Enchanting the Fey- The Complete Series

by Rebecca Bosevski

  “What’s a pyre?”

  “Do you know what you are boy?”

  “I am fey.”

  The horse seemed to ponder his answer for a moment as its eyes travelled from his face, down his small body and back. “I don’t believe I have ever met a fey, but the people out there may call you a witch. Or warlock. Either way, they build the pyre, light it up and burn you all the same. You best be quiet boy or be hiding back under that blanket.”

  “Burn me?”

  “Yes, burn you to a crisp they would. They can’t speak to us, or do the other things you lot can, so they tie you to a post and light you on fire until you are black and gone.”

  Traflier’s face paled at the creature’s revelation.

  “My mama!” he cried and pushed open the stall gate. He ran towards the end of the row to the large barn doors. They were closed tight, and his small arms didn’t have the strength to push them open, to free him. He tried to remember the open cast but couldn’t. He had only made it work once and it had taken almost all of the day’s lesson to do that much. None of the others his age had done it at all, so at the time he was praised as a powerful fey. But in this moment, he didn’t feel powerful. He looked back at the creature in the stall still watching him intently.

  “Please help me,” Traflier begged, his fingers wrapping so tightly around the handle that they turned white.

  “I am afraid not, dear child. Your mother wanted you safe, you should be hiding. Better to not meet the same fate.”

  A heat rose in him and he stormed enraged towards the horse, flinging the creature’s own gate open he screamed. “Open that door and let me out!”

  The horse’s eyes glazed over. His head dropped, and his breathing slowed to a steady rasp. The horse moved slowly, each step heavy against the dirt floor. Walking past him to the main door, he lunged backwards, and brought his front legs up into the air before thrusting them at the door in a single loud wack. The door wedged open a little.

  “Do it again,” Traflier ordered and the creature again rose onto its back hooves and blasted the door. It moved a fraction further.

  “Get it open. NOW!” Traflier yelled and in a breath the horse turned. Rising onto his front legs he brought his hind legs up high into the air. In another breath he smacked them down against the door with an enormous boom. The door flung open.

  Traflier ran out into the night. Guided only by the crescent moon’s light, he followed the sound of the people screaming. Dashing between trees another light appeared, golden and inviting in the darkness. But the voices grew too and he thought about hiding again.

  Don’t let them see me, he pleaded as his heart beat a mile a minute. He focused on his feet as he moved through the woods, but when he stepped out of the tree line and into the clearing, he almost knocked into a man standing on the edge of the gathering of people.

  Humans. Many held torches, their flames licking in the breeze. The warm light he had seen. Their angered voices struggled to separate, until the one in front of him joined in their calls. Traflier would remember his voice always.

  “Burn her!” he screamed. “Burn the witch.”

  And as if in slow motion, the crowd moved forming a small gap in which he saw her. His mother. Tied to a post above a pile of sticks.

  He weaved through the legs, trying to get to her. Trying to think of a cast to free her. A cast to quiet them. Any cast. But nothing came and as he stepped out of the front line of humans he watched as a black cloaked man tossed his torch into the pile of sticks, sending them into a crackling blaze.

  Traflier screamed. The humans cheered.

  His mother’s eyes met with his and went wide for a moment before they softened and she smiled shaking her head briefly before the fire grew to block her from sight.

  He screamed again, calling for her. “MAMA!”

  The humans continued to cheer, their booming roar overpowering his small voice.

  Large hands grabbed him and pulled him back, though the many legs of those still cheering. He thrashed and clawed at the arm gripping him as he tugged him away from the light of the flames that stole his mother away. The smell of the smoke that lingered in the air around them thinned as the light from the pyre faded and the calls of the crowd softened. He stopped fighting and dropped limp to the ground. The hands dropped their grasp of him but he didn’t move.

  The man, Traflier could now make out, came to kneel before him and scooped him up, in a familiar and yet foreign embrace. He didn’t fight them. He had no fight left. Traflier rested his head against the unmoving chest of the person carrying him and closed his eyes. His mother’s face greeted him. Her smile warming his heart. Then the flames raged over his vision of her and was swallowed by the fire.

  ***

  TRAFLIER JOLTED AWAKE, the dirt scraping his cheek as he raised his head. He had fallen asleep on the ground. He rose up quickly looking for her, for their house, anything.

  It had been a dream. A nightmare. It was all a nightmare. He thought as he turned in a circle. He stopped when he came to see what he had slept before. It’s surface unmistakable against the jagged rock of the mountain. The gateway of the Feydom. Reaching out his hand he rested it against the cool smooth crystal.

  “You are a brave boy,” came a male voice and Traflier spun to see him.

  A nazieth guard dressed in his green gear. Almost invisible amongst the trees and shrubbery he stepped through. “You must return to the Feydom now, there is nothing for you here.”

  Traflier’s eyes began to well. “My mother?”

  “Your mother is gone, child. It is no longer safe to be in this sector. I must return you to the Feydom.”

  “I don’t want to leave her here, I want my mama.”

  “I know you do, but she is no longer here,” the nazieth guard said, crouching as he reached him and resting a strong hand on his shoulder. “Your mother has moved on, she is in essence now and would want her boy to be safe, back home in the Feydom. Come, let’s open the gateway together.”

  Traflier wiped his eyes. “I am too small to open a gateway.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Eight. I am only in the second class. We don’t learn big casts till fourth or fifth.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Well, you have a lot of power for one so young, I think we could give it a go anyway.”

  “Okay.”

  The guard stood and took Traflier’s hand, “Now you have to see where we want to go. You have to want to go there with every fibre of your being. You have to see it, see the gateway on the other side, the entrance and the people gathered as they try to sell their wares.”

  Traflier tried to think of home, of the Feydom, but every time he closed his eyes he only saw his mother’s face. “I can’t do it,” he spat, dejectedly pulling his hand from beneath the guard’s and storming a few strides away from the gate.

  The guard’s soft footsteps followed him. “Don’t close your eyes if they show you things you don’t wish to see.”

  “How can I picture the Feydom if I don’t close my eyes?”

  “You look into the gateway. Trust me, you will see the Feydom in your mind with your eyes open and fixed on the way home. Will you try again?”

  “Why can’t you just do it?”

  “I can’t, not without your help. It took three guards to get us here, but they are lost now like your…”

  “I will try.”

  The guard smiled down at him and reached out his hand again. Leading Traflier back to the gate he again placed a hand over his against the glistening black. “Now, look into the crystal, look for home. Want it with everything you have left. I know you can do it. I know you can get us there.”

  Traflier didn’t close his eyes. He did as the guard said and focused on the wall before him. His eyes stung as they struggled against his resolve to not let them blink. He didn’t want to see the nightmare again. He wanted to go home, to go to where everything was shiny an
d bright and happy. He thought of the Feydom and wished. The wall softened against his hand and he finally blinked as the guard’s hand wrapped around his and both sunk slightly into the slick darkness.

  The onyx moved now like a black liquid metal, shining in the rising light of the earth’s single sun. “Thank the Fey we can go home,” the guard said, smiling down at him. It wasn’t his mother’s smile but it held something in it that he liked.

  Stepping through wouldn’t be uncomfortable, he knew the shudder that would follow on the other side well. His mother took him to the human realm often, she kept a house there for their visits so that he could practice his magic’s in a neutral zone, a place where nothing surrounding him could affect his power. At least that is what she had told him—he thought she really came for the flowers. The garden by the house swelled with blooms of every colour. The Feydom had flowers too, but none of them smelled as good as the ones she grew.

  The gateway began to solidify over their hands.

  “What’s happening?” The guard called trying to pull their hands free.

  Did I do that? Traflier thought, remembering that he had been thinking of the human home his mother had loved so dearly. The wall thickened further.

  He shifted his focus and stared deeply into the black onyx once more. He pictured the stalls and the people, he thought of the gateway on the other side. “I want to go home. I want to go home,” he whispered as his eyes again strained at the time spent unblinking. The portal again softened and he felt the guard’s eyes on him but didn’t dare look away from the wall for fear it would solidify completely and embed their hands within its surface.

  With each image of home he brought forth from his mind, the wall became thinner and once it cooled against his skin and moved like a wave across it, the guard pulled him through to the other side.

  “How did you…?” a black suited nazieth began from his post beside the gateway. He locked eyes on Traflier. “You couldn’t, not with only a child?”

  “He did it, I couldn’t focus on the gateway. It was all him,” the green guard replied, looking down at Traflier.

  Had it really been me. Did I open a gateway on my own?

  “I need to debrief the elders. They need to know that sector is unsafe. Its portal must be blocked before…” He looked from the other guard and back to Traflier. Traflier gripped the green guard’s hand a little tighter. He didn’t want to be on his own. “Maybe you should come with me, then after I debrief the elders we can figure out what to do next. It will be okay. You will be alright. I promise, everything will be fine.”

  Traflier knew the guard was lying, but he nodded his agreement anyway and allowed the guard to lead him away from the gateway and away from the realm that had taken his mother.

  The elders spent most days seated on the podium at the edge of the main square. From there they were able to hear the concerns of the Feydom, but also watch over it. Traflier liked coming to the square when the elders were seated. One of them had a daughter he enjoyed playing with, Annabella. She was not as skilled at magic as he, but she was quicker in learning to fly, and she liked practicing as much as he did.

  As the guard moved them through the stalls selling wares like clothing embroidered with gold and ivory, fruits, and breads too. The smell of something sweet drew his nose but the guard pulled him along in the other direction. They reached the edge of the podium, a stage stretching across the front of the main hall and long enough to seat twelve high backed, hand carved wooden chairs.

  “I wish to alert you to an unsafe sector of the human realm,” the guard began, pulling Traflier up closer beside him. The edge of the podium reached just below his nose and now he stood closer he saw many of the twelve elders eyed him curiously from their seats.

  “What of the child?” Elder Maves asked, waving a hand in the direction of Traflier. “Did he bear witness to this unsafe sector you speak of?”

  The guard shifted from foot to foot. “The child’s mother met the light at the hands of a sect of humans within this sector.”

  Met the light. Traflier had heard the phrase only twice in his short life. Once for his father, spoken only during his passage to essence, and once during the same event for a neighbour fey. It wasn’t usual for many to attend the passage of a fey. The neighbour bore no children and his mother thought it too sad to take such a journey alone. So they went. The elders offered their blessings to the travelled and cast the magics that would send them into the light. Said the words that would spell the pathway for them.

  His mother would not hear those words and a rage rose within Traflier. He tugged his hand from the guard. “You should have brought her home, how will she meet the light if she cannot have the cast made on her? How?”

  The elders turned their attention to the green suited nazieth.

  Elder Roanam, a large man with bulging eyes and an orange goatee spoke next. “You left the body of the fey behind?”

  “No,” the guard said and Traflier glared.

  “Yes, you did! You pulled me away from her, I could have stopped them, you could have stopped them. Why didn’t you save her, cast a protection spell, a transfer spell? Why didn’t you help my mama?”

  Tears were falling freely now, his eyes blurry and stinging with the anger boiling over inside him. The guard reached around and pulled the bag he wore from his back. Traflier hadn’t noticed it before now, but as the guard laid it on the edge of the podium he saw what it was coated in. A thin black substance dusted the fabric of the bag. Ash.

  Elder Mars stood from his seat to collect the bag, lifting it gently with two hands as if it were made of glass. He took it to Elder Harack, the oldest of the elders, who let it be laid upon his lap. He placed his two wrinkled pale hands over it, nodding to the nazieth to continue.

  “I returned while the child slept. I did my duty. I returned our fey to her home so that she may meet the light. The nazieth I travelled with I could not retrieve, lost to the oceans of the human world, their burned broken bodies thrown from the cliff into the waves below.”

  Elder Pontors tilted his head and squinted decidedly. “How did you return without the other guards to open the gateway?”

  “The child alone opened the gateway.”

  All the elder’s gazed at Traflier.

  “Take the boy to his family, they will see to him,” Elder Kios began, waving Traflier and the guard away with one hand. “Report the location to the gateway guard. No one shall travel to that sector until it is deemed safe. I am afraid it may be time to ward the gateway completely.”

  The green suited nazieth knelt before Traflier. “Where will I find your familiar fey?”

  Traflier looked at the bag resting in Elder Harack’s lap. He said nothing. Only pointed.

  “You have no other?”

  Traflier shook his head.

  Annabella ran up the stairs of the podium, latching onto her father’s arm. She brought him down to whisper in his ear. Elder Pontors frowned as his daughter continued to tell him something, then his eyes went to Traflier and they softened. The corners of his mouth rose a little but his lips remained thin and closed. When Annabella finally released Elder Pontors he turned to face her, kissed her forehead, then raised a hand in Traflier’s direction.

  “We shall accept the child into my home. He will be demi-Pontors, of my house but not my blood.”

  Annabella came down the stairs much slower now, never taking her eyes from Traflier. She walked the short distance between them then reached out her hand. “You can come live with us, we will be your family.”

  Traflier turned his body away from the guard, his fingers fidgeting at his side.

  Could I be a part of their family? Should I? My mother, I want my mother. His eyes began to well again and Annabella rushed the few steps between them to wrap him in her gentle arms. Her hair smelled of sweet berries and was the colour of a human realm sun. Not like his at all. His was as black as the night sky and sat out in spikes at odd angles. He didn’t pull away
. He let her hug him. He buried his head in her neck and let his arms rise to wrap around her back. He cried into her shiny smooth sweet-smelling hair as she held him, and no one spoke. Not the green suited nazieth, nor the elders of the Feydom.

  He released Annabella from their embrace, but took her hand and nodded, the smallest of smiles rising to his lips.

  I am not alone. Mama, you can go into the light, I will be okay.

  ***

  IT WAS A WEEK BEFORE Elder Pontors brought up the gateway incident. He waited until his daughter, who had been near inseparable from Traflier since his move to their home, had left to collect some foods for their dinner. Annabella’s mother, Traflier had never met, but he had heard rumours of her collapse into mind magics. Some said she had been locked away by Elder Pontors himself.

  “Are you settling in okay?” Elder Pontors asked, coming to sit at the main table across from Traflier. Traflier had been reading a scroll from the shared learning library, its edges marked by age, but the ink clear as the day it stained the page.

  He respectfully looked up from the paper, pushing it forwards to give his full attention to his new guardian. “Fine, Sir, thank you.”

  “The nazieth who brought you forwards thought you responsible for opening the gateway. What do you remember about that?”

  “Not a lot, Sir,” Traflier said. A lie. He remembered everything about that day. He had replayed it over and over in his mind the past few days. Trying to replicate the advanced magic needed to open the gateway. Several casts sat in the same education marker as the gateway casts, none Traflier had been successful in activating yet.

  “Do you know what’s required to open a gateway?”

  “Picturing where you want to go?”

  “Yes, and having the will to get you there. You have to want it. I find it hard to believe you would have wanted to leave your mother.” The words stung, and the tears prickled at his eyes.

  “I wanted to come home,” Traflier began, wiping his eyes with the palms of his hands. “But then I thought of the flowers she loved that were beside our human house and the gateway went thick, we got stuck. So, I thought of home again, of the stalls and the people, and I wished as hard as I could. The gateway went like water and the nazieth guard pulled me through.”