THE SEPTAVALENT STONE: CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

A Humbled Elder

Mr. and Mrs. Hindan were the most unstable and unusual parents anyone could ever meet, and they couldn't care less what you, or anyone else thought, because they were happy to be so.

They could never be caught dead taking their children to the park like other normal parents do, or to school, because they felt that such practices were dull and unnecessary. Instead they usually took them to their workplaces where they did their daily business transactions. And that would have been okay if the work they did involved selling schoolbooks for little children, or doing charity work for hospitals, no, their job description was nowhere near any of those.

Mr. Hindan was an acquirer and Mrs. Hindan was a distributor of magical items. Items that were so unusual and dangerous that to handle some of them, you had to be depressed, while others you had to handle them during the full moon, and most of them had to be handled by children to prevent them from exploding, causing any adult within a three-mile radius permanent unhappiness.

Mr. Hindan was a handsome and dark man. He was tall and lanky, with slightly graying hair which sometimes made people address him as Uncle Jeffery, while Mrs. Hindan was a fair woman with freckles on her face and a slightly long nose, which came in handy when sniffing for poisonous or cursed objects.

Yes, they were unusual parents, but all that was to change when Mrs. Hindan died in a car crash. A 'normal' death I'm sure you'll say but even her death, scorns the word.

The crash happened while they were escaping some supernaturally powerful men called 'elders'; earth guardians whose job it was to rid it of everything magical be it witch, wizard, warlock or any object that had a drop of magic in it.

The death of Mrs. Hindan is what led Uncle Jeffery to get a nanny and move with his children to a peaceful suburban estate called Ringewud, where they could live a normal magic-free life.

Sadly, the normal family life of a widower and his three children was short-lived, for five months after they had moved into the estate, the neighbors had called a meeting in the estate hall to discuss the weird things that Mrs. Wamaka and Mr. Ladejobi of house number five and four claimed they had seen

“It was around eleven o'clock,” Mrs. Wamaka started, scratching at her hair which had been tied to a bun. She was a rather fat woman with a friendly face, who knew almost every dirty detail about everyone. Nothing ever happened in the estate without her knowledge. If you were up to no good in the estate and you wanted no one to know about it, it was safer to tell her about it, for she was also good in covering things up. “And naturally I was going to bring in the clothes because I had done some laundry earlier.”

About four or five people snorted from behind, but Mrs. Wamaka ignored this.

“Eleven O'clock?” said one of the women from behind. “Bringing in your clothes by that time? Are you sure you were not doing something else?”

“Like what, Pedita?”

“Pork-nosing, maybe. We wouldn't put it past you.”

Mrs. Wamaka stood up angrily, but before she could say anything Mr. Humphrey silenced her.

“Enough bickering,” he shouted, banging his fist on the table. “And let’s get on with the matter at hand; you were saying you saw something when you were bringing in your clothes, yes Wamky?”

“Well, err,” Mrs. Wamaka cleared her throat loudly, and continued. “It was beside house number seven, two men tying only wrappers, both of them were carrying staffs, and they were on fire. They were talking about,” she paused for a moment, wondering what Pedita and the other women at the back would say if she told them everything both men had said. It would just be another excuse for them to call her a busybody.