Prologue
The bed she was lying
in a very comfortable bed.
Wait.
She was conscious?
If she was
conscious, that means… He’s alive.
She sat up and hit
her head on something. She tried to
focus her eyes in the dark to see what impeding her headroom. She was in a bed, in a box? Oh yes, she recalled these now. She was in a coffin. Last time she awakened in a ditch, so she
couldn’t complain.
She pushed against
the lid to see if it would move. It was
heavy but she got one side a little.
Remembering the previous times, she sat up and peeked through the crack she
had made. She was in a small elegantly
decorated room filled with flowers and the lights were muted. It smelled a
little sterile and it was quiet. She
didn’t see anyone, so she rose on out of her coffin. There were heavy curtains on the windows and
coffin was on a stand. She ungracefully
rolled out onto the floor. Rising up, she
searched for the door. She needed to get
out of here quickly before someone noticed that her body’s previous owner was
missing.
Luckily, the door
was unlocked and the hall outside was empty.
She didn’t hear the sounds of anyone at all. She needed to leave quickly.
She was
able to leave out the front door only to discover she was in an upscale
neighborhood. Dawn looked to be just an
hour away. The sign on the lawn outside
read Adams Funeral Home. She smirked to herself. During
her previous lives, funerals were held in the deceased’s home or church. She hadn’t seen a culture with a dedicated
building for the dead since her original lifetime, back in Egypt.
First things
first, she needed to get as far away from this place as possible, find new
clothes, and find out where and when she was.
She closed her
eyes for a moment, searching for the reassuring tugging sensation that was
always present in her head, and started walking in that general direction.
She was in a small
city. The roads were paved; an excessive
amount of automobiles sat on the side of the road, and all the houses and
businesses were tidy and close together.
The streets were well lit with an electrical street lamp every fifty
feet.
She wondered how
long had it been since her last lifetime.
Automobiles didn’t look like this in 1917. Only the very wealthy could afford
electricity at night.
After an hour of
following the pulling sensation in her head, she was standing in the parking
lot of a tall building. Saint Thompson Medical Center shined in
bright lights on top of the building. The
outside looked to be made of completely glass windows, at least six stories of
glass. The dawning sun reflected a deep
pink off of the building’s side. She
could see uniformed workers milling about inside. She could read the sign, so she knew the
language hadn’t changed in the many years since she had last lived. She walked up to the front door, looking for
a door handle, and was surprised when the door opened for her
automatically. She caught her reflection
in the glass door.
She then noticed how
she was dressed, in a short black skirt that came to her knees and a white
button up shirt. The magic that had
allowed her soul to claim this body had altered it from its previous owner’s
looks to be the exact replica of her original body. The clothes hung off her small frame, like
she was wearing her older sister’s clothing.
She walked into
the main entrance and a large woman in a cartoon dog print shirt and pants
looked up from behind her desk where she was hitting buttons in front a flat picture
frame.
She walked past
her intent on her destination.
“Can I help you?”
“No ma’am. I am just going to the birthing rooms,” she
replied
The large woman blinked
at her, processing her foreign accent, words, and looks. The woman thought a moment, and replied, “Visiting
hours are not until eight. You can wait
in the waiting room down the hall. There
is a coffee machine in that one and the TV’s not broke either. The one in the maternity is stuck on Channel
9, and no one wants to watch Sports Network.
Visitation is in an hour.”
She was miffed at
the interception, but she didn’t want to draw too much attention to herself, especially
when she was this close to him. She
shrugged and walked in the direction the woman pointed. She wondered idly what a coffee machine or a “TV”
was. This was the first time she had
been awakened so close to him. Usually
it was far enough away that she could ignore the tugging. She normally had time to get acquainted with
the time period. She had to build her
life from scratch every time. She would
have to steal and lay low for a while, until she found a place to live and a
way to support herself.
She found the
empty room filled with chairs, a big moving picture, and a square
metal cabinet that announced it held coffee within. She inspected the moving picture. This must be what a TV is, she thought, a
radio with pictures. She moved to the
coffee cabinet, pondering on how it operated.
It appeared that you put money in the slot and selected the coffee you
wanted. She could use some coffee, but
she didn’t have any money.
She sat in a
corner and noticed a folded newspaper on the end table. Scared that she would discover exactly how
many years she had been dead, she picked it up and read the front headline. City employee involved in a sex scandal. At least that part of humanity doesn’t change.
Then she found the date: October 7,
2008.
Ninety years. It had been ninety years since she had
died.
She browsed the newspaper,
assimilating herself to current events, until the clock on the wall announced it
was eight o’clock.
Choking down her
anxiety, she rose and left the room in search of a building map. There was a big, color coded sign that stated what was on each floor hanging on
the wall outside of the waiting room. She
followed the pink labeled Mommy and Baby
Unit signs to the elevator. She knew
what an elevator was, even if it looked a little different.
As she stepped out
of the elevator on the fourth floor, she was faced with a big window with
infants on display. She leaned against
the window, hands on the glass in front of her.
There he was. Tiny, pink, and sleeping peacefully.
There was a set of
thick wooden doors to the left of the window with a number pad on the
right. They were still locked. She turned back to the little wonder in the
window. She looked at the card on the
crib to see what his new parents had named him.
They hadn’t yet. It just said
Baby Jones.
Aw, Quintus.
They’re going to give you a horrible name, like Henry or William, she
thought to herself.
She stood there
enraptured with the magic she had worked that brought them back like this. When there was magic in the world, she had
tried to give them immortality, so they would never have to be apart. She didn’t realize she was breaking a law of
nature at the time. She was too
inexperienced with magic, and she didn’t know magic was starting to fade from
the world too. There must always be
balance; no one can live forever.
When she cast the
spell that merged their souls, she burnt out her body, killing both herself and
Quintus. His soul goes through the
process of reincarnation each time before he is reborn into the world. Her soul, on the other hand, was denied
rebirth. Her soul inhabits the closest
unaltered empty body when he is born.
The spell transforms the body to look like she did 1500 years ago,
making it hers. Quintus’s looks change
during his teenage years until he looks like he did when they were citizens of
the Byzantium Empire. He never recalls
their previous lives until after they meet again, while she must remember each
and every day of every life. Until her
half of their soul met his half, she wouldn’t age, and it had caused some
issues before.
She watched him, saddened with the
knowledge that it would be many years before he would be a man again. Then the real work of making him love her again
would start. She turned to leave,
knowing it was best to only know him from afar until then, when suddenly
the lights went out. The emergency
lights were instantly on and people were coming out of their rooms, their panic stricken faces looking
around.
She felt a
pressure in my chest; a low rumbling sound was heard from outside. She could feel the vibrations through her
entire body. Her hair was filled with
electric. The walls started shaking, and
the babies started crying.
Then everything
went white for the span of five heartbeats.
She felt the floor
give; she tried to hold on to the wall, but it was glass and it was falling too. She will never forget the sound of a building
dying – the twisting steel, the scraping and busting concrete, the shattering
glass, and then the eerily quiet aftermath where the only sounds are of human
pain.
She was trapped
between what used to be the floor and one of the heavy wooden doors. Her heart was beating too fast; her breathing
was too short; and all of her senses were screaming from overload. She felt it the moment the other half of her soul
depart this world, a crushing and sucking sensation from inside of her. There was no pain; her soul was leaving that
body, to slip back into quiet oblivion.
Baby Quintus’s tiny body didn’t survive the collapse so her soul wouldn’t
either.
