Journeys of the Sneaky Urchin - A FlickerSpark FanFic

Prologue

A cut for blood, fire for light, a canary for a soul, and a melody for a heart.

Nothing ever happened on the island of Evergreen, barely a passing port for sailors selling tinkers. Except for that one night at deep hours, when a groom boy and two demoiselles slithered into the city's cemetery, hidden by the trees on one side, they sneaked into the stone building in its centre, there they prepared to exhume the Mausoleum's last occupant.

"A-are you sure you can make it?" the boy stuttered.

"Backing down after digging this much?" Evie said.

"Dirt we can put back...I don't want to open it if you're not sure."

Sabie reached on her bag and handed Noah an iron bar. "We don't have any longer, the body won't last much."

"What about your father?"

"He'll understand," Evie replied.

She then searched on her own back for an old book, while Noah and Sabie forced the coffin open. No dust, spiders or bugs came out. Lila was asleep, as much as the day they buried her; she still smelt of fragrant perfume and flowers, her face was still soft and peace rested on her face.

The air became heavy, the lights seemed to dim. Evie opened the book near the end and held it in front of her. "Shall we start?" she said.

Noah and Sabie placed bone meal around the coffin, candles next to her body, a music box in her hands, and a cage with a canary near her bare feet.

Evie opened the book near the end, looking through the pages to find the last chapter. 'Allurement'.

"Could you...start the music box?"

Sabie almost didn't want to, the old box was an old gift from their grandfather, he'd travelled the world and found an old nursery rhyme he had to share with them; not from the elves in the northwest, nor the Dragonborn in Noldrin's north, not even from the nobles around the Antheian bay; he'd visited an Orcish town in the mountains, he stopped there to buy food and find some rest, when he was leaving, he heard a mother sing something to her babe. When he came back to Evergreen he commissioned a watchmaker and a luthier to make a music box with that melody.

They didn't know the words to that song, so Lila made her own to sing her daughters to sleep.

But sickness stroke, and she would sing them no more.

Sabie and Noah started lighting the candles as the music played. Evie started reading the spell, so old its language died millennia before their time.

Pari, 'blood'; sossi, 'light'; enkaal, 'a soul'; Arqaan, 'a heart'.

She read the words, she repeated them, she enunciated the best she could.

There was silence.

Evie scorched through the pages, she'd read everything right, they had the ingredients.

"We should go ba—"

"Wait!, I'll find it."

Noah started putting down the candles.

"Stop!" Evie hollered.

"He's right, maybe we should go back" Sabie approached.

Evie kept looking through the pages. At the top, she finally noticed it, a blue seal; in the first pages, a yellow seal, a black one, a red one and in the last three pages, a white seal with a name under it.

"Erio."

The Mausoleum's door shut, the candles lit again as tall as any of the kids; they chilled as wind blew with nowhere to enter.