of the Earth’s atmosphere.
“Then we saw her.”
Everything they described played out like a cinema all around them.
“She was massive.” Celina said. “And beautiful. We looked, and for once we didn’t see Earth as a planet. We saw her as a living, breathing entity with a visible pulse.”
Sven and Orphenn looked at it, and saw it just as they had seen it. Celina was right. You automatically, almost instinctively fell in love with her. It was like feeling a growing baby’s heartbeat for the first time and already knowing you loved her.
“It made us want to protect her even more.”
Cinder started again. “We planned on trying to attack the Day Star, who was now a raging supernova, growing brighter by the second.”
The Day Star appeared to be a woman like Mother Sun, except she shone a hot, frightening white. Her liquid face contorted in anger. She appeared to be very slowly straddling her way towards Earth.
“But there were things Mother Sun could never have protected us from. There is no oxygen out there. Fire needs oxygen to live. Cira was useless without her flame. There was nothing for my sisters to hurl with telekinesis, and the angry thing had no mind that Cira could read.”
Orphenn spotted Celina motioning to Cinder in the memory, panic in her eyes.
“Celina had an idea. I tried porting to find any random chunk of ice to use to her advantage, as some sort of weapon. It shattered when she tried to use it. It was then that I tried a new trick, at the last minute.”
Cinder performed what looked like a mastered Kung Fu move, bringing the heels of her hands together in front of her, and holding her hands open like the jaws of a crocodile.
Day Star’s last thread of life looked about to snap, just as a sort of wisping darkness like black fog stormed from Cinder’s claw-like hands. It acted like a black whirlpool, even darker than the starry abyss around them. It submerged Day Star, as if billions of dark hands grasped her and overwhelmed her. The darkness absorbed her, and she was gone with the portal. Earth was safe.
Where did she go? What did you do? Cira had asked. She had sent the thought to Cinder’s mind, as speech cannot be heard without air. Cinder answered with another thought.
I ported her. She’s exploded now, somewhere far away.
There was a moment of cold, absolute silence for the death of the Day Star.
Celina wants to know where you learned that. Cira smirked.
“I ported us home just in time for our birthday party.” Cinder said proudly.
“When we got there, we had the usual party-presents, cake, ice cream.” Celina interjected. “But the real present was a surprise for after all the guests left.”
“Mom and Dad had told us a secret.” Cinder intoned. “Nine months later, we had the most beautiful little secret we ever could have asked for.”
Celina directed her words at Orphenn. “You were born on October twenty-fourth.”
She showed a memory of the infant Orphenn in their mother’s arms, with the triplets and their father surrounding the hospital bed, close at her sides.
“They’ve all been in there for a long time, haven’t they?” Xeila noted.
“Well,” Jeremiah reasoned, “you’ve heard the rumors. They’ve got their long lost brother in there.”
“Sure, but they’ve also got Dad in there. I need to talk to him. And Celina has an urgent visitor.”
“The visitor can wait. And so can you.”
“You said that about marrying me too. Look where that got us.” Xeila clutched the doorknob.
“Wait. Don’t be rude, Xeila-”
She flung open the door.