Chronicles of the Kiridians

For it is written in the Chronicles of the Kiridians:

Your memories represent a part of you

But they are not you

We change daily, every moment, every second, nothing we do is ever the same.

We should not be held down by reflections of our past

You really messed it up this time.

That’s all I can think as I run down the long corridor of the palace. I’ve dodged the guards plenty of times before, but this time was different. This time I was running for my life. I knew I had plenty to be worried about. He was not the kind of man that you say no too. You do exactly as your told, and do it without hesitation.

That’s how it works in King Delmund’s court. It’s his kingdom, you’re just living in it.

“You can’t hide forever,” he calls down the corridor. “You know you can’t. It’s only a matter of time.”

He’s lost his mind. That’s the only way to describe the psychotic things he’s asking. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to take the life of someone else. There might be a great reward waiting for him at the end of this monstrosity of an action, but can he really live with himself knowing that he had to kill someone he loves?

I quickly turn down another hallway and feel a hand grab onto my arm. The maid and nanny to the royal family stands there with her finger over her mouth. “Don’t scream, we are going to get you out of here,” she says as she grabs me by my hand and leads me down a corridor.

She leads me over to a wall and knocks on it three times. The wall opens and she steps inside, and right as I’m about to follow, a hand grabs onto my hair. “I told you, you can’t hide forever!” says the king with a bright smile as he plunges the knife toward my body-

I wake up drenched in sweat. My breath catches with each inhale as I look around the room to make sure that King Delmund is not standing over me with a knife. That was such a vivid dream. Everything felt so real. I place my hand on my arm where the maid had grabbed me in the story. I could almost still feel her touch as if she was still there.

But was it a dream, Kara?

I can’t help but let that thought creep into my head. I’ve replayed that conversation with Lena a thousand times. She wouldn’t tell me I had a lot to remember if I was just some ordinary girl from earth. I’m tied into this somehow. I just can’t figure it out.

Why can’t I remember?

I sit up in bed and begin to walk out of the room when Raina wakes up. Her head shoots up and she wipes her eyes, squinting at me. The light from the moon dances into my bedroom window, lightly illuminating the room.

“Kara?” she asks me in a sleepy haze. “Is everything good?”

“Uh,” I say not sure how to respond to that question. There really isn’t a good way to explain to your friend you just had a dream that their dad killed you. “Yeah! I just needed some water,” I lie as I leave the room and walk down the hall toward the stairs.

“You don’t know if these Earth people have a gun,”

Well, that’s not something you hear every day.

This isn’t just any robber. This is someone from Kiridia. Or worse, some other planet that I don’t know about that is after Raina in an attempt to get to King Delmund.

And I thought life in Sanora was boring.

I freeze at the top of the stairs and take a deep breath. There’s no way that I’m going to be able to sneak back to my room by the time whoever these people are, find out that I’m here. I turn to my left and as quietly as I can, turn the knob to the upstairs bathroom. The door squeaks, and I wince as I wait for the shouts or the blast of their alien gun, but none of that comes.

I slip into the bathroom and close the door behind me. I immediately start looking for something that I can fight someone off with. “Mom you really didn’t take home intrusion into consideration when you were picking the decor,” I whisper to myself as I frantically move around the bathroom.

I open up the towel closet and see a can of hairspray sitting on the middle shelf and frown.

This is really the best you can protect yourself with when guards from another planet are currently trying to kidnap your friend that is in the house.

You’re screwed.

I open the door slowly and peak in the hallway through a crack. Whoever is in my house hasn’t made it to the stairs yet. I can hear them in the living room messing with things. A crash from downstairs allows me the distraction to open the bathroom door wide and quickly tiptoe to my room at the end of the hall.

“Raina!” I whisper when I dive back into my room.

I close the door behind me and lock it. Raina still hasn’t stirred from her sleep and has continued to lightly snore. “Raina!” I say tapping her. “Stop snoring and wake up! This is an emergency!”

“Kara, I do not snore!” she says louder than I would have liked when kidnappers are in the room. “Why do you have hair spray-”

I cover her mouth with my hand and she looks at me angrily. “Raina, I need you to listen. Kiridian guards are in the house right now. I heard them when I went to go get water. We need to get out of here. We need to run-”

“I think they’re in here,” whispers a man’s voice from outside of my room. They twist the knob of my door and curse underneath their breath when they see that it’s locked.

“What do we do?!” whispers Raina as fear raises in her voice. “We can’t let my father get me, Kara,”

I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. I think about all of the hiding places that I can hide in my room and an idea comes to me.

When Joey and I were 10, it was really hot out that summer. So hot my parents wouldn’t let us go play outside out of fear of heatstroke. Joey and I were extremely bored, and bored kids lead to exploring the house. We found everything from my parent’s spot they hid Christmas presents, to my old diary I had misplaced, but the best thing we found that summer was a door in the back wall of my closet.

It led to a secret hole in the wall just big enough for two kids. We made it our secret lair that summer, and only we knew about it. Hopefully, this is going to be the hole in the wall that saves Raina’s life.

“Raina, follow me. I have a plan,” I whisper quickly as the men feverishly play with the lock. I lead Raina over to the closet and move the clothes out of the way.

“Honestly, Kara, I think we need to be a bit more inventive than a closet-” she stops talking when she sees me pulling off the hidden door leading to the hole in the wall. I grab her hand and push her inside and cover my lips with a finger.

“What about you?!” she whispers hastily.

“I didn’t say you were going to like the plan!”

She reaches out to grab my hand, but I quickly push the door back in place and close the closet door behind me. The Kiridian guards burst into the room right after I do so. I take a few deep breaths as I let my back sink against the hidden door and breathe carefully.

If this is going to work, they need to think I was actually hiding.

“I know you’re in here, earth girl,” whispers the man as he moves around my room. “There’s not a lot of places you can hide.

I press my back as hard as I can against the door. Lena made it abundantly clear that to make sure King Delmund doesn’t get his way, Raina and her siblings can have no harm come to them. I clench the hairspray in my hand and make sure that it’s pointed away from my face.

The men’s footsteps get closer to my closet and I take one last deep breath as the door squeaks open. I pull my legs in as tight as I can, and hope that the clothes hanging off the bar cover me in the dimly lit room.

“There you are,” says the man as he reaches into the closet. I quickly spray the hairspray in his face, and he lets out a low grunt as he shields his eyes. His partner jumps in front of him and slaps it out of my hand. He grabs my arm, and roughly swings me out of the closet and throws me against the bed. The wind leaves my body as he and his partner stand over me intimidatingly.

“Are you kidding me?!” says the guy as he rubs his eye. “Come on, earth girl! This could have gone entirely different!”

If the first pair of guards I had come to my house were big, these two were gigantic. They have the same lion logo, but this time it was in the center of the uniform and not their arm. They have a bald head, and their skin is raised into some sort of pattern on their scalp. I’m also one hundred percent sure they could squish my head with one bicep.

“Where’s the princess,” says the one that threw me cooly.

I open up my mouth to talk, but can’t catch my breath enough to do so. I hold my finger up in the hair and then point to my chest and continue to try to catch my breath.

“Nice going, Ralph,” says the man that I sprayed with hairspray. “You broke the earthling. I told you we can’t just walk in here and wreak havoc. She’s not Kiridian-”

“Brandon, do me a favor,” says Ralph with an annoyed expression on his face. “Shut up. Maybe if you did better at roughing things up a bit you’d not be blind right now,”

The two sit quietly as my breath slowly returns to normal. I look at them with fear in my eyes as Brandon steps closer. “Look, kid,” he says. “We don’t want to hurt you. We just need to know where the princess is. If you cooperate, we get out of your hair and you never have to see his ugly mug again,” he says slapping Ralph’s back.

“Lie to us and we come back and it won’t be as pleasant,” adds Ralph.

“Gee, and I thought breaking was so friendly,” I mock from the floor of my bedroom. “I guess the fact you assaulted me means we can be besties, right?”

Brandon cracks a chuckle and Ralph glares at him before he turns to me. He leans down and looks me in the eye. There’s a fire in him as he looks at me, almost like he wants me to do something like he wants a reason to do something that’s going to hurt me.

“Where is the princess?”

“Are you referring to the crazy girl from the cave?” I ask him innocently.

Ralph’s nostrils flare as he stares at me with intensity. He grabs ahold of my shirt and pulls me forward so that our faces are almost touching. “We both know you know about Kiridia. Skip the games, kid. Where is the princess? We will be gone, and you can go back to life as normal. No one has to get hurt here,”

I gulp. I really didn’t think through this plan. Not that I had a lot of time to come up with something, but I should have known they would try and come back to the house after the first attack. The hole in our guest room isn’t even fixed from the last one.

Ralph looks at Brandon and motions for him to keep looking around the room.

“You won’t find her in here,” I finally say.

“No?” he asks me curiously. “And where will I find her then?”

Just lie, Kara! This is a life or death situation. We can’t let them get Raina.

“I can’t betray her,” I tell him trying to put up a front as I get my story together. “I won’t lie, I don’t like her at all. She was way more trouble than she was worth,” I hope Raina can’t hear me saying all of this from the closet, “But I told her I would help her, so I did. I won’t tell you,”

“I have waited sixteen years for there to be some kind of contact with the royal children here on earth. Their father has waited sixteen years, earth girl!” Ralph shakes me and I let out a small yelp. “I said where is the princess?!” Ralph says aggressively.

“She was in that pod for sixteen years?” I ask astonished.

My mind begins to wander at all of the things that Raina has missed in these sixteen years of life she was trapped in that pod. Her siblings obviously had no idea that they would be missing for this long. Had I not fallen in the cave, she could have easily been in there for forever. I was born the year that Raina came to earth.

“Wait, how was she in it for sixteen years?” I ask him confused. “The cave crash-”

“Was us,” says Brandon cheerily from where he is in the room. “We have been chasing flight trajectories for, well, sixteen years,” says Brandon. “There are many different ways things like that can go, and you multiply that by each sibling, and well, you have a lot of possibilities. We were hoping that the crash would influence people not to come into the cave so we could search it carefully, but we were cut off the following morning when your class came into the cave,”

I stare at the two men in shock. My jaw is practically on the ground from the information that I’ve been told. The fact that not only Raina but her brother have woken up so close together cannot be a coincidence. Something is going to happen.

I just hope we are on the winning side of whatever it is.

“How did you know she got out of the pod?” I ask confused.

“We got a notification that one of our pods had been opened. We didn’t know who it was that was getting out,” says Brandon. “You can imagine our joy when we found one of the missing royal children!” he chuckles to himself as he shrugs his shoulders. “That and the fact we saw you two come out of the cave. We were going to check it after you guys left. We had hoped the others would be buried in there, but we couldn’t even find Raina’s pod.”

“This is taking to long!” says Ralph. “No more questions! Where is the princess?!”

“She’s in Texarkana!” I say without thinking.

“What the heck is a Texarkana?” asks Brandon from across the room.

“It’s a city in North Texas,” I say. “They had the pods separate upon impact. We were able to isolate one of the other pods using the necklace thing that she has. She left yesterday on a bus.”

The two guards look at each other and Brandon shrugs. “As long as it isn’t Edwin who they found we still have a chance to intercept this. If Edwin is found, then the four of them can not only fully reconnect but go off the grid.”

Note to self: if I get out of this alive, find Edwin.

"How do I know you’re telling the truth, Earth Girl?” Ralph says giving me a suspicious look.

“Because you just broke into my house and my parents have yet to come and check on anything that has happened?” I say confused by his question. “You can obviously still do it again. She’s in Texarkana. I think it was her sister’s pod that they found.”

“How long ago did she leave?” he asks me finally letting go of my shirt. I quickly scoot back against the bed and feel my body unclench as he stands up and backs away from me.

“She left yesterday morning,” I say. “I drove her to the bus stop and then I came home,” I say. Tears start to well up in my eyes, and while I’m not quite sure where the emotion is coming from, I figure I can use it to my advantage in this situation. “I just want my life to go back to normal. I never asked for any of this,”

The two men nod at each other and then walk toward the door. Brandon quickly opens it up and walks out into the hall while Ralph stops before exiting and turns to me. “Remember, earth girl,” he says. “We can always come back and find you,”

He leaves the room and shuts the door behind him, and it’s only then I realize how long it’s been since I’ve taken a deep breath. I fall to the ground and breathe deeply as I wait a considerable amount of time before getting up from the ground and going to check in the hallway to make sure the men were gone.

I run to the stairs just in time to hear them closing the front door and I run downstairs to lock it. When I return upstairs I immediately run to the closet and open up the hole in the wall where Raina was hiding. Her face was in her knees as hugged her legs tightly to her chest. When she picks her head up and sees me she jumps from the closet and tackles me.

“That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do, Kara!” she says. She brings me in for a hug so tight it almost makes me miss Ralph’s death grip on my shirt. “I cannot believe they just left! What did you tell them?!”

I begin to tell Raina the story of what happened and watch as her face shifts from horrified to impressed. “You talked back to Ralph?!” says Raina slack-jawed. “Kara, do you have a death wish? He’s my father’s most trusted guard. He’s literally the one person I would avoid when I saw him walking in the castle. I’ve never been so impressed with someone, Kara!” I finish telling Raina what I told Ralph and she nods her head. “Now we just need to pray that Anya isn’t actually in that place you talked about,” says Raina with a nod. “Tomorrow is Friday, right? We get Brodie this weekend. Or at least we go look for him. I think he’ll have some idea of how to find the others-”

“Raina, there’s one more thing I need to tell you...” I say with my voice drifting off. Worry begins to show in her eyes as her forehead crinkles. She quickly tries to hide her facial expression but fails in doing so. “You were in that pod-” I begin to tell her but I pause. There’s not an easy way to tell someone they missed out on sixteen years of their lives. If she ever gets back to Kiridia, things could be completely different. Raina should be well into her thirties right now, but here she is. Sixteen-years-old.

“I was what, Kara?” she guides me with worry in her voice.

“You were in the pod for sixteen years,” I tell her.

She covers her mouth as tears start to fall down her face. She begins to breathe heavily and then sobs. We sit like that for what feels like forever before she finally looks up at me wipes her face. “My poor siblings,” she says. “We have to go get Brodie this weekend, Kara! He will have to have some sort of idea of what we can do to find the others. Edwin had to take this into account-”

“We aren’t going this weekend,” I tell her as I get up from the floor and walk over to the closet. I grab my bag off the top shelf and begin grabbing tons of clothes from the bar and placing them in the bag.

“Kara, we have to go this weekend,” says Raina. “It’s-”

“We aren’t going this weekend, because we are going tomorrow,” I say with conviction in my voice. “There’s no way I can justify letting them sit there another day while I sit around and do nothing.”

“Kara, you have responsibilities here,” says Raina getting up from the floor. “I understand what you’re doing, and I’m grateful for it, but we can’t just blow off your parents and your school. That’s important-”

“It was always going to come down to choosing, Raina,” I interrupt her again. “This is not the life that I’m supposed to have. I can’t explain it to you, but something big is happening. I can just feel it. We have to get your siblings as soon as possible. I won’t allow myself to have regret. I know that if something were to happen to one of your siblings-”

She gets up and crosses the room and wraps me in another tight hug. I sit there awkwardly for a minute before I decide to hug her back and we sit like that for a minute. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had,” she says as she lets go of me. “I’ll text Joseph and let him know the plan,”

I walk over to my cash drawer and pull the money out from it. I have a little over a thousand dollars from summers of doing odd jobs over the summers since sixth grade. “Oh, Kara,” says Raina with a smile. “I can take care of the money. Don’t worry,” she says with a smile.

“How?”

“You focus on getting the car, or some other transportation out of here to San Antonio for the three of us,” says Raina. “I’ll take care of the funds,”