Inked (The Ink Keepers Book 1)

by N. I. Rojas

  “I’m getting tired.” -The Graphylux said understanding Kyra’s intentions. - “I’ll just have power for one more trick for now. Then I’ll rest.”

  Kyra watched her stained forearm. She hated it. She was going to write something so good and effective that could erase any kind of ink, including the enchanted ink of the Graphylux.

  “Fairy Girl, we need to cross the mountain. You have to write a bridge.” -Mackenzie told her while he pointed towards the giant elves. One was already free and helping the others to escape. Kyra was frightened. Yes, he was right. The black stains in her forearm would have to wait, but she won’t forget.

  As she wrote, a log lengthy enough to go from side to side began to appear between the peak of the two mountains, making way for Kyra and Mackenzie to cross to the other mountain. The Graphylux flew from Kyra’s hand, making magic in the sky. Sparkles flew on all directions, like perfect fireworks. And the improvised bridge, which first looked like a mirage, was as real as Kyra’s own hands.

  Kyra walked over the log thinking what a bad idea this had really been because she was uncoordinated, and her balance wasn’t any better. If I fall, he won’t save me , was everything she could think about. At the distance, in a plateau on top of the mountain, Kyra and Mackenzie both saw a few trees towering high to the sky, and in one of them a tree house. Faster than before, they both ran looking for that tree, and when they found it, they started climbing. It could work as hideout for the night as Sunday mercifully was coming to an end. In every branch they found gold coins, small gemstones, and silver doubloons. Stuffing their pockets with the treasure, both kept going up, but soon the tree turned to be thin and unstable for the weight of them two. Kyra kept climbing, and Mackenzie gave her a push to enter the tree house. A virgin garden with one lonely plant welcomed Kyra. A treasure chest hidden underneath the shinning Dhalia. Kyra wished to count the Dhalia petals, but she had a theory. If she could count the petals of a flower, the quantity of petals would turn into new freckles in her body.

  Kyra stretched her hands trying to grab the small wooden box. Her eyes were captivated by its beautiful shades of purple, yellow and pink. A kaleidoscope moving and mixing, hypnotizing her. She felt something, a pinch. A bite! The Dhalia was a carnivore specimen, rare to find as Kyra had just heard talking about it in works of fiction her friend Ash used to talk about. Despite its beauty and rarity, Kyra was officially mad with plants that could eat or bite.

  Kyra took the Graphylux out of the waist of the green pants, but when she tried to write nothing happened. The carnivore plant tried to bite Kyra again, but this time, she buried the pen deep into the plant’s head, snatching the small box with the other hand.

  The house wobbled convulsive from side to side, falling to the abysm. How lucky she was, as Mackenzie had held her by the green stockings he gave her earlier.

  “Okay. I’ll give a ten to this pant!” -Kyra said as Mackenzie flew from the tree, carrying her until reaching the solid floor between the trees.

  Night appeared faster than they thought, or maybe their day full of adventure had been so strenuous that had ended quicker than normal. But Kyra was grateful, as this Sunday had lasted an eternity. They made a camp and devoured all the hazelnuts Mackenzie had caramelized with strawberry sauce. Kyra would have hunt something, but she was so tired that preferred to eat all they had until the next day. She’ll wake up early to collect food, she promised herself.

  Maybe the moonlight was the one to blame of Kyra’s sleepless night. Moving from side to side in the teepee Mackenzie improvised, Kyra found she was restless enough to give up on sleeping. Usually, Mackenzie could peacefully sleep in front of a snoring troll. There weren’t too many things that could come between him and a long rest. This night was different. He was asleep now, exhausted, after silently crying again for SunFish, a good pet, always making jokes in a language Mackenzie didn’t understand, but funny jokes after all.

  The closer they got to Mount Grimm, the erratic everything turned out to be. Nothing, not even time was according to normality, just as the Wizard had told Mackenzie. Trust no apparatus… time is changing… But normal was a concept hard to define. Normal was the way Kyra preferred things. Perhaps her father tried to prepare her for this in many ways, but Kyra recognized this was way beyond his knowledge.

  Normal was the existence of witches and wizards in Mackenzie’s world. He could have known better before making a deal with the crazy Wizard.

  Tired of not being able to sleep, Kyra sat on the floor, examining the things she had collected. The Graphylux and a strange key they found inside the treasure chest. She had her old backpack again. Mackenzie had recovered it before coming back. Rummaging through it, Kyra checked the things her father had packed for her. Clothes, MRE (meal ready to eat her father brought from a military friend), and a book. She stuffed the clothes and MREs inside the backpack and went out of the teepee to read under the moonlight.

  The book was handmade, written by an unknown author, but to Kyra’s surprise it was dedicated to her. The noises of the night tried to scare her, but her senses were far away immersed in a thought about that book. The roar of a lion echoed thunderously behind her. With fear, Kyra turned around to meet the wild animal face to face.

  The roar turned out to be just a bull frog eating termites. Determined to ignore any other noise, she came back to the book, that would be piece of cake.

  The sad part, Kyra recognized, was that this book was a work of fantasy.

  Chapter 15: The Inklings

  Monday morning

  There are things created by ink. Things with the right to see us. Creatures with the privilege and ability to be invisible to normal eyes. -The book began saying so. - Captive shadows, trapped souls, prisoners without chains, all of them been punished by the Lady of the Night. She’s not a heart without a soul. She is a heartless soul.

  Waiting to reach Mount Grimm before the next sunset, Kyra and Mackenzie packed the camp even before the first ray of sun had touched Alter Land. She hadn’t sleep, but she doesn’t need it. She had a night full of fantasy just under the spell of that book. She didn’t read enough, but what she read was still under analysis in her mind. She had never enjoyed this kind of book before, but last night she gave it a chance to see life in a different way. There, everything was tastier, fantastical. This world had proven her so far how wrong she had always been. And this book, a mix between prose and verse, weird reality and illusion, was magical enough for Kyra to hear bells rattling every time she turned a page. She could even smell smoke and see fishes protected in strong bubbles flying over their heads.

  Mackenzie was acting weird -Kyra thought- weirder than usual. And that was too much to consider, as his behavior was always crazy, irreverent, almost bordering on the insults and mockery. He had his own reasons as his life has turned into crazy chaos since that foolish light appeared in the sky. If only he hadn’t gone looking for trouble! Paytime had come.

  Dark spots had appeared close to them this dawn, in the ground and the sky, and between the clouds seconds after Kyra had left the camp looking for fresh water. Even in the water of the small river veins Kyra could see some stained blurs. She showed Mackenzie the discovery and he recognized it too. Sirina had shown him this in a dream. Alter Land was getting sick faster. Sick of the way it was created. Sick of its central elements. As water and oxygen are main elements in Planet Earth, Ink and Fantasy are main elements in Alter Land. Obviously, the Wizard was no longer holding his healing spell on the land, leaving it to rotten and stain, at mercy of self-destruction.

  Kyra remembered something her father used to say: From dust you are… and to dust you shall return . That was happening in Alter Land. A world created of ink was going back to be just that… ink.

  They needed to go faster now, unless they wanted to end as ink. Mount Grimm was still far on foot. If Kyra hadn’t been so stubborn they would be flying straight to that place to find whatever was waiting there for them. Sirina? Mr. Marin? Her mom? Per
haps Kyra and Mackenzie could rescue their beloveds soon.

  Fire surrounded them while they were jogging fast in between the skirts of both mountains. Mount Grimm was still far, right behind the huge cloak of rainbow mist that could be seen at the distance, just a tiny cotton candy cloud enticing them from afar. War cries were a late warning because Kyra had already been taken prisoner. Mackenzie fell to the grass, asleep under a strong spell of unheard songs and sleeping darts. Unconscious in the ground, Mackenzie was surrounded by the natives. A dart- perhaps with Galos and Mandragora Officinarum- was embedded in his arm. That was the last thing Kyra saw of him.

  Kyra tried to fight against her captors, but they were stronger than her. Soon she understood the natives were repeating something in a language unknown to her, their eyes transfixed, mired in a deep trance.

  They tied her tightly as they ran at full speed with her in tow. Arriving to a beautiful lagoon with glowing rainbow colors reflected in the crystallized water, Kyra was forced to board a canoe. Rowing lagoon inside, the natives watched Kyra like she was the devil incarnated. Kyra was amazed and not just for the little kindness of the natives.

  The exquisite beauty of that place was mesmerizing. It was a spell of course, a mirage drawn with ink just to mislead her. Beyond being thinking on how she could rescue her father, she needed to think on how to rescue herself. And Probably rescue Mackenzie.

  Flying fishes appeared the deeper they traveled into the lagoon, their dilated, bulging eyes cautioning her of an upcoming danger. Ignoring the warning Kyra looked around, recognizing at great distance the mountain Mackenzie was talking about. Right now, Mount Grimm was just a boat trip away. But this was a boat trip in the wrong direction. Now she regretted having left the Graphylux inside her bag. This time she couldn’t write something to save herself.

  The natives discussed something in their strange language, but as they pointed at her, Kyra knew they were talking about the strange markings she had in her forearm.

  “Oh, this is just ink, guys. A tattoo I did to myself.” -She tried to explain. - “It’s okay, believe me. It’s just ink.”

  Kyra was ignored and a signal was given. The boat stopped immediately. A strange ritual started as they all clustered around Kyra, singing a lot of weird melodies, their eyes turning around wildly, displaying only the white of the eye, whipping her with palm branches. She could only guess they were performing an exorcism on her tiny body. Everything went cold and soon she stopped breathing.

  Her lungs filling with sweet water the deeper she sank into the depths of the lagoon. Her hands and legs were tied with a strong knot she couldn’t undo. Air bubbles left her mouth and she only felt cold and pity of herself and her poor father. He would die there, just like her. In a place where their bodies would never be recovered. Something hit her head and her eyes were blank at last. Peacefully sleeping under the kiss of death.

  ******

  The dentist had never been in this place before despite the many times he had asked Jadline- his lovely girlfriend- to take him there. Everything he knew about this place was from stories she told him, tales of fantasy and beauty and mystery. How many times he had asked her to show him this place she talked about with so much passion, but she always said it wasn’t possible. The dentist always ended with the conviction that Jadline was just talking nonsense. Something you cannot see, touch, feel… something you cannot prove. But he also contradicted himself. He couldn’t see love, touch the feeling… but it was there, fighting for ways to prove itself.

  And there he was. Hungry, thirsty, with cold. Fear reigning over his body and soul. Jadline had told the truth. She wasn’t just a lunatic in love with a fantasy she had invented. Many times he had considered his girlfriend was just some kind of frustrated writer living in the world she had so created with such difficulty. She was right after all. The poor dentist feared Kyra was in great danger. If Jadline was right about this entire place, then the dangers were as real as the fact that he loves white teeth. As useless as fluoride to a mouth full of cavities, just as good-for-nothing Kyra’s father felt.

  The prison in which he was held captive was a mess of black strings strangled as a giant web. After trying to break it, he just gave up. Unbreakable, impassable. A ghostly unsolvable puzzle. A maze with secret doors with roads to perdition-ville. He was sure Jadline wrote about the impossibility to survive prisons like this in the book she handed him minutes before leaving him with their child in arms.

  How much he regretted having doubted of her earlier in their relationship, when she just came and went to discretion, making him consider she was playing twisted on his heart. It had been the instant she left, opening a magic portal in his own backyard that he began to believe in her magical world. She had forced him to promise he would take the diamond from the floor and then hide it until their daughter turned fifteen, when she was to be sent to Alter Land before the Inklings, witches and wizards decided to come after her. There, Jadline would protect her no matter what.

  If everything were so easy, Jadline would have never been trapped and the Inklings would have never decided to begin a war against the writer who let them just fall on the paper- shapeless, without emotions to work with, without purpose. Wasted drops of ink.

  Jadline did what she thought proper. She promised them that a girl living among humans would come to write them with a special purpose, something so amazingly magical they would be glad to have waited for so long. Just then Mackenzie appeared. The girl living among humans turned out to be a boy who didn’t know to write a single word and who didn’t possess the Graphylux. The Inklings were so mad that held Jadline prisoner forever.

  So used to the cobblestone path in his garden, the dentist felt chills just watching all this green pasture under his cage. Without wind it swayed. Without water, it grew inches taller every single day. The worst thing was that every inch closer, the grass grew sharper needles wishing to sink deep into his skin. The rain has started now, inclement and cold, injecting his body as dangerous medicine. The strong the wind blew, the farther the cage traveled. Fear and uncertainty reigned his every thought. Where he would end up? Would he see his daughter again?

  The raindrops hitting against his skin felt as powerful as fat chunks of hail. Curled like a baby in the mother’s womb, the dentist prayed silently for his daughter and for Jadline, so they won’t be suffering these calamities too.

  Alter Land had learned its way to be cruel. Sadly, the human mind who designed it left a lot of loose ends. The characters had developed, extending their capacities beyond what was written. Witches and wizards had been the worst, finding passages to travel between their fantasy to the reality of those who read it. A space misplaced, a word misspelled, ellipsis to drama… All those things were seized to earn power, and the result has been a real world full of crazy fantasies. A tangled mess.

  “Oh, poor human!” -The sweet voice said. - “I’ll sing a song to make you feel in a sunny day at the lagoon.”

  Chapter 16: Some drops of the Enchanted Ink

  Monday

  He woke up to a strange taste in his mouth, something like bitter oranges. To be Mackenzie’s less favorite taste in the world, he was perhaps too relaxed. Of course he was. The sleeping dart was still inlaid in his arm, thin like a pin, painful as dragon claw. It was hard to express how much Mackenzie hated to be sedated with this dreadful darts. Indians had the bad habit to hit him with a dart before taking him to their secret settlement. The small poisoned dart -the evidence- made the culprit too obvious.

  But it hadn’t always been that way. The first time he felt this kind of dart had been the most traumatic thing that had happened to him in Alter Land. After waking up that time, he discovered he had been sedated by an old lady who took him as an adopted grandson. She resulted to be an evil witch who forced Mackenzie to call her “grandmother”. A granny who always forgot his name, who forced him to do things he didn’t want.

  He escaped one day, hiding in a forest where he got lost. He disco
vered the forest was forbidden to humans, but nothing happened to him. Stories about that forest came and went; Stories of drafts and trolls and wolves, and many other creatures in which he wouldn’t have believed before, when he was just a normal boy. Before he had seen all of them with his own eyes.

  His head hurt, maybe because it was full of blood already. His feet were tied and he was hanging from a tree, his head down, closer to an unknown heat source. Screaming and calling for help, Mackenzie trembled, trying to free himself. The more he shook the closer he got to the heat. It wasn’t the first time he had been caught prisoner, but it never came this far.

  The bubbling cauldron right under his head confirmed he was about to become dinner.

  “Oh, look what we have here? The birdbrain boy! The whole forest knows by now how you killed your little flying fish. Nobody is happy with you now. Weirdo murderer!” -Mackenzie cursed to his insides. This had to be another work of the Wizard. That crazy dirty maggot surely knew how to make people suffer in misery.

  “Witch?” -He asked in surprise.

  “Can be.” -She answered back, showing Mackenzie her new face. - “I came to show you how beautiful I turned to be here in Alter Land, just as you advised.”