Magic Underground: The Complete Collection (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 4)

by Melinda Kucsera

  She couldn’t take her eyes away from her certain death, and she couldn’t understand why Nimby and Seaira had been so calm about it, or why they remained so. She had eyes and thoughts only for the raging drop below. The ship crested, completely, hanging in the air over the waterfall. Ariana prepared herself for the fall, wrapping the rope around her middle and holding onto it as hard as she could. But she could not have prepared herself for what happened.

  Just as the fall seemed inevitable Seaira rose, calmly and purposefully into the air, away from the churning riverbed and deafening waterfall. She rose as gracefully as a dancer into the baby blue sky. Ariana’s knees gave out as she turned to face Nimby, whose hands were closed tightly around the steering wheel, a sturdy brown oak magic pouring from his palms into the wheel, the ship, the rigging and the mast. Suddenly, the magic flashed, almost blinding Ariana, before fading to a golden-brown that melded with the color of the ship itself.

  Finally, Nimby opened his eyes, slowly, blinking them several times before focusing on Ariana. “Why in the world are you so pale, child? And why are you wrapped up in the anchor line?”

  Ariana’s heart began to slow, her stomach began to settle and the reality that she was alive began to sit like a dream inside her chest. She wanted to be angry with Nimby, but it was clear that he hadn’t even thought to mention that his magic would enable them to safely travel in the sky.

  She took a deep, shuddering breath and almost whispered, “I thought I was going to die. You could have told me that Seaira can fly!”

  Nimby looked immediately abashed. “Oh, Ari, I’m so sorry! I didn’t even think about it. I’m an old sailor and simply go through the motions. I hadn’t meant to scare you. Anyway, she can’t fly, really, unless I make the air around us think we are lighter. It is my magic that keeps up aloft.” He walked down from the ship’s wheel, patting Seaira’s railing. “You take it over from here,” he instructed the ship. Seaira held her course. Nimby knelt to where Ariana was twisted up in the anchor’s rope and began untangling her.

  “You must trust me, Ari. I’ve traveled the waters and air of Endowa more times than any other pixie, I dare say. It is my job and my pleasure. My magic is strongly air magic, though not ultimately as powerful as yours or your mother’s. It allows me to help Seaira navigate away from the dangerous waters of Pieramu, where I doubt, even with that gold trinket, we would be safe. Though, I won’t say no to more security.” He disentangled Ariana with one last pull before straightening and taking a deep breath.

  “I love the air up here!” Nimby smiled and offered a hand to Ariana, who was being nudged and comforted by a worried looking Wot.

  Ariana took a deep breath of the fresh air and smiled, looking past the bow of the ship and down at the sparkling landscape. From this far up, Endowa was simply stunning. “It does smell nice up here. Untainted.”

  Nimby patted her shoulder. “Exactly that. Why don’t you and Wot make yourself comfortable for a while? We have a long stretch of skies ahead of us and I need to help Seaira keep an eye out for storms, sky pirates and the like. I know you probably have a lot of questions, but I have to concentrate at this juncture. My first job is to get you to Pieramu safe. If you’d like to have a good view without the wind, you can go below deck to watch the skies from the porthole, and brew some more tea. I’ll join you in a while.”

  Ariana yawned, her energy completely zapped now that they were safe. “Okay.”

  She didn’t share that she would probably sleep once in the cabin. Several days of poor sleep and stressful events were taking a toll on her. She yawned her way to the cabin, Wot following behind her.

  Ariana woke to Wot pulling on her hair. “Wot, what are you doing?”

  Wot flitted into the air “warfing” like a little puppy needing to go outside for his business. He seemed agitated and ruffled. He flew over to the cabin door, looking back to make sure Ariana was following.

  “I’m coming,” she assured the agitated Driode. Her stomach tensed in worry. Why was Wot acting so strangely? She strained her ears to hear movement above deck but heard nothing.

  She opened the cabin door and was immediately struck by the most beautiful music. It rang like a mother’s lullaby and a lover’s croon. It was not of any world she knew, nor of an instrument she could name. Possibly, it was not an instrument that made this perfect music at all, but her heart. Ariana looked around, in a daze, as Wot fluttered close to her head, chirping distracting noises at her. She realized that the air around her was dense, white and heavy, as if they were traveling through a fog bank.

  “Hush, Wot, I’m trying to hear the music,” she whispered, barely sparing a glance for her little friend.

  If she had been in a state to recognize him, she would have seen that he was frantic with worry, dipping around her head and shrilling sharp warnings in his animal tongue. But Ariana could barely hear the cries over the beautiful, enchanting music. She glided like a sleepwalker across the deck, searching for the source of the sound. The music was coming from the stern of the ship. Her body moved of its own accord, toward a glowing figure who sat on Seaira’s railing.

  Seaira’s sails flapped wildly, striking Ariana in the face. Seaira allowed herself to be heard, shouting, “No, Princess! No, Nimby! Come away from them! You do not see their true form or hear their true voices! Please!”

  But Ariana and Nimby, who was drifting slowly towards another glowing figure, a short, curvy red-haired pixie or fairy with dense freckles and mischievous eyes, could not hear Seaira’s warnings over the Nimbulous siren’s songs.

  Ariana was at the railing now, smiling and extending a hand to her new friend Alice. “Come fly with me, Ariana!” Alice was saying, her purple eyes full of laughter.

  “I can’t fly,” Ariana answered, her heart dropping. “I don’t have pretty wings like you.”

  Alice extended her wings to their full length. They were translucent purple, lighter than her eyes. “Here, let me help you!”

  Alice extended her pale hand, reached around Ariana’s back and made a pulling gesture. Icy magic spun under her fingertips, crafting snowflake-like wings. Ariana grinned in a dazed way and began pulling herself up and over the railing. Nimby, on the other side of her, was pulling himself up, too, smiling like a fool up at the red-headed being who beckoned to him with a flirtatious finger. Seaira flung a rope out from her rigging to catch the pixie before he launched himself off the ship.

  Ariana smiled at Alice, “Where are we going?”

  Alice smiled, “Anywhere we want! We can be free, away from family who don’t care what we want. Just you and me doing whatever we please.”

  Ariana laughed hollowly. “I’d like that.”

  Her left foot was now on the railing and she was pulling herself up, when Wot screeched in her ear and bit the rounded edge of her right ear with a tiny, copper fang. The magic of his venom woke Ariana instantly. The music stopped, her ear throbbed and Alice vanished in a cloud of smoke, only to be replaced by a flying-monkey sort of person with yellow eyes and saliva-dripping jowls. Ariana screamed and pushed back from the railing, falling into the struggling Nimby, who was fighting to get unwound from Seaira’s ropes. Ariana grabbed Nimby, trying to wrestle the much stronger pixie to the ground. He pushed her to the deck and reached out again for what she could now see was another flying-monkey like being, part-human or fairy and part-beast.

  Wot flew over to Nimby and bit him on the hand as the pixie swatted at the Driode. Nimby’s clouded eyes and stupefied facade slipped off his face and he suddenly turned to the creatures with hate in his eyes. “Nimbulous sirens, you’ve grown too brave! It has been centuries since you dare attack a pixie or fairy vessel. You will now remember why!”

  Nimby raised his muscled arms, the hair on them standing on end as he sucked in and drew the very clouds surrounding them into his person. He drew them in until Ariana could see nothing but clear sky. The siren creatures cried out in alarm as Nimby blew out in typhoon-like gusts the clouds he�
�d sucked in. Mini-cloud tornadoes shot from his mouth, spinning the sirens up in their cyclone depths and away from Seaira. Nimby dropped to the deck in exhaustion, and slowly, but gradually, his sturdy power began to pull out of Seaira and back into his skin, giving him the energy he needed to stay conscious.

  He sat up, dizzy, mumbling, “Thank you Wot, Seaira, my friends. I’m afraid it is time to descend, whether we are close or not, though I feel we are. Ariana, child, help me stand, I am weak.”

  Ariana rushed to Nimby. “Can I help Seaira stay aloft? Can I do anything?” Ariana asked, the feeling of the ship descending from so high up giving her stomach a sick feeling.

  Nimby pulled himself up to standing with her help. Wot fluttered around them making whimpering noises, possibly Driode apologies or worries. “You did good, my boy. I forgot about Driode venom.” He looked at Ariana. “Anyone who is bit by a Driode must see only the truth in front of them, cannot tell lies and cannot believe lies. We will be a very honest crew for the next several hours, until the venom wears off.”

  Ariana scooped Wot out of the sky and snuggled the Driode who rubbed his head against her chest and purred. “Oh, Wot, you saved us! You’re the bravest boy in the world.” Wot jumped out of her embrace to make worried chirps. “Don’t worry, boy, Nimby and I will help Seaira.”

  Nimby went to the steering wheel and Ariana followed behind him. “What can I do, Nimby? Your power is low and mine is not. Is there something I can do?”

  Nimby frowned. “I have a feeling there are many things you can do, my girl, but I don’t know your power, and you don’t know how to control it, so I think the best you can do is make sure we land where we want to land. I intend to land in the Crystal lake in Pieramu before I pull all my magic back. I need you to keep watch and tell me when you see it. You will not be able to miss it. It is in the very middle of the Darkest Forest. Go to Seaira’s bow and signal to me when you see the lake. Seaira used up much of her energy in pulling me away from the sirens and will not be able to signal me when it is time to land. It takes her a great deal of energy to exert movement in such a way, though I am grateful for it.” Nimby patted his ship’s wheel affectionately.

  Ariana nodded in agreement. She headed to the ship’s bow and watched the vibrant, rolling hills of Fuerone pass by under them. The sirens would have had them both. Wot rubbed against her ankle at the ship’s bow. She scratched his head and murmured her thanks.

  “You’re a good friend, buddy,” she told him.

  She rubbed the ear where he’d bit her and her hand came away wet with blood. “Huh, you got me pretty good on that one. I think I might have a hole in it now,” she said, a crooked smile on her face.

  She called to her magic and imagined crocheting a small square with it. She moved her hands as she would with a real crochet needle but kept an eye on the distant horizon. They were now below the clouds and Ariana could see that the landscape had changed. The trees, grass, and nature in this part of Endowa was much less striking. The trees were so dark green they were almost black. The grassy hillsides were a striking hunter green, speckled with mustard and midnight flowers. It was a stark contrast to the vibrant, glittery Fuerone.

  She felt herself come to the end of a small crochet square and tied it off. She lifted the square to her ear and pinched the little hole where Wot’s fang pierced it. When she felt the blood abate, she wiped the rest of her ear clean. She then lifted her hand to feel the wound and gasped. There was a hole where Wot had bit her; that hadn’t changed, but it was a wound that felt as if it were several days old, healing around the edges of the hole.

  She stared at her little square of magic in awe. Wot took wing to look at her ear then sniffed the little cloth, which looked as clean as if she’d never used it. “Do your bites usually heal more quickly than other injuries, Wot?”

  Wot tilted his head to the side in a confused way. Ariana chose to interpret that as “no.” Wot sniffed the little cloth again then sneezed. Ariana shrugged. It looked simple enough, a crochet square of teal yarn. But the wound...She shook her head.

  “That’s a question for later,” she said to herself.

  It seemed the questions for later were piling up. Such as: who was that woman Nimby had almost dived off Seaira for? How had he done that amazing trick with the cloud cyclones and could she learn it? How was she related to the marauder? What would her mother be like? Would she be as cold and distant as her father?

  She sighed. She was not sure she really wanted the answer to most of the questions running through her mind. When suddenly, she was jolted out of her reverie by the sight of a giant lake so big and so icy white that it made the surrounding forest look tar black in comparison.

  “Nimby! The lake! It’s just ahead!” Ariana yelled back.

  Nimby called back, “Aye, Ari. How far?”

  “Well...I suppose about a half mile if we were on the ground? Maybe a little less? It’s hard to tell from up here,” she answered.

  “Okay, we’ll start our decent.” Nimby took a breath and started breathing his brown magic back into his body. He stood taller as it returned to him, as though using it cost him a great deal more than using hers cost Ariana. Ariana only felt tired from the use of her magic a couple times, and those were times when she used it in a way that felt...unnatural somehow.

  Making the square that she stuffed into her dress pocket felt easy, as if almost no power went into the work. Nimby seemed to tire from magic that was natural to him, though. She wondered how other pixies felt, and how they differed from her. Would she be able to find a teacher who could help her understand how to use her power without hurting herself or anyone else?

  She swallowed nervously as Seaira sank down, speeding towards the landscape racing by under them. In no time, they were at the edge of the forest, hovering just inches above the tree line.

  “Be prepared for a heavy landing, Ari. Hold on tight. Wot, you might want to take to the air for this. I have to take the rest of my power back, now, or I won’t have enough strength to stand or land.”

  Ari grabbed Seaira’s railing with white-knuckled hands and turned to reply. “I’m holding on. We’re over the lake now, Nimby!”

  Nimby nodded and sucked the rest of his magic back inside himself. The moment his dull brown glow faded from Seaira’s form the ship began to plummet toward the lake.

  “Okay, Seaira, I know you have a little left in you. Open the sails, my girl, and take it as easy as you can,” Nimby urged his ship.

  Seaira’s sails billowed out, catching the wind, somewhat slowing the ship’s descent. They were still falling towards the lake so quickly that Ariana worried the ship would break upon the surface of the water. She and the weakened Nimby would be thrown overboard into its icy waters.

  Wot chirped nervously by her ear, eyeing her in a way that said, “Do something!”

  Ariana took a deep breath. She reached out with her magic to touch the lake below and felt something respond to her magic, as though the water purred when her magic touched it. Suddenly, she knew that the water wanted to obey her in the same way weaving did. She gathered more of her magic and pushed it out with her hands to lay atop the water. She felt the water respond with a question. What do you need, Princess?

  They were still falling so fast that she knew their landing would be too hard on Seaira, dangerous and even deadly for the crew. She called out to the water, “Catch!”

  She felt the assent of the water wash over her. When they were twenty feet from a certain catastrophic landing, Ariana raised her hands, her magic and the water into a soft, fountain that hugged the sides of the ship then, slowly, like a mother carefully placing her baby into its cradle, settled the ship upon its surface without so much as a splash. Ariana dropped her hands, whispered “Thank you” then turned to smile at Nimby, whose eyes were the size of dinner plates.

  The pixie said nothing, only starred, flabbergasted, at Ariana before closing his mouth, clearing his throat and saying, “Welcome home, Princess.
”

  “Indeed, welcome home, my child,” a woman said behind her. Ariana turned and saw a woman, a willowy pixie with waist-length black hair whose ice-blue eyes were a mirror of her own, walking across the water to meet her as casually as one might walk over land. “I have been waiting for thirteen years to say those words.”

  Ariana’s heart leapt.

  About the Author

  Washington state author H. M. Jones is an N.I.E.A finalist and B.R.A.G medallion honoree for her debut novel, Monochrome. She writes poetry, new adult, young adult, fantasy, sci-fi, and speculative fiction. In her spare time, she loves to cosplay with her two favorite geeklets, sing to her chickens, and dance haphazardly around the house while talking to characters she hasn’t written yet. Her dog worries for her.

  For more information about the author, please visit: www.hmjones.net.

  The Forgotten

  H. B. Lyne

  This is the final instalment in the Magic Underground series and my final story in this neat little trilogy! “The Forgotten” picks up right where the second story left off: with the unexpected death of Felix's sister and the city rippling with the after effects of the disappearance and reappearance of St. Catherine's.

  I love to take my characters to the darkest places, but still, it was only while writing “The Watcher” that I realised that Julie had to die. I had to take Felix there in order to complete his personal arc.

  “The Forgotten” chronicles his despair and his increasing PTSD symptoms. How can he move forward when everyone else has forgotten about the alarming magic that just afflicted their city? How can life return to normal now that he alone knows the truth?

  Felix is now one of my favourite characters to write and I'm planning to give him his own novel series in the near future!