Spellcaster series #5: The Sage

Birth Right

HEIDI

I couldn't believe my eyes when Vicky showed up on our front porch unannounced. The last time I saw her, we were hugging in tears because it was supposed to be the last time we would see each other after she and Tristan had just broken me out of the maximum security prison. All that was some five years ago. Yet at the time, we did not think she would be relaying the message about Tristan's father so soon.

The funeral was short and sombre. Mrs Embers also came, as requested by Tristan, and she had finally laid her eyes on our simple abode. He insisted that she lived with us.

They said he had died in his sleep, just like his father before him. Jessie, Wynona and Vicky helped arrange the grand funeral for Mr. Embers in the Worldly realm. The third, the interim Sage of Untamed magic, was not present.

"Who's the third Sage?" I asked Vicky.

In a disgusted tone, she replied, "Sam Locke."

I didn't understand her aversion to the man but I didn't ask. I watched as Tristan knelt before his father's grave with his eyes shut. After a few silent minutes, he turned and consoled his sobbing mother. Ada watched it all with curious, tearful eyes. Her father was sad, she said to me in her child-like naivety, and she didn't like it.

After the funeral, we gathered in front of the fire place. Tristan lit the firewood with Arsonion as we stared at the flames in silence. Grief constricted us on that Friday afternoon. Ada stretched out her arms to her father who scooped her up from me.

"Daddy's all right, sweetheart," he whispered to her and wiped a tear from her cheek.

"She's an empath," Vicky blurted.

I turned to her questionably. Her red eyes remained on Ada.

"It's a gift."

"What do you mean a gift? Is it not just a personality?" Mrs Embers asked with full wonderment.

"Ada is no an ordinary child," Vicky explained. "Her emotions are somehow tied to others, usually people she is closest to."

"Like her parents," Tristan said, softly brushing Ada's brown locks. "She dreams what her mother dreams."

Vicky nodded. "She has powerful energies; one of a Sage and the other is something else."

I dreaded to think about it but I knew someday I had to accept it. "Dark energy."

They turned to me. I couldn't pry my eyes off the flames. Vicky's lips were thin, eyes levelling with mine and said nothing. She agreed. Mrs Embers's green eyes widened with concern and fear. Tristan, ironically, looked the most confused.

"How do you know for sure?" He asked, gently pressing Ada's head into his shoulder as if she wouldn't hear us that way.

I shrugged. "I had suspected before when our nightmares were in sync. Besides, I got mine from my father's so it's most definitely hereditary."

Vicky squeezed my hand and offered a reassuring smile. "If Ada is anything like her mother, she'll be fine."

I nodded and we all fell into silence again. Ada was falling asleep. Mrs Embers watched her granddaughter in wordless awe, digesting the fact that she had one. I couldn't help but feel sorry that she wasn't aware of our little family for the past three years and that we eloped five years ago. Somehow, I was sure, she had hoped that she would attend her son's wedding with some reputable and ambitious woman and watch him have a family in a wealthy property.

Yet, she must have thought, her son had to settle with me.

"Can I put her to bed?" Mrs Embers offered nervously.