Race to Witch Mountain: The Last Day of the Two Kingdoms
Chapter Four
Seth's POV
"Oh no." Sara and I said together. "Jack Bruno, what is today's date?"
He told us the date and asked, "What does that have to do with anything?"
"It is the Last Day of the Two Kingdoms, mine specifically. Happy Birthday to me." Karana cheered in an emotionless voice.
"Seth, what exactly are the Two Kingdoms?" Dr. Friedman asked.
"Not an are but an is. The Two Kingdoms is not what it seems. It is a state of mind, but mostly understood to be a very serious and powerful disease. It means that I'm bipolar. And I'm the worst of the three, an Arrow." Karana answered, taking the words right off of my tongue.
"How far?" I asked, fearing the answer.
"Twenty Earth minutes. Father decided it would be best to let me wreak havoc on you while you were on Earth, as the Earth saying goes, to injure two flying mammals with a piece of stone."
"What does 'how far' supposed to mean?" Dr. Friedman asked.
"I guess they didn't fill you in on a lot about the Kingdoms. Bipolar disease used to be called the disease of the Two Kingdoms on Earth. We still call it that but your planet abandoned that name years ago. It has been on our planet since the beginning of time and only a small percentile are affected by it each year. That small percentile is granted with extraordinary powers but it comes at a price. Our moods are volatile and they can grow worse in three different ways.
"The most common is the Waterfall. It is where the moods build and build rapidly until the swell to the breaking point and then fall back. The next most common is the Mountain. It is a milder version of the Waterfall but it has longer building point and it falls back slower. But the rarest is the Arrow, where it just gets worse and worse until the Last Moment of the Kingdom. Arrows only come around once in a while and sometimes are mistaken for high Mountains. There hadn't been Arrows for thirteen years before I was born.
"But the big thing with the Two Kingdoms is that we don't suffer depression. We instead have four main types of Kingdoms: Happy to Crazy, Angry to Docile, Calm to Aggressive and Heaven to Hell. The last is the Kingdoms that I was born with but I started in Hell first.
"The last part is that the Kingdoms last varying amounts. Some are days, others weeks and most are months. A rare few can be mere minutes and some are affected with lunar rotations. But Arrows tend to be about a year or so. So our Kingdoms are greatly feared and we often are spoiled to appease our moods and hold down the terror of the Last Day. For me, I have a five year cycle of 'traveling' between Kingdoms. The first was five years of Hell, five years of Heaven during which my engagement to Seth was officially made, and I'm on the last day of my second cycle of Hell.
"Seeing as today is my birthday and I'm an Arrow, today is the worst day for me to be mad because with every passing second, I get worse until I finally snap into the next Kingdom." Karana said, concluding the explanation of the Two Kingdoms.
"Privileged little bitch, that's what you are Karana." Sara grumbled menacingly.
"And a little good two shoes who gets a potty mouth when she gets near the Kingdom Bearers is what you are Sara." Karana said, throwing hard words at Sara. "You would have made a horrible Kingdom Bearer. You would have been like that woman that no one knew was a Bearer because her cycle lasted one hundred years. I would have been ordered to kill you, just like I did to her. Her Hell was beyond insufferable. To imagine that she had been a Heaven all these years."
"You killed my grandmother?" Sara asked in a wavering voice.
"Yep. My daddy told me it was time for me to continue the family business for the greater good of our government. I also put down that eight year Rugged Mountain. You know, the one that would change moods every three minutes? That was a real pleasure. One second she would be begging for her life, the next she would be daring me to kill her. I was glad when I slit her throat."
"Sorry to interrupt, but what is your family's profession?" Dr. Friedman cut in.
"Murder. Government authorized assassins and executioners. Very joyful career, don't you think? It's actually why I'm here." Karana said in a sarcastic voice.
"Like you would have the authority to do anything, Karana. Your father holds the title, not you. Anything you do counts as unjustified murder, giving you execution."
"No. Being daddy's little girl, I earned my title and license to kill for the government early. And if you don't mind too terribly, business must be put into order. Bye bye guys." She said, reaching into her jacket for what I saw to be the hilt of either a knife or plasma gun.
"Put your hands up!" I heard a megaphone say and every one of us turned around to see the federal agents that had been chasing us as well.
This day, literally, got better every second…