To Be Continued...
Once upon a time, long ago in a nearby land, there lived a boy. This boy was the son of a witch and a warrior. He had courage and honor and magic in his blood, and his destiny burned bright and clear like a candle on a midwinter's day. However, the boy was young and foolish. He allowed distractions and hardships to steal away his attention. His mother the witch used all of her magic to keep herself and her children alive, and his father the warrior sank into a deep, dark swamp, and let himself drown rather than use his strength to escape. The boy's outlook darkened even as he excelled in school. He put on a bright face to cover up his cloudy heart, and none seemed to be the wiser. He became Dark.
One day, the boy met a girl. She was slightly younger than he, and mostly sat quietly. The boy enjoyed making people smile and making them happy, so he sat near the girl and began to talk to her. Unbeknownst to the boy, this was no ordinary girl. She was a reincarnated Roman of noble birth, a Gypsy princess as well, a clever artist, and a powerful enchantress in her own right. When the boy who had become Dark looked into her huge, dark eyes, he saw a beautiful flash that both exhilarated and frightened him. He quickly averted his gaze, unable and unwilling to believe his initial thought: that he had seen love and white fire and clean heat in that look.
"It isn't that," thought the boy who had become Dark. "Just puppy love and the reflection of the moon. She is young and naive, and she thinks she loves me because of this bright mask I wear. If she knew the real me, she would quickly see the error of her ways."
But the moon had not been shining, the love was real, and the girl, whose name was Maria, was much wiser and stronger than the boy who was Dark had realized. Maria looked at the boy's very soul in that one glance, and she saw past all of his illusions. She looked deep within him, past the bright mask he wore, but also past the murky clouds of his indecision and weakness as well. For, although he had forgotten, the darkness was no more a real part of the boy than the mask above it. Maria peered deep, deep down, to see the boy's core. She saw gleaming steel, basking in radiance. She saw love and compassion and magic and greatness. Most importantly, she saw that his soul sang out with joy at her approach, for the two were spirit-kin, and destined for unity.
"You love me, and I love you. We will complete ourselves and then enhance each other. We were meant for one another. We are home," Maria said quietly.
But the boy pretended he had not heard. The blackness in his heart was cold and stifling, but it was also familiar and comforting in a way. Maria had seen his soul, but he had not seen his own. He worried that there would be nothing left of him under the black veil of fear and sadness. He turned his heart away. "I am Dark," he thought, "this girl doesn't know me at all."
Maria, as I have mentioned, was a powerful spellcaster. More importantly, she was a brave soul who saw what was right. She took all of her considerable divine energy, and she compressed it into a tiny, glowing seed. She planted this seed in the very center of the boy's heart. She smiled to herself, knowing that when the seed grew, the boy would become free of his folly, and would be hers forevermore.
Time passed, however, and the boy continued to look away from Maria. Sweetly, she wrote him letters, drew him pictures, and prayed for her seed to grow. He acted nonchalant, pretending he didn't care very much about Maria's gifts, but part of him must have known their importance, for he kept every single one.
The years continued to go by, and still the seed lay dormant. Maria was weakened by neglect, and unable to use her magic, as it was locked away within the seed. Slowly, she began to doubt herself. Maybe when she looked into the boy's eyes, she had been mistaken? She had thought for sure that this boy and she were to be one, but the love she had predicted didn't seem to be manifesting itself. Without her magic, she was slowly being overtaken by the same darkness that surrounded the boy who was Dark.
One day, unexpected by the boy or the girl, the Winds of Fortune changed their direction. Suddenly, for the first time, the boy and the girl gained the opportunity to be with each other. Both of them felt in their bones that the winds of fortune were soon to blow again, but they were happy together for the short time they had. Maria saw that despite this happiness, her seed had not yet begun to grow. She resolved not to worry about it, and to spend her days in love as best she could.
One sweet summer's night, beneath a star of great portent, Maria and the boy talked about secret names and the power they held. Just then, Maria realized that inside herself, there was still one tiny well of magic. She called upon these last reserves to discover her truename, and the truename of the boy. She knew now that she was Mary Kate Cataline Caesar, and he wasn't Dark at all, but was Ulysses Odysseus Brown. Mary Smiled and waited, knowing that now the boy had a chance to know himself, only to have the capricious hand of fate stymie her excellent efforts. Ulysses felt once again torn away, and the two once again parted ways.
Maria cried bitter tears into her hands. "If this is love," she decided, "I want no part in it!" She traveled to the far-off lands of the North, cursing her own foolishness at having spent so much time and energy on a boy that so clearly was worth none of it. She found new friends, new ideas, new boys to focus her attentions upon.
However, the gods of destiny love nothing better than irony. As Maria traveled North, the boy felt more and more uncomfortable. The more time passed, the more he found himself thinking about Maria, until she began to frequent his thoughts all day and haunt his dreams at night. The boy frequently felt pains in his stomach, and could never understand why. Little did he know, these pains were only the long-dormant seed's first flutters of life. It had awoken at the call of his true name, and was quickly becoming a sapling.
As the tree of magic and love grew inside Ulysses's heart, it burned away the darkness, pain, and worry that it encountered there. As it did this, the boy could see inside himself, discover how he worked, and clearly observe the magic within him. Besides his own potent power, he now had control over Maria's immense magic, bound up in her tree. He did not learn how to use this force within him right away, however. First, he had to wait for the Winds of Fortune to blow once more.
He didn't have to wait too long, thankfully. The Winds blew Maria back from the North, and when she came back to her homeland, she found herself swept back to the boy who was once Dark. When the boy looked at her,he felt the darkness finally lifting from his eyes. He looked into her eyes, and could see her soul. He saw what she had recognized so many years ago: they were destined for each other. Ulysses smiled widely, thinking that now, at last, their unity could begin.
"You love me, and I love you. We will complete ourselves and then enhance each other. We were meant for one another. We are home," said Ulysses happily.
Maria, however, had spent too long dwelling alongside the darkness herself. When the boy looked into her eyes, she thought to herself, "Oh, just my luck! He finally believes in all that foolishness only now, when I have given up any hope of it coming true!"
Out loud to him, she said, "My heart is gone. It has shriveled and dried up like dust, and it will never return. You don't love me, and you wouldn't think you did if you really knew me. There is no heart in my chest, there is only darkness."
Maria could hide the truth from the boy no better than long ago he had tried to hide it from her. The beautiful, pure love in her heart shone out like the sun to Ulysses's unveiled eyes. He smiled to himself and responded, "I do love me, and you love me too. You might not see it yet, but it's there. We will be married someday, and we will be happy."
Maria did not believe the boy, and thought that he was being crazy. However, she could not resist spending more and more time talking to the boy and spending time with him. All summer, the two destined lovers stayed near each other. All summer, she feigned indifference, granted no promises, and gave no outward sign of her love. She acted, in short, just as he had done years earlier. Ulysses just smiled, and continued to pour his love and affection over her and into her.
Now, the jealous spirits that lorded over the Underworld saw the immortal love growing in the hearts and minds and souls of the boy and girl, and began scheming to separate the two. As Mary Kate's defenses finally crumbled and she let Ulysses's love flow into her, she felt herself being pulled away by the Winds of Fortune. As the breeze became a gale, the darkness lifted from her eyes and heart. The tree of love that now blossomed furiously in Ulysses's heart stretched its branches across the lovers' embraces, and stretched into Mary Kate's heart as well.
When the magical tree reached the spirit of its creator, it sang out in joy. Once and for all, it had found its way home. The tree was torn between its desire to live within the boy for whom it was planted or within the girl by whom it was created. This indecision magnified itself a thousand times, until with a flash of light and a deep, resonant boom, the tree split in half. One tree, a mighty maple, remained firmly rooted in the heart of the boy, but a new tree, a shining silver willow, now found itself occupying the heart of Maria.
Maria gasped to feel this new power surge through her like electricity. Her skin tingled with the joy and the love that she had found. The wind was still growing stronger, however, and she began to feel herself lifted off of her feet. The boy looked on in alarm, and grabbed Maria's arms desperately. He saw the willow tree's branches blowing, and could feel his lover being pulled away, but he could not feel any of the wind. The spirits of the Underworld were relics of an ancient age, who felt that women and women alone should be beautiful prizes. "What's happening?" cried the boy.
"I don't know! ... But don't worry! We are together now, no distance can separate us! I'll return to you!" shouted Maria over the noise of the tornado.