Hi guys! Ebony here, with my first story ever, Soulchains! I get that hardly any people have read Keepers, but I'll try and explain the Jewelian terminology as I go along.
Charisma Fletch slipped down a bank, getting mud on her fresh white stockings. Ahead, her daemon, Valour, streaked up a tree in the form of a ginger and white tabby tom. He perched on a branch high above her head, purring and yowling a challenge.
Grinning, the red-headed twelve-year-old darted across the leaf litter to scrambled up after him. She'd only placed a hand on the mossy trunk when a gale shook the tall tree, making it groan and shudder. Valour wailed and Rizzy grimaced, pacing anxiously across the dirt and dead leaves below, with her arms held up in case Val fell. The ginger kitten changed into a blackbird, but the howling wind buffeted that delicate shape so much that he flicked back into a ginger tomcat, then a black slaughterbird, then a snarling idlecat. Rizzy shouted a warning, but Valour's claws were already slipping, and then he was falling, twisting and trying to shift back into a raven-like slaughterbird.
Rizzy woke up as her ma shook her gently. "Charisma, dearling, it's time for breakfast."
Rizzy murmured something intelligible and shut her eyes tighter, trying to hold onto the sheer wildness of the dream. Her ma's ragdoll daemon dabbed at the thin silver guardchain that connected Rizzy to the bedpost, in case slavers like the Tiger Tomcat or Duchess Flint tried to steal her away in the night.
Valour mewled and sat up, yawning hugely. In real life he was still in his assigned childhood form, that of a sleek slate-grey Burmese cat. Rizzy jerked fully awake as he swept his tail across her eyes.
"How could you forget?" he scolded primly. "Today is Separation Day!"
Rizzy gasped and leapt out of bed. Her ma stepped backwards and smiled, then left the room with her cat daemon, Harmony. Valour paced across the bed as Rizzy put on her shirt and dress, then pulled on her stockings and combed her frizzy red gold hair, all the time connected to her bed by her guardchain. The silver cuff on her left wrist had two shining chains leading from it: her guardchain and her soulchain.
Valour tugged on the end of her soulchain, which was about two metres long and attached to his blue collar, and glaring impatiently at Rizzy. His stormy tail flicked back and forth. She grimaced sympathetically back at him.
Valour hated his demure grey form, and Separation Day was also the day when daemons were granted their adult shape. In Jewel, the port city they lived in, it was believed that a daemon's form affected their human's personality. So children were given an animal at birth, chosen by the Fugleman and the Grand Protector. Cats and small birds for girls, dogs and small mammals like raccoons and squirrels for boys. A grey cat was supposed to encourage meekness and calm in an infant. Rizzy snorted at the thought. It hadn't worked for her, probably because she and Val loved to change into legendary or extinct animals in private.
Ma poked her head around the door. "Ready, sweeting?"
Rizzy nodded, and her ma and Harmony slipped into the room. Harmony had no soulchain, like the daemon of anyone over twenty, and today that rubbed Valour's fur the wrong way. Rizzy scooped him up before he could hiss, then waited in cheery silence as Ma unfastened her guardchain.
Downstairs, the kitchen smelt of coffee and warm croissants. Rizzy's pa smiled over the morning gazette at her, his raven daemon cawing a greeting from his shoulder. Rizzy hugged Val and sat down in her chair while Ma clipped her guardchain onto the table.
Peacefully spreading redcurrant jam on her croissant, Rizzy listened as her parents bustled around getting ready for work. Her pa was a groom, looking after the city militia's horses, and her ma was a seamstress in the local draper. They couldn't leave the house until the Blessed Guardians that looked after Rizzy's class, Guardian Modest and Guardian Cherish, came to pick up Rizzy.
Someone rapped on the front door, on the Feverbone Canal side of the house. Ma hurried to open the door, while Rizzy stuffed the rest of her breakfast into her mouth, smoothed Valour's fur and wiped her sticky mouth. Pa unfastened her from the table and for a moment she longed to slip out the back door onto Old Mango Alley with Pa and help with the horses like she used to before she was old enough for school. Rizzy pictured herself as a plump four-year-old with a shock of reddish hair, riding on Valour as a pony when her pa wasn't watching, pretending to be a Blessed Guardian.
She snapped out of her daydream as Val tugged on her soulchain. Guardian Cherish was waiting, astride her dappled grey horse daemon. All Guardians had horse daemons.
Behind Cherish was Guardian Modest, on a nappy bay horse. Four silver guardchains trailed from his saddle, connected to the wrists of Rizzy's classmates.
First there was the twins, Condolence and Ardour. They were both deeply tanned boys with shaggy black labrador daemons, always laughing. Behind them meek little Sympathy whispered something to her dove daemon.
Rizzy waited while her chain was attached to Guardian Modest's saddle, then pushed past Sympathy to walk with her best friend, Amity. Amity was lucky- she'd been assigned a golden cat form for her daemon, Solace. Golden meant talent and clarity, which suited Amity perfectly. She was the best under-twenty clarinet player in Jewel.
To the Blessed Guardians clucking over the class like broody hens, it looked like Rizzy and Amity were walking in silence, Amity fiddling nervously with her soulchain and Rizzy scrunching up her collar. Actually, they were chatting casually in fingertalk, the secret language of Jewel that changed and evolved with each generation so that adults could never understand.
What do you think I'll be? I'm so excited! Amity burbled happily.
You'll be a musician, obviously, Rizzy answered, twirling Valour's tail around her finger. He reared up and batted her hand away.
Amity smiled and shrugged slightly. The daemon for a clarinetist is a hooded oriole, I think.
What is a hooded oriole?!
Amity laughed. I don't really know. I read it somewhere, a book that didn't have illustrations.
Oh.
Guardian Cherish was looking at them sternly, so the two girls' fingers stilled and they walked companionably beside Feverbone Canal towards where the ceremony would be held.
There was a crowd of black-cloaked Blessed Guardians in Broken Moon Plaza, waiting for them. On a podium, the chief whitesmith, the Fugleman (leader of the Blessed Guardians and high priest), and the Grand Protector were waiting. Guardians Cherish and Modest dismounted and fussed around the class, getting them in line and attaching Con and Ardour's guardchains to Modest, while Sympathy, Rizzy and Amity were transferred into Guardian Cherish's care.
The twin boys were first up. The Grand Protector, a pompous, haughty man with muddy brown hair, cleared his throat and announced, "Condolence Hahn."
The Fugleman took Con's guardchain and helped him step up onto the platform, trembling with nerves. The whitesmith bent over Con's left wrist, and with a barely audible click, his guardchain was severed from the cuff. Then the whitesmith knelt and slipped the red collar off Con's black labrador daemon. The dog stretched and rubbed against Con's leg.
"For all your childhood years, your daemon has been a black dog, to make you strong and obedient," The Grand Protector said. "Now, your dog shall change into an otter, as benefitting a baker and your personality."
Con's going to be a baker? Didn't see that one coming, Rizzy thought. She watched as Con's daemon scrutinized the picture that the Fugleman presented her with, then shrank and elongated into a sleek nut-brown otter. The whitesmith had already fused Con's soulchain to an otter sized collar, and the Fugleman respectfully held the collar as the otter wriggled into it.
Then Con was officially a teen. He stumbled to the back of the stage and watched in awe as his otter daemon twitched and strutted, testing out her new form.
It was his twin next. As Ardour walked past he reached out and let his fingertips brush Rizzy's, but didn't look at her. Her heart fluttered uncomfortably as the Grand Protector told him that he would be a Blessed Guardian, and his dog daemon would change into a chestnut horse.
His daemon, Glory, obeyed promptly, but in between the shape of a labrador and a horse, Rizzy thought she saw a different animal. A huge, sleek black cat with mottled fur. Ardour glanced at her and his fingers flickered.
It's called a panther.
There was no time to ponder over Glory's wildcat form, because now it was Rizzy's turn.
"Charisma Fletch," the Grand Protector repeated. The Fugleman tugged on her chain and she hopped up onto the podium. She felt no different once her guardchain had been severed; her silver cuff still chafed her wrist.
The Grand Protector hesitated, then continued with his speech. "For all your childhood years, your daemon has been a grey cat."
Wrong, Rizzy thought smugly.
"Now, your cat shall change into a hummingbird, as benefitting a scribe and your personality."
As the whitesmith fitted a miniscule collar on Valour, Rizzy was in shock. A hummingbird? Sure, they're pretty, but what about a dog? Loyal and charming? "Hummingbirds are useless!"
Blushing furiously, she realised that she'd just shouted her opinion out in front of the two most important people in the city.
Locksmith, please help me! Locksmith was one of the seven Faroon Peninsula gods. The Seven were tricky, and no always helpful; that's why if someone mentioned one of their names you had to flick your fingers. This was a polite way of saying; Please go away and help someone else!
The Locksmith was Rizzy favourite god, but she decided to flick her fingers anyway, cancelling out the hasty prayer. Anyway, the crowd had stopped staring at her.
It was Amity's turn, and Rizzy discovered that a hooded oriole was a black and yellow bird, about the size of a thrush. Eyes bright and smiling widely, Amity came to stand beside Rizzy.
Sympathy was to be a Blessed Guardian too, with a white horse daemon, and then the ceremony was over. Without a guardchain, the class of five was unsure of what to do, milling around behind the Blessed Guardians.
Eventually Sympathy and Ardour mounted their daemons and trotted off with the swarm of Blessed Guardians, then Guardian Modest led Amity away to get her clarinet. Guardian Cherish surveyed Rizzy and Con.
"Come, children. Condolence Hahn, you are an apprentice at the bakery on the corner of Old Mango Alley and Misery Street. Charisma Fletch, you are an under-scribe at Miss Unity's Manuscriptorium, but you don't start until tomorrow."
"I live on Old Mango Alley," Rizzy piped up. Valour was perched on her shoulder, ruffling his feathers in a disdainful way. "How about I walk with you until the baker's, then I can go in the back door."
All Jewelian houses in the Old Quarter had a front door leading onto one street and back door leading onto another, usually smaller street. Guardian Cherish's plump robin daemon chirped in agreement to Rizzy and they set off down the cobbled streets between rows of houses and shops, all made of Jewel's second biggest export, bluestone.
The Misery street bakery smelled delicious, but Rizzy had no money. Mouth watering, she waved goodbye to Con and his otter, then turned and ran down Old Mango Alley like a pride of idlecats was after her.
There was no one home, but she let herself in with the spare key and fixed herself a sandwich with slices of thick, honey-cured ham. Valour buzzed around the kitchen, loving his wings but at the same time hating his new, tiny form. As Rizzy finished the last of her lunch, he changed into a tiger, huge and glorious, then an adorable dalmatian puppy, then, out of habit, his old form of a drab grey cat.
While Rizzy tidied up, he flashed from form to form at the speed of thought - the speed of her thoughts. Finally he settled on a ginger-and-white tabby tom, like from her dream.
Rizzy had forgotten completely about her dream, but now she recalled it with a rush of pleasure. In real life she would never be allowed to get her clothes dirty, never enter a forest, and Valour wasn't allowed anywhere near the manicured trees in Jewel.
She sighed and Val shifted back into a hummingbird.
"I've never been a hummingbird," he commented, whizzing around the little room. "It's not that bad."
"It is. Aren't you embarrassed? And disappointed? The Grand Protector arranged the rest of my life around the fact that I have neat handwriting," Rizzy replied woodenly.
Why did this happen? Great Wooden, send your Black Ox elsewhere. Weeping Lady, blame someone else for your tears, she thought angrily. Valour landed on her arm and shuffled his feathers sympathetically.
"At least you're not a Blessed Guardian," he pointed out quietly.
"Sympathy will be a great Blessed Cardigan," Rizzy muttered.
"You're thinking of Ardour," her daemon stated. He hopped onto the floor and in a moment was a panther, imitating the jet-black form Glory had taken.
"Why do you think he did that? I know he doesn't want to be a Blessed Guardian." Rizzy wandered into the parlor and Valour paced after her. He was about to say something when Rizzy's ma arrived home for lunch.
"Sweeting, are you here?"
Val was a hummingbird again in a flash, and Rizzy ran to her to explain the ceremony, forgetting what she had been thinking about. It wasn't until a week later that she was reminded of the conversation with Valour.
A week later, Ardour disappeared.
So, who's your favourite character so far? And can you guess who the villain is? They've appeared in this chapter. Reviews are love, review are life!