“Careful, those things are ancient and I am sure the others taking the tests would like to read them too.”
“Pfft, they lasted this long. Hey, maybe it is in the wrong section in the library? Wouldn’t be the first time someone didn’t put something back where it belongs.”
“True, we did find our beach that way.”
Annabella’s eyes brightened and she jumped to her feet. “Oh, T, we have to take Grace to our beach, she has to see it. Grace, come to Mummy.”
Grace turned instantly at the call of her name and began to quickly bounce towards her mother.
“Anna, maybe we should wait until she is older?”
“Why wait, T? The gates have been warded for years, and besides, the relationship with the humans is going so well. Another family just moved through last week. Marcus brought them. His son fell for a girl over there and now she is pregnant, and he wanted to bring them here so the child could see the Feydom. Isn’t it wonderful?”
Traflier didn’t answer her. He hadn’t made up his mind about the decision to allow humans to live within the Feydom. Fey lived within the human realm all the time, more so since the wards forced them to be without magic and so thrust them into the human ways. Traflier never saw the appeal some of the other fey saw in living with the humans, but mostly he objected the imbalance of it all. To come to the Feydom, a human gave up nothing, to live in the human world, a fey gave up everything they are.
Better they come here then, he thought to himself, just as Grace leapt into his lap.
“Oomph. Wow, you are getting so big, my Gracie, tell me again how old are you? Is it ten? Eleven?”
Grace giggled and shook her head. “Me nearly three, Daddy.”
“Oh, so it must be. And what does my Gracie want for her birthday?”
“Beach, Daddy. Me go beach, please.”
Traflier looked up at his wife who struggled to suppress her smile. Leaning in so that his nose touched Grace’s, he whispered, “I would give you the sky if I could, but if it the beach you wish to see, the beach it shall be.”
He wriggled his nose, tickling the tip of hers, and she shied away with a giggle. Climbing off him she toddled the two steps to her mother and with beaming bright eyes yelled, “Daddy yes. Mummy, we go beach.”
“Not just any beach, Grace,” her mother began. “We are going to our beach.”
Traflier had only been to the human realm a handful of times over the years. All at his wife’s request, and each time only to their beach. They had managed thus far to keep their little piece of paradise secret from others in the Feydom, and with Traflier training to be an elder, he was sanctioned to go between the realms as often as he pleased.
Elders needed to know the most difficult of casts and be able to create the more complicated potions. Many of the ingredients of which were found in other realms. He had travelled just the week before to see the equillis. They could heal an open wound with a brush of their feathery mane or imbue strength with the help of a royal’s horn. Traflier had thought they might permit to assisting in a more central role with the fey, but the queen refused him. Said though the equillis would not deny a fey their help, they would not agree to be in service to them. And as it was with the equillis, what the Queen says, goes.
Traflier didn’t know why it would be so bad to work for the fey and was a little miffed at the Queen’s lack of regard for the higher power of the Feydom. The fey are the most powerful beings in existence, the equillis should be elated to join with them. He had thought at the time.
***
TURNED OUT GRACE loved the beach just as much as her mother. It quickly became a weekly trip for them and Traflier began to look forward to their visits too. It was the only time he found that his mind wasn’t preoccupied with elder training.
Grace had been a little shocked at first when she toddled a bit too close to the water’s edge and a wave crashed into her legs sending her onto her bottom.
She cried out for her mother, wining that her daddy didn’t stop the wave in time. They had to explain to her then about the wards, but not the reason for them, though she did ask. Twice.
One evening after a long afternoon at their beach building sand castles and collecting seashells, Annabella had been reading Grace a story about a child that visits a merry go round, and afterwards, Grace begged her to make her one. Traflier, who was sitting on an armchair nearby, without thinking mentioned he had seen a carousel in the scrolls.
“It is like a merry go round with painted horses and decorated carriages,” he said.
Grace’s eyes brightened as she pleaded to be taken to the place he had seen them. But his expression fell when he remembered the scroll described a human park.
Parks were highly populated human places.
And this park, you reached by going through one of the oldest gateways which stood nearby.
Traflier remembered the gateway’s description clearly in his mind. The black onyx had become overgrown with vines. It was written that they had taken on part of its magic, moving and twisting when the gateway activates then returning to their place when closed.
He had wanted to see the vines for himself, watch them move. It fascinated him how some of the gateways interacted with the worlds they were connected to. He had even read that a few gateways had disappeared from sight completely, but that the magic would still activate and send someone through. He had yet to be game enough to try one of those either.
“I guess we could go to the park, it will only be for a short visit. I don’t know the area we will be going to walk into so it won’t be today, but maybe, yes, for your birthday. That should give me enough time to figure out all the details.”
“Will you ever deny her anything?” Annabella asked, closing the story book and giving her daughter a kiss on the forehead.
His lips raised in a pout on one side and his brow wrinkled as he thought of an adequate response. “When she asks to date, I believe then I will be able to deny her request. But until then, I am at her will.”
“Well, I guess we are going to the park.”
***
GRACE ADORED THE CAROUSEL in the human world. Her visits to the park began to outnumber the ones they took to the beach. By the time she turned five, the park had become an almost daily ritual. Riding the carousel while Traflier and Annabella sat together admiring the colours of the human realm sunset, then taking a walk along the lit paths before returning to the Feydom.
“Is it time for the park, Daddy?” Grace asked, running into her father’s study where Traflier spent the entirety of the day. His final exams were coming up and he needed to prove that even as a demi-Pontas he deserved the rank of elder. He knew more casts than any fey in existence and he could repeat most of them without draining his magic too. Something even the elders of now struggled with.
“I know we go to the park every night, Gracie, but your mother is attending to an ill fey tonight. Do you think we could try something new? Maybe you could try a few casts in the back lands of the Feydom while Daddy practices his cast for light?”
Her eyes saddened but then the corners of her lips rose and he could tell she had something running through her mind that this concession would cost him. “Okay, what is it?” he asked, placing the scroll he had been studying to the side to give her his full attention. Always his full attention.
“When mother no longer needs to be with the fey, we spend a whole day in the human realm. First the beach, then the park, and we can try the human food. You said there was nothing dangerous about eating it and I want to try those red shiny things so bad.”
“Apples, Grace, they are called apples. You have a deal. Let me just grab a few of these scrolls and we will head out to the back lands. Do you want to bring your cast book and practice?”
“I will go get it now. Can you show me how to do something new, Daddy?”
“If you are good I might teach you something new.”
“Ha, I am always good.”
“T
hen you have nothing to worry about, do you?”
She giggled and took off to collect her book while Traflier bundled the scrolls on his desk together. He had been struggling with the cast for light for a while now. It was supposed to be one of the harder casts. Calling something from nothing was near impossible, so you needed to bring it from somewhere, but every time he tried to call it from a nearby lamp, or even the sky, it failed him.
“Daddy, I’m ready!” Grace called from down the hall, and he took off to join her for their back lands practice session.
Arriving in the back lands, the sky had already begun to darken, so he placed the lantern by Grace as she ran around collecting flowers for her mother.
Traflier sat under a tree and laid out the scrolls he had been studying, trying to decipher how to call for light when there was none to bring forward. If he could only get this cast right, he could show the elders that he would bring a new era to the fey, one with new casts, stronger casts. He tried again to call for light.
Nothing.
Dejected he leaned back against the tree, his eyes closed as he listened to his daughter giggle and talk to herself as she inspected each flower to determine if it met her lofty standards of what she would present her mother.
I need the light, please I need the light. “I need to find the light.” Grace’s singing voice blurred to white noise, then a sudden flash of light shone through his closed eyelids. He shot his eyes open and leapt to his feet at the sight that stood before him. A fey like none he had ever seen. His eyes were large orbs, dark as onyx, his face pale with skin like wax that glistened under the light of the sky. But it was his hair that disturbed Traflier the most; slicked back against his head and as red as fire.
“Grace?” he breathed out. He could still hear her playing with the flowers. She hadn’t seemed to notice the light or the arrival of the unusual fey. Traflier took a step to the left, not taking his eyes from the mysterious creature before him. “Who are you?”
“I am Mortimer. You have finally found the way to call for light, I thought that deserved a visit.”
“A visit?”
“Yes. Those like me don’t often dwell below. But you had been trying so hard, and when you finally discovered how to bring the light, well, I couldn’t help myself.”
“I don’t know what I did, I didn’t speak a cast. What exactly are you?”
“Ah, but you did in the purest way you could. You wanted it and wished for it with all your mind and spirit. This was your cast. It called me forth, brought me down to grant your desire for light.”
“Brought you down?”
“Oh, I am sorry, I am not doing this very well. You see we angels don’t converse with beings very often, I am afraid I have lost my way with the words, as you might say.”
“Okay, so you are saying I somehow called forth an angel to grant me a wish for light, that about sum it up?”
He seemed to ponder Traflier’s statement for a moment, though his black eyes gave almost nothing away. The slightest of tilts to his head the only indication he was more than a freaky statue. The light Traflier had called faded away.
Righting his head ever so slightly he smiled, lips closed, but the corners of his eyes proved the sincerity of it. “Yes, I believe you communicated an accurate run down of the situation. Do you have any other questions?”
“Oh, you have no idea the million thoughts running through my mind. I had only read one scroll that spoke of angels, what are you exactly? How did you create the light and can we do it again? Where did you come from? What else can you do? Do you have wings? I think the scroll mentioned wings like a large firebird? Are your wings like a firebird?”
Mortimer raised his hands. “Hold on, I may not be permitted to answer some of what you have asked, but for now how about I show you how you can call for light again?”
“Oh, yes please.”
They sat together beside the tree as Mortimer explained how his desire for the light is what had brought him down to grant his request. A fey had a strong connection to the angels and if they knew how to use it, they would be able to do so much more than their casts allow.
Traflier was intrigued by the idea of not needing a verse or potion, but was a little let down when Mortimer clarified that those things were still needed for the casts they already knew. The angels could fulfil certain desires, but not all.
“So for light, I need to call on my desire for it, but do I need to speak the words at all or can it all be in my head?”
“You don’t need to vocalise, but if you don’t specify exactly what you are after the angel might simply refuse to perform the desired outcome.”
“So, we call you forth to do something, but you don’t have to do it?”
“Exactly, we are higher beings after all. We offer service to empowered beings but are not in service to them.”
Traflier remembered the equillis queen and her refusal to be in service to the fey. Perhaps keeping favour with the creatures and beings that could help the Feydom was better than nothing.
“Okay so I am going to try again.”
Mortimer nodded and stood to await the call. He should have been able to hear it but nothing came.
“Are you sure you are ready to try again?”
“Why? Isn’t it working?”
“No.”
“I don’t get it, I did it before.”
“Yes, but you really wanted it then, didn’t you? What was it about that moment that made you want the light?”
Traflier listened to Grace still playing amount the flowers, she squealed with glee at the discovery of a perry blossom, one of her mother’s favourites. “I was listening to my daughter and thinking about how I wanted the light so badly. I needed it.”
“Did you think of light itself?”
“No, I thought only of my need for light.”
Mortimer smiled a thin grin and Traflier nodded at the realisation that it was his desire that is met, the light is the result, not the action.
Traflier closed his eyes and thought of what he wanted. I need light. Please, all I need is light. He opened his eyes and surrounding him and Mortimer was a brilliant ball of light. Soft and honey coloured, it rose above them slowly.
“Now you have it, you will be able to do what you like with it. Wish it away. Make it grow, or shrink. Send it elsewhere, even. It is only its creation that I needed to help with.”
“Find Grace,” he said to the light, and in his mind he pictured the light soaring over the grass and enveloping his daughter in its golden glow.
The light shot across the blades of grass and then Grace squealed. Traflier followed the light and found Grace frozen in place within its glow, a wide-eyed stare pointed right at him.
“Daddy, help.”
“It is okay, Grace, it is only light Daddy made for you.”
“You made me light?”
“Yes, do you like it?”
“Can I do it too?”
“Maybe when you are older. Pick up your flowers, I think it is time we go home. I will leave you with the light, it will move with you until you are back with me at the tree.” Traflier didn’t know why he knew it so surely that the light would do as he thought, but he believed it would.
When he arrived back at the tree Mortimer was waiting.
“Is Grace alright?”
“She was a little scared but she will be fine.”
“I will be going back now, but do feel free to call on me again.”
“Oh, I will. In fact, would you like to meet here again tomorrow? I would love to hear everything about your kind. It is all so fascinating.”
“I shall see you tomorrow then.”
Traflier nodded and Mortimer disappeared in a flash. How can there still be angels around? The one scroll that even mentioned them said they had left this plane for all eternity. Well, I guess eternity isn’t as long as I thought. He chuckled to himself as Grace and the ball of light breached the tree line across form him.
&nbs
p; “Ready to go, my darling Grace?”
“Ready, Daddy. Do you think we can take the light with us?”
“Let’s see how far it will go, maybe we can shrink it and you can keep it in your room in a jar, so that you will always have a light in the dark?”
Grace loved that idea, and after arriving home, Traflier did just that. He told the light he wanted it to shrink down to the size of a pebble, then he picked it up. It was warm to touch, and its light shone through the tips of his fingers making them look orange. He dropped it into a small jar and screwed the lid on.
“There you are, Grace; this light will shine for as long as I am.”
“Am what, Daddy?”
“Am a part of these realms, of course. One day we all enter the light, and when I do, I suspect this little light will go with me.”
She looked up at him, her big eyes welling with tears. “Please don’t leave me, Daddy.”
“Oh my, Grace, I will be with you for as long as you need me, okay?”
“I will always need you.”
“Then you shall always have me.”
He kissed her on the forehead, tucked her in, and left her in her room to sleep.
When he returned to his study he quickly pulled a notebook from the stack on the side of his desk and jotted down the title to a new list. What to ask the angel.
Every day for the next two weeks Grace went with her father to the back lands of the Feydom to collect wildflowers and practice casts. Traflier met with Mortimer and learned all he could from the angel. The latest lesson involved pushing his power out into the grass to make it stronger, greener, more alive. It didn’t take Traflier long to master it. It didn’t take long for him to master any of the lessons Mortimer showed him.
“How are you doing this so quickly?” Mortimer asked one day as they were revisiting the power transfer he had shown him the day before.
“I have always had a knack for magics. Even as a child I have been able to do more than most. I opened my first gateway when I was eight.”
“Really? Those are some powerful magics, no wonder you were able to call me forth then, you have something strong inside you. Closer to the original fey than most, it seems.”
Enchanting the Fey- The Complete Series Page 50