[Tyrana]: 64.Xaadn.Xaadn all at once

Xaadn woke with a bit of a start: Voices below…

“Thank you, sir. I will take everything into account and get back to you in due time. Now, though, we must all get some rest. One is quick to dismiss even the most important decisions in way of sleep at such an ungodly hour. Are you certain you want to journey home so soon, though? There’s more than enough room here, and with this weather…”

It was the voice of the proud, booming man Xaadn knew slightly as her… unofficial godfather by force, if you will. It was evident that he was quite intoxicated. As a result, Xaadn noticed, he had an outrageous, overdramatic, overacted, ostentatious twang to his voice. She mouthed these words in sequence to herself with a slight smile, proud of her bout of alliteration.

An older voice answered. This older voice wasn’t pitched nearly as low, and it was a great deal less abrasive. Xaadn thought she might even consider it to be gentle. In sorts, of course, for it was hard to be gentle in times like these. Perhaps the informal politeness of the older man led her to believe he was a gentle person. Perhaps she was overanalyzing the situation due to the fact that it had just then woke her from quite a restful sleep… Xaadn assumed the latter, of course, but such a transaction taken place so late at night must have been of some importance. So she fought sleep, and, on her new position on the floor over the two men, lifted one of the smaller slates just high enough for her to put her head to the ground and see the majority of what was happening below her.

“No, no… quite unnecessary. My driver will not be happy with me; neither will the poor creatures that have to pull me along. But I must get back home…”

A slight smile crossed his lips, and his voice softened.

“My grandchildren are expected to arrive tomorrow morning. Two little girls, you know. And nothing short of a tornado will keep me from being the first to see them. You understand. You have a small one around here yourself, don’t you?”

At this, he made a quick glance to where Xaadn was peering through the slate. Her heart froze. But the old man simply smiled, and gave a quick wink, but turned, so the bigger man, on the verge of complete drunkenness, didn’t give the slightest notice. Instead he shook his head.

“Xaadn. My sister’s daughter.

Illegitimate, of course. My sister was never one for… legitimacy. I either took her in, or she would have died in her mother’s keeping. Crazy woman, my sister. Not much better than what I can say for her daughter, I suppose. She’s a strange one. You saw her? In the downstairs garden, no doubt. Or the attic.”

“I did see her as a matter of fact, Master Nalnsyr. A clever-looking child. Pretty little thing from what I saw. She was writing. How old is she? Eight? Nine? Wrote at a devil’s of a speed that one.”

Apparently, the man had been here longer than she had thought. Then they must have waited some time to talk about whatever it was they needed to discuss…

“Twelve. She’s Twelve.”


The other man raised his eyebrows. “Twelve! Her mother’s a small one, then, huh?” He said, looking at the massive man in front of him. This man must’ve been a full two heads taller than himself, at least. And with the widest shoulders he had ever seen.

“Her mother…” He paused. “Xaadn is small for her age.”

The older man nodded.

“So she is. She’s a clever one, though. I can tell. I have a knack for such things, you know.”

“I have no doubt you know more than I when it comes to most things, Sir Kitram. But as I have observed, the snow has fallen at least another two inches from when you said you were leaving last. If you have any hope of getting home, you should leave as soon as possible. And with more of a jacket than that! There’s a terrific wind outside.”

This was true. With every pause in conversation, you could hear it beating up against the walls, tearing through the trees. It was nearly impossible to see through the windows now. The gusts were sweeping the snow in mountains against all sides of the building. The unaccustomed weight of it caused the walls to creak, which, when added to the sounds made by the wind, resulted in an eerie symphony of noises. Most of this, of course, occurred at night, which added to the eeriness, as darkness will often do.

“Why, I do say! How beautiful! It’s wondrous how such beauty can come about in situations that are so terrible, isn’t it?” Sir Kitram walked over to the window and squinted outside. Master Nalnsyr raised one eyebrow, and his head cocked slightly to the side.

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“Eh. I mostly didn’t expect you to. Old cooks like me just come out with these things now and again. You’ll understand someday, I’m sure. But I suppose I really must be going. I have a long way to go, and in this snow, I’ll be lucky if the time is only doubled.” With that, he scooped up the pack by his chair, and threw the remnants of his drink into the fireplace. It went up in green flame. (This made Xaadn very curious, and slightly frightened. She knew of no consumable fluid that did that.)

“Sir. A jacket. Surely…”

“I have no intention of coming all the way back here to return a jacket in a week’s time. I will be fine. I lived through the first storm, you know,” and with a wink, “Not to mention the trip here, right? Okay, then. My driver should be waiting for me. And seeing what time it is, he’s most likely very angry with me. I didn’t mean to keep him out so long. Be sure to find some way to inform me of the…” He glanced up at the ceiling. Just for a moment. “Did you say your niece played in the attic?”

“Sir. The snow. It’s falling as we speak. With all due respect, Xaadn isn’t important right now. She rarely is. You need not put a moment’s thought to her. Your diver will be up to his neck by now…”

“Xaadn is a clever child. My… I suppose she won’t be much of a child anymore in a few years, will she? I apologize, sir. I just take joy in children, is all. You have a remarkable one on your hands, I think. She writes…”

“Sir!”

“Yes, yes. You’re right. I’ll be leaving now. Be sure to send me results as soon as you have some. And get some sleep, master! You look as if you haven’t rested in weeks!”

With that, he hoisted the heavy pack onto his hip, and made toward the door. Before he left, he turned around to face Master Nalnsyr, and the small crack in the ceiling, once more.

“I don’t mean to bother you at such a time, but may I take the rest of those with me?” He said, pointing to the small tray of seed biscuits on the table. “I will not stop on the way home, and I already haven’t eaten much else today.”

“Of course,” said Master Nalnsyr. He grabbed the platter from the middle of the table. “There are only a few left. I have more over here. I’ll just be a moment.” He walked to the far corner of the room. Xaadn heard shuffling. When she looked back at the old man, he was staring directly into her eyes. He took a small instrument from his pocket and set it on the far corner of the fireplace with an equally small slip of paper. He then nodded to her, and turned again to the window. Nalnsyr came back a moment later with a small bag. “You’ll find a good number of biscuits in here, and some fruit,” He also handed him a little bottle, “To warm you up,” with a wink this time, which was out of character for him. Either the cheerful nature of the old man was mirrored in him, Xaadn imagined, or he was drunker than she thought. The old man smiled warmly at him, and shook Nalnsyr’s hand with both of his.

“I look forward to hearing from you.” He opened the door (with some difficulty, as the wind had beaten a great deal of snow against it), and stepped into the darkness. Nalnsyr closed it immediately behind him. No sense in letting heat out. He shook his head.

“Poor old bastard’ll be lucky if he makes it to the end of the drive.”

Xaadn’s eyes flicked back to the fireplace, where the… thing lay. It was about as high as her long finger, she decided. She was sure it was for her, as strange as it was. She lay perfectly still, watching through the slit as her uncle snuffed out candles and put stacks of papers and books in stacks. She was sorry she missed a conversation that was obviously very important. Or would at least give her some sort of clue as to what exactly Sir Kytram placed on the fireplace for her. She was terribly curious, and ways of getting to it unnoticed ran through her head as she watched her uncle finish up and leave the room.

As soon as the door closed behind him, she let out a sigh and dropped the slate back down. Both of her legs were asleep. She tapped on them gently to wake them up as she thought.

The people who lived here at her Uncle’s place (mostly government-related people in ‘high places,’ which didn’t interest her in the slightest) found her to be more of a bother than anything. Her uncle didn’t want her there, and he made that very clear. The people here tended to share his opinions when it came to most things. The ones who shared more of his opinions were known to hold the highest positions, to become more successful than the rest, to prosper. Those who didn’t… well… they didn’t. Unfortunately, Xaadn didn’t.


Her mother had been gone for years now. Xaadn was informed of her death after having lived with her uncle for nearly four years. Informed as more of an afterthought than a concern. Her mother’s life was indeed strange, and her death seemed to fit all too well. Her body had been found, though barely recognizable as even human, for it was nearly inside out when they came upon it, stuffed between two pillars under the small footbridge that adjoined the two little towns in the area. Xaadn believed her mother had come down with a fever, and had passed peacefully away in her bed when Xaadn was ten. In reality, the remains of her mother had been disposed of a little before Xaadn’s sixth birthday.


As soon as Xaadn’s legs were functional again, she scurried back and forth on the floor, first looking under the slate into the room she had been peering before, then lifting one above the hallway, then one above the retiring room, just outside her godfather’s bedroom, then back to the first again. She did this for a good amount of time, checking and re-checking, until she was sure she could make it downstairs quickly and quietly enough to take whatever was left for her on the fireplace, and make it back upstairs unnoticed. She would have to hide it, she knew. But hiding things was not something that was unfamiliar to Xaadn. The attic of the small castle was full of places to hide things. Xaadn had practically full-reign of the attic, which wasn’t much more than a crawlspace, and wasn’t even used for storage, save a few forgotten chests of blankets (which Xaadn made good use of, considering how dreadfully cold it got; especially lately, due to the unusually harsh winter). Most of the slates that made up the floor lifted up to reveal not only the rooms underneath, but several places in the rafters below where objects of varying sizes could be hidden. When put back into place, and the cracks were filled back up with a good layer of dust (which wasn’t hard to come by), the slates looked as if they had never been moved, and as solid as ever.
Xaadn checked under each of the three slates a few times more (For good measure), and when she was sure everyone was asleep, opened the hatch in the corner, and climbed down the narrow ladder.

The ladder led into one of the little-used pantries in the kitchen. When the kitchen was most busy, Xaadn could usually slip by unnoticed, sneak into the pantry, and up through the hatch, which she could conveniently lock behind her.

Xaadn opened the pantry door a crack to check outside. When she saw that the kitchen was dark and entirely deserted, she walked across it, and into the empty hallway. Running her fingers along a wall, so as not to get lost in the pitch dark, she made her way first to her uncle’s room. The cautiously pressed her ear against the door, all the while wishing desperately that there was a stone she could lift to peek inside and know for sure if the man was asleep. She heard no noise, however, so she then hurried down and across the hall to the room with the fireplace. She could hardly see her hand in front of her, but she had been down this hallway in the dark several times before, and it proved to be little trouble. She reached the door, and saw the soft orange glow under it from the fire, which had not yet died. The door had a crude lock, which had long been broken; Xaadn’s tiny finger easily slid inside to push the latch up. There was a soft click, and the door pushed open.

Xaadn felt the warmness of the room hit her like a wall; she wasted no time, however, in running quietly to the fireplace. The instrument still lay on the mantle. She picked it up in both hands, scooping up the bit of paper with it. It was unusually heavy, but she didn’t risk taking time to examine it quite yet. She scurried as fast as she could to the door, and shut it carefully behind her; lacking the key, she simply slid her finger in again to push the latch back down. Then she made her way back down the hall, through the kitchen, and into the pantry. She pulled the hatch down, climbed the ladder, and locked it behind her. She collapsed on a blanket, and let out the breath she wasn’t aware she had been holding for some time. When her heart slowed back down, and the acid lowered from her throat, she opened her hands.

In one hand she had a small crumpled slip of paper. Or, as it turns out, two slips of paper, folded together. One was circular, with tiny pin-point dots on it. There were arrows and circles and some very small writing. It appeared to be a map. The other slip of paper was even smaller, and said one word on it; (or so she thought). It was in a language she hadn’t even seen before. Roughly seven symbols in a row, and they all connected in some sort of bizarre scripture.
Xaadn set them aside, and took to examining the instrument further. It was… a cylinder. The top of the cylinder (or what she had assumed was the top) was very warm, but Xaadn figured this was due to the fact that it was on the fireplace for a good amount of time. There were four knobs running down one side in various sizes. The one nearest the top was larger than the rest, but still no bigger than the fingernail on her smallest finger. The rest of the knobs were roughly the size of one you might find on a watch, all in a row. It was all made entirely of some heavy dark metal, which, when caught in the rays of her lamp, reflected a deep red light.

Crossing her fingers and holding her breath, Xaadn gingerly touched the first knob, felt it beneath her fingertips, and turned. To her surprise (And in a sense, to her disappointment) nothing happened. She turned it a few more times, with the same result. Seeing that the first knob was hopeless, she moved on to the one below it. This one was too small to fit her fingers around, so she gripped it as hard as she could with the tips of her fingernails, and turned.

There was a click, and the top of the cylinder slid to the side, revealing the inside. Xaadn put her eye up to it, and saw that there was only a shallow space under the sliding top. This space seemed to be completely empty, though very warm. She found she could push the top back, and it would lock into place once again, and she could just as easily turn the second knob to open it again.

Xaadn then focused her attention to the third knob. This one, too, she could only move with her fingernails. It clicked once, twice, and at the third click, emitted a terrible noise. It was a high-pitched hiss, and louder than anything she had ever heard before. The noise seemed lighter and thinner than air itself, spreading in an instant to fill every crack and space in the attic. She immediately dropped the instrument to her knees and covered her ears. This made no difference. The hiss ripped right through her hands, piercing her ears, and flooding her brain. Terrified, panicking, screaming, she grabbed the cylinder and shook it blindly. The noise persisted. Xaadn saw red. Her head swam, and she became very dizzy. She desperately fumbled for the knob. She felt one between her fingertips, prayed it was the third, and turned.

The noise stopped. Xaadn noticed she was no longer on the blanket, but had made her way across the narrow room, and was curled up in the farthest corner. She felt something warm run against her neck. She put her hand to it, and when she pulled her red wet fingers back, realized her ears were bleeding. Tears ran down her cheeks, mixing with blood at the corner of her jaw. She stared fearfully at the tiny instrument that made what was undoubtedly the world’s most horrible noise.

That’s when she heard another noise. Someone was climbing the ladder in the pantry.


Xaadn scrambled back to the blanket to recover the two papers. She then fit the whole lot into her pocket, wiped the blood and the tears as best she could, curled up on a pile of blankets in a corner, and wished silently for the curious person to give up with the hatch and go back to sleep.
Xaadn didn’t know when the person left, for as soon as she closed her eyes, she fell asleep.


When Xaadn woke back up, she realized she hadn’t moved at all since she had curled up on the blanket. Every muscle in her body had been clenched all night, her ears rang and buzzed, and there was a dull throb in her head. The dried blood on the blanket and on her shirt proved that her ears didn’t stop bleeding until long after she had fallen asleep.

There were a few windows (Well… vents.) in the attic, but they were covered in snow. Xaadn covered them with blankets, anyway, to keep the cold out. She pushed a blanket aside, and knocked on the slats to un-stick some of the snow. The sun flooded through, but brought no heat with it, so Xaadn replaced the blanket, satisfied that she at least knew it was daytime. She next tiptoed over to a slate, lifted it, and looked into the kitchen. The smell of breakfast floated up through with the usual kitchen sounds, and her stomach immediately started to growl.

From what she could see, they were preparing an unusual amount of food. Apparently, her uncle was to have some more important figureheads for breakfast again today. Ever since his research was published, more and more people came to meet him and marvel at his experiments. These experiments, Xaadn understood, potentially would lead to some of the greatest discoveries in any course of history. Of course, as openly as everyone talked of them lately, she learned more and more about them as time passed. Being a curious individual by nature anyway expanded upon this knowledge.

From what Xaadn had gathered so far, there were two major experiments happening simultaneously, and both were prospering: One of them was spoken of quite openly, and in great detail. It involved some sort of paternal-memory transfer. It was believed that families had some sort of subconscious neural connection. And through some sort of electromagnetic-induced forced telepathy, memories and thoughts could be recovered from the minds of relatives; ancestors… The possibilities would extend to many different areas; History, psychology, crime investigation…

The other experiment was some sort of torture device, Xaadn was sure. It was not called that, of course. It was called many different things. She had only heard about these experiments through large amounts of spying. They were always spoken of between few people at a time, and in hushed voices. From what was said, however, these experiments seemed to be just as important, and would turn out to be just as revolutionary as the others. Which Xaadn found to be unusual, if not downright disturbing.


Xaadn couldn’t think of a way she could possibly sneak to her room from the kitchen, being covered in blood and all… But of course, she couldn’t possibly stay in the attic for another whole day, so she grabbed some snow off of the vents, and rubbed it on her skin and through her hair until she felt she looked at least halfway-normal. Though, she realized, it was exceedingly difficult to get out of her hair, as it had already stained in places. Xaadn ripped out the most of it, and combed the rest around as best she could with her fingertips.

Upon opening a second vent to collect more snow, she found that there was no snow on the outside. It was windy outside, so it wasn’t radically unusual. The slats that made up the vents, though, were warped, and some were in splinters. Figuring the wind blew another branch into the building, she reached her tiny hand in between two broken slats to grab a handful of snow off the window’s ledge. But then Xaadn saw the blood. Droplets of it on the vent, and small puddles of the stuff frozen in the snow on the ledge. Not hers, she was sure. It was on the outside of the windows, drops and puddles, and streaks of it. There were prints, too. They were tiny… Hand prints. The wind blew against the building, sending crystals of blood through the vents into Xaadn’s face. She gasped, and dropped the blanket back over the opening.


He heard it call out. It burned his ears, tore through his mind. He told the others. They flew.


Shivering, Xaadn pulled on some shoes, and brushed the red snow off her shoulders. She needed more snow to clean the blood off her arms, but there was no chance of her lifting the blanket again, and looking outside. She scraped the majority of it off with her fingernails, and her saliva did the rest.

 She kept a sweater upstairs as well for when the nights were unbearably cold. (She fell asleep in the attic a lot. She certainly spent more time in it than in her bedroom…) She slipped this sweater on over her shirt to hide the blood that had dripped. She then crossed her fingers, and unlatched the door to the pantry.

She climbed down the ladder, and opened the pantry door, narrowly missing a servant who was rushing with some ridiculous amount of fish balancing on a plate on his shoulder. He cursed, and bolted out of the way in time for Xaadn to slip out and close the door behind her. Once in the kitchen, she tried her hardest to blend in with the vast amount of people, and make her way across the room to the hallway. She got caught in a few paths, and was given several dirty looks, but she mostly got through unshaken. She also managed to slip a biscuit off of a table somewhere and hide it in her pocket. She wondered if it would harm the instrument, and then decided if it did, it wouldn’t be all bad. Anything that could make a sound that terrible…

“Xaadn, dear! What on earth has happened to you?!” When Xaadn had turned to avoid colliding with yet another rushing servant, she ran into “Fourteen”, who was one of the kitchen’s grunt-cooks, if you will… The fourteenth, incidentally. She and Xaadn got long okay. She was a lonely old woman, and enjoyed any company she could find. Xaadn looked up at her, forced a smile, and shrugged.

“You spent the night up there again, didn’t you? You have a nice bed downstairs. No sense in freezing half to death… And without supper, if I know you well enough. Here: If anyone asks, just tell them I gave it to you,” Fourteen said, pushing a small pie into Xaadn’s hands. “No worries of anyone stopping you this morning, though, probably. With all the bustle. Now you get to your room. You look as if you hadn’t washed for…”

Xaadn looked at her gratefully and scurried out of the kitchen, down the stairs, and to her room. Fourteen was as close a friend as she had ever had, and was more of a mother-figure than her mother had ever been.

When she was five, she came to live with her uncle, and had only seen her mother three times that year, and they weren’t particularly happy memories. Her mother came, and the whole castle became uneasy. Nalnsyr had never been fond of his sister, and in the last years Xaadn had seen her before she left permanently, she could almost see why. Her mother had become delusional and unstable. She spoke of star carriages, and space portals, and her ‘life before’, which were usually some completely incomprehensible tales involving creatures and events that quite obviously did not exist. She would often talk to people who were not there, and all three times she came to see her daughter at the castle, she was screaming and in strong restraints when they brought her out. She never spoke directly to Xaadn; never said her name. She never showed the slightest maternal love towards the child in any way, but still insisted upon seeing her.

The third and last time, however, Xaadn came across her accidentally. It was night, and they were wheeling her down the hall, evidently coming from the basement. Xaadn was told several times of how much of an embarrassment her mother was to Master Nalnsyr, and how they couldn’t direct her through the usual doors and hallways, so as not to frighten the Master’s guests. Apparently, she would enter through the basement.

This time she wasn’t walking. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t move. The restraints held her arms down at her sides, and the sedatives caused her pupils to enlarge, covering the entirety of her eyes. They shone silver in the light from the lamp. Her hair was half gone, and the rest was hanging limply around and over her face. Xaadn was terrified. Seeing her mother was something that frightened her anyway, and though this time, she was… quite calm… Xaadn had never felt so scared.

The servants who were pushing her cart didn’t notice Xaadn in the shadow of the hallway. But her mother did. She turned her weak head toward her daughter, and opened her mouth. A slight crackling sound emitted, but nothing else. Xaadn wanted to run, but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t take her eyes off of the living corpse that was her mother.

The servants wheeled her around the corner, and then she was gone. That was the last memory Xaadn had of her mother, and to the day she would die, she would never tell anyone what she saw that night.


Xaadn hastily shut the door to her bedroom, and licked the hot gravy that was streaming down her arm. Seeing no reason to waste time waiting for the pie to cool off, she filled her tiny stomach as quickly as she could swallow, and sat on her bed, warmed and full and happy. Upon checking her pocket, she discovered the biscuit she had swiped had some sort of fruit jam in the center. Surprised and pleased with her sudden bounty of consumable fortune, she devoured this as well.


Although her uncle didn’t care for her like the father he was intended to be, Nalnsyr wasn’t an entirely bad man. He was rather compassionate, in fact, although his… occupation… and his hard life had given him sort of a cold demeanor. He was just about afraid of Xaadn, almost a spitting image of his estranged sister, and having her scuttling around gave him no comfort. She was by no means a bad looking child. She was small, of course, and light-framed. Her eyes large and sad and black as ebony, and her pupils silver, which was unusual, but not entirely unheard of. Her skin was smooth and dark grey, and her hair so white it seemed to give off light of its own. He always saw her as someone who had stepped out of an old black-and-white photograph from before. Someone who had stepped out to take the place of his sister. He didn’t know how to react to her. How to treat her, to feed or educate her. He didn’t know how he would get rid of her.


Xaadn lay on her bed for a while, just daydreaming. She eventually fell asleep again. She dreamed. She dreamed of Nalnsyr and the old man in the sitting room. She dreamed of sky carriages, and people with wings, and bloody handprints on her windowsill.

She dreamed of that night as she often did. She saw her mother wheeled from the basement. Watched again and again as her mother opened her mouth, and emitted that dry, paper sound… Her mother’s eyes burned, hollow and empty, but following her daughter, nonetheless. Again, Xaadn was motionless, and forced to watch the wheelchair, the wheelchair with the straps, and locks, and buckles. The wheelchair with her mother in it. Forced to watch as her mother’s back was turned in this wheelchair, and see only what was left of her hair hanging over the back, hear the crackling sound dissipate as she rounded the corner… and see the metal spike. It looked like a large shard of glass, but gold. Xaadn could see the light from the lanterns flash against it. It had apparently been inserted in the top of the woman’s head, and had since been pulled downwards to the nape of her neck. It started to fall, and sliced further down.

Xaadn woke up out of breath. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and her arms were wrapped tight around herself. When she started breathing normally again, she opened her eyes to prove to herself she was really awake. She opened them to her little bedroom, with the curtains half-drawn, and the bed drenched with sweat. It was night now. She was surprised to see she had slept through the day. Especially with all the commotion going on. Xaadn, still a bit shaken from the dream, let out a long breath, happy to be alone in her quiet room. Alone… She swung her eyes to every corner, just in case. The last corner. That’s where he was sitting.

Xaadn’s uncle was sitting on a stool in the far corner of her bedroom. He had something in his hands. He was turning it over and over. He was chuckling. Xaadn just looked at him. She didn’t know what to do. He hadn’t personally been in her bedroom since… well… he had never been in her bedroom since it was her bedroom. He got up, and strolled over to the bed, his fist clenched.

“Well, then. It seems you’re awake. You also seem to have a… a chill. I wonder why that’s so? Do you know why, Xaadn?”

Xaadn was more confused than frightened. There wasn’t anything particularly frightening about her uncle. He was big and loud, but he usually took to ignoring her as much as possible. She was still half-asleep, and very drowsy. After all, she did fall asleep in the middle of the day…

“You didn’t answer my question, Xaadn. You know what? I’ll just tell you. You have a chill, because you spend the night in the attic. Or rather, you stay up all night in the attic, and sleep all day in your bedroom. Do you think that’s it? Is that why you’re cold?”

She really didn’t know how to answer. She had never heard her uncle say her name so many times before. She just looked at him. He bent over her face, and put something down on her chest. She looked down to see what it was.

“Recognize this, Xaadn? Is this what you were playing with last night in the attic? Where did you get this?”
Xaadn jumped, and tried to get up. Nalnsyr snatched the cylinder, and then grabbed her wrist.

“Do you have any idea what this is? Where did you get it? Did your mother give it to you? She did, didn’t she? You’ve been hiding it. I knew you would. I knew you would do this. She told you to. She told you…”
Xaadn shook her head franticly. Now she was frightened. Her uncle had never done this. This couldn’t be her uncle tonight. He was… so different. He wasn’t even yelling. Just… talking. His eyes dug into her. His nails dug into her.
“WHAT DID SHE TELL YOU?”
Xaadn, frozen to her feet, just shook her head. She couldn’t tell him the old man gave it to her. That she snuck down and stole it off the mantle…

Nalnsyr took his niece by the wrist, and dragged her out of her bedroom, and down the hall. Fortunately, she was too terrified to make a noise.

They went down several hallways. Xaadn, even with her extensive experience of the building in the dark, was lost. She didn’t know this area existed. It was as if her uncle was going through doors that weren’t there. Through walls…

A door opened, and she was shoved into a black room. Then the door shut behind her, and electric lights flickered on. Electric lights? Xaadn was unaware the castle had any electricity. She was unaware anywhere had electricity. She had heard of such a thing. Her mother described it to her when she was small. Since the accident at the hall sixty years ago, though, and then all this snow… electricity simply wasn’t practical. Nobody used it anymore. Maybe in the south, where the effects hadn’t been so bad. But they had both suns on their side now, so it was daylight most of the time there, anyway.

The room was white. So white, it hurt her eyes. What wasn’t white was gold, and shiny. When her eyes adjusted, she could make out actual objects in this glow. There were people. They were behind a pane of glass. There were a lot of people. Crowded all around…

There were three chairs. Gold. Funny chairs. No straps or clips, though they looked like they should have had them. Just plain and gold, with an area mapped out on the floor where one was to set one’s feet while in a chair. They were connected by wires to a huge white switchboard. There was a big white screen on one wall, facing the pane of glass. There was a table with a series of instruments, and another that was covered in paper. The floor was hard and white. The walls were hard and white. Everything was hard and white. The room was quite empty, especially for its size, but there was no echo. Only the buzz of the electric lights could be heard. Xaadn disliked it immediately. She turned to her uncle, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was busy at the pane of glass, talking to the people softly, motioning to her. They all stared.

He walked over, and set the cylinder on one of the tables, then turned back to Xaadn.
“Just like your mother,” he mumbled. “You will be… you are… just like your mother.”

With this, he picked Xaadn up. Picked her up! And set her gently into one of the chairs. He then turned back to his audience.

“This child’s mother was a disturbed individual. Her daughter, though she appears normal, carries some of these genetics with her. With these genetics comes the mental pathway between her and her late mother. There have never been any legitimate scientific attempts to communicate with the dead before now. But with this technology, people will no longer be able to ‘take it to the grave.” The audience was generous, and gave a slight chuckle. Nalnsyr continued.

“Children are a bit more fragile than adults, and it won’t take a lot of force to retrieve this information. The equipment might even be damaging to the child itself. Of course, these are just assumptions. This will be our first test. Notice the child’s inability to move. She has been drugged. This will ensure the experiment runs smoothly. If there are no questions, we will proceed.” There was a short pause.

“Very well.”

Xaadn’s head spun. She felt dizzy, then sick, then… angry. The white room twirled around her head, casting green shadows behind her eyelids when she blinked. It enraged her.

She started to see images. She thought at first there was a film being shown, for when she looked between her half-closed lids, the images were just projected on the screen. At first, these were images of the room she was in. The desks. The chairs. The people. The cylinder.

Then the images became more and more obscure. A pie. A window. Birds. Trees. Water… Then star carriages. They stood upright, there was a great fire beneath them, and they rose majestically into the air. Xaadn closed her eyes. The star carriages were there behind her eyelids as well. They rumbled, shook the ground, and roared into the clouds.

The audience mumbled to each other. Some of them shook their heads. Some of them laughed out loud. Others simply got up, and left the building. Nalnsyr panicked, raking his fingers across switches and buttons on the switchboard, calling out to the audience, dismissing the ridiculous images to the lively imagination of a youngster.

Xaadn was just angry.

Nalnsyr eventually got the place back under some control. Of course, the screen continued flashing bizarre images. Something that looked like a cat… sort of. With tall ears, huge back feet, and a small tail. The audience knew it was ludicrous. Xaadn knew it was a jackrabbit.

With every flick of the projector, the scenes became more fantastic. There were images of huge buildings that reached the sky, to bridges that spanned entire oceans, to cities underwater, and cities above the ground. They flashed steadily on the screen. The audience was appalled. Xaadn was angry.

The images grew faster still. People with wings, flying up to meet the sun. The one sun in the sky. People bringing themselves together in the sky, creating light. Creating suns. The screen flashed over and over with scenes of this sun-building. Of these people with wings… The images weren’t even visible anymore; they just filtered onto the screen as one big mass of color. Xaadn saw all of them. She knew all of them. Her head felt as if it would shatter. Her breathing became faster. Nalnsyr desperately flicked switches and pushed buttons. He turned the machine off. It didn’t matter. The projector kept going, fueled by some sort of outside energy, it seemed. It was the only explanation. The audience became disturbed and frightened. They left in bunches, or stared in horror as the electric lights burst, sending sparks, then leaving the room in complete darkness; save for the screen, which flashed even faster, if at all possible.

Xaadn let out a cry, then howled and screamed. The switchboard made terrible noises, and then let out a fireball, sending Nalnsyr clear across the room. The papers on the desk lit, and proceeded to send up embers which landed everywhere, spreading fire and smoke. The screen played on. Xaadn was still angry.

The screen slowed down momentarily. There were scenes of dark hallways, and wheelchairs, and lanterns. There was a strange woman in one of these wheelchairs. Her mother. She drooped over in that same way. Her eyes absent, her mouth open, crackling. She turned and stared at the scene on the other side of the screen. Then she was wheeled around the corner, that metal spike in the back of her skull.

She was dumped in the stream in back of the castle. Just dumped there. She lay for a moment, then got up, and stumbled to the bridge. She settled herself under it, and reached up to the shard in her neck. She pulled it out. Looked at it. She forced it into her shoulder, and down her arm, butterflying the flesh on the way down. Then under her arm, all the way down to her ankle. Her blood poured over the ground, melting the snow, filling the stream.

She went down her other side in the same fashion, but stopped at her hip. Here, she removed the spike, raided it at arm’s length, then plunged it into her hip-bone with amazing strength, causing it to crack, forced it apart, and proceeded down her leg.

Taking the shard in hand one last time, she pushed herself against two of the pillars under the bridge, reached around one, and cut from the bottom of her throat, down her chest, separating her ribcage. She stopped when it reached her abdomen, and her intestine spilled into the brook. She then gave one final push, and forced herself between the pillars, and stayed there in the flow of the stream until death.


The ceiling began to collapse. Rocks fell through it, crashing into the smooth white floor. A beam fell in front of the exit leading out of the glass box. The crowd was trapped. They weren’t looking at the screen any longer. They panicked. The fire spread quickly, igniting everything. The people behind the window screamed and cried, and threw themselves against the glass, all in vain. Perspiration and blood smeared across the glass in dirty crimson streaks, and then soon dried to brown as the heat filtered through. Most people fainted from either the heat or the smoke, and lay sizzling on the glass. The rest were beaten alive by the screaming hoard. Either way, they all lay dead in the end.

The ends of Xaadn’s hair, as well as much of her clothes, were already up in flames. She didn’t notice. She was just angry. She didn’t remember standing up. She didn’t remember finding her way out of the room, and down the hallways. She didn’t remember escaping the castle. And she certainly didn’t remember picking up that damned cylinder.


It was dark when she opened her eyes. Everything hurt. When she closed them again, she drifted back to sleep. She may have dreamed. It was hard to distinguish dream from memory from thought from anything else. They ran together. They ran fast. Xaadn stayed in her dream state for much longer than she had imagined. She stayed until the drugs filtered from her body. The drugs. When had Nalnsyr poisoned her? She didn’t remember. She was asleep that night, when he visited…

She finally became conscious and aware and fully awake several nights after she crawled frantically away from the ruined castle. Xaadn didn’t have any idea where she was, but there was a roof over her head, if a low one. It wasn’t especially warm, but there were blankets. As her eyes came into focus, Xaadn saw she was in some sort of large, overturned wooden box. Rims of dim light peeked under blankets hanging over the walls. Xaadn reached at arm’s length and lifted a blanket. The moon she could see was full, and on the horizon. She wasn’t sure of the others, but just that one cast enough light to throw her surroundings into view. From under the blanket, she saw she had to look through a bunch of trees to rest her eyes on the pitted orange moon. The ground was still covered with snow, which eerily resembled the surface of the moon itself. Orange light reflected off of the snow, making misshapen shadows around the trees, and making reflections behind Xaadn’s closed eyelids bright and violet.

Xaadn felt under the pile of blankets on top of her, and noticed she still had her sweater on, but now she was wearing trousers, and shoes. Her hair had been carefully pulled back and tied at the nape of her neck.

She was about to roll back over and rest her hurting self a bit more, when she heard the soft, familiar voice float in under the walls.

“Are you awake in there?” Someone knocked lightly on the side of the box thing she was under. “I don’t know if you’re rested, but I do know you must be hungry.”

Xaadn kicked off a pile of rough quilts, and searched for an opening in the wall under the hanging blankets. There wasn’t one, just a narrow crack at the bottom of the wooden barrier. When she lifted the blanket hanging on her left, she found that it didn’t have a wall under it, that it led to another blanket-swathed area. She was feeling under the blankets on the far wall of this new section, when the voice sounded again. It was laughing.

“Find the latch, dear. Near the bottom, sort of in the middle of the side, there. Slide…”

Xaadn finally rested her hand on a large wooden lever. She lifted it up, and pushed. Hard. The wall flew open, and she tumbled out onto hard-packed snow. The old man laughed harder. Xaadn frowned.

“Come on now, that was funny,” he said, helping her up by her forearms. Xaadn looked behind her, and saw she was sleeping in an overturned sledge. The soft orange light from the moon mixed with the light from the fire the gentleman was not sitting in front of. The light spilled through the open door, casting a flickering orange rectangle on the pile of blankets and stacks of books under the sleigh.

“You’ve been sleeping for… eeehhhh…” Kitram scratched his head. “How does your calendar work, here?” He pointed. “That moon’s come up three times, but the twins over there have flown around the place six times already. And the little blue one has only peeked at us once. And of course, we can’t expect the sun for a while, I’d imagine.”

Xaadn’s head was light and airy, and her hands and feet felt tingly and numb. The only thing she could think to do was shut the door behind her. She turned swiftly, and nearly fell.

“You can leave that open, dear. It was open just a little while ago when I was reading. I shut it so you would be safe when I went to get food. Speaking of food!” He held out a steaming wooden bowl.

She didn’t remember the wet snow, the sharp rocks. She didn’t remember crawling, clutching the cylinder against her chest with one hand, feeling for the ground with her other. She didn’t remember crawling faster when the small castle exploded, sending fire far enough to singe the ends of her hair. She didn’t remember following the tiny handprints. Knowing them, loving them; trusting them to bring her anywhere safe. She didn’t remember following them down the rocky slope, didn’t remember poking her head through the tops of giant snowdrifts, just to ensure she could see the indents of their slight fingertips, pushed lightly around their tiny palms. She didn’t remember them leading her across the bridge. The bridge. Even if she had, she wouldn’t have recognized the bridge. She would have only recognized the gold shard, jutting sharply from one of the pillars. She would have recognized it. She may have even seen it. She may have. She didn’t remember.

“Flee, it’s hopeless. The snow is too heavy. We can’t even go back the way we came.” Kitram squinted through the blizzard, searching for anything recognizable as a house, a road, or even a tree. “Aren’t we supposed to be in a forest? It’s a wonder we haven’t hit anything. Can you see at all up there?”

Flee turned herself around so she could almost see the little elderly man bundled in the back of the sledge. The snow was falling so heavily, the moment he talked, the words seemed pressed back against his face, and then fell straight into his lap, and never made it far enough to be heard by her driver’s ears.

“Too much snow!” She yelled. Her voice was muffled and flat, but her strong lungs pushed enough of her voice for Kitram to hear.

Flee was an enormous woman. She was kind and pleasant, and very clever. She was easily triple the size of Kitram, her arms sturdy, and bigger around than the old man’s legs. He stood slightly above her elbow. A mass of thick black hair was brushed roughly back from her face, and ran in a braid down her wide back. Flee had a lot of everything but temper. She had served Kitram for a long, long time.

Nalnsyr’s men had been surprised at Flee’s size when she and Kitram arrived, but before they even noticed Flee, they were surprised at what was pulling their sleigh. The two creatures harnessed to the front resembled horses… in a way. Very large horses. Their hair hung long and course and grey, and grew nearly everywhere on their massive bodies. In the areas around their eyes were hard black scales, like on a reptile. Nalnsyr’s stable workers were taken aback by the animals’ feet, which had three thick, grasping toes protruding from wide hooves. What they were most interested in (and slightly frightened of), were the two hard circles just in front of the ears on the creatures’ forehead, where two great horns must have been trimmed off. Kitram, in good humor, referred to them as his horses, so that is what they were called in his presence.

The animals’ size and mild demeanors led to the suggestions of Nalnsyr’s men that they were the offspring of some lucky horse, and Kitram’s colossal driver. None of them laughed over this in anywhere but private, though, for fear of upsetting the towering woman with the wild green eyes, or her elderly counterpart, who was said to make deals with Satan.


Kitram seemed content to eat in silence, so Xaadn took advantage of the situation, and didn’t make any attempt at conversation. The silence was interrupted by a rustling of branches behind Xaadn. Before she could jump up in fright, Kitram looked over her shoulder with a big grin, and beckoned the approaching Flee.

“We were turned around someplace. No big surprise, I suppose. Is this the brightest moon? We’ll head out again the next time it rises. Damn this planet and its moon seasons.” Flee mumbled more under her breath as she accepted a bowl from Kitram, and sat on a folded blanket next to him. Xaadn watched her uneasily. Flee sat staring into the fire for a while, then looked up at Xaadn, catching her glance. “Are you still hungry, darlin’? There’s no shortage of this goop.”

Xaadn nodded, and Flee refilled her bowl.

“Those monsters drained you half to death. Look how pale you are! Can you speak, or did they take your voice from you, too?” Although intimidating in appearance, Flee had gentle mannerisms, and a kind voice. Xaadn smiled.

“Now, Flee, let’s not pressure her. At least, not yet. She doesn’t seem like a big talker. Besides, we’ll have plenty of time for conversation. What better pastime for a long ride?” Kitram winked. Xaadn always felt that too much winking was annoying. It seemed to fit Kitram, though, to wink. Just as it seemed fit for Flee to nod matter-of-factly and resume eating.
The rest of the night was spent in silence, minus the cracking of the fire, and the occasional flip of pages from Kitram’s book. When the orange moon finally set, and the two white ones began to make their way swiftly overhead, Xaadn crawled back under the sledge, and Flee tramped back out into the woods, leaving Kitram with his reading.