“You said something before about some woods?” I asked, urging him to continue as we walked.
“Ardennes is where the Nymph live. Muircadia is where the Sprites live. Vesuvius is home to the Pixies. And Kamalani is my home.”
“Wow,” I said again.
“So are we going to Kamalani?” I asked.
“No, we are going to Texas right now, but then we will go home. Anyway, you cannot portal to Kamalani, you have to fly to it. Or be flown if you don’t have wings. We will arrive in Ardennes. The Fae at your home were Nymphs, at least the majority of them were. I might have sensed a Pixie as well, but I feel we should start our search in Ardennes.”
The darkness changed. At the end of the tunnel, there was a light that was much larger than the other pinpricks of light. That light continued to grow as we got closer to it.
Alec stopped and turned toward me then. “We should hug again.”
I nodded and lifted my arms up around his neck, as his arms circled my waist and pulled me closer to him. My chest hit his, his muscles were hard beneath my softness. It made me feel weaker, again. Incapable. I took a deep breath, ignoring my insecurities, and jumped when he did.
I looked around, and at first I thought we were in a state park or a garden or something. But then I saw headstones everywhere and realized we were in a cemetery.
I sneezed, my nose tickled and ran angrily.
“This is Llano Cemetery, one of the oldest and largest cemeteries in Texas. And in case you hadn’t noticed, Texas is full of pollen” He bent down and picked up his little tripudio thing and tucked it back in pocket before walking forward. I followed behind him as we walked toward a large, white pavilion, and I sneezed again.
“Yeah,” I said, as I pinched my nose to stop another sneeze from coming. “Pollen…No wonder I never wanted to live in Texas.”
He chuckled, and then explained, “The porta we will travel through is here, in this gazebo.”
“Will it be like the tripudio?” I asked, thinking I would be okay with it if it was, because honestly it was pretty amazing.
“No.” Then he walked up the steps of the gazebo and stopped in the center before turning to look at me. “A porta is not like the tripudio. A tripudio is a device that I can take with me. The portas are connected through energy. Some call it energy, others may call it the fifth element, or aether. We call it magic. It is how we are all connected to everything, through space and time. You are connected to me, and to the ground. To the air, and the water. You are connected to this Realm, and to the Outer Realm, and to our home.”
I nodded to show that I was following him, finally understanding what he was saying. Even though, in that moment I didn’t feel connected to anything. Not to him, or to this place, or to any other place. I was devoid of anything other than my sadness and hatred and anger.
“This porta has been here long before it was a cemetery. It has and always will be here. It is a center for energy and magic. Until you have your own magic, you will need another Fae to be with you at all time when going through a porta, just as with the tripudio.”
“Okay. So how do we make it work?”
“With magic of course,” he said as his lips turned up, revealing a set of dimples I hadn’t seen on him before. It was clear to me then, how excited he was to be able to go back to his home.
He turned away from me again, and I walked up the stairs to be near him. He spread his arms, leaving them downward toward his sides, and then slowly lifted them up. Again he was concentrating, with his eyes closed tightly.
The mist he called magic pooled around us. Though it felt like a mist, it wasn’t wet. It didn’t make my hair or clothes damp at all. It was just a thickness of air. I took a step closer to him, not wanting to be left behind. I found my conviction again. I would avenge my parents. I wasn’t sure how. But I knew, without a doubt I would do it, somehow.
Some way.
Then, right in front of him, I saw a sparking. It was like someone had flicked a lighter and then let it go out again, before flicking it back on. This happened a few times, before the light stayed on. It wasn’t like a flame, but just a bright, white light. In the center of the light a triangle was formed.
It started out as a dark triangle, but as it grew, I saw other colors in the center of it. Along the outside edges of the triangle, the bright light remained, which only made the inside of the triangle look darker.
As the triangle grew, Alec remained focused. He didn’t move anymore, now that his arms were about the same level as his head, spread open wide. Finally, when the triangle had grown so large that the tip of it was touching the ceiling and the two edges were pushed beyond the railings surrounding the gazebo, it stopped growing.
Alec turned to me and asked, “Ready?”
When he spoke, his voice sounded different than before. Deeper. Almost husky, as if he had been screaming and his throat was parched. I didn’t know if it was because opening the porta had caused him pain, or if perhaps using that amount of magic weakened him, but I wasn’t about to ask him now. He looked almost scary, though I knew he was ready and excited to be going through.
“Yes.”
“Good.” He grabbed my hand and together we walked into the triangle.
Being in a porta was nothing like being in a tripudio.
Chapter Six
The Empyrean: The land of the Fae. There are four provinces: Muircadia, Vesuvius, Ardennes, and Kamalani.
It was like I was in a triangle tunnel. The walls were angled to a point at the top. But everywhere around me was glass. Or at least it looked like it. Like stained glass, with tiny, rectangle tiles forming the walls. The colors were amazing, breathtaking. Rubies and emeralds, sapphires and amethyst. They all blurred together and wove within one another behind the glazed wall.
It was as if the colors moved, like beyond the wall was an ocean of different hues and pigments all swirling together. Brilliant silky water flowed and pulsed behind the glass.
“It’s so beautiful,” I said, more to myself than to him. Though he answered me anyway.
“Yes it is. I’ll never forget my first trip through a porta. I was in training to become a Realm Guard, and we had to prove our ability to efficiently navigate a porta.” He paused to look down at me. “Apparently it is difficult for so-ome.” He drew out the word ‘some’ to make it two syllables, then he winked.
“Ha!” The laugh shocked me more than I could’ve expected.
I mentally added cocky to my list of adjectives to describe this strange fairy. Still, the distraction was proving strong.
Really, if I didn’t try to add some humor into things, I would go crazy trying to believe everything I was already seeing. They say ‘seeing is believing’, but sometimes even when you do see it, you still can’t believe it.
“Can you portal to anywhere in your home?” He looked back at me to speak, but I added on before he could correct me, “I mean, other than the Floating place.”
He smiled again and said, “You can enter and exit a porta, only at a porta. As I said, it is a place of strong magic. So we will exit through another porta. You cannot portal to Kamalani because there isn’t a porta there. It’s in the air above us. In the sky.”
“Oh,” was all I could think to say.
From the darkness inside the tunnel, despite the flowing colors beyond the glass walls, it was obvious to see the exit as soon as it appeared. It was another bright, white triangle, far off in the distance. It looked like we would have to walk another ten minutes before we would reach it, but Alec stopped walking as soon as I noticed the white light.
I could barely stop the urge I had to yell, Don’t go into the light! But I wasn’t sure if fairies watched Poltergeist and I really didn’t want to sound like a freak.
“We have arrived.” And though we stopped moving, the white triangle grew, just as it had back in Texas.
I tried to see through the white triangle, so that I might be able to see the fairy world, but I co
uld only see white. When the triangle was about three feet long, the light got so bright I had to close my eyes. It was like I was looking directly at the sun, in the middle of the afternoon in the dead of summer. Even with my eyes closed, the lights burned through my eyelids, and I could only see red.
I still felt Alec’s hand in mine. And when he started walking forward, I made my legs move with him despite my fear of the unknown.
At first I just stood there and felt out my surroundings. It was not cold, and I felt an insatiable urge to strip my jacket and beanie off. There was a light breeze and the suns warmth beat down on me. Birds chirped in the distance and a few other things rustled the leaves, like squirrels or some other tiny animal scurrying around in the trees.
It smelled fresh. Like spring and summer combined. I could smell flowers, plants, and the dirt that gave them life as if I was in the middle of a huge garden with every kind of flower blooming all around me. I could smell everything; it was like freakin sensory overload. So many smells combined as they rushed into me.
My heart beat increase and my hands began sweating. And I even got a nauseous, rolling feeling in my stomach. If it was this overwhelming with my eyes closed, how could I ever open them? This place that apparently I had come from. This place that was my parent’s home. How could it ever be my home?
Alec moved in front of me and grab both of my arms, just above my elbows. Heat from his body brushed into me.
“Open your eyes, Lily,” he breathed into my ear. The warmth from his breath caused goosebumps to pop up under my many layers of clothes, and I almost shivered despite how warm I was.
Still, I obeyed him.
All around me I saw green and brown. Brown and green. Bright green, dark green, blue green and yellow green. Reddish brown, and yellowish brown. And grayish brown and blackish brown. So many different colors, but still only green and brown.
It was obviously a forested area I stood in. The leaves that hung from the branches were so numerous and plentiful that I couldn’t even see a sliver of sky beyond them.
I turned in a circle, and all around me were trees. Aspen and Pine Trees. Oaks and Birch. Giant Redwoods and tiny Dogwoods. So many, everywhere I looked. And then I stopped twirling and recognized the thin dirt path to my left to be a trail. A destination. A course to follow. And I remembered my conviction. My promise.
I turned to Alec and my jaw dropped at his appearance. He must have shrunk a lot, leaving him only an inch or two taller than me. His blond hair was whiter than before, creating a halo around his face. His eyes shone like emeralds in the sun, despite the sunlight being masked by the tree tops. And his lips looked fuller and pinker.
He now wore khaki pants and a light blue button up shirt, with a dark blue blazer over it. Over his left breast he wore a medal of some sort.
But even more astonishing than those miniscule changes were his wings. Wings! They were huge. Not like a birds wings, there weren’t any feathers. They weren’t colorful like a butterflies wings. Instead they were gossamer thin, and nearly see through. The intricate designs woven throughout them were marvelous, I felt certain I could have spent all day studying them, and still there would be more I hadn’t seen.
“Beautiful,” I murmured, before I could stop myself.
“Yes, it is beautiful here,” he said, mistaking my words. “Welcome to the Empyrean, Land of the Fae.” As he said it he lifted his arms, as if to showcase the landscape like a masterpiece of art. “Welcome home, Lily.”
“You have wings!” I said, because once again I couldn’t stop myself. He chuckled as I stated the obvious.
“I am Sylph. All Sylph after the age of seventeen grow wings. I could hide them if I needed to, though it’s not common practice. Depending on where you are, anyway. They are something to be proud of, they explain your past. Sometimes even your future. You’ll understand better after your birthday.”
“But you didn’t have any before,” I said, arguing at the insanity of it all. “Just a minute ago, you looked normal, with no wings. And now you have them.”
“I was cloaked, as all Fae are in the Mortal Realm.”
“But…” I felt the urge to argue. To explain that I needed explanations. To make him understand that all of this, the tripudio, the porta, the wings, it’s all crazy.
All of it.
“Why do you even travel between realms? What is the point of it? When you could live in a place like this…” As I said it, I too motioned with my hands at the surrounding beauty. “Why would anyone want to leave this place?”
He shrugged his shoulders before he answered me.
“Some are banished to live as mortals, after their magic is stripped from them as a form of punishment for one crime or another. Some choose to live there, still with their magic, but cloaked as I was.”
I didn’t understand it. Everything I had seen so far, and it wasn’t much, was beautiful. Amazing. How could anyone choose to leave? Why would they want to live as an other- someone different and foreign, like I was- when they could choose to live here, among their own kind?
“And then some live there in hiding,” he continued, oblivious to my internal debate. “I’m guessing that was the case with your parents. I don’t know who they were, but I feel as though I should. I could sense something intrinsically good and important about them.” Then he seemed to think harder on his words.
“Why would anyone need to hide? My parents are…were good. They were the best people ever,” I reiterated, my determination to avenge them stronger than ever.
“I believe that, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have enemies. Though the Empyrean is beautiful and wonderful, not everything about it is perfect. Not all Fae are good.”
“Are there like, light fairies and dark fairies?” I asked, thinking more of the light elves and dark elves of the paranormal stories I read.
“No. There are four kinds of Fae. I’ve already explained this to you.” His voice took on an edge like he was already losing his patience with me.
“Yeah, I remember. Land, air, water, fire… I get it. But then, what could possibly be bad with this place?”
He sighed and then started looking around the forest we stood in, as if trying to get his bearings or to decide where we would go.
“That is a loaded question. I’ll explain as we walk. Deal?” he offered.
I nodded and motioned with my hand for him to lead the way. He started walking toward the single path I noticed.
“Please, wait one second,” he said to me, after we had only just started on the trail.
He stood in the center of the trail, which was maybe four feet in width. He placed his hands to his side, then lifted them up, palms up, before he put them back, palms down. It looked like he was pushing air up, then pushing it back down. I didn’t ask him what he was doing though, because he was doing his serious concentration thing again.
“Yes, this is the right way. They came through this way. Well, at least some of them did.”
I nodded. “Okay, then that’s the way we go.”
He turned and looked back at me, a question in his eyes like he was trying to figure something out about me.
“What do you plan on doing when we find them? Do you have some skill in hand-to-hand combat that I haven’t noticed? Do you wield a concealed weapon that I haven’t sensed on you?” The implied accusation that I was incompetent and incapable struck a nerve. It was the same way I’d felt my entire life.
“I’ll do whatever I have to. I’ll avenge my parents.” I tried to make my voice sound strong and sure, but I don’t know how well it worked.
“Hmm,” he murmured and then nodded once. “Well, I suppose I have my work cut out for me. This won’t be a fast, easy trip, you realize? There is probably a long road ahead of us.”
I nodded. I didn’t care how long it took, or what I had to do, I would find whoever stole my parents from me. I had nothing else to live for, even if that sounded dumb. I had nothing back home awaiting me. I didn�
�t even have a home to go back too.
“Ok, well let’s get started then.” He started walking into the trail, officially starting my adventure into this strange new world.
Chapter Seven
Village: A group of residences, smaller than a town, situated in a rural area. There are several villages throughout, with the Central Village in the middle of each province.
It felt like we had been walking for hours. My tennis shoes crunched the leaves and dirt beneath my feet. The wind rustled the leaves above my head. The birds sang softly, while the squirrels jumped from limb to limb.
Shortly after we arrived, I changed my clothes. I took off the hat, sweater and jacket and replaced my long sleeve tunic for a short sleeve blouse. I took off my boots and wore the more comfortable tennis shoes Alec had packed in this magical velvet bag.
And thank God he did, because it was killer to walk forever in the heat. Even with the shade the trees provided, I would guess the temperature was at least in the nineties. And I might’ve enjoyed the walk, if I was in better shape and wasn’t constantly thinking about where I was going, or who I was looking for.
Alec and I didn’t talk much for a while. Every time I wanted to say something, he always looked to be concentrating too hard for me to bother him. So I just followed behind him, one foot in front of the other. Like Dory, except on land. Just keep walking, walking, walking.
Really though, this place didn’t seem too different. The trees were brighter, and the leaves greener. The animals looked the same. When I saw a herd of deer run across the trail in front of us, they weren’t purple or anything. Everything was the same. Just brighter, stronger, prettier.
When a fox dashed past I whispered to the furry creature, “Hey, so what does a fox say?” totally hoping he would jump up dancing and sing, “Ringa-ding-ding,” or something stupid like that. But he was just the same as the foxes back home. As soon as he noticed me, he scurried away.
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