by L. C. Mawson
“I... Freya.”
“Freya what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been alone as long as I can remember.”
“Alone here?”
“No. Here is new.”
“And the castle hasn’t tried to kill you?”
She shook her head. “Nope. The ghosts are just after-images of other worlds. And the spirits who live here don’t mind me.”
“The spirits? They’re different from the ghosts?”
She nodded. “They’re the ones who tend to chase people away. This is their home, after all.”
Freya finally got to her feet, folding her arms. “So, that’s it? You just wanted to know my name?”
He looked awkward at that, blushing. “Well, yeah, I guess. I just... I wanted to know.”
Freya couldn’t help but smile. Apparently some things stayed the same across realms.
FREYA WOKE WITH A GROAN as her phone buzzed at her.
Mel wasn’t kidding about those dreams, she thought to herself. I need to stop playing fantasy RPGs.
She just wanted to sleep. It had become such a foreign concept to her over the last few months. Between frantic, late-night revision sessions and hunting Demons in an effort to retain some semblance of sanity, sleep had become a distant afterthought.
Her body, however, was making sure she got some now. Her limbs felt like lead and her head was killing. She was used to the post-exam stress-crash, though she suspected that this one would take a week or two to get over. She wondered at which point this had been deemed the best way to educate children. Probably back when hitting them was seen as effective punishment, she decided.
She reached for her phone, wishing that the buzzing would stop, only to temporarily blind herself as she turned it on, the light burning her eyes. She buried her face back in her pillow and gave her eyes a few moments to recover before she lifted her head and attempted to look at her phone again. The screen was still too bright, but she ignored it, going to her messages.
“Hey,” one from Damon said. “End of exams party at the park today. You coming?”
Freya groaned, cursing Damon as she looked to see that it was ten in the morning. She supposed that his uncle had made him get up early for training, despite the fact that he had been out the night before. She wondered how long he had waited before giving in and sending the message.
“What time?” she texted back.
“One.”
Freya groaned once more before letting Damon know that she would be there. She rubbed her eyes and pulled her hand away to see that it was now black, reminding her that she had forgotten to take her make-up off the night before.
“Stupid Damon and his stupid social life,” Freya muttered under her breath as she got up, collecting together clean clothes, before heading to the bathroom for a shower.
FREYA WAS GLAD THAT it was sunny. As much as the sun never agreed with her pale skin, and it meant that she had to remember to shave her legs so that she could wear shorts, it was still better than turning up to the park and getting drenched. There had been thunder storms the week before that had made getting to and from her exams a complete pain.
“I have more info on Cinderella,” Damon said by way of greeting, causing Freya to roll her eyes as she approached.
“Don’t you mean gossip?” she asked as she made her way over to the swings. Most of the others were at the picnic benches or lounging on the grass.
“Do you want to hear or not?”
Truthfully, she didn’t really care, but she could see that Damon did. “Alright, who is she?”
“Michelle’s step-sister.”
“Michelle has a step-sister?”
“Yep. The guy put a post up on Facebook, but none of the replies were her. I went through my friends list to see if I recognised her. I found her in Marian’s profile pic. I asked Marian and apparently her name is Bethany. Her mother died when she was born and her father married Michelle’s mother a few years back. Then he died about six months ago in a car wreck. Apparently Bethany’s step-mother is kind of a nightmare and doesn’t really let her out of the house much.”
“Was that why she was running for the taxi?”
He nodded. “Marian said she sneaked out in order to go to prom. She had to get back before her step-mother, though.”
“Weird. Did anyone let him know who she is?”
“Marian said she would.”
“So, not exactly Cinderella then?”
Damon sighed, shaking his head. “Not exactly. But close enough, right? I mean, it’s not as if it could be exact.”
Freya shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe if Marian wasn’t playing a role, it would be closer.”
“Maybe she’s the fairy godmother.”
“There might be versions where the fairy godmother helps the prince to find Cinderella,” Freya conceded.
“I’m gonna go see if Marian’s here. I want to know what happened.”
Freya watched him as he left, deciding to stay on the swings, rather than try to join the others.
TO FREYA’S SURPRISE, it wasn’t long before the swing next to her was occupied once more, though this time it was Jamie, not Damon.
“Hey,” Freya greeted, trying to keep her surprise from her tone. Was this going to be a thing? Were they becoming friends?
“Hey,” Jamie replied with a smile. “I just wanted to tell you that I spoke to the others. They won’t be harassing you anymore.”
Freya raised an eyebrow. “Forgive me if I don’t hold my breath on that one.”
“Yeah, I... I’m sorry. If they start up with any of that crap, just tell me. I’ll shut them up for you.”
Freya was left wondering what to say before eventually settling for “Thank you.”
“It’s the least I could do,” Jamie reasoned. “I don’t want to start sixth form playing the same games. It’s time to grow up.”
“Well, thank you anyway.”
“Are you coming back for sixth form too?”
Freya nodded. “That’s the plan.”
“Are we going to have any classes together?”
“I don’t know. What are you taking?”
Jamie gave a sheepish shrug. “English, psychology and sociology. You?”
“Maths, further maths, physics and chemistry.”
“Wow... That sounds...”
“Incredibly nerdy?”
“Exhausting.”
Freya smiled with a shrug. “Tell me about it. But I’m just better with numbers than anything else, so it just makes sense.”
“Yeah, an awful, twisted kind of sense.”
“Well, maybe I’m an awful, twisted kind of person.”
Jamie laughed and Freya couldn’t help but smile. Her laugh was loud and warm, the kind of laugh which seemed to radiate happiness. It seemed much nicer than the laughs that had been maliciously directed at Freya. She found herself hoping that it was because it was more genuine.
“Me too,” Jamie eventually said as Damon walked up to them.
“Hey,” he greeted with a grin.
Freya briefly wondered if he was happy that they were getting along because he hoped to rekindle his relationship with Jamie. But Jamie had barely even acknowledged his arrival, her attention still on Freya.
“Hey,” Freya replied with a wave. “What’s up?”
“It’s not just Cinderella,” he said excitedly.
Jamie raised an eyebrow. “What is he talking about?”
Freya rolled her eyes. “You know Bethany?”
“I think so.”
“She sneaked out to go to prom, despite her step-mother’s wishes, and she left a shoe behind.”
“Wow, really?”
Freya nodded before turning back to Damon. “So, what do you mean it’s not just Cinderella?”
“You know Anya?”
“Yeah, she was in my biology class.” Freya had always liked Anya. They didn’t hang out outside of class, but Anya’s friend group had an odd
number of people, and she didn’t turn up her nose at pairing up with Freya.
“Yesterday was her sixteenth birthday.”
“And?”
“And, well, you know she took textiles, right?”
“No, but okay.”
“She went to collect her final project before prom with Mara. Mara says that she pricked her finger on one of the pins and passed out. They had to call an ambulance and, apparently, she hasn’t woken up.”
“That’s horrible,” Jamie said, kicking at the ground in an effort to still her swing.
“And really close to Sleeping Beauty,” Freya noted, frowning in thought.
Bethany could have been a coincidence. A bit random, but then sometimes things were just random. But Anya made two fairy tales come to life, which was a little more than Freya was comfortable shrugging off as a coincidence. She wondered if there was any underlying magic. Though she had no idea why anyone would cast a spell to make fairy tales come to life. It would take a lot of power and Freya couldn’t see the positive, though she wasn’t too well versed on magic outside of Demons.
She considered calling Amber and asking her, but she doubted that she would get a straight answer. Amber was so busy protecting her, she didn’t realise that all she was doing was putting blinders on her. Mel, on the other hand, would probably know more about the magical community as it currently existed and she wouldn’t censor her words.
“I wonder if she has a boyfriend or anything to wake her up,” Damon said.
Jamie rolled her eyes. “It’s not literally Sleeping Beauty, Damon. She’s ill, not under a sleeping curse.”
“I know, I just... Wouldn’t it be cool? If true love’s kiss woke her up?”
Freya snorted. “Yeah, unless it’s the older versions of the story.”
“Why? What happened in the older version?”
“He didn’t kiss her, he raped her. She only woke up after giving birth to twins.”
Jamie made a face. “Fairy tales are so creepy.”
Freya smirked. “Exactly.”
Chapter Five
Freya ended up running home, having lost track of time. It was getting dark, which wasn’t a good sign, given the time of year. She didn’t bother to check the time on her phone. She didn’t need to know exactly how late she was. That would just make her anxiety worse.
She upped her speed to just barely more than Human down the last couple of streets, not wanting to push her luck. Her shifting was getting better, but she still lacked distance. Amber told her that it was more of a mental block than anything else and that shifting further didn’t really take any more energy, but Freya could still only go a couple of streets at a time. With the energy it would take to cloak her activities, she would have exhausted herself half way home. So she settled for running.
She hoped to sneak in without Margaret noticing and pretend that she had been home for hours, but Margaret came out of the kitchen door as Freya entered, a glass of wine in her hand.
“What do you call this hour?” Margaret asked.
Freya shrugged. “My phone died.” A million issues with her lie cropped up immediately, including the fact that she could have asked a friend, that she should have come home as soon as she saw her phone die, and that she could have rang Margaret from a friend’s phone to tell her what had happened. But the words were already out of her mouth.
Margaret raised an eyebrow as she walked towards her, swaying a little on her feet. “And what do you think you’re wearing?”
Freya looked down at her red and white checkered dress. It wasn’t her favourite, but it was good for a hot summer day. She didn’t know what Margaret was talking about, though. It was more than long enough and, though the top was tight around her breasts, giving them quite a bit of prominence, it was by no means risqué. Margaret had, in fact, picked the dress out for her. But she did sometimes change her mind about clothes she had suggested that Freya use her allowance to buy, throwing them out when Freya’s back was turned.
“My dress,” Freya said, unsure of what other answer she could possibly give.
Freya didn’t see the slap coming, it was so out of the blue. Her hand ignited into flame in response to Margaret’s smug look, but she got a hold of herself enough to extinguish it before Margaret could notice.
“That’s for talking back.”
“I didn’t!” Freya cried, barely dodging Margaret’s next swipe. “What is wrong with you?”
“You, you little bitch! Parading around, rubbing my age in my face.”
“Wait, what?!” Freya was completely lost. “You know what? I’m heading out. I’ll come back when you’re sober.”
Freya stormed out of the house, fuming. Amber appeared next to her as soon as the door shut.
“Yeah, yeah, there’s magic in the house, I know,” Freya said as she opened up her senses. “How did Margaret get affected? I thought you had put a protection spell around the house.”
Amber shrugged as Freya jumped up to her bedroom window. “It would have to be strong magic, and possibly a blanket spell.”
“Like the fairy tales coming to life?” Freya asked as she slipped into her bedroom.
“Possibly. If that’s the case, the magic is probably somewhat neutral. Which might explain how it got through the protection spell.”
“It sure as hell didn’t feel neutral,” Freya grumbled as she changed her dress for her leggings and plain top. She pulled her enchanted chainmail over the top, covering that with a dark purple skirt and a leather jacket. It wasn’t completely protective but she didn’t know how long she would be gone and didn’t want to have to constantly use strong illusions.
She made sure to stick some heavier armour in her handbag, though, along with her best sword. She wasn’t sure when she would be able to come back.
FREYA FOUND HERSELF heading back to the park. Most of the others had still been there when she had left, and she found herself aching for the familiarity of Damon - or, hell, even Jamie - to remind her that the ridiculous turn things had taken was isolated. The whole world wasn’t upside down, it was just a handful of people.
She arrived back at the park to see that Damon had left after her. In fact, there was only a couple of people left.
“Hey,” she heard from behind her.
She turned to see Jamie approaching.
“You came back?”
Freya shrugged, not sure of what to say. There’s some kind of magic at work in the area and it’s affected my foster mother and I know that I need to figure out where it’s coming from, but I really just need to regroup right now.
Yeah, because that would go over well...
“I had an argument with my foster mother. I... I just left.”
“Crap.”
“Yeah...”
“Are you okay?”
Freya nodded. “Yeah. No, it’s fine. I’m overreacting.” She cursed her voice breaking. This wasn’t Margaret’s fault, it was the spell. She didn’t want to give Jamie the impression that she had some kind of terrible home life. But she really needed to talk to someone.
“You’re allowed to be upset if you’re upset,” Jamie told her. “You don’t have to worry about what I think.”
Freya gave her a thankful smile as she wiped away her tears. “I just... I don’t know how to fix it.”
“What exactly happened?”
Freya shrugged to buy herself time, trying to figure out how to talk around the magic. “I came home late,” she eventually said. “Margaret was really mad and she... She ripped into me. She made comments about how I was dressed and then I... I stormed upstairs, got changed, and left.”
“She commented on your dress?”
Freya nodded. “Yeah.”
“Why? I thought you looked really nice.”
Freya blushed a little at that. “I... I don’t know. I mean, she was there when I bought it. But she does change her mind a lot...”
“That sucks. I mean, it sounds like she should be trying to fix thi
s as much as you.”
“Well, you’ve only heard my side of the story,” Freya reasoned. “Maybe if you heard just hers, you would think that I was entirely in the wrong.”
“Wow, you are really trying hard to defend her,” Jamie said with a raised eyebrow. “Were you this forgiving when I was being mean?”
Freya snorted. She had hated Jamie, to the point at which she had tried to figure out a way to justify hexing her several times.
But, the more she thought about it, the more she realised that it hadn’t been an immediate response. Damon had asked her, a week or so into him dating her, if Jamie’s cold attitude bothered her. Freya had shrugged it off and reasoned that she might have acted the same way.
Of course, that forgiveness had died a slow death over the months that followed.
“It’s a character flaw,” Freya admitted.
“Oh good, I wasn’t looking forward to the ‘being nice isn’t always good for you’ talk.”
Freya shrugged. “I’m very aware of my issues. Actually doing anything about them is a very different thing.”
Jamie grinned back at her. “Well, it’s late, so my parents will kill me if I don’t get home. Do you need a place to stay? I can pull out the blow-up mattress.”
“Won’t your parents mind?”
“Well, they won’t be happy about it, but they won’t kick you out or anything.”
Freya shook her head. She might not have any leads, but she needed to start trying to figure out where this magic was coming from, before someone got seriously hurt.
“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Freya told her. “Damon’s got plenty of spare rooms and his uncle won’t have any issue putting me up for the night.”
Freya could have sworn that Jamie looked slightly dejected at that, though she quickly covered it with a smile.
“Well, if you ever need to talk, just give me a text, okay?”
“I don’t have your number,” Freya pointed out.
“I’ll Facebook it.”