by Dianna Hardy
She looked again at the pen. Not for the first time, she considered what would happen, what would her life be like, if she had the gall to write a few selfish words...
Elena discovered that all these years, her curse had been false
and she could, in fact sleep with anyone she wanted, at any time,
with no magical consequences … she could fall in love.
God, it was so tempting … but it still wouldn't solve the fact that he'd be bound to, not just her, but her entire lineage – a responsibility she wasn't prepared to put upon him. But … what would life be like if he were also a witch?
He finally told her his secret:
he, too, was a great magician with unmatched super powers.
He would be her equal – it would be so much easier. Not that she didn't consider him her equal in every other way.
With a last sigh at her ridiculous notions, she pulled her T-shirt over her head and stripped her Levi's from her legs. Snuggling down under her duvet she took one last look at the pen that sat atop her open notebook, then she reached out and turned the light off.
~*~
“Elena ...”
Her name reached her as a whisper on the cool autumn breeze.
“Elena ...”
Forcing her sleepy eyes open, she looked around for the voice that called to her, expecting to find herself in her bedroom, maybe Karl at the doorway, trying to get her attention. But she was not in her bedroom. Suddenly alarmed, she sat up straight with a gasp. She was still in her bed, but this was nowhere she'd been before. The floor was gritty with sand and dust, an arid red; the room was not a room, but a cave of some kind. Cream coloured, stone walls greeted her, with candles lighting them in various places, flickering orange in the darkness that surrounded her.
Okay … so I'm still in my bed … so, this must be a dream … I hope...
“Elena...”
Her heart hammered in her chest, almost drowning out her thoughts.
If this is a dream, then it's okay to ask who's there, right?
“Who are you?”
Silence greeted her, and an unearthly breeze rippled her bedsheets – not the cool breeze of autumn, but hot and humid, as if a dragon was breathing on her. Beads of sweat began to form behind her neck – this was magic, but not the good kind.
“Elena...” The voice was directly behind her now and her name fluttered against her ear. She spun around, trying to keep her fear reined in and failing when she came face to face with a man, seemingly made out of stone, his face cracked like an old, dry pavement, his eyes the clearest, sharpest green she'd ever seen – inhuman – a demon.
She wanted to scream, but her throat couldn't work the sound out. She tried to move, but her body suddenly seemed like stone itself, heavy and cumbersome. And the demon sat at the edge of her bed. With a grey, cracked finger, he stroked her cheek. A shudder vibrated through her still body.
“Sweet Elena, do you like my gift?”
“G-gift?”
“A magic pen – a powerful pen for a powerful witch.”
“It's – it's yours?” Her throat felt as dry as the cave floor – her words, barely audible, hurt her every time she spoke.
“No, my beautiful witch, it's yours.”
His fingers travelled down her neck. She wanted to smack him, hit him, at the very least swat his hand away, but the back of her neck was burning in warning of the black magic he exuded and she could not move. She could barely shudder, but another one managed to snake its way down her spine.
His fingers stopped at the swell of her breasts and trailed across the edge of her bra. To her horror, her skin began to tingle where he touched her and a warmth spread between her legs.
No!
Her brain suddenly kicked into action and she focused her intent fully on the outcome she desired. She forced her throat to work. “Saepio, saepio, saepio...”
The demon laughed. “Your barriers won't work against me, Elena – you have no idea what I am.”
“Saepio, saepio, saepio...”
No, the barrier wasn't working, but her body was loosening up, her senses were returning, her throat becoming less dry...
His hand snaked its way around her waist.
“I'm going to show you how to use your new gift.” And then she was flush against the length of him, his cheek against hers, his voice a deadly whisper in her ear … “I'm going to fill you with my world.”
Her throat felt normal again, and finally, the scream that had been lodged inside her erupted, and shook the walls of the demon's lair, even as everything faded around her.
~*~
Karl had never been a deep sleeper, but never in his life had anything brought him out of slumber so quickly as the ear-splitting scream coming from Elena's room.
His heart leapt right up into his throat as he dove for his door and half ran, half stumbled down the hall. He'd never heard her scream before, not like this, and once again he found himself overwhelmed by the very essence of her – only this time it was her fear he felt – and Elena never got scared.
He bouldered his way into her room to find her sitting up, tangled in her sheets and tearing at air.
“Elena!”
Did she see him? She seemed to be looking at something...
“Elena! Wake up!”
The look on her face almost had him frozen to the spot, but his practical nature always bested him, and he grabbed her shoulders instead, trying to shake her into full alertness. The woman was rigid under his hands, so he tried a different approach. Collecting her into his arms, he planted a tender kiss on her forehead and rubbed her back, speaking softly, “Elena, honey, everything's all right. It's me – it's Karl.”
She was burning hot, her skin tacky with sweat, but she blinked.
Yes. We're getting somewhere.
“Elena, it's okay ... everything's okay...”
He rocked her in his arms, back and forth.
“Wake up, baby. Wake up...”
She blinked again and turned her head. “K-Karl?”
“Yes, it's me … are you all right?”
She looked skittishly at her surroundings, then surrendered into his arms, her breaths coming out sharp and quick.
“What happened?”
“There was … something was here...”
He frowned at her open window. Did she mean that someone was actually in here?
As if reading his mind, she shook her head. “No. It was a like a dream … but it wasn't a dream.”
She paused and seemed unsure of what to say next.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don't know. I...”
She looked at him – looked right into his eyes with her own hazel ones. Up until now it hadn't even occurred to him that they were holding each other wearing not a hell of a lot, and he forced his mind away from the fact.
A slight smile touched her lips. “I like your eyes – I like that they're so blue...” And then her smile disappeared, she looked away and shuddered. His practical self won through yet again, and he used the opportunity to untangle her sheets and draw them up around her – for his sake more than hers. She shot him a grateful glance.
“It was a demon. I think he was in this room, or at least, his shadow was. He seeped into my mind as I was dreaming.”
“A demon?”
Nothing about Elena or the life she led should surprise him any more, but he'd never heard her mention demons at all in the past, so here he was, once again taken aback.
“I don't know much about them. There are text books and stuff, but my teachers never concentrated on the demon worlds so much … guess I'd better get researching.”
“A demon? I don't know what to say … how do you know it was a demon?”
“Instinct, I guess … and he looked kind of … demonic. Oh, God ...”
“What?”
“The pen … he said it was his gift to me.”
They both looked at the pen that sat atop her n
ightstand.
“Do you believe him?”
She shrugged. “I have no reason not to, I mean … the pen just appeared one day out of nowhere.”
“So you think he planted it for you to find?”
“I suppose he did, and I'd better find out why fast, because I don't think this was a one-off visit. Karl? Karl – what is it?”
Karl had stopped moving; he'd almost stopped breathing. A feeling of dread had sunk into the pit of his stomach. “Do you always sleep with your notebook open?”
“Yes, it's easier for me to write down dreams and stuff when half asleep.”
“Did you write down that?”
Elena looked once again at the notebook and spotted what she had obviously missed before. A strangled cry escaped her lips.
The plane's final engine failed, and the passengers
screamed as it plummeted.
Chapter Three
“Oh, God, I didn't write that, I didn't...” But it was her handwriting staring back at her, down to the very last detail.
“What does it mean?”
Racing past Karl, she grabbed her clothes and ran downstairs. Throwing on her shirt, she opened her laptop and turned on the TV.
When Karl caught up with her, he had the pen and notebook in his hand.
“A plane's gone down … a plane full of people.”
“You don't know that, Elena.”
“Yes, I do! That's what happens when I write with the pen. What I write happens.”
“Yes, but you didn't write this.”
“I don't remember writing it, but what if I did? What if I did it while I was dreaming, like sleepwalking – what if he made me do it?”
The laptop was still loading and the TV was blaring at them. Elena skipped through the channels, landing on the News.
“Nothing … nothing about a plane crash.”
“Maybe it hasn't happened yet.”
She dropped the control and snatched the pen from him. “Of course! Maybe I can stop it.”
“Wait – what if it has happened … and then what you write undoes it. Isn't that detrimental to time, or space, or physics or something...?”
She stopped with the pen in mid-air and chewed her lip in thought. “I don't know. I don't know what happens, but if the plane hasn't crashed yet, the alternative is that all those people die, so I'm willing to take the risk.”
At the last minute, by some miracle,
the plane's engines rumbled to—
“Elena, look...” He nodded at the telly.
The footage showed a video, home made and somewhat blurry, of an aeroplane, crashing into a field near some houses. A fireball went up around it. Residents ran from the disaster, fearing for their own lives, screaming in a language she recognised as Italian – this was happening in Italy. Tears blurred her vision and the pen shook in her trembling hand – she was too late.
“When?” Her knees felt weak.
“Looks recent. Maybe it's just a coincidence.”
“There's no such thing … Karl...” Her legs gave way.
“All right – I've got you.” Strong arms helped her to the couch.
“Karl … I've killed them.”
“Now, I knew you were going to say that … and you know what I'm going to say, right?”
“I did it – this is my writing – I wrote this.” The murderous words, scrawled in black ink, danced across her eyes and seemed to laugh at her.
“Elena, listen to me. If you wrote this, you didn't do it consciously, and I'll bet you anything your dream demon had everything to do with this. You said, he told you he was going to show you how to use the pen.”
“He said he was going to fill me with his world.”
His eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “What the hell does that mean?”
Elena felt the blood rush to her cheeks – she wasn't sure she wanted to hazard a guess. “That he's going to turn me into an evil witch? I don't know.”
With a sigh, Karl ran his hand through his hair, a mannerism he'd inherited from his father. Elena realised years back, that he did it every time he was trying to gather his thoughts.
“I think you should call your mum.”
“What? Why?”
“Self-explanatory, Elena. A whole bunch of people just died, probably because of that pen that you know nothing about, and some demon that you also know nothing about has the power to make you do things you don't want to do.”
Again, she felt herself blushing. Thankfully Karl didn't seem to notice.
“Your mum seems the most logical, immediate solution. Either that, or The Council.”
She grimaced. The Council? Only as the very last resort. Karl was right, her mother may have answers.
“All right. Pass me the phone.”
“Now? It's five o'clock in the morning.”
“If I don't do it now, I'll lose my nerve – pass me the phone.”
~*~
Elena sat, drumming her fingers on the breakfast table, her lukewarm coffee all but forgotten. The oven clock read 8:30am. Time was going too slow.
Having since learnt that there were no survivors of the plane crash, and having heard some of the passengers' last minute phone calls to their loved ones that were starting to stream into the News, Elena had broken down sobbing. Not even Karl had been able to take away the pain of the reality she had indirectly created. When her silence took over and numbness began to sink in, Karl had sat her down at the table and made her a steaming coffee, leaving her alone to drink it, for which she was grateful. Now the numbness had started to fade away, replaced by the edginess she always felt at seeing her mum.
She had been greeted with the usual stony silence when she'd told her over the phone about the dream … and about the pen. Every conversation she had with her mum was awkward and cold, ever since that day she'd healed the butterfly. Before that, she had vague recollections of warmth, kindness, laughter … Okay, so since then, she'd learnt that witches weren't allowed to meddle with life and death, but her mother's reaction had seemed too great for something she hadn't even known she could do at the time. Her eight year old self never really understood what she'd done wrong, her teenage self used to make up scenarios of what the issue might be, and her adult self had given up wanting to know, preferring to keep the peace than open a can of worms that would estrange her even further.
She shuffled in her seat and glanced once more at the clock. She had said that she would be here as soon as she could.
That was three hours ago – she only lives fifteen minutes away, for God's sake!
“Jesus, Elena, chill out. You'll wear a hole through your seat.”
“This was your idea, remember – I didn't want to call her.”
“And was I wrong? What's the alternative?”
Sitting back, she felt a sulk coming on – she couldn't think of an alternative.
“It'll be all right. Do you want me to make you another coffee?”
The doorbell rang. Nervously, Elena jumped up. She really was all over the place.
A warm hand on her shoulder encouraged her back down. “I'll get it – you try and relax a bit.”
Picking up the intercom, Karl buzzed her in and walked off through the lounge to open their front door. She heard her mother's heels echoing on the stone stairs outside, getting louder with every step. She heard Karl's warm, friendly hello greeting, and then her mother's voice, curt, crisp – a startling contrast to his – “Good morning, Karl. Still hanging around, are you?”
Elena bit back the anger that surged up her throat. Just keep your cool. You only have to do this for maybe an hour, two at the most, and then she'll be gone.
Her footsteps made their way into the kitchen.
Elena rose from the table and turned around. “Hello, Mother.”
“Elena. So, where's the pen?”
Straight to business then. No 'how are you?', no peck on the cheek. Typical.
“Right here on the table.”
&n
bsp; All three of them stared at it, as if waiting for it to announce itself. Of course, it did nothing.
“Goodness, it's so … unassuming.”
“Yes. Mum, do you know anything about it?”
“There's a fable about a 'witching pen' – it was always thought to be a fairy tale.”
“Any chance it's not?”
“Apparently so. But first, tell me about your demon.”
Elena baulked at the reference to the demon being hers. “I pretty much told you everything on the phone.”
“You didn't tell me what he looked like.”
“Oh, um … he … his eyes were green – a brilliant green, like emeralds shining in the sun. His skin was grey and looked like it was made of stone, and it was cracked, like a dry pavement – and hard, but only like leathered skin, not hard like stone.”
“You touched him?” Her mother's voice was tight, her lips drawn in. She looked disturbed.
“No. He – he touched me...”
Unbidden, her mind replayed his fingers trailing down her neck, how they felt on the tops of her breasts … she knew her face was an obvious shade of red. Out of the corner of her eye, Elena saw Karl fold his arms across his chest. Shit!
Her mother was eyeing her suspiciously. “Were you attracted to him?”
“What? No!” She answered too quickly, and her face turned a shade darker.
Her mother's eyes narrowed. “I see.”
Karl was standing still as a statue and Elena desperately wanted to explain it wasn't what he thought … or at the very least for the ground to swallow her up.
“You met a Shanka demon.”
“You know about demons? What's a Shanka demon? Why have you never told me before? Why don't I know about demons?”