Jenni stopped and stared at Kiri, as if willing her to give Jenni the answer she wanted.
“Yes,” Kiri said. “I wish to try the transformation.”
Jenni leaped up, whooping, shot across the couple of yards and hugged Kiri. She didn’t feel anything like Shannon, but Jenni was a friend, too, Kiri hoped. A friend and mentor who’d steer her through the whole scary process.
Then Lathyr had put his arm around Kiri’s shoulders and smiled down at her, nodding. “I think you will do very well.”
She nearly sagged with relief against him. “Thank you,” she said.
No sound announced the appearance of the King of Air, Cloudsylph, as he materialized on the opposite end of the small porch.
“You have decided to become Lightfolk,” he said matter-of-factly, looking at Kiri as both Lathyr and Aric bowed to him. Jenni rose and bowed, too.
“Yes,” Kiri said. She bobbed her knees in a feeble curtsy.
The King nodded, not meeting her gaze, probably because he could ensnare her so easily. “Very good. I believe the ritual should take place as soon as possible. This evening.”
Kiri stood frozen, but Jenni jerked. “We’d planned on it for Thursday afternoon, soon after the new moon.”
“I understand,” said Cloudsylph. “But I am available tonight, and I have a ritual myself on the new moon.”
“I don’t think—” Lathyr began smoothly.
“Is Ms. Palger not ready?” Cloudsylph’s beautiful silver brows rose.
Lathyr stiffened beside Kiri. “Yes.”
“It is always best to carry through immediately on an important decision. Doubts arise later. Don’t you agree?” he asked Kiri.
She nodded. She’d had doubts, had them now, wouldn’t voice them, figured she’d better damn well not feel them.
“Any doubts must be banished before you enter the ritual dance circle,” Lathyr confirmed.
Kiri nodded again, said, “I know.”
“King Cloudsylph, we would be honored for you to take part in the circle,” Aric said, his voice slightly rough.
The Air King waved a hand. “I will return to Eight Corp until I am needed for the ritual.” He glanced at the house and the Emberdrake brownies hurried out of the brick wall.
“We will begin the ceremony before moonset and end it before sunset,” said Hartha, the female brownie.
Everyone nodded, but Kiri was clueless.
Cloudsylph vanished, and those who remained relaxed. Kiri swayed on her feet and Lathyr’s arm came back around her. Nice.
“Most Lightfolk feel moon and sun phases,” he said. “Moonset is 4:38 p.m. today and sunset is 6:38 p.m.”
“We can start the ceremony at four,” Jenni said with a questioning glance at Kiri.
A little more than two hours from now. Tension seized Kiri’s muscles, then she forced herself to relax. “All right,” Kiri said. She cleared her throat. “I’ve, uh, set all my affairs in order.”
Without a word, the brownies whisked back inside.
Kiri met Jenni’s eyes. “You’ve met—at least online—my friends Shannon and Averill Johnston. They are my heirs.”
Jenni nodded.
“I think I’ll go look at the koi,” Kiri said blankly, and went back out the door. She crossed the street without looking and stared at the pond, not even seeing the fish. She stood in a daze for a couple of minutes, then headed home.
Half an hour later, a sharp, fast rat-a-tat-tat knock came at her door. She went and looked out the peephole and saw nothing. Again. No evil in Mystic Circle...so she opened the door, to Rock, the brownie. She’d learned that the brownieman didn’t really serve Jenni and Aric Emberdrake, but Jenni’s old cat, Chinook.
He strode in quickly, but with a swagger, hopped up onto the round arm of the chair and stared pointedly at the kitchen cupboards. While she was out, Kiri had bought some miniature chocolate candy bars. She put a variety in a bowl and took it to Rock.
He grinned, his eartips quivered, then his ears rolled up and down in delight. Plunging his small hands into the bowl, he stirred the candies around, then came out with one that was dark chocolate and nuts. He ate it, paper and all.
“The Princess and her Consort and the Sir spoke with us brownies,” he said confidingly.
Jenni, Aric and Lathyr? Kiri raised her brows. “Oh?”
Rock inclined his head until his chin touched his chest, then took another miniature, crunched it down. “We checked the new community room hub and the wheel of tunnels, and all are ready.” His little chest expanded. “We are very efficient beings. If you become one of us, you will be blessed—and welcomed, of course.”
Kiri prayed she wouldn’t become a brownie.
Rock hopped down and pulled out a paper and some small bottles from his flat pockets, a neat trick. “This is from Hartha, the Emberdrake browniefem. Instructions for your cleansing and preparation for the ritual. She will send over a robe for you a half hour before the ceremony begins.”
“Thank you,” Kiri said. Her stomach squeezed tightly. She assured herself she was committed and procedures had started.
Rock’s eyes seemed to get bigger in his face. “You will love being Lightfolk.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You will see,” he said, dropping all the chocolate candy into his pockets, which again remained flat, and trooped through the wall and outside.
Kiri sat down on the chair. Doubts were natural, so were the rationalizations, pros and cons that whirred in her mind like a hamster wheel—those that had plagued her all weekend.
Rock’s head popped through the wall and she squeaked, shrank back in her chair at the sight of the disembodied head. “I forgot to tell you to look at the door to the tunnel and the chamber in your basement. It is visible now that you can see magic, and will open to your fingers.” That said, he vanished again.
A door in her basement! A tunnel! And maybe she could get a good look at the space beforehand. Visualization was always a good tool before doing something important. It might even settle her. She glanced at the clock. Less than two hours.
She went to the basement door, turned on the lights and descended the stairs, that needed cleaning, especially if any visitors would be coming to her house from a hitherto unknown tunnel. Too late now.
And there, in the west brick wall, was a lovely door that matched the style of her house, and that neither she nor her Realtor had seen before. The frame was rectangular and wood of a light walnut color, wide with grooves and small squares with rosettes on each side at the top.
The door itself looked to be a darker wood, oak maybe. It, too, was rectangular, and the knob was one of those antique brass ones with a fussy pattern and polished so each curve and angle gleamed in the dull light.
When she touched the knob, a tingle of magic fizzed up her fingers, a feeling she was familiar with from the gloves in the game. Yes, magic, and from what she now knew, balanced elemental magic. She heard her own rapid breath, realized she had an inner trembling going on.
All the times she’d been in magical places—the executive floor of Eight Corp, the Castle at the top of Mystic Circle, even Jenni and Aric Emberdrake’s house—she’d been unaware that they’d contained magic. Now she was about to walk through a door made by brownies, traverse a tunnel made by the small beings and find the place where she’d become a magical person herself...or die.
Gigantic deal.
Two good yoga breaths and she turned the handle and opened the door and blinked at the bright and cheerful pale yellow tiles that covered the corridor.
Wow. And they were pristine.
She stepped in, then decided to leave one of her shoes in the crack of the door just in case the thing might swing shut and lock her in. Taking both trainers off, she left them and padded down the hall stocking-footed. Again magic tingled, this time with every step she took.
As she proceeded, the tiles took on a deeper color, to gold, then golden brown, then brown by the time she came to the door
at the end. Another deep breath and she depressed the iron latch and stepped into a large, circular chamber.
Rock was right—it was beautiful. The walls were set with panels of various stones: cream-colored marble with gold veins, brown granite; and semiprecious stones: rose quartz, malachite, turquoise, lapis lazuli. A rainbow of stones, and the largest panel was due north and made of gold.
There were nine doors, one for each house in Mystic Circle, so the room she was in was like a large hub in the middle of a wheel, with the tunnels as spokes. She vaguely recalled some wheel images/symbols in Transformation.
Naturally the floor was mosaic. A few feet in, a pattern of rainbowed tiles began. They were set in a spiral that seemed to flow with magical energy, a path that was wide enough for one person to tread, and again the opening to that spiral path was in the north. Brownies and dwarves, earth elementals and the direction associated with earth was north.
Kiri couldn’t imagine walking straight into the center of the room without following the path. So she stood, toes flexing under her, staring at the room.
The ceiling was arched and domelike and she marveled that this was all under the lovely park in the middle of Mystic Circle. That probably should have irritated her, because she liked the park so, and worried about tree roots and whatever, but instead this place augmented the feeling of serenity she got from the park. Comforting.
The door to the north opened and Lathyr walked through.
Their eyes met, and she thought she saw yearning in his, but he simply gave a half bow. He straightened but made no move to circle the room to her.
Power pulsed, and she became aware that magic cycled through her, affecting her. If she could feel it, so might every other human. If humanity on earth had no magic in and of themselves, she and others like her would transform and claim it now, and that seemed right. Making magic their own, on their own world, seemed right.
She stood straighter.
“A lovely chamber,” Lathyr said. “Equal to any I’ve seen in the minor palaces.”
Of course there’d really be Lightfolk palaces. “Where’s—” She stopped. Would he tell her, even before she became Lightfolk? As if she were a threat to them.
She shifted feet.
“Kiri,” Lathyr said, in a deep rich voice she hadn’t heard before. “You may decide against this action up to the very moment you step onto the path to dance to the center of the circle.” He waved to the very middle of the room, a ruby heart inset into the final curl.
Dancing along the path? That hadn’t been explained to her before. She swallowed and nodded.
“But once our circle closes around you, you must be dedicated with all your being to becoming a Lightfolk.” His hand dropped, expression got even more intense. “I believe it will be an ordeal, Kiri, and one you must survive.”
So she voiced her deepest hope. “Do you think I can become an elfem?”
Now he crossed to her, without illusion so she saw his gliding grace. He reached out as if to take her hands like he’d done so often before, but stopped.
She took his hands, enjoyed the connection between them, the magic, hoped she didn’t show her pleasure, but kept her face properly serious. “Do you think I can become an elfem?”
He hesitated.
“Truth!” she demanded.
“In truth, then, no. I think becoming an elf is something your mind wants and not your heart.”
“And my body will follow my heart.”
His expression turned granite impassive. “I think you need to have no split in mind or heart.” He cleared his throat. “I know you like control of your life.”
“Who doesn’t?” she shot back.
He inclined his head. “But I think you may need to surrender to this. Have faith in the magic in you, in the balanced power of this place, know who you are to your depths and surrender.”
She let out a long and shaky breath. “Not a fight I should win?”
“Who would you be fighting, Kiri? The magic that will conform to your deepest wishes? If so, stop this now. Yourself? You should not fight yourself.”
“All right. I understand.” Breathe in and out. “Do you think I might become a sprite?” And die.
His clasp firmed around her fingers. “No. I think you have too much potential magic for that. I would not let you do this if I believed you would perish.”
That was good news, and, like he said, she heard that in her ears, her brain accepted it, but she had doubts in her heart. “What kind of Lightfolk do you think my innermost me is?”
“Truly? I believe you will become mer or naiad. Water Realm called to you, Kiri.”
“Uh-huh.”
A last squeeze of her fingers and he let them go. “You have the ability to become a dwarfem, too.”
“Not a brownie?”
“I do not believe so.”
“And you’re the best expert.”
His lips twitched a grimace. “Yes. I do not have a great deal of experience with this, but I have more than anyone else.”
“More sense of potential magic.”
He kissed her cheek. “Kiri,” he said in an American accent. “You’re loaded with it. Later.”
He moved faster than she could see and was gone, and she didn’t quite know how he had vanished.
Oh, she wanted to know those secrets. How Aric and Jenni and Lathyr appeared and disappeared. What travel powers they might have. She hadn’t asked Rock, who had jabbered on about moving through the earth, a power both brownies and dwarves had, and she wasn’t sure how fast that was. But with magic everything could be fast.
Absently she moved around the room, feeling the magic. All the elements were mixed and balanced. She could tell the difference in the atmosphere in here and the computer room at Eight Corp—which felt mostly of Jenni’s fire and some of Lathyr’s water. Closing her eyes in memory, she let her tongue curl to the top of her mouth. Eight Corp was mostly air. If the Air King was the most powerful dude who usually hung there, that would explain it.
And she’d made a circuit of the room, liked it. Definitely special.
She could do this. Being a naiad or a mer would be wonderful. Smiling, she went through her door and back up to her house and smelled luscious odors—brownies had left a rich stew on her stove along with a mouthwatering small loaf of bread that Kiri knew Tamara had made.
She dug in.
Then she followed the instructions, bathed and meditated to music and fixed her will to become Lightfolk, her intention in her mind, rooted in her heart.
She donned the raw silk robe, light but opaque, for which she was thankful. It felt odd, only wearing one long thing, but she figured so many other new and wonderful things were about to happen that she’d soon be distracted.
Kiri was ready when Amber Davail came to lead her to the circle—transformation or doom.
Chapter 21
AMBER SPOKE TO Kiri about the day, the pretty sky, the warm weather, the small slice of waning crescent moon low in the sky, everyday matters, as they walked downstairs and through the tunnel to the new community ritual chamber.
When Kiri saw everyone there to dance the ritual for her transformation, her eyes stung. The Emberdrakes stood in the south of the circle, Jenni smiling at her. Rafe awaited Amber in the southwest and nodded at Kiri. Tamara Thunderock took the exact northeast compass point. All of the brownies were there. So was Jenni’s old cat, sitting, tail around her feet, smiling smugly.
Kiri’s breath hitched as she saw the King of Air, Cloudsylph, taking the power point of due east, and Mrs. Daurfin and a strange dwarf directly north.
Amber’s firesprite, Sargas, wasn’t the only sprite there, another firesprite hovered in the south, and a trio of airsprites in the southeast. The west point had Lathyr, of course, and a naiad and naiader on either side of him. There were even a couple of women Kiri stared at until she realized they were dryads. Fascinating.
“Who are these people?” Kiri asked Amber under her breath.<
br />
“Part of Eight Corp’s technology-magic Meld team.” Amber grinned. “We invited them to take part in the ritual and everyone came!”
“That’s so nice of them. Thank you all for coming!” Kiri projected her voice.
“We are honored to be here,” Cloudsylph said.
Huh. Wow. Excitement bubbled through Kiri.
Amber walked Kiri to the opening of the spiral path, then took her place next to her husband.
“Everyone join energies, please,” Cloudsylph said.
One of the dryads bobbed up and down on her toes. “Oooh, such lovely strong and balanced magic.” She aimed her comment at Lathyr with a fluttering of lashes. Kiri didn’t like that.
Whoops. No negative energy. That could make things go wrong, she was sure.
The king nodded to her and smiled, and her feet stuck to the ground. “We will begin our dance as you dance the spiral path.”
She didn’t consider herself a good dancer, and it was unexpectedly hard to take that first step onto a path with her bare feet.
Of course, once she did that, she was committed to everything. Maybe her “dance” down the spiral would center her mind and her will. She told herself it would.
She felt the focus of everyone’s eyes, but no one spoke. She thought that’s what she was waiting for, some prompt. But as a minute stretched into two, she understood that they were all respecting her choice.
People, Lightfolk and human, respecting her. She liked that.
One last question to her heart. Did she really want to do this? Risk her life for the chance to become magic? No guarantees of what elemental being she might become. No guarantees of her skills or spells.
No guarantees of life.
Her gaze went to the Air King, the beautiful elf. His expression remained impassive, and it seemed as if he could await her forever. He had a preternatural patience.
Supernatural. Just like she wanted to be.
She looked in the opposite direction. Lathyr, too, was serious. Handsome in a different way than the king. And he, too, gave no prompting, no smile, no tiny nod of his head.
Enchanted Ever After (Mystic Circle) Page 19