Chapter 4 - Faith - Everything Changes

 

Chapter 4 - Faith - Everything Changes

Nottingham 1121 A.D.

I think I realized upon waking that having two souls in the same time frame might be a problem. I saw Back to the Future. I know things like that might happen. There is a phrase about believing something in your heart can bring that thing to life. I know the scripture doesn’t exactly relate to that, I am paraphrasing but my heart is believing this right now. And it scares me.

I am not sure what took over James and how that relates to Deacon but this might be a bad thing, I’m thinking. All I know for sure is that a big castle took over our church and now two people are one and Deacon has the same soul as one of them. Even my writer’s mind is whirling.

This is usually the time I speak with God. You know, just chat and shoot the breeze. Tell him my worries or concerns and see what I can glean from him in a subtle way that makes sense in my brain. Nothing major is going on with me. I haven’t had a lot of problems since quitting the paper. My stress level is surely down a few notches. Making candles is not very stress-inducing but I was missing church and that is why I came back.

I wanted to talk to James about being gaslighted by the spirits, demons, whatever that made my life not so great a month ago. It mainly focused on my family, Deacon and the people at church. And it really kind of messed with my head. I couldn’t decide if Deacon was bad or just being used by the darkside to give me brain freeze. My biggest wonder was, why me?

My thoughts were jostled as I realized my hand was completely numb. Deacon had my hand in a death grip. How had I even gotten on this side of the room anyway?  I tried to subtly wrench my hand free without waking him up. This was awkward. The man really was still married and being this close to him was unsettling. I’m a bit empathic, my mom called it intuitive. And my spidey sense was clanging like a church bell on Sunday morning. Never had my intuition been so strong before.

When I looked up and surveyed the room I suddenly remembered what had happened the night before. Earlier I had been contemplating in my half sleep state. Now I was starkly awake. The entire church had transformed into a castle! When I moved to get up, my clothes were heavy. I looked down and found myself wearing a long green dress that was stiff. No wonder my back was killing me. Plus, I could barely breathe in this thing. I wondered for a second if we were masquerading and then heard a loud noise from outside the window. It kind of reminded me of a rooster.

I managed to get up and stumble my way to the window and gasped. What I saw outside was not the church grounds, but a lush forest. Closer to the building was a strangely shaped courtyard with all types of people milling around.

I stumbled backward. What was going on here? Before I could even consider what was happening, someone tentatively knocked on the wall. Well, it looked like a wall. It was so ornate it was hard to tell it was actually a door. A woman wearing a similar dress to mine poked her head through the opening.

“My lady?”

I could barely speak, I was so shocked. “Yes?”

“Will you be wanting to break your fast soon? It is nearly midday.”

If I had looked behind me at that moment I would have seen that Deacon was no longer there on the floor and that he had completely disappeared from the room. Maybe that would have better prepared me for the next few minutes I was about to experience.

I followed the girl out of the room and through the corridors of the castle. It was then I realized how big this mansion actually was. The word castle was a good way to describe it. It was very majestic in that back in time sort of way. When we reached the dining area another young girl approached saying the master had requested my presence.

“He is still in his chambers so I will leave you in his sitting room.” I didn’t know this woman’s name so I just nodded and followed her. As we traversed more corridors I continued to marvel at how intricately made everything was. It looked like it must have taken forever to create it. It was just spectacular. And that isn’t really a good enough word to describe it. By the time she left me in the sitting room I had learned her name was Sala,

Not gonna lie, I am still a whole lot freaked out about a lot of this. Okay, most of this. A castle, this castle, just yesterday appeared around my church and today it was somewhere else. And at this moment, I had no idea where this somewhere else was.

I heard a man chuckle from an adjacent room and it sounded strangely like James, but not exactly. Before I could contemplate further James walked into the room. I gasped, put a hand to my eyes and spun around. The man was completely naked and he was talking nonchalantly to another man who looked like the buff twin brother of Deacon who worked a season or two on Game of Thrones. What in the heck was going on here?

“Still shy as always, I see.” It was Deacon’s voice but the timbre was different and it had a slight British or Scottish accent. I couldn’t decide which.

”Sala said you wanted to see me,” I managed to croak out. I am sure my face was completely beet red. 

The men whispered amongst themselves, but I couldn’t focus on what they were saying. I still had naked James stuck in my mind’s eye. The only word that came to my mind at that moment was, woah. They finally managed to get my attention again and had to physically turn me around.

“Marian, are you alright. That is not a sight you haven’t seen before growing up in Nottingham together,” said the Deacon lookalike whose name I discovered was Jason.

It was then the word clicked in my mind. Did he just say Nottingham? As in Robin Hood’s Nottingham?