The Castle of Aberdeen

I moaned as the blaring whine of my alarm woke me. I pushed myself up and tapped my phone to make the noise stop, then slumped back into my pillows as blissful silence reached my ears.

But it was short lived.

A thunderous pounding shook my bedroom door. "Oi! Kendra, wake up!" a deep voice bellowed.

"Go away, Jack!" I moaned.

"Come on! Ma made breakfast for ya!"

"Let me sleep you bloody ingrate." I growled halfheartedly.

Jack chuckled, “Be ready in five minutes, lass, or I'm coming back to get ya.” Then the thumps of his heavy footsteps faded away.

I sighed and pulled myself out of my comfortable bed. I pulled on the flowing light blue dress Ma had insisted I wear today. It was very simple, with fabric flowing from shoulder straps down to just past my knees, and a white sash tied around my waist. For shoes, I grabbed a pair of silver flats.

I was preparing to apply makeup when the door burst open and a large figure filled the frame. Thick muscled arms, long legs, and wide shoulders made him tower over everything. Short cropped black hair covered his head and a goatee framed his big grinning mouth, his hazel-green eyes glittered evilly.

"Time’s up!" Jack bellowed with a grin and grabbed me, tossing me over his shoulder like a kidnap victim.

I pounded at his back as I laughed and shrieked. "Put me down you great lummox!"

"I ain't gonna let my own sister be late to her birthday!" He laughed as he went down the stairs. "It's not gentlemanly."

I snorted, "A gentleman? You? That's a laugh."

"Oh, shut your gob, Goldie Locks.” Jack teased and started tickling my side, making me squeal.

“Make me, Teddy Bear!” I giggled as I kicked and tried to get away from him.

"Jackson Edgar McLane!" A stern voice barked from the kitchen doorway. "Put your sister down this instant!"

Jack paled and set me down gently on my feet. I straightened my dress before I was enveloped by a warm, caring hug.

I looked up at my mother and smiled. Thick brown hair pulled back in a fat braid down her back, her hazel eyes kind and loving. She was plump and pear shaped with an ample bosom but I loved her all the more.

She smiled and kissed my forehead before releasing me. "Happy birthday Kendra."

I sighed, "Ma, you know how I feel about my birthday."

"Nonsense!" She quipped and led me into the kitchen that was perfuming the air with delicious scents. "Everyone deserves to celebrate the day they were born. Not every day a girl turns twenty-five."

"I think you're daft to hate your birthday," Jack said as he came in behind us and sat next to me.

I rolled my eyes. "I don't hate it, it's just never a good day for me. Odd things happen and it never turns out well." I poured myself a cup of tea while Ma shuffled around the kitchen. “Did Papa leave already?” I asked her.

“Aye, but I told him you’d be home for supper so he can wish you a happy birthday then.”

I frowned, “Ma, I never said I was coming home for dinner.”

Ma turned to give me a stern look with her eyebrow raised, “I beg your pardon?”

I bit my lip and looked away, “Sorry Ma, ‘course I'm coming for dinner!”

My crazy but lovable mother smiled at me and returned to getting breakfast.

I cleared my throat and turned to Jack, “So how’s that wife of yours?” I said cheerily. “Marion was it?”

Jack glared playfully at my purposefully getting Mary’s name wrong. “Oh, she's great. Actually, she’s eating for two now.”

I laughed, “Really? That was quick.”

Jack rolled his eyes, “Oh, bugger off! After two years I think it's a wonder it took me this long.” He grabbed a piece of toast, “But the hormones are already comin’ in, and she’s a tiny terror, Mary is.”

I snickered, “You're totally whipped you Wally.”

“Hey! Shut your gob you�"”

"Not on a birthday, Jackson!” Ma barked before he could finish.

Jack rolled his eyes, “She doesn't even like her birthday, Ma.”

I took a sip of tea, "Cause the lot of you make a big fuss over my birthday, and it's unnecessary."

"Oh, shut your gob and eat your breakfast." Ma scolded, placing a plate of flapjacks, eggs and sausage in front of me. "The last time you were here your birthday wasn't so bad was it?"

I thought back to that day, the day birthdays took a bad turn.

It was my twenty-first birthday, I'd been cleaning up the dishes and cut my finger on a knife. Liquid gold had started gushing from the cut. I'd felt cold, so cold and lifeless as the gold started to spread over my head and up my arm, more of it began to fall to the floor. I began to feel dizzy as the world shuddered and span. Then it vanished and my hand was healed. Ma walked into the kitchen and asked if anything was wrong.

I had been so sure I was going mad that I said nothing. And even though it had happened more and more each time I drew the slightest bit of blood, I'd said nothing. Today would be no different.

"No, I guess not." I lied, digging into my breakfast.

* * * *

Once breakfast was through, I grabbed my trench coat, book bag, and my umbrella before heading out to the car with Jack who had insisted on driving me. Today my class was going to visit a castle in Aberdeen, it was maybe an hour drive from the house so I had elected to stay there for the night. I had known it would make my family happy to see me again and I was right.

I didn't visit often, I lived on campus at Cambridge University and Scotland was too far away for me to visit more regularly than Christmas. But I was majoring in History, and our Professor had got the idea to take us to a castle in Scotland, so here I was, having my dear brother yap and tease me for an hour.

"You have to visit more often, Kendra." Jack said sadly. "It breaks Ma's heart every time you go, and Papa barely ever sees you when you come!"

I sighed. "I know, but you don't know what it's like, Jack. You are their son, and I'm�""

"You start spouting that 'I'm a burden' horseshit, and I'll drive you right back home and tell them. Let you sit for an hour while they lecture you. Maybe it would get the notion through your silly blonde head that we love you. You are family whether you believe it or not. Bloody hell, lass, I changed your diapers!"

I snorted. "A fact I would rather not remember, thanks."

"Just promise you'll come home more often, yeah?" Jack pleaded as we arrived at the meeting place for my class.

I met his eyes. Clear, beautiful hazel eyes. Not for the first time I wished I looked more like my brother, or my parents. Once more I imagined having dark hair instead of gold, and not having odd intense eyes of the same golden color.

I sighed, "I'll try, okay?" I gave him a hug and grabbed my bag. "I love you Jack."

"Love you too Kendra." He said, and I walked away.

As I neared the castle, I caught sight of my friend Valerie, who was waving and shouting at me.

"Bout time you showed up!" She said in her American accent. "I was beginning to think you were gonna ditch!"

I huffed and gave her a look. "I'm a history major, Val. I don't know what you do in America but here we don't 'ditch'."

She snorted. "Yeah right. Well let's go!" And she jerked me along toward the group.

I'm sure it was a fascinating tour of the castle. But considering how many castles are in Scotland and England alone, it gets old.

Not to mention the whole time, Valerie was chattering about guys at the school, at her work, in the tour, and at her flat. She was undoubtedly a guy magnet, she had a new boyfriend every week or two and was clueless to the rest that drooled at her feet.

I took notes on the tour but forgot them as soon as I wrote them down. I was too busy thinking about my own love life, which, sadly, was non existent. Guys didn't notice me that much. I could talk to a few and be friends with others, but if I liked one there was usually one of two problems standing in my way.

The first is that they had a girlfriend already. And if not the first option, then they simply didn't know I existed. It was as if the entire world had decided that I was off limits to men, and I didn't like women in that way so that option was out.

We had stopped in a grand hall lined with tapestries and Mr. Harris was droning about something interesting so I flipped to another page in my notebook.

Then, the event that would change my life forever....

A bloody paper cut.

I swore as the red beaded on my finger and dripped down into my hand. Gold started to pour from the small cut, quickly coating my fingers and hand, spreading up my arm and gushing toward the floor.

Valerie looked at me and her eyes widened. "What the f**k?" She screamed and stumbled back from the gold as it stayed in the air, spiraling around me as my body started to grow colder. The gold was spreading everywhere, and now my hands were melting, adding to the spiral vortex of liquid gold. I was quickly becoming encased in the liquid storm, only the occasional gap revealed the horror struck faces of my peers.

"Somebody help me!" I screamed as my body melted away. I didn't dare look down to see how much of me was left, I couldn't move anyway. The cold gripped my phantom limbs to the point of pain, the dizziness hit me hard and fast as I watched the gold completely obscure my view. My world was now a spinning purgatory of liquid gold.

Screams echoed around me, I couldn't tell if they were mine or not. Shut my eyes and prayed that I would wake up soon, or that death was here and would finish me quickly.

Then the spinning stopped, I opened my eyes to see the gold receding into my body, returning my limbs to flesh and bone. The gold was gathering in my chest, burning with cold as my heart pounded faster and faster. The cold left my limbs in a flood of warmth and I stumbled into the brick wall, which was very different from the walls of Aberdeen castle.

My limbs started to shake and before I could look around the cold that had been building in my chest exploded out of me, shooting up as a beam of golden light. My head was thrown back as the light held me up, and I watched the light penetrate the glass ceiling above me. I couldn't remember there being a glass ceiling before.

I closed my eyes as the light grew brighter and a horrible ringing sounded in my ears, the kind of ringing that's so high that you can't be sure if it's in your head or not. The light vanished and I was released, hitting the stone floor as my legs failed me and my breakfast came up.

The little of what I saw confused me, I wasn't in the tapestried hall of the castle in Aberdeen. I was in a large round room, with brick walls, metal sconces for torches, a few windows, and moth eaten tapestries long dead, many no longer hanging. In the middle was a large table and across from me was a large doorway with one great wooden door still standing. The last thing I saw was the blue sky overhead before the world went black.