Starlight, Ch. 2

It was the middle of the day, and I was still slumped against the chair in the kitchen. I’d stayed up all night waiting for my father to come home because I didn’t want him to be locked out. He was a rambling drunk most of the time. He probably forgot what day it was. I was woken up by a pretty young woman shaking my shoulder. My shock was met with plenty of apologies.

“Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to break in, the door was unlocked, and I saw you through the window, and oh I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s alright Miss, I apologize for worrying you. What are you doing all the way out here in this backwater town?”

“I came to meet Kalash. We’ve been in correspondence for a month now. I wanted to meet him in person to discuss the plan. Since this is his address, I’m assuming you’re related to him?” she sat down at the table, and I got up off the floor and joined her at the table.

“I’m his son. My name is Jem, it’s nice to meet you,”

“Lovely to meet you as well. My name is Sunchia. I’m known by a few as the Sun Mage. I traveled all the way from Osmore just for this,” the woman told me, shaking my hand. She was wearing yellows and oranges. She had no scarf on her head, which I thought was odd since she claimed to be a mage. On her robes, there were golden charms of the different phases of the moon. Her skin was tan like she had spent her whole life working outdoors. Her hair was a dirty blonde color, half up in a bun at the back of her head, and the other half hung down to her waist. It was wavy and frizzled. I’d never met a mage who wore their hair down. It was supposed to be sacred to them or something.

“Good to meet you as well. How did you become acquainted with my father?”

“We share similar views on the war,” Sunchia said. There was no official war. In his radical beliefs, my father believed the brief war that started years ago never ended. Sunchia smiled brightly at me. Her teeth were perfectly straight, and a glistening white.

“So that’s why you wear your hair down? Because we are at war?”

“Of course. Mages wear their hair down when we are at war,” Sunchia said. All the people keeping the war alive were crazy. I’d been dealing with my fathers crazy since I was training with a wooden sword. He was like a cult leader. A charismatic cult leader, to be fair, but a cult leader nonetheless. How else would he get the young and beautiful Sunchia to join in on his antics? I only went along with his antics because I believed that Osmore was a corrupt nation, full of hate and evil. They declared war on us over some minor issue, then massacred our troops in the streets, and when they ran out of things to kill, they told us the war was over.

***

My father had been recruiting people for his cause since I was young. When I was six or seven I remember he brought home a woman. It wasn’t my mother. My mother smelled like baked goods and coffee. She always announced her presence to me. She was soft. This woman was anything but that. She didn’t even look the same. My mother had dark skin and bright eyes. She wore her hair up all the time, away from her face. She had soft features and a thin figure. She hugged me. This new woman never did.

This new woman was pale. She looked sickly in her face sometimes, the skin under her eyes sagging, and the color in her cheeks gone. She had a full figure, with big hips and a tiny waist she cinched with a corset. She had brown hair that was chopped short at her shoulders, and bangs that covered her eyebrows. She wore white most of the time and a red choker around her neck. She never hugged me. She smelled like cigarettes and dirt. She looked at me with disdain and disgust, like she couldn’t imagine why my father kept me around. She didn’t stick around. I remember a conversation she had with my father once. It was a few days before she left.

“Kalash, I can’t do this, you’re horrible,” she had cried into her hands. My father put a hand on her shoulder.

“Oh, but it’s so right Elzebel. Don’t you see it?” he said.

“You are the worst thing to ever happen to me, to Eltrine. It’s like you want war.”

“Don’t run, Elzebel, don’t go to Osmore. They are the enemy, you can be safe, here, with me,”

“I’m going, Kal. And I’m never coming back. I will not do this,”

“Elzebel, ” he said as she stormed off.

“You kill Kal. You’re no better than them,” she yelled as she opened the door.

“Come on Elzebel,”

“You’ve ruined me enough Kal. All I can hope is that when you fall, you don’t drag our entire county down with you,” She told him. The day after, she hugged me for the first and only time. She still smelled like cigarettes, but it was a warm hug, almost like my mother's. I was sitting outside against the fence, watching the stars. She sat next to me. I drew circles in the dirt with a stick. I wanted everybody to leave me alone.

“You poor sweet boy. I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m going to Osmore. My sister says she can find work for me in the capital. Would you like to come with me? Escape that horrid man? I know how he treats you. He’s a manipulator. I just, couldn’t see it until it was too late,” Elzebel said, hugging me closer,

“I know, but he's my dad. I can’t leave him. I wish I could, but I just can’t. It’s my dad,” I told her. I wanted nothing more than to get up and leave with her at that moment.

“I get it kid. If you ever need anything, come find me. I’ll be in the capital of Osmore. If I’m lucky I’ll get a job at the castle. Consider yourself my family,” I don’t know what happened to Elzebel. All I know is that when one leaves, my father goes out to replace her with another. The first thing he would do to me is deny that the current woman was being manipulated, and claim that they just understood him. The second thing he would do was blame me when the random girl he brought home wasn’t intelligent enough, or too immature. The third thing he would do is drink copious amounts of alcohol when the girl inevitably leaves.

***

“Where is your father anyways? He told me he’d be here today. Do I have the date wrong?” Sunchia said.

“He’s never back when he says. He’s a lying drunk,” I told her. Her bright eyes drooped down.

“Well, you’ll have to do then,” she said. I tipped my head.

“Huh?”

“You share his beliefs, do you not?” Sunchia asked, placing a hand on my shoulder.

“I do,” I said cautiously.

“Perfect. If he’s late, he doesn’t get to be a part of the biggest event in all of history,”

“What?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Well,” Sunchia walked her fingers across the table, “We’re going to assassinate the royal family,”

“And you’ve officially beat the Kal record of crazy plans,” I said. Sunchia giggled.

“The caravan leaves tomorrow. We have all manner of weapons and assassins from across the continent. Kal was meant to take down the Great Mage. He told me he had some sort of weapon that would be effective against a magic user,”

“I know what he’s talking about. It’s not a weapon. It’s an old piece of junk that he keeps lying around in the shed,” I got up from the table and led Sunchia to the shed in the back of my yard, where Kal kept most of his junk. I cracked open the door, and cobwebs and dust fell to the ground. I groaned. Why did my father never clean this place? There was a workbench to the left of the shed, with a few unfinished woodworking projects, and some loose pieces of leather. There were tools lying around, along with a few long empty bottles that must have previously contained alcohol. On the other side of the shed, there were larger tools hanging on the walls, and open hooks where other tools should be. Kal was never very organized. In all honesty, neither was I.

The second floorboard from the back of the shed was sticking up in one corner. I took a whittling stick from the workbench and jammed it into the crack in the floor. Sunchia watched me with great interest. I pried the plank up a little, then grabbed it and yanked it all the way off. Under our shed was a box containing our most prized possessions. My most prized possession, a pair of beautifully crafted blades that had been enchanted to curse whomever they cut. And then my fathers. A dingy little coin. Sunchia inspected the coin, then tapped it twice against the side of the little shed.

“This is enchanted,” she said.

“How can you tell?” She wiped the dirt off the front side of the coin and handed it to me.

“Normal coins don’t move,” she said. The man on the coin, the first King of Osmore, a liar and a fool, was on every coin in the kingdom. I never understood why my father had a different kingdom's currency. In this coin, he wasn't posed for a profile picture. He was looking at me straight on, blinking and moving his eyes.

“Holy mother,” I whispered.

“That right there is a curse coin,” Sunchia said. I raised an eyebrow. “If you're holding it, and you say a certain incantation, it renders the curse found inside it true,”

“Kal’s plan was to flash a coin at the Great Mage of Osmore?”

“I guess,” Sunchia said.

“Oh come on Kal,” I grumbled. I picked up the blades that I kept in the shed and exited the tiny little hut with Kal’s dingy coin. This might just be the stupidest thing I’d ever done.

“You might want to pack some warmer clothes. Osmore gets cold at night,” Sunchia said as she walked back towards the back door to my house.

"Wonderful mess you've stumbled into now, huh Jem? Now we've got to go kill a Mage," I said to myself in a mocking voice, quickly shutting up when Sunchia turned around.