The Secret Keeper

Chapter 1-The Boy With Green Eyes

I flinched.

The whip’s sharp snap rang in my ears even after it sounded. Terrified at the prospect of meeting the hostile glares of the fellow human slaves, I stared at my feet as the enslaved approached the Mistress.

“We have completed the statue you requested us to build, Your Loveliness,” the leader of this particular band of slaves declared.

“Excellent!” the Mistress exclaimed. “Bring it in--let me see!”

I hazarded a glance in their direction. The leader bowed and led the slaves away.

The Mistress sighed mirthfully. “Oh, what an exciting day, wouldn’t you agree, Ellie?”

“Yes, Mistress,” I concurred, although blandly.

“Ellie dear, is something wrong?” she questioned lovingly. “You seem awfully quiet today.”

“I’m fine,” I assured her. “I’m just a little bit tired. Yesterday was…well…a lot to take in.”

“Oh, my poor dear! I shall instruct the slaves to make sure you get to bed earlier than usual.”

“Thank you, Mistress.”

She smiled at me and then looked ahead. “Wonderful! Look, Ellie! Here they come with the statue!”

I sighed and looked up, too. The representation of the Mistress was actually quite accurate. The thing was composed entirely of crystal. It had electric blue hair that fell to its waist, pink skin, and violet, cat-like eyes underneath very long eyelashes. Like the Mistress, it had a human-like body with arms and legs, hands and feet. In its long-fingered hands was a scepter with a multicolored crystal at the top.

“It’s beautiful!” the Mistress breathed.

The slaves bowed. “We are pleased that you like it, Your Loveliness. Where do you suggest we put it?”

“The garden would be a perfect place for it,” she said.

“Then the garden shall be its new home,” the leader agreed.

I looked up just as the slaves were leaving, which turned out to be a mistake on my part.

I spotted a boy about my age with long, light brown hair that fell gracefully into his green eyes. Those eyes narrowed as he saw that I was looking at him.

I quickly averted my gaze and involuntarily uttered, “Oh!”

“What was that, Ellie?” the Mistress asked.

“N-nothing,” I lied. I suddenly desperately wanted to get away, although I didn’t know why. When I took a risk to look up again, the slaves had left the room. “Um…I’m feeling very tired right now. If you would allow me to, I’d like to rest for the night.”

“Of course,” she said warmly. “I will retrieve a slave to escort you to your room.”

“Um…that shouldn’t be necessary, Mistress, but thank you.”

“Very well. Sweet dreams, Secret Keeper.”

I fast-walked away, trying not to take my eyes off the crystal floor. Why did I feel so troubled? After all, I had the best job in Crystallia--for a human, anyway. While most humans were enslaved and forced to do hard labor, I was treated like a princess. The Queen of Crystallia needed to treat me as such, or else there might be concern as to whether or not I would commit treason.

I was Crystallia’s Secret Keeper. The job is somewhat hard to understand, and even harder to explain. In its simplest form, a Secret Keeper is just that--a person who keeps secrets. But it goes deeper than that.

I know about everything that goes on in Crystallia. I attend no meetings between the leaders, however, nor am I ever told anything. But the Mistress uses her scepter to transfer knowledge--from secrets to general information--to me, and I hold onto it until she needs it. By no means am I allowed to tell anyone the information I receive. Why have a Secret Keeper, then? Can’t she just remember it herself? The answer is no; Crystallians have appallingly horrid memories, and even the Queen is no exception to the rule.

Not once have I failed to recall a memory she imparted to me, which pleased the Queen greatly.

“I knew that you were the one, Ellie,” she would occasionally tell me, her violet eyes filled with affection. “The scientists showed me several other potential Secret Keepers, but I had a good feeling about you.”

One thing that all the other potential Secret Keepers had in common was our excellent memories, which is clearly a necessary quality to have in order to be a Secret Keeper. But although the other two candidates had the same recall ability as me, the Queen liked something about me. She thought I was something special. I was “hand picked”, as she would often tell me.

I was thinking about the boy I had seen when I suddenly collided with something.

More accurately, it was someone.

“Sorry,” I said, looking up for a second to find that he was the same boy I had just been thinking of.

Why did I get this strange feeling when I saw him?

His green eyes narrowed, piercing into my brown ones. “Watch where you’re going, Ellie,” he snapped.

He caught my attention at the last word. “Wait…how did you know my name?”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, I guess everyone around here knows who you are. Queen’s little pet.” He spat the last phrase hatefully and looked down at the floor. He then looked up, and his expression softened. “So you seriously don’t recognize me?”

“Um…”

“Oh, forget it. Just forget it. They’ve got you brainwashed, Ellie,” he said, turning his eyes back down to the floor and storming past me angrily.

“Wait! What do you mean?” I called after him.

But it was too late; he was already gone.

I stood on the spot for several moments then finally continued to trudge to my sleeping quarters. I arrived at a long hallway filled with air-locked doors, found the one with the crystal numbers 3924 written directly above the metal, double doors. I punched in the combination to open the lock in a keypad located to the right of the door: 7690415. The doors fluidly slipped open when I pressed the enter key.

My room was very spacious, much more so than the other slaves’. A round bed with white sheets sat in the back of the center of the room, and a round nightstand stood to the right of it. To my left was a dresser filled with beautiful clothes, made by the most talented designers in Crystallia. I slipped into a silk nightgown, prepared myself for bed, and sighed happily as I climbed into bed. It had been so long ago since I had slept on an Earth bed, so I couldn’t quite remember what they had felt like, but I had a feeling that Crystallian beds were much comfier than Earth beds. In fact, it was so wonderful that I almost always forgot to turn out the lights. Tonight was no exception.

“Lights,” I called out drowsily, and darkness instantly enveloped me as the lights were extinguished.

That night, I dreamed of the boy with the green eyes. We were together, holding hands and smiling and laughing. I felt one emotion during the entire dream: joy.

When I woke up, I had a smile on my face, but it faded when I realized that I was having a déjà vu.

I could have sworn that I had had that same dream before.