Lucidity

Chapter 29 - The Great Divide

“What happened?” Alex asked when Jimmy paused for breath. He had just gotten to the part in the story where Maeve’s brother killed the two Kallisteans and ordered Maeve to follow him or die.

Grace slipped off the radiator, her butt growing numb, and crossed over to stand beside Jimmy. He slid his hand over her arm, intertwining his fingers with hers.

“Well, now.” After a suitable pause to build suspense, Jimmy continued his carefully edited version of Maeve’s story. “Maeve and Lothar fought all that day and into the night.” It was an exaggeration, Grace knew, but the kids were rapt, hanging on his every word. “Maeve was smaller than her brother, but she was skilled and she had the special sword the Kallisteans had forged for her. Finally, Maeve forced Lothar’s sword from him, had him down, her blade at his throat.”

“Did she kill him?” Kat shifted, the blanket falling aside as she slid to the edge of the chair.

“Worse,” Jimmy said in a low, groaning voice. What a ham. A ghost telling a ghost story, how fitting. “She walked away.”

“Walked away?”

“She decided that the worst punishment would be to leave him to his own companions. He lay there, bleeding, wounded, and they pounced on him.”

“Did they eat him too?” Alex added.

Grace shook her head at the boy’s gruesome sense of humor. Cannibals seemed to hold no fear for the kids.

“Maeve took the women and children and returned to the Kallista settlement. There they flourished during the year without sun.”

“The end,” Grace interjected. The children didn’t need to know the rest. Not tonight at least. “Time for bed.”

The kids flopped back, then Kat sat up again. “Wait. What was the treasure? How did it save the world when Grace found it again?”

Grace took over the storytelling; otherwise they’d be there all night. “When the sun finally returned months later, Maeve and the others decided to split up. Some of the Kallista wanted to try to sail home. The rest followed Maeve to a new home near where she once ruled. She left the treasure on the island and gave the leader of each group a map so that they could lead future generations to it, if needed.”

“A map? How’d a piece of paper last three thousand years?” Kat asked.

“Did they have paper back then? Maybe they carved it on a stone,” Alex suggested.

“Maeve wouldn’t be carrying around a hunk of stone.”

“She carved it onto her knife,” Grace answered them. “The knife I took from her tomb. It was fashioned of a special metal alloy unknown in Maeve’s time—before the Kallista arrived, that is. Her sword was made of the same material, much lighter, sharper, stronger than Lothar’s.”

“That’s how she was able to defeat him.”

“Plus she was smarter and better than him,” Kat said. Then she turned to Grace. “Where was the treasure hidden? What was it?”

“We had clues to where the island was from Maeve’s manuscript. Once I realized that the markings on the knife were a map, I found the treasure hidden in a sea cavern, half way up a cliff.”

“And about got yourself killed climbing up there to get it,” Jimmy put in from his place beside Alex.

“Did not. Besides, you were the fool who almost drowned.” Grace wrinkled her nose at him.

He harrumphed in response. Grace shot him a glare. He’d almost died that day, yet he always joked about it whenever he told the story.

Of course, back then, how were they to know that Jimmy’s days were numbered? The scent of blood filled her mind and for a moment her own screams drowned out the other sounds in the room.