Year 8820

Approximately 6,800 years ago…

The world’s population has been dwindled by Coronavirus mutations. The world’s political, economic, and every countries population have begun to dissipate. The world’s top scientists have come together secretly to find a cure. What they found instead were six families that are entirely immune to any mutation. Of all six resistant families, only one has experience controlling people in a crisis, The Royal House of Windsor. Their family has hundreds of years of leading a country in their background.

Now the Corona Crusades are over, and the Windsor’s Rule is solidified over the entire Earth. With only a million people left on Earth, there wasn’t much need for “countries” anymore. People resistant to the Six Vaccine or weren’t one of the Six families were killed in the Crusades for the good of all. It felt like the whole planet and the people still here got a reset, a chance to start over and treat the earth and its resources with respect and resourcefulness. However, there was one strange fact; the sixth family was never named. Are they out in the population simply living… absolutely no one knows except maybe the Windsor’s.

Year 8820.

It’s been 6800 years since the world was forever changed. My ancestors were lucky enough to be immune to the Coronavirus and its mutations. I wear my locket as a badge of honor. All of us that are descended from the Five Families are given them at birth. It shows the rest of the world that I belong to the family that kept everyone else’s alive to thrive on our planet. The other families, mostly where my friends are descended from, are the Patel, DeLacarte, Cho, and de Pilar, and of course us- the Windsor’s.

“Elly!” my history teacher interrupted my thoughts, “I expect that your paper on the Crusades has been completed if you aren’t paying attention to the lectures.” I roll my eyes and decide I’ll be honest.

“No. I’m sure my family knows a little bit more about this subject.” As I pull my locket back and forth across its chain, ignoring his blatant attempt to embarrass me.

“See me after our class has concluded, Ms. Winsor.” Mr. W says to me with a straight, ungrateful face. I scoff but nod just enough for only him to see. After class, he asked me, rather crudely, “Do you even know why your locket has six roses?” Seeing as I didn’t jump to answer, he continued to berate me about my own history! “It’s not just the simple fact that it was Queen Elizabeth II’s signature pendant after the loss of her Prince. Those facts are everywhere. Those six roses, who does the sixth represent?”

“I don’t..No one knows!” I huffed out. I wonder how it is my responsibility to know what happened almost 7,000 years ago to a single-family and their descendants when mine was busy governing.

“Then that is the paper I expect to read from you.” Mr. W smiles coyly and motions towards the door, meaning that I now have his permission to leave the room. It’s hard to balance the idea that your family is the only Royals left and that our family is part of the reason there is a population. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t Royal. Yes, there were five other families, but they didn’t come from a background like ours. They were engineers, doctors, teachers, musicians, and the last one- no one knows. Yet somehow, I am responsible for finding what historians couldn’t for centuries. I love the grateful looks I receive, but not the weight put on me just for being related to a Queen 6,800 years ago. Exasperated, I slowly trudge out to meet my friends. Other descendants of the Five, we all have the matching lockets- why aren’t they writing about the other family too, I wonder. Only Cora, my cousin, could partially understand being from the Windsor lineage.

After school Cora and I go to the hidden “garden” on my family’s estate. Sometimes I wished I could live in the Taj Mahal, but it was also a casualty of the Covid Crusades. Burning entire villages in the Religious Crusades apparently didn’t teach our ancestors anything; nearly whole countries wiped off the Earth to eradicate the virus.

Of all of my ancestor’s many castles we own, my favorite is Windsor. Most likely because it’s the only one I’m not allowed to go to, this, of course, is why we sneak in. Just like that crumbling ancient book Cora found in the library when we were twelve, “The Secret Garden.” Ever since we wanted one of our own, Windsor was ours.

As the sky began to turn slightly gray and purple, Cora gave me her signature look that said it all, ‘I know you want to stay. We have to go, or we will get caught!’ Smiling slightly, I told her to go ahead. I had homework from Mr. W, sighing in the indignation of his need to punish me for my 100 times Grant Grandmother. I thought maybe I’d find something different than all the same stuff we have in the Palace and every other library. Cora gave me a disapproving look, tapped her locket three times, her calming technique.

It was well past dusk, and the night was in full roar around me, the insects and predators taking their rightful place back in the food chain with fewer humans to impede their growth. I should have been afraid to return to the Palace alone, to be caught by a guard or an animal- but what I had found chilled me to my bones more than any of them could.

“Neowise and the Crusades,” a large book that resembled more consensus than a book I’ve ever seen. I turned the book this way and that, trying to see the name underneath that authored it. All I could make out was ‘si- fa-i-es, By A. Will-s.’

“Ugh!” I let a deep annoyance grunt out; what kind of help is that, or even language? It could be about the Fae Folk, for all I could tell. There was just something spooky, the consensus, lists of the five names, and the mysterious sixth missing as usual. I pulled on my locket again left to right just as my Mother did when she had been stressed. I decided I wasn’t getting any further here in Windsor, grabbed the strange book, and shoved it into my rucksack. I was going to head home- hopefully unnoticed.

Later that night, I found myself entranced; it was about a Comet that passed over the world 6,800 years ago, near the time Covid was beginning, not the Crusades? I know in our oldest records that people believed that things in the sky somehow impacted what happened on earth. A comet, famine, or I guess a virus in this case.

Without knowing it, I fell asleep, dreaming of Neowise, but I saw it passing over us in our time; it was beautiful! Why would this be something someone was afraid of? “They are distractions from reality,” someone whispered in my ear, and I shot up awake, looking around frantically; there was no one, but I could still feel the hot breath on my ear. This class is not worth this much stress, I decided. Mr. W could have the stupid book and figure out his weird obsession with the sixth family himself. The book felt heavier as I got closer to school and finally gave in to one more look.

I stared blankly into The Five Family names repeatedly, along with my notes next to me with all the spelling changes I found for them through the centuries. Still, there wasn’t another name that didn’t fit in with the five! Plenty of last names were shortened to one letter; P for Patel, C for Cho, D or P for de Pilar, and W for Windsor. These are common for people who aren’t from a pure lineage. That’s why Mr. W must have given me this assignment; he thinks he’s a ‘W’ Windsor!

I stomped into class; Mr. W was out. He’s never out. I looked around and noticed for the first time, quite a few people were out. Cora was missing as well. I would stop by later to see what was going on with her; I was too angry with Mr. W right now.

I pulled out the consensus book once more and looking over the names like it was a habit like Cora’s tapping of her locket. Then I noticed the back corner; it peeled up a little and looked like something was blocked. I carefully extracted it in the school’s lab since this place seemed to mirror an old “ghost town.” A secret compartment! Okay, page, but it’s still something new in this world. Nothing is new anymore; just the Families and Corona Crusades are all that’s spoken of.

Although most of it was eroded, it was an ancient crude drawing of a rose bush, but more like a tree twisting up with the six trunks with a rosebud at the top. Within each bud held a name, the first five you could guess… I scanned rapidly; this had to be it! The moment I was waiting for, the world was waiting for! On the Head bud, where I expected to find my Windsor line, says “Williams.” “W,” I whispered to no one. I searched every inch of this book; no Willams, the head family was the Windsor’s; this made no sense… but something in me knew already. A dread deep inside.

I went immediately to Mr. W’s house, not caring why he wasn’t at school. He was sick, coughing and wheezing, laying in bed like he was nearly a corpse.

“What does your W stand for? Are you my kindred? Are you really a Windsor all this time? Where is your locket?” I shouted at his exhausted sleeping body.

“My name is Wyliams. I am no kindred to the Windsor tyrants.” He choked out. “Did you enjoy Neowise and the discovery at your ‘Secret Garden’?” he smiled through gritted teeth. “I can see you figured some out, but not all that you did.” He spat the word ‘you’ like it was meant for someone else. “I am Williams. I am the Sixth family. The one the other ‘W’ easily erased from history since the ‘W’ was Royalty and couldn’t be confused with us lesser Williams’” He coughed uncontrollably. “Did you see it? It’s back, Neowise.” Smiling the most horrifying smile on his face, I reached for my locket; it felt hot on my skin, or was my skin hot on my locket?

“The Crusades.. they were, they were,” I stammered, “after Neowise, not during.” All I got from Mr. Wyliams was a look that said, ‘are you sure of that?’

He croaked out, “Neowise has returned, and so has my lineage with it. We have waited patiently to exact revenge on the Windsor’s who attempted to erase us from history. Williams were immune, not the Windsor’s; they just had the ability to fake all needed documents and tests. Us W’s have worked tirelessly to find the strain that should have erased you.” He snatched my locket away, pried it open, and showed a picture of the comet inside drawn with the Coronavirus spores instead. “Our Sacrifice brings about the end of the Windsor tyranny.”

I backed away, lost without my pendant to slide, feeling feverish. I stumbled back home, only to find my family dying from the “Sacrifice” Wyliams spoke of.

As I suddenly saw the sky darken, I saw Neowise pass over, but not in a dream this time. I felt the whisper on my neck again. “I told you it was a distraction from reality.” Then I saw the shadow of Cora’s family ascending into our Palace, W.. Williams, not Windsor! Never my cousin, never our Secret Garden, my unknown enemy all along.