The Bonds of Blood (11 page)

She sat the book and mirror down
solidly and stripped her dress the rest of the way off so that she
could maneuver better. Picking the mirror back up, Joya looked over
her shoulder again and noticed strange markings running up her
spine from the cleft of her buttocks. The markings were much like
vines, several vines in fact, and so dim that Joya at first thought
they were mere figments of her imagination, a strange apparition
brought on by the shadows in the room.

She could not have been more wrong, for
as she examined them the vines shimmered a soft silver color, like
moonlight on a still lake. The vines writhed and moved, as if
crawling up her back, and it was only then that Joya realized she
could actually feel them moving.

They slipped up her skin in a weird,
tingling hum, like someone was barely running a feather up her
spine. Shivering, goose bumps came to her flesh, and Joya watched
entranced as the pulsing vines reached the base of her neck. Once
there, the symbol began to glow a soft color, barely more
substantial than the vines up her back. At once Joya realized that
every time her birthmark hummed it was glowing too; it was only the
thick veil of hair that kept it hidden.

Languidly the vines vanished, leaving
only the pulsing, glowing symbol on Joya’s neck.

“Where did the vines go?” she asked
curiously, not the least bit scared, but more in awe at the beauty
she was staring at.

The vines come and go; they
fuel the mark.

“What is the mark? I don’t
understand—what are they fueling it with?”

All in good time,
the voice said.

After a long time the throbbing light
faded from the mark, and still Joya stared at it, now only a dark
smudge on her neck. Finally, she sat the mirror and book down,
dressed for bed, and then crossed the room to the desk. Closing up
her schoolbooks, Joya retrieved the “geometry” book (as she had now
started to refer to it) and climbed into bed.

It was only then, after opening the
book back up to the first page, that Joya was able to make out five
words:

“Lemniscate or Stigmata of the …” and
that is where the words became unreadable again. With a furrow of
her brow, Joya flipped through the rest of the book and found that
she could now make out other passages, but the only words she was
able to read from the book were the ones she had always been able
to read—plus lemniscate and stigmata.

Late in the night, Joya closed the book
and settled down to sleep. Sleep was long in coming, for Joya’s
mind was now so active from the evening’s events that each time she
started to nod off, a new theory came into her mind chasing off the
drifting veil of dreams.

The last thing she thought before going
to sleep was if Amber was having similar experiences.

CHAPTER SEVEN

_A
ngelica had slept like
a
corpse the whole night. In fact, when she
woke her skin was cold, her mouth dry, and her joints stiff, as if
she had not moved an inch all night.

No matter her current physical state,
Angelica had been plagued with violent, macabre dreams the whole
time, making her (despite her coma-like sleep) extremely exhausted
that morning.

She was just rolling over, and about to
go back to sleep, when she heard a faint noise that brought her
crashing back awake.

Angelica sat straight up in bed and
turned her head slightly so that she could catch the noise better
once it sounded again. Despite the howling wind outside, more
violent now than ever, Angelica was able to pick up a strange
weeping sound.

Tossing the covers off herself,
Angelica quickly made her way out of the room, tying her robe
around herself as she went.

It seemed she was the last to rise that
morning. Amber’s door stood open, and Dauin, Joya, and Jovian were
already gathered there. Angelica pushed her way through them all
and into the room. Amber was nowhere in sight.

The room was very much in order. The
bed was made, the curtains drawn back to let in light from outside,
though the windows were still closed tight due to the fierce wind
still blowing. There were no signs whatsoever of a struggle, so
Angelica was not worried at first.

She must be in the
bathroom,
Angelica assumed, but then why
was everyone crowded around her room?

“She’s gone,” Angelica heard Joya say
behind her, her sister’s voice thick with tears that she had
obviously been shedding all morning from the look of her swollen
eyes.

“What?” Angelica asked in disbelief.
“What did you say?” she asked again, the strange sense of déjà vu
overwhelming her. Joya had said this to her before, hadn’t
she?

“Amber,” Jovian said.

“She’s gone,” Joya whispered again,
clinging to her father as more tears wracked her slight frame. The
last of her words were lost in a loud wailing of wind.

The morning quickened into a solemn
race for answers as a small crowd gathered in Amber’s
room.

“Grace,” Dauin said as the kids cleared
from their sister’s room some time later. He caught the old lady by
the arm and steered her down the hall to his room. “It is missing,”
he said, and Grace could not help but notice the desperate quality
in his voice.

“Are you sure?” she asked, gripping his
hand on her arm tight. Grace felt weak, like her knees were about
to give out. “Are you sure it has happened? Are you sure it is
gone? You did not take it out to clean it, did you, and then
misplace it?” she asked, desperate that the time had finally
arrived.

“No, I have not been able to remove it
for the last thirty years; you know that.”

“Then it has finally happened?” Grace
asked. “It is finally back in play?”

“Yes, I fear that it is.”

“And you know the only thing that could
have reawakened it?” the old lady said severely.

“Yes, I know.”

“The time to act is now upon us, Dauin.
We both know what we must do.”

Dauin could only nod darkly, looking at
his children in pain. He had agreed to this years before they had
been born, and no matter how much it hurt him, Dauin knew that he
had to act. He was bound by fate.

Dauin had to release his children and
leave them in Grace’s care.

Shocked silence hung over the dining
room that morning as the family gathered around the table.
Breakfast came and went in the same silence. It was not like there
were no questions; indeed all of them had many questions, but as
soon as they were about to ask anything, they remembered that no
one sitting around the table knew any more than they did, and they
once more fell silent.

Dauin sighed a great heave of breath
and forlornly eyed his remaining children. A small, reassuring
smile came to his lips, but it did not touch his eyes. Jovian
thought the expression was supposed to calm them, but on the
contrary the cold detached look in Dauin’s eyes only put Jovian
more on edge.

Finally, their father broke the
silence. “Joya, Jovian, Angelica—come. We have some business to
take care of.”

The three of them looked at each other
and rose seemingly all at once.

“Where are we going, Father?” Joya
asked as they followed Dauin through a series of chambers and
corridors that adjoined all the buildings of the large
plantation.

“We have to attend chapel today; we
must pray for your sister. The truth of the matter is that none of
us know what she is going through, or what took her from us.” He
worried the edge of his lip. “Her room looked as though she had
been of a single mind in her leaving, but the fact that no one can
leave the house due to that accursed wind alerts me to some caustic
plot that your sister may have fallen prey to.”

The wind outside was so powerful that
more than a few trees could be seen uprooted through the
windows.

Angelica peered outside as they passed
a long window, and she saw the destruction that their home was now
in. All around the house, the fields were decimated, and the crops
lay flat on the ground. Only the most powerful of trees had been
able to withstand the onslaught of that Otherworldly wind, but even
those trees had been stripped of leaves. The ones that fell laid
flat on the ground, leaving large craters in the earth where their
roots had once been.

“We won’t be able to salvage any of
it.” Dauin said to her. Angelica was nearly frozen in place by her
father’s words. “The crops, that is,” her father went on, noticing
her dumbfounded look. “The wind has destroyed all the crops; we
won’t be able to salvage any of it.”

“I know.” She nodded gravely, but kept
silent about her vision that day by the pyre. Something strange was
happening. Joya’s words today about Amber’s being gone could have
been explained away as coincidence, but this exchange with her
father on top of the previous happenings … now that could not be
brushed off.

Angelica was so caught up in her own
thoughts that she didn’t realize they were standing before the door
to the chapel until she nearly bumped into her father’s
back.

One by one they filed in and proceeded
down the long walkway between the pews to where Candalyn stood by
the altar. Grace was already there sitting in the front row with
Destra beside her, the two teachers speaking in whispered
tones.

The chapel was at the far end of the
plantation houses, so that three of the four walls were out in the
open. Here the sound of the wind was more violent than it had been
in the main part of the house, and Joya found it ironic that the
wind seemed to have an adversity to the holy place.

Almost like it is
confirming Destra’s suspicions of the wind being Baba Yaga,
Joya mused.

All of the stained glass windows were
covered with thick, floor-length black curtains plunging the chapel
in a deep mood of mourning. Candles were lit to either end of the
ivory altar, and in the center of the altar copal incense drifted
lazily into the air, as if that, too, mourned Amber’s
absence.

Candalyn bowed his head as they
approached the altar, and Grace stood, though she made no move to
approach them or comfort them. Destra remained sitting, her face an
unreadable mask, but Jovian had the feeling she was very
upset.

Dauin bowed deeply to the altar, and
then turned to the right, where a large life-size statue of the
pregnant Goddess stood, barefoot, crowned with a crescent moon on
her brow. Here he bowed his head. Kissing his fist, he placed it to
his forehead, whispering a prayer none could hear but the Goddess
the statue represented. Reverently the three of them followed their
fathers lead, and then they were all seated.

Grace remained where she
was.

“As we all know,” she began, “Amber is
no longer with us. Her fate is veiled, and none know what is
transpiring with her. It is now that Candalyn has called us
together to lead us in prayer, the only aid we are currently able
to give the Neferis heir.” Kneeling before the statue of the
Goddess, Grace kissed the tips of her fingers and lightly brushed
them to the bare feet of the effigy.

Candalyn open the red, leather-bound
Carloso, and flipped through its silky pages as Grace silently rose
from her supplication, then took her seat beside Destra.