Beyond: Snillotia Trilogy Book One by Donna Wagner (books you have to read TXT) 📕

The faces of everyone around the table, were all showing looked of complete and utter shock. Grandma Aras quietly chuckled to herself. “I don’t mean the exact stories! I mean the person the stories were based on.”

One by one, it seemed everyone let out a sigh of relief. “I still don’t understand,” Anna said, “If you learned about all this from some long-ago relative’s diaries, how would that help you? Wouldn’t the woman you thought might be the Old Woman E, be long gone?”

“In the stories, dear, the Old Woman E, was a witch, yes, but don’t forget, this is a Snillotian fairytale! Everyone in Snillotia has some kind of power. It’s as normal as someone having brown hair! The Old Woman E had a power, too!”

Everyone one who knew the stories suddenly realized what she meant. “She lives forever,” Ronnoc said quietly.

Tim raised his eyebrows in surprise. He hadn’t heard about that power yet. He looked at his grandmother and waited for her to finish her story. “I found her. She lived in an old cottage in the middle of nowhere, and yes, she was very, very old. She told me she could help my Nelle. She said she knew this day would come. She told me that when she was once a small child, she was given a prophecy. She was told that in many years to come she would one day give her life to a small girl, who shared her blood, who would be the start of something wondrous. She told me at first she thought it would be a child she would have that she would dedicate her life to raising and loving, and she said she did have children, and they had children, and so on, but none born had ever done anything wondrous. As the years passed and she realized what her power really meant, she lost track of her descendants, but as soon as I arrived with Nelle, she knew the day had come. She said Nelle looked exactly like her daughter had as a child.”

“What’s her name? Where is she?” Ronnoc asked.

Grandma Aras shook her head. “She didn’t tell me her name. She told me as the years passed and she stopped interacting with anyone, she no longer needed a name, since there was no one to use it. You very rarely have any reason to use your most important possession! She was quite right! Other people do use your name more than you do! She saved my Nelle that day. She transferred her power to her somehow,” she paused, seeing the look on Tim’s face, “No, Tim, I don’t mean that your mom would live forever, just that she wouldn’t die at that time. Whatever the Old Woman E did immediately had an effect. Nelle’s color came back; she became her energetic self again.  However, when I looked for the woman to thank her, she was gone. She had completely vanished.”

Everyone was silent as they processed what they had learned. Grandpa Cire continued the story. “Aras came and found me. I couldn’t believe my eyes. My baby was herself again! I finally listened to Aras explain what had happened. Then I believed. However, we kept it to ourselves. We had no proof since the woman had disappeared. We went about our lives. When people asked how Nelle survived, we just said it must have been something a healer had done and that we didn’t know exactly what, but that we were happy whatever it was had worked! People seemed to accept that without any more questions.”

It was silent as everyone digested this new information. “And now I can resume my story,” Ronnoc said, “I must admit, I didn’t know any of that. From my perspective, I thought my father took me away because he knew I made my sister sick- that I hadn’t protected her. I know now that was just a childish misconception. However, at that time, I didn’t. When we returned home and Nelle was well, things changed. Nelle could do no wrong. I felt like I was fading into the background. I was angry at my parents. I was very excited to go to the Y in my thirteenth year. I thought I would be able to finally have friends and people who cared about me and not my sister.”

“We had no idea you felt that way, son.”

Ronnoc looked at his father. He opened his mouth and then closed it, as if he was about to say something and then changed his mind. “When I got to the Y, I had friends, but it still felt like something was missing. I didn’t know what it was. Arat’s brother was the one person I talked to most during my time there. She was not on my floor, but because of her brother, I saw her quite a bit. She made me happy. How much of that was love and how much was her power, I’ll never know, but by the time I was starting my final year, I had decided I was going to marry her. I knew I had to wait because she was two years behind me. Then everything changed again,” he paused and glanced at Einna, as he continued, “The prince and princess arrived for their first year. Although they were only in their thirteenth year, even those older became obsessed. Everything they did was reported and obsessed over. All the girls, even my Arat, loved Mit. He was charming, and he knew it.”

Ronnoc had started sounding angry as he talked. “I’m sorry, Einna. I do know now that it’s not your fault, or even Mit’s fault, that everyone decided to obsess over the two of you, but for me, when my best friend fell in love with you, even if you didn’t know it and could talk of nothing else, and the girl I wanted to marry could talk of nothing but Mit, it was the final straw. For me, it felt