Stella Constinight

                                                                                  Stella

                                                                      

                                                                            Introduction

“How much farther do we have to go?”

“Just over the little bridge there.”

“We have to hurry, she’s getting worse.”

I stumbled and fell to my knees. Wrapping my arms around my waist, I cried and rocked back and forth. My hood fell back and revealed my fiery red hair to the day’s dark sky. I shivered as pains stabbed in my chest.

“We can’t stop now, Constellation.” Father’s arms wrapped around me and he yanked me up.

I opened my mouth to scream, and a hand clasped over my mouth just as quickly, barely containing the sound. The pains traveled to my arms and legs now, and I shook my head as the tears fell.

“Please, Constellation, hold on.” Mummzie pleaded with me in a whisper. She removed her hand from my mouth and took my small hand in hers. Her gray eyes glittered with tears as she locked with mine. “We are trying to help you. This healer promised to make the pain go away. He promised he could make you normal.”

“Mummzie, I don’t want to be normal,” I barely managed to get out. “I want to be who I am, who I am meant to be.”

Mummzie released my hand and shook her head in frustration. I had said the wrong thing. She pulled my black hood back up and over my head, hiding my hair and face thoroughly. She tugged on her own hood and held her cape together more tightly.

“You are just a child, Constellation, and do not know what you want. I do not want you to have this power, this weight and responsibility on your shoulders. Your father and I do not want you to have the fate of so many before you. No, this is better and you will one day thank us.”

She turned and started us forward again. Father held me tightly to his chest, I looked up into his troubled eyes. The sky was beginning to lighten, and it would become dangerous for us to be out of doors soon. Wherever they were taking me, we needed to be there in a matter of minutes.

“We did not want this for you, Constellation.” He said sadly as he hurried after my mummzie. “This is not the life we wanted for you, so we will do whatever we can to stop it.”

“But why, Father?” I asked and gasped from pain. I gripped my head in my hands and closed my eyes tightly.

“Because of that, Constellation,” he replied sharply. “You will remain with the healer for several months until you are healed and no longer suffer. Afterwards, we will come for you, and we will be happy once more.”

“Father,” I said softly. I wrapped my arms around my waist and balled into myself as he hurried.

They would not ever understand who I was. They would not ever understand who I was meant to be, the power I was destined to control. I was five and yet still never an actual child. I had always known who I would grow up to be, and regular was not it. I had been named to carry on my bloodline, the last just today buried, and my parents still refused to believe it. There would be no reasoning with them or trying to make them understand. They wanted me like my brothers and sisters not understand I never could be.

I covered my mouth with my hand and screamed into it as something shot through my chest. I was left weak and breathless, my hand fell away and hung by my side. I struggled with every breath and my eyes closed. My head rolled into my father’s shoulder and he ran faster.

I heard someone knocking on a door and the sound of metal scrapping together loudly in protest. I managed to turn my head to try and see where the noise was coming from and I broke into a cold sweat.

A tall, terribly skinny woman with short green hair and too narrow eyes stood in the doorway. Her face was long and sharp and her smile was not welcoming at all, but threatening as though she had just seen food for the first time in days. Her hands were long and her fingers boney. She wore a traditional white robe of a healer and the blue beads around her neck and hanging from her ears. Her blue belt was wide for her too thin waist and only managed to make her look even skinnier. She did not look anything like the healers I had known.

“There you are, my child,” her voice was raspy and cold. “I have waited some time for you to arrive.”

Mummzie looked behind us worriedly and faced the woman again. “We are sorry to have kept the Healer waiting for so long. Where is he?”

The woman never looked away from me, somehow boring into my very soul with her frozen eyes. “Oh, the man you spoke with is my brother. He is no healer, simply my fetcher. I am the healer you have requested.”

“Oh,” Mummzie said oddly. “Well, that’s fine then. Will your brother be helping you with our daughter?”

“Yes, of course.” The woman replied. “My sister is away right now, else you would meet her as well.”

Three of them. My heart stopped and my eyes grew. It couldn’t be. They just couldn’t be. Then again, my parents had taken me from home, from protection and things I needed to heal, and were bringing me to this dilapidated building to see some “healer” to try and take my power away. Maybe this would be how I died. The Fates would merely be allowed to kill me now instead of having to wait so many years when I was older.

“You have received your first payment?” Father asked.

I was panicking. My breath was shallow and fast and my head was both stabbing in pain and swimming from too much air. I tried to shake my head, to scream at my parents to get me away from this woman, but I was frozen. There was nothing I could do but moan and close my eyes.

The woman’s grin grew and she laced her fingers together in front of her. “Oh, yes, sir, thank you. I found it quite adequate for our services. And it will remain so for the next four months?”

“Yes,” Father answered. “That was the timetable you gave us for our daughter to become well.”

“Quite right,” the woman said with a nod. She turned her gaze to my mummzie and said, “Did you bring the stone?”

Mummzie paused only a second before removing a small parcel from the inside of her cape. A little red cloth covered the stone which was supposed to be my life source. Just a tiny bit of the crystal clear stone was visible to me and a numbness washed over me. For half a second I felt peace and pain-free.

I gripped my father’s shirt and pleaded with him with my eyes to take me back home. I could tell I was breaking his heart, but I fought on. “Please, Father,” I whispered. The stones affect was fading quickly and my hand was slipping. He could not leave me here with this woman- with this Fate. They would kill me and take the stone with them and anyone else like me would die on their sixth birthday. He had to take me home, to the proper healers and where I would be cared for.

“Where should I take her?” Father tore his eyes away from mine and asked the stranger.

I lost my grip and my hand fell to my side once more. My head drooped and I let my tears fall freely. My heart was broken and I would never heal. My parents were abandoning me to these killers because they didn’t want me to have power. They would let me die because they didn’t want me to suffer later on. Pain resurfaced all throughout my body and I screamed as it took complete and utter control of me. I heard my mummzie calling my name and my father held me tightly to his chest. Suddenly, I knew no more.