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The Prophecy

  By K. H. Blackmoore

  Copyright 2012 K. H. Blackmoore

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  Most prophecies are vague. Perhaps that is why this stone had been ignored for so long. The prophecy engraved into its surface was clearly spelled out:

  The blond child of the grey haired witless and the fragile beauty will save her friends from the storm.

  Dannon ran his hands over the grey stone, feeling the familiar shape of the letters engraved in its surface against his fingers. Yes, there was nothing hidden here. No great mysteries, no tales of treasure to find or heroic stories waiting to happen or events that would rattle kingdoms.

  The fact that the prophecy was so vague was probably for the best. Otherwise the stone would have been hauled off to a major city long ago and its intended recipients would never have known. He turned and seated himself on the stone, looking out over the grassy knoll the stone stood watch over and over the great grassy plain beyond. He sighed again, and rubbed his long auburn brown hair. His hair color was the visual warning of the strength of the magic which flowed through his veins. Magic. The darker color a person’s hair, the stronger that person was in the magic arts. Which is why, yet again, he had turned away ambassadors from the Kingdom Feuer today. They had offered him chances to study all the prophecy stones their kingdom had squirreled away. An even greater temptation, they had offered the chance to study the war magics that were forbidden to all but a chosen few magicians. If only he would leave the sleepy little village in the middle of nowhere and join the war.

  Dannon looked out over the wind ripples on the plain and listened to the small sparrows singing their peaceful song. If only the peace all around him was not such an illusion. War was coming to his village. At least it was coming according to the ambassadors. The fragile truce between the mighty Kingdoms of Feuer and Wasser had been broken one too many times and soon the armies of both would roll across his tiny town as they battled. The magic they unleashed would score the land into ashes and leave nothing alive or growing for miles around any battlefield. His town was doomed.

  Once again Dannon wished he had been born without the curse of magic. In this tiny little town there was no need for a strong magician. The inhabitants were all blessed with golden brown hair with very little variation between. Their weak magic was more than enough for growing their crops and simple household chores. He was not needed here. In truth, he could not have told why he stayed, except for the guaranty of seeing this one prophecy played out. It was an opportunity few magicians had the chance to witness and one he would not pass up for all the magic of the world. A prophecy Dannon would not live to see come into fruition if war ravaged the land.

  "Dannon!" A high pitched child's voice rang out. He smiled to himself. Speaking of the child of prophecy. "What are you doing out here Dannon?" The voice came from behind him and he felt his smile grow as he turned. "Looking at the rock I told you about, Sunshine." A bright smile on an angelic little face greeted him. The child was roughly seven years old with long blond hair. A heavily patched light blue dress adorned her thin frame. Her face was a little bit grubby from the infrequent washings. But her cheerful personality more than made up for her shabby appearance.

  "The rock that tells everyone about myself and Daddy?" Sunshine asked.

  "Yes, that rock." Dannon answered. "What are you doing so far away from the village?"

  "I am looking for Daddy. I think he is lost again." Sunshine answered cheerfully.

  "Did he wander off again?"

  "I think so. I can't find him in any of the usual places. Will you help me look for him?"

  "Sure," Dannon replied as he took the child's hand. "Where should we look for him?"

  "I was going to go to the forest." Sunshine answered.

  "But the forest is dangerous for a child!" Dannon exclaimed.

  "Yes it is," Sunshine replied in a knowing tone, "but the villagers don’t always like Daddy. So I didn’t want them to know he got lost again."

  "They are just scared because he is different. But we don’t have to tell them that he got lost. Let's go look, shall we?"

  It was a quick walk to the edge of the forest. There was little danger for a grown man under the branches of the forests trees, but Dannon worried about Sunshine wandering around in it alone. They searched the paths of the forest for a while until they came to the edge of a small stream. Sitting on a large stone in the middle of the stream, his cloths dripping wet, pounding a rock against a stick, was Sunshine's father, Grey.

  Dannon didn’t know if Grey was his real name or if it was the name the villagers had given him when he and Sunshine's mother had wandered into the village so many years ago. He certainly never talked much. And what he did say never made sense. Because Grey had two very distinctive features that set him apart from everyone else. The first characteristic everyone noticed about Grey was his knee-length hair. It was a light gray color. A color no one had ever seen before. A color that seemed to have no magic connected to it. And the second fact that quickly became apparent to even an inobservant passerby would be that Grey was crazy.

  Not dangerously so, but still crazy. He could perform simple tasks that were given to him, as long as they were repetitive. Often times his conversation seemed to be in another language. He would seem almost coherent, if not very simple minded.

  But then there were days like today, when Grey would wander off and do strange things. He had never hurt anyone. Although one day he set a wood stack on fire near the village; another he had chopped a tree down in the center of town. The strange things he did, although infrequent, were enough to set the villagers against him. When Sunshine's mother had been alive no one had cared because she had taken care of Grey and helped make sure he didn’t get into trouble. But two years after Sunshine had been born the poor woman had died. Grey had gotten worse after that. The villagers had wanted to take Sunshine away, believing that Grey could not care for the child. Dannon had stopped them however, understanding that Sunshine was the child of the prophecy. The village elders had consented to leave the child with Grey on the condition that Dannon help raise her. Since that day Dannon had lived in the house on the edge of town with Sunshine and Grey.

  "Grey" Dannon called, without a response from the gray haired man. "Grey, it's time to go back to the village. It's time to go home." Grey continued to pound on the rock with his stick as if he could not hear Dannon. Grey's long silver hair was splayed out in the stream behind him like the silvered strands of a spider's web lit by dew drops in the early morning. Dannon sighed in frustration.

  "Daddy." Grey's head snapped up at the sound of Sunshine's voice. "Daddy, it's time to get out of the stream."

  Grey stood, promptly slipped on the wet rock and plunged head first into the stream. Sunshine laughed while Dannon just sighed to himself again as the now completely soaked Grey extracted himself from the water. Sunshine let go of Dannon's hand and promptly attached herself to her father. Her cheerful chatter filled the long walk back to their house on the edge of the village while Grey's unintelligible replies broke in every now and then. That night Sunshine combed out Grey's hair for him and then braided it after their dinner was over.

  A few days later Dannon was teaching school to the village children. Mostly he taught them the basics of magic, math and reading. There weren’t many children in such a small village and they had to work on their family’s farm much of the time. Still, it was one of the highlights of his life, to watch
the children grow as they learned about their world and their magic.

  Sunshine was his star pupil. She seemed to drink up everything he tried to teach her. Unfortunately her magic was so weak that she had trouble casting even the simplest spells. Her problem was not that Sunshine didn’t know the concepts of magic or spells that Dannon taught, but her magic was just too weak to make the spells work. It was frustrating for both Dannon and Sunshine, and more than once he wondered at the prophecy. How would a child who could hardly levitate an empty cup or barely light a candle save any one?

  Maybe she would save her friends some other way. It was an interesting thought to Dannon, meaning that the prophecy might not be as plain and simple as it first looked. Dannon really hoped he would be around to see the prophecy come true. Of course with as friendly as Sunshine was, it probably meant that she would save the entire village somehow. He realized that he should probably start writing down everything about the prophecy and Sunshine so that when the prophecy was fulfilled he had a record to show his fellow magicians. Dannon resolved to start a journal on Sunshine that very day after school ended.

  The following weeks