Eternal Journey. Alex Archer

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      Prologue

      St. Claire, August, 1932

      A storm blew over the island last night.

      We were safely tucked away behind the thick walls at Devlin Manor. Lucas entertained us all night, keeping the children distracted with tall tales and games. I knew that I was safe with my family, but I could not shake the strange apprehension that gnawed at me, and only increased as the night went on.

      Each band of rain, each blast of wind that rattled the shutters pushed me further back in my memories, further back in time, to a night, more than twenty years ago, and a night that I thought was safely buried in the murky depths of history.

      At the height of the storm, a gust of wind came that was so violent, so angry, that the howl of it carried through the house, echoing down the long halls and up to the tall ceilings. An image came to my mind, one that I had fought to keep away. It was of her.

      Celeste.

      When the dawn came, I threw open the shutters to see that the sky was once again a mollifying shade of blue and the wind was meek and apologetic. Palms rustled in the wind. Birds alighted from their dark, secret spaces. But the storm had shifted the coastline, exposing the marrow of the rocks. As I looked more closely from my perch, there, on the largest of them, I saw something…shiny. Shading my eyes from the dawn, I squinted and saw something that I had not seen in many, many years.

      I didn’t need to walk down to the shoreline to know what it was. But I went, anyway. I had to see for myself if it was real.

      It was. Celeste had returned. Her golden body still sharp with youth and beauty, while mine had begun to soften. The same after all these years and the beating tides.

      Why now?

      Did she think that I had forgotten?

      Never. I went to the statuette and lifted it, wondering how something less than a foot high could do so much damage. I hoisted it into the air, that perfect golden miniature of her, and threw it back into the sea where it belonged.

      Memories like jewels no matter how long or how deeply they are buried, always shine when exposed to the sun.