The Five Realms

Chapter 24: Beanca III

Chapter 24: The Legacy Keeper

Beanca's room was silent under a crescent moon, dust motes drifting in the lavender nightlight. The air smelled of pine balsam and old books. Her satchel lay open on the bed, half-packed with earthly things: rolled jeans, a small journal, the carved bone pendant draped over the laces.

Curled on a woven blanket at the foot of her bed, Solin shifted in his sleep. Tiny paws twitched as he dreamed, his soft whines echoing in the quiet. Beanca brushed her fingertips along his fur—it felt like promise and roots mingled together.

Outside the window, Emeraldsa's form glimmered half a mile away, hidden from human eyes by her growing glamor spell. Still, Beanca could almost sense her—a presence in the pine shadows, patient and guarding.

As Beanca reached for her bag, she paused, recalling her dreams—fractured moments when she seemed to drift beyond herself. A flash of Emeraldsa's emerald-slope flight over starlit terrain. Another time, the world spun through Solin's small pup-eyes as he bore the scent of fresh earth. Even a whisper of a bird's soaring perspective had slipped into her sleep. She didn't have a word for it—just a knowing that her spirit could wander beyond her body.

God, grant me courage, she whispered, fingers tightening around the pendant at her throat. Help me hold truth and wildness in the same breath. Her faith had held her steady: Doorways shut with prayer, fear lost to grace, impossible things anchored by faith.

Outside, the wind shifted as Beanca stepped barefoot into the circle of smooth stones nestled in her grandmother's back garden. Candles flickered in mason jars, casting amber halos across the mossy path. Solin dozed in the corner near a dish of water and herbs, ears twitching as if he too sensed the veil thinning.

Her grandmother knelt across from her, the carved shabti resting between them—its wood was pale and fine-grained, etched with tiny lines that mirrored Beanca's face with uncanny softness. Around its neck hung a sliver of bark carved with symbols so old they made her teeth ache.

"This isn't Egyptian," Beanca said softly, fingers brushing the shabti's hairline.

Her grandmother shook her head. "It's older. The bones of trees remember things the blood forgets." She uncapped a vial and traced spiral runes across the doll's chest with sap as dark as ink. "The Cheyenne have stories about memory-stone and whisper-bark. But you'd call it something else if you read it in books—Children of the Forest, maybe."

The ritual was soft-spoken, stitched with humming. Beanca pressed her own sigil pendant to the shabti's forehead while her grandmother spoke the binding words in a forgotten dialect that blurred syllables like water slipping through leaves.

"The doll will wake in three days," her grandmother said, eyes gleaming in the candlelight. "It'll carry your shape, your warmth, but it won't be you. It will keep your place. Speak your name, if someone asks. And listen."

She held up a small bone token and threaded it on a strand of braided silver hair. "When it hears something worth knowing, I'll feel it in this. Like an echo. You'll be remembered, even if you're far."

Beanca nodded, a lump rising in her throat.

Her grandmother placed a hand on her cheek, warm and grounding. "Don't let the magic forget who you are. That's how legacies lose their meaning."

The kitchen smelled of leftover enchiladas and lavender dish soap. Her father zipped up a lunch cooler while her mother checked a flashlight in the utility drawer. The soft hum of the fridge was the only steady sound, grounding Beanca in the ordinary just long enough to feel its weight.

She leaned against the counter, arms folded, trying not to crush the moment with nerves.

"I'm heading out early tomorrow," she said, voice a notch too casual. "Camping trip with Katherine and the girls. Pretty remote."