Jean Genie
Copyright© 2026 by Rachael Jane
Chapter 10: The Venetian Ship
Constantinople, Ottoman Empire, 1520
I don’t dream when the Maristela Bracelet is dormant. I have no sense of time; only a faint lingering memory of being alive. I could have been asleep for decades without knowing when, without warning, I feel the world again. It begins as a faint tremor, followed by a ripple of sensation through the amber stone embedded in the bracelet. A heartbeat that isn’t mine. Intuitively, I know that the bracelet has a new wearer.
“Wake up, Jeannia,” is the silent ... impossible to ignore ... message from the bracelet.
I rise from the depths of stillness like a diver breaking the surface of a lake. I remain trapped inside the bracelet but I’m now able to sense time and place once again. The world rushes back in fragments. Confusing at first, but gradually more coherent. Voices in a language I initially don’t know, but, thanks to the bracelet, I soon understand. I hear the creak of wood, and the slap of waves against a hull. I’m on a ship.
I haven’t felt a part of the world since my time with Rosalia Fuentes. Rosalia was the first true wearer of the Maristela Bracelet after my spirit was bound to the bracelet. My binding was a partially successful attempt to free me from imprisonment and certain death at the hands of the Inquisition. Maristela intended to reverse the binding, but she died before she was able to do so.
Now the Maristela Bracelet and I are bound to each other for better or worse. Rosalia was my first mistress, and helping her was my first mission. Once Rosalia’s well of spirit magic was depleted, the bracelet fell quiet, although it observed the world around it. I was cast into the nothingness; frozen in time until now.
I try to reach for a memory of Rosalia, now that the bracelet is active once again. Paradoxically, even though our parting seems only moments ago to me, my memory of her feels distant, as though softened by time. Years must have passed since I last saw her, but as yet, I don’t know how many. What became of Rosalia after her magic ran dry? What happened to her mother, Esperanza, and her cousin Mateo? Did Don Carlos live long enough to see peace?
The bracelet responds to my questions with what it observed during the three years that Rosalia retained the bracelet. By the time she sold the bracelet, she had remarried ... fortunately, not to the obnoxious Caballero Alonso, whose infatuation with Doña Carmelita proved to more durable than I thought likely. Esperanza and Mateo were released from prison after a year, and both left for the Spanish colonies in South America. Don Carlos continued to give generously to the Church, and so presumably he found the peace that he sought. Once Rosalia parted with the bracelet, it passed through several hands without being activated, before being sold to a Venetian merchant. That could be the reason why we are currently at sea.
The bracelet’s new wearer’s fingers brush the gold surface. Her touch is hesitant, curious and tinged with fear. I sense that she is young; late teens, perhaps twenty years of age, but no older. Her spirit well is deep; much deeper than Rosalia’s, and it is shaped differently. Her alignment to the Realms of the Heavens and Soul is strong and bright, suggesting intelligence and empathy. Less so for the Realm of the Earth, which manifests as something softer, like a reed bending in the wind. She is probably physically delicate, perhaps unused to hardship. I listen to her thoughts. They come to me as impressions in my mind, rather than words.
Venice ... Trade ... Duty ... Harem ... Fear ... Constantinople.
Constantinople. The centre of the expanding Ottoman Empire. I know city’s name, but I have never seen it. I lived in Andalusia, Spain, and ‘died’ there when my spirit was drawn into the bracelet. I’ve slept in silence while the bracelet has crossed seas and borders. Now I awaken into a world I don’t recognize.
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