“A creature as evil as you only deserves death.” Those were the last words I heard before the tip of his sword plunged through my heart.
As I drew my last breath to go meet the Goddess of Death I found that I was drawing a first in a new place. Gone was the cold bite of the blade in my chest and in its stead a rapidly hammering heart remained. I found myself not shielding my husband’s wounded body but sitting in a strangely familiar looking bed, a cold sweat running down my back.
As the pounding of my heart lessened in my ears I discovered a new sound in the room: breathing. As my eyes looked around the shadows I could make out a dozen sleeping children in simple beds. A sense of nostalgia overtook me and I tried to understand if I was seeing something real. Looking down in the darkness at the faint outline of my own body I raised my hands and gawked at the small hands and their tiny fingers.
Did I go back to the orphanage I grew up in? Or was my life I’d lived all a dream that had spanned over a decade up until the unjust deaths of me and my husband? My head hurt and my heart ached as I tried to work out the truth. I finally gave up trying to find the truth as exhaustion pulled me back into darkness and the night turned to day.
As I spent the next few days hints to which was the real truth started to emerge. It was little things at first. Just small events that filtered out of the memories I’d gained that piled up until only one fact could be seen: I couldn’t ignore the things I remembered. Either it was something that had happened to me, or it was a dream warning me of a dark future.
The future didn’t leave me feeling hopeless though for in it lay a promise. A promise of the gentlest, warmest and most loveable man I have ever known. The memory of that gentle smile on his face made my heart race just like he were in front of me now. That promise was the thing I wanted to protect. Needed to protect. But to do so I knew that I couldn't let things just happen the same way again. To do so would only lead both my husband and me back to an unjust death.
With that understanding on my heart I began to review the obstacles that contributed to that death. Of course there were the obvious obstacles: namely the classmates who turned misunderstanding and coincidence into evidence of misdeeds and evil intent. I could not honestly claim to feel nothing when faced with the memories of their scorn, their hate, and their blind belief that they were the only ones who were just and right. But even as the anger and pain I felt poured through my childish body I had to point some blame myself.
Perhaps an argument could be made that my failings were only natural, a product of my family dying to the blade of some “hero” leaving me orphaned and unloved from a young age. Or perhaps my overflowing dark magic could he at fault for making others uncomfortable around me and isolating me from my peers as a child. But I refused to take an easy excuse and instead point it at myself. Even as an orphan there were still other children. Even as someone with an overwhelming amount of dark magic glowing through my body there were still people who would talk to me and even care for me. No, my problem was that I had used those excuses as reasons to not try. I chose to stay isolated and alone to the point where I forgot how to communicate with people. To connect with them. To make friends with them.
Even though I hated those bastards for driving me and my husband to our deaths, I knew that to overturn their claims and defend myself from their false sense of justice that I needed to learn to connect with people.
And part of that connection would need to come from my magic. In the life I lived before I had accepted my magic as it was: a way to summon shades to serve me, protect me and fight for me. And while such power was good for scaring small children, the shades were only seen with hatred and disgust. The shadowy forms of half rotten bodies dressed in rags just put some people off I suppose.
As I pondered my options I watched the children, my mind reviewing what I knew about magic from the courses I had once attended to try and find a solution. It wasn’t that I couldn't do other things with my magic but those things lacked the utility the shades had given me. An army you could summon was more useful than an obscuring black mist or a spell that absorbed energy from a person you were touching after all.
Well to me it was more useful at least.
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It was as I watched a couple of girls playing with their dolls that an idea crossed my mind. Mages could infuse weapons with their element to increase the weapon's power in a fight. Could I infuse my shades into dolls to allow me to have my servants while making them more acceptable?
I couldn’t contain my excitement at the idea and sprinted as fast as my little legs would let me to find one of the Sisters who cared for those of us who had been given over to the orphanage. I found Sister Margaret in her usual spot in a corner of the yard near the garden. She was an older woman whose face wore the wear of time but she never lamented over it but instead carried a kind smile.
As I approached I saw that she was fixing a skirt, her needle almost flashing as she quickly stitched the torn side back up on small, neat stitches. It was this needlework I’d remembered that made me seek her out. If anyone could teach me how to sew, it was her.
Sadly though, my resolve and my abilities were not equal. Instead of walking up to her and asking her to teach me I stood a ways away and just silently watched her with rapt attention. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go up to her, but even with years of experience in the past life I’d lived, I never started a conversation. I was completely lost on how to talk to someone, much less ask them for a favor.
Her soft blue eyes glanced up from her work and met my red ones and I instinctively froze before scurrying off like a frightened squirrel.
I’m such an idiot that it hurts.
No, wait, that’s the pain from thumping my head against a tree in frustration. Rubbing the sore spot I resolved to try again.
For nearly a week we continued this game of me approaching her from a distance, staring like a frightened deer and then running off in a flash of white hair and pale skin. My spirit was willing, but the flesh wasn’t strong enough to overturn two lives spent being an idiot it seems. It actually seemed that the extra experience may have only made it worse! The longer I lived the worst I got it seemed. There has to be some way to resolve this. At the rate I’m going I won’t learn how to make dolls, but how to break trees in half with my head.
And while that does sound like a really neat ability, it doesn’t really help me fix my problems. Maybe Klaus would like to learn that when I meet him again? I let out a dejected sigh as I considered where I was going wrong.
“Veronica?”
Maybe I should reconsider the whole dolls idea.
“Veronica.”
Could I do something else with my magic instead? I mean I don’t have-
“Veronica Regina Kurst!”
My head snapped around from its semi-permanent home against the tree trunk as my eyes widened to the point that I’m sure they looked like they were going to fall out of my head. Sister Margaret was standing only a pace away from me, the wrinkle in her forehead fading as her usual smile bloomed back onto her face.
“Are you feeling alright?”
My head bobbed up and down as I tried to urge my mouth to move and ask the favor I’d been trying to ask her every time I saw her but I only managed to flap my mouth uselessly like a fish pulled from water.
The concern in her eyes eased, “Were you trying to find me for something?”
Another foolish nod.
“Was it my sewing?”
Nod.
“Did you need me to make something for you?”
This time my head shook, my shoulder length white hair fluttering loosely.
Her forehead creased a little, “Fix something?”
Another shake.
I could almost see the vein in her forehead forming as she was forced by my own ineptitude to play some kind of game of questions. If this was intentional I’m sure we’d be having fun, but instead she was getting frustrated and I was shaking like a leaf in a typhoon. To someone else this would likely been hilarious, but to the two of us it was a test of our limits: her patience and my ability to not run like a startled rabbit.
“Then did you want to learn how to sew?”
I nodded so hard my head was likely to pop off if I kept it up.
She let out a sigh, either in defeat or relief of the nature of my request. “Alright. I’ll prepare some stuff tonight so you can start practicing tomorrow. It’ll be hard at first so if you really want to do it, I won’t let you stop halfway. Meet me in the usual spot in the yard after breakfast if you still want to learn.”
I nodded vigorously at her terms. They were fair, and were likely ones she’d offered in the past. Plus if I worked with her maybe I could work on my ability to talk to people!
Excitement seized my trembling body and I blurted out two short words: “thank you” before darting off like I had so many times before.
I didn’t know at the time that as she watched me dart off her mouth had hung open for a moment before she muttered to herself in disbelief, “So she isn’t mute.”
At least now I won’t die. Right?