Destinata (Valguard) (2 page)

“How do you know all this? You only just got into town, how can you possibly know anything about my family and my life?”

“Because I came here looking for you, I know everything about you and everything about your family. I know that you were born on the twenty-eight of February to Eva Dawson and Mikal Aiken, in your mother’s house on Oak Street, right here in the town of Tole. I know that you believe your father deserted you when you were twelve months old but he actually went on living in this tiny hole of a town for the last seventeen years because he couldn’t bring himself to leave you. I know that when you were five you skinned your knee when you fell off your bike because you were frightened by a young Valguard who accidently let his glasses slip onto the bridge of his nose. I know that when you turned sixteen your hair started to turn white and you now dye it every month to cover it up because you think it is early aging. And I know that now that you have turned eighteen you are going to stop the humans and the Valguard’s from tearing this world to shreds.”

“How… What
?”

Charlie was lost for words, she was overwhelmed by the amount this stranger knew about her and more than a little frightened.

“I’ve been watching and waiting for your eighteenth, the day that you would become the Destinata. You are the only half-Valguard in existence and that gives you an advantage. You are the one person who can stop the destruction of the Earth when Mikal finally comes to his senses and realizes that he has sat idle for too long.”

“What the h
ell is a destinata? And why would I want to
help
one of you or any of you for that matter? I’m just a girl Zane, I can’t stop the destruction of the earth, what will happen will happen with or without me in the way.”

“You’re wrong. You can and will save the Earth Charlie, you have to. Not for me or for the other
Valguard’s or even the humans but because you are destined to. It’s the solitary reason for your being. You were born for this very purpose. You
are
the destinata, or the chosen one in laymen’s terms. You were created to stop the humans and the Valguard from going to war and destroying this world as we know it… and you will.”

“I don’t even know what the bloody
Valguard are let alone how to stop them! Why does it have to be me? Why can’t you do it since you know so much about it?”

Charlie stood angrily, almost falling over her own feet when she stomped away from where Zane was still silently leaning against the tree trunk. The smooth deep sound of his voice so close to her now
it startled Charlie and as she turned and once again tripped over her own feet she was greeted by warm arms.

“Because, I’m not the destinata. You are.
You were born with the best parts of both races. You have kindness in your heart like no other human, you can repel the haze because you are part Valguard, you can probably even haze others. Who knows how many traits you have inherited from either side. You are the only logical choice to stop the oncoming war between our races because you were born and are a part of both.”
Does he really think that will change my mind? So what if I am part Valguard, I’m still just an eighteen year old girl!

“I can’t
and won’t do anything until I know what exactly a Valguard is. I have grown up my whole life wondering why no one ever left our small town or for that matter why no one ever comes in. I’ve spent every minute of every day looking over my shoulder to see if the decisions I was making were really my own or whether I had finally been hazed. I’ve spent years trying to work out
what
you are but I still have no idea. No one else in town cares. They all know that your kind is here, but they just overlook it like you are just like us. Where did you come from? Why do you want the earth? Why not live with us instead of against us?”

Charlie had no idea where her passion had come from but she wanted the answers she sought and she wasn’t going to rest until she got them.

“The Valguard
are
humans. Well, evolved from humans anyway. Centuries have passed since the first Valguard walked among the humans and we have watched as we all started slowly regressing to our former primitive selves. Maybe we had a hand in that by introducing diseases into your eco-system to slowly kill the left over ‘real humans’ off, so that we could have the run of the earth. Maybe that is why we started regressing over the years, maybe not. Either way, the Valguard slowly started to die out, humans are no longer advanced enough to get to our state of higher being and since procreating between two Valguard’s only produces a human child, the only options we have left are to live within the world of the humans and create half beings such as yourself or let our race die off entirely. Or then again, we could just wipe out every human on the earth and have it for ourselves. There would be no humans to evolve into Valguard we would die out slowly and alone. And so you see, for both of our races to continue on, we need to be able to live peacefully together. The humans
need
to know of and accept the Valguard for what they are so that both can survive or one side or the other need to rise up against the other and defeat their natural enemies.
You
are the one that is going to see that one of these options happens.”

“That doesn’t really tell me anything. How exactly does one
evolve
?”

Zane’s face was thoughtful for a moment before he answered her.

“Maybe evolve is the wrong word. Created might be better. At some stage in your races history, they began to experiment upon themselves, always striving to be bigger and better. They finally succeeded and instead of their subjects dying, they lived but they were… wrong. The human scientists spent years improving the serum that changed normal human beings into the Valguard and finally they perfected it and here we are.”

“Ok, I understand that part better, but why would the
Valguard want to go to war with us if they need us to procreate more of their own?”

Zane looked to be getting irritated with Charlie’s questions but answered anyway.

“I already told you this part. No Valguard other than your father has ever successfully ‘won over’ a human before. No matter how great their hazing ability, free will always wins out in the end. They would rather see the planet destroyed than to continue living a lie amongst humans. It’s only a matter of time before they become bored with their complacency here.”

Charlie thought over what Zane had said for a while before finally accepting it and moving on.

“Fine, but I want to know everything else as well.”

“Like what?”

She was taking advantage of his willingness to talk to her and was figuratively jumping at the chance while she had it.

“Anything, everything you can think of.”

“Ok, nobody ever comes into town because the moment they get towards the border of Tole they are repelled against it by the haze. Nobody ever leaves for the same reason, if someone does get outside of the town they would be outside of the haze the Valguard’s put on each individual and it would be chaos within the week. The Valguard don’t make your decisions for you, they just sway you towards a decision that isn’t detrimental to them. No one else in town cares because we don’t want them to care. Well the Valguard that live here permanently don’t want anyone to care, they want to live here for the moment in peace such as it is. Dropping the haze would cause fear and hysteria and anarchy within the town. Our kind is outnumbered by a few hundred and even though we are strong they aren’t good odds.”

“Well then why do I need to stop a war? If you are outnumbered, it won’t matter if I intervene.”

“The Valguard in Tole aren’t the only Valguard in the world Charlie, there are tens of thousands of us still living in different areas, watching and waiting for humans to become weak enough to be taken down for good. You need to step up and show them that your race isn’t weak, you need to stand between the two and get them to live peacefully or both races will die out. The Valguard will kill all the humans because it is bred into them to do it, they think themselves superior to you and they will have no one to breed with to create half beings and keep their own race alive.”

Charlie didn’t miss the fact that Zane had gone from ‘we’ to ‘them’ in a heartbeat and it was apparent to her then that he wanted her to do this for the survival of his kind. She knew in that moment that he would exclude himself from the others of his kind to get his point across
and that he didn’t agree with their killing without reason and she admired him for it. She also knew that she couldn’t do it. She was an eighteen year old girl, she wasn’t raised to convince two races to become one and hadn’t the slightest clue in how to do so anyway.

“I can’t. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

Charlie ran back the way she had followed Zane in but this time he didn’t try to track her down, he let her go exhaling slowly and wondering how he would get her to save his race. Surely she had to know how important it was, she was after all part Valguard whether she liked it or not.

Zane continued on to where he was originally going before he had realized that Charlie was following him through the woods. He had hidden behind an old oak waiting for her to sneak passed hoping she wouldn’t realize he had veered off course to wait for her, he wanted her to leave, she couldn’t be witness to what he was about to do and it was too early for him to tell her what she needed to know. He caught her scent the moment she rushed passed the tree he was so aptly hiding behind and before she knew what had hit her she was pinned under his large bulk of a body screeching louder than a banshee. Zane didn’t like coming off as a sleaze but he thought it the most effective way to get rid of her quickly, that was until he couldn’t resist her pleas any longer and rolled over.

Well, there was nothing for it, he would tell her everything and hope that she would take it well and that would be that, he expected that at the very least it would be a quick conversation and he could head on to his destination in peace. What he hadn’t expected was that Charlie would be so entirely fascinated by the man that had just tried to rape her. Not that he actually would have done so, but she had no idea that it had only been a ruse to get rid of her. He could see the intrigue in her eyes and the body language that suggested she wasn’t even the slightest bit afraid of him. When she reached her hand out and hesitated, he wanted nothing more than for her to run her fingers through his thick hair, to feel her slightly c
ooler-than-his skin on his own but she withdrew looking awkward, he knew she couldn’t see him staring intently at her through his dark black sunglasses, hiding the one physical feature that set them apart from the humans but the way she looked at him, he was quite sure that whether she could see his eyes or not, she still knew what he was hiding.

He told her everything, right down to Mikal being her father; maybe she wasn’t ready for that yet, but she needed to know. For all the good it did though,
he might as well have been talking to a wall.
He let her go the second time she turned away from him. She was determined to not have anything to do with helping both races to live peacefully but with a sigh of frustration he let her walk away.

He was most certainly la
te now but he would deal with Kara once he arrived, she couldn’t resist the effect of the haze the way that Charlie did, and it would be as easy as breathing to get her to overlook the fact that he was an hour late for his appointment. His mind was distracted on the way to Kara’s place in the center of the woods.

How can she
not want to help? How can she refuse her destiny?

Before he knew it, he was standing outside Kara’s house – if you could call the small one room cottage a house – and with a deep breath in, bracing for what was to come he k
nocked on the small door in front of him.

He heard Kara’s stomping before she made it half way across the cottage and
steadied himself for the yelling that was to come as soon as the door was opened. The door flew open and crashed on the wall behind it, surely leaving a hole in its wake.

“You’re late! Over an hour late in fact! Do you think that I have time…”

“I’m sorry Kara, I was held up. If you settle down I will tell you what happened.” He could see the glow from his own eyes reflected in Kara’s deep brown ones and knew instantly that the hazing he had put upon her was working a charm. Although usually when a human was told directly about the Valguard the hazing didn’t work on them all that well, Kara was old and weak and was still easily influenced. He didn’t know himself what hazing felt like but from what he had heard it was just like the groggy feeling you get upon waking. The one that made everything seem happy and OK. In most cases it didn’t hurt anyone and it was relatively harmless but essential for a Valguard to have the power to bend the mind of the humans to their will. If humans were to gain the knowledge of the Valguard it would mean war instantly and this
disguise
– for lack of a better word – was the easiest way to go about it.

“
OK Zane, what is it that has you so troubled?”

“Why don’t you tell me Kara, you are the seer after all.”

“Give me a minute, I was worried about you being late and with everything going on… Oh! You told the girl already? Do you know what this means Zane? She isn’t supposed to know yet, she was supposed to…”

“I know what was supposed to happen Kara, but she was getting suspicious, she followed me through the woods, what was I supposed to do? She knows now and there is nothing that can be done about it, we will just have to deal with whatever comes our way.”

“But she wasn’t supposed to know! Everything is shifting now, changing. I can’t see what is going to happen now that she knows. You were
supposed
to wait! We’re flying blind now Zane, she was supposed to find out on her own. It was supposed to be Mikal that told her. Why couldn’t you just wait?”

“Because she deserves to know!
And she was asking questions. Her destiny has been hidden from her for far too long. We’re just going to have to help her through it.”

Kara’s small frail frame moved out of the doorway to let Zane through and she shuffled herself into the lounge and gestured roughly with a wave of her hand for him to make himself comfortable. Her greying hair whipped around her face as the breeze came through the open window, she struggled to tie it back as she sat down across the room from him and started fussing over the mismatched doilies on her side table. The old seer was like this when she was worried – more so when she couldn’t ‘see’ – and Zane knew he would have to stop her from obsessing over the placement of her belongings before it drove her mad.

He slowly made his way over to where the tired seer sat and placed his hands softly over the top of hers, stopping her from fussing and calming her at the same time.

“I’m sorry Kara, I really am but there was no way around it. The haze doesn’t work on her, you know that as well as I do. I tried to lie but she knew I was, you’re her grandmother, maybe some of your foresight was gifted to her as well.
Either way, it’s done now and we will just have to make do.”

“My daughter was never supposed to conceive a child, let alone a child to a
Valguard. How did everything get so turned around Zane? That poor girl has no idea what is waiting for her. I think it’s time that we were introduced don’t you?”

Warm tears fell down Kara’s age-lined face and she closed her eyes as Zane wiped them away gently. She leaned into his hand taking respite in the safety and warmth that he offered.

“Maybe it is time Kara. You’ve been watching from the shadows for too long. It’s time that you met your granddaughter. She has a stubborn streak just like yours but I will see if I can get her here. After tonight though, I’m afraid I may have lost any chance of getting her to come back into the woods with me willingly.”

Kara jumped up with the energy of an
eighteen year old at his words, seeming to get a second life at the thought of meeting her one and only grandchild for the first time. Kara had been blinded by Mikal when he came to town nineteen years ago, she was without her foresight and by the time he lifted the haze that surround her for almost twelve months her daughter was ready to give birth to Charlie. It was too late by then to tell Eva that she was never supposed to conceive a child. The birth, set into effect a destiny that Charlie would have to fulfill, one that would see her take her last breath, one that would see the world changed in a way that it has never seen before.
Kara retreated to the woods after that day and that is where she stayed for eighteen long years. Her only company being the handsome young man that wandered into her cabin five years ago. How he got there only he knew, he refused to speak of how he came to get into the town of Tole with anyone, not even Kara. He had stayed by her side until it was time to move into town and set a plan into motion and although things were now moving faster than expected she couldn’t be angry at the boy for giving into her granddaughter. He was a rotten liar and she knew from experience that he would crack under a strong glare in a split second. His honesty was what set him apart from the other Valguard. Although he talked big about
them
letting too much humanity seep in over the last twenty years, he was more human than any of them. Being brought up in a foster home with human parents had seen to that.

“Don’t you worry about that my boy, Charlie will come more willingly than you think, you will see.”

“Don’t be so sure of yourself Kara, you said it yourself, you are flying blind now.”

“Ahh but this I can see, and I have seen for quite some time now.
Your worlds are converging and it’s time for a change. You need to see to it that my granddaughter gets here as soon as possible, there is a lot to discuss.”

Zane nodded and headed towards the door to escape to the retreat to his own house, somewhere he could think and be alone even if it was only for a while but before he made it out of the cozy lounge, he was stopped once again by the old woman who he had become so fond of during his stay in the cottage.

“Don’t force her Zane, she has the stubbornness of her grandmother. Forcing her will be the one sure way to get her to never enter these woods again.”

“Oh believe me, I know. The resemblance is uncanny Kara.
Physical and otherwise. She has your nose, your eyes, and your stubbornness. No one could deny that you are related, not even her.”

A solitary tear rolled over Kara’s cheek but this time Zane let it slide right down to pool in the corner of her lips gave her a small smile and walked away.

             
                            ********************************************

Charlie ran the whol
e way home and collapsed on the top step where she broke down into tears. This couldn’t be happening to her, she only turned eighteen about a month ago, she should be enjoying her life. She had taken a year off schooling to decide on what she wanted to do with her life and have some fun while she was at it. She wanted to leave Tole, get out and see the lights of the big cities. She wanted to rest and read and draw. She didn’t want to be thrown into the middle of some war and to make matters worse, be told that she was supposedly the peace-keeper between two races, just because she was told that she been born from both.

She had no idea what reason Zane would have to lie to her and although deep down she knew he wasn’t lying about anything he had said in the woods, she had to find out for herself. She struggled to regain her composure before going inside. There was no way in hell she was going to tell El’ and Matt about what had happened, they wer
e already going to be asking a hundred questions about how she got so dirty and bruised and worst of all why she was bleeding, she didn’t want to add crying into that mixture of things as well.

Just remember what Ma used to tell you when you were little and you would fall of your bike; ‘Breathe Charlie, just breathe.’

She closed her eyes drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, the hammering of her heart slowing, the tears that fell from her eyes stopping in their tracks. She licked her lips dissolving the remaining tears that had pooled in the corners, straightened out her shirt and grabbed the handle, taking one last breath before she was walked into the interrogation that was coming. And as suspected when she walked in and found her housemates sitting in the downstairs lounge of their three story house, she was bombarded with questions.

“What the
hell
happened to you Charlie? Where have you been? It’s almost midnight.”

“I got lost in the woods, I fell down trying to find my way out.”

They didn’t believe her, she had never been able to lie well and right now she sounded like a robot saying rehearsed lines. She hoped as hard as she could that her friends would just drop it and to her amazement they did. El’ returned to the movie they were watching first and after a few more seconds of staring, Matt followed.

Well that was easy. Maybe a little too easy…

Charlie assumed that El’ and Matt had more pressing matters to worry about and shrugged it off as good luck as she moved through the big house to the shower. Washing off the dirt and grime of the night settled her some but didn’t completely get rid of the feelings circulating through her body. She was relaxed sure, but in the back of her mind she knew that things would never be the same again, she knew what she must do and the first step in doing so was getting out of the comfort and warmth of the shower and getting dressed. She loathed getting out of the shower on the best of days but today was particularly worse. She felt safe, she felt comforted and she felt mostly at ease but she knew in order to get up the courage to walk out the door and talk to Mikal, she would have to get moving. Courage wasn’t easy to come by and she would need to use all her pent up anger and resentment to pluck up the strength to have the conversation she was dreading and so it was time to move.

Charlie turned the shower off reluctantly and started to dry her hair but just as she
was about to tie her hair up in the already too wet towel, she heard a familiar low voice. The sound carried up the stairs like he was speaking through a megaphone and she knew instantly who it was. Frantically trying to put some fresh clothes on she stumbled and fell hitting her already bruised head on the door handle.