Fated Loss Page 3

  The woods can't go on forever. If I keep walking, I will eventually come to the forest edge. Besides, the only forests that are left around here are the ones under reservation, and even those are small.

  I started to get up, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of blue then it disappeared. I scanned the darkness more slowly, looking for the blue light. It appeared again, and this time I had a good look… Was that a cerulean diamond in the trunk of a tree? I thought my eyes were going crazy, but I stepped closer and saw it was true.

  Just a few feet in front of me, there was a massive oak that was three times the normal size. The trunk was studded with multicolored crystals and gems that sparkled like stars in the dark. That is totally not natural. How can millions of crystals embed themselves in the trunk of a tree? I was tempted to think this was a dream or an illusion, but I knew better.

  Now to think after all that had happened today, I would stay away from things that have obvious signs of magic written all over it, but I didn't. However, I don't see a jewel encrusted tree every day, so I had to explore even though I knew this was a very bad idea.

  As soon as I reached the base of the tree, a golden halo of sunlight flooded around me and the Crystal Tree. It was like a huge invisible spotlight had flicked on and shone on only me and the tree. Everywhere else was as dark as before. Now in the light, I could see more details of the oak. The leaves were made of silver and gold that glittered in the sunlight. I couldn't be sure, but the roots seemed to form a rough stairway that led up to the trunk.

  I stood there with wide eyes until I forced myself to leave. I tried to turn around but found I couldn't. My body wouldn't respond, and it acted on its own. My hand reached out to touch the biggest flower-shaped diamond in the center of the trunk, and I couldn't do anything to stop it.

  As soon as my fingers made contact with the gem, the whole tree shook violently.

  The spell broke, and I stumbled back a few feet. I watched in amazement as all the multicolored light from the gems condensed and started swirling together to form a rainbow vortex right in front of the Crystal Tree.

  Then I felt a soft tug that got more insistent. I scrambled to my feet, turned around, and tried to run away. But it was too late. The portal had become a vacuum, pulling me in. Though everything else was still. The leaves on the ground didn't even rustle.

  I lifted my leg to take another step, but it felt twenty pounds heavier than normal. The portal's force got stronger, and I started slipping backward despite desperately trying to move forward.

  I just want to show you something, someone said in a soft whisper.

  I almost jumped out of my skin. I looked around for the source of the voice, but I was by myself with only the forest and the Crystal Tree…unless the tree talked.

  Yes, I am the spirit of Astella, the voice said. Please, I need to show you something.

  Even though the voice was feminine and warm, I still found it creepy. My legs shook. Compared to the fire episode in the school's bathroom, which I thought was the worst that could happen, this topped it.

  My voice was a pitch higher than normal, but I got the words out. “What do you need to show me?” I asked, humoring the spirit but not at all interested. Too bad I didn't have a choice.

  Come and see.

  I couldn't do anything to stop it, so I let go. Passing through the portal felt like walking into a beam of sunlight. But then the warm feeling changed, and I plunged into biting cold.

  ROSE

  Chapter 7

  The portal opened and deposited me on an ice-covered cliff. Huh, I expected to be zapped to nowhere, but I got transported here. Where is here? But before I could have a look around, my foot slipped on ice and went flying like one of those comical banana slips. I landed hard on my back and started sliding down the slanted cliff.

  “Oh, no!”

  I flailed wildly, groping for nonexistent handholds. But the rock was covered in a thick sheet of dark frozen water that was very slick. My legs slipped off the ledge. A few more seconds, then I will tumble down below.

  I flipped around so that I was lying on my front. If only I could summon fire again, I thought panicking. Right now, I don't care if magic wasn't supposed to be possible. I just needed to melt this ice. But I didn't expect it to work so well. Immediately, flames blazed in my hands, and I had to jerk them away from my face to avoid getting burned. I passed the fire over the ice and melted it.

  My torso just slid off the edge when I found a crack in the rock. I shoved my fingers deep into the crevice and hoped I wouldn't fall. For a moment I dangled there by one arm, looking dizzily at the town five hundred feet below.

  I scrambled back up the ridge and hunched over, panting. The cold air burned my lungs with every breath and had already dried the blood on my scraped hands.

  Once I got over the shock of almost dying on a supposedly normal Tuesday, I melted all the ice so that wouldn't happen again.

  “I am never going to try rock climbing,” I grumbled to myself.

  Now, what did the tree want to show me? I looked around, but all I saw was a run-down and neglected city covered with gray snow that reeked of tar… Unless this was what I needed to see.

  I couldn't make out many details, but if the city looked this bad from up here then down there must be ten times worse. Many of the houses were boarded up and had no roofs, and heaps of garbage were piled on the streets.

  At first I thought the town was deserted, but then I spotted a moving object. I squinted and tried my best to see five hundred plus feet away. I could only make out a walking humanoid shape with wings, but I knew what they were.

  I guess I can't deny the truth anymore. I am the one who wrote in that diary, I have magical powers, and my grandparents' conversation in the kitchen wasn't some kind of early April Fools' Day joke. This place was the last piece of evidence that proves faeries are, indeed, real.

  I looked down again and realized that the surprises weren't over. The round city was only the center of a giant flower-shaped land. Four petals stretched out into the distance. Each had a very different and unique landscape. The petal directly in front of me was covered with icy pine trees and small mountains. The left petal had a large frozen lagoon. Between the ice forest and lagoon, there was another. This petal had rolling hills and a river cutting through a valley. The one on my right was covered in black volcanic rock and active volcanoes.

  Every petal, except the volcano petal, was covered in snow. But that was only four petals. Don't flowers usually have five? My scalp tingled, and I turned around.

  “Oh…”

  I was standing on the fifth. This petal looked the most intimidating and treacherous by far. There were only looming, rugged mountains and jagged, icy cliffs with nothing else as far as I can see.

  The ground jolted sideways so vigorously that my feet swept out from under me. Fissures appeared in the ledge and widened as the land continued shaking. I watched as a volcano from the volcanic petal dissolved into black sand and was carried by the wind over a line of mountains behind me.

  I have a feeling that wasn't supposed to happen. Rocks don't just dissolve and turn into something else. This is magic, I reminded myself. Anything can happen.

  My cliff started to fracture and crumble. I jumped to another spot as the area I was standing on disintegrated. The rocks tumbled downward through the sky as a strong gust of wind blew. The boulders bypassed the town by an inch and disappeared behind a cloud bank…cloud bank. I am standing on a floating flower-shaped land. (Like my brain can take any more of this.)

  The rainbow portal reopened, and I leaped through. I blinked, and the magical, floating land was gone.

  Creeaaakkk.. I looked up at the park's welcome sign that was swinging above my head. It was like nothing ever happened, but I know what I saw. The wind picked up, but the cold didn't bother me anymore. Compared to over there, this was summer. I headed back home. My grandparents have some serious explai
ning to do.

  ROSE

  Chapter 8

  It was nightfall by the time I came home and an hour past my curfew. I hope Gramma and Gramp didn't worry too much about me. But the delicious smell of chocolate chip cookies wafting out the open window told me that everything was normal, and Gramma was doing her usual Tuesday night baking.

  I went inside and pushed open the kitchen door. I stand corrected. They were worried. Gramma always makes perfect cookies, but today a burnt tray of uneven chocolate chip cookies stood on the counter. And at this time, Gramp usually watches the evening news on the tube TV, but now he was anxiously staring out the window. The door creaked as it closed, and they turned around with speed that I didn't thought was possible at their age.

  “Oh, sugar pie! Thank the faeri— gods you are safe,” Gramma said. (She still calls me sugar pie even though she knows I am way too old for that nickname.)

  Gramp pointed a finger at me and wagged it side to side. “Young lady, you have a curfew you know,” he said sternly, but I could see he was relieved.

  “Sorry. I was too busy getting zapped to faery lands,” I replied.

  “What on Earth are you talking about?” Gramma's voice was slightly shrill, and it gave away her lie.

  “Yeah, it's not on Earth, and you know what I mean.”

  I told them about my hectic day. They didn't look surprised when I showed them my powers and the diary, but they did look concerned when I described how bleak and cold Astella was.

  “That isn't normal,” Gramma said to Gramp.

  “Yes, Astella must be in a desperate state, but we shouldn't dump the responsibility on her,” Gramp replied.

  “She found out and deserves to know. Her kingdom and parents are at risk.”

  “She is only sixteen. We are asking her to—”

  Gramma gently squeezed Gramp's hand. “I am worried too, but this may be Astella's only chance.”

  “Hello, still here you know,” I said interrupting their conversation. “Will someone explain what is going on?”

  Gramp rustled the thin white hair on his head and fidgeted with his glasses. “Ok, Rose, we will tell you the story. But I just want you to know that you have a choice not to go.”

  

  Gramma and Gramp spent the next hour telling me the story of my life. It felt like I was listening to a fantasy tale from a children's book, so I had a hard time believing it. And it didn't help that Gramp was talking in a very fast pace like he wanted to get this over with as quick as possible. Sometimes Gramma had to intervene and add important details. So their story was pretty choppy, adding to the implausibility.

  But it started when I was born. Turns out that before Gramma and Gramp moved to the human world for retirement, they were faery king and queen from my mom's side. On the first night of my life, Gramma and Gramp were watching over me while my parents rested. They were rocking me in a cradle when golden words, the prophecy, appeared out of nowhere and floated above my head.

  To darkness the world must fall

  But the mightiest faery of them all

  Will choose her own path to save the land

  Or all that she loves will not stand

  But in the final battle to the end

  More than just a friend's life shall end

  Nothing happened until my fourteenth birthday. When the fire Faery took over Astella, she erased Skylar's and my memories and threw us into the human world. Gramma and Gramp found us in the park forest by the Crystal Tree and took us home. They raised us themselves and told us our parents died in a car crash, so we wouldn't wonder where they were. But the truth was that Gramma and Gramp didn't know for sure if my parents are dead or still alive. They couldn't go back and confront the Faery because she had shut down the only portal to and from Astella. For some reason I must have overpowered the Faery's magic with my touch so the spirit of Astella can take me to see that place.

  Yesterday Gramma and Gramp somehow got a note from an anonymous faery. (Though there was no other way to communicate between Astella and the human world except for the closed portal.) The note said that Astella is falling apart literally. Faeries are starving, and everything is barren and cold. If any more faeries died, Astella had no point in existing since there would be no faeries left anyway. Astella is going to fall apart petal by petal if something doesn't change.

  The way that fire Faery is ruling also affects the human world as well. If I thought the weather was gray and cold here, in Astella it was ten times worse.

  “So what does this have to do with me?” I asked after they finished their story.

  “Rose, the diary appeared because Astella needs your help. You are the Savior from the prophecy. You can save the kingdom,” Gramma said.

  “What!”

  Now I understand why Gramp felt so jittery.

  “You mean I have to save a kingdom, rescue thousands of faeries, and overthrow a vicious queen.” My breathing turned quick and rapid, and I started to pace back and forth on the kitchen floor.

  “Calm down, Rose. It's not that you have to. It's your choice. You are not obliged to do anything, and you can pretend all of this never happened and live a normal life,” Gramp said.

  I took a few deep breaths and tried to push down the scream that was previously building in my throat. “Why didn't you tell me this earlier?”

  “If we told you before you found out, we could alter the future.” Gramp moved a chair out of the way before I could trip over it in my pacing frenzy.

  “So basically if I chose to, I would have to defeat whoever she is, save the kingdom, keep Astella from crumbling, and find a way to save the dying faeries. Sure, piece of cake. I can be home for breakfast.”

  “Yes, and if you do try to save Astella, you need to be ready by tomorrow morning,” Gramma added.

  “Why?”

  “Because before you try to reclaim the throne, you need to learn how to use your powers, and theTtraining academy starts tomorrow,” she replied.

  I collapsed into a chair. “Oh, just great! I suppose I can get a pair of wings there too?”

  I never thought about wings until now. It seemed like a small detail, but what is a faery without wings?

  “Oh, you do have wings. We all do including Skylar,” Gramp whispered. “Just don't tell her. She has to turn sixteen when powers start showing themselves or find out for herself. Also, we don't want her getting pulled into the complicated world of faeries just yet.”

  I nodded in reply. Though I would have a hard time hiding anything from Skylar. She can drag the truth out of people.

  Gramma chuckled. “Sometimes it's annoying how our wings are hidden in the human world. I am getting old, and I occasionally forget to summon them when I need to.”

  If this was some other day, I would've laughed because Gramma did look funny when one time I saw her jumping up and down for a plate out of her reach. But today all I felt like doing was to crawl under my covers and hide forever.

  “If you want your wings to appear, you have to summon them.” Gramp closed his eyes, and a few seconds later a large pair of green and yellow wings sprouted from his back.

  Gramp winked at me. “You should see your grandma's wings. They are beautiful.”

  “Oh, stop.” Gramma blushed, but I could tell she was enjoying a little flattery.

  A moment later multicolored wings appeared on Gramma's back. The wings looked like a miniature sunset with orange, pink, purple, and yellow all swirled together in a lovely pattern.

  “Wow, Gramma,” I said. Gramp was right. I guess Gramma still has a little style left.

  “Try it, Rose,” Gramma urged.

  I closed my eyes and attempted to summon my wings, but subconsciously I was thinking, this is ridiculous. I opened my eyes again and looked at my back. Nope.

  “You have to believe, Rose,” Gramp said.

  You mean wholeheartedly believe faeries are real, I can conjure magic, and I can save a kingdo
m from a sinister fire queen?

  It was all hard, maybe impossible, to believe. Especially the last one. I know Gramma and Gramp's story explained everything that had taken place in the last two days. Sure, I was a faery, I could conjure magic, but do I believe it? Oh, I know they are real, but knowing the truth and believing are two different things.

  I thought back to how my life was never normal. How I can't remember anything before fourteen, my magic closet, the nightmares. Now I finally know the explanation to every quirky thing that had happened, and I still wasn't ready to believe in faeries and magic because it was easier to deny the scary truth than to accept it. It's easier to pretend that, yes, this is real, but it is happening to somebody else.

  But I don't have that kind of luxury. I have to accept who I am, and I am Rose, the Savior of Astella.

  My back tingled. I opened my eyes and looked over my shoulder. The beautiful rose hue was the first thing I noticed about my wings. But when I shifted, they caught the light, and the color turned deeper but brighter all at the same time. It was gorgeous except…

  I ran my fingers across the blackened edges on top of my wings, and a section of it crumbled. There were also a few holes the size of quarters.

  “They are pretty, but what happened?” I asked.

  “The battle before that Faery took the castle.” Gramma shook her head sadly. “She must have burned your wings.”

  Well, if they were this dazzling now, I wondered what they looked like before getting torched.

  “How do I make them hidden again?”

  “Easy, just dismiss them,” Gramp answered.

  I tried, and my wings immediately disappeared. “Thanks for explaining. I need some time to think,” I said as calmly as I could, but I felt like my stomach was twisted into knots.

  “Just remember, Rose,” Gramma said, “it's your choice.”

  Gramma's tone was warm and neutral. No matter what I choose, I knew she wouldn't be disappointed in me.