Enchanting the Fey- The Complete Series

by Rebecca Bosevski

  I scanned the area but saw no one. “Who?”

  Jax pointed down to our feet. Sitting on the tip of my shoe was a hytersprite.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, nudging my shoe forwards. She leapt from it and bounced off Jax’s knee then up to my shoulder.

  “Look I don’t have time for games,” I said, looking down at the small sprite perched on the strap of my top.

  “Des,” Jax began, reaching out his hand for the sprite to jump onto. The sprite shook her head and buried herself in my hair. She tickled as she made her way underneath the stands to the other side. “Hytersprites can track magical beings.”

  “Ava! Can you find my daughter?” I asked the lump of hair sitting on my shoulder. The hytersprites golden glow shone through the strands of my hair and she parted a few to peek through. Slowly the sprite revealed herself more, then made her way to my ear.

  “I help you, but first you help us.” The sprite’s voice was like a child’s, struggling to form a complete sentence and unusually high pitched.

  “What do you need help with?”

  “To be grown again. You can make us grown again, yes?”

  I looked to Jax for answers.

  “The hytersprites were once full grown beings of light. They would emit energy wherever they went. It was thought that the sky in Sayeesies grew from the energy of the many hytersprites who lived there all those years ago.”

  The sprite took a strand of my hair in her hands and used it to swing back to the other shoulder.

  “He took our light and made us this,” the sprite said into my other ear. “He took it and made the sky sparkle. Traflier took it, he took our light.” The sprite said, leaping from my shoulder and bouncing off Jax’s head before landing again on my shoe.

  I reached in to my bag and pulled out the book and knelt down to her. “I will do whatever I can to return you to your form.” I walked us to the side of the building so we wouldn’t be interrupted.

  I opened the book to the spell I had been trying to use to give back the Tanzieth’s magic. I had scribbled a few notes and alterations in the margins too, but none of it had worked yet. Maybe it could work for them.

  I held out my hand and she excitedly leapt onto it. It tickled as her light feet brushed my palm.

  “Jax, can you hold the book please?” I asked, handing it to him open to the page I needed. He nodded, and took it without word.

  First I focused on the sky, on the energy of it gleaming. Then I tried the cast to transfer energy asking for it to be sent from shulun to the sprite. Nothing happened. I frowned and the sprite sat in a huff in my hand.

  “Look.” I began moving my hand to be directly in front of my eyes. “I will try again, and I will keep trying, but I have to find Ava first. Please will you help us?”

  “Try again,” she grumbled.

  I rolled my eyes and then tried the alteration I had made to return the power rather than transfer it. It didn’t work either. Finally, I attempted to combine the awakening cast I had used on myself on top of the transfer cast. Still nothing.

  “I am sorry, I will find a way to help you. I promise. Can you please help us first? I have to find my daughter, she’s alone. She’s only a child and she’s alone in the human world. Please.”

  The sprite leapt back onto my shoulder. “Okay, but when we find her then you try again, deal?”

  I nodded. “Deal.”

  She pulled the strap of my top firmly over her lap like a seatbelt. “Now let’s go portal to the plain place.”

  I smirked, thinking of how the human world must seem plain to beings like them. But it could be so beautiful, too. I missed the city lights and the ocean. Ava would love the ocean.

  “Des, you ready?” Jax asked, taking my hand.

  “Ready to go. Wait, what’s your name, what do we call you?” I asked, looking down at where the sprite now sat, swinging her legs so they tapped lightly against my shoulder.

  “Madel. My name is Madel.”

  “Okay, Madel, well hold on tight. Jax, we have to be quick. Ava has already been in my world far too long. She’s alone and probably scared out of her mind. We have to get to her.”

  Jax squeezed my hand tightly again. “We will find her, Des. Then we can come back here and make things right again.”

  “I know, I will figure out how to give it all back, to get the magic back and—”

  “Des, no. I mean the council. Surely you will lead the council? They will elect their teams, but we will be on it too, won’t we? I mean they want you to lead them, they won’t even have to hold a vote to put you on it.”

  “Jax, I don’t want to lead them. Why would we want to?” My heart rate rose sending a flush to my cheeks.

  He frowned a little, then something seemed to click and he was smiling again.

  “Right, why would we want that anyway? Come on lets go get our daughter back.”

  My heart rate fell and I relaxed into his hold. I had no desire to lead the fey, or even be on the council. But Jax appeared to have a pretty strong interest in it. Maybe I could get him to be on the council, if he wants to so bad, what harm could it do? The sprite grabbed my earlobe whispering into it.

  “Do you know what he can do?” she asked, being careful to keep her voice low.

  I shook my head slightly in reply. The sprite nuzzled in closer to my ear. “He affects change.”

  I didn’t know what that meant but I couldn’t ask her without Jax hearing. I waited and hoped she would tell me more but she remained silent and moved to the edge of my shoulder. We rounded another corner and my stomach fell.

  There it was.

  The gateway.

  The portal that brought me into this crazy world.

  The portal that changed my life.

  It had been with Jax at my side, but with Moyeth too. I missed him and Phoneas. They were what made this place feel like it could be a home for me. Then Traflier had to go and get them killed. Phoneas, consumed by the beasts, and then Moyeth, willingly offering up his life just to be with her.

  Sure you are together now, but you are still a stupid twit Moyeth? I thought to myself as I did so many times since they passed. I hated him for what he did sometimes, too. I know the loss you feel when someone you love dies, but you honour them by living, not by doing something completely mental and almost ending the world.

  “Des,” Jax said, tugging my arm a little to gain my attention. We had arrived at the portal without me realising, swept up in the nightmare of losing Moyeth to the Dazearthro.

  “Yes, alright, hold on,” I said as I shook off the chill those memories brought and concentrated on the portal in front of us. The black glistening surface shimmered under shulun.

  Shulun, another wrong of Traflier’s to right. I concentrated on my world, the one I left behind. I focused on my daughter Ava, and how I desperately wanted to find her.

  I can show her all the things I love about my world. I can keep her safe.

  Then, my final thought is of my life before. The one I left behind before all this madness.

  With that memory, the portal brightened, became like glass, and through it I saw the world I walked away from. The world where my daughter was lost, alone, and probably scared.

  “Madel, once we get through, you lead the way.”

  Madel whispered her agreement into my ear and we all stepped through, the portal shimmered cool against my skin, then the light dulled and the air became thick and hot.

  I was home.

  The portal had opened in a wooded area I didn’t recognise, or at least not at this time of night. The stars sparkled through the silhouettes of branches, so it had to be far enough from the city for the pollution to have cleared at least a little. The warmth was expected for what should be the Australian summer, but the ground was soft beneath our feet, and the air smelled of rain. I loved waking up to the smell of rain—or at least I used to.

  Shulun didn’t rain. It shone brightly, sending glistening rays of light and pow
er over Sayeesies. A star shot across the sky and I made a silent wish to find Ava safe and soon. The stars twinkled as if in reply. How can Madel call this place dull?

  “Duck!” Jax called, and I dropped to the ground on reflex, just in time to miss the swing of something that whooshed past my head.

  I spun to find Jax tackling a woman wearing heels definitely not suited to our bush surroundings. He was struggling to hold her down. She thrashed and kicked, scraping up her legs against the rocky soil.

  Madel clung to the strap of my top as I rushed towards them, throwing a shield around the woman. Jax was able to release her, but she could not escape. She was trapped.

  “Who are you?” he asked, but the woman reached into her pocket and shoved something into her mouth before we even registered what she was doing.

  Her eyes rolled back and her head flopped to the side as she began to convulse. Green foam spilled from her now open mouth. Then she went limp. Her eyes were wide and lifeless, looking up at the scattering of stars in the sky.

  “Who the hell was she?” I asked Jax as I removed the shield and knelt beside her. “She doesn’t exactly look like the camping type.”

  “She looks like you used to, like when I saw you in the coffee place that time. Professional, clean, except you were wearing practical shoes.”

  Madel grabbed my ear lobe and whispered. “She has a fabled, she stole it. Set them free, set the fabled free.”

  “What?” I arched my neck to look at Madel. “What fabled does she have?”

  “In her jacket, in her pocket. Pixie pocket, pixie trapped.”

  I reached over and lifted the quite fashionable short black jacket to reveal an inner pocket. It bulged slightly, and reaching inside I could feel something round. I pulled it free and saw what Madel spoke of.

  In a glass ball slept a pixie. She looked similar to what I looked like in my fairy form, except her wings were more like a butterfly’s and she wore clothes made from petals and grasses.

  “Is she alright?” I asked, lifting the ball to look at her more closely.

  “Open the ball, set her free,” Madel said into my ear again.

  I looked for a way to open it, but there was no latch, no seam. “I don’t know how.”

  I held it up to Jax who took it quickly and knelt by a large stone. He scuffed the ball against the sharp surface of the rock. It scraped like nails on a chalk board, but it did the trick. The ball cracked and then opened, the pixie awakening instantly and flitting above us.

  “Wait, are you alright?” I asked.

  Madel flung from my shoulder and shone brightly as she bounced towards the pixie.

  Seeing Madel must have calmed her, she stopped frantically darting about and slowly lowered herself to the rock Jax had used.

  “They won’t hurt you,” Madel reassured as she joined the pixie on the rock. “They saved you, set you free did, Desmoree.”

  I smiled at Madel’s rhyme and crouched. “What happened?”

  The pixie looked over to where the woman’s body lay, foam still oozing from her mouth. She sat, little legs crossed and her wings wrapped around her like a security blanket. “She chased me from the streets, my human tried to stop her, tried to give me time. But a monster ended him.” She dropped her head into her hands. “Then she caught me, told me to help her open a door. A door to a dark place. I said no, then everything slipped into blackness.”

  “Your human?”

  Jax touched my shoulder, “Des, pixies are muses for humans. They only come here to help them, to guide them. The woman must have targeted her human to get to her.”

  “What door?”

  The pixie nuzzled closer to Madel. “The bad coven want to open the door to more bad things.”

  “How can you help them?”

  “We can bring inspiration to humans, they can use us to inspire the path they need to take to achieve their goal.”

  “Can you get back home?” I asked, standing and stepping over to the woman again. “You should go now, warn the others like you to be careful. Something dark is coming.” I didn’t want to sound so ominous, but the demons were trying to open the mouth of hell and a crazy coven of souls was helping them. Something dark wasn’t really coming, it was already here.

  I had to find Ava.

  “Madel, where is Ava? Can you find her?”

  Madel returned to her perch on my shoulder, her little legs swinging under the strap.

  “There is trace of her here. There is trace, and she go near here.”

  “Trace?” I asked, trying to tilt my head again to look at the shining sprite.

  “She not here now, but her magic leave trace. I see trace.”

  I scanned the area. In the distance the smallest of lights began to flash red and blue through the trees.

  “Police maybe. I wonder if they could help us?”

  “Really, you want to involve the police?” Jax asked with derision. “What if they look you up? Des, there is no record of you having a daughter. There is no record of Ava at all, how do you ask them to help find someone who, according to the human system, doesn’t exist? Why would Ava even come here? I thought she was looking for fabled items.”

  “She’s a day old, Jax, she probably didn’t even know where she was going. Her portal didn’t exactly look stable. Did you see my grandmother’s vase?”

  Jax shook his head. “She had to have some idea. The voices she hears, could they have told her to come here? Could they have led her into the woods?”

  “I thought she was hearing the seers, the ones I met in Sayeesies before…you know. But she was so scared of the voice she heard before she opened the portal. I can’t imagine them scaring her into fleeing. Someone else must be talking to her, too.”

  The blue and red lights still flashed in the distance, but now flashlights joined them, coming closer.

  “They must be looking for something,” I said, moving to be shielded by a large tree. “Or someone. Madel, you need to lower your shine or disappear, humans won’t take well to seeing a sprite on my shoulder.”

  She whispered that she would try to locate Ava and come find us, then urged us to go in the direction of the blue and red lights. Ava’s magic trace led up there.

  Madel disappeared. She didn’t float away, fly off or bounce down from my shoulder onto the ground. She actually disappeared.

  “How did she do that?” I asked Jax, keeping my voice to a hushed whisper.

  “Hytersprites can jump between worlds. It’s one of the reasons they can track magical beings so well, they can go anywhere.”

  “Then why did she come through the portal with us? Why not just jump here herself,? Or better yet, why didn’t she just take us with her?”

  “Maybe if her light was larger, if she were larger she could have. But I have never known a hytersprite to transport anything other than themselves.”

  “What are we going to say to the police? We can’t hide here forever.”

  “Follow my lead,” Jax said as he stepped out from behind the tree. I followed, slowly.

  He began to walk towards the flashlights. “Hello,” Jax called into the night. I didn’t know what he had planned, but sneaking past them obviously wasn’t it.

  “Hello, officers, what’s going on up there?”

  “Sir, stop where you are.”

  “My wife and I were just wondering what was going on, we saw your lights and—”

  “Mam, sir, you both need to stop.”

  Jax and I both stopped walking, being careful to keep our hands up. The flashlights moved over us. I scrunched my nose and turned my head as the officer’s light landed on my face.

  “What the hell,” I bitched as I brought my hand up to shield my face.

  “Mam, don’t move.”

  “Then don’t try to blind me with the fucking light.”

  “Des,” Jax hushed. Clearly the flashlight didn’t blast him in the eyes.

  “What are you two doing out here?” The police officer asked as
my sight slowly returned. The flashlight he held stayed mostly directed on me, and the lack of light surrounding him meant I could only work out his stature. Tall and broad.

  “Our dog ran off, we were out here looking for him. Have you seen a white and grey Shepard running through here?”

  “That true, mam? You’re looking for your dog?”

  “We are,” I said, trying to sound sincere. “The little shit took off. Not the first time, the last time we found him five kilometres away just sitting under a bloody tree.”

  “Well, he ain’t up there. And you shouldn’t be out here this late. Come on, up with us now. We will keep an eye out for your dog while we wrap things up.”

  The cop motioned up the hill with his flashlight, obviously wanting us to go first. We obliged and began heading towards the flashing lights of the patrol car.

  “What happened up here?” I asked as we got close enough to see someone zipping up a black body bag. My heart leapt into my throat. Could it be Ava? What if Madel only found a trace because she’s dead. She can’t be. I would know. Surely, I would know.

  “Mam, are you alright?” The faint voice of the cop asked. It was like he called from the end of an enormous tunnel.

  “Des,” Jax’s voice came through louder, then his hand on my arm pulled me out.

  “Sorry, I am alright. What were you saying?”

  “A man was mauled by something. The officer was just asking if Madel was a vicious dog.”

  “Madel…a vicious dog?” I began, but then remembered myself. “Bloody hell, no. Madel wouldn’t hurt a fly.” She was barely bigger than one.

  “Officer Peck, here, will take you home. Give him a picture of your Madel. We will keep an eye out during our investigation.”

  “Thank you but we can make our own way home,” Jax said, but the officer would hear nothing of it. And if Jax or I protested too much we would have drawn more attention to ourselves. We climbed into the police cruiser and it wasn’t until the door closed that I remembered the back doors of this type of patrol car would only open from the outside.

  “Des, do you know where we are?” Jax whispered beside me, before Officer Peck climbed into the front seat and started the engine. I shook my head.