Enchanting the Fey- The Complete Series

by Rebecca Bosevski

Prasinus afa, an emerald dust used in spelling others to reveal themselves. It was one of the trickier spells, requiring more than twenty ingredients, so I eagerly took out a small plastic baggie and scooped some of the Prasinus afa into it.

  Better get some more, this spell might come in handy seeing as no one ever tells me what is actually going on. I filled two more baggies and put them into my bag before zipping it closed.

  I followed the pink light, which darkened the further I got from the white beam. I turned a corner to the left, then another to the right, and hit a wall. I knew it! I turned back, retracing my steps until I made it back to the cavern, my blood-soaked rag still sitting in the dirt by the wall.

  I headed for the narrow hole. The opening was too small for me to fit on my hands and knees, so I had to take off my bag to push it ahead of me as I army-crawled my way through.

  “Always got to be the hard way,” I bitched, scraping my hands as I pulled myself through. The tunnel widened and I was able to crawl properly a few more feet before I almost lost the bag off the edge of a black hole.

  “Fuck!”

  The red veins ran down the wall of the hole, but even they struggled to illuminate the distance of the chasm. I took a few breaths to settle my nerves and swung the bag onto my back before edging out onto a ledge barely big enough to stand on.

  I edged around the opening, back pressed against the sharp walls.

  “Why am I doing this?” I asked myself, already knowing I had no real answer. Just over halfway around, the wall opened up and I entered an obstacle course of rocks. Climbing over and under ledges and boulders, I made my way from beginning to end.

  Finally, squishing beneath the final overhead section, I saw the lake of fire.

  Ash and charred leaves skipped on a dry breeze around the hundreds of shriveled stumps littering the floor of the Outer Reaches. The heat billowing from the lake of fire prickled my skin and I willingly lost myself in the dance of the flames.

  A cold vice wrapping around my ankle broke my daze and, glancing down, I screamed at the man that had emerged from the lake of fire, grasping my ankle. Though he wasn’t exactly a man. His waxy skin was shriveled and sunk in around his skull, and though he had no eyes, he peered at me through the black holes that had once held them.

  I kicked out as I edged myself away from the fire. With each struggling step, I merely pulled him further out of the lake.

  “Let go!” I screamed as I fell backwards onto the ground. Reaching forward, I pried at his hands, the thick skin stripping away from his bones, and a green ooze like the inside of a rotten frog squished beneath my fingers.

  Gross gross gross!

  Even with little flesh left on his hands, his steely grip remained. I had to twist to reach for the silver blade in my bag and, as his bones dug into the skin at my ankles, I wrapped my hand around its hilt and pulled it free. As I slashed at his arm, green sprayed across my legs and he cried out, releasing his hold on me he scurried backwards, returning to the lake and disappearing beneath the flames.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  I stood, resting my weight on the other ankle as I fingered the clump of hair that remained stuck to the gash on my head-but it hadn’t reopened.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  I wiped the green goo from my fingers and the blade and put it back into the bag so I could look over the pages again. The sooner I got the ingredients I needed, the better. The hardest would be Bane—a type of herb with many varieties only indistinguishable by the number of streaks on its leaves. I needed Bane for the spell to Unleash Mortimer’s dream, even though I wasn’t sure I would ever do Mortimer’s spell. It didn’t tell me what it did exactly and I’d decided I would have to find out who Mortimer was before I would consider making his dream a reality.

  Holding the pages in one hand and the blade in the other, I walked slowly, not wanting to be caught off guard again. The soot on the ground kicked up with each step I took, whirling in patterns in the air before falling back to the blackened land.

  Peeking out from behind a charred stump swayed a shrub of Bane, its leaves glistening. It had three streaks of silver on each leaf.

  Not the one I need. Dammit.

  I collected a few leaves anyway and pulled a small section of root from the soil.

  I’m not coming back here again, better to grab some now.

  I found Baynar grass, spindly blades of grass speckled with blue-green spots, and silver ash, beads of sap excreted when an Alaman tree was burned. I ran my thumb along the blades of Baynar. Its spots raised to the touch and left a blue-green powder on my skin that I quickly wiped on the back of my pants-I wasn’t sure if the dust alone would do anything to me.

  Parnet stones were not actually stones, but seeds of a flowering Marlo bush. It was harder to find, its red petals blending in with the partially alight ash dancing on the breeze. Troges bark and Rokens root were parts of the Alaman tree, too, the bark on the newest branches the only usable section, the older bark held no power. I had to climb onto a broken tree branch to reach the new bark.

  It creaked beneath me and I reached as high as I could, finally grasping the bark just in time as I slipped down the trunk, grazing my leg and stopping just before the jagged break would have impaled some part of me.

  I took a slow breath to calm my pulse and that’s when I saw it: peeking out of the broken stump grew a small plant, its leaves shimmering with five silver lines each.

  “Yes!”

  All that was left was the Bane and the nocturnes fire. Great, back to where Hollow Man attacked me.

  I put the pages back into my pocket and pulled Sacorasies from the bag. If he came at me again, I would do more than slash his hand. I’ll blow your fucking sunken, fucked-up head off.

  I made my way back to the lake of fire, collecting a few un-named leaves and roots along the way. Nocturnes fire, something I couldn’t possibly transport, was required for the awakening spell, so I pulled the darkened moss and flakers leaves I had collected earlier in the week from my bag and, picking up a smooth rock, knelt by the fire’s edge.

  Kneeling by the lake’s edge, I kept an eye on the ripples of fire to be sure the hollow man did not return.

  I began crushing the leaves with a rock fragment on the ground, careful to keep Sacorasies by my side. Once the leaves were a matted mess, I squeezed out the darkened moss from a small plastic bag and mixed it with a stick. The goo emitted the aroma of sour milk mixed with dirty socks. Gagging, I used the rock to scoop up the stinky mess, and dropped it into the fire. The stench of rotted meat hissed and bubbled from where it slowly sank into the flames. Hesitant to say the words of the spell, I took a few breaths through the mouth to settle my racing heart and my quell my churning stomach.

  I was not sure of what would happen, but what scared me more was that idea that nothing would happen, and I would have made the journey to no avail. I needed this spell to do something, anything. A sign I might be able survive the battle against the Dazerarthro, even if I wasn’t the savior they were expecting. I would at least be a participant in the war.

  My voice shook as I muttered, “To all that is I am, and with all I am I open to thee.”

  Nothing happened.

  I said the words again and again, louder, slower, clearer. But still, nothing. I laid my hands over my face and wept. I wept for the spell that did not work, for the life I could lose, and for the fate of the family I had only recently discovered.

  The lapping fire churned and I jumped back, grabbing Sacorasies and aiming it at the flames.

  Just the fire, no hollow man.

  I sighed, falling back onto my elbows.

  You will just have to convince Traflier to teach you magic. If he wants you to fight, he has to train you.

  I heaved myself up and grabbed my bag of goodies, ready to again face the obstacle course of rocks to make my way back to Sayeesies. I edged past the enormous pit, through the narrow tunnel, and around its twists and turns. Knowing ea
ch scrape brought me closer to the light of Shulun, I persevered.

  I stumbled the final few steps out of the crack in the wall. Falling to my knees, I let the glistening rays of Shulun warm my battered, bruised skin.

  Then the visions hit me.

  My body remained outside the crack in the wall, but my mind flew across Sayeesies until I saw myself standing, completely exposed, on the edge of a cliff. The clifftop looked like it had been swallowed by a cloud. Bright energy swirled around me then through me and I watched myself leap off the precipice, into the air.

  The image changed, and I saw Jax hanging something around my neck.

  Then it was Moyeth, slumped in one of Traflier’s big green leather chairs, his head in his hands as he wept.

  My mind moved from one vision to the next without pause. I saw myself sitting next to Jax in an ostentatious room as my father handed me a box. Then, nothing but red. Thick and warm. Blood.

  I dropped to the ground, my body overwhelmed by the force of the visions. My stomach rebelled and I fought the urge to vomit. I could smell the blood, as if it were under my nose. Its metallic taste still lingered on my tongue. I reached for the wall, using it to help me stand.

  After seeing those images, I no longer questioned my mother’s ability to know what someone’s future could hold. I had just seen glimpses of several futures, and though the images didn’t reveal much, the feelings they evoked did.

  I knew I had to do something I had been putting off since my first week in Syaeesies: I had to see my father.

  Let’s just hope I can hold my tongue long enough to learn what I need to.

  #

  During my little escapades in The Outer Reaches, the ninth nazieth had returned with some more of my things from the human realm. A large box of my former life sat on the floor beside my dresser and it was actually pretty lucky I hadn’t seen it as soon as I returned, or I wouldn’t have had any time to clean myself up before Jax knocked on my door-as it was, I’d struggled to hold a conversation as I fingered through my things pulling out all the pretty shoes to line them up at the foot of my bed.

  Unsurprisingly, Jax was more than happy to take me to Landown, my father’s property in Baldea. He assumed his begging had finally swayed me. I didn’t tell him about the vision I had or my trip to The Outer Reaches. I didn’t tell anyone.

  After crossing the border between Baldea and Sayeesies, we had to travel through twisted dirt roads with barely enough room between the trees to fit the car.

  I called it a car, though it could hardly qualify. It had no motor, no wheels, and did not require a driver. Spelled to transport Stalisies wherever they wanted to go, it was one of the few easily authorized magics in Sayeesies. Only two men could perform the spell and you had to have it approved by Traflier first, but he wasn’t known to refuse it. Jax had been the one to ask Traflier; I wasn’t ready to go see him yet. I needed to work out exactly what I wanted to ask him. For some reason, every time I left him I never seemed to have the answers I’d initially sought.

  The cabin area of the car was comfortable enough and looked like a double back seat of a Rolls Royce. Jax kept me entertained by pointing out various locations of meaning to him along the way. The first place he had fallen off a horse, the rock he’d tripped over running away from his brother after pelting him with an augor—which was a kind of fruit apparently, a lot like an apple.

  “Jax, if you were born here, how fast do you age? I mean how does it work, the age/time thing?” I leaned back into the chair and rested my head against its plush interior.

  “We age in the same way you do, until we are fully grown. After about eighteen years, our growth slows down.”

  “But that would mean in Sayeesies years you would be like, what? Twenty?”

  Jax sat, smirking at my confusion, “why do you ask?”

  “If I stay here and in one hundred years I decide to go back to the human world, will it all rush back, will I suddenly look one hundred years older?” I asked.

  “Don’t be silly, you will just start to age quicker from when you go back. Does that make sense?”

  “Not a lot makes sense here, Jax.” I gazed out of the window at the darkening sky. In Sayeesies, Shulun dulled but never completely blackened. But the sky over Baldea reacted to night and day like in the human world.

  “Des, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Traflier asked me to talk to you about something you said when you were… upset.”

  “You can ask me whatever you like. You tried to kill me, remember? No need to be shy now.”

  He smiled.

  I love that smile. The way his left eye squints a tiny bit more than the right and the dimple, oh my God the dimple.

  “You said something about dream messages,” he said. “What did you mean?” He shifted forward on his seat, like getting closer to me would make me answer faster.

  “They aren’t all puppies and rainbows, are you sure you want me to tell you?”

  He nodded, still eagerly perched on the edge of the seat.

  I began with the beast dream. “I am in the dark; silhouettes of oak trees outline the moon lit edges of an open field. I spin around after hearing a sharp snap, I assumed it was a twig, but it wasn’t. Blood red eyes glisten at me from the shadows. They grow larger as the creature moves closer growling as it reveals pure white jagged teeth. Then in a breath I am the beast, and I am looking into eyes as blue as the brightest sea. A woman. Somehow I know it is not me. She has pale soft skin, a few tiny freckles above her brow, but that is all I can see, I am but an inch away from her. She smells like peaches and honey. She screams in anguish as the creature I have become leers in for the final kill. Then in an instant I am standing beneath the trees, hidden in the shadows where the beast once stood. I am watching as the beast devourers the woman.” Jax was now sitting about as far from me as he could get.

  “Do you want to hear more?”

  “Are they all like that?” he asked through shaky breath.

  “No,” I said, observing the dark sky. “I had a dream about my mother that felt as real as you and I sitting here talking right now. In it, I’m standing in a field filled with dandilillies, I hear a bird squawk, but when I turn around to see it, I’m faced with an enormous castle. The castle walls are huge and they’re partially covered by a sparkling black moss. My mother appears out of nowhere, wearing a long dress encrusted with blue glass stones covering the bodice. Much fancier than anything I’d ever seen her wear in real life.”

  Jax’s eyes gleamed and I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat.

  “What happens next?” he asked as he moved closer again. The smell of lilacs incorporated with his body heat made my stomach flip. He smiled at me and the lump returned.

  “Did you talk to her, in the dream?” he probed.

  “I asked her what she was doing there, and why she never told me where I came from.” I looked down at my fingers, interlaced in my lap.

  “And?”

  “She said, ‘My Desmoree, you are unique; you are the child of three. Myself, your father and Frey.’ Then she turned me around to face that castle wall covered with blackened, sparkling moss, raising my face up with her hands—warm, like they always were. When I looked up at the top of the castle, there was a statue of a woman. It wore a similar dress to my mother and as I watched it, my mother’s hands still firmly holding my stare, a golden crack formed on the arm of the statue. Several more followed, radiating light as they snaked over the surface of the statue. Then the statue exploded.”

  Jax sat close still. Normally I would have chastised him for invading my personal space, but his smell was so intoxicating, I had to lean back slightly to regain my train of thought.

  “The statue shone with golden light, and she leapt off the castle. Once in the sky, her skirt wrapped behind her, forming broken leaf-like wings, lifting her higher. My mother looked towards the soaring woman that was once a statue and said one word: Frey. Then
I woke up.”

  I sat back in my seat, closed my eyes and tried to see it all again.

  “Do you know what this means?” Jax blurted. “Des, you have the sight. You are connected, like your mother.”

  I had little idea what Jax was talking about, and was about to ask him to explain more, when the familiar pull on my mind stopped me.

  “I don’t feel so good,” I said, and sank into darkness yet again.

  #

  I regained consciousness after who knows how long, but I did not open my eyes strait away. Comfortable and warm, the smell of lilacs surrounded me. I breathed Jax in, letting his warm scent envelope me. I was safe. Wrapped in Jax's strong arms. His chest was at my back and I could feel his heart beating under his shirt, strong and fast. He was whispering something under his breath, but I couldn’t make out the words. I opened my eyes and tilted my head to look up into those beautiful green whirlpools.

  “Are we there yet?” I whispered under strained breath.

  He chuckled and helped me sit up. Then, leaning across me, his warm skin brushing against my arm, he pulled on the handle and opened the car door.

  I looked out into the darkness, and there it was, sparkling in what little light shone through the masses of trees. The black moss castle.

  I stepped out of the car. The massive structure stood exactly as it had appeared in my dream: huge stone walls covered in black moss sparkling in the nightlight.

  Jax took hold of my hand, silencing my thoughts and charging my pulse. “Your mother showed this place to you,” he said, stepping in between the castle and me. “Your connection to sight is so strong that you’re able to see essence in your dreams. There has not been documentation of this ability since the first of our kind.”

  “Maybe no one wants to tell you they can see essence in their dreams, huh, ever think of that?”

  “I guess, but Traflier would know for sure.”

  “What is essence again?”

  He laughed. “Essence is what we all become when we leave this world, when we die. Some say you can ascend into essence, but I think they’re just trying to account for the recent unexplained deaths.”