Now the more observant among you will have noticed that this story is called My Idiot Sister is The Chosen One and not I Am The Chosen One. That is not a mistake and all that will be explained as we go along. But for now, somewhere in my head was floating around the notion that a destiny I didn't believe in had selected me for a higher purpose. I'll admit, that was a very welcome ego stroke and when I woke up after the short bout of fainting I'd undergone I was still entertaining the possibility that it was true. Basically, it was all going on so I was holding on to the one thing that on one level I believed was right.
I was lying on the couch in the living room when I came to. Amber was sat in her customary chair, carefully positioned to get the best view of the telly and there, stood in the middle looking right at me was the Jack of Clubs.
The curtains were drawn, but streaks of daylight still made their way in through the odd gap here and there. As I came to my senses I believed for a second that I must have slept right through to Sunday, but then I remembered the strange occurrence of the Daytime Night and I realised very little time had passed.
'Who's your friend?' asked Amber, her eyes clamped on the TV screen.
'Eh?' was the best I could manage, I'm afraid. If the man in the Renaissance outfit knew he was being talked about he didn't give any sign of it. Instead he continued to stare at me as if I was an interesting exhibit in a museum. He smiled.
'This geezer said he was a friend of yours. Said you were chatting at the door when you fainted. Wuss. He brought you in and laid you down.'
'It is possible you need a better diet,' offered the visitor.
'That's what I keep saying, but no-one listens to me,' said Amber.
'What you eat has a very direct effect on your health.'
'I think he only eats yoghurt,' continued Amber. 'I don't remember the last time I saw him eating anything proper. I think it's some sort of disorder.'
'Who are you?' I finally managed to ask him.
'My name is Francesco Cabriatti,' he replied. 'I am an alchemist, an inventor and, of late, a time traveller.'
'That would explain his ridiculous clothes,' chipped in Amber.
Having woken up only seconds ago it felt like I had arrived in the middle of an ongoing conversation. Amber and this Cabriatti seemed very at ease with each other.
'Aren't you bothered that there's a complete stranger inside the house?' I asked her.
She shrugged her shoulders. 'Meh. He was polite enough. I just figured he was with you.'
'You have nothing to fear from me,' said Cabriatti. 'But I would be lying if I said the coming days would be without danger.'
Heh.
At the top of this chapter I said that that was where the story really starts. To be completely accurate, this is where it starts. The moment when Cabriatti promised there'd be danger ahead. Because – no word of a lie – when I heard him say that I thought 'you know what? I am up for this.' Admittedly, my head was still rotating and I wasn't exactly thinking straight, but that is honestly what came to mind.
Now at this point you might be thinking 'Hang on, it's daylight at night-time and a time-travelling Renaissance Italian has turned up and everyone's being very calm about everything.' At least that's what I thought as I wrote it just now. That is how everything went down, though. Maybe there should have been more screaming and shocks and stuff, but there wasn't. I don't really have a frame of reference for this sort of thing. If someone from the 16th Century turns up in your living room and night instantly turns into day let us know how you get on and we'll compare notes. Thank you.
I put the kettle on and did us all a brew. It's funny how Amber can remember to be civil when there's a cup of tea in the offing. This gave Cabriatti the opportunity to prove his credentials as an alchemist as he transmuted a packet of Nice biscuits into Garibaldis. Apparently it was a coincidence and they're not really Italian biscuits at all and although he knew some Garibaldis they were (probably) not related to the Garibaldi from history who was from later on than when Cabriatti came from.
I got the answers to some questions. Cabriatti was an inventor who had built a time machine to travel forward to the present day and warn us of an impending disaster. A side effect of his time travelling was that he had brought a bit of his own time along with him. It had been about ten o'clock in the morning when he'd set off so that was why it was daylight outside at the moment. He thought it would eventually wear off but he wasn't sure when as he had never done this sort of thing before.
He then went on to tell us the story I told you in Chapter 1. I say 'us' – Amber wasn't really listening at all so when we finally met the two demons that Cabriatti was talking about I had to explain to her who they were, which was really irritating. He also told us that he and some other alchemist types had figured out that the demons, Lucia and Lisa, were likely to achieve their goals in our day and age. These 'Tabula Rasa Scrolls' were like a 'Format' button for the world. If anyone ever used them the whole of creation would be wiped out with only the owner of the scrolls left in existence to rewrite the whole of reality from the beginning. I asked who had made these scrolls, what was the thinking behind them, but Cabriatti couldn't answer. Although he was convinced they exist – some evidence had been found where small parts of reality had been rewritten before now – no-one had ever seen them or knew where they were located. This is why an object like the Chianti Lodestone was needed. The Lodestone could be used to find anything, anywhere, anywhen. In theory it could be used to find the scrolls and that is what the demon sisters had intended back in Cabriatti's time.
Cabriatti thought he had thwarted the sisters but he now believed that they had managed to spirit the Lodestone away somewhere before he had trapped them in the form of cats. Fortunately we were on our second cup of tea by the time Cabriatti had got round to telling me this so I was a lot better disposed to believing what he was saying. Since the world hadn't ended in the last four hundred or so years (obviously) Cabriatti and the few other alchemists he had managed to gather together had decided that while the demons must've been responsible for the Lodestone's disappearance it was likely that they didn't know where it was either.
'They probably need to get a Lodestone thingy to find the Lodestone thingy, then,' was Amber's contribution to this conversation. She does that a lot. Pretends she isn't listening and then chips in with some clever-clever comment half way in.
Turns out though, that the alchemists had had the same idea and were going to make another one! Problem was it wouldn't work as well as the original. A lot of the secrets of the ancient alchemists had been lost and it was unlikely that a new Lodestone would work for someone who didn't know their ways. So a second plan was started. Since it was unlikely Lucia and Lisa would complete their quest for the scrolls before the 21st Century a scheme was devised whereby the modest powers of the Renaissance alchemists could be multiplied and improved over time. A seed of potential was placed within the child of one of the alchemist's relatives. Over the course of the twenty or so generations that separated their time from ours that seed would grow until a child would be born who would be in tune with the world of mysteries. They would be able to see the hidden things around us and could perform the spells that would bring the new Lodestone to life, hopefully to find its twin or, if that had fallen into the paws of the demons, go as far as finding the Tabula Rasa Scrolls themselves and making sure they were never used.
At this point I was under the impression that I was the child in question – certainly that was what Cabriatti believed.
'It is your task,' explained Cabriatti solemnly, 'to use the new Lodestone to prevent the demon sisters succeeding in their plan to wipe out the world. You are the chosen descendant of that first gifted child. You alone have the power to do this.'
'Fair enough,' I said, 'have you got this new Lodestone, then?'
Cabriatti looked sheepish at this. 'I haven't actually started it yet.'
'You'd better get a move on. I'd hate for the world to end while you were still getting yourself organised.'
'It's not that simple,' said Cabriatti. 'It will take until the end of my days to create even a modest copy of the original Lodestone.'
'This plan is sounding more and more shaky the deeper we go into it,' I suggested.
'No, all is well. I simply have to return to my own time. Back then, plans are already in place to hide the Lodestone upon its completion. I will give you the location of where it is secreted and you will be able to collect the finished article in this present time of yours.'
The chimes of Big Ben cut through our conversation. I shuddered once again. Who could be at the door? Maybe mum and dad were back early.
'Could you get that, Amber?' I asked. It was the middle of an ad break and I thought there might be half a chance she'd do it for once. 'I'm still chatting with this alchemist bloke.'
Amber didn't put up a fight. 'You're in luck – I need a loo break anyway.' And off she went.
'I'm going to have to sort all this out with Mum and Dad,' I pointed out to Cabriatti. 'They won't even let me out on a Saturday night. I don't know how they'll feel about taking on demons and the like.'
Cabriatti frowned. 'They must let you go. The whole of existence depends upon it.'
'I don't think that'll matter to my mum. She's very stubborn.'
Amber popped her head back into the living room.
'There's some drunken loon at the door,' she whispered.
'Then say 'not today, thank you and just close it.'
'He's asked for you. Is it someone you know? Get rid of him, Carl. If I close the door he's not going to go away. I can't phone the police – mum would go spare.'
I could feel the blood rushing away from my head again. 'He's not causing any trouble, is he?'
'No, he's just stood there with a traffic cone on his head, swaying from side to side. Come on, Carl. Get rid.'
I looked nervously at Cabriatti but all he did was nod back at me. He knew something. I made my way to the front door, all the way feeling slightly itchy as if there was something more going on than I was aware of.
If it was someone I knew at the door it was impossible to tell. The cone on his head completely obscured his face. He was dressed in the uniform of the twentysomething male booze hound – short sleeve shirt, jeans and an ocean of after shave. He looked unsteady on his feet, but for all his wobbling he didn't move from the spot where he was stood.
'Hello, can I help you at all.' I don't know why I said that again. Didn't do me any good the first time. But it did get a reaction from the cone guy. He grabbed hold of the base of the cone and tilted it and his head down toward me so the point was aimed in my direction.
'A message of death from Santa Lucia!' slurred the cone guy at the top of his voice. By the time I saw the sickly green beam of light shoot from the point of the cone it was too late.
More soonliest
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