Revolving Worlds – Book Three
2060
Chapter Five
Repetition
Renesmee's Point of View
Notch, scoop, twist, turn, repeat.
Notch, scoop, twist, turn, repeat.
Over and over.
Again and Again.
Another thirty-six repetitions and the petals for one votive would be marked. Then I would need to carve them out. After that I had to scoop out a hole in the middle for a tapered candle to fit in, carve out all the surrounding petals, and finally sand everything and I would be done. With this one. There were another three at my feet that I'd already finished and Jake was almost done with his forth. But it was slow going. Purple Heart was a hard wood, even with Jake's and my superhuman strength it wasn't easy to carve, and our knives and other carving tools needed to be re-sharpened in between each votive, sometimes sooner.
Once we finished the carving Jake and I would still have to stain them grey using a three step process, Alice had decided on, to match Felicity and Jennifer's wedding theme.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Jake was struggling with the piece he was working on.
"Something wrong?" I asked him.
"No," he grunted back. "There's just a knot in the wood that I can't seem to get through." He was gritting his teeth, trying to twist the blade further into the unyielding piece of timber.
He hadn't gotten very far on that one so I just suggested he try a new piece of wood.
"I'm not sure if we have enough, extra," he replied. "I don't want to run out and be caught short. We don't have enough time to go back to Brazil." I saw his arm muscles flex as he tried to force the blade into the wood again.
"Ouch!" Jake screamed, as the blade slid through his index finger.
Grabbing a nearby cloth, I'd been using to whip dust off the votives, I quickly applied pressure to his bleeding finger. It wasn't the cleanest, and probably not the best idea on my part, but I didn't have anything else readily available, and his finger was squirting blood. "Oh! Jake are you okay?"
"Don't worry about it, Ness," Jake assured me. "Look it's already healed." He used his non injured hand and took mine off of his, then removed the cloth, showing me the lightly faded scar that now ran along the length of his finger.
While injuries to Jake's muscles and bones healed miraculously fast, his skin still showed the signs of all of those wounds, each leaving its own scar in its place. His body was covered in them from bite and claw marks from fooling around with his Wolf brothers when he was younger, to the bullet and dart holes Joham and his daughters had shot him with, to a few knife wounds he'd gathered over the years - some I knew about, some I wasn't so sure of their cause.
I love him and don't care about what he looked like but his body was showing its age, not in physical years, but in scars. Even with him being immortal the years were taking their toll on his body nonetheless.
"I guess I need to be more careful. Red will completely clash with the weddings teal color theme."
I could tell Jake was trying to downplay his injury, not wanting to seem weak, so I thought it would be good to do the same. "Well, you don't need to be worried about me. I can't get hurt by a knife," I reminded him as I thrust the blade against my leg, watching it crumple in on itself, stopping myself before the thing was completely destroyed. "Oops! I guess I shouldn't have done that," I said, as I pinched the blade between my finger and thumb, running in up and down its length, attempted to smooth it out as best I could. It was still a little crumpley so I sharpened it on a nearby stone.
"Show off," Jake chuckled, as we got back to work.
Three votives later my phone started buzzing in my pocket.
"Jacob, we need to go to the main house," I said, holding it up so he could see the text I just received from Carlisle. He must have gotten it as well because instead of looking at mine he took out his own phone to read the entire message.
We'd only been working on the votives for a little over two hours today. If we kept getting interrupted we were never going to finish.
Now that Alice was involved with the planning, and Felicity and Jennifer had finalized the guest list, we at least had a fixed number for the amount of votives we'd been requested to make. But after a week we were only done with thirty-three of them and still had another one hundred and thirty-five to go. And the wedding was less than a month away.
"So what do you think the disaster is this time?" Jacob asked me as we ran over to the main house.
"Don't be so negative. You don't know it's something bad. Maybe Felicity and Jennifer decided to elope or something."
"I don't know about you, but personally, as her father, and Felicity being my only daughter, her running off and eloping would be pretty bad. I mean, not as bad as some of the other things we've been through but it would not be one of my top ten happiest things I'd like to see happen."
"Okay so then what do you think it is?"
"Who knows? Too many possibilities. With Alice it could be anything. Instead, how about we think about what it's probably not?"
"Okay, you start." I needed a moment to think.
"Well, since everyone is either a Vampire, Wolf, or some combination I doubt anybody got sick."
I rolled my eyes. Obviously. Hmmm. "I don't think Carlisle contacted us to let us know that Alice and Jasper ran off and joined the circus."
"You don't know that. Alice would make an awesome fortune teller at a carnival," Jake laughed, as I'd intended.
"You're right they probably did join the circus."
"Or maybe Emmett and Rose got a little too rowdy and now their new playhouse is already a pile of rubble."
"I hope not. They're not moving back in with us."
"Agreed," Jake winced. "But knowing Rose and Em, it's only a matter of time before their house implodes and they'll need another one. You heard them at night, back when we were all living together in South Carolina."
Eww. How could I forget? It's amazing that house hadn't sustained more damage than it did. Jake had been dealing with the loss of his father at the time and trying to climb his way back from his drunken stupor, I'm surprised he'd noticed.
Jake and I theorized more possibilities the entire run until we reached the main house, each getting more bizarre and extreme... less plausible, yet more hilarious than the first. By the time we got there some combination of aliens, dinosaurs, and anal probes had been brought up at least three times.
"Renesmee, Jacob, thank you for getting here so quickly," Carlisle said as he greeted us at the door. "Everyone's in the dining room. We're just waiting for Rosalie and Emmett."
"I wonder what those two are up to?" Jacob chuckled to me, under his breath.
Once they arrived, Carlisle set a letter down on the dining room table.
From the heavy embossed paper I could tell it was expensive.
"What does it say?" Rose asked the question that was on everyone's mind.
"It is official word from the Volturi, whenever they conduct an official execution, proclaiming justice has been done, to the members of a coven who were not present," Carlisle explained.
Someone in the family was killed? But looking around the table I could easily see we were all here. Was it an announcement of a future execution? No that couldn't be it. Carlisle said that their justice had already been carried out. Who else could it be then? My mind quickly wondered over to all the members of our extended family – David? One of my grandkids? One of the other Wolves? The Denali Coven? Panic started to set in, until my father shook his head, alleviating my worry. But then who?
"It appears that Albert was seen feeding publically
"Sarcastic much?" Emmett huffed, reading over the letter himself. "Did Caius have to take so much satisfaction in telling us that he ordered the guys death?"
"He probably did a happy dance when he signed the order," Jasper said.
"There's no paperwork for that part," Alice clarified. "He just tells the guard the name and they take care of it."
None of us particularly liked Albert, mostly because he refused to live off of animal blood, after Carlisle was forced to change him, when Esme lost control at a construction site and he witnessed her feeding from his co-workers. At the time changing him was seen as the better alternative than having the Volturi execute him and punish us (probably in some overly vengeful way). And we'd let him decide what to do – risk the Volturi finding out and killing him or change him to continue life as one of us. He was the one ultimately who'd decided to become a Vampire. Carlisle immediately thought of him as his newest son, but Albert wasn't interested. Right from the beginning he'd refused to listen to the rules. We'd made sure he knew them, but he was the one who chose not to follow them, and left us as soon as he could.
"Good riddance," Jake said under his breath. While no one said anything I could see that most of us agreed with him. My father had gone off to hunt humans for a short period in his life. Albert might have switched to a vegetarian diet, given the opportunity. But he never got the chance. Esme feel horrible all over again. She undeservedly saw his two deaths as her fault. But she shouldn't, at least not this one. He made his own choices.
"He got thirty-eight years of life he wouldn't have had," Carlisle said in an attempt to comfort his wife, who was looking almost as depressed as she had when the accident first occurred.
"He would still be human, and alive, if it weren't for me." If she could still cry, she would have been.
"There's more," Alice spoke up as Carlisle continued to reassure Esme. "When Carlisle first received the letter I took a look to see if we should be prepared for anything else from the Volturi and well… I'm not sure what it is yet but Caius is definitely up to something. Again. And I'm pretty sure it has to do with us, I just don't know what… or how."
"He's playing with the holes in your visions," Bella snarled. Anything to do with Caius meant trouble – most likely directed at me. He never got over not being allowed to kill me when I was just a baby.
"He might not be. He might not have finalized his plans, whatever they are." Jasper cut in.
"Either way he continues to change his plans and none of them are good for us." Alice said.
"And what are some of these plans?" Jacob growled.
"There's so many -" she shook her head.
"The top ones then," Bella suggested. "What have you been seeing more than once?"
"Let's see... he's thought about somehow poisoning our livestock."
Rose snickered. "Drinking from a sick deer wouldn't hurt us." Some joined in the laughter.
"No, but if he kills all of them then we won't have anything to feed from."
Everyone went silent except Emmett. "So we ration until we can get more deer. It won't be the first time. Not that big of a deal. What else?"
"Sometimes he's been thinking about trying to catch us all individually and take us out but he knows we're all paired up and how unlikely that would be."
"So he's working alone. That's something." Jasper almost looked like he was getting excited.
I guess that was true. "But he has forever to make new friends." Wait a minute. "Why isn't he utilizing the rest of the Volturi on this? There are dozens of them that could be helping him. He must be blocking you about that too." I started to panic. We could be surrounded even now.
"No, the rest of the Volturi want no part of this."
"What?" I relaxed but still didn't understand.
My father tried to clear up my confusion. "He was outvoted. Two to one."
But Aro is dead. Only he and Marcus are left.
"There are still three leaders of the Volturi, Aro was... replaced."
By who? I mentally asked my father. He didn't answer this time, so either my mother was now blocking me for some reason, but that wasn't likely, he just answered my previous questions, or, more likely, he was choosing to ignore me for some reason.
Alice went over a few other possible scenarios that Caius was considering, but Jasper was in a much better, more confident mood, now that he knew Caius would be vastly outnumbered. He began strategizing how we would handle him. He was still a member of the Volturi, but if the other two (whomever the third was- I gave my father a dirty look, which he ignored) were against him, it was agreed that if we ended up killing Caius they most likely would not retaliate... probably.
We still didn't know when or where he'd strike so it was agreed that until things were more certain none of us would go anywhere alone, and not without a phone. Alice was going to increase the frequency of looking into Caius' decisions and all of us were going to start patrolling the surrounding area, making sure he wasn't lurking around. That was Jake's idea. Alice assured him that she'd see him coming when he finally made up his mind, but Jake wasn't convinced.
"Why couldn't we do this during the day? Doesn't my family know we sleep at night?" We'd been patrolling, looking to make sure Caius was nowhere near, for almost five hours and I was getting tired. Staying up past 1am wasn't something I was use to.
"I made the schedule," Jake said.
"What? Why would you do this to us?"
"Because during the day we still need to carve another one hundred twenty-seven votives. Remember?"
Argh! He was right. I was the one who had given in to Alice and agreed that Jake and I would do that. But I still thought this was unfair. Couldn't we patrol and carve at the same time? In the daytime? When the sun was out? Not in the middle of the night when I was supposed to be in bed. Hmmm… my bed. I miss my bed. So soft, and comfy.
I could feel my eyes closing. Maybe if I just took a little nap…
"NESSIE!" Jake's voice boomed and I instantly was alert.
"What is it? Is it Caius?"
"No. But be thankful it wasn't or you could be dead by now. Were you sleeping?" He looked not exactly angry. More upset... concerned.
"No," I huffed. He gave me a look. "Yes. I'm sorry, but I'm not a full-Vampire and I'm not a Wolf. I don't have mystical magical energy that lets me never get tired and stay up all night long. I need my sleep."
"You're right," he sighed. "Tomorrow I'll adjust the schedules, and we can patrol during the daytime only. For tonight how about I phase and you can hop on," he said tilting his head behind him. "Do you think you can stay awake if you don't also have to run?"
I wasn't sure but agreed anyway. He phased and I climbed onto his back, almost like he was a horse or something. I wasn't sure if sitting up here, with the wind still in my hair as Jake ran, but not running myself, would make my drowsiness worse or not. Jake's Wolf self was so comfy, I loved falling asleep on him in both forms, but this one was just so big and warm and...
I wasn't sure how many hours Jake had run that night. I must have fallen asleep soon after I climbed on his back.
"What time is it?" I asked as I opened my eyes and saw that we were in our bed.
"Just after eight," Jake replied. I patrolled for another hour, but it was getting harder and harder to run, without jostling you. I was afraid you might fall off, so I ran us over to the main house and mentally filled Edward in. He and Bella covered the rest of our shift."
"That was nice of them."
"Yeah, well, they only switched times with us."
"Oh. When was theirs supposed to be?"
"In about thirty minutes."
I groaned.
"Come on," Jake said, pulling me out of bed. If we get up now, we'll have time for a quick shower and breakfast."
"How about we stay in bed," I said, pushing him back down, with me colliding on top of him, "and do something much more fun. We can grab a meal on the go later." We were bound to run across a few bunnies or a fox while patrolling.
"Mmmm," Jake smirked in agreement, before rolling us over.
Bella and Edward agreed to take a few more of our patrol shifts over the weeks that followed in order for us to finish carving the votives, but they were more than willing to do so in order to help us make their granddaughter's wedding dreams come true. In all that time no one had spotted Caius, and Alice still had no idea what his true plan was. She said her visions of what he was going to do kept changing day by day, sometimes hour by hour. I was starting to think that that was his plan. To never actually attack us, just drive Alice, and by proxy all of us nuts, by continually change his mind forever on end.
Right now I didn't care though. We'd done it. We carved one hundred sixty-eight votives out of the Purple Heart wood. Actually we'd one extra because in order to finish on time Jake and I'd turned it into sort of a contest between the two of us and we were racing at the end to finish number one hundred sixty-eight.
Jake won of course, but I couldn't leave a half finished votive out there so I put the final touches on number one hundred sixty-nine before we started staining all of them. The wedding was in three days and we would need every second for the stain to dry. I still don't truly understand why we couldn't have just used a different wood that was already the right color without having to go through such elaborate staining methods, but what Alice wants, Alice gets. Whether it's her wedding or not.
"You owe me a new set of carving knives," Jake said to Alice as we delivered the finished votives to her, two days later. The wedding was tomorrow and we were going to go to the church early in the morning to set everything up. Right now everything was just being loaded in the trucks, before the rehearsal dinner.
"Already ordered," she smirked back to him. "They'll be here on Friday."
Everyone was at the church for Felicity and Jennifer's wedding in La Push. After once again catching up with the Amazon coven I made my way over to where Jake was talking with Seth. He was in a small group with his wife and children. As Seth turned I could see that he was holding a small baby. This must be Emma, his granddaughter. She was looking as lovely as she did in the video phone chats I'd seen her on.
After exchanging some pleasantries I grabbed Jake and we headed over to David and Angelina. They were building a solid friendship, but I could tell that David still wasn't ready to move on from Janet. I hadn't expected him to so soon anyway but it was good that they at least had come together today.
A few of the other original Wolves from when I was a child were here, all of the remaining ones at least. On days like this I was reminded that Sam and Jared and their wives were gone. But their children were here. And Leah had come with Paul's nephew, Joffrey. Though they weren't together right at this moment.
Jake and I were going to have to go over and rescue him. Joffrey was hilariously trying (and failing) to interject himself into a conversation with a couple of Jennifer and Felicity's friends they had met in Australia. I knew he wasn't a Wolf, but he must have known by their red eyes, pale skin, and modelesque beauty that he was trying to talk to a pair of mated Vampires, didn't he? Surely Leah or Paul, or someone from La Push would have told him.
A glance over to my father didn't help. He was busy calming down some of the new Wolves. I had not seen what had happened, but could see Carlisle on the other side of the room, reasoning with Charlotte and Peter. They were growling, but no one was fighting... yet.
Leah was in the back with Felicity, since she'd asked her to be one of her bridesmaids. They were all getting dressed and having their hair and makeup done by Alice. Felicity had also asked my granddaughter, Sepideh to be a bridesmaid, as well as Jasper and Emmett, flipping tradition on its side and having men and women for bridesmaids, or I guess bridesmaids and bridesmen.
Jennifer had done the same asking Rose and Bella, along with some male Nomads she'd known over the years. I'd never met them before but they seemed nice enough, at least as far as I could tell in the few moments I'd met them last night at the rehearsal dinner. Huilen who was acting as Jennifer's Mother-of-the-Bride was in the church greeting all of the wedding guests with me and Jacob. Bella had already sent word out that both Brides were ready so we were just waiting for the rest of our guests to arrive and the ceremony would begin.
"Joffery, I think the ceremony is going to start," Jake said, grabbing him away from the Australians before they could bite his head off, literally. He looked a little confused, but he'd get over it. We sat him down next to Rachel and Rebecca. It was a nice reunion for the two of them. I don't know when the last time was that Jake's sisters had seen each other, but Rebecca had brought her husband, Solomon all the way from Greece, as well as their son, Belen. And it looked like most of the Grecian Wolves were attending the wedding, as well. Some of them seem to have brought dates with them, too. I wondered if any of them were Imprints but didn't want to be rude and ask.
If Jake didn't know, my father probably would and I could ask him in private later. I looked over to him again. The incident between the young Wolves and Jasper's old friends seemed to have been resolved and he was back playing the church organ. All was well and he gave me a slight smirk and head nod.
Good, I would drive myself crazy trying to reason out who was an Imprint and who was just a friend or girlfriend.
Looking around the room again I could see that some of the Wolves were getting a little agitated. I couldn't blame them. While it seemed that Jake and I were content with a small wedding, it looked like Felicity and Jennifer had invited everyone they had ever met, and some that they hadn't. Almost every single Vampire who had come to witness for me when I was a baby was here, minus a few exceptions - the Egyptian and Irish covens were missing. And Alistair, being such a loner, was naturally not here. But I spotted Mary and Randall keeping to themselves in a far corner, close to, but not speaking with few other Nomads, whom I never met before, but obviously knew Jennifer and Felicity.
Jake and I made two more circuits around the room. We talked to everyone we'd known and introduced ourselves, as the parents of the bride, (well one of the brides) to those we didn't. Huilen had done the same as Jennifer's proxy Mother-of-the-Bride. And my father, who would be walking her down the aisle and giving Jennifer away, had even torn himself away from the organ long enough to do the same, when I'd offered to take his place after my first loop.
The wedding was supposed to have started over an hour ago but we were still waiting for William and Penny. Matthew had arrived forty minutes ago, apologizing profusely for being late and letting us all know that his brother and sister-in-law would be here soon. "I thought they were right behind me. I don't understand what happened."
"Alice do you think you could look and see if you can give us an idea of what is keeping them?" my father asked her, after no one could get in touch with either of them by phone.
"We're in the heart of Wolf country. And William is a Wolf. Even as much as I'm able to see around that, you don't really think I'd be able to see anything here do you?"
She had a point, but twenty minutes later after another round of attempts to call them failed, and two of the Wolves phased to talk to William with their telepathy turned up nothing, Edward implored his sister to try again.
"Alright, alright," she sighed, "but don't blame me when I come up with nothing." She searched for a second and then gasped, followed closely by something being crunched into kindling by my father. "I don't know what happened... we need to get to..."
"The hospital," Edward finished for her. "Quickly!"
A.N. - Thanks for reading. Please review.
Just a quick note to Silas who has been wonderful continually reviewing this story and keeping me motivated. Thanks super duper much.
Regarding your comments, after I post this I'm going to go back to the first chapter and add in the Table of Contents so you can see how many chapters there are. Completely forgot to do that, but thanks for reminding me.
Also your other comment (from awhile ago) wondering about the Cullens attempting to develop artificial blood - they had, but it was more of throw away comment that their attempts were unsuccessful. It did however inspire me to rewrite it and is now a full blown scene. If you would would like to read it - it was Revolving Worlds - Book One, Chapter 21.