Richmond, Virginia
1865
The thing I had dreaded has finally happened.
America is at war. But not with Russia or Britain; it's at war with itself.
Let's see what happened here:
I'm sure you all have heard about David's trip to Richmond, when he was on his tour of the States. (Apparently, the czar thought the president's demands were too over the top; he sent David to Washington D. C. to investigate the situation.) I did meet President Buchanan, and he was as pleasant as an unwanted snake living in a pair of boots.
You also may have heard the story about the incident where a wealthy landowner decided to give David a few of his slaves as a tribute. That deed went as well as you expected. David was outraged when he was given those frightened young people as his gifts, but Leo took it a step further when he beat up that horrible man. (Leo was 12 years old when that story happened.) Before five minutes were over, Stannard and Damon had restrained Leo and Babs was scolding him for overreacting (even if she was angered by the thoughtless gesture), but it was too late. Derrick Carroll was crippled for life due to the beating, but everyone who lived and worked on the plantation all claimed that he got what he deserved, as he was cruel to his family as he was cruel to his slaves.
But the story wasn't over yet.
After the disastrous trip, David cut the tour short, saying that he could no longer support a country that oppressed a certain group of people and got away with it.
But that wasn't all that happened; he finally had a good reason to declare war on America.
To start, David had brought our family back to London, England, which I knew was a very bad move. (Remember when I told you that I was kicked out of England for my role in destroying the Hawksley family? I was told not to return to London under pain of death.) I decided that it would be better if I went to the Trichenberg family home in Tortmain Fortress, where it was hidden by prying eyes next to the Trevusk Wood near the village of Tergaron. There, no one would know that I had gone from being Selena Drake/Lady Sarah Farrington, the disgraced daughter of Sir Lucius Farrington and Clio Drake to Lady Selena Trichenberg, the wife of Sir David Trichenberg.
But that wasn't to be, as King Ihon had received news about our arrival in Eirebul; he had David explain to him why he needed to build an army to attack America, which he felt needed to be punished for enslaving and abusing the African people. The young slaves Laurence, Enoch, Georgiana, Rosalie, Landon, Minerva, Matthew, Reginald, and Amelda had told the royal court their stories about living in America, from Amelda's mother being beaten to death by her father and brothers for giving birth to a white man's child (Amelda's sister Raileigh, who also came to London with us), Landon and Minerva, two teenage sweethearts who had planned to ask their master for permission to marry before David came, and Laurence, who was abandoned by his family during their flight to freedom when he was two years old. They also told their stories to Queen Victoria’s court; many people who heard the stories were outraged at the treatment those young people had received at the hands of Derrick Carroll and vowed to help put an end to slavery in the United States so no one would have to suffer anymore.
Within a few months of the incident in Richmond, I gave birth to a set of twins named Remington and Virginia. At the same time, the Atlantean army was building a fleet of airships to mount an attack on America; those airships were named after the signs of the constellations. Magorious (who was with us during this time) said to me, "Now that you have seen firsthand what slavery has reduced those people to, are you sure you don't want to destroy the country that has enslaved them, oppressed them, and dehumanized them?"
"I do," I said, "but I also can't help but think of the innocent people living in that country. Those people have done nothing wrong and we’re going to punish them along with the guilty ones."
"There are no innocents in America!" Magorious snapped. "The only innocents are the Natives who were pushed off their property and the Africans who were stolen from Africa. Those who aren't Natives or Africans are evil and pathetic; it's our duty to destroy them before they destroy us!"
Well, I could not find a way to respond or tell him that he was wrong, not when I had seen the evils he described firsthand. Although I had contemplated telling David that attacking the country was a bad idea, I couldn’t help but think of Anna Kroger being forced to live among the Romas and Karl Kroger being forced away from his family. I couldn't help but worry for the people of America who would receive the wrath of the Atlantean empire on their heads.
But something always tells me that the worst was yet to come.
When my fourth son Blaine was born, the southern part of the United States broke away from the rest of the country. That act angered millions of people living in America and around the world and even today in your time, it was widely regarded as a very bad move.
When that happened, the Atlanteans who did their business in the States soon removed their businesses from the country, which almost sent the American economy into a huge depression. As the rich grew poor and the poor grew poorer, I wondered what would happen if David was to attack the States right then and there. Would he have to find which parts of the country to destroy or spare? I'm not sure why, but I discovered that Czar Alexander II had finally put an end to serfdom, which had been around for over 400 years. This came on the heels of the Crimean War, which happened between 1853-1856. Alexander also warned David not to attack America, not until the time was right.
So, with a sigh, the Atlantean army had to wait.
They waited almost four years.
During that time, my children Marianne and Finn were born, with my daughter Johannah being the youngest child and last-born. My children Terra, Thorn, and Acacia were now adults (or almost close to it); they quickly began to carve out their new lives in King Ihon's court. While the king welcomed them, I was not allowed to enter the Dewmire Castle, where the king lived with his wife and children and held his royal court. His mother and sister still lived in Starford Palace (where the Atlantean rulers traditionally lived), but his older brothers were locked away in the infamous Brass Tower because of what they had done during their years as princes under their father's rule.
So far, due to the events that happened during the tour of America, David insisted that our family stayed in England until after the American Civil War was over. (Let me cut in and say that there is nothing civil about a civil war, as brother kills brother and the country bleeds and burns.)
Anyway, with that in mind, four years had passed since the war began; I'm beginning to feel every one of my 37 years. Seven gray hairs had already begun to appear on my head, and I was sure that my beauty (which was what possessed Thayer Hawksley into wanting to marry me despite his deformity) was beginning to fade. Plus little Johannah's arrival into the world has put an end to me becoming pregnant again.
But before we go any further, I must say that the time that I had feared had finally come. When Johannah was barely six weeks old, the Atlantean army led by Sir David Trichenberg and King Ihon Fitzgerald (he dropped his family name of Flintwood when he took the throne) began its attack on America. Within a day and a half, the entire country was completely decimated, with nearly three million people dead and many buildings being burned to the ground. (I also heard from Landon that David had scolded General Ulysses S. Grant for defending his country when the Natives of America were shoved off their lands and forced to live on reservations.)
But just because David had attacked the United States didn't mean he left the country to wallow in its own filth. A week after the devastating attack on America, he had saved President Abraham Lincoln when a man by the name of John Wilkes Booth had tried to kill him while he and his wife Mary were in the Ford Theater. He had seen the offending man sneaking into the box seat where the president was sitting and cut the man's arm off just moments before he could shoot the president. A scream had been heard from the seats; Mrs. Lincoln looked down and saw the disembodied arm of John Wilkes Booth lying on the floor with a gun in its hand. As the audience gasped in surprise, David turned to Mr. Booth and said in a dark voice, "You wish to shoot the president for winning his civil war, don't you? That’s not going to happen; not on my watch!"
With that being done, Mr. Booth was arrested for attempting to kill the president that same night. Within a matter of days, several other people involved in the conspiracy to shoot Mr. Lincoln were rounded up and taken to jail. The survivors of the war were horrified to learn that someone had almost shot their president; many people took to the streets and protested the lack of protection for the president and his family. But the story was not over yet, not by a long shot.
Within a month and a half of the Atlantean invasion of America, David finally returned home. His face was lined and his hair had gone grey. He looked like a man deeply affected by the war that he had seen; he claimed that he could still hear the screams of the dying people everywhere he went. I shook my head, knowing that while the Atlantean army shouldn't have bombed the United States, the people there had brought it upon themselves with their cruelty, greed, and racism as well as the lack of empathy for others. The cleanup and restoration of America was already underway when David returned to London.
I’m not sure how I should word this, but David decided that it would be best if we didn't return to Russia for a while, not while the former serfs would be angry with us for raining fire upon the American people. While Leopold and Terra stayed behind to assist in the cleanup and reconciliation of America, Thorn had married an American spellcaster and settled down in New York. Acacia, however, decided to serve the new king of what would be known as Columbiana; his name was Ishaan Washington. While my other children remained at the family manor, my stepdaughters Josseline and Bernadette (David's daughters with Christine Courbet) went to St. Louis and helped establish an alternate community there.
At the same time, I discovered that Paxton, Ryland, and Piers had built up a huge following of people who wanted to get away from the increasing materialistic community and find enlightenment in nature. Many of those people were Nomagics, even though there were a few Mages and spellcasters who couldn’t use magic who wanted to get away from the stifling life of a nonmagical magic user. Pax wanted to build a community outside London for those people, yet the fairy Anthurium Hazelsplash persuaded him to build his city next to the Elvish city of Ylfanor. (That city was named Grimsby, and it was hidden deep in the heart of Grimwich near what would be Gamaris Academy.)
While many people willingly joined Pax in his quest to rid the world of injustice towards deformed people and bastards, I became worried, especially when it became known that Ryland and Piers wanted to destroy the Hawksley family for killing their father and grandmother. I especially became alarmed when it had come to my attention that Bernard Kroger had taken his only son Karl to an asylum a few days before his 15th birthday, where he later died. (But I wondered how that was possible, since I had seen Karl in the Russian court during the years that I had spent living in Russia? This part of the story wasn't right.)
At the same time, Michaela Kroger (Bernard’s wife) had begged me to help her find him, but for some odd reason, I refused to help her. Not when Karl reminded me too much of Paxton and how I once coddled him and tried to protect him for my grandmother's hatred and wrath. Bernard's parents Michael and Sarah were both getting old. They couldn't take care of Karl, and neither would Christine, who I discovered had married Semyon Ivanovich Smirnov, a grandson of Simon Smirnov, and went to live in King Ishaan's court in St. Louis, Columbiana. (He decided to keep Washington, D.C. as a living monument to America's past, but that's for a different story.)
So with my apparent refusal to help a mother find her missing child, myself worrying about what my sons and brother were becoming, and David’s depression resulting from leading the attack on America, it soon fell to me to hold everything together for the sake of the Trichenberg family. My younger children were quickly growing up and I had to get Terra and Acacia to settle down with a husband and wife. Leopold, however, was not one to sit around and wait for fate to bring him a bride; he had returned to Russia to pursue a woman among the Roma tribes.
And while my family was quickly falling apart due to the circumstances that were beyond their control, I also found myself feeling more and more forgotten, as if I was nothing more than a footnote in the page of history. I knew I was a notorious lover and firebrand witch, but now, I was known as "the Forgotten Silver Dragon Princess". My brother Phoebus Drake, his wife Margaret Pecke, and their children Ashley, Kelly, and Olive were quickly rising in prominence in Queen Victoria’s court, and my sister Luna Drake Hawksley was now the leader in Ihon Fitzgerald's court. (I did mention that Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, had died in 1861, a tragedy that struck the queen so deeply, she never remarried and wore black for the rest of her life.) I knew that there was no place for me in either court, and I knew I didn't belong in Czar Alexander II's Imperial Court, even if David did.
Yet there was one more thing I needed to deal with, which was my inevitable death. But how and why my death happened was the subject of much speculation and very few answers. Nevertheless, my death was a sad story, a story that forewarns people about wanting to know what happens to them in the future. The future is never promised, as it could change at any point.
But that won’t be until later.
As for me, knowing that I was not allowed to go to the king's palace under any circumstances despite the fact that my children were welcomed into the royal court, I went to the Blue Heaven Gardens in Chetham, where Ryland and Piers were currently living. (I remembered that Gramma had cursed me when she told me that if I didn't stop picking up my brother Paxton; because of that curse, I had had nothing but bad things happen to me.)
Which was ironic because when I went to the gardens to find my sons, I saw Paxton standing in the middle of the garden. He had changed so much from the tiny boy I had failed to protect from my grandmother's wrath and hatred that it wasn't funny. He had long white hair, light blue eyes, and a pale white complexion. He wore the dark blue and dark gray colors of the Stormfield clan. He looked more like an old sage than a young man who grew up in the church.
But then again, I wondered if Pax would even remember me. After all, he had been a baby when I last saw him; I bet he didn't even remember his older sister. Not that he would actually care that I was his sister, especially if he found out about what I had done since I last saw him.
Which was what happened.
When I saw Ryland and Piers for the first time in over 11 years, I was shocked to say in the least. Ryland looked exactly like what Pax had looked like before he was struck by lightning, and Piers was as twisted as Thayer had been. It was like I was never going to completely escape from the Hawksleys as long as I lived.
Not even if I had fully redeemed myself.
Pax stared at me as I saw him speaking with a large group of people; he was speaking of a new King and his new kingdom, a kingdom that would never judge you based on your disabilities. But what was this new kingdom, which sought to remove people from their homes and families and take them to a world where they could live their lives, but never see their families? Was it one of those "alternative communities that Magorious had spoken of?
"Paxton?" I said as I stared at him. He stared at me for a moment before resuming his speech. It seemed that he had forgotten me during his years of living in Bethesaida. To further complicate matters, neither Ryland or Piers recognized me at all.
I guess Gramma's curse had been Pax seeing me, but not knowing who I am; that curse also extended to Ryland and Piers. With a sigh, I turned around and prepared to return to the castle when Pax said, "Selena Drake? I always knew you would return for me, sister."
I gasped in shock as Pax stared at me. The people who were with him also stared at me, as did Ryland and Piers. I felt like I was about to either faint or burst into flames, as I'm sure that they had heard about how I had betrayed the Hawksley family and dragged the Drake family through the mud due to my selfishness and greed. I was sure I would be condemned for all my wicked deeds.
But to my shock, nothing of that sort happened.
Instead, Pax said to me, "I have heard about your deeds, Selena Drake. You have avenged our mother's death and restored honor to the Drake family. Through your sacrifice, the Drake family has put the Hawksley family in their place and punished the Rothchester family for their cruelty and deception."
I nodded, knowing that I could no longer deny anything, not where it counted. Everything I had done in my 33 years of life had been leading to this moment. Pax then continued, "In spite of your good deeds, you were banished from Buckingham Palace and exiled from Eirebul under pain of death. You were ordered to go to Russia to spend the rest of your life freezing to death in the Winter Kingdom. Instead of death, you married a powerful sorcerer and are now fighting to rid the world of injustice and lunacies."
"Indeed I am," I said as I stared at Paxton. "How did you know this would happen to me?"
“My grandmother was a soothsayer, and she knew who you were and what your deeds would be," said Paxton. "She also predicted your friend's death and the destruction of the Hawksley family. Yet, the Drake family will suffer some heavy losses, but they will endure."
I nodded, knowing that Paxton's grandmother had been the soothsayer Camilla had mocked and I had believed when we were children. I usually don't give much stock into believing the future, but I should have known the soothsayer would tell me my future for a reason. "And why would your grandmother tell me of my future?" I snapped. "To mock me? To condemn me?"
"To warn you," said Paxton.
“ Warn me against what?” I said.
"The Drake family is in grave danger and they must flee from England under pain of death," said Pax. “While Luna Drake's children will be safe in England, your children and the children of your brother Phoebus will suffer for your kind-hearted deeds. Many of them will die, but those who survive will make a huge difference in the world of their choosing."
I nodded, knowing that like it or not, I would die early in life, as would five of my children. But the rest of my children will live long enough to see a new era happen, an era where mages, spellcasters, and Atlanteans will live in harmony with the nonmagical people. Vampires and werewolves would cease their pointless fighting and seek to help police the new world order.
Yet I wasn't ready for that to happen, not when I don't know what the future would hold.
And from what I can tell, the future is certainly not promised.
ns 15.158.61.51da2
