Fate’s Joke

Chapter Three

PRESENT,

Running through the woods with the full moon that hovered over her as a guide, the purple hem of the white cloak that was a little too big for her, swept the debris on the forest floor as she made her way deeper into the woods, struggling to keep the hood of her cloak over her head.

"This is what I ought to do. This is what I ought to do" She chanted, trying to keep her fears at bay and stop herself from turning back.

Gradually venturing deeper into the woods, the unearthly silence and the dense fog that hovered over the woods seemed more eerie.

Shivering, she yearned for the comfort and safety of her chambers. The crackling fireplace, the soft blankets, and someone to wait on her.

Suddenly, the trees parted, and a clearing shrouded in an eerie glow came into view. Seven figures draped in black cloaks stood in a circle around a massive boulder, their faces hidden in the shadows.

Two ancient trees, sentinels of the clearing, loomed before her, with green and black candles flickered at their roots, casting an otherworldly light.

The pungent scent of rosemary wafting through the night air.

"Come forward!" A feminine voice, low and husky, pierced the night air, sending shivers coursing down her spine.

"Come forward!" She was beckoned on again.

As she lifted her foot to walk through the trees to enter the clearing, an unseen force weighed down on her, making it impossible for her to move freely.

"Only the worthy can come through," the seven figures chanted in unison, their voices weaving a hypnotic spell. "Only the worthy can come through..."

Each repetition felt like a physical blow, making her legs heavier. Taking a step back, the pressure eased, and her feet felt light again.

Walking towards the clearing again, the air thickened and the resistance grew stronger with each step.

As she approached the trees, the circle of salt surrounding the boulder gleamed like a ring of moonlit steel. Smaller stones, arranged in a precise pattern, at different point around the circle, pulsing with an otherworldly energy.

The chanting grew louder and more insistent. She swayed, dizzy from the force pushing her back, and the chanting suddenly ceased.

Suddenly, she broke through the barrier and walked through the two trees.

"She's weak" "I do not perceive any strength from her" "She's scared, how strong can she be?" "Her mother was far more powerful" They murmured.

"Into the circle!" A loud voice cut through the whispers.

As she steeped into the circle, the coven’s voice rose in unison as they pointed to the little stone lying on the large boulder beside a ritual knife.

"You have come of age. If you are destined to be part of this coven, your instincts will guide you. Light up the stone!"

Standing for a long time without any idea of what to do, she looked around for clues as to what she was meant to do. Seeing that they all stood still and she couldn't make out their faces that were well hidden beneath their cloaks, she walked towards the center of the circle and tripped on a small stone.

"I told you she's weak" Someone muttered once more.

Ignoring their words, she wondered if the stone she tripped on had always been there.

Holding onto the large boulder for support, she felt it pulse with life and abruptly withdrew her hands .

Surely, the stone could not be alive!

"You have come of age. If you are destined to be part of this coven, your instincts will guide you. Light up the stone!" The seven behind her chorused once more.

Summoning courage, she touched the boulder once more and felt nothing. Staring at the stone and ritual knife for a long time, she suddenly picked up the knife and cut her palm, letting her blood drop on the stone.

~***~

JARED BLACK SAT BEHIND THE STEERING wheel of his cheap '89 model Toyota truck, stuck in the early morning traffic. Sighing nonstop at the loud blaring of horns and the incessant chatter in the traffic, he stroke the black stone hanging loosely from his neck, trying to calm down.

It was a long commute from his home to the library. Setting out with that in mind, he had started off early to beat the traffic.

The early morning traffic was bad. Made sluggish by the fog that hung dangerously low in the air and the slippery road still wet from the rain that fell in the night.

By the time he had spent two hours in the traffic without much headway, he felt so frustrated that the newest song from his favorite boy band, and the fact that he didn't have to deal with his team leader didn't completely lift his mood.

Not that he was in a good mood to start with, but the traffic congestion, annoyed him to no end.

Sighing, he turned off the song blasting from his stereo and slumped into his seat.

Trying to focus on other things, he picked up his laptop from the co-pilot seat. Letting his messy personal life interfere with his job like he had been doing for the past three weeks would get him fired if he didn't get his act together.

Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, he compared and analyzed the data, graphs, and information he had been collecting for the past two months.

His company was hoping to gain a government-awarded contract they couldn't pull off alone. They needed a beneficial collaboration that would help them minimize costs while still using the best materials.

Looking intently at the graphs, he focused on the three construction companies topping the chart.

While the company recommended by his team leader topped the chart, and was a big one that would give them a fair cost, and had lots of experience running major projects, they sometimes sold underhanded goods and had a bad reputation.

The other two companies, on the other hand, were steadily rising small companies with good reputations and records but expensive goods.

Eyeing the graphs one more time, he sighed. He couldn't afford to make mistakes.

Pushing the thoughts to the back of his mind, he hoped that whatever he came up with would be accepted.

Eyeing the steering wheel of his trusty truck, that was supposed to be sitting in some sort of museum that collected obsolete technologies, his mind wandered back to the one thing he had been trying not to think about.

His dreams were back, and they were much stronger than they had been three years ago.

He wished he could ignore how he felt. And bury it like he did three years ago when Seth extended a helping hand to him the day he had shown up at his part-time job with everything he had to his name in a little tattered box that still managed to somehow hold together, a load of college and medical debt, and no roof over his head. As skeptical as he had been about receiving help from a stranger, knowing that there is no such thing as a free lunch, he had only two options — accept the offer from a strange seemingly kind young lady or sleep on the streets.

Weighing his choices, he had been smart enough to choose the better option. And three years down the line, he thought himself living his best life.

He had decided that he would not live his life, chasing something as stupid as a dream like the protagonist of some fantasy book.

Now, his debts were paid off, he had what he liked to think of as a stable life, and had been somewhat convinced that tossing out his curiosity about the dreams that haunted him since his teenage days was the best decision he had made. Till it came rushing back on the night he clocked 29 three weeks ago.

Shoving off the dreams as meaningless wasn't going to work this time. A part of his mind told him so! They had come to stay till he found answers. And somehow, he strongly believed it.

Last night, he had the same dream that he had the night he clocked eighteen. The same dream that started it all. And somehow, this time, he felt his blood boil like there was something beckoning to him. Something powerful he could not ignore.

He had never being able to completely forget his dreams, but now, he was scared that digging deeper would probably turn his life upside down, costing him the stability he had struggled so much to build.

Somehow, he felt like all he had been doing was trying to put a plastic lid on an erupting volcano.

Just how long could the lid last before the larva melts it?

The foundation he had built on was fragile. So fragile that the dream last night had thrown him right back to the very beginning. Reminding him that there was only so little a person could do to run away from his reality.

Everything he had so carefully tucked away when things started to take on a good look, burst open.

The dreams that nagged at him, each time he had them, and made him experience different heights of extreme emotions, gnawed at the reins of his sanity.

With just a few weeks in, the three years he spent building what he liked to think of as a 'normal' life for himself, turned out to be a joke and he felt more overwhelmed than he did three years ago. Suppressing his dreams was simply a grand act to deceive himself. The larva had melted the lid and came pouring out.

Whatever it was beckoning on him, through his dreams was still out there somewhere, strongly calling out to him. All he had ended up doing was running around in circles.

Stroking the black stone around his neck, he felt himself relax.

His dreams had never meant nothing. He had just been so good at lying to himself that he chugged down something he knew was obviously not normal as nothing. Now, he was struggling to hold onto every little bit of sanity in his life.

Sighing for the umpteenth time, He finally pulled into the Library's parking lot. He had so much reading to catch up with.