Guardians Awakening/Chapter Two/ In A Past Life

The next day, Verlaine is unrolling a Persian rug she found in the attic and coughing from the dust. “Note to self, before putting old rug in room always beat it out first. Especially after you’ve cleaned,” she says between coughs. Danielle had helped her look for things in the attic yesterday after they’d eaten lunch and they’d brought most of what Verlaine liked down already, even a few old books and a desk with a broken drawer. They were bringing the rest of the stuff down today while Ichiro walked around with the contractors to see what needed fixing. He’d already sold the last of their furniture from New York that they didn’t need any more and had brought all the remaining boxes and Verlaine’s guitar, from the move.

After Verlaine beat out the rug she rolled it back up so Danielle could send it to the cleaners, she began to unpack her boxes all marked Verlaine’s Stuff in sharpie. She unpacks two, and shoves the rest to the back of her closet with the suitcases. Now that her bathroom is filled with shampoos, conditioners, bubble baths, and the main essentials and her window seats adorned with throw pillows and paper lanterns she feels she is done for the day and decides to head outside. So grabbing her guitar case off the bed and shrugging it on, she leaves the room and runs downstairs.

“Hey, I’m going out, don’t miss me,” she calls as she pulls open the front door and dashes out. She bumps the ladder that one of the painters is on and it starts to teeter, surprised, she spins around to face it, standing on the top step. As her eyes catch the ladder she swears it stops falling and straightens itself; light flashing as it does. “Well that was weird,” she mumbles and dashes of up the drive leaving the painter on the ladder shaking in his boots and clutching the metal, his paint brush slipping from his grasp.

On a second thought she runs around the house, pulling out her phone, and straight to the cliff, stopping ten feet from the cliff’s edge. After tapping in her password she hits the camera button and takes a picture of the view, getting the cloudy sky, one big bird on the horizon, and the cliff’s edge as well.“Nice photo,” she smiles. She leans in to take another picture when a bird swoops down too close to her and hits her. She losses her footing and screams just as the bird turns and hits her again, this time sending her tumbling down the cliff side.

“Whoa,” she yells, dragging the word out. Blindly, she grabs at anything to stop her from falling. Once she grabs a branch and it holds her for a few seconds before snapping and sending her tumbling down the cliff side again. Not long after she stops rolling and hits her back against the sandy surface of a beach, thankfully she is nowhere near any of the rocks, but still gets the wind knocked out of her. She lays sprawled out on the sand staring up at the sky for a few minutes, groaning and in pain all over. Then the bird swoops down and lands beside her, its feather brushing he face.

Glancing at it, she sees that it has the face and size of a hawk, with sparrow-like wings tinted gold. Except it’s a silvery gray bird, and has a red head and black smears around the eyes. The eyes were black as well, rimmed with a steel blue. “What the heck are you,” she asks, not expecting an answer. If birds could smile she swears this one does, and it chirps, a metallic sound, as if it is chuckling. The bird pecks at her silver hair and lifts up a lock, tugging it. She swats at it, not really trying to hit it, just trying to get her hair back.

“Oh shoo, you can’t use this for your nest.”

It cocks its head at her questioningly then pecks at her hair again, tugging hard.

“Ouch, stop it.” She sits up and it hops back. “What, what do you want? Did your nest break or something?”

The bird shakes its head.

“Then what?” She looks at it for an answer.

The bird nudges its head to the left at the base of the cliff where an opening for a cave stands.

“You want me to go in there?”

It nods and flaps its wings. It heads towards the entrance and when she doesn’t follow in squawks at her.

“Fine, fine, I’ve got nothing better to do anyways.”

Standing, she follows the new species of bird into the cave, picking up her discarded cell phone on the way and pocketing it. She follows the bird into the cave, picking her way through the rocks and medium sized boulders surrounding the entrance. “Hey bird, do you know the way back to the top of the cliff?” The bird chirps and she assumes that’s a yes. A small voice in her head is telling her that she is following a bird and reminding her how crazy that looks and sounds. She argues that people talk to animals all the time, and parrots can be trained to speak back to people. “And if that’s still strange, I’m dreaming. At least the bird hasn’t talked yet.” Turning on the flash light from her phone she shines it around to get a good look at the leaky cave and the path in front of her. After walking for a few minutes through the mouth of the cave the bird leads her to the opening of three more caves.

“Which one do I go through?”

It squawks and flies to the one on the far left.

“Left it is,” she says, following.

This cave is narrower than the first one and longer. It winds only once and then comes out to a wide empty space with hooks for the unlit torches on the walls. Five torches, but no exits. She is just about to ask if they should go back the way they came when the bird flies over the middle torch six yards away from the entrance. It pecks at it so Verlaine walks over and grabs the torch, lifting it out of its holder. The ground rumbles and the wall shudders as a rectangular block in the wall slides up beside the hook.

“Wow, that’s so cool,” she says, returning the torch and following the bird through the new entrance. It slides down behind them so she tries to keep her exclaiming to a minimum so she doesn’t run out of air.

This new cave is just wide enough for two people to walk side by side without brushing against each other. It goes on for about seven meters and lets out on an edge. The bird calls to her to follow as it flies close to the wall, she walks along the ledge that isn’t narrow per say but not wide enough that she isn’t not afraid of falling. The only good part is that she realizes she can turn her phones flashlight off because the walls are glowing. When she looks around she sees that crystals are sticking out of the walls everywhere and when she listens closely she can hear running water. The ledge is like a long ramp that only goes down but she is sure there are other openings alone the wall, they’re just hidden. At last when they reach the bottom the bird leads her to what she hopes is the exit. It is not; instead it is a huge space with niches cut into the cave walls but nothing in the niches.

Verlaine walks alone a stone path with two streams running on both sides. The place is bright and when she looks up she finds the source of the light. Dozens of those ice-like crystals are glowing blue at the ceiling like a chandelier. A few crystals poking out of the wall are glowing green and slabs of stone sit beneath them. The bird flies over to the center and perches on the top point of a marble fountain while Verlaine spins around slowly, taking everything in.

She stares in amazement. “This looks like a coliseum.” She bumps into a raised dais a few feet from the fountain and the bird. “Ouch, okay birdie, I’ve bumped into and fallen into too many things here and not that the place isn’t beautiful and amazing but I’d like to go home now. Plus, I’m sure Mom is going to be peeved when she sees me like this, I mean look at me. I’m a mess.”

The bird chirps, and pecks at the scepter shaped top of the fountain. The water stops pouring from it and after a few seconds the ground rumbles again. Five holes circling the fountain open up in the rock and five statues emerge slowly from them. Each statue is of a woman. The nearest to Verlaine is of a tall, young woman who, when she glances down, is wearing high heeled boots. “Yeah, I feel you, shortness has its perks though,” she jokes. The woman has long hair that goes past her waist and holds in one hand a crystal ball hanging from a thread. The arm with that crystal ball is extending, while the other on is drawn in, holding an oval mirror.

“What is she the statue of liberty?”

The bird flies up above her and perches on the stone dais behind Verlaine who turns to face him. “No, young Verlaine, she is you.”

Gaping in shock and horror, Verlaine stumbles back, bumping into the first statue.

“Y-you talked, birds aren’t supposed to do that. Not unless you’re a parrot,” she says in disbelief.

“Well I assure you Mistress, I am no parrot. I am a Plutchart, a rare Ǽmezian bird. Of course I can only talk because of your magic. Thank you for that by the way, if it wasn’t for you it’d be very difficult to speak to those who need my assistance.”

“How is this even possible?”

“Because you made it possible, well, you in a former life. You see Verlaine, once upon a time, a little more than decade ago in Ǽmezi, you were that woman right there.” He points one of his feet to the statue she is leaning against. “A beauty you were, you don’t look much different now.”

“Thanks I guess, but that probably won’t be the oddest thing I’ll hear from you, will it?”

“No. In your first life you were the goddess Vidya, the only owner to the Heart of Yggdrasil and the leader to the Guardians of the Border, protectors of the twelve worlds. But you died, murdered by the evil king Sinthys. Your last task was to save the rightful heir of the throne and send her to earth. Now you are alive again and must find the other Guardians and end what was started nine years ago.”

“Uhuh, so who’s this rightful heir and is he or she good?”

“Good, I hope. She is Princess Ilene; you sent her to earth with Asina, your most trusted priestess. Sadly, Asina and I haven’t seen the princess and her attendants since she separated from them way back when Rome became an empire.”

“What the heck, how old would she be? Besides, didn’t you just tell me that this happened nine years ago?”

“The time in this world is different from the time in Ǽmezi. The people there live for what humans consider centuries. The princess might look like a teenager, possibly your age. Asina has only aged about three or four times, she looks like a human woman of early forties and she was only sixteen when she left Ǽmezi so there is no telling what the princess, who was six, would look like now.”

“What, so you mean to tell me the most important person from your world is missing and you don’t even know what she looks like? Do you even know if she is still alive?” She leans towards him, hands on her hips and eyes narrowed, angry now.

“If she wasn’t, then we would know. The Heart would’ve told us.” He gulps “I’m sure it would’ve.”

“What heart?”

“The Heart of Yggdrasil, your birth right. The Heart was given to you by Yggdrasil, when you were first born. Although you are the only one who can control it, it gives Asina and me a warning from time to time.”

“I see. If Asina is some hundred year old priestess that miraculously looks forty-something, then who the heck are you?”

“I am Torin, your familiar. Before you ask I was originally your pet but your magic made me able to speak the human language as well as the animal. I am an intelligent bird I assure you and I can do much more than just speak.”

“Alright Torin, can I leave now. I’d like to get home?”

“Not yet, I haven’t told you the reason I brought you down here.”

“Then spill it already and let me leave.”

“Fine, you are the most impatient of all Vidya’s reincarnations. You and four other girls in this town will start to awaken as your Guardian selves with the memories of your past lives. Your powers will appear and you will need to learn once again, how to control them, find Asina, she will help you. She lives in this town as well, one of her descendants will awaken as a Guardian, but Guardian of what, I don’t know.”

“Alright, I’ll keep that in mind when I start school Monday to look for girls experiencing a super powered version of puberty. Now can you get me out of here?”

“Yes, follow me.” He flies off the dais and heads to the back of the “room” to another dark opening.

“That’s what I’ve been doing all day.”

Once they have both entered the opening the statues sink down into the rock with a grating noise. The fountain begins to run again and everything is as it should be. Verlaine decides that asking how all that stuff got there is a question for another day as Torin leads her up an old, wooden stairwell running along the wall and at last, out of the cliff side and the caves. Looking around, she finds herself in the old well in Nona’s backyard and climbs up the three stone steps. She checks her phone, roughly two and a half hours have passed. The contractors, repairmen, and painters have done a pretty decent job in the time she was away, and Danielle sent her a dozen text massages. “Five missed calls, two from Mom, and three from Dad. They must be pissed. So much for turning over a new leaf,” she sighs and pockets the phone. She enters through the back door, surprised it’s unlocked, takes off her dirty converse sneakers and yells “I’m home.”

Instantly her parents come barreling down the hall and Nona down the back steps. “Where have you been young lady,” they all ask simultaneously.

She laughs weakly, scratching the back of her head. “Would you believe me if I said I fell down the side of the cliff?”

“But Verlaine,” says Nona. “It doesn’t take two and a half hours to get back up from there, there’s a stairwell for that exact purpose.”

“There was, so you mean I went through that cave for nothing?” Slumping over defeated, she groans. “Two and a half hours of my life spent wandering through stupid caves just to find out there was a stupid stairwell.”

“What cave,” asks Danielle. “I don’t remember there being a cave there.”

“What do you mean no cave,” Verlaine asks, shooting her head up, right brow arched.

“Maybe she hit her head too hard when she fell and was just knocked unconscious. Yeah that’s it she must’ve dreamed everything,” offers Nona.

“Yeah, I can believe that,” says Ichigo placing a hand on Verlaine’s shoulder. “Come on Verlaine, let’s get you cleaned up.”

“Sure Dad, but I swear I didn’t dream it. I was spirited away by this bird and—”

“Sounds like a lovely dream dear, but you’re awake now, you can stop believing it,” he says patiently.

“Yeah honey, we’ll let your disappearance slide this time alright? For now just get cleaned up, lie down, and I’ll bring you a cup of cocoa,” says Danielle, suddenly cheerful.

Verlaine glowers, annoyed at their refusal to believe her and also relieved at not getting grounded again. “Fine, but it was real to me.”

“We know honey, we know,” says Danielle.

As promised, Danielle delivered Verlaine a cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream once she was cleaned up and dry. So sitting in the window seat, wrapped in a red blanket, she leans against the window sipping the coco and staring at the stars. Minutes pass, and then she hears a tap at the glass. Glancing down she spots Torin and grins, happy that she hadn’t imagined what she’d seen and wasn’t missing two and a half hours of her life forever. She opens the window, letting in a draft of cool November air. Torin hops in and she offers him a cracker from the bowl beside her.

“Hey, what’re you doing here?” she says.

“Just checking to see if you are alright, looks like your wounds, though minor, haven’t healed yet.” He narrows his eyes at the band aid beneath her right eye while biting down on a saltine.

“What are you talking about? Of course it wouldn’t be healed already. No one heals that fast, except maybe, Wolverine, but he’s fiction.”

“The goddess Vidya healed instantly, she could even control her healing, delay it for a time to seem normal,” he says the word as if it is a bad taste in his mouth. “But I suppose you haven’t awakened yet, not fully anyways, so your healing powers must still be dormant. Oh well.”

“Huh, that’s actually kind of cool. But I don’t think reincarnation works like that Torin. If Vidya’s physical form could heal instantly then why did she die and why did her body burn to ash when the Temple was set on fire? Besides that, I don’t think my body would heal instantly because I have a human body, not a goddess’s body.”

“Vidya’s mother was human; she was impregnated by the tree Yggdrasil while she was dying in front of it. You saved her, your very existence is meant to save people. Anyhow, when Vidya’s body dies it comes back whole and new, but at the same age it died. She changed that, she sent her soul and all her power to this world and sent her ashes after to mix with a developing fetus.”

“Ew, how do you know all this?”

“You told me, when you were reborn for the sixth time.”

“Wait what, how many times have I been reborn?”

“This is the twelfth time. I believe you found the princess in one of those lives but the others weren’t able to be reborn. For centuries you have been the only one being reborn and this is the first time that the other girls have been reborn with you. That is a sure sign that it is now possible to defeat King Sinthys.”

“Wow, so wait, does that mean I’ve died more than thirteen times.”

“You’ve died exactly seventeen times, four of those as Vidya herself.”

“Wow, boy that’s a lot of times to die and come back. So that means she knew exactly where you go when you die, that means when her memories come into me I’ll know too. Cool, that’s like, the coolest thing ever.”

Torin looks at her as if she is crazy for even thinking such a thing. “Your mind was always impossible to comprehend, and your thoughts are just a puzzle even now when human minds are so simple.”

She smiles at him. “Oh, I have about the same IQ as William James Sidis, way higher than Einstein’s, if you know who these people are. I told my parents that I wanted to live a normal life so that’s why I went through all those years of schooling. I’m gonna be an author and I need the experience.”

“Mistress, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

She laughs. “I figured as much, you can just call me Verlaine though.”

“I cannot do that My Lady, I wouldn’t even dream of it. It is very disrespectful.”

“Suit yourself, birdy,” she says, taking a sip from her coco.