The Secrets of Elderville

After lunch, Matteo leaves for guard duty, while Opal leads Jessa to the bottom of the tree. “Where are we going Opal?” Opal smiles at Jessa as they jump off the last branch of the tree and float down to the grass below. “Just follow me, do what I do and don’t get distracted. They have a cat and she’s mean.” Jessa stares at her aunt, about to ask her a multitude of questions, but before she can, Opal starts to run towards the human’s house. Delilah’s house. Opal looked over her shoulder, “come on Jessa! Keep up!” Jessa snaps out of it, running after Opal. As they came closer to the house, Opal veers off to the right, going around the corner of the house. Jessa skids, while also turning right, trying to match Opal’s speed. Shit, shit, shit, shit. How is she so fast? Jessa never realized how out of shape she was.

They get to the side of the house, Opal leaps onto a green vine, which had grown all over the side of the house from top to bottom. Jessa follows her, grabbing the vine that Opal’s foot had just stepped off. Reaching the top, they came upon a window cracked open. The smell of vanilla, and lemon hit their faces as they climbed through the crack. The room was dimly lit, making Jessa’s eyes unfocused. “I know, it’s annoying how dark she keeps it in this room. It’s Delilah’s storage room, she keeps most of her supplies in here for her side job. She makes soap.”

Jessa’s eyes finally took in the room around her. Boxes and boxes full of little bottles and bars of soap. “Delilah keeps this lamp on for me, and then you see that round golden thing next to it?” Opal points her finger at a shiny, golden object hanging next to this so-called lamp. Attached to it is a string, which Opal flies over to and begins to pull on the string. The golden thing starts to shake and let out a high-pitched ringing. “Jeez, that’s loud! What is that?!” Jessa covers her tiny, pointed ears. “It’s called a bell! It alerts Delilah that I’m here. You’ll meet her in a minute, she’s going to come through that door.”

As soon as Jessa turned her head, the door had started to crack open. But they do not see Delilah walk through, they look down to see an animal with black, white and orange fur with a big fluffy tail.

“Oh no it’s Gigi! Quick Jessa fly up to that ceiling fan!” Opal dashes towards the top of the room, where a big light and planks of wood hang from. Jessa hesitates at first, cause when she looked back to the doorway, the cat had vanished from sight. Opal landed on one of the planks of wood and looked for Jessa. “JESSA! DO. NOT. MOVE!” Suddenly she felt it, hot breath on the back of her wings. She froze, terrified of the fact that there was now a huge animal behind her, probably wanting her as it’s lunch. The animal lifted its paw, claws extracted from them. Jessa closed her eyes, waiting for what’s to come next. She could hear Opal screaming from the top, “No Gigi! Bad Gigi! You shoo! Shoo! Oh no, DELILAH!”

Jessa, eyes still closed, waiting for the end, standing as still as a rock. But the end never came, she peaked her eye open and instead of the animal it was a human! She was standing in front of Jessa and the animal named Gigi beside Jessa, holding some kind of weapon. “Gigi, no! You nasty girl! Get out and leave this poor fairy alone!” Delilah then activated the weapon, shooting a stream of water at the furry animal. Gigi bellowed out a loud, “MEOOOOW” and a hiss that sounded like a snake. Was she a snake? A furry snake with legs? The beast dashes off the desk and out the door.

“I apologize on behalf of my devil of a feline, Gigi. She still thinks fairies are something to play with. You must be a new guest of Opal’s! Speaking of Opal…” The human looked up at the ceiling fan, stretching her arm out. Opal jumps off the fan and onto Delilah’s hand. “Thank the elders, Delilah you’re a life saver. I thought our poor Jessa was going to be cat food.” Delilah gently moved Opal to the desk, next to Jessa. “Jessa, you say? You mean THE Jessa, your niece?” Delilah crouched down in front of Jessa and pointed her finger at her. “Nice to meet ya!” Jessa stared at the finger. Opal giggled, “She wants you to shake her finger. Take out your hand, grab her finger and then shake it up and down.” Jessa did as she instructed, only she also shook her entire body up and down as well. That made Delilah and Opal burst out into laughter. Jessa’s face started to heat up and quickly crossed her arms. “Sorry Jessa, but that was quite amusing,” Opal then flew onto Delilah’s shoulder, motioning to Jessa to do the same.

Jessa, Opal and Delilah walked out of the dark room and down a set of stairs, into a very wide, spacious room that Delilah called the main living area. Jessa’s eyes didn’t know what to look at first, the huge windows? The horrible yellow color on the walls? But then there it was. A strange silver staff in the corner of the room, with a blue crystal at the top wrapped with silver wire. Jessa felt pulled to it, as if it were calling out to her. She quickly floated to the staff and hovered next to it, staring into the crystal. At first, she heard a humming sound, but then it started to sound like voices. And then all she heard was one name, repeated over and over. “Dario…Dario…”, suddenly she felt someone shaking her. “Jessa! Jessa!” She turned around and saw Opal, with a look of pure panic on her face. “What happened?” She led Jessa to the window and made her sit down.

Jessa felt like the wind had been stolen from her lungs. “Uh you looked like you were in some kind of trance, just staring at Delilah’s staff over there. Are you okay?” Opal lays a hand on her shoulder and gently patted her head. “I-I don’t know. I kept hearing a name coming from it. I don’t know anyone by that name but then again it sounds so familiar.” Opal straightened her back and became stiff. “What name?” Jessa, startled by her reaction, hesitated. Looking away from her aunt and to Delilah, who also had the same expression on her face. “It sounded like Dario? I think?” Opal stood up and looked at Delilah. And as if some sort of unspoken agreement between them had been made, Delilah nodded her head and rushed off to the other room.

Jessa could hear drawers being opened and closed, and the scuffling of Delilah’s feet. “Opal, what is-...” but Opal held up a hand to silence her. “Patience, I’ll explain in a moment.” Not soon after Delilah came back into the room with a multitude of items in her hands. Notably one of them being a huge, old book with a symbol Jessa knew she had seen before. “I’ve seen this before, Grandmother Greta had this symbol on a necklace she always wore, tucked under her dress. I never got a chance to ask her about it,” Jessa traced the symbol with her hand, feeling a shiver run through her wings. “What does it mean?” she asks. Opal opens the book with a wave from her wand, “It is an old symbol, said to mean many things. Wanderers from way back, even before the time of the first king of elderville, used to worship this symbol. Even got it tattooed on their chests.

The first part of the symbol is a waxing crescent, the second a full moon and the third the waning crescent. Also known as The Maiden, The Mother and The Crone. The Maiden represents a new moon. The maiden embodies purity, youth, creation, pleasure, naivety, and new beginnings. The mother represents a full moon. Embodies love, patience, gratitude, power and self-care. And lastly, the crone, represents the fading waning moon, which embodies endings, wisdom, death, acceptance, and culmination.” Opal finally lands on a page with the same symbol and sketches of wanderers kneeling in front of it. The page next to it is a sketch of an angry looking king, pointing his finger at the symbol, with an army of wanderer knights burning the symbol. The next page had sketches of wanderers who had the symbol on their chest, being beaten and their wings being cut from them. Jessa gasps, “what is this? Why did they do this?” She looks to her aunt, whose expression had not changed. “King Dario, the first king of Elderville. A small-minded wanderer, who after defeating the Wasp King, had decided that the wanderers of Elderville were too weak. Only putting their faith in the divine feminine and declaring that their belief in such things is what caused the Wasps to try and take over our village. He deemed the wanderers who had carved the symbol on their chest as traitors to their own kind and ordered their wings to be cut from their bodies and cast them out of the village. It’s been said that they slowly died out in the mountains, either hunted by beasts or fell ill by the cold temperatures. After several years of the persecution of wanderers who secretly still worshipped the divine feminine, a group of them banded together to overthrow the old mad king, who had let the power of the crown go to his head and had been a drunken fool for most of his reign. They succeeded in taking him down and decided his fate would be to have his own wings stripped from him and to spend the rest of his life deep in the mountains where only our most dangerous prisoners were sent. But before they did that, they took from him his most precious possession, a powerful crystal that had been used in the wasp wars that King Dario stole from the humans.” Delilah smirked, “Divine justice, I like to call it.” Opal also let slip a small smirk but quickly resumed the story. “The leader of the group who took the first king down was your father, before he became King Elliot.”

Jessa’s face fell, remembering her father. She could not remember much about him. Only that he was always angry about something and stayed in the royal throne room most of the time, even having his own bed behind the royal throne. He had died when she was only ten years old. Only now she knew the truth of his demise, that he had been killed by the wasp king.

Opal turned the page of the book again, revealing another sketch. It was of the first royal wanderer family, the mad king and his queen whose face looked so familiar to Jessa and their daughters who were also very familiar. Jessa freezes, looking at the oldest daughter, with long silver hair. She slowly looked to the queen’s face again, realizing it was her Grandmother Greta only with long blonde hair. And then looking upon her mother’s face, noticing that her eyes were not of fire red but a light shade of green. “Your father was the-…” Opal nodded, finishing Jessa’s sentence by pointing at the names listed under the sketch.

‘King Dario, Queen Greta, Princess Opal and Princess Isobel’

“My grandfather was the mad king. I can’t wrap my mind around that. How did you and my mother, before she got possessed by the wasp king, turn out so sweet?” Jessa had to sit down again, after taking in more shocking news. Opal knelt next to Jessa, moving a piece of hair out of her face, “Oh, your mother was always a brat and I, well I was a bit stuck up in my youth and a bit self-centered. That is until my mother made me realize there’s more to life than myself and my needs. Once I put down the mirror and took in the world around me, my whole perspective changed. And I realized how messed up our royal family was. Especially after the fall of my father, I remember my mother pleading with the village to spare us. The village agreed and for a while the elders oversaw the wanderers. But after a long time, the elders decided they needed a new king to rule us once again, they needed a front man to dish out the laws and to listen to the villager’s constant ‘complaints’ as they called them. Yet they were still the ones pulling the strings behind the scenes, persuading the new king on what to do with each new situation that arose. The new king being your father.”

Jessa breathed out a sigh. So many things were kept secret in our village. What else has been kept from me? She could feel her anger and frustration start to rise. “I know this is a lot to take in. You’ve been through so much within a short period of time.” Opal patted Jessa’s knee, deciding to join her by sitting down beside her. “Yeah, I haven’t had time to breathe. Yet alone take in the fact that I’m a year older, and none the wiser. I mean how many things have you and grandmother been hiding from me? Any more secrets you care to share? Speak now or forever hold your wings!” She could feel herself about to explode. Opal sighed, looking down at her wand. “There are many more secrets that I haven’t told you yet. They will be revealed when the time is right, I promise you that.” Jessa rolled her eyes, shooting up into the air. “Well let me know when that time is!” She flies out of the room and up the stairs.

Delilah sits on the couch in front of Opal and the book. Opal had not moved from her spot, still looking at her wand, twirling it in her hands. “Have I done this all wrong, Delilah?” Delilah sighed, shaking her head, “I’m not an expert on family. You know that, but what I do know is the feeling of betrayal and how confused she must be and scared. She finds out her grandfather was a psychotic king, and her mother is a wasp who killed her father and that she’s supposed to be the one to save her village. It’s a lot for a…how old is she?” Opal nodded her head, “She’s twenty- no twenty-one now. Yeah, it’s too much to hear in such a short amount of time for one so young.” Opal pauses, setting her wand back in the strap. “Oh my elder,” she shoots up into the air, in front of Delilah’s face. “HER BIRTHDAY WAS YESTERDAY AND I’M A DUMB ASS!” She flies out of the room after Jessa, Delilah stands and runs out the front door. She runs to the tree and yells out, “Jessa! Come back!” She sees Opal flying out from around the house at top speed towards the tree. Opal lands on the branch in front of her hollow, looking around to see if she can spot Jessa. Matteo comes flying down from the top of the tree, “Opal? What’s going on?”

Opal explains the events that just unfolded, and without hesitation, he flies off into the tree in search of Jessa. After thirty minutes, nobody could find her. “Where would she go? She doesn’t know the area; she doesn’t know the dangers of the other humans and beasts. We must find her before she is hurt!” Opal grabs Matteo’s arm, gripping it with the strength of a full-grown owl claw. He lightly smacks it off, “ow! We’ll find her Opal, don’t worry. Have you searched the house at all?” Opal loosens her grip. “No, no we didn’t. I didn’t think she would want to hide there. But then again that was the last place I thought of looking for her, which makes it the perfect hiding place. You should go find her Matteo, I’m afraid she’s too angry with me now and you seem to have a spot in her heart.” Matteo raises his eyebrows in surprise, Opal laughs, “oh don’t look so shocked, I know you feel the same way for her. I practically raised you, remember? Now go get our girl.”

Matteo flies out of the tree, towards the house. He enters through the opened window, searching the dimly lit room. But Jessa was nowhere to be seen, understandably so since the smell of vanilla and lemon was too much for his tiny nose to take. Flying out of the room, he looked around to see only one other room open on the second floor, what the humans called the bathroom. Matteo flies into the room, scanning the area and noticing the window in here also open.

He lands on the ledge next to the window, looking out but only seeing the house next door. As he was about to leave the window, he heard someone crying. He darted out of the window and up to the roof. “Jessa!” She lay curled up on the roof tiles, bawling. “Go away! I don’t want you to see me like this.” Matteo sat next to her and lays his hand on her head and began to gently pet it. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m here and I’m staying.” Jessa began to cry even more, slowly crawling into Matteo’s lap. After a moment, she calmed down, “I can’t do this Matteo, it’s too much.” Matteo kept petting her head and had started to slowly rock her body back and forth in a soothing motion. “Jessa, I know it’s hard to believe in yourself, trust me. All this responsibility and you feel you must take this on all alone. But you’re not alone, you don’t have to carry this burden by yourself. Your aunt Opal will help you and Lily and Selene and Delilah and…me.” Jessa lifted her head to look at him, he smiled down at her, wiping her tear-stained face. “I believe in you Jessa. I know you can do this, with a little help.” She smiled back at him, sitting up a little more. “Thanks Matteo, for believing in me,” Matteo takes her hand and kisses her fingers. Jessa’s face began to heat up and butterflies began to dance in her stomach. “So, I heard from a little fairy that it was your birthday yesterday?” Jessa looks away, taking her hand back. “Yes, a year older. I’ve never liked my birthday. It was always seen as this big thing at home and there would be a big party that would last three days. I would only stay for the cake part and then I would sneak away to my room or to the ground in search of bugs and what not.” Matteo stood up, stretching out his arms and wings, Jessa took notice of his shirt riding up to reveal a bit of his soft, sun kissed skin. He looked down at Jessa and extended his hand to her, “Come on birthday girl, we’re going to go have a small party that will only last tonight. And before you ask, yes there will be cake.” She took his hand, and together they flew back towards the tree.

The party did indeed last until midnight. Everyone in the gathering hollow had partied till they dropped, passing out one by one, scattered around the hollow. Only Matteo, Opal, Lily and Jessa are still going. But all are not quite themselves, especially Jessa who felt as though she was going to cough up her lungs. “What was this called again?” she asks as she blows out the smelly smoke. Lily giggles, “we call it fairy grass, although the humans call it something lame,” she hits the long wooden pipe and passes it to Opal who is so far gone she waves it away. “I’m done for the night; I need food and sleep. Goodnight birthday girl,” she stands up and kisses Jessa’s forehead. “And goodnight to everyone, and please don’t make a mess in the kitchen or Selene will have your heads!”

Matteo hits the pipe and passes it to Jessa but before she can grab it, a pale hand steals it from her. “Don’t mind if I do,” Hawk takes a deep, long hit from the pipe, blowing the smoke into Jessa’s face. “Heard it was your birthday and came down from my post to see if there was any food left. Glad I did, I haven’t had this stuff in a while. Not since that one night, do you remember Matteo? We ended up with honey in all sorts of places that honey shouldn’t be,” they lean down towards Matteo, putting their hands on his shoulders. Matteo knocks them away and takes Jessa’s hand, “come on Jessa, come on Lily, let’s go get something to eat.” As he led her out of the hollow, Jessa looked back to see Hawk slumping down in the chair Jessa was sitting in, leaning back in it and hitting the pipe again.

As they enter the kitchen, Matteo starts a pot of water on the stove. Lily goes to the ice box and takes out a block of cheese. Matteo turns to Jessa, “Jessa will you go into the pantry and get some pasta?” Jessa looked at him with a puzzled expression. He sighs, “you don’t know what pasta is?” She smiles and shakes her head. He takes her hand once again and leads her to the pantry, taking out his wand, the color of it was a light green, silver vines wrapped around it. He flicks it and a light beamed at the tip of it. Still holding onto her hand, he guides it to a bag of hard, curled shaped things she could only assume was pasta.

“This is macaroni, Delilah showed us how to make it from scratch. And when boiled with scalding hot water, they turn soft and mushy. We will be mixing it with cheese and milk tonight and your life will be changed forever.” They both giggled, he began to gently massage her fingers with his hand, the light from his wand illuminating their faces. Jessa looked down, beginning to feel her head spin from all that smoking. Matteo takes her chin and lifts it up, so her eyes met his, she was startled to see that his held such hunger in them. He bites his lip and leans closer to her, but a thought popped into her head that she couldn’t let go.

She jerks her head back, “what was Hawk talking about, with the honey in places it shouldn’t be?” Matteo closes his eyes and sighs. He steps back from her, “That was a long time ago when I was a different wanderer. They only said that to try and make you jealous and to try and make their claim on me, which they DO NOT own me to make that crystal clear!” He runs his hands through his short spiked, black hair and grabs the bag of pasta. As he starts to leave the pantry, Jessa grabs his arm and pulls him into her. She holds the back of his neck as her lips meet his for the first time. It was soft and slow at first, he dropped the bag of pasta on the ground and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her into him tighter. The soft, slow kisses turned into hard and fast kisses, she grabs his hair clutching onto it as he grabs her legs, lifting her up. Suddenly a loud cough came from the kitchen and Lily began whistling very loudly. They stop the ravenous make out session and began to laugh.

Matteo sets her back down and gives her one more peck on the lips before picking the bag of pasta back up. He exits the pantry, “sorry about that Lily, we had a hard time finding the pasta, Selene put it up on a really high shelf.” Jessa strolls out of the pantry with a little bit of swag in her step. Lily makes a fart noise with her mouth, “Yeah, right. That wasn’t the only thing that was hard,” she pours the pasta into the boiling pot and stirs it. Matteo looks down and quickly turns his back to them, adjusting himself. Jessa and Lily began to laugh so hard that they ended up on the floor, struggling to breathe. “Alright I’ll take care of grating the cheese, all the way over here behind the island,” Matteo takes the block of cheese and begins to grate it.

After mixing all the ingredients and eating every bit of the macaroni and cheese, they all leave each other for the night. Matteo walks Jessa back to her hollow, kissing her one more time. “Goodnight, Jessa, well technically it’s morning but still. Goodnight,” He kisses her cheek and walks down the hall and to the spiral stairs. Jessa stared at him the whole way down, admiring his backside once again. As she was about to enter her hollow, she hears somebody scoff from behind her. Out of the shadows walks out Hawk, “you’re living a fairytale, princess. If you think he likes you, you’ve got another rude awakening coming. He’s been through these wanderer girls like a knife slicing through melted butter.” They start to walk down the hall, but as they pass Jessa, they stop in front of her, so their face is right next to hers. Jessa’s face began to heat up, looking into their green eyes, as Hawk whispers, “you may be pretty and sexy with a nice ass and a curvy waist but once he’s decided he’s done with you, that won’t matter anymore. You’ll just be another notch on his smoking pipe, and he’ll come crawling back to me, needing a little Hawk fix.” They whip their purple ponytail back, brushing Jessa’s face and saunter off down the hall.

As Jessa takes off her dress and puts on her night gown, she can’t help but wonder if Hawk was telling the truth or if they were trying to mess with her head. If they’re right and he’s using me then I just wasted my first kiss on scum. She curls up in her covers and starts to think of how sweet Hawk’s hair smelled, wondering what that scent was. She felt a tingle in her stomach, like she had felt earlier on the roof with Matteo. At first, she paused in thought, wondering why she was getting that same tingling feeling about Hawk. But she shoved the thought away into her fictional closet in her mind and fell asleep to thoughts of Matteo holding her.

End of Chapter Seven.