42

Strange Pillows and Puzzles

"I feel so funky," were Deilune's first words after they’d helped him into the house and onto the sofa in the parlor. His term funky contrasted so greatly with the seeming seriousness of the situation that Lottica wanted to laugh. She didn't, but she could see her mother and brother felt the same way.

"Do you hurt anywhere, Dale?" Linda asked.

Deilune was quiet a moment as if he were taking inventory of his extremities. "No. I feel fine now. I don't know what happened out there. I just became…light."

"Do you mean light-headed, dear?"

Again, he hesitated before answering. "Not exactly." He turned to Nick standing behind the sofa. "Nick, do you remember the conversation we had late the night that, that we…umm…came back? You asked how I felt, and I told you that I seemed lightened. Well, this was much more intense and sudden as if I was about to float away. I think that's why I ended up on the ground. I couldn't quite feel my feet and lost my balance."

Nick’s eyebrows rose. "You felt like you were going to actually float off?"

"I don't think so, but it was very disorienting. Like I was being pulled at by another force. Kinda like the moon and the tides."

"Could it be Hawk?" Lottica asked. "It happened just as the constellation rose."

Deilune smiled. "My little daarling, it could be anything. I think all of us have to admit we are complete rookies at this new game of abracadabra-hocus-pocus."

"I don't believe in magic, Dad," said Nick, his face set and serious.

"I don't either, but I think we better get good at pretending we do," he tapped his chest where the pulsing light had dimmed, "because the Kareima and Hawk seem to have their own ideas on the matter."

Later that night, as Lottica hugged a totally unfamiliar pillow in an ancient old house with mysterious statues and paintings, she tried not to make too much of every creak and groan that the complete darkness of the countryside magnified. Add the fact that her zombie parents were sleeping in the next room, and Lottica’s mind raced like a sprint car.

It was one thing to cope with an over-active imagination in your own bed in your own house in your own county, it was a completely different thing to be halfway around the world and deal with the peculiar noises of timeworn Breima Manor. But Lottica tried by picturing how this ever-stranger story of the Kareima and her family might play out: fairy godmothers, talking beasts, magicians, spells, epic battles, knights in shining armor.

Not that she was against any of these scenarios, especially knights in shining armor, but she also had to worry about her not-so-dead parents. Her major worry was keeping them from dying—again. Her dad’s brief fainting episode earlier in the evening, along with her parents’ inexplicable weakness when confronted by Beilla in the Food Court a few days ago left her uneasy. It was too disquieting how precarious, how uncertain, their connection to life appeared to be.

Lottica hugged her unfamiliar pillow tighter. Its musky smell reminding her of that first hug of her mother's the morning after she’d rejoined the living. She felt a sort of numbness, like a far-off sorrow, on the edge of her consciousness. It was one thing to take care of herself. It was a whole other thing to worry about her family, the people she loved most deeply.

Bewildered, but unwilling to give in to confusion and helplessness, she took deep breaths.

One…

Two…

Three…

Slowly she relaxed, sinking gently into the big picture: the legends of the lifestones, of Hawk and of Raven.

It reminded her of learning the constellations with her parents on warm summer nights in their backyard. They'd show her a star chart and point out the key stars. It took her awhile to get the constellations straight. She’d mix up Andromeda with Pegasus or Cygnus with Cepheus. It wasn’t until her parents began to tell her the myths, the stories behind the stars, that the constellations became clear and recognizable patterns to her. Orion was just a row of stars until she could picture the ancient hunter’s belt and great bow.

Tonight, it had helped her to see the Hawk constellation. She sensed it was an important piece to the mystery of the Kareima and the other lifestones. A puzzle piece that might explain how the three legendary gemstones fit together. Though, in her gut, something seemed to be missing from the story. The puzzle far from complete.

Hopefully, her search for that missing piece could begin tomorrow. Before retiring to bed, their grandparents told them that they would be driving into Kreistia, the nearby town, to do some shopping and find out any news about Beilla. They also had a plan to prepare Lebreima for Deilune’s reappearance, believing they could counter any previous reports of Deilune’s demise as propaganda spread by Beilla in order to wrest power from their family.

Grandfather Breima had asked Deilune and Linda to keep a low profile for the time being and not come with them. Lottica asked if she and Nick could come. Their grandparents had been very pleased by the request. Grandfather had ended the conversation with a glint of conspiracy in his eyes when he gravely pointed at his grandchildren saying, "Yes, enough vacation. Now, school for you."

So, in a far-off country, curled up with a strange pillow in an unfamiliar bed in the mysterious stillness of her first night at Breima Manor, it was this expectation of what Lebreima might have to teach her that finally calmed Lottica’s racing thoughts and allowed her to drift into dreams that, oddly enough, were far less fantastic than her current reality.