The Blood Jewel

The only qualm I have with my grave is that I cannot hear the sea. In all other aspects it’s really quite pleasant, at least in my imagination. I haven’t actually seen the place where I’m buried, since sight and other such senses have long ago been ripped from me, so I’m free to construct my surroundings as I see fit.

In my unseeing eyes, the hollow where I lie is small, the dark stone ceiling pocked like the surface of the moon, contrasting the wash of sand that ancient tides wore smooth. A small gap in the rocks leads to open air, where there is golden sunlight by day and silver moonlight by night. The sand sparkles in the patch of light the gap makes, making it look like a gem-studded palace floor. It is quiet, peaceful, undisturbed, and forgotten. Just as it should be.

Ah, where are my manners? I am the Blood Jewel, and I do not want to be found.

I was a woman once. A naive, foolish, silly woman. A woman who fancied herself in love with a man who could barely look her in the eye. My name in that life was Aegea, and I was a flighty thing with the sea at her feet and the salt wind in her hair.

I ran off with a man who wove a siren’s yarn of adventure on the waves, spinning the dreams in my head into a candy floss of pretty lies.

I followed him onto a ship, one with romantic white sails and dirty men with leering smiles. It was too late for me to turn back, and in that moment I grew up very quickly. I cursed the man with shifting eyes and I cursed myself for my ignorant idiocy.

They brought me to an island, and the captain coolly informed me that I was meant for sacrifice. He produced a blood-red jewel, holding it out to me so the light caught and splintered on its edges and facets.

“Blood for the Blood Jewel.”

There were cheers. The crew was hungry. Hungry for blood, hungry for the power prophesied, hungry to rule the seas and play at being gods of death.

One voice alone stood in dissent.

She, Maria, the lowest rat on the ship.

She begged for my life, but as the only other solution offered was her own, she shut up. I do not blame her for that.

Hers was the last face I saw as a knife slid across my skin.

Was I expecting heaven? Maybe not.

I hoped vaguely to be spared hell.

My soul slowly pulled its fragmented pieces back together, and I felt closed in. Walls surrounded me, hard and cool as crystal.

If I still had a heart, it would have sank. My blood was not the only thing this dark magic claimed. Souls. To take, one must also give. My soul, the slaughtered lamb, that these monsters might slaughter more.

And so they did. In their gruesome ecstasy, they turned on one another - any perceived slight magnified a hundred-fold, and the captain, with the jewel in its terrible glory still clutched in his fist, was the first target.

Death, everywhere death.

I, the jewel, was passed from hand to hand, clutched and clawed and grasped and snatched. There was no end to the power-lust that drove men onto their brother’s swords, and with each fallen man, the magic that held me fast grew, fed by its namesake.

The sun set, the fire of its daily death turning the jewel a thousand shades of red.

It was Maria who rescued me from the pirate crew and the agony of the blood magic that threatened to shatter my soul once again.

Maria, with a cruel slash across her stomach.

Maria, my savior.

She stole me from under the noses of the pirates resting in a shaky truce, when the fire was low and the blood and the rum had mixed the sand into a sticky sludge, and ran.

She ran along the sand as the tide rose, washing her footprints into the ocean. She ran under the waning moon in starlight and shadow. She ran until I could feel her heartbeat begin to falter.

Then, she began to climb. An ancient stretch of cliffs had thrown a temper tantrum eons ago, and flung itself out over the beach, leaving a maze of hollows and heights, all dark, sharp stone that bit at anyone who dared to explore.

Maria scrambled over the rocks, losing speed and blood. With every drop that fell and anointed the smooth edges of the jewel, the dark magic shuddered with delight, and my soul shuddered with fear.

She slowed only enough to double over in pain. She brought me close to her face and rested her forehead against the cool surface.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

Shouts sounded behind us and she shoved me into her pocket. She tried to run again.

They were faster.

I fell from her pocket as she darted in a sudden new direction. I fell into the crags, skittering over blade-sharp stones and sliding ever downward.

The last thing I heard was Maria’s short scream and the cries of a half-drunk crew searching for my familiar, blood-red gleam in the moonlight.

More death.

It was a year and a day before the last of the crew gave up the search. He was the only one left; the combination of time and greedy companions was not conducive to the lifespan of a pirate. If only he knew how close he’d come once or twice. How it would drive him mad to know he stood directly over my grave, his shadow blocking out the golden sun.

It’s been a long time since then that I’ve rested. Has it been a lifespan of men? More? The magic that binds my soul to this crystal prison is all but dormant, the sacrifice of my blood nearly spent. I know even when it runs out, my soul will never be free of it, not unless someone else is unfortunate enough to repeat my fate.

Which is why I have learned to be content. I cannot, even for the sake of my own weary soul, allow this tragedy to befall anyone else. I can make peace with empty eternity. I simply wish I was close enough to hear the waves.

I tell you this tale as a warning: do not trust men with a siren’s song and shifty eyes, and do not try to find me. The power I keep is only that of death and woe. Do not try to find me.