Chapter 1
'Twas the 602nd year of Our Lord in Ireland, with the winter harsh and cold. Some days, Mother, Sister and I would just sit around stitching garments as the wind and ice-rain blew itself out. I will start on one of these days. Joy, now sixteen of age, was not stitching this night. She sat pretty, just as a young lady should, perched on the edge of her seat with a superior expression on her face, speaking of the fair that would occur in a few days while moving her hands swiftly through the air on long, delicate arms.
“I mean won’t it be marvelous?” she said, casting her arms above her head. I stopped listening again, as I was wont to do; very impolite for a maid, I know, but I had other things at mind.
My last trip to Sibeal Rori’s quaint cottage had been…queer to say the least. You see, Sibeal is gossiped to be the descendant of the great prophet Ezekiel of Biblical times, so imagine how I should feel when she said to me, “I’ll must feed you well this visit, for I fear you a lack of food in the near future.” I had, in fact, rudely and bluntly stared at her.
“Why should you fear such a thing?” I asked aloud.
“I’ve not a clue. These fears and speculations do come and go with ne’er an explanation.” And from that point we had not spoken.
Joy’s loud racket drowned my thoughts and I interrupted her. “Joy! Need you speak so much? Won’t your tongue suffer from abuse?”
Joy looked abashed only for a moment before she stuck her nose in the air and replied frigidly, “You would be exited as well if you had any common sense. Absalom shall speak at the fair! Does that mean nothing to you?”
“Oh, a prince! Why ever didn’t you say? But wait-you did, about five-hundred times. What’s so special of Absalom?”
Joy scoffed, “You’ve a need for your head examined, don’t you? Absalom is a handsome, rich prince, you daft.”
“Any dunce born to a king would be a ‘rich’ prince, and so it doesn’t make him uncommonly special, and as for handsome, I disagree.”
“Hush!” exclaimed Mother, her lips a slender thread. “There’s no rhyme or reason to scorn. Absalom’s father is the best ruler since Evan III, and the both of you should enjoy the fair and be pleasant to one another. You should just be happy we don’t live under a dictator!” And that was that. No one argued with Mother.
*
The next morning, Joy had already taken to the bathroom, and had been in there for hours.
“Joy!” I shouted through the door. “Joy, I need to wash up, too!” When there was no answer, I shouted more urgently, “JOY!”
The door opened, and a cloud of overwhelming perfumed steam draped over me like a wet blanket, suffocating me. I coughed, and my brows pulled down over my eyes. Joy had her hair wrapped in a towel and her best dress on.
“Phew! Did you use all of your perfume? Mum won’t be getting you more soon. What a waste!” I choked through the over-powering fragrance.
“I’ll last,” she replied smoothly. Then her face changed to a sneer. “Unlike me, though, you look positively ratty. Pardon me, but if you were any less conscious of your looks, you wou--”1
“What?! I’d what? Pardon me, Joy, but if you were any more conscious of your looks, you would be a Sting!”
Joy looked positively broken with sorrow.
“Oh, Aigneis…” she began, then ran to her room.
“Aigneis,” Mother said behind me, “it’s time we had a talk.”
I turned around with fear in my eye. I followed my mum to the sitting room. “Sit,” she said, and I obeyed.
Mother stood before me with her face extremely pinched, as if in pain. “Do you even know what a Sting really is?”
I trembled. “The most evil being to ever walk Earth?”
“Yes, and no. They are completely evil, but they did not begin their lives that way. You see, Stings began as humans.” I shivered. “They were just the same as you and I. The first Sting, long ago, began all of his race. His name was Dark Shadow. He was betrayed when he was still young, and so became broken and crooked. He vowed to make his betrayer pay, so he studied dark magic and forgotten trickeries. His soul turned black, with a seething, red fire, ready to destroy.
“He became a Sting by choice, by a false spell that he induced upon himself, and then learned to cast the spell through his eyes, and did so. But it went wrong, and would only perform correctly on the opposite gender. Even so, he went on turning others into Stings, giving them his same powers. And thus have the Stings been.”
“But,” I asked, “if the newly-made Stings were not by choice, then how did they come to be evil?”
“A good question, and with a most grievous answer. Let’s see, how did that old rhyme go? Here…
“When the spell to turn person to Sting is cast,
memories of person’s life are ripped free
for both to see
and to fade away forever
in the cursed Sting mind
where only Dark and Shadow are left behind.”
I gazed in wonder as my mother stood, now with a dip in her strong spine, beginning to weep.
*
As I walked outside that afternoon behind Joy-who certainly wasn’t a joy right now, prattling on about how amazing it was that Absalom had chosen to come to our quaint town-a sizeable bird ruffled its feathers in the large bush next to our front door. I looked over and saw a majestic gray beauty with a hooked beak. It stared in my eyes, as if trying to convey something, and I stopped walking. There was total quiet except for Joy’s gibber that continued on. Eventually, though, she stopped and turned around. “Aigneis?”
“Yes?”
“Kindly tell to me what you are staring at.”
“The bird.”
She spun her eyes around, searching wildly, her eyes skipping right over the bush. “Okay … well … I don’t see a bird,” she said, puzzled. I gazed at the bird a while longer, then turned to Joy. For a second her face remained confused and edgy, but then she became loathing once again, and sighed. “Come on.”
She went on ahead, and I glanced back, but the bush was devoid of any sign of bird.
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