Page 2 of The Heir
“All will be well, Ora,” the man said softly.
“I hope you are right, Theodore.”
“I am always right. You should know that after all this time.”
“You are–” She paused and sighed. “You are loyal, I will give you that. Butrightall the time? No. You are mostly wrong.” She smiled as Theodore chuckled and turned to the mirror, just as the light faded away. “Terra will not be destroyed while I am still breathing. Good will prevail, and she will save us all.”
“While I breathe, too.” Theodore said, placing a hand around Ora’s shoulders. “For I am always right beside you.”
“It seems I shall never escape Draken’s curse.”
“What curse?” Theodore feigned confusion.
“You–youhave been my curse these many hundreds of years.”
“I would call it a blessing–agift. But regardless of all the lovely and cherished titles you bestow upon me–”
She shook her head in exasperation, and with a flick of her wrist, Ora, Theodore, and the mirror vanished.
Chapter One
Ihuffed, blowing some hair out of my face, only to scream, internally, as it fell back over my eyes again. I couldn't see where I was walking, and the last thing I needed at that moment was to fall. I tried again and again to get the hair to move away and stay there. I shook my head from side to side, back and forth, and even tried to tilt it backward a bit. No use. So there in the attic I stood, balancing two boxes in my arms while trying to move forward. I continued to huff and blow at my hair every few feet so that I could see where to step. My lungs began to hurt from all the huffing, and I became a bit dizzy. The second to last thing I needed right then was to pass out. It seemed that the sweat upon my brow was the reason that a stubborn clump of hair kept sticking to my forehead, directly over my eyes. I realized that no amount of huffing was going to permanently move that hair, so I grunted once more in annoyance, set the boxes down, sighed, moved the hair from my face with my hands, and tucked it behind my ear before, finally, fixing it by pulling it all up into a clip. The attic was hot, and I had never intended to spend so many of my afternoons up there, but whatwas inside those boxes was so incredibly interesting that even the heat couldn’t deter me from going up there. Plus, with my best friend gone for most of the summer and my aunt working daily at the flower shop, I had little else to do. And havinglittleto do was dangerous because it left my mind free to ponder on the tragic state of my life.
I didn’t want to do that.
So, there I was, shuffling boxes of my parents’ pasts around the attic, when other teenagers were going to the beach, the pool, or the mall.
Do I want to go to those places?
No.
Actually, I had no idea what I wanted to do other than keep my mind busy and my body tired so that I wouldn’t think too much, so that I could fall asleep quickly at night. I always hoped I could work my body hard enough so that I’d fall quickly into the deepest of sleeps and, thereby, avoid the nightmares. At that time, being exhausted did keep them at bay. It wasn’t a flawless plan, but it worked most of the time. I picked up a box, dislodged some dust bunnies, which caused me to sneeze for thehundredthtime that day, and I dropped it, causing me to flinch as it hit the floor, and I hoped that nothing breakable, or priceless, was inside. I sat down beside the box and stared around the small attic for a moment.
Before my parents’ deaths, I had never gone up into the attic, and it was a lot smaller than I thought it would be. I went up, initially, just trying to find some pictures of my parents. It was surprising to me, the lack of baby pictures of both my mom and my dad. Actually, after searching through half of the boxes, I realized that there were not any pictures at all from their youth. Not justno pictures, but there were no toys and no little trinkets or keepsakes from their childhoods, either, not even clothing—no pictures of their parents—nothing. I realized that while,yes,I knew both sets of my grandparents were dead, I had never, not even once, seen a picture of any of them. I wondered why that was. The attic door squeaked, and I turned to see Mary, my aunt, leaning there in the doorway, holding a cup of ice water. Her blond hair was wavy as was mine and my mom’s. She looked so much like her, an aching reminder of what I’d lost, yet I was happy to have a piece of my mom still there with me in the form of her sister. Mary must have left the flower shop early,heaven bless her.
“Thought I would find you smoldering up here,” she said with a chuckle, walking over to me and handing me the glass.
I greedily gulped it down.
“Find anything good?” she asked.
“Not really. I was wondering, though–There are no pictures of mom’s and dad’s childhoods. Why is that?”
Mary’s face grew strangely pale, and she appeared uncomfortably silent. Her blue eyes searched about the room.
“Mary?” I asked, confused by her reaction.
“Uh, well—you see,” She touched the fabric of her oversized t-shirt, which advertised a band that I wasn’t familiar with, as she spoke.“There was a fire.”
“A fire?” I whispered, “Why had I never heardthatstory before?”
“It was before you were born; there was a fire, and most of their pictures and things were destroyed.” Mary looked around the small space.
“But,youmust have at leastonepicture of your parents, right? My mom’s side?”
She looked into an open box as she spoke absentmindedly, touching the papers inside.
“I was living with your mom and dad at the time. We all lost everything.”