Enchanting the Fey- The Complete Series

by Rebecca Bosevski

  The river grew nearer by the second. “How do we stop?” I yelled out above the noise of the air flying past us.

  “Traspor ceaser,” Jax said into my ear and the mort slowed to a stop beside the slate croaker.

  “Was that one of your chants, one you are authorized to do I mean?”

  “Marcus taught it to me and had it approved by Traflier. It’s the safest way to get down here, and seeing as I can’t fly, it was approved pretty quickly.”

  “Nice, but I don’t look forward to the walk back up.” I contemplated the surprisingly steep hill we had come down.

  “Des, the mort goes both ways, we won’t be walking.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good to know.”

  “Come on, I’ll introduce you to Marcus. You’ll like him, I’m sure.”

  Jax walked towards the opening to the croaker, a wooden door set in the side of the dome that curved along the wall. Before he could knock, the door swung open, almost thwacking him in the face.

  Jax leapt back standing between the doorway and me.

  “Jax—”

  “Shh, he doesn’t have many visitors, give him a sec.”

  I watched the opening, sure to keep behind Jax. Maybe meeting Marcus wasn’t a good idea.

  “Who is with you?” a weak voice called from within the doorway.

  “Her name is Des. Giovanya’s daughter.”

  “Giovanya. Ahh, yes, a gifted Fey, a true friend. One day she will return and we shall be merry.”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  Jax frowned at Marcus. “I told you, Marcus, remember, she died.”

  “How!” Marcus yelled, stepping out of the opening and taking strides towards us. “How did she die? Did you see it? Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure, I saw it,” I said stepping out from behind Jax.

  He stopped to observe me. “You are her daughter?” He glanced between Jax and I.

  “I am. You are Marcus?”

  “I am,” he said, bowing before us. “I apologize for my reaction to the news of your mother, she is—was a dear friend.”

  I nodded and he swept his arm towards his croaker. “Would you like to come in?”

  “About time,” Jax joked, elbowing Marcus as he walked past him and into the croaker dome. I followed closely behind.

  On the inside, the dome, much like Traflier's tree, far exceeded expectations. The size was the same as observed from outside, but its extravagance was not. While the external walls were bare of anything but the curved door, carved-out shelves and inset cupboards and drawers lined the internal walls. Glass jars and rolled papers sat stacked and jammed in wherever he had found space.

  “Maybe you should move to a bigger croaker,” I said, stepping over a stack of papers to sit on a stool by the bar table that jutted out from one wall.

  Marcus and Jax laughed for a moment before Jax, seeming to remember my distaste for being the butt of a joke, stopped and elbowed Marcus again.

  “Watch, my dear,” Marcus said, taking an iron rod from its hiding place between two towers of imbedded drawers. He tapped the rod three times on the floor between us and it croaked as the boards moved outwards, curving under each other to reveal a lit stairway to yet another room.

  “Clever! How may floors down does it go?” I asked, trying to seem less impressed than I actually was.

  “As many as I desire,” Marcus said, tapping the stick again. The floorboards returned and then he and Jax joined me at the bar table. “I’m sorry to hear about your mother.”

  “Thanks. So… how did you know her?”

  “She said she liked my stories, she said I told the best tales. But I think she liked my foreseeing tea more than my stories, even though I didn’t often share.”

  “Foreseeing tea?” I asked.

  Jax nodded to Marcus and swiveled on his stool to rest his shoulders against the shelves beside him.

  “I am a Brewer. Some casts require only words; others require the perfect mix of ingredients, combined with the words to create the desired outcome.”

  “Can’t they simply follow some instructions, like following a recipe for a cake? You know, cream the butter and sugar before adding two eggs and two cups of flour.”

  “But what kind of eggs? What if you needed the eggs laid by a hen with only four red feathers? Are you going to go out to find that hen? Could you?”

  “Well, why would it matter if the hen had four red feathers or ten, if it’s the egg you need?”

  “Because in events such as castings, if you miss one aspect it can not only fail to achieve the desired outcome, but it could mirror onto you a curse.”

  “So you brew up the mixes and then give them to the Fey who want to do a particular cast?”

  “He gives them to Traflier,” said Jax. “Only Traflier can distribute the brews when someone requests and is approved for a cast.” He gawked up at the ceiling of the dome. I followed his stare up the walls. The shelves, cupboards, and drawers carved into the walls extended almost to the top, stopping when about one meter circumference of stone remained. In its center sat a glowing yellow ball.

  “The children were making those,” I said, pointing up to the light.

  “What?” Marcus asked.

  “The yellow ball light thing. The children in the class, they were making one.”

  “That is impossible; you must not have seen it properly. They couldn’t possibly…”

  “I saw it, right Jax? Tell him, it was the same. Look, it even has the lightning swimming around inside like the one in the class.”

  Jax frowned. “Des, I didn’t see any ball in the class.”

  “What do you mean you didn’t see it? The children all sat around it. They made it grow bigger and bigger and when the teacher caught us, it exploded into a thousand tiny lights that dissolved right in front of us.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say, but all I saw was some kids sitting around. Then they stood up when we got busted.”

  Did he actually not see it? Could he be lying? Maybe he doesn’t want Marcus to know.

  “Maybe I imagined it,” I said, wanting both of their eyes to be off me.

  “You couldn’t have seen one of those, Des. No one but myself and Traflier can create one.”

  “What does it do?” I asked, watching the lightning snake its way around his orb exactly like the one I had seen above the children do.

  “I use it to absorb the curses from brews I create in error. I’ve spelled it to absorb these and these alone. It is a complex creation, taking years of practice to create and maintain. So you see, children just could not possibly have created one.”

  “I must have seen something else then, I guess.” I turned my head to look at the shelves Jax’s head was resting on.

  “What about the foreseeing tea?” I asked, hoping to get further with it than I had with the orb.

  “Ahh, your mother loved to see what possibilities lay before her, the foreseeing tea makes this possible. It opens a link to what is to come so that the drinker may see glimpses.”

  “May see?”

  “It is not, as she found, always useful or accurate. Futures change with the choices we make, what you see one day you may not see the next, or you may not see anything at all. It took your mother several tries before she even glimpsed something she could describe.”

  “But she did see things; she managed to see her future?”

  “She did.”

  “Can I try it?”

  “No!” Jax yelled, standing and swinging me on the stool to face him. “You can’t, it’s too dangerous.”

  I looked to Marcus.

  “He’s right; the tea is not for everyone. When we have more time, and if Traflier approves, you may be able to start taking doses to build up your tolerance so that in a few months you might be able to take a full dose.”

  “A few months? I don’t have that kind of time.”

  Jax raised his eyebrows. “Of course, there is one way you could fi
nd out more information that isn’t in Traflier’s books.”

  “Jax, give it up,” I replied rolling my eyes.

  “What am I missing?” Marcus asked.

  “She won’t go…”

  “No, I won’t. I don’t want to see him, and you can’t make me. I want to go see Traflier now. Thanks for having us, Marcus, but I think I should leave now.” I stood, not giving Jax a choice, and stepped around his bits and bobs to make my way out the door.

  I heard Jax mutter something to Marcus before he followed me out the door.

  “Des, I didn’t…”

  “Don’t worry about it; let’s just get back up this hill.”

  “Sure,” Jax said, taking hold of the mort’s rope and pulling it to hover in front of me. I climbed on, Jax folding in behind me. Even though I was annoyed with him, his touch still made me vibrate and I welcomed the increased thump in my chest.

  “Accendentor mort,” Jax whispered by my ear and the mort took off climbing the hill in a matter of moments. “Traspor ceaser,” Jax said again, and the mort came to a stop beside the place Jax had pulled it from the sand. He rested the mort over the spot and it slowly sank beneath the sand once more.

  “Are we okay?” Jax asked.

  “It’s fine; I was just disappointed about the tea. You were right, I did like Marcus.”

  He smiled and began leading me back up the sand path towards Traflier’s tree. When we reached the door, I stopped and turned to Jax. “I’d like to go down alone. I have some family issues I want to raise, is that okay?”

  Jax frowned a little before forcing a smile. “I’ll come to see you later. Is there anything I can bring you?”

  Shoes, I thought desperately. “I would kill for some coffee,” I said out loud as I pushed open the door and stepped into the lift.

  “I will see what I can do,” Jax said as the door closed and the lift began to move.

  Great, now all I can think about is coffee, I don’t even want to know how long it has been.

  When the lift reached the bottom, I called out for Traflier, but he didn’t answer. I couldn’t find him anywhere, so I decided I would wait a while. I strolled around the space, admiring the art on the walls and the ornate rug beneath my feet. But before long, I found myself fixed on his collection of books.

  Traflier’s library had floor-to-ceiling shelves and a wheel ladder like in the old movies. I pulled out a few titles and glanced through the pages. One after the other, I looked at the authors and each of them was the same: Traflier.

  “Where is a good Mary Janice Davidson or Richelle Mead when you need her?” I said as I remembered my incredibly full bedside bookshelves in my apartment back home. I had every Undead series book, and of course the Dark Swan series and VA too. I loved the way their stories took you away to another world. A world I now found myself embroiled in.

  Laughing at the realization, I pushed the tall ladder, and it slid along the shelf rail with ease, watching the spines of the books fly past the rungs. When the ladder passed a book on the topmost shelf I grabbed to stop it, the leather bound book with no title on the spine caught my eye.

  Interesting. I climbed the ladder to the top and slipped it from the shelf, causing a thick mist of dust to drift to the floor. Clearly, it had remained in its place for many years.

  The cover’s warm aged leather contrasted against an embossed gold bird in flight. Its smooth gold was the only detail on the exterior of the book at all. I sat back in one of the large green leather chairs and tried to open the book. It would not budge.

  I couldn’t see any seal or fastening that could keep the pages locked. I tried other ways to open the book: I dropped it, wacked it, pried and prodded, but all to no avail. Finally defeated, I stood and climbed the ladder to return it to its spot on the shelf. Great, the only book I want to look at and I can’t open it.

  I slid it onto the shelf and a shiver ran up my spine. Instinctively, I pulled it back and rested it against the rungs of the ladder. Something told me I had to read this book.

  I inspected the bird on the cover as it shone in the light. Beneath the gold of its wings, letters sat, only visible when I tilted the book into the light shining in from Shulun.

  Profero Appello.

  I took Latin in high school and I was sure appello meant name, but I struggled to recall what profero meant. I ran my thumb over the embossed bird as I tried to remember the classes I’d taken so long ago. The bird looked a lot like the one I had seen throughout my life, and then it hit me: voice. Profero meant voice.

  So… voice name.

  It couldn’t be that easy. But everything else in this place was weird, this sort of solution would technically fit right in.

  “Desmoree,” I said aloud, feeling a bit silly. The cover flung open, tumbling from my hold. I fell backwards and grasped for a hold of the ladder. My heart raced as I wrapped my fingers around the rung and pulled myself in tightly against the cool wood. I regained my composure and made my way down.

  My heart continued to pound, from both the shock of the book opening and the fear of falling. When I reached the floor, there, splayed open to the first page, was the book with no title that opened when I said my name scrawled by hand on the first page was an inscription: For Desmoree: You shall be the only one to reveal these pages, the only one who should use its words, and the only hope I have to save them all.

  Great—another prophecy.

  I sat back in the leather chair and turned my back to the door. At first glance, a normal person might think it was a book of poetry—someone's personal diary of thoughts and drawings. But it was not poetry.

  Spells! Pages and pages of ingredients, preparations, and chants. The first one was small; it apparently opened your mind to the magic of nature. A note written above it specified to perform no other cast before it.

  “Darkened moss, Flaker’s leaf, and Nocturne’s fire.”

  Totally normal stuff.

  Though I had never heard of any of these things, the drawings gave clues to where I could find them. Darkened moss appeared to be a black sludge growing at the bottom of a Ferrara tree—Traflier's tree. Flakers leaf was the leaf of a Dandielilly, a flower I knew. But Nocturnes fire looked like lava. Bellow the drawing of Nocturnes fire were the words Outer Reaches.

  The instructions were simple enough: crush the leaves, mix with the sludge, and dissolve in the lava whilst saying the chant, To all that is I am, and all I am I open to thee.

  When I was young, I delved into magic, as I suppose most kids did at some point. I bought a spell book from a local Wicca shop, wanting to try to make my hair grow longer. I followed the instructions perfectly. It didn’t work. None of the spells did. I did set my carpet on fire once, but it was by knocking over a candle, not by magically willing it to ignite. Ma thought it was hilarious.

  This book was different. I took my time reading its pages, and before I knew it, I had read it cover to cover. There were chants for strength, some for hiding precious things, and one for finding something lost. I sat there for a few minutes, holding the book closed in my lap, pondering all I had read. Then I stood up, picked up a book from one of the random stacks, and put it in the spell book’s place on the top shelf.

  What I wanted to speak to Traflier about didn’t seem as imperative anymore, so instead I went back to my room to read the book again.

  Sitting propped up by several pillows on my awfully comfortable bed, the book again refused to open unless I stated my name. I read it cover to cover a second time, without pause. Then I re-read and re-read. Finally, I fell asleep with it still in my lap on the bed.

  I woke early to a repeating bird’s chirp. This alone wasn't unusual; bird songs had awoken me almost every morning since arriving in Sayeesies. The birds in Sayeesies were mostly like the birds you would find in an exotic rainforest, granted some of them were a little more unusual than others. A squashed-face bright yellow-eyed Correal was the oddest I had seen yet.

  This morning, though, there w
as only one bird chirping, and its song was definitely not sweet. It squawked at me, over and over.

  I climbed out of bed and trudged to the window to shoo it away but stopped, astonished to find the bluebird, just like the one I had seen all through my life, sitting on the black iron rail, staring at me, squawking its vile verse.

  Seeing this bird, this close was not good. When I was twelve, I had seen it perched on a branch across from me, squawking as I climbed a large oak tree—moments before I fell from the tree, breaking my wrist. It landed on the front of my mother’s car moments before I crashed into a pole-thank God for airbags-and it appeared again the day of my mother’s death, waking me with its squawk. I had followed its call to my mother’s room and found that she had just passed.

  I leapt towards the window, shooing the bluebird away with my hand, but it simply sat there, undeterred by my flailing arms. It flew into my room and perched proudly on my mirror, continuing its squawking song. Grunting at it, I stepped out onto the balcony determined to ignore it and tried to focus on the beauty of Sayeesies.

  From my window, Sayeesies could have been the farm where I grew up. Except for the flowers—no farm or florist had silver and aqua flowers, especially not ones that sparkled.

  The mountains of Danzor blocked any view of the Outer Reaches. Only those with nothing to lose would dare venture past those mountains, into the dark. I had only read about it in Traflier’s books. He wrote of finding a few of the most potent herbs that grew only there, in the dark. Though the mountains blocked my view, I could see where the sky faded from its glistening gold to blackness.

  In the same second it crossed my mind to venture there, the bluebird sprung from its perch on my mirror and flew past my head and out the window, sending a chill up my spine and thus rightly removing the thought instantly.

  Thankful that my bad omen was gone, I turned back to my room. It was beginning to feel more like home. Grace, my great-grandmother, who by the way looked no more than forty, had done a great job decorating. Nothing other than a handful of my belongings had been brought to Sayeesies: finally a few of my shoes, a pair of cream flats, black flats, my amazing sparkly blue pumps, sunglasses and some underwear. Apparently, a storage unit now housed the rest my personal items. Traflier said I could get the rest when there was more time.