The Object

Cairo Helmway was sleeping peacefully on a couch in the living room at Crest view cottage. A book lay open on his lap- 'The First Phoenix'. It had a majestic bird engulfed in flame on the cover. Cairo's Uncle Adams had suggested that he read this book. Mr. Adams was a famous historian. He was the author of several bestseller books including 'A war of Delusion', '7 Ways of Creation', 'The Old Universe' and many more. His most famous books are about alternate realities and the real origin of mankind. Many of his fans thought him to be a lunatic and still loved his works. But then, even the sane authors were nuts.

Cairo was an orphan. His parents had drowned in a tsunami while they were on a cruise ship. He was merely two years old at that time. His grandmother looked after him for the next three years, but slowly, her health started deteriorating, and she passed away. Mr. Adams, a distant uncle of Cairo's, had always shown a particular interest in him. Upon his grandmother's death, Mr. Adams decided to adopt Cairo. None of the relatives complained. They were glad to be rid of that boy, having spent countless days worrying about what would happen if somehow, the boy's care fell into their hands.

But, Henry Adams was far from cold-hearted. He loved Cairo like his own son. He was not married, and had no children of his own, having been so preoccupied with his books in his youth. He was sixty-four years old and was very rich because of his bestselling books. He owned the whole of Greencrest hill and lived there peacefully.

Cairo was homeschooled by his uncle. Uncle Adams was a well-educated man himself and even gave lectures in the nearby high school during his leisure. Cairo was not a very bright student, the only things he enjoyed learning were ancient mythology and history, especially because Mr. Adams was an expert in that field. He often made Cairo read his books and would always ask him to keep an open mind and accept anything as long as it has some proof. But if Cairo would happen to ask him the proof for some of the things that Mr. Adams himself had written in his books, especially about ancient civilizations still living amongst normal civilians, Mr. Adams would just nod sagely and say 'You will understand soon enough.'

Whatever Cairo said, he was an inquisitive boy, and his Uncle's ideas and books fascinated him. The book he was currently reading, The First Phoenix, had been an international bestseller written by his Uncle. The book lay open at page seventeen on his lap as he dozed his head off. It read-

..as the cold wind blew over the dark knight's body, his face slowly started losing its glow, until he became completely translucent, and shimmered off into non-being. Beside him, sat another knight, his brother. He was kneeling beside his dead brother's body and was filled with grief at being forced to fight his only living relation. His brother's ideas of world dominance greatly clashed with his own ideals of peace and friendship. He had spent ages trying to persuade his brother to give up on his bloodthirsty attitude and work for the betterment of humans. But alas, the dark knight had always been short-tempered, and finally decided to kill his brother.

Being the elder brother, Thath was always better than the dark knight at magic, yet, it had almost required his full power to restrain his brother's powers.

Suddenly, a sound echoed behind his back and he turned. To his amazement, there stood the dark knight, grinning. He was surrounded by such a bright light that it nearly blinded Thath. 'Brother…?' he started

'Yes, it is me,' replied the dark knight.

'But… How?' Thath said weakly.

'I have always been smarter than you, my dear brother, the knight you fought was a mere human servant of mine, and you wasted all your powers to destroy him. Now…. it's time to finish you for good'

Rage rushed through Thath, and he said 'You used another harmless being for your evil purposes! Have you not already done enough?'

'Harmless? My shoe!' he spat, 'some stupid vermin of his race nearly bombed our palace to try and get at me, I escaped just in time…. And you say we get along with them? They are nothing… nothing compared to us. Join me, this is the last time I will ask you this…'

'Never…. I will fight till the end,' Thath replied with a dangerous look in his eyes. He spread his hands and split himself into seven, just as the dark knight raised his majestic sword, and charged…

Here, the page ended. Cairo had nearly finished the book when he fell asleep. Indeed, his uncle had a way of capturing the audience's attraction.

Suddenly a harsh cry disturbed the night's peace and Cairo's eyes fluttered open. He leaped off his couch and looked around. He saw something white fly past his window. He felt weary and nervous. A train of thoughts rushed past his mind. It could be a thief..? But no, the thing was way too fast. Could he perhaps be dreaming, but then again, what had caused that harsh cry? He wished his uncle was at home right now. Mr. Adams often went on some 'personal' mysterious work during the night.

Cairo edged nervously towards the window and looked out. He saw nothing. Then, his eyes fell on a shiny object fallen on the ground. It was about three meters from the window and it cast a lovely blue aura on its surroundings. Now, Cairo's curiosity overtook his fears and he felt himself opening the window and walking toward the object, as if in a trance.

As he neared the object, he realized that it was an amulet. He picked it up and admired its beauty. It seemed to be made of bronze but was nearly weightless. The source of the blue light was a small blue gem embedded in the center. The bronze surface around the gem had several scratches but the gem was pristine. He looked at it for a long while, then, as if coming out of a trance, he shook his head, blinked his eyes and looked around foolishly in the hope of catching the person who had just rushed past his window, and had probably dropped the amulet in a rush. Finding no one, Cairo went back to the house and closed the window. Now that he was up from his sleep, he decided to look at the amulet more properly. He switched on the lights, went into his uncle's study, and examined it more carefully in full light. Now that he looked at it closely, he realized that the scratches on the bronze surface looked more like some ancient hieroglyphics. He opened a drawer in the table and took out a magnifying glass. His uncle specialized in ancient scriptures and had taught Cairo a lot about them. His uncle had taught him how to differentiate between different alphabets in ancient languages and Cairo, was set upon using most of that knowledge.

The symbols that he saw were nothing like those that he ever read in his uncle's books. He went over to the large cupboard filled with all his uncle's reference books. He picked up An updated guide of Ancient Scriptures and walked back to the table. Even in that book, he couldn't find any reference to those weird and mysterious twisting lines etched on the surface of the amulet.

Feeling hopeless, Cairo set out to try and identify the type of gem in the amulet. Here, luck favored him. He had looked into an old and dusty book that lay on the bottommost shelf of the cupboard and found a very similar-looking gem on the very first page. He read-

Sapphire is a blue-colored variety of Corundum. Corundum has two varieties- Sapphire, which has a dark blue shade, and Ruby(discussed on page 7), which is normally red.

A true Sapphire can be identified from its replicas by simply shining a torch on the gem in the dark. If the light emitted is the same shade as that of the stone, then the stone is truly a Sapphire, but if the color of the light emitted is different, then you probably have a very bad replica of the true stone. The different varieties of Sapphires and their costs are given on the next page…

Cairo rushed off to bring a torch from the living room. If the stone was truly a Sapphire, then it would be priceless! It had been ages since Cairo had ever felt so excited in his life. He rushed back up along with the torch that he found in the living room, taking three flights of stairs at once. He switched off the lights in the study, took a deep breath, and shone the torch on the amulet.

Cairo stood there, transfixed by the effect he created. The whole room was instantly filled with different shades of blue, increasing the beauty of every object on which the light fell, and the center of all the light was the Sapphire, shining like a blue moon. 'So the stone was actually a sapphire', he thought.

Cairo gazed at the glowing blue stone for a whole minute and then, he switched off the torch and again stared at the natural light that was now being emitted by the stone, without the need for any other source of light. The light waves moving slowly and gracefully inside the gem gave Cairo the feeling of looking at a miniature Aurora borealis.

He flicked on the table lamp and started searching for the price of this particular Sapphire. With every page he flicked, his excitement mounted higher and higher, until he reached the last page of the Sapphire section. There, he found a gem that looked exactly like the stone on the amulet. It had the look of large, lost portals interloping each other as the light passed over each of its folds. Cairo's eyes nearly popped out of its sockets as he read its description. The gem which was captioned was called the Cornflower Blue Sapphire, and it was worth nearly eight thousand dollars.

Such a priceless stone had been lying in the grass outside his house! Cairo was astounded. He was very excited at showing this discovery to his uncle.

Then, as if on an impulse, Cairo lifted the amulet, and swung it around his head.

He instantly regretted it. His head started swimming and he felt his vision go hazy. He collapsed on the floor, and everything went black.

When he woke up, he felt light-headed and weak. He looked around and to his surprise, found himself floating along in an endless dark void. He looked at his hands and gasped; he had no hands, in fact, he had no body at all! He was just a shimmering cloud of translucent smoke. 'Please be a dream, please be a dream…' he thought.

Suddenly, he heard someone speak, and looked up. There was a swirl of smoke, and two people appeared. One of them was a man who seemed to be in his forties, and the other person was a boy of about Cairo's age, although he was way more lean and tall. The boy had a mutinous expression on his face. He had clear green eyes and his brown hair was tied in short dreadlocks. He was wearing leather clothes and had a large sword strapped to his waist by a scabbard. The man to whom he was talking, was wearing a weird embroidered coat and a long swishy cloak. He had a short black beard and was nearly bald. His eyes were cold and distant like ever-lost dungeons and passages. He seemed to be arguing with the boy.

'I fail to understand why you should complain… I would have thought it to be an honor to serve the Great Preceptor'

'But he doesn't understand, and nor do you, Reilly!! I have told him about a million times that there are no traces of the Magnarcus anywhere. It's lost forever. I studied everything about its history, but every book says the same thing- Dominus per lapidem eligitur!' retorted the boy.

'Sorry?' spluttered the man named Reilly.

'It means that the bow will choose its own owner… you can't just go on a quest for it!'

'Oh! But I still think you ought to listen to him, Dean,' said Reilly, 'from what I have heard, he seems to have a very good idea as to where its exact location is.'

'Anyways, why does he even need that powerful bow? I don't like anything about him, from his great long beard to his disgusting toenails. Some even say he is in league with a few of those nasty mist dragons-'

Until now, Cairo had been listening to this conversation in an awestruck manner, but when he heard the boy talk of dragons as if they existed, Cairo let out a great gasp, and nearly missed out on the rest of the conversation.

'...Oh, why did we have to end up with such a dreadful Preceptor!'

'You do as you are told. The Great Preceptor has much more on his head than listening to you whimper.' said Reilly angrily.

'Oh but we all know how much you worship him! It's pathetic the way you keep following him everywhere he….' but the rest of the statement was drowned by a mighty uproar by Reilly, who seemed to have lost his temper. He chanted some sort of a short spell and conjured a big stout club out of thin air, and swung it at Dean, just as he managed to get out of the way and raise his sword.

Now, Reilly seemed to have realized his mistake, as he eyed Dean's double-edged blade. He snapped his fingers and his club vanished.

'My apologies, I should not have lost my temper so easily, and I regret your attitude. Anyways, you do as you are told, or I will be forced to kick you out of this island, and I have every right to do so, being this island's director,' Reilly said coldly. Dean simply raised his eyebrows. He sheathed his sword and looked Reilly straight in the eyes.

'I don't think I have much of a choice,' and he turned to leave. His cloudy figure dissolved into nothingness, leaving Cairo to stare at Reilly's satisfied face.

'No…. You really don't have a choice' muttered Reilly.

Then, Reilly's smoky body twisted and turned to take the form of a majestic fiery dragon. Its fierce face turned towards Cairo and lunged at him and everything went black once again.

When Cairo woke up again, it was nearly six in the morning. His pajamas stuck to his body because of sweat. He wrenched the amulet from his neck and walked back to his room. His uncle had told him about cursed necklaces and ancient jewelry that was supposed to curse its wearer. Now, Cairo had mixed feelings for the amulet, on one hand, he thought it looked beautiful, but on the other hand he also thought that the amulet was driving him crazy. He still couldn't believe the dream he had just seen. But then, he couldn't accept that the thing he saw when he fell unconscious was even a dream. Those two people looked so real, and they were talking about dragons! Cairo felt his head swimming again. He looked at the amulet one last time and decided to ask his uncle to have a look at it when he came back.

Cairo placed the amulet in his bedside drawer, flung himself into bed, and went to sleep–trying his best to never dream of dragons ever again.