A Prophecy Forgotten
Chapter Six: Scars for Life

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The boys gave Tommy their letters of apology when he returned to school the next day. He waited until he was safe at home to read them—a good decision because most said something like this: Dear Cry Baby, I’m writing you this letter because the teacher says I have to. You are nothing but a sissy crybaby and I’m sorry that we have to beat you up to make you a man. Sincerely, Josh.

Tommy crumpled the letter and threw it in the garbage can, then pounded his fist on the desk, again and again, in a display of a temper that Gabriella had never seen.

“Oh, oh, oh! Not like Jim!” Gabriella said. “Tommy, your dad is the best, but not his temper!” She watched helplessly as Tommy crumpled up the rest of the letters. “Tommy, you’ve got to let it go! You’ve got to let it go! Work with me here!”

Something caught Gabriella’s eye when Tommy grabbed the last letter. It actually started with “Dear Tommy,” instead of something derogatory. She slammed it on the desk before he could toss it into the garbage can. Tommy sighed and read the letter.

Dear Tommy, I am so sorry for not helping you when all those kids beat you up. I don’t think they are very nice, but I’m afraid they’ll break my nose, too. Anyway, I’m not going to hang out with them anymore. Your Pal, Ritchie P.S. Maybe we could play American Heroes one day. I just got the tank.

Tommy stared at the letter for a long time. Then he crumpled it up and slammed it in the garbage can with the rest.

“He really is sorry,” said Gabriella.

Tommy took out his math workbook and started to work a problem.

“Yeah, I guess you don’t want friends like that, do you?”

Tommy concentrated on his addition.

“But he doesn’t think you’re a dweeb or a crybaby.”

“Why do teachers have to assign fifty problems?” Tommy said to himself.

“That makes three of us now, so you had better rethink last night’s ‘nobody likes me’ comment.”

“Five plus seven is twelve. Put down a two, carry the one.”

Gabriella looked down at Tommy’s homework. “Oh, math. No wonder you’re in such a foul mood.”

Tommy narrowed his eyes and put down his pencil. He looked over his shoulder at the closet, as though he expected Mikey to jump out.

“What’s up, big—?” A faint hint of sulfur hit Gabriella’s nostrils. She cocked an arrow and hovered above Tommy’s desk with her back against the wall.

An eerie, hissing laughter resonated from Tommy’s closet. “How did you know they were here, Tommy?” Gabriella whispered. She aimed her arrow at the closet and yelled, “You’re in Elysian territory. Get out now, or I will fight!”

The door nudged open, and not one, but two dark, decayed forms jumped out and bounded toward Gabriella with their swords drawn.

Gabriella let her arrow fly, and the first mornacht fell with an arrow sticking right between the crevices of his armor. She sent another deadly accurate arrow at the second, but it blocked it with its shield and threw a dagger at her.

She ducked just in time.

“Slow! Slow! You are slow for a guard!” hissed the mornacht as it scampered across the ceiling like a cockroach.

Gabriella kept it in her arrow’s site, waiting for a good shot. Then the dead mornacht began to steam. Gabriella dove under Tommy’s desk just before it blew up. The second mornacht continued crawling around the perimeter of the room, laughing and hissing.

“Don’t watch it,” Gabriella told herself once she emerged from the desk. “It’s trying to make you dizzy.” She tried to keep her focus ahead of her, which was why she missed it sneaking up behind her.

The mornacht’s spindly fingers wrapped around her throat. Gabriella dropped her bow and struggled to escape, but its fingers were too long to pry open. She slammed it into the wall, but it kept its hold.

“By the time they send a replacement, I’ll have already established residency!” the mornacht hissed in her ear.

Gabriella forced herself to calm down and remember her training. “When a mornacht’s got your throat, it doesn’t have any hands to defend itself!” she remembered her grappling instructor yelling. She reached in her boot, grabbed her spare dagger, and rammed it over her head down into the mornacht’s shoulder. The mornacht shrieked and loosed its hold just enough for Gabriella to wriggle free. It grabbed wildly at her and managed to latch its long fingernails just below both of her shoulders. They tore into her skin, from her biceps to her wrists, as she flew away.

Gabriella ignored the pain and grabbed her sword hilt. She dropped to the floor, whipped around, and thrust out her sword.

The mornacht flew right into Gabriella’s sword—scratching and clawing until it drew its final breath. She kicked it off and pulled her sword out of its belly. With one swift swing, the mornacht’s head landed on Tommy’s bed. She shoved the mornacht’s head and torso through the window and watched it burst into flames just as it hit the driveway.

She had forgotten about the mornacht’s blood on her hands. It began to sizzle, and she gritted her teeth against the pain as she tried to wipe it off before it burned through her skin. Gabriella leaned against the wall and slid to the floor.

“They know you’re hardening,” she said to Tommy as she grabbed her horn. “They won’t make it any easier for you.” She blew the horn. “Or me either,” she muttered and waited for a herald to attend her.

While she waited, she took a good look at Tommy. He was panting, and a bead of sweat traveled down the side of his head as he looked around the room.

“It was nothing. Just my imagination—just my imagination,” Tommy whispered to himself. “Back to math.”

“You can sense them?” Gabriella asked. She hopped on the desk and watched Tommy finish his math problems. “Humans can’t sense them. Why can you?”

Gabriella’s thoughts wandered to what the mornachts might want with Tommy. They must have known he was hardening and wanted to seize the opportunity to take up early residency. Early residency meant taking over a human before he had hardened—a horrible violation of any peace accord even Salla could think up. The mornachts only used it when they found a valuable human on the verge of hardening, but knew the human might reverse it himself. The mornachts would kill the human’s guard and take up residency for as long as possible until Elysia sent enough soldiers to extract it. Usually, the soldiers came too late.

Gabriella shivered at the thought of a mornacht toying with her Tommy and hoped she had fought hard enough to discourage any more attacks.

The herald who attended Gabriella happened to be a healer’s apprentice, and her hands and arms felt much better once he finished. He explained to her that her hands would heal without scarring. Unfortunately, he could not say the same for her arms.

“Scars like these would make any soldier proud,” he said to cheer her up. “Most guards would have died, and I know of officers back home who wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to do what you did. Those are scars of bravery.”

Gabriella disagreed. She knew her early hesitation gave the second mornacht just enough time to block her first arrow.

“They’re scars of inexperience,” she muttered to herself, deciding to double her archery practice once her hands healed.

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Copyright © 2006 M. B. Weston. All rights reserved.
Revised: 02/06/09