Gillamoor, England
1838
It was a long time coming, they said. Gramma Drake had told me many times that it was a long time coming. I didn't know what it was, but all I knew was that the Norms* among us were talking about what would be the storm of the century.
But I was 10 years old, and I knew nothing about the passage of time. According to us Drakes and everyone else in the witch clans, time wasn't measured in years, especially the years of our lives. As a rule, most witches could live for 200 years; to die before you reached your 100th year meant that you were unlucky or unworthy.
As my companion Camilla Mallor and I wandered through the cemetery at Bethsaida, we chanced to see an old soothsayer standing in front of a huge grave. Camilla said, "Selena, I think we should leave. My mother told me that soothsayers are dangerous."
"But what if she knows our future?" I said. "I bet that the gods put her here to show us what our future will look like."
"You know that we're not supposed to know our own future, Selena," said Camilla. "If we do, we'll do everything to either make that future come true or avoid it."
I frowned, knowing that Mamma had abandoned me and my brother Phoebus and my sister Luna when a soothsayer had told her that she would marry a wealthy English lord. But the man Mamma had married ended up being a no-good idiot who locked her up in a gilded cage while he gallivanted with another man. When last I heard, Mamma had died a broken woman before I reached my ninth birthday; Gramma took my brother Paxton away from his father and had her nurses raise him.
"Selena, are you listening to me?" Camilla snapped as the storm clouds gathered above our heads. But the soothsayer had heard us; she turned to stare at us, saying, "I see you, Selena Drake! You're the granddaughter of Rowan Drake, are you not?"
"I am," I said while looking at the ground. Gramma had always told me to never look a Norm soothsayer directly in the eye, lest she trap you with one of her spells. "My mother's name is Clio Drake."
"Indeed," said the soothsayer as she grabbed my hand. She turned my palm up and read it, saying, "You will be known as the most powerful witch in your clan, yet you won't find much happiness."
"I already don't have that much happiness," I snapped as I stared at the woman. "My mother's dead. My littlest brother is a dwarf. My father leaves our home and goes on long journeys, and I don't see him for months. I usually stay with Gramma when my father leaves."
"I see," said the soothsayer.
But I wasn't done yet; I then said, "My father has promised me to Thayer Hawksley. When will I marry him?"
"Never," said the soothsayer. "You will never marry him, because he will marry death's daughter tonight. Can you feel it?"
"But will I never marry?" I snapped.
"Yes, you will marry," said the soothsayer. "But you won't marry a Mage or a wizard; you will marry a sorcerer."
"And what of our children?" I said.
"Five for you and three for him, yet you and him will have eight children," said the soothsayer. "Five of those children will never reach their majority, for they will die. And also, there will be one man who will have the power to take away everything that you love and destroy you. And when that day happens, he will grab you by the neck and squeeze you to death."
At this point, Camilla had heard enough. She grabbed a huge clump of mud and threw it at the soothsayer. As the woman recoiled from the mud ball, Camilla grabbed my hand and dragged me away from the grave, saying, "She's a liar, an awful rotten liar! Whatever she says about you is not true!"
"But what if it is?" I snapped. "You can't tell the difference between a fake psychic and a true soothsayer, so what makes you think the woman is a fake?"
"You can't believe anything these Norms tell you," said Camilla. "That's why so many of them are dying due to their willingness to believe every lie they're told."
"But the Norms in our lands don't pay any attention to the psychics and soothsayers," I said in turn, "not when they have the prophets and teachers to listen to."
Camilla glared at me as she thought about what I had said. Daddy had been a churchgoing man before he married Mamma and had my siblings and me, and he always made us go to church on Sundays, even if he wasn't home most of the time. Gramma never liked church, as she believed that those who worshipped the Supreme Being were the biggest liars and sinners of all.
But you can't say that to grandfather and grandmother, not unless you fancy them giving you a lecture about how you're a sinner if you believe in magic and if you think magic is harmless. I mean, what do they know about magic anyway?
By the time we reached the old village square (as Gillamoor had built a new square fifteen years ago), Camilla and I swore that we would never tell anyone that we spoke to the soothsayer in the graveyard. We would never tell anyone that Thayer Hawksley would die, knowing that my father and Thayer's father Alaric had arranged for us to marry when I was 8 years old and Thayer was 11. (But Mamma had objected to the marriage, as Thayer had been born a stunted, twisted hunchback. Plus, she wanted me to marry Bram Rowes.)
But I should have known that the soothsayer was right when she spoke about Thayer, as the storm hit our village as soon as I reached my house. Inside, my Gramma, my twin brother Phoebus, and younger sister Luna were in the sitting room knitting. (Or Phoebus was trying to get out of knitting. He keeps saying that knitting was "a woman's job", which I think is completely insane.)
"Boy, if you don't stop the complaining, I will grab that poker stick and tan your little hide," Gramma snapped as she stared at Phoebus. "You don't get to tell me what to do, and knitting ain't no woman's job! Now you get your butt back in that chair and start knitting or else your father will hear about it when he gets home!"
Phoebus was undaunted by Gramma’s threats. He said, “I'm not scared of you, Gramma! Do you think you can make me act like one of those stupid Norm women? Well I'm not buying that nonsense!”
“You better do what you’re told if you know it's good for you, boy!" Gramma snapped as she reached out and slapped Phoebus across his face. Luna snorted with laughter while Paxton stared at us, with his bright blue eyes darting around the room. I frowned, remembering what Mamma had told me whenever I voiced my doubts about my gender: "Do not allow them to shove you into a box; the minute you conform to the role society has dictated for you, that will be when you truly die." If only that had been the truth when Mamma had discovered that Lord Emerson Rothchester had deceived her and locked her in Goldbrand Manor outside London, where she quickly withered and died. (Gramma never forgave him for that; she took baby Paxton away from him after he was born.)
Just as I had reached the kitchen, a loud thunderclap was heard. At that, everyone screamed and dove under the kitchen table. Baby Pax cried; he did not like thunderstorms, not since a thunderstorm happened when he was born. Gramma stared at us from the living room, saying, "Now, now, there's no need for all this fuss, children. It's just old Mother Nature and Father God showing us who's really in charge of this world. Come out from under that table all of you."
At once, Phoebus, Luna, and I crawled into the living room and faced her, with me holding baby Pax, who whimpered as the storm continued. "Put that creature down, Selena," Gramma snapped as she stared at me. "But Paxton is my brother," I cried out. "He's afraid of the storm."
"Well, it's his own fault," Gramma snapped as she stared at me. "Your husband will have one black blotch for every time you've picked up that monster. You should have known that when he was born, didn't you?"
"But he's your grandson, Gramma," said Luna. "Why do you hate him so?"
"Because he was the product of your mother's suffering, that's why," said Gramma. "Because he was born, he is a curse on our family. Someone will come along and destroy us until we are wiped off the face of the earth. Beginning with you, Miss Selena Drake."
I gasped in horror as the reality of what was happening hit me. No one had told me that our family was cursed, not when I didn't know what that meant.
"Selena," said Gramma, "put down the creature or else."
With a sigh loud enough to shake the curtains, I set Paxton on the ground next to me. He looked at me with a strange look, as if he was asking me, "Why did you put me down?"
But Gramma wasn't done with me yet; she said, "It's time for you to learn that the world is not fair, and that includes dealing with Paxton. He's not your brother, no matter what anyone says. He's a monster who destroyed your mother and ruined every chance for us to get her back. He has no place here in this family."
"But Gramma," Luna cried out, "you can't say that about Pax! He's Mamma's son and our brother!"
"But he's not your father's son," Gramma snapped back. "And the sooner you let him go, the happier you will be. It would have been better for everyone had he died and your mother lived, but such things are not given to us. All we have to decide is what to do with what we have now."
She reached out, snatched Pax away from me, and went outside. By then, the storm had picked up to the point where the clouds had turned darker than night and the rain was pouring heavily on the earth. Thunder and lightning could be seen and heard. Phoebus, Luna, and I huddled by a nearby window as we watched Gramma holding Pax up to the sky.
But that wasn't the worst of it.
A nurse screamed in horror as she saw Gramma and Pax; she tried to call out a warning to them, telling them to get inside quickly before something terrible would happen. But Gramma did not hear her, nor would she acknowledge the other woman's presence. To her, she had to destroy Paxton or else our family would be doomed.
Just then, a huge bolt of lightning and a loud clap of thunder sounded in front of our house. Phoebus, Luna, and I covered our eyes, as the light from the lightning bolt was too bright; we covered our ears because the sound from the thunderclap was too loud.
But when it was all over, we stepped out the house, all three of us not wanting to find two charred bodies, especially if those bodies were of our grandmother and brother. But we went outside anyway, knowing that once we did, it would seal our doom that our grandmother had committed the vilest of all sins, which was to kill an innocent child. (Our clan cherished all children, be they trueborn or bastards; to destroy a child because it was born a bastard was seen as an unforgivable sin. And Gramma had committed that unforgivable sin indeed.)
One of the servants found Paxton almost 25 feet from where Gramma had held him. The lightning bolt had changed his brown hair to white and his blue eyes were almost white as well. Also, his skin was so white, it was blinding. Yet he was standing on his own two feet; he wasn't crippled or twisted in any way.
At the same time, our Gramma couldn't be found. Merida Shropton (the minister's wife) claimed that she saw Gramma being killed and vaporized in the attack. Most of our clan members (both men and women) shook their heads, wondering what on God’s green earth had possessed Rowan Drake to take her youngest grandson and offer him to the gods as a human sacrifice.
But Paxton's miracle was all people could talk about that night; many Norms took that as a sign that Paxton would become a great spiritual leader who would help the Christian Kingdom usher in a new reign of change. Well, that didn't excuse the fact that our Gramma was gone, possibly dead due to her grief over our mother's death and wrath that she felt, knowing that she had to raise her only daughter's twisted son.
And to make matters worse, someone working in a nearby field to repair the damage caused by the storm had found Gramma's body lying face down in a cornfield; she had indeed been struck by lightning and killed. But that wasn't the only tragedy our clan faced, as we also discovered that Thayer Hawksley and his nurse were also struck by lightning and killed. The Hawksley family was beyond devastated at this tragedy, as Thayer was supposed to be the first member of his generation to live in Gillamoor, where he would be expected to marry me and build a family there, continuing the Hawksley dynasty.
At once, Camilla said to me, "We should have done something; Thayer didn't deserve to die!"
"But he's dead," I snapped in turn. "He's dead because the soothsayer predicted his death. Plus, I can't marry him now, as the living cannot marry the dead."
"We should have warned the Hawksleys about this," said Camilla as if I didn't say anything. "We should have told them to keep Thayer safe."
"But that would mean admitting that we spoke to the soothsayer," I snapped in turn, "and you know we can't do that, not if we want to have both our lives compromised."
"But your life is already compromised," Camilla said in turn. "Now that Thayer is dead, the Hawksleys will still demand that you serve them, not as a wife. You will be forced to be a mistress to one of their bachelor brothers."
"Which is impossible, since everyone in that family must be married," I snapped. "And I won't chuckold any man from his wife."
As I turned away from Camilla, I looked up in the sky and saw a huge flash of color. It wasn't so much as a rainbow as it was a sign. A sign that the Drake family would go through some serious hardships; despite that, the Drakes always endured the hardships and came out stronger while those who seek their destruction are themselves destroyed. That’s just how it was.
Yet I wondered what it meant for my own future, as it meant that I had to give up everything I wanted in order to gain a life I didn't want...
Here's what happened:
After the storm of the century and the death of Rowan Drake, Selena, Phoebus, and Luna were sent to stay with Rowan's sister Kelly, who lived in the nearby city of Grimwich. Kelly saw to Selena and Luna's education and sent Phoebus to the Trotinns School of Wizards in Starminster Castle. (Trotinns was later renamed Gamaris Academy of Magic in 1876.)
As for Paxton, he grew up in the Bethsaida Chapel, where he stayed until he turned 18 years old. He never saw his father, Lord Emerson Rothchester; the older man had died of an opium overdose when Pax was seven years old. Pax also did not see Selena, Luna, and Phoebus for many years.
But the Hawksley family was furious when Kelly Drake decided to pull the plug on the arranged marriage between Selena Drake and Jeremiah Hawksley; Alaric had demanded that Selena marry his younger son after Thayer's death. Kelly and her husband, Oliver Ligarius, decided to marry Selena off to Stannard Bigley, whose mother was a member of the Graylight Clan. That union was also rejected when Selena's father intervened, saying that he would allow Selena to marry a man of her own choosing and on her own terms. The Hawksley family, outraged that Selena would not marry Jeremiah, began plotting revenge against the Drake family, as they were sure that Selena and her grandmother were responsible for Thayer's death.
But Selena's story hasn't ended yet, as we now see what happened to her when she turned 14 years old...
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