Category: Young Adult/Teen Publisher: Webbed Footprint Publications
ISBN-10: 1471761657
Type: Fiction
Pages: 257
Copyright: June 26, 2012
ISBN-13: 9781471761652
A supernatural story about love, revenge and redemption for a teenage reader.
Rosalia is consumed with the desire to track down and kill the only man she ever loved.
Four hundred years ago she was accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. She believes John, the love of her life, was the one who betrayed her.
She must now exact her revenge on him to reclaim her immortality.
Excerpt
-March 2013, Salisbury-
Chapter 1
The Sighting
Sitting on a park bench and watching the lazy current of the river, Rosalia cut a lonely and awkward figure. She was willowy and sinuous, with thin, long limbs and a mass of straw-white curls which sneaked out from under her oversized knitted beanie. Her large, deep-set eyes were as pale as her hair as if all pigmentation had been drained away from her body. If you looked deep into those eyes, you would see the eons of time that had passed before them even though Rosalia was only a mere sixteen.
The river’s current had hypnotised her. She was staring intently into its black depth rippling with feeble touches of winter sunlight. There was menace in the river today reminding Rosalia of the countless lives the Avon had swallowed over the centuries and of the tributaries of blood that had seeped into it from the battlefields of Salisbury Plain. The Avon was a quiet river now, conquered and tamed by locks and bridges, but deep inside, it was brimming with anger, thirsty for more blood.
Her friends had long gone home. They were friends after a fashion; people would befriend Rosalia for all the wrong reasons – because she was odd, because she didn’t try to befriend them, because there was an air of mystery about her and they were curious to find out what it was she was hiding. As she would reveal nothing, they would tire of her silence and crumble away one by one. She did not care when they came and did not care when they left. They had no patience. No time. Rosalia had all the time in the world like the tirelessly flowing river bound to reach its destination sooner or later.
Suddenly a gust of wind hit her with a scent so powerful and so familiar that it made her reel. She jumped to her feet and scanned the park, searching for Him. She sniffed the air like a dog would: her nostrils flaring, her head erect, her eyes quick and sharp. A long subdued fury rose inside her gut like thirst. Thirst for John’s blood.
There he was – at the far end of the park, on a narrow overgrown path leading out into the city streets where Rosalia could easily lose his scent. She could only see the back of his head and his arm over a small, chubby girl with short plum-coloured hair.
Rosalia could move with the wind: saddle it like a horse and lead it at a speed to where she wished to be. She rode on a potent gust that slapped John on the back and made the small girl under his arm shiver. “It’s cold,” the girl said. John rubbed her back and looked into her eyes lovingly, the same way he used to look at Rosalia. “Better?” he asked. The girl smiled and tilted her head onto his chest. A pang of jealousy stung Rosalia. She weaved the wind into a whip and lashed out at John.
“Damn arctic cold!” he moaned. “Wind’s picked up out of nowhere. Let’s go home.”
“To yours?”
“Yes. Mum will be out for her yoga class, dad’s away in Brussels for the week – the house is ours.” There was a wicked twinkle in his eyes: an expectation of pleasure: sinful, forbidden pleasure. He kissed the girl on the lips – expertly, and the girl closed her eyes and smiled. She was an innocent, chubby little girl with full, sensual lips and a pretty, childlike expression in her eyes. John had lost his innocence though. He was so much more polished these days - suave, cunning and emotionally detached. He looked almost the same now as he had then. His hair was the same shiny chestnut brown – almost black, his brows thick and moody, his jaw angular. He had the same delicate hands, too small for his wide chest and long arms. He was taller and more muscular than then. But he was Him. He was John of Langeford.
Rosalia was walking two steps behind them, her breath freezing on the back of John’s neck. They were now weaving amongst other pedestrians, hurrying purposefully across the market square where traders were packing up their stalls for the night. They crossed the street dodging cars that hooted at them furiously, and emerged by the department store. In the mirror glass of a fashion display Rosalia could see their reflections: theirs – a happy couple huddled together for warmth and comfort, and hers – a ghostlike waif wrapped in a long, knitted cardigan and frayed scarf pulled upon by the wind.
John had spotted her reflection, too. His eyes narrowed, his lips pursed. He stared. Something must have stirred inside his head, some memory - a shred of recognition. But he couldn’t know Rosalia. He had no real memory of her. Tens of generations, tens of life-spans separated him from a real memory of Rosalia. She, on the other hand, found it impossible to forget him. Not until she had put right the wrong he had done to her.
“Are you all right?” the girl asked him. They were standing in the middle of the pavement, glaring at a window displaying mannequins frozen in seductive poses, and at Rosalia’s eerie reflection. Rosalia looked away and stepped aside, hiding behind a bus stop.
“Yes, I’m fine. I thought I saw someone...”
“Who?”
“No one,” John frowned. “I mean, no one I know.”
They dived into a narrow street under an archway. Rosalia followed from a wary distance. She wished them not to look back. John could not suspect anything. There were fewer people now on the pavement and it was harder for Rosalia to conceal herself. In the city it was impossible to change form without being observed. She had to go after him as she was: on two legs, in her beanie and scarf - vulnerable.
“I can only stay for an hour,” the girl was babbling, excitement ringing in her voice. “Don’t let me stay for a minute longer. Mum would wonder where I was...”
“Not a minute longer,” he echoed, his attention entirely on the girl’s lips, which he kissed again – now more daringly. “I will walk you home.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to. It’ll be dark in an hour.”
He put the key in the door of a nice two storey house covered in poison ivy that was suffocating the windows with its evergreen invasiveness. It wasn’t a stately mansion, but it was comfortable enough for the heir of Langeford.
He opened the door and let the girl in first with an overstated bow, “This way, madam.” The girl peeled with laughter. The door was shut promptly.
Rosalia didn’t want to follow over the threshold to witness their intimacies. She knew where he lived. For a long while she stood behind a small, bushy tree with rubbery leaves and remnants of pale-pink flowers which were beginning to rot, their colour fading to yellowed rust. It had to be a magnolia, Rosalia observed pointlessly. She inhaled the withering scent, closed her eyes and lifted her face towards the sky. The sun was setting, staining the sky red. She turned on her heel and walked home.
Chapter 2
Home
Mum pinched her cheek as she walked in the door. She gazed at her horrified. “You look pale as if you saw a ghost,” she said. “We need to put some colour into you! God, you must be cold! Hot chocolate, it is!”
She scuttled away to the kitchen. Rosalia heard her open the squeaking fridge door and put the pot on the hob. Mum didn’t use the microwave if she could help it. She liked it done the traditional way, without laser fires. Mum was old – she was now sixty seven, and Dad was seventy. They had Rosalia very late in life, and they had hardly expected it to happen at all. They had long given up on babies, it wasn’t meant to be. They didn’t speak of it anymore though deep down, without the other one knowing, each of them had yearned for a child, and cried inside. Rosalia chose them for her parents. She had never regretted that choice.
She had slumped at the kitchen table watching Mum’s slender figure by the hob, her arm working in circles as she was stirring cocoa powder into the hot milk. She threw in two teaspoons of sugar, and then another one for good measure. With a wide smile, she put the drink in front of Rosalia. Her face was small and delicate, with a narrow chin and milky-grey, deep set eyes. Their colour complemented the silver of her hair which framed her face like a hallo of shimmering rays. “Drink while it’s hot,” she said and gazed at her daughter with love so deep and so trusting that Rosalia could feel its warmth melt her skin.
Mum and Dad doted on her. Now both retired, they had no other purpose in life than to pamper their child with boundless attention, yield to her every whim and shower her with love. Little did they know: life as they knew it was about to change.
“Good day at school?”
“Yeah, the usual.”
“That makes it good, then,” Mum interpreted her daughter’s teenage talk with her typical accomplished skill. She smiled again and patted Rosalia on the hand, “You’re doing well, working hard. Keep at it!”
This year was the year of GCSEs, a year that would determine Rosalia’s entire future. That was what Mum thought. Mum knew very little and the less she knew the better. Rosalia came with all the trimmings of a normal teenager: she went to school, sharpened pencils to take notes when teachers taught her about events from the past she had actually lived through. She listened attentively in science lessons when Mr McCormick went on about molecules and the evolution theory which did not as much as scratch the surface of the mysteries of nature Rosalia held locked in her mind. All her efforts to be ordinary kept her parents happy and allowed Rosalia to peacefully get on with her search for John of Langeford.
“Is dad home?” she changed the subject.
“Yes,” Mum smirked. “Where else could he be? Snoring in front of the telly, I suspect. Go and give him a kiss. His stomach has been troubling him again. I say, go see a doctor, but he won’t listen to me. Maybe he’ll listen to you?” She looked worried, and she had good reason to worry, though she didn’t know why. Rosalia did: Dad had stomach cancer.
She went into the lounge. The television was bursting with images of bloody carnage in some God-forsaken corner of the world: a little black girl with dusty hair and huge, sad eyes was sitting next to a motionless body that was her mother; she was rocking back and forth; the soil underfoot was grey and cracked, barren. The cameraman shifted his lens to show a jeep filled to the brim with men waving machine guns, sending series of bullets into the sky. They looked euphoric. Rosalia turned the TV off.
Dad was half-sitting-half-lying on the couch. In the dimmed, red light of the lamp he looked almost healthy, only a twist of discomfort on his face and his fingers clutching his stomach betrayed the devastation inside his body.
It wasn’t easy to keep cancer at bay – not even for Rosalia. Cancer went against every rule of nature: it grew and reproduced in order to thwart and destroy its host, and then it would die with it. It was a merciless and mindless disease.
Without waking Dad, Rosalia ran her hands over his stomach, suppressing the savage cancer cells that were ravaging his body. She could sense their resistance. They were fighting back, biting back, draining her own energy. But she was stronger and they had to shrink and hide away. They would be lurking though, waiting for another day, she knew, but for now Dad was the winner.
He awoke with a start. “What the-“ His eyes were frightened, but the pain was gone from them.
“Just me, Dad, trying to give you a kiss. Stay still, will you!” She grinned as she kissed his withered cheek. His slim, long face creased into a network of smiling wrinkles that shot from the corners of his eyes.
“Come here, my imp,” he pulled himself up on the couch. He was painfully skinny – his body seemed to have no weight. “Tell me about your day.”
He called her his imp – how ironic! Rosalia was a witch: she commanded imps, they were her servants.
“Yeah, it was the usual,” she mumbled under her breath, the same way she had spoken earlier to her mother. “I’ll go to my room, got things to do for tomorrow...”
“You do that, darling.”
He was on his feet, looking perky. His posture was lifted and there was a smile on his face. As Rosalia was climbing up the stairs, she could hear him talking to Mum, “Told you, Cherie, it was nothing. Mild indigestion... I feel a hundred per cent now. You always worry your little head off for no reason!”
A cold chill went down Rosalia’s spine. Would she be there for him when she was done with John? Would she be back to her small and ordinary teenage life with her elderly parents, or would she be gone forever, her revenge at last putting her soul to rest? She wanted to return to them and to keep a watchful eye over them until they died. What was left of their lives was only a drop in the ocean of eternity Rosalia would soon immerse in. She could easily spare a couple of fleeting decades to the two elderly people who loved and cared for her more than they loved and cared for themselves. The temptation of open fields and hidey-holes in deep woods would have to wait. Now that her rebirth was so close that she could sense it in her fingertips, Rosalia was in no hurry. No, she would not abandon her human parents, she would not let them weep for her.
Jennifer finally ends up in Apalachia after barely escaping an attack. She soon learns about her destiny and how her actions will 'put a friend in grave danger'. With everyone refusing to tell her more Jennifer must find answers for herself.
