Finding Heathcliff

Nine

Eyes intent on the oscillating screen of fire alive with images of places she didn't recognise, and events she hadn't witnessed, Astrid let her mind follow her uncle's words, hoping that they would help her to make sense of what she was seeing.

"Before we get to your trial, child, let me fill in a few gaps in your knowledge of political history which your tutors left upon my request. It is a tradition that the future queen learns these things from her predecessor, on reaching the age of ascension. And because your mother is not here for you, it is my duty to tell you some important truths."

Astrid didn't like the sound of that. Had she been lied to until now? Why? Did 'some truths' mean that there were some lies that he would still leave unexplained, for her to discover alone? She forced herself to peel her eyes from the shifting pictures to look at Uncle Arcturus.

He smiled at her and the fulgent, trembling screen separating them made his moustache and beard unite into one dark smudge, pulled the cold smile shivering on his thin lips into a grimace and then erased his mouth altogether, turning his face into a scary, featureless mask.

Astrid gasped at the sight and dropped her gaze back into the fire, catching Orion's form with the corner of her eye. He was so still and silent that she nearly forgot that he was sitting at her side. Apparently, her fiancé was as bewitched by the magical flames as she-- it was like watching pages of their history and geography books come to life.

The first images appearing in front of them moved and shifted too fast for them to understand properly-- there were vast, golden planes, and the sea crashing against white cliffs, and green, endless forests, soon replaced by what looked like a few rudimentary stone buildings sprinkled around a vast, lush countryside. But the pictures kept changing so fast that the view made Astrid's head spin, making it impossible for her to concentrate. After a few interminable minutes, the vision slowed down, making her finally get a glimpse at something that, at least vaguely, made sense to her.

An ancient city bustling with life rose from the flames suddenly. Its streets interspersed with easily recognisable sights which no longer existed were full of people and things Astrid had never seen, but she recalled their names easily from books. At first, horse-drawn carriages crawled up wide, cobbled, tree-lined boulevards, barely visible through thick, white clouds of smoke and steam, then bicycles, and cars which filled the air with darker but less dense vapours rushed up the same roads, while even faster trains disappear down the tunnels uncoiling under the city. The few churches and monuments, now dwarfed by many taller, tower-like buildings, and the clothes the people Astrid glimpsed in the flames wore, told her better than anything else that this was London, once the capital of Eurovea, sometime before World War III, before the devastating earthquake of 2095.

Astrid felt her uncle's glare on her, and when she looked up and nodded her understanding of what he was making her see, though without knowing why, the images shifted fast again, to show the same city submerged by the sea up the roofs of its highest, still standing buildings.

"This is London, just before World War IV," Uncle Arcturus said, "a few years after we, the royal family and our followers, moved further inland, into the part of the country which, thanks to a sequence of seismic events, an earthquake swarm which lasted nearly a decade, rose considerably and remained dry."

He fell silent for a few moments, letting the shimmering images accompanied by his words sink into the young couple's mind before his voice shattered the silence of the chamber only disturbed by the low hiss of the flames one more time.

"Deimos," he spoke to the sorceress.

The woman was staring at the fire just like Astrid and Orion, but without any curiosity in her eyes, as if she had seen all these pictures too many times, and now her irises were indifferently offering their vision to the others by producing and maintaining the flames. Nodding in reply without blinking once, she made them morph again, and now the fire showed a huge army of tall, black-clad men, marching across what was left of Eurovea, towards a town topped by a magnificent castle which Astrid recognized in a flash as Starling.

Astrid's breath caught; those dark men seemed vaguely familiar. But before she could understand the whisper of her memory, Uncle Arcturus spoke, scattering her thoughts.

"The monsters..." the regent hissed into the flames upon seeing the army. "Your tutors never told you the exact reason for World War IV, Astrid. It was them! Angels!"

Astrid saw how Deimos started at the last exclamation, her distraction making the screen spill into a brazierful of low, imageless sparks and flickers for a few heartbeats, before the sorceress forced the fire to grow tall and flatten to her will again.

The princess took a deep breath and only exhaled once she was sure that Uncle Arcturus, not wanting to miss the effect his words had on his niece was staring at her so intently that he noticed nothing. She could feel that Deimos wouldn't want him to notice how that last word had affected her, but why? And why was she even concerned about Deimos??? Astrid didn't know the sorceress personally, they had never even spoken-- now that she thought of it, it seemed that Deimos had been purposely avoiding her all her life.

Forcing her eyes back to the images, Astrid let them flood her mind, banishing thoughts of Deimos. The words that had nothing to do with each other swirled in her imagination, creating the most bizarre patterns and possibilities, and new questions without answers. Monsters. Angels. War...

When Uncle Arcturus spoke again, his question entered her ears, muffled as if it had reached her from beyond a thick cloud of fog, "Do you understand?"