chapter.38  »  clarity.

By some great miracle, the queen and her entourage managed to reach the castle safely.  The Kemmer Army was still fast approaching, however.  Even so, the coachman had maneuvered rather effortlessly through the rugged terrain of the journey from the forest to the kingdom.  As they bobbed endlessly along the road, the queen could not erase from her mind's eye the sight of the green flames engulfing the hut.

The flames had originated from the ground, or at least that was what Catherine kept telling herself.  Any other explanation raised the hairs on the back of her neck.  In the midst of the trauma, though, the Mage's words rang in her ears like a neverending echo.  Each word of the oracle matched the beat of her heart.  Was that what it was?  An oracle?  Not in her lifetime did Catherine think she would encounter something as primitive as an old woman with cloud-white eyes spouting prophecies in a devilish voice.  The old woman couldn't have faked it, of course.  After all she was dead now, murdered by her own magic.

To think about magic in such a dishonorable way made Catherine feel a bit ashamed.  Magic—real magic, like the one the Mage had used—was the pride of her kingdom.  And the root cause of the war.

She clung to her robe tightly, her knuckles turning white.  She needed to get to her son.

The horses pulling the carriage skidded to a halt at the gates of the castle.  The two guards accompanying the queen and Jinki's mentor were the first to exit.  They ensured that there were no hostile forces nearby.  When they were sure there was no danger in sight, they hurriedly ushered the queen and the mentor up the castle's steps and into its safe walls.

"Where is my son?!"  The queen demanded immediately upon seeing a castle guard.

"He's in the throne room, Your Majesty," the guard said, clicking his heel to attention.

Catherine's eyebrows furrowed.  "Throne room?"

She did not wait for a response.  Her feet dragged her up the many steps on the grand staircase of the castle and weaved her way through its halls.  Jinki's mentor trailed after her, hitching his brown robes above his ankles to catch up to the queen's unbelievable pace.  The castle was grand, but in no time they reached the throne room.  The sight that beheld them drew the deepest gasp from the queen.

"Nicolas!"  She managed to squeak out.

"Arddun's beard!"  Jinki's mentor cursed.  He ran forward to the center of the room.

The prince was on the floor, leaning over the body of a woman.  Another woman had seated herself at the head of the fallen, using her thighs as cushioning for the woman's head.  A man who wore rectangular glasses was also on the floor, tucked a little bit behind the commotion, his face as pale as the Mage's eyes.  Nicolas ran to the queen, his hands on her arm as Catherine looked on, wondering why her son was sobbing over the body on the ground.

"My queen..." Nicolas muttered.  "Our son is home..."

"Who- Who are they?"  She stammered.  She gulped.  "Who is she?"

"I don't know," Nicolas said, and it was true.  It was still unclear to him who these people were.  But all he knew was that they had helped his son when he was stuck On Earth and now they were here, stuck in their realm.

Catherine met her husband's eyes.  "Is she... Is she alive?"

"Yes, but she fainted.  She has been unconscious for half an hour now.  We do not know the cause."

Catherine turned to look at the body again.  Jinki had moved aside as he wiped his face with the sleeve of his uniform, revealing the face of the lady.  The queen drew in a gentle breath.  In a moment's flash, she was reminded of a tale from her childhood—a tale that at the time had seemed to her like just another story, but now that she could see her face...

"A long time ago, the kingdom of Nydiralle stood tall near the kingdom of Preriloth," her nanny began.  She was a woman of eighty, the wrinkles on her face etched with history.  Old she might have been, but happy she had been as well.  She had served the Asthor household for six decades and knew every story in the land.  More importantly, she loved to tell the stories to the Asthor children; most especially, to Catherine.

"You've told me this story, nan," little Catherine whined.  Her pigtails wiggled against her head as she clung to the fur blanket on her legs.  She had just turned six about a moon ago, a brave age.  She felt like she knew everything, and one of those things was that she had heard this story before.

"Ah, I have, little one," her nanny replied, her voice husky and laced with mystery, "but I have not shown you... the book."

Immediately, Catherine's caramel-colored eyes shone.  In the candlelight of her grand bedroom, they twinkled like gold, quickly filling up with interest.  She crawled from her spot in the bed closer to the foot where her nanny sat on an upholstered stool, grinning like a cat who knew all the secrets of the world.

"Is it a picture book?"  she inquired softly, hopefully.

Her nanny chuckled, swiping a finger at Catherine's button nose.  "You've gotten so smart.  Yes, it is a picture book."

"I want to see it!  I want to see it!"

Her nanny laughed again before pulling out the book from underneath her apron.  It was a sizeable book, the tattered brown cover twice as wide as Catherine.  It was thin, however.  From what she could see, Catherine presumed it had only about thirty pages, maybe less.  Still, she was excited to have it in her lap.

"Can you read the title, my sweet one?" her nanny asked, glancing from the book to Catherine's rosy cheeks.

Catherine's mouth pouted a little as she tried to read.  "The... Prin- Princess... Of... Nydi- Nydir...alle.  The Princess of Nydiralle."

"Very good."  Her nanny smiled proudly.

Catherine clapped her tiny hands, squealing in victory.  She turned the cover of the book carefully, and then the pages until she got to the first picture she could find.

It was the portrait of a royal family.  There was a king, a queen, and a baby in the queen's arms.  It had to be the most brightly colored picture Catherine had ever seen.  There were reds and pinks, oranges and yellows, blues and greens.  The king and the queen were pristine, with the king standing behind the queen as straight as a sword and the queen wearing a soft yet alluring smile, seated on a red chair.  But it was the baby wrapped in a satin shawl in her arms that caught Catherine's eyes.  Her eyes were round, cheeks full, and  head a little bald... but there was no doubting the tiny raise at either end of .  She was smiling, and she was beautiful.

"Where is the princess now, nan?" she asked in the tiniest voice.

"Oh, no one knows," her nanny said with a sigh.  "And people say different things to confuse one another until no one knows what to believe anymore."

Catherine stared a little more at the baby before looking up at her nanny.  "What do you believe?"

It took a moment for her nanny to answer—partly because she did not expect Catherine to ask that question—but when she did, she answered with faith.  It was soft, but it was there.

"I believe that Princess Soojin is still out there," she said.  "That wherever she may be, she is still alive, and will return to save her kingdom."

Catherine looked at the baby again.  She was so tiny, but the baby was tinier.  "Someday, I want to be a princess, too."

"And I believe that you'll be one," her nanny said with the lightest of giggles.  She reached for the lit candlestick on the bench at the foot of Catherine's bed and pulled out a candle from the pocket of her apron.  "Now, let's practice."

Before closing the book, Catherine took one last glimpse of the baby.  She hoped in her heart that she was indeed still alive.  Then she pushed the book aside and concentrated on the lit candlestick in her nanny's right hand.  Gingerly, she raised both hands, closed her eyes, then opened them again.  The flame flickered, danced, gave off tiny sparks—with one flick of the wrist, Catherine had it jump to the other candle in one piece.

"I did it!"  She yelled.  "I did it, I did it, I did it!"

It felt like it was only yesterday that her nanny had shown her that book, that she had seen that family portrait.  But the eyes could not lie, and Catherine was clear-headed now that her son was in front of her.  But while the concern of him missing had now disappeared, there was now the matter of this... this woman who was on the floor of the throne room.  Her heart was beating rapidly, but she needed to know.

She approached the group slowly.  The closer she got, the clearer Jinki's mentor's voice became.  He was reciting a healing chant, his hands hovering over her body from her hands to her feet.  Catherine knelt beside her son, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.  Her eyes found Jinki's hands: they were grasping the woman's hand.  He kept kissing her knuckles, perhaps thinking that his touches could open her eyes somehow.

"Soojin... Soojin, wake up... Please wake up..."  Jinki begged, rolling on the balls of his feet.

Catherine's eyes flickered to her son like lightning.  "Who is she?"

Jinki looked at the woman beside him as though he was seeing her for the first time.  He dropped Soojin's hand and threw his arms around his mother, his weeping gaining power again.

"We have to save her, mother.  We have to save Soojin," he managed to utter between sobs.

Catherine rubbed circles on her son's back, her eyes plastered on the woman's face.  She looked as beautiful as she had been when she was a baby.

While Jinki wept on her shoulder, she met the eyes of the king.  In her eyes was a flame, igniting a strength within Nicolas that had left him since Kemwen declared war on his kingdom.

"Ready a bed-chamber for her," Catherine said.  "She is the long lost princess of Nydiralle, and she needs to wake up."

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

GUESS WHO GRADUATEDDDDDDDD!

IT ME.

this story is getting more and more intense and honestly, it's turning out better than i originally planned.  before anything else though, we gotta wake Soojin up.  hang tight!  it's gonna be quite a ride from here on out.

thank y'all and have a fantastic day!

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