stick together. Cracks form all over it, some large enough to reveal deep fissures in the ground beneath. Whoever once lived here, they must be long gone, and I fear what aggressive invaders might have displaced them.
“Where did tell you we should go?” Astor asks.
His look suggests he really expects me to have an answer, like he somehow knows about my secret rendezvous with the Necromancer and assumes I must have been instructed. Or maybe he suspects that the Necromancer might have whispered something to my mind since he knows that the Necromancer has talked to me in that way before.
“He didn’t,” I say hollowly, “though I wish he had.”
“Yeah,” he sighs.
“He might not have known any more than what he told us,” I continue, but I doubt it.
How could the Necromancer know that Eliana was in danger and yet have no other details for us? And he transitioned so quickly into sending us away that I had no chance to ask. I suppose I also somewhat assumed he would have told us if there was anything else important we needed to know. Then again, as I consider the mystery of his true intentions, he might have other reasons for hiding the truth. Time will tell.
We follow a fork in the road that turns into the forest. As we go a little further, I notice a few oddities, from faded metallic signs to lightless posts sticking out from the side of the roadway. Cement walkways also run alongside them, seeming altogether unnecessary, as does the wideness of the road.
“This must have been a public garden, or one for a palace or something,” I comment to Astor when we reach a wide opening of grass and flowers surrounding the windmill.
The walkway diverts from the road here, leading through the small overgrown garden lying between us and the windmill. Different colors of flowers grow in patches, and several small paths weave through the different sorts. Broken benches appear on the different paths here and there, but though this place seems ancient and abandoned, a set of footprints in the brush tells me that someone passed this way not long ago.
“Look,” I say to Astor pointing to them, but he doesn’t.
“I’ve noticed quite a few already,” he says. “Whatever’s been going on, it’s caused quite a frenzy. The footprints are spread apart, like everyone has to run whenever they are out in the open. We need to keep our eyes open.”
The breeze then dies down, and the air becomes perfectly calm, making me paranoid. A moment ago, I could hear birds chirping in some distant trees, but not anymore. It’s too quiet. I can still hear waves crashing on the beach behind us, but beyond that, the only thing I am able to sense is a foul odor on the air. Not a stench, but something felt. Something dreary.
But considering the transforming experience I had last night with the Necromancer, I don’t believe that he would send us to our doom. He could have killed us if he wanted us dead, so I shouldn’t let myself believe that some terrible fate will soon befall us. We just need to keep our guard up, that’s all.
“Kaela, come see this,” Astor says anxiously from ahead of me.
He is standing at the top of a small stairway that descends to the base of the windmill. A platform hangs several stories above it, supporting a wide balcony that makes a complete circle around it. The windmill itself is a metal and concrete structure with beams that stick out to further support the balcony. Its entrance is a simple doorway at the bottom of the stairs, a dark metallic one covered in deep, bloody gashes.
We look at each other warily and unholster our guns as we descend the steps. As we get close, I realize that the door is slightly open. Astor steps forward and pushes it inward while I take aim, anticipating something jumping out at us. The door screeches as it swings, and I cringe thinking about what faraway creatures are now being made aware of our presence. To my relief, behind it is only an empty hallway.
Astor leads us inside, where a hallway going down and to our left has collapsed and is blocked with rubble. Another door in front of us is locked, leaving our only remaining option a staircase heading up toward the balcony. I go first this time, Astor walking backwards a few paces behind to keep an eye on the entrance as we move upward. The stairs here are made of old wood and creak loudly, echoing our footsteps throughout the windmill’s corridors despite our efforts to keep light feet.
There is a hallway lined several rooms at the stop of the stairs, but as we go through them, none provides any hint of what became of this place’s former occupants. Each room contains several rusty old beds with tattered mattresses. The reinforced locks in the doors suggest this might be a hideaway or refuge of some sort, but everything is too neat and orderly to indicate any sort of struggle.
“Did you hear that?” Astor suddenly stops.
I freeze and try to listen, but there is only silence. Yet Astor remains tense, his hand raised slightly like he can feel the pulse of the air with it. A few seconds pass, and still nothing, but then a slow tapping starts to pick up, the sound of someone running and gradually drawing closer to us.
“What should we do?” I whisper.
He places his finger to his lips and pulls out his gun again. I do the same, and we creep out into the hallway toward the stairs. As we slowly move, the distant steps pound louder and louder against the pathway and soon the stairs leading down into the windmill. We halt where we are, a few dozen feet from the end of the hall, the path before us bright from the distant sun casting its light through the windows above us. This lets me know that what I am seeing is real as another ghost from my past rushes up the stairs and emerges from around the corner. My once dead sister Cassandra.
“Kaela!” she cries out, ignoring Astor’s pointed gun.
I can’t move, even as she rushes toward me. Is this real, or another trick like what the Necromancer did before? She wraps her arms around me, squeezing tightly, but I am limp and lifeless. That is until her warmth begins to envelop me, freeing me to embrace her as I burst into joyous tears.
We stay like that for a long while. She eventually starts to pull away, like she is ready to move on, but I am not. I’m only starting to truly grasp the moment. I have never felt so utterly happy in all my life, and I don’t want it to end quite yet. I tightly pull her in once more and squeeze as hard as I can. She laughs through more tears. How I missed it, her smile. But if she’s alive, if this is real, then it shouldn’t be just her.
“Where’s Helena?” I ask.
Her smile disappears, and I brace for sad news.
“She was taken.”
“By who?” I ask stunned.
The noise of several more people sound behind her before she is able to answer the question, and we all turn that way.
“Princess, you can’t just…” a dark-skinned man says irritated, cutting himself off at the sight of us.
“You saw the light from the beach,” she snaps back. “We’ve been waiting so long for this. I wasn’t going to risk something or someone else getting to them first.”
“Why have you been waiting for me?” I puzzle.
She hesitates as she turns toward me, and I find myself unexpectedly bothered, like I sense she still sees me as someone too young or immature to handle the straight truth.
“Wait,” I jump in just as she’s finally about to answer me. “Eliana is Helena, isn’t she?”
Cassandra nods hesitantly, and I quickly become agitated, this time not at her, but at my father. For years I have been expected to live under the impression that my sisters were dead. My heart ruptured when he, in apparently feigned sorrow, told me. At any point, he could have ended my misery and revealed the truth, but he didn’t. It has all been kept from me, like I wasn’t prepared to know. Like I’ll always be a child.
“Kaela,” she says, placing her arms around me.
I resist at first, but it’s too hard to be stubborn in this moment. My sisters have come back to life. I can’t focus on what was, only what is. And I have missed them too much to let myself be anything but happy right now.
“Mariam had to believe we were dead,” Cassa
ndra continues after another long moment. “I promise I’ll tell you everything when we have time. That all of your heartache had a purpose. That your pain wasn’t for nothing.”
Looking up into her wet eyes, I feel her love and my heart is freed of all resentment. Her attention then turns to Astor.
“Things went according to plan?” she asks.
“More or less,” he answers slyly. “There were a few bumps in the road, but we arrived all the same.”
“The world stone is with your mother then?”
The answer he gives her shocks me.
“Yes.”
He looks at me, but I don’t know how to react. I search my mind for why he would lie to her like that. Based on my conversation with Julienne, almost nothing has gone to plan so far. We are only here thanks to a powerful and mysterious being who for all his efforts to portray himself as possessing the purest of intentions could very well be plotting a treacherous demise for all of us.
I am tempted to reveal the truth to Cassandra, but as I turn to her, I change my mind and glance back at Astor. His childish frame notwithstanding, he is older and in many ways wiser than the rest of us combined. He must be doing this for a reason I will simply have to get from him later. For now, our focus must be on Helena. There will be time for confessions once we get her back.
“We should return to the shelter,” the dark man says, stepping toward us.
He is tall and built so strongly that