Esmerelda's Triumph

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Twin Destinies

Like her father before her, by her nineteenth birthday, Esmerelda’s hair had turned not just gray but silver. But that was only a minor change. Meebe had aged as well and was on her deathbed, which put her in catastrophic circumstances. She had not tried to run away again but had remained faithful to her adoptive parent.

In her frame of mind, she was experiencing the loss of family all over again. This time, however, it was much worse. She doubted that she could stand the loneliness that would follow. Where would I find anyone as loving as Meebe? She had no idea where to go, nor what she would find, nor how she would cope when she got there. She wondered how she was going to provide for herself. Could I hire out my wizardry skills? She had been sensible enough to learn more about the Black Moor, its geography, size, and inhabitants. She felt comfortable enough that she would not get lost again.

As she held Meebe’s trembling hand, a weasel stood by her side. It was not just any pet, either. Meebe had recently taught her how to summon her own familiar. The function of a familiar was to share its senses, such as sight, with its master. She named him Slinky, and he seemed to like the moniker. He also seemed to sense her misery as he put his paw on her leg to console her. She acknowledged him by reaching down and patting him.

Facing anxiety and loneliness, she shivered with dread, and her eyes filled with tears as Meebe lay dying. In a weak voice, Meebe gave her final counsel.

"Try not to be too sad. We all must go through this, and now it is my time."

Those were words that petrified her with fear, but she tried not to show it. Because of her love for the old gnome, she feared the impending loneliness even more.

"I have been lucky to have you all these years to brighten my existence." Meebe fondly, with a trembling hand, touched her cheek. She held Meebe’s hand in her own. Meebe’s strength gave out, and her arm dropped to her side.

Likewise, Esmeralda’s eyes flashed a silent signal.

Once more, Meebe continued, "You must take charge of your own destiny, Esmerelda, before someone else decides your fate on your behalf. You would not be happy if that happened, and you need to find someone to love you and give you a good home." After a few labored breaths, she added, "I regret that I could not teach you more, but there is one who can." Meebe paused to take a few more shallow, labored breaths.

Esmerelda leaned over her and asked, "Who is it, and why?" She held her breath as a lump formed in her throat while anxiety swelled in her chest.

Slowly, Meebe gasped, "You need more training before you leave the moor, my dear. He is a gnome like me, and his name is Finkle. He’s the Wizard of Wizards."

Meebe shut her eyes, and it became evident to Esmerelda that she was doing her best to communicate a desperate, last-minute plea. Tears ran down her cheek as she waited breathlessly for any further advice. The suspense was driving her insane as she softly asked, "Where do I find him?"

Meebe looked her in the eye and pointed to the window. "Do you remember the goblin synad?"

She nodded her head and gasped. "Yes." Though she had never seen the creature, she remembered its mischief distinctly. They had to keep anything shiny securely put away, or it was likely to disappear. She had learned how to polish common rocks that she found especially pleasing. Whenever she put them out on the windowsill, they kept disappearing, and she had never been able to catch the wily thief.

"Find it, my dear, and send it to find Finkle." Meebe looked up at me with a weak but earnest plea. "You will need his help. Don’t fail." Her eyes closed as her head dropped, and she exhaled her last breath.

It was agonizing as she animated a shovel, dug a grave beside her mother’s, and lowered Meebe’s wrapped body into it, and then covered it with earth again. She levitated a stone into position at the head of the grave, and as Meebe had done for her mother, she etched "MEEBE" with a burning ray from her own fingertip. In her state of mind, she didn’t know how she managed to keep her sanity. When it was done, she collapsed in tears and cuddled her weasel close. "It’s just us now, Slinky."

Castelia found a corner of her psyche where she felt safest and hid away. That little old spinster, who had driven the worgs away when she was nine, requested that she sign a long scroll in her own blood. She didn’t really know what she was doing at the time, but she hoped it meant that the old wench would help her and her father escape Merisha. She couldn’t even read, so she just scrawled an "X."

Instead, the old matron collapsed before her and literally crumbled to dust. In her place stood a dark, loathsome figure with horns and a tail. She had hooves for feet. What came next was the perception of evil intentions forcing their way into her thoughts. When she tried to resist, visions of her and her father’s deaths flashed into her mind. An ethereal voice as real as her own reminded her, "You signed a blood oath with me."

The realization that her safety depended on her complete obedience to that despicable entity crowding into her mind made her cower. Since that day, she has lived in complete terror. She watched her father turn into a living shadow of himself. He became little more than a walking zombie. Her aunt’s prediction had come true. They were living a fate worse than death.

In the interim, she had become a powerful being but had done horrible things. She was known as the Mistress of Merisha who served only the Prince of Hell, Asmodeus. Her servants were mercilessly worked to the bone until they crumbled into dust. Time had no meaning for her anymore. So, she found a corner deep within her inner self where she hid from the reality of what was going on outside.

On occasion, she ventured forth out of sheer boredom into the fabric of reality. The last time she had done that, she witnessed a conversation with a dwarf about raiding a silver mine so she could replenish her depleting servants. She retreated into her safe place, where there was, at least, a modicum of peace.

The morning light that cascaded through the lone window of her cottage illuminated her sullen countenance. A fresh fire added a radiant glow from the opposite direction as it heated the frigid morning air.

All she had to wear was a plain, worn, and faded green frock. Her silver hair was combed and fell past her shoulders. An errant lock of hair dangled in front of her right eye, and she brushed it over her shoulder. She brushed a tear from her face as she sat at the table and opened a small coffer. Slinky sat beside her on the floor and gave her a curious stare.

She slowly sorted through the contents of the coffer, filled with trinkets and childish keepsakes. Among them were several polished stones that she had collected over time. She had set them out on the windowsill, but they kept disappearing. She had never even so much as seen the cutpurse, but Meebe had said that she had. It was the reason she had started keeping them in the coffer.

What if the thief is a snyad? If so… it has as keen a love for polished pebbles as I have. A mind-boggling plan came to her. She wiped tears from her eyes as she picked out one of her favorite stones, an oblong black rock with white streaks running through it.

Slinky watched her with concern as she retrieved a glass bottle that she had found during her travels around the moor. She had kept it because of its unusual shape. It was narrower in the middle. She didn’t know why she liked it; it just intrigued her.

She noticed Slinky and realized he was sensing her feelings of loss and loneliness. That warmed her to the depths of her soul. The special bond that they shared had gone deeper than just master and familiar. He sometimes seemed to have a humanoid intelligence. She forced a smile and said, "I’ll be all right, Slinky." She really felt overwhelmed and confused, and she had doubts about whether her idea was going to work.

Uttering a magical cant and waving her hands in a circular motion, she created a variation of Meebe’s ghost rope that Meebe had used to rescue her; ghost rope was what she called it, but Meebe called it an ethereal lanyard. The variation she created was a thin ghost string that she tied around the middle of the bottle. The string's gossamer sheen made it almost invisible.

The oddly shaped bottle was curved in the middle, and she was pleased when the rock easily fit through the bottle neck. She took pride in her accomplishment as she tied the other end of the gossamer string around her bed frame and set the bottle in the window. For a few minutes, she sat admiring the monkey trap she had set.

"I can’t sit around watching it, or the thief will never show, and it will catch nothing even if it works," she mumbled.

She returned to the table and closed the coffer, then snapped her fingers, and a wand appeared in her hands. It was a very plain object that had been fashioned out of a simple stick. It was not even straight but crooked because it had been cut from a branch; however, it did have a carved ivory handle. When she waved the wand, the coffer floated onto one of the shelves in the cupboard.

No sooner had she done that than a rattling noise, followed by a horrid scream, rent the air. Slinky let out a hissing bark, and they both whirled around to see what was happening. The monkey trap had worked splendidly.

She had never seen a goblin in her life, but the mottle colored, winged creature with its hand in the jar, if it wasn’t a Snyad, was as good a likeness as she could imagine. If it had not been for its desire to hang on to the stone, it could have freed itself and fled. Instead, it banged the jar around and screamed its head off.

Slinky pounced on it and would have torn it to pieces, but she stopped him.

"No, Slinky," she yelled. "Don’t hurt him; I want this little fellow."

The creature was slightly bigger than Slinky. Its head was bat-like with large, pointed ears. Slinky halted nose to nose with it before he looked back, puzzled.

"You like that, do you?" she asked as she knelt down in front of the goblin. It quit screaming and returned a worried look. "I have a proposition to offer you." She couldn’t tell if the Synad understood her at all, but she proceeded as if it did. "You can keep that treasure if you will do me a favor." She looked it straight in the eye, hoping for some sign that it understood her. She thought she saw some curiosity in its gaze, so she asked, "Do you know of a gn0me named Finkle? The Wizard of Wizards?"

Its eyes darted about its head, which gave her the feeling that it might be thinking. A cynical smirk slowly crossed its face, and she believed that she saw it nod its head.

"If you do, then," she told him, "I need you to find him and tell him that I need his help. Will you do that?" It sneered with a gurgle, and that gave her some hope that she had successfully made her wishes known.

Slinky growled and bared his teeth. The goblin whimpered and slowly relaxed its grip. She continued, "If you do that, I will let you have that treasure and maybe even put more out for you." It made no reply but withdrew its hand from the trap and disappeared so quickly beneath the bed that she barely saw a blur.