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Note: I changed some stuff from the last post, so if it seems a little different...just keep that in mind. thanks!
PROLOGUE
It was 250, the Year of the Dark Eyes, which was exactly five hundred years ago.
I was borne to a family on Xetok, a royal family that is, perhaps the most powerful, richest royal family on the entire planet in all of time. I had two sisters – the eldest Kartika, the other Anastasia – a mother and a father.
Then I met the aliens.
The aliens have been there forever, as long as we could imagine, from the days when our anceint planet was called Earth. We have never seen them before, as no one else has, but we knew they were there. However, they have never disturbed us, so it didn’t matter.
That all changed one day when I walked outside the palace walls, out into the villages that our parents had ruled. And that was what had changed my life forever.
Along the streets I met an elderly man, so old and yellowing I pitied him, for he looked as though he was going to die. He was crossing the wet, raining streets, and slipped on a little puddle of water – he was surely going to die if he fell over, as if he wouldn’t already die from his present state.
I remember how I rushed out to help him.
“Oh, princess!” he exclaimed. “You saved me!”
There was something unusually inhuman about him, but I couldn’t tell what it was at the time, besides the point that he looked fragile to the point of collapsing. When I straightened him up, he said he would reward me for it.
He said that if I took the yellow gem that was in his hand, I would get anything I wished for. Absolutely anything.
The gift sounded a tad odd to me, but I couldn’t resist it. After all, who wouldn’t want their wish being fulfilled?
And I had a great wish. A giant, enormous wish that would be impossible to fulfill under normal circumstances. Except…was this normal circumstances?
For so long, as the youngest one of the family, I was often looked down upon, not treated as seriously as the rest. I hated that. I absolutely hated that, and, as sudden as a strike of lightning and as quick to spread as a disease, my want turned to a hungry desire that I could not push back.
I didn’t think about the possibilities that the old man has been playing a trick on me. I didn’t even wonder if the man himself was crazy, and that I was falling for the greatest mistake on the planet…all I wanted was the gem. The gem, which could be the solution to all my dreams…
“I wanted to be the strongest, most powerful queen on the earth!” I said loudly.
I immediately grabbed the gem, and immediately felt more powerful – like I was in charge of the world. The old man changed, too: becoming more green, his skin more stiff and scaly, strange iron-like feathers out of his back, also with spikes and thorns. His eyes turned a pure, hideous black. But I hardly noticed; the strength growing inside me was overpowering; I couldn’t see anything around me, and felt something within me growing, growing like a ball of fire and a sheen of something like pure gold enveloped me until I couldn’t think of anything at all. It was only until later that I saw the seemingly impossible change in the old man.
From then on, my life changed irrevocably. Things became more evil, as I began to see things that I haven’t noticed before: ghosts, strange shapes and creatures that lurk in the darkness. I immediately became fierily angry at everyone; cursing my oldest sister, Kartika, to the bottom of the Warzit mountains as a hideous beast, along with her many friends, who changed as well. I changed her name into Nuagua, a name only for demons; she and her few would not leave the Warzit mountains for as long as Xetok exists.
I also cursed my other sister into the depths of peoples’ dreams, and changed her into a monster of nightmares, who – and her peoples – would never see the light of day again.
My parents saw all of this happen, and were astounded. So they took their last breath and were no more.
I have never even considered the evils of what I have done, never even considered my sudden change from when I was a little princess to when I had been given my gifts.
That all happened less than thirty minutes after my change. And when I grew older, I was granted a bigger kingdom in the middle of the sky, only seen when the moon is full. That way no fool of a human would dare enter my presence; they would be fried alive before they even take a step within my grand palace.
Yet one day, when I was enjoying my pleasure, a young dragon visited my golden kingdom. I would have burned him to pieces if it weren’t for what he was going to say.
“Your kingdom is prosperous right now.” He said. But then he gravely continued. “But it soon would be no longer. Many bad things are going to happen, my Queen; beware.”
“How dare you say that!” I snapped at him. “What would bring my kingdom down?!”
“A single young girl,” he said, his eyes far away. “Somewhere in the future, a young girl would bring your kingdom down. A girl no more than a decade old, with fire for her hair and the sea for her eyes, and red stars twinkling along her nose.”
I did not believe him. In a moment, within a flash of light in my golden power, the gnome was no more than a pillar of golden ice – a statue that was well suited for my castle.
Nothing could stop me. Not a gnome, not a girl, or any other beast can come even close to destroying me. I am too powerful for that – and I will reign as long as time goes.
For I am the great Queen Medara.
Part One
CHAPTER ONE
MY SISTER’S DEAD
6:19 IN THE MORNING. DAY 28, THE YEAR OF THE SINGING DOGS. YEAR 750
Melissa Horiek stood up on her bed and looked outside. Horrible. Simply horrible.
I can’t believe it, she thought. Tears formed at the corner of her eyes. The dark, cloudy sky looked even blacker than before; no other sound except for the sounds of her clock and the distant sounds of wolves perturbed the silence. Even the noise of nosy counselors coming over to comfort her parents had vanished. Melissa shook her head for the twentieth time, and sat back down on her bed with an angry thump for the fiftieth time that night. I just can’t believe it.
It couldn’t have happened. It couldn’t. After all, what were the chances? That your mere fifteen year old sister would die in a bus crash on her way to school? That even the most reliable school district has failed to keep her alive?
Rumor all over the place said that the bus driver has gone nuts – drinking Yizbal, they say. Only previous research has stated that the driver must have been drinking the alcoholic drink for plenty of years; and although students come to school and back home safe each day from this bus driver without even expecting a thing, that day, that one day that Jennifer happened to go on it…well, guess what: it crashed.
Melissa felt so hurt, mad, and like she was going to burst out crying that she banged the wall. Hard.
OUCH! She thought, immediately pulling back and waving her now red fist back and forth. Even with all the pain she had within her, it just didn’t seem possible that this physical one would hurt too.
“Melissa?” she heard a voice calling for her from behind the door.
“Come in,” she sighed.
The door slowly creaked open, revealing a sad and tired looking woman, still dressed in her pink and blue polka dotted pajamas, her hair fuzzed up in curlers. Melissa saw this and at once tried to smile, feeling all guilty and stupid inside. Of course. It was her mother.
“Are you okay?” her mom asked, a little wrinkle snuggling between her two eyebrows. “Melissa, is there anything wrong?”
She tried to smile, but, in the few hours they have been mourning so far, she seemed to have forgotten how to smile. “No, no, everything’s fine,” she lied.
“Are you sure?”
Melissa nodded again – a bumpy, bobble-head kind of nod – and sat on her bed again, resting her chin on her collarbone, closing her eyes trying to look sleepy. But she couldn’t. How could she? There was way too much in her mind right now.
All she needed to be was alone. She could take care of this herself. She always could.
She sneaked a glance at her mother through her peripheral vision. Even if she could take care of this by herself, surely her mother didn’t realize that. Yet.
Just to think: Only a few days ago, she and Jennifer were still at the pond trying to catch frogs, slipping them into girl’s lockers while they were still out playing. Remembering them both laughing hysterically when they found out….
“Why did it have to happen to us?” Melissa finally croaked. Her voice sounded like an old granny’s’. “Why do all the girls in our family have to die?”
Her mother came forward, smoothing her daughter’s mahogany red-brown hair. Usually Melissa would shake her hand off; she wasn’t really the type that would enjoy something like that. But tonight she didn’t even bother.
“I have no answer for that.”
But still, Melissa couldn’t help it. Was it really their fault that each time a child in their family died – which, so far all of them did except for the youngest, Melissa – that they just came up from the dead again?
Her mother looked on, looking across the plain of starry fields’ right outside the window. It was as though she was trying to search for a world in which there was no curse to devastate, either.
It all started over five hundred years ago. King Fredrik was a young king – better than all the rest. He had led the Shamians in a way that no other king has done: full of peace, always thinking of every single one of his citizens.
Though, no one knew about his past – or the past of his father, his grandfather, or any of his ancestors. Such a thing was a complete mystery to the people of Sham.
They said that , one dark, pitch-black summer night, in which everything was covered in complete darkness except for the shining full moon overhead, the king has received a letter – a letter with a gold seal of a circle with a dot within it, and three lines sticking out of the circle, all equally spaced. On the end of each line were two curls branching off of them. Without so much as a warning, he went on his legendary stallion, the one that had a mane that blazed like fire, eyes that were deep like the sea; which, according to the legends, was just like the appearance of King Frederick – except across his nose were red freckles like stars.
“I may not come back anytime soon;” he said to a young maiden, her name Annabeline. They were engaged, but it turned out that the two may never see each other again. “take care of my country for me. I will put my trust in you.”
She asked him where he was going, if it was dangerous, if he was going to be safe there. Yet the only thing King Frederick said was that an ancient enemy was going to attack, and he needed to stop her, for the sake of his kingdom.
He was never seen again.
But it wasn’t long that, precisely ten years from the disappearance of the king, that, during the stroke of midnight, a guard protecting queen Annabeline had seen a gold-sealed envelope – the exact one that their king has disappeared with years ago.
According to the legends, it had read:
Your king is dead. After all, such a one like him does not deserve such power! From this time forth, I will set a curse on you: Who ever deceases in your country will not remain deceased; they will rise up again as new ones. And from this time forth, who ever decides to continue their magic, they cannot!
No one knew why this enigma set a curse on Sham, but the effect on the guard was immediate. He began to get his eyes all bright, and then he turned to stone. Yet before he was completely deceased, he managed to cry out of the castle window:
“Zonyabanyi! Ash-gaweh!” he shouted in the language of their time. Which, translated, meant: “Beware! An incredible danger is upon us!”
Melissa suddenly woke up, her eyes wide with surprise; shaking her head with such shock. The words of the story her father and mother had told her years and years ago had echoed in her head. It flowed freely, haunting her. She turned, and realizing that her mother was shaking her shoulders.
“Melissa? Melissa?” Her mother cried. “Melissa, are you okay?!”
The girl tried to pry off her mother’s fingers, putting the most reassuring look on her face. “Mom, it’s okay,” she explained, her grin turning sheepish. “Just had another bad memory, that’s all.”
Her mother let out a wistful sigh. A tear streamed down her pallid cheeks, dripping daintily off her chin. “Lissy, you worry me sometimes,” she whispered clutching her daughter in her arms as if she weren’t ever going to let go again. “How did you just zone out like that?”
Melissa shrugged, not at all disturbed by the strength in her mom’s arms. “Talent,” she replied.
They just sat their for a while, absorbed in their memories. It was a very peaceful time, where there was nothing but warmness and thoughts in the air, and Melissa felt herself soften so much that she felt she could cry again. It seemed possible that the very calmness was mending her broken heart…
But all too soon, her mother broke the silence.
“Oops, look at the time!” her mom then exclaimed, looking at her ever-present pearly yellow watch on her wrist. “It’s almost time to get up and go to work! Melissa, make sure you take care of yourself well. Good bye!”
She was in such a rush to get out of the room that the moment she was gone that Melissa felt like an empty space was in front of her.
Melissa looked up at the door, now swung open, and found herself staring at it blankly. On normal circumstances, no one would let their employee go back to work hours after his/her child has just died…but Elizabeth Horiek’s boss was no human. He was a blind, thoughtless, apathetic Cursed One that thought of nothing but himself and did nothing but roll around like a log and drool like a helpless baby, which, in essence, he was. By no means did he care if one of his many employees had a dead relation.
But that was what Cursed Ones were like. There was no helping it, which was one of the many things that drove Melissa absolutely crazy.
And everyone knew that, for a loved one to first die and then, somehow, some way come back to “life” once more would not only be painful to the people who once knew them before but to everyone else around them. Because once they came back to “life” again, they were no longer the person they once were before. They would become emotionless, useless, someone without personality and about as human as a piece of driftwood. Plus, sometimes Cursed Ones would become so crazy that they could start murdering everyone that comes in their way…
The empty space that used to be where her mother had been was turning practically unbearable. It was almost as though a phantom had taken her place and now spent its’ time glaring at Melissa as though she was the one who didn’t belong there…she sighed, and with a thump, laid back down on her bed again.
“This is so hard,” she groaned.
The story still managed to haunt her, even though it was many, many years old and not many people believed it anymore. The stories were getting rusty, and even so, when it was first told during the time five hundred years ago, hardly anyone listened to it.
The Shamians’ view of the world was blurred now. They had lacked their interest in finding out about it, in reaching for knowledge even in their little part of an island. It was as though the sudden “curse” thing and the mysterious disappearance of King Frederick has suddenly diminished their curiosity or…like some how, some way, they just forgot how to do that. It was as though someone put this thing in their minds that said, don’t think about how the Cursed Ones came to be, don’t get outside of Sham, just stay in here. It sure seemed like that, to Melissa Horiek. Because whenever the topic of the King Frederick Incident was brought up in any place, in any conversation, people some how carefully avoided it by all means. If it was because they were afraid to be reminded of their future, Melissa would quite understand that. But there was something more to it. Like something came to a sudden halt the moment the curse was upon Sham.
Everyone liked to avoid the topic, that was true. Except for Melissa Horiek, that is – possibly the first one in centuries not to be so afraid of such a thing. And that was what caused conflict with her so much. No one understood her, and she hardly understood anybody.
Most often than not she felt like an outcast.
And most often than not the normal people of Sham looked upon her like she was more like a wild animal with nothing but savageness within it than a real, living girl. A girl that felt like everything around her was falling apart, or maybe that she herself was causing this wreck, but that it couldn’t be her fault; it couldn’t. After all, why blame her that everyone else was just as ignorant as pieces of driftwood with no concern of anything?
Melissa sighed, having the feeling one would probably get if he or she could feel bags coming under their eyes.
I wonder what Jennifer would be like if she came “alive” again, just like the other Cursed Ones? Melissa thought dazily. Right after she got her darned Accident…
That’s what people in Sham called deaths before eighty. “Accidents.”
Oh, but how lucky all those seniors are! Yet then, what would it feel like to be all old and weathering when everyone around you was yet “younger” than you? Would that make you feel older than ever, or….smaller than ever?
She decided it didn’t matter. As long as another family member didn’t die, it would be alright.
Melissa went to open the window, and breathed in a cool gust of fresh air. It felt dry in her throat and bitter in her mouth, so she closed it again and went downstairs. Once she checked the oven clock, she knew her mom was right.
It was 6:30; time to get to school.
School. Melissa groaned again, and for some reason, had a feeling that if her mother was there, she would be driven mad.
Education was not the very best thing for a mourning person, either.
After packing lunch and her schoolbag, she was out the door.
Melissa ran through the dark of the trees, hoping that no one saw her dashing figure as she speeded along the forest. There was hardly any light to guide her way, though the path was terribly familiar. It was a route she took day and night to get to and from school. She knew this by heart; even the first time she came, she had a vague feeling of where to go. The wind guided her way down the hill, into the trenches, into the valley of where the small school of Eastern Sham lies.
Was that what her Accident going to be? Getting mulled by a wild creature of some sort?!
But when she did get there, she could not believe her luck.
There, right there, was her sister Jennifer.
And she wasn’t even buried, either.
“Jennifer!” Melissa shouted, and sprinted towards her as fast as her legs could possibly carry her.
How come they didn’t even bother burying her? In normal circumstances Melissa would probably have some kind of tantrum on a calamity like that, but right now she was much too excited and shocked to get into a fit.
“WHAT happened? Why didn’t they bury you –" She shouted at her sister, trying to catch some light in her blank goldfish eyes, and once she realized that there was no point in reanimating a corpse, she sighed and sat back down on the grass. Her heart was pumping madly like jackhammers against her chest. There was no hope. Oh, man she thought, feeling frustration when small molecules of tears began to form at her tear ducts. Not now, please, not now…
But then, slowly, as impossible as it was, Jennifer’s eyes turned, along with her head. For a moment they caught Melissa’s.
They were completely white.
And then Melissa was sure. She was completely sure.
Jennifer – Jennifer Horiek– was, without a doubt, a Cursed One.
Jennifer opened her mouth, as though to say something, but the only thing that came out of it was an inhuman groan; something that belonged more to a monster than the what-used-to-be sister of Melissa.
And as the girl saw this, she screamed.
I know, it's kind of bad. But I don't know what to do about it...
You should say "peoples'". You should tell the reader that the princess herself became more evil. And how could her mom and dad not know of this?
. Good luck with the rest of it.