Blair: The Sleeping Daughter

Blair:

The Sleeping Daughter

April Klasen

Independently Published

2015

Copyright © 2015 by April Klasen

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First published: 2015

ISBN 978-0-9944659-1-7

April Klasen

www.aprilklasenauthor.com

[email protected]

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April 

April Klasen is an independently published author, a blogger, and an expert on finding new hiding places to read uninterrupted. For more stories by April visit www.aprilklasenauthor.com

Also by April Klasen

Blair: Salem’s Daughter

Blair: The Sleeping Daughter

Blair: The Same Daughter

The Annual

Beta

Pure PopAsia

Summertime Madness

Acknowledgements

Thank you Nanowrimo.

Thank you Brothers Grimm.

Thank you Bek.

Thank you editor B.

Thank you Mum and Dad.

Thank you Readers. You’re amazing!

Before

Once upon a time there was a girl who lived a quiet life. But this was not always true. When she was fifteen, she went on an unusual quest to restore the sword and break the blood curse by unknowingly sacrificing herself.

On the quest she discovered a dormant talent; she was a spirit witch, and powerful.

As time passed, the girl grew older in her world and waited excitedly for the time she could return to the fantasy land and her true love.

Only months passed in the other land, but the king and his advisors, the five wizards of Alizaria, worried greatly over the girl’s strength in spirit. If what she had accomplished in her quest was just the beginning, then perhaps her powers would increase as she aged. Perhaps she was an enemy of Alizaria.

The girl, just seventeen, was lured back into the other world where she was ambushed. The wizards bound her spirit to her body, preventing her reincarnation. But this was not a solution. If she was as strong as they suspected, then she could resurrect herself and lead an army of un-dead against the king and his people.

They placed a sleeping curse upon the girl; she was not dead, merely unable to live. She was buried in a place to be forgotten and never to be woken.

Her love married another and had a family.

On the other side of the gate, eight years passed, and her parents lost hope of finding their missing child.

In the fantasy land where time moves differently, faster or slower but never the same as the girl’s home, one thousand years had passed when the daughter of Salem was suddenly woken.

"Salem’s Daughter,

spirit of Alizaria and blood of another land,

a daughter of two worlds:

She will be loved by an heir.

She will sleep till Alizaria needs her.

She will bring fire and flood.

She will be the greatest queen for a thousand years.

She will be alone."

Chapter One: The Same

Blair screamed. No... wait... stop! She opened her eyes to a murky darkness. The air was stale, but she gasped it desperately, and wriggled around till her arms and legs hit walls. Narrow walls. She raised her hands. Please, no. Above her there was nothing. She snapped upright.

The room was small and carved into the walls with small alcoves for glowing crystals. They struggled to push the darkness back, like a torch with dying batteries.

Panic rose high, clamping down her chest, squeezing out her breath. What happened? Her ears echoed with the rasped sound in the silence. Quickly she climbed out of the box and stumbled away from it. A lid lay crooked to the side.

Oh, hell no. She stumbled to a wall and bent over at the waist, gagging. Nothing came up from her empty stomach. She shook all over. Blair slid down the wall and sat as a jumble of limbs, like her body couldn’t remember how to position itself to sit.

Think carefully; what happened? She didn’t speak; the sound didn’t belong in this silence. Vague images flashed through her head. Wizards! She felt her face frown. Fucking wizards!

But what had they done?

She rolled over onto her knees and slipped. The dress she wore was tangled through her legs. Cold stone pushed against her belly. She yelped and hurried to stand.

Blair reached a hand out to a crystal. She wrapped her cold fingers around it and pulled it from the wall. Like she had been taught, she blew on it and it brightened.

She squinted against the sudden light. Ow.

Her room was carved stone with flecks of orange throughout it. She waved the crystal around and the flecks glittered. In the centre of the room was the box with the lid. The word squatted on her tongue; coffin.

But it wasn’t like any she had seen on TV. This one was also stone with flecks, and carved into the room, never to be removed. She took a step forward. The inside was padded with a mattress and pillow. She recoiled.

"No... wait... stop!" She tried to scream but it stuck in her throat. The last thing she saw as her eyes closed was five old wizards, hands raised and eyes closed, lost in their chanting. And then nothing.

Blair pushed the images back.

Nope. Not now. Not ever.

She had to focus on everything else, but that. Not what they had done to her.

But how did she wake up?

She was alone, so it wasn’t like a fairy tale with Prince Charming rescuing her.

Prince.

Dathan, Blair gasped. Where was he? Did Cassius and those fucking wizards try something with Dathan?

She heard herself hiss.

What the…? Did she really just hiss like a cat? Blair blinked and forced herself to relax. Deep breath. Exhale. Everything is alright. But her body twitched. It knew that it wanted to move. She allowed it to. She walked around the coffin, sticking close to the walls of the room till she found the darkened doorway.

She stepped out into the dark and waved the crystal around.

The door was a solid block of stone. It was lying on the floor, knocked down. She stepped over it and just stared. What had happened? Why was she awake now?

The panic returned. She waited for an answer, but couldn’t think of any. She shrank away from the darkness and pushed her back against the wall. She squeezed her eyes closed.

I want light, she whispered.

There was a shift, and suddenly her eyelids changed from black to a red. She opened them. The hallway blazed with light now. Just like her room, there were small crystals placed in carved niches in the walls.

So she still had her magic.

This made her straighten her back and force the panic down. Everything is going to be alright, just as soon as I get out of here.

She didn’t dare call here what she thought it was. Here could very well be her last resting place if she let her imagination put the facts together, so she blanked her mind and took tentative steps to the left. She stopped and started back to the right. Then stopped.

Either way, the hallway stretched beyond her sight.

She started hyperventilating. This was not good. She leaned her back against the cold stone and focused on a spot on the opposite wall. She just stared at it. Her breathing slowed to normal.

She allowed her eyes to look over the walls. There seemed to be another door, the stone set in place. Above, carved into the lintel, were a name and a date.

She frowned and moved to that side of the hall and looked above her door. No name, but a date just a little earlier than the other.

It happened. She laughed a sick and twisted laugh. She always knew that if she had died at home then she would have been easily forgotten, her headstone left to be terrorised by time and weather till the lettering was all gone. But this was Alizaria. She was meant to be remembered, for restoring the sword and, if she had had it her way, for being Dathan’s queen.

Yet she was in an unmarked crypt.

Her skin crawled and the laughter died.

For two years she wrote to Dathan on that magic paper. She told him everything; all the mundane days at school, her extracurricular activities like horseback riding, archery and fencing, funny stories of learning to drive. In his time, just a few months in Alizaria, he wrote her about the rebels and Lucy, stories about his youth, and just one important sentence.

~

Blair never kept a journal. It was too dangerous with her nosy mother to write down her feelings. What she did instead was a crazy type of strange. The things that she could never tell Emily or Dathan in their daily, almost hourly writings, she kept bottled till the next storm. Then she would lie outside, staring at the gathering storms, and whisper it all to the sky.

In some way, she was telling Lucy.

This is what kept her sane. She would be about ready to lose control and just start screaming out the truth in the middle of class or while watching television with her parents, and then a storm would be developing.

She told the clouds everything, rationalised her feelings for certain things, and whispered her deepest hopes and desires.

The answering thunder gave her hope that someone else was listening, and understanding exactly where she was coming from.

~

Blair looked down at her feet.

The floor was covered in a heavy sheeting of dust. How much time had passed? She noticed something absolutely bizarre. Footsteps had cleared away patches of the dust. New footprints. She traced them with her eyes; Converse shoes.

She looked at her bare feet.

Someone else had been here, in particular, someone from home… from her time.

The footsteps went one way only, heading from the inside of her crypt and to the right. For all she knew, this could be leading her to a trap. Another one. Leading her down, further into the earth. But what other choice was there?

She started off, her prints smudging over the others.

~

Blair stood in front of the mirror, brushing the length of her hair. She sighed. It had been easier when it was short and it dried almost instantly. Now, it was hard labour. Washing, drying, styling.

People would comment about her hair. The lovely red colour. How long it was.

She would flush and murmur a thank you. She didn’t really care what people thought about it.

After all, she was growing it out for other reasons.

Blair plaited it, the strands slipping through her fingers. At least now, no one mistook her for a boy.

~

She came to a set of stairs heading up. Well, she was heading the right way.

She climbed, gripping the hand rail.

As she came to the top, she found she was at the start of a new darkened hallway, and the prints led into it. She took a step forward.

She still had the crystal from her crypt clutched in her palm.

But it wasn’t needed. As soon as she touched a foot to the floor, the other crystals flickered and lit the way. She saw that the prints led to midway down the hall and then stopped.

She ran to them.

They had changed direction, turning to the right again. She looked and saw the hallway branching off. She stood at a T-intersection.

With a shrug, she started down this new path.

~

"Blair, the guidance counsellor crossed his legs and leaned back into the chair. They sat in the informal seats, facing each other instead of at his desk where there was a solid lump of wood between them. We really need to focus on what you want to achieve after school."

She tried hard to resist rolling her eyes.

"Do you want to go to university? Travel? Enter an apprenticeship?"

She shrugged.

He sighed heavily. Really, this is your future; you have to think about it. I know you’re just a kid and only want to have fun right now, but if you don’t start thinking seriously about what you want now, then no one here can help you get to that. He uncrossed his legs and leaned his forearms on his thighs.

She leaned back further.

"Do you want to end up unemployed and still living with your parents, doing nothing while your friends are off to uni, travelling the world, and making a start on their careers? Is that what you want?"

She tilted her head to the side. You wouldn’t understand.

He didn’t resist rolling his eyes. Just because I’m an adult doesn’t mean I wasn’t like you, confused about what I wanted out of life.

"Great, so if I don’t hurry up, I’ll be just like you, trying to talk kids down the right path away from the disaster of not being a real educator but a guidance counsellor. Don’t worry. I have it all figured out. I’m working towards total world domination."

The counsellor stood and left the room.

~

She’d turned five times on this one level and still hadn’t come to another set of stairs. The steps of the footprints were evenly measured, like whoever it was had been taking a long stroll to stretch their legs and have a look around.

Blair carefully tried to place a foot on top of one, just to see the size. Her tiny size-sevens were no match. Definitely too big to be anyone she knew from home.

Dust swirled around her ankles and under her skirt.

She tried not to look at the dress they had put her in. She remembered wearing her favourite shirt and shorts. That meant they had stripped her and thrown them away.

She shuddered. God, please tell me those wizards were not the ones who stripped me. Knowing her luck, it probably was some skinny servant girls who talked later on, comparing themselves to her.

Why am I even thinking about this stuff? She tossed her head hard from side to side to empty it of thoughts.

The dates caught her eye as she did.

This level was ten years after the one below. What? How long have I been down here? She lifted her hands to her face and ran her fingers around her eyes. Slight lines, not wrinkles. But ten years would make her twenty-seven.

She continued watching the dates as she walked.

One name caught her attention. Thirteen years after her burial, Cassius had died.

A slight panic rose up but she stuffed it back