“Jane, I want our fake engagement to be real,” he said, his heart racing and on edge. She didn’t respond, and he was afraid, as he’d always been, that it was too much for her. When still she said nothing, he called out to her. Again and again he said her name, but when no response came, he knew she’d left him.
23
Jane
Her eyes opened in the old woman’s cottage. She was slumped over, her head in her crossed arms on the table. When she sat up, Jane saw Lili.
“Oh, you’re back,” said the woman, as if Jane had returned from the bathroom.
“Why am I here? Can I go back to him?” Jane asked, distressed.
“To whom?” Lili questioned her. Jane’s reality settled in front of her.
“I… I should go,” Jane said, feeling wobbly but using every effort to reach the door.
“Careful, child, you’re not fully here. Sit for a moment.” Jane sat back down. “Tell me, is it the prince you saw? Is he alive?”
“Yes, he’s alive,” Jane said, trying to remember to breathe when she thought about him and the conditions he was living in. “For now.”
“It’s incredible you were able to see him,” said the old woman.
“I spoke to him,” Jane said, explaining how he heard her in his mind and how she heard him speak normally. The woman nodded her head, her finger on her chin in thought.
“Most interesting. And unusual. I haven’t seen such an opening of a mind with this potion before.”
“Potion? It’s not a drug from my world?” Jane was astonished.
“No, it’s very much a potion from this land,” Lili said solemnly.
“Can I have more?” she asked the woman, who looked at her strangely now.
“It wouldn’t be safe so soon.” There was something in Lili’s look that made Jane uneasy.
“I have to go,” Jane said, this time making it out the door. Though she was slow, she reached Genevieve’s room and finally slept like she hadn’t in weeks.
The next few weeks she visited Lili daily, asking her questions, knowing each day she was delving deeper into this world and into her “witchcraft”. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she watched Lili make potions to help neighbors with broken hearts, anxiety, depression, and other ailments. Back in her world, people would pop a pill to confuse their brain chemistry into thinking they weren’t feeling a certain way. The pills didn’t always work, Jane had noticed from friends who’d told her about their problems.
Here, she witnessed the potions taking immediate effect in neighbors who passed by to procure solutions to their problems from Lili. Could it be magic? There was so much she’d already seen and experienced here that she couldn’t deny there really was magic, witchcraft, or whatever you wanted to call it.
The strangest potion she witnessed was taken by a man who complained about having trouble with his memory. The potion Lily made allowed him to remember every single detail of his life. His wife said he’d even been able to recite the conversation they’d had when they first met.
Jane even learned about some of the potions, how to mix them and where to find the ingredients (though Lili would not divulge some of the ingredients). The only thing Jane hadn’t asked about in the weeks that passed was the potion she’d taken herself when she flew unseen into Axel’s cell. She thought about asking Lili to let her have some more, but her biggest fear was going back to that place and seeing Axel looking exponentially worse. Already she had seen him in a state of despair and, by his account, tortured.
She had asked Darick again to contact him, which he agreed to. Several times he tried, but Axel’s friend could not receive anything from him.
She became a part of the family, going with the queen on walks through the village, sitting with the king and telling him of the goings-on. He probably had already heard the news she relayed to him, but he was kind enough to listen and seemed to enjoy her opinion of his people. She noticed the queen smiling one day as Jane commented on the mating song she’d heard that day.
“It was a nice song the girl sang to him, but really, how is the boy supposed to remember it?”
The king answered, “He will remember it if he wants her to be his wife. If Axel were to tell you something so important your entire marriage depended on it, would you not remember it? Word for word?” Jane considered this, her thoughts always verging on guilt when they spoke to her of the supposed marriage.
“Yes, I’d probably write it down,” she said. The king laughed.
“There are no pens here, but there’s always another mind you can ask to help you remember. And the boy will practice and practice until he has it perfect. Then that night will be the best of his life.” She saw the king look over her shoulder. Jane turned to see the queen, smiling.
The queen said, “I was not given a chance to sing a song. I had never heard of such a thing, but he did not even tell me. As I stood in the crowd, hearing him sing my favorite Air Supply song, I was touched, but did not know the significance of it until later. Apparently, he’d made that my mating song.” Jane laughed, wondering if Axel had been here if she would have had to join in that ritual with him.
When Jane was not gossiping with Dori, learning potions from Lili, spending time with Axel’s parents, and visiting with new acquaintances in the village, she wandered around discovering new places, each more magical than the last. She didn’t return to the place with the willows, but she found an equally mesmerizing, though smaller, creek running zigzag through a meadow of tall grass and colorful wildflowers.
Lying among the flowers, watching the butterflies flutter about, Jane wondered for the millionth time how life would be when she returned home. There would be nothing as beautiful as this.
24
Axel
The last time they took Axel to the room opposite the dungeon, he’d been questioned for hours. This time he would have none of that. They could take away his food again, or whip him until he was nothing but bones. But there was no way he would sit in that wretched room and repeat over and over the same thing. It didn’t matter how many times and how many ways they asked him, he would not create a portal for them.
The portals. They were they only reason that his grandfather had been given his own land to rule. No one could make a portal except for the men in his family. His great-great-great-grandfather had been the first to discover that there was another world they could travel to by creating a portal twice a year.
That ability had risen his family to near royalty, but once it was Axel’s grandfather’s turn to create portals for the king, he refused. Axel didn’t know why, but he was told it was because his grandfather used it as a bargaining chip to create his own kingdom. He would create one last portal for the king if the king granted the village sovereignty. The king agreed, and the citadel had survived 100 years with that portal.
They brought Axel to that room again, sat him on a fine wooden chair, and he waited until someone came in. He knew it would be King Siloh. Axel’s resolve was weakening. He was tired of it all. They were wearing him down, and they knew it. He’d had a breakthrough of hope when he’d heard from Jane, but that was so long ago it was almost as if it had not happened.
The king walked in then. “I have been most generous with you. Every time my council has advised that I kill your family, I tell them it would not serve us to have you angry. I want us to be friends. We can have a mutual agreement,” he said.
“I highly doubt I’ll end up your friend,” Axel said, “and there’s nothing I need from you.”
“Well, that’s not true. You need your freedom. I’m sure you’d like your mind to be free again. I can’t even imagine what it’s been like for you these past months with only your thoughts in your head. And I don’t think it would hurt for you to know that you, too, can have unlimited mind control.” There it was. It’s what Axel wanted more than anything. Ever since he’d seen these men block his mind, keep him buried against his will, and stop all messages, the need to find out how grew within him.
He had become obsessed in the different theories. Maybe they’d mated with another species that was far stronger than humans. Perhaps there was a potion. Still, he could not reconcile the fact that these citadel people had wanted the humans gone and the portal in his own village destroyed. Why then would the king want him to create another one?
“Why do you not wish us to have a portal?” was Axel’s first question. He couldn’t seem eager, but he was crawling out of his skin, ready to jump up and shout to the man in front of him to give him the fucking information already.
“A portal is a powerful tool, is it not? You’ve found that you can increase your mind capabilities somewhat if you mate with humans. Why would I want another kingdom to potentially outmaneuver us with their minds? It would make us weak.”
“You outmaneuver us, so that can’t be true,” Axel pointed out.
“Ah, but that is because you have not yet discovered the true value of the portal,” King Siloh said. So the portals and the magnified mind powers were connected. Something from Earth was giving them those advanced abilities. Some kind of drug? A secret technology?
As Axel considered the various possibilities, he suddenly felt the chair he was sitting on vibrate. He held onto it as the chair, with him in it, lifted off the ground. Astounded, Axel saw that the king held his gaze on Axel’s chair. Then the chair descended and landed back on solid ground.
“How did you do that?” Axel asked, wanting to know more than anything.
“It seems we have information to trade then.”
“How many times do I have to say the same thing? It’s not something I can teach you. I just know how. It’s passed down from the men in our line.” Axel was exasperated. This would never end. He’d die in this place, an old man, repeating the same thing over and over again.
King Siloh walked around the room, his long robe-like clothes sweeping the floor behind him. “And you have made a portal before?”
“Like I said the last time you kept me here asking the same exact questions— yes. It was a mirror that shattered when I came back this last time,” Axel said, wondering what it was they wanted him to say.
“Why not something unbreakable?” the king asked.
“Like what? What is your portal?” Axel wanted information too.
“Ours is a wooden doorway which has fallen into disrepair. Fixing it would alter the portal, but in its state it’s becoming less reliable. Twice now we’ve not been able to use it for some time until it works again. We need something unbreakable.”
“Well I can’t make one out of thin air. And the boundaries of a body of water are always changing, so that’s no good,” Axel thought out loud. “Perhaps a stone doorway? That would last longer. But good luck finding another portal-maker.”
The king lowered his head to Axel’s and brought his face ever so close. “Do not anger me, son. Your father is still alive. I can dispose of you and bring him.”
“Why haven’t you?” Axel asked, matching the King Siloh’s slow speech.
The king stood straight and put a hand up against the wall. “Right on the other side is something that would be of value to a young, vital person. Not a decrepit old man like your fatherthat is not long for this world.”
Axel said nothing. If the king was going to reveal something, let him do it. Axel would not beg for information like they were doing. When the king lost patience with the silence he sat down in front of Axel, his eyes suddenly wide and expectant.
“Would you like to expand your mind right now?” King Siloh asked him.
25
Jane
The plans for the Night of Eternal Light were in full swing. Already, Jane couldn’t sleep with the amount of sunlight that streamed through Genevieve’s bedroom window. She’d thrown pillows over her head to block some out. The weather was turning warmer, though she had noticed the spring months had been very mild in this land. She wondered if temperature changes might not be so varied here.
“How do you do it? Sleep with so much light?” Jane asked of Dori one morning as they ate breakfast. Jane yawned.
Dori giggled. “We’re just used to it I guess.” Dori then whispered, “Jane, would you come with me today to the market? I’ve decided to sing my mating song to Nicklas.” The girl blushed, and Jane laughed.
“Of course I’ll come. Wouldn’t you want your mother or your friends to be with you?” Jane was nervous for Dori, hoping Nicklas would seem receptive to Dori’s song.
“No, I would be too self-conscious with all of them. But I’m so comfortable with you, and you will be my sister soon,” Dori said, hugging Jane. They had become such good friends in the past months that Jane couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Dori, your brother and I are not engaged. He wanted your father to believe that in case he was so sick he left this world. Axel did not want him to worry about the future heir being without a wife,” Jane blurted out.
“Oh,” Dori said, her face crestfallen. “Well, that changes things doesn’t it?”
Jane felt awful. She didn’t want Dori to hate her. “I’m sorry we lied. But I’ve loved each and every one of you. Even though I will go through the portal your father makes, I’ll always remember all of you with so much fondness.”
Dori then gave a small smile. “I understand why you did it, and it was very generous of you to help my brother, no matter how misguided his lie was. Father just wants him to be happy. But I still want you to come with me to the market. And don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”
Jane gave a sigh of relief, feeling a thousand times better now. Dori really was so very good. The pair finished their breakfast and headed to the village. On their way to the market, Jane noticed Dori was getting visibly nervous.
“You will do fine. You’ve been practicing for months,” Jane reassured her, putting her arm around the girl’s shoulder.
“I’m not worried about the singing. What if he doesn’t sing it on the Night of Eternal Light? I don’t want to be bitter like Genevieve,” Dori said.
“Genevieve is not the only girl who wasn’t reciprocated, is she?” Jane asked. Dori shook her head. “And all of those girls somehow moved on without being bitter like Genevieve right?” Dori nodded. Then she shook her head. “Some girls are very ashamed. There have been a few that sang to my brother, and when he did not sing their songs, they have never forgotten.”
“To Axel? He’s done that to other girls?”
“Well, he is the heir, so he had to turn down many girls and women. There are three, though, that have caused problems several times since. I’m surprised they have said nothing to you... the spiteful creatures.”
“No, everyone has been nothing but nice,” Jane assured her.
“Hmm. Be careful. They may not be genuine in their friendship,” Dori said. Jane wondered what it would be like to receive such a public rejection. She couldn’t imagine dressing up for such an important event and then it not coming to pass in front of everyone you know. It was too horrible. She tried to ease Dori’s nerves, forgetting about the possibility that some of Axel’s ex-girlfriends were bitter towards her.
Dori jumped back to the subject at hand, “But Nicklas is so handsome. All the girls want to sing their songs to him. I’ll be the first, I believe, but what makes me a better wife than any of them?”
“You’re beautiful, kind, sweet, and a princess. Can they top that?” Jane asked. Being a princess had to count for something, right?
“Genevieve is a princess too,” Dori pointed out. She walked on to the other end of the market, where Nicklas was standing guard. He was a member of the army that had been created since Axel’s capture, with Darick as head of the army. Guards were appointed to stand watch at all times wherever there were crowds of people and around the homes to prevent further mischief.
Dori grabbed Jane’s hand, gave it a squeeze, and let it go as she walked forward with a purpose. When she was several feet away, she started to sing. Her voice was angelic, her words
eloquent. Everyone around them stopped what they were doing to listen, to record in their minds the words and the feeling of the moment. Jane did too, watching how gracefully Dori sang. And how Nicklas, when he first realized what was happening, smiled so brightly that Jane had no doubt he would be singing it back on the Night of Eternal Light. When she finished, Dori gave a little bow of the head, and walked back toward Jane.
“Hurry,” she said, whispering. Jane followed her until they turned a corner, and then Dori collapsed.
“Oh my gosh!” Jane rushed to help her.
“I’m fine, I think. My legs just couldn’t stop shaking. I can’t believe I did it.”
“I can’t believe it either. But he was smiling,” Jane said, helping Dori up. She noticed they were in front of Lili’s cottage.
“Come, let’s sit with Lili for awhile.”
“The witch!” Dori said, not taking a step further. “I knew you were visiting her, but I cannot enter there. Father has forbidden it.”
“Why?” Jane asked, unsure why some people came by to get remedies from Lili, yet almost everyone avoided her.
“She does strange things. Be careful, Jane,” Dori warned. Jane then confided what she’d seen when she took a potion, how she’d seen Axel imprisoned. Dori was thoughtful. “Can it be done again?” she asked.
Jane had wanted to do it ever since, but with all the warnings against Lili, and the fear of what she might see, she’d been too chicken to try again. But what if she never saw Axel again? Going through the portal soon, it was possible she left before he came back. She still didn’t know what the plan was, except that the King Hareld would make a portal and the human women were on alert. They might have to leave suddenly if their lives were in danger. As predicted, the queen refused to even consider it.
Jane answered, “I suppose I could do it again, but, Dori, I don’t know what I’ll see there. What if he’s hurt badly? I’m so scared.”
A Touch of Spring: Spellbound Series Book 1 (The Spellbound Series) Page 8