Um... It's been a while, I know. Sorry... I spent a while on other ideas and neglected this one. But! Here is chapter eight! It's been quietly gathering dust somewhere on my memory disk, patiently waiting for this moment. C:
8. Karpen
“I suppose it is important that you know about my family,” she began. “My family were very important. When I was alive I was a princess. Then I became a queen, but I shall tell you of that later.
“It is probably difficult for you to imagine me as royalty, but royalty was what I was. The daughter of the richest, most powerful king and queen in our entire world. Those who ruled Charlington and Rouinkle were insignificant to the stretch of our empire; although Charlington was becoming more and more powerful.
“We were an important family. One that had ruled Darvia for so long it seemed our reign had begun even before time. So important, in fact, that we needed special guards who watched over us from the shadows of secrecy. Those guards were special themselves, as they were taught from birth the art of combat and necessary deeds, such as thievery, deceit, and the ability to appear seemingly out of nowhere. These were not the only traits which defined them as our guards. They were extraordinary. They had unusual gifts. The ability to heal from any wound. Anything, except…”
She stopped, suddenly gasping for breath. She managed to push the word out, as though its very utterance was painful to her.
“Fire.”
“Fire?” I echoed, sensing she needed a prompt.
She nodded, her eyes tightly closed. Then she opened them and quickly turned to me. “Please excuse me, Lady Amelia,” she said hastily, her eyes bright with pain. “I am no longer in fine humour to continue. Perhaps we could speak again later? Yes – later.” She made to lurch to her feet but I grabbed her arm.
“Alonsa – look at me.” That was an unnecessary thing to say as she was staring at me with huge, shocked eyes. “Don’t go running away. You said you needed to tell me what happened. You can’t run away from your pain. Trust me – it never gets easier. I-I know. You just have to … deal with it.”
“Deal with it?” she echoed, sounding surprised. It then occurred to me that maybe she’d never come across the phrase before. I frowned, searching for a way to express what I meant so she’d understand it.
“Yeah. You … you just have to keep swimming for the surface and hope that someday you’ll make it; that someday you are no longer trapped, unable to breath, under all your pain. That someday you’ll be…” free.
She looked down at her hands. “It is not only my pain I have to endure, Lady Amelia,” she whispered, as though sharing a terrible secret. “I am angry, so terribly angry… I… I am scared that this anger will come pouring out and harm everything – including you. Oh, Lady Amelia! I am scared of what I have to tell you! I am scared of what I have to recall! I am scared of how it will affect me after so long. I’m so scared…”
She sat with her head bowed, her hands limply resting on her lap. I saw a tear glisten silently as it rolled down her cheek. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. Seeing her so miserable, I could not help feeling the need to comfort her as if she were Maya or Moe. Or Jamie.
A distraction was what she needed. A good distraction. Also, I did want to hear her tale. I hate to say it, but her reluctance to continue made me even more interested.
“So, who were the guards?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light, as though we had not just been talking about the depths of our pain.
“The guards?”
“Yeah, the ones you were just telling me about. Are they the Karpers? Or are they completely different?”
“Karpen,” she corrected, almost automatically. She smiled a small, sad smile for a moment before she continued. “The Karpen were different. Like a new breed of people. Unfortunately, this new group of people were feared and only allowed to live to serve the King and Queen. They were considered filth, lower than the grime who filled our dungeons. They were kept in the dungeons until they participated in a special ceremony.
“I told you how they were alive only because they were useful guards. Every member of our family had a Karpe who would watch over us from the shadows of our lives. The most powerful one, Brauman, dreamt of when new Karpen need to be created. When the dreams came to him the kingdom celebrated. It meant in a few years a child of Royalty would be born.” She took a deep breath before she continued. “When it was announced I would soon be born the celebrations were grand. My mother and father had struggled to produce an heir. When I was born their faces must have fallen in disappointment. Cursed with a girl.”
She sounded so bitter! Her eyes were narrowed and her lips tight – the mask of resentment distorting her features.
She looked up at me, sensing my surprise. “Girls were powerless back then, Lady Amelia. The only way for my family to benefit from my birth was if I were married off to another wealthy family. Or to princes of the other insignificant lands that surrounded us.
“After my birth my parents tried for a son, but Brauman never dreamed again. They were distraught, but put all of their energies into moulding me into a lady. A worthy price to entice the highest of bidders.” She smiled a wry smile. “Unfortunately for them, I entered a ‘rebellious stage’ when I was only a few years older than you. It’s this stage I will tell you about, and of times relevant to my tale.”
“How long was this stage?”
“It lasted for many years, much to my parents’ dismay.”
Many years. Many years. “You can’t be serious,” I said in a flat voice. How long would I spend listening to her?
“I am very serious about all of this, Lady Amelia. Maybe you do not understand how someone like you is so rare. A tiny flower hidden in an overgrown rainforest. I have only been able to communicate with a small handful of people in the many years I have roamed my world and yours.”
“Yeah, you mentioned,” I muttered. “Why are you still telling me this? I said I’d help. I meant it this time.”
She smiled patiently. “I merely do not like taking chances when the stakes are so high.”
I thought for a few minutes, frowning furiously as I tried to make sense of it all. A question stuck in my mind. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I shook my head and asked the one which I knew.
“Why did you show me you falling over the banister? I know you were angry at me then, but why that? Is that how you…” died?
“No, Lady Amelia. From then on I was very careful around staircases. My lesson had been learnt. Every vision you have had has included someone very special. When I made you lose consciousness you remember I was not alone in that particular vision. He had grown somewhat older, but he still looked the same. Do you not think?”
The young man with the hat and the boy in the shadows were the same person.
“Oh. I – er – he was the same person. He – he was…” I stuttered, surprised by the revelation and struggling to put the pieces together.
“My Karpe.”
The words seemed to hang in the air for a few seconds before their meaning hit me. “Oh, but – but if he was…” I frowned, thinking of them laughing and happily wrestling for his hat. Weren’t the Karpen thought of as the scum of the earth? If so then why were Alonsa and him so … familiar … with each other? Why would a princess be snug in the arms of filth?
Alonsa had raised her head and stared defiantly at me. “Ravian was a good person. He was a kind, honest soul. The lords and the ladies and those who thought themselves so honourable had no right to treat him so badly. They had no right at all.” Her gaze seemed to bare straight into me as she added: “A good fortune does not make a good person, Lady Amelia.”
“Yeah, I know; money doesn’t bring happiness and all that.” I rolled my eyes. Hadn’t that old saying been engraved into our minds enough?
“It doesn’t, Lady Amelia. It really doesn’t.”
Said a freaking princess; had she tried living on hardly any money? I didn’t think so. Give me all the money; I really wouldn’t mind proving everyone wrong. It would be great, actually. I would drive up to them in my shiny, new car and laugh. “Ha! Money doesn’t make me happy! Good one!”
She sighed and stretched her arms above her head. “It’s late, Lady Amelia. It’s time for you to have real dreams.”
“You mean this isn’t a dream?”
“Yes – it is. I meant dreams that are little more than nonsense. Dreams where your mind isn’t active like you are awake. So I bid you goodnight, Lady Amelia. I will come to you again – soon.”
“Oh, okay.” I felt a little disappointed. I thought I was going to learn shocking secrets – the reason she had died! When really I had learnt precious little. Basically nothing.
“Tomorrow,” she promised.
“Okay. Tomorrow.”
She smiled at me. Then the surrounding world promptly began to fade. Everything solid around me became like air, dissipating and mixing like colourful wisps of smoke until all that was left was a tunnel of blurred colour. A tunnel I found myself suddenly falling down. Twirling around and around until all sense of time and place were lost. Until I was lost.
I was thinking I left this too long to start posting again...
