Welcome to Gaia! ::

This is my baby as far as all my stories go. It's not my firstborn, but my baby, and as such I cradle it close and have taken extra care with developing it that my firstborn stories didn't get. They can get over it, though; they're tough. Deepest Magic will always hold a very special place in my heart, and with any luck I will be able to write and refine it well enough to get it published. Without further ado, onto the first chapter!

Chapter 1

The dead leaves crunch under my feet as I make my way to the main building for breakfast. It’s not really cold yet, just cool enough to warrant the need of a light jacket. The smell of winter drifts on the breeze. Snow will cover the world within the month, and it gives me a weird peace to know that. I can’t explain why the snow and cold relax me so. Maybe I’m crazy. That wouldn’t surprise me too much.

I greet the maids as I go to hang my jacket up and take my shoes off. Klahshah scolds me as I take my seat to the right of my younger brother, telling me that I need to try not to be late to the most important meal of the day. I just laugh and continue to hum this little tune that’s been playing in my head since I woke up this morning. It’s a lovely little tune, but it has too many emotions in it. No one seems to notice my new little song until Grandfather speaks up from the head of the table to my left.

“Did you make that melody up, Bahmel?”

My spoon clinks against the little glass bowl of jelly as I scoop some up for my biscuits. “No. It’s from a dream I had last night.”

“Who was singing it?”

“Shut up, Dro.“ I turn to my brother and sock him hard in the arm. “No one was singing it. It was just there… in the background almost.” I don’t want to get Grandmother started on this topic so early in the day. She’ll have a list of names for me by the time I get home from school of potential matches for me. I swear. That woman won’t rest until I say my wedding vows, and even then she’ll move on about children. I wonder how Father lived so long with her nagging over his shoulder.

I bite into the warm biscuit. I have to get Klahshah to teach me the recipe sometime. Before I can think about it, I’m back to humming that tune again. By chance I glance over at Grandfather. He’s stopped eating. He sits there still the same, but his eyes looked pained for some reason. I swallow what’s in my mouth and look at him full-on.

“Grandfather, is something wrong?”

My words seem to snap him out of his trance, and his hands instantly resume their task at his plate.

“No… of course not.”

He doesn’t look away from his plate, and no one else speaks to break the silence. I hate these silences. I want to say something, but decide against it. The voice in my head calls me a coward, and I can’t argue. I never press matters because I have this fear that I’ll find something out that I never wanted or needed to know. Silence isn’t so bad, really. It’s just maddening, and I can barely stop myself from humming again.

“So who was singing it?” Dro glances my way with a smile creeping onto his lips.

“I told you. No one was singing it. It was just in the background, all tune and no voice.”

“You’re lying. I can see it in the way you scrunch your eyebrows.”

“What?” He says the weirdest things sometimes.

“You scrunch your eyebrows together when you don’t want people to ask for a better answer. So who was singing it?”

“I told you, Dro. No one was singing it. It was just there.”

“A likely story.” He’s enjoying this, isn’t he?

“If you don’t shut that twisted smile of yours up, I’ll do it myself.”

Suddenly someone reaches between us from behind to pour some juice into our glasses. “Now, now, boys. Play nice. Save all that energy for studies. Another year of schooling begins today.” Klahshah always knows when to cut in, and she’s so quiet when she moves. She could sneak up on jackrabbit and tap it on the shoulder.

Dro practically slumps into his chair. “Lucky Bahme’ah only has one more year left.”

I take a nice cool sip of my juice. “Believe me, I’m going to be in school for years to come, Dro.”

“Still going after that doctor thing, huh?”

“I haven’t changed my mind yet. Why should I?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you’re captivated by some mysterious beauty singing songs to you in your dreams asking you to run away with it.”

I nearly choke on my juice. When I get my breath back, a sigh comes from my mouth coated in aggravation daggers. “For the last time, Dro, there is… no…“

“Bahmel, are you watching the time? You don’t want to be late for school.” Again, Klahshah inserts herself into our conversation. Not that I mind, but I would like to yell at my brother once. Just one good yell would be nice. Not now, though, apparently. No, for now I down the rest of my juice and excuse myself from the table. School awaits.

“Yeah, you don’t want to be ‘late’ for your two-hour pre-class daydreaming, right, Bahmeh?” I catch the playful smirk on his face and reach over to ruffle his hair up really good. I can’t help but smile at his defensive reaction to having his neatly combed and styled hair shaken to bits. We both laugh, and I turn around leave the room.

“Have a good day, Bahmel.”

I stop and look back at the dining table. That’s the first Mother’s spoken all day. I wonder about her sometimes. She never says anything, but her eyes say that she’s holding something back.

“You too, Mom.” One of these days I’ll ask her what she’s thinking about, but not today.

---

My driver is leaning casually against his car when I get to him. He drops his half-smoked cigarette onto the cool dirt of the driveway and snubs it out with the toe of his shoe.

“Mighty brisk morning, isn’t it, Young Treshdahn? Are you ready for another year of schooling?” He opens the backseat door for me as he talks and closes it before I have a chance to answer. He’s almost too respectful to me, but I don’t mind so much anymore. After the first couple of years of having him as my driver I learned to just ignore him. I figure it’s just the way he is, if for no other reason than he knows Grandfather doesn’t tolerate rudeness among those he employs on the estate.

The drive to my school is long and quiet, the calm silence broken only occasionally by my driver asking me some question that rarely requires more than an acknowledging grunt or such from me in reply. I like it that way, to be honest. It gives me time to think.

I attend the same Mandatory Finishing school that my father did before me. He died when I was two years old, not too long after he and my mother married and not long enough after my brother was conceived for him to know he had a child on the way. Emdahbe Treshdahn. His portrait hangs above my bed in my room, the same bed and room that belonged to him when he was alive. I can stare at that painting for hours at a time just looking into the painted eyes and imagining that he’s talking to me. I’ve heard so much about him as I’ve grown up, so many stories and so many anecdotes.

Father was the only child of Master and Madam Treshdahn. His whole life he looked to being a successful doctor like his father before him and his father before him. He went on to study medicine after Mandatory just like I plan to myself, and he worked along side his father for many years.

Mother and he went to Mandatory together and graduated together. They went their separate ways after that, though. Mother took a husband and had me, and when he died she reunited with her “Treshdahn prince” as Grandmother puts it when she tells the story. It didn’t last for long, but it produced my brother. When we were younger we would look at Father’s portrait and try to find the similarities between his face and ours. We never found much, though. I look too much like my blood father, and Dro is the gender-swapped spitting image of our mother. I’m jealous of Dro sometimes for having Father’s blood. It just makes me feel that much further away from knowing who Emdahbe Treshdahn really was.

The closest I get to knowing Father is following in his footsteps as best as I can. I attend the same school as he did, I’m pursuing the same profession, and I even sleep in his old room and in his old bed. When I feel depressed I tell myself that Father was in my place once, and he got through it so why can’t I? Father even managed to weather Grandmother’s unbearably persistent nagging for him to marry for more than two decades. How he managed to do that and retain his sanity I may never know. I’m not even twenty yet, and it already makes me want to tear my ears off when she starts on the topic.

As the oldest of Father’s children legally, I am the heir presumptive to the Treshdahn name and wealth and fortune. You could say that it all started with my great-grandfather Mister Treshdahn, but it was Grandfather who gave the name the connotation that it has now. He built the company up and out from the ashes that his father burnt it down into. Grandfather was only as young as I am now- nineteen- when the title had to suddenly be passed on to him, and he worked so hard to redeem the Treshdahn name. It’s a strong and powerful name now. The greater Treshdahn corporation is the first name in medicine and medical education this side of the Eastern Mountains.

Father was an amazing man as I understand. If there’s one thing Grandmother is certain about, it’s that I will know who my father was and what kind of a man he was. I wonder about the stories she tells me sometimes, though. She makes him sound so perfect, so smart, so handsome, so amazing. I suppose that’s to be expected, though. Grandmother had to burry her only child when he tragically died at the age of forty-five. She seems a little delusional in general sometimes, so something so emotionally scarring should certainly carry over in that respect. I can’t blame her for wanting to remember what a good son she had. I hope I can live up to such a legend.

After a while we pull up to the school, and my driver gets out to open my door. I used to tell him to stop doing that because it embarrassed me, but he never listened to me. Gradually, I stopped caring.

“See you this afternoon, Young Treshdahn?”

“Four o’clock on the dot.”

“Yes, sir.”

He’ll most likely be waiting for me at half past three, leaning against the car patiently smoking a cigarette or two until classes end.

Once the car drives away I walk to the open courtyard in the middle of the school. The sight of my closest friends brings a smile to my face, even more so as my best friend Kredmah catches my eye and calls out my name with a beckoning wave. I run to meet them, and soon we’re all greeting each other.

My smile drops as soon as one of them raises my least favorite subject.

“So, Bahme, did you meet anyone interesting over the break?”

My entire demeanor changes with those words. Of all the things in the world that he could have asked, why the hell did he choose the one topic that he knows I hate the most? When will people stop asking me that? I’m sick and tired of it.

“Hey, sorry. Just curious.”

“Yeah, you and the rest of the world.”

He’s quiet for a moment or two, but he still has that expectant look on his face.

“Well?”

“Well what?” Please tell me he’s not going to press the subject further.

“Did you?”

“Oh, for crying out- No!”

He looks taken aback. Good.

Kredmah puts his arm around my shoulders then. He’s the Klahshah among my friends- intuitive to a fault.

“Who’s up for finding our new classroom?”

Our eyes meet, and a small smile makes its way to my face. “I’m game.”

“Excellent! Let’s go then.” His arm stays where it is as we make our way to the buildings. Of all my friends, Kredmah is the only one who has never pushed the subject of relationships. He himself has never dated anyone, so perhaps that has something to do with it.

Classes won’t start anytime soon, but it’s become a tradition among my friends to get to school as early as we can on the first day after a long break so we can catch up before the lessons start. It helps, I guess. We get all that happy anxiety out of the way right off the bat, and our minds are calmed and ready for the lesson when it finally comes.

I don’t feel much like talking today, though. I enjoy sitting back in my desk and listening to the stories that my friends tell. I love a good story, especially when it’s told by a good storyteller. Grandmother cultured that appreciation in me with all her stories about her son, my father.

I hardly notice it at first when I start humming that same tune from this morning. To be perfectly honest I don’t realize it at all until Kredmah looks my way and asks me about it.

“What?”

“That tune. What’s it from?”

“Oh.” I feel the slightest blush run up my cheeks at having been so careless. “Just something that I came up with this morning.”

He nods and then glides almost seamlessly into another story. I’ll have to thank him later.

I sigh to myself and place my tongue between my top and bottom teeth, holding it there to keep me from humming. School is no place for a tune like that. School is a place for understanding and explaining. I can’t exactly explain this morning’s tune to anyone I know, least of all anyone at school. Even Dro wouldn’t want to hear me tell him the truth.

I wasn’t asleep when I heard it, and it wasn’t in the background all tune and no voice like I told my family this morning. I was lying in bed wide awake with my eyes closed, trying to enjoy the last few minutes of being tucked under the warm covers before I had to accept defeat and force myself out into another day.

Then… it was like someone lay down close beside me. I could feel the indention of his body on the bed. He hummed right into my ear so sweetly and gently, finally ending in a small chuckle.

“Time to get out of bed, Emdah. You can’t pretend to be asleep forever.”

“I can try.” The words came out of my mouth before I had a chance to consider them, and once they were out I realized the oddness of the whole situation. I opened my eyes and looked beside me. No one was there. No one ever is.

I suppose I’ve always known that the estate is haunted. My father died violently, and that has a tendency to keep spirits grounded from what I hear. I hear his voice like that sometimes- memories trapped in the room replaying themselves when the timing is right. I like to think of him with my mother. I like to think that there were days when Mother was happy and smiling like I see in pictures from when she was younger. Her first name is Rochemdah, and I could easily see Father shortening it to Emdah between the two of them.

I never talk about what I experience. No one I know would want to seriously discuss “haunting” as more than fictitious campfire stories. I don’t want to sound crazy, so I keep it to myself. It’s better that way. There are some things in life that you can’t go around telling people no matter how much it thrashes around in your head begging to come out.

Thank you for your comment!

Tense is a fun thing once you get it right. Good to hear that it's working. biggrin

As for the portrait question, Emdahbe didn't marry Rochemdah until he was a little over 40, so he slept in the same room for most of his life. As for what all he was doing up until then... We'll be getting to that later xd

I suppose "out from the ashes" would sound less awkward. Thank you. The story behind that which I probably won't touch on too much is this- Bahmel's great-grandfather Mister Treshdahn started the company and made a good fortune. He set up the family estate and raised his son there. The thing was, he really wasn't a nice guy. When Bahmel's grandfather was 19, Mister Treshdahn murdered his wife, and the company almost tanked. Bahmel's grandfather officially became Master Treshdahn and managed to save the company as well as the integrity of the family name.

That next one was indeed a typo. Thank you for spotting it.

I'm glad you like it so far! I will definitely have to get the next chapter up soon!