Sleep came easily for Luna. She was up bright and early the next morning, doing the worksheets placed in front of her after listening to the reading of Charlotte’s Web. Ant was trying to test their comprehension by going for two books a day. Each had a chapter, one with breakfast, and the other with lunch, and around dinner time she’d stealth test them. This meant that Luna had to read certain chapters herself because she wasn’t around to hear them and Ant liked to spring questions on them throughout the day as well.

Once her plate was cleared of eggs, bacon, and apple jammed toast, she was dressed in a floral-smocked apron over dress. She also wore brown shoes with tights. Her coat on, she followed Georgia out to the chicken coop to do her oft-ignored part of the chores.

Georgia didn’t normally have much to say to her and today was the same as ever. She bossed a little, said the chickens liked her best, and Luna didn’t argue. They hardly knew her, after all. Georgia spent much more time with the animals, which was good for her.

Or maybe it was stunting her speech.

“She’s better at talking than she used to be,” Luna observed as she left the yard for the dirt road. Cædmon would be there soon to take her back to the government offices. “At least she makes sense now, even if she does keep using all the same words.”

“That is the natural progression of the child's mind. If you engage her in conversation her vocabulary will improve, but neither of us is interested in that and she will do well enough on her own. She has friends to speak to and other adults.”

She wondered what life was going to be like for Georgia Gold. Would she grow up to be a popular person? What would happen if Ant remarried? It was difficult to think of things like that.

“I guess I don’t know that much,” she admitted.

“No one does.”

When her stand-in relative arrived they departed directly for the streets of Society and Luna tried to pay more attention to what was going on. It reminded her a bit of the city, when she was with Ungle, but it was so, so different. The way of dress and even the pieces of conversation she overheard as they walked were medieval and fanciful.

“I want a book about flying! And let’s get a flying carpet! NOW!”

She didn’t think she’d ever had a tantrum, like this kid was fixing to do, in public.

“You can’t have a carpet until you’re much older! No, I can’t get you one,” the tone of an exhausted caregiver. “How about we get the book though?”

“No!” a foot stomp. “I want both!” His pitch escalated.

She and Cædmon were keeping to the shadows and they had to get to the building on time, but for some reason, she couldn’t walk on. Instead, she released his hand, marched up to the adult and child, and said, “Don’t talk to your mother like that!”

Both blinked at her in shock. The child recovered first, insulted at being scolded by someone clearly younger and smaller than himself. “Mind your own business!”

“If you’re talking that loud in public it’s everybody’s business. No wonder she won’t give you what you want. I hope she never does! You shouldn’t even get the book.” And he shouldn’t. He was a rotten brat.

“She’s not my mother, she’s my servant,” he spit the word, “and she’s supposed to do whatever I tell her. I’ll have her fired for this.”

A servant?

“He’s a child of old wealth and blood,” Donner told her. “I don’t know what family he’s from, but no doubt he’s used to having his way in everything.”

“She said you can’t even get a carpet until you're older. Don’t ask for impossible things and then get mad when people can’t do what you want.” She wasn’t giving up on this. “Who would ever want to do anything for you? No wonder you’re with a nanny and not your mother. She can’t stand you either!”

SLAP.

Straight across her cheek the sting barely registered as she leaped forward and landed a closed fist straight to the nose. His wail was glorious.

The nanny was frantic and Luna didn’t wait around to see him healed; she hoped she’d never see him again.

Cædmon had no comment about the altercation. He took her hand and continued the trek. Donner, however, was angrily rebuking her for this incredible breach of etiquette.

“You do not behave that way in Society! You have no idea who you may have made an enemy of! There are rules here, most of them unspoken. You will undoubtedly see that child again when you attend Nyx and Aether.”

“So what? You think he’ll remember me by then?”

“Yes because Society operates with an entirely different mentality. The aristocrats of Society hold grudges! They are taught to carry themselves with immense pride from infancy. That child could be one of a long line. You didn't pay any attention to his clothing, but the gold detailing points to his status. He is not poor and will not forget what you did to him.”

“Oh please,” she scoffed as they approached the building. “I won’t even look the same by then. We’ll be grown up.”

She tuned him out from there because they were immediately led to another section where they were to be interviewed by a woman with many folders on her desk and the other desks she saw were in similar disarray. It seemed Donner was right about what happened in this area of the building. There was some dispute about an inheritance over yonder and people in the next cubicle were concerned about the state of their child’s magical ability; from the sound of it, she hadn’t displayed much and her future was in question. The worker was explaining the baselines for acceptance by various schools.

“In the worst case,” said the working man, “she will have a place in Breaker. I know, I know,” he added quickly, Luna assumed in response to the gasps of horror. “But it is not a bad institution and she will learn a trade of her choice. She will still have prospects.”

Despite the misfortune of others, Luna retained a bad mood; she certainly hadn’t expected to be slapped by a strange, bratty boy today. So, she used compulsion, a new word she’d learned by reading one of Ant’s forbidden, hidden books. Which Donner hated with a passion but she thought she needed to know more words and adult books had lots of them.

Lots.

And other information that was super nasty and she knew where babies came from in way more detail now and Donner was as grossed out by it all as she was, she was pretty sure.

She sort of wished she'd listened to him when he told her to put the book down.

With the worker lady in a dreamlike state, Luna quietly issued her orders. “You will fill in any information that makes sense. You will make sure these papers are approved and that the girl Luna Rysing will be informed of her father’s name and whereabouts so she can go to Pinewood School of the Arcane Arts as soon as possible.” She waited for a nod and watched the woman fill out her papers. “Quills and ink?” she asked Donner. “I mean, I noticed that before, but everyone has to do that? Even here?” When it would be a pain to make a blot and have to redo whole folders full of papers?

“Yes.” He was in a foul mood, too. “But there are spells to fix that sort of mistake.” He spoke hissingly.

It was rotten to have two angry people in one mind.

As soon as papers were shuffled and the woman stood, Luna said, “Done. Let’s get out of here,” and led the way back out of the government.

That whole encounter was a bad start and everything was a million times worse when they returned to the road and she saw black smoke rising into the air over the hill.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Ant's house.

This country town saw landowners on either side of it and there weren't any other buildings in the area.

“Shit!” she shouted as she dropped Cædmon’s hand and ran; the vampire kept pace with her.

The circumstances of the fire were unknown to Luna, but her arrival triggered a magic circle that alerted Ned, who was tearing apart the children’s bedroom, to the fact that she was back. Out of nowhere and far sooner than she should have been. He’d placed circles a mile out and for her to trigger this one meant she bypassed the rest, which was impossible.

Except it clearly wasn’t.

When he became aware of the arrival of Luna and the vampire, he panicked. He had a plan, but it was a stupid, last-minute one that he didn’t tell Rob about because he wasn’t going to go for it no matter how Ned tried to spin it. None of them would, in fact, so he didn't tell anybody about it.

When he lit the place up the screams from downstairs were all genuine.

The worst plan in the history of the world was that if Luna somehow returned before she should, he would set the house on fire and force her to use her true power, whatever that was. And he didn’t think it was so bad a plan because of course she would stop it.

Why wasn’t she stopping it?

He could see her outside, staring from the road, gasping for air and he realized he had no idea what kind of psychological impact this might have on her. Considering her history, which they’d hastily looked into, he realized that she was in the midst of a panic attack.

That was…

Not good.

Not good at all.

And now he was panicking and there were no more screams and-

Frederick Nedabi was formerly of a poor, country family. A long line of full-blooded magicians, yes, but not of much power or any social standing to speak of. There were no affinities in his household growing up and he didn’t know about now, but he would be shocked if anything had changed. They were cursed, after all, and families didn’t easily escape generational curses.

Especially deserved ones.

The malice behind this curse in particular was deep-seated and justified in the eyes of Fate. The Nedabi clan had little belief in that sort of thing back in those days, which was an oddity at the time and partly why it all happened in the first place.

They’d deeply disrespected a devotee of Phanes, a woman who considered the deity female rather than the traditional male and the appointed patron saint of her household. It was all nonsense, the Nedabi’s thought, and they didn’t care about saying so.

What they didn’t know was that the woman was powerful, far more so than they, and they didn’t stand a chance against her full-moon, silver sickle, red blood ritual. To top it all off, Phanes may be real because that was who she called on to make the curse last to the end of all ages, and, a thousand years later, it was still going strong.

They no longer knew all the conditions of the curse, that was lost to time, but they’d never made it out of poverty and bad luck seemed to follow no matter where they went or what they did. Marriages were bitter, sibling relationships ferocious, and Fredrick, now Ned, was sure he would die alone as a member of the Sphere in a fire he set himself.

Sadly, the curse would not die with him as he had many brothers and sisters who would no doubt carry it forward, but his own line would go no further.

Maybe this was the curse, he thought as he stared out the window with horror at what came from the child called Luna. At what she became. The true form of It, of Her. The shadow cast from her, in the shape of a man, who fell to the cold, dusty road. The pillar of light that engulfed them all. The reversal of everything that was and would be and somehow he remembered it so precisely and yet not at all.

Once he, and Rob, were back in the underground offices, and Rob was not remembering anything that happened out of the ordinary, he still knew it all. Knew her.

But he didn’t.

She was…

He’d never had such a splitting headache.

She was…

“Hey, Ned!”

You deserve that curse.

And he did. Luna was sure of that. This was all his fault. All of it. She didn’t want to remember things like that, that was the whole point!

She sat up in bed, out of her mind, and Donner was shouting at her from within that she was going to wake up Georgia if she didn’t stop it, so she did. With a deep breath, she put it all away again. All the things she didn’t want to know.

And she was a child once more.

“What happened?” she asked aloud in a whisper. Everything after seeing the farmhouse on fire was blank. The place didn’t burn down, so maybe it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought. A fire on the stove or something?

“No,” Donner said; he was still shaky about the whole thing. “No it was a true inferno, but if you don’t have the memories then I don’t want to tell you about it.”

“Oh, come on!” she yelled in her head. “If everything is fine now-”

“Yes, now it is, but it was not.” He was ejected from her mind and the suffocation was still too real. To be without a body was not possible. “I don’t know how to tell you how far from fine it was.”

“I’ll go to sleep and you can show me!”

That was the last thing he wanted to do. “No. I promise you, you don’t want to know. If you did you would.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? And what happened to Cædmon?”

“Ashes,” he would tell her that much. “I suppose your alter ego was done with him. Or perhaps it was a welcome release, I don’t know. Either way, he’s no longer of this world.”

“He died!?” She froze as Georgia jolted upright, looked around, and fell back to the bed. “What?!” A shocked whisper.

“Yes, Cædmon the vampire pretending to be your ancestor is dead. I will tell you this, he intended to save your family from the fire, but what he brought out of the house was little more than char. That, I think, was what set your inner… Demon? Off.”

“My inner what?” She was pulling on pants and a coat. It was snowing out under the moon. The first snow of the season. There was something magical about it and she didn’t want to waste it sitting next to sleeping, snoring Georgia.

He would not tell her the full of it, he wouldn’t risk his own life for that, but she would be incessant in her questioning if he refused entirely.

When she was outdoors, after checking on her aunt and the whole house to see if it was in any way damaged, he told her the bare minimum.

“Whatever it means to be Life came out of you. It not only stopped the fire, it made it so the fire never happened, and I was not part of you for that. When you changed, your mind was changed and I could not remain.”

“You got out? What’d you come back for?”

“My spirit, soul, whatever this is, could not be sustained in the world. I don’t know what I was, but I was not alive. I thought I would at least be pulled to the bridge, but I wasn’t. I don’t know what happened.”

Neither did she. She didn’t remember any of that. “I know there was a fire, but that’s it.”

“There was more. Your aunt and cousin died. They were beyond recognition. When your diety exposed itself they were returned to who they were along with two men who were in the house. One, the mailman and the other I don’t know.”

“One of his kids?”

“No. An adult. I’m suspicious of them both at this point.”

“Why?”

“Life seemed to have a grudge against the stranger,” he said. “And if David knows that person, that puts him under suspicion.”

She looked up to the clouded sky and stuck out her tongue. Was she really Life, then? It sounded like she must be. But, how could she be a whole god and not know it?

“You don’t want to know,” Donner answered. “You put it all away behind those locked, boarded-over doors. They flew open together when you changed and I was cast out of your mind. I’m not sure how I got back. I suppose you must have done that too.”

“You won’t show me what happened?”

“No. Whatever your reasons for forgetting, you chose to do it again. It must be important to you.”

“I probably wanted a vacation. Being Life would be exhausting, I bet.” Having to make everything and keep it together, especially with Ink Pen trying to end it. “Wouldn’t that make me the most important one of all?”

He didn’t want to think that was true, but her early afternoon display proved her position. When he was next aware of himself, she was unconscious in bed. He had no idea what happened between those times. “Don’t think about it,” was the safest answer. “Forget any of that happened, except to be careful of the mailman.”

She looked around the yard. Snow was sticking to the grass. “You said Cædmon was dead? Did I kill him?”

“You must have,” he affirmed. “While all the rest was put right, he became ash.”

“He must’ve been blown away on the wind,” she said as a harsh gust whipped her hair into her face. “I wonder why I did that?”

“You, yourself, said you would end him.”

“Well, yeah, but… I don’t know. I don’t think that was it.”

“There may have been a price. Even for Life. The primordial deities, the Fates, we don’t know how much is going on in this world. Once again,” he sighed, “Arcane is our best shot.”

“So,” she said, “we forget what happened today and keep on heading to school?”

“Yes.”

“The goal is still to get you out of my head and I was right, you need a body first?”

“Yes.”

“What do we do now that Cædmon is gone?”

“The papers are filed, it shouldn’t have an impact. Except,” he paused. “You’ll have to find out where he lived. That’s where they’ll send the information.”

“He wrote it down, I saw it on the paperwork. If I go to sleep we can look.”

Back to bed, with a quiet, “Bye, Cædmon, you ancient pedophile,” she slipped into dreams, to find the house of the vampire who’d waited so long to see her again.