Enchanting the Fey- The Complete Series

by Rebecca Bosevski

  “I believe you will be a great power, Traflier, a great fey indeed. If you allow, I would like to help you learn more than is offered in the standard lessons. Would you like that?”

  “Can I still stay here?”

  “Of course you can, you are demi-Pontors now, a part of my house always.”

  Traflier released the breath he didn’t know he had been holding. “Can you tell me how to do this cast?” Traflier asked, pushing the scroll further out to be easily read by Elder Pontors. “I can’t see what to do after you find all the ingredients. It just says to get them.”

  “Ahh, you have found some of the lunomas scrolls. These are old indeed. I am afraid I don’t know the answer, this mix should ensure a strong growth, but the cast to activate it has been lost for years. I am afraid even the elders are not aware of it. There are so many cats lost to time, no longer practiced and so forgotten to the light.”

  “Why wouldn’t anyone use this? We could make food grow faster and bigger and…”

  “And what would we do with it all? We have enough for every fey to be full and well.”

  “The humans, some of them don’t have enough, we could—“

  “No! listen closely, Traflier. After what happened to your mother the elders have taken a vote. The announcement will be made to the Feydom tomorrow. We are putting up wards on the gateways. No one who steps through will take their power with them. No fey will be able to cast out of this realm.”

  Traflier thought of how his mother had often used magic in the human realm. She had helped heal a few of the neighbours and their children with soups or breads she had made for them. She had encouraged him to practice his casts there too. With no help from magical surroundings she said his power would only grow. She was right about that. He had opened the gateway, a cast that had taken three nazieth guards to achieve. He wondered, if she had had such restrictions, would she still be with him? Would the humans have still tied her to the pyre and sent her to the light?

  Traflier didn’t mind the wards being in place, he didn’t care if they blocked the way to the human world all together. He never wanted to go back.

  Annabella opened the door to the main room and the conversation with Elder Pontors was ended.

  ***

  “DON’T YOU MISS IT?” Annabella whispered into his ear as the teacher of their higher magics class droned on about casts both Traflier and Annabella knew by heart. Thanks to the extra lessons Annabella’s father gave them almost every afternoon since they were young, both Traflier and Annabella excelled in their classes.

  “Miss what?” he asked trying not to count the tiny freckles on her nose and failing. Eight, nine…

  “The human world, silly. Don’t you miss it just a little? I heard it is beautiful. That there is water that moves and crashes onto white sandy shores. Did you ever visit the ocean?”

  Traflier didn’t want to talk about the human realm. It had been ten years since his mother met the light and ten years since the wards binding their magic to the Feydom were instated. The moment you stepped through the gateway you were human. Something Traflier had no desire to be. Annabella however, dreamed of the oceans of earth. Since their neighbouring fey returned with pictures of the human beauties five years ago, Annabella pressed him at least once a day about the realm he used to visit as a child.

  “Come on, T. I want to go see the ocean for myself and you have to come with me. It won’t be the same without you. Come on T, fey come back all the time talking about how amazing it is. I want to see the ocean. Father said I can go if you go with me. I think he just knows you won’t go and then I can’t go. Please?”

  “I have no desire to return to that place.”

  “But, T, please?”

  The nightmare that still visited his sleep flashed in his mind. His mother’s sad smile before the flames stole her from view. “No!” The whole class turned to look at them.

  “And what may I ask is your objection?” The teacher, Madam Kale asked, folding her arms across her chest. “You do realise demi-Pontors that without mastering this cast you shall not graduate. Do you really wish to spend another cycle with me in the classroom?”

  “No, Madam Kale. I’m sorry.”

  Her eyes went from Traflier to Annabella and back. “See to it you both pay attention.”

  “Yes, madam,” they both replied, each of them nudging the other with their knees beneath the bench.

  “I don’t want to go back Anna, why can’t you see that?” Traflier whispered after Madam Kale was occupied explaining the cast to a table near the front.

  “But father said I can only go if you go with me. It is my birthday in a week and all I want is to see the ocean, any ocean. Please, it can be far away from any humans, just the ocean?”

  He dropped his head.

  Her eyes went to his hands as he wound his fingers together under the table. I can’t make him do this.

  “Traflier I’m sorry. It is okay we can just go to the waters of the merlands. Maybe we can go for a swim and look at the corals near the palace, Lara went there last week and said the corals are in full colour.”

  He stopped winding his fingers together and looked up at her. “Thanks.” It is because of her I have a family, have a home. Can I really say no just because I am scared to go back? She would do it for me, and she can’t do it without me.

  “Really, T. It is fine.” Annabella said a little too loud and Madam Kale popped her head up to glare at them before returning to the struggling students.

  “We can still look for a gateway for you to go when your father will let you. You know, without me. If we find a gateway as close to the ocean as we can, I am sure he will let you go,”

  She bit at her bottom lip the way she did when she was trying to hide something from him. He loved how she did that. “Really? You would look for a gateway with me?”

  “Let’s go after class.”

  “Awesome, thanks T.”

  They didn’t interrupt the class again. They did their casts, perfect as always, and then made their way to the library of scrolls to look through the gateway maps. If Annabella was going to the human realm, Traflier wanted it to be nowhere near the town he knew as a child.

  “Here, look this one says it is on the edge of a coastal village,” Annabella said, holding up the scroll for him to see.

  “Too many people, let’s find one a bit more out there. The human realm is a huge place.”

  She scrunched up her nose and re-rolled the scroll, sliding it back into its tube on the wall. “This is going to take forever, who can we ask that has been there?”

  “It won’t matter. To open the gateway, you have to picture where you are going. These scrolls give you that description in perfect detail. Without it, you could end up lost in between.”

  “You don’t believe that do you?” she asked, sliding out a scroll from the bottom section and unfurling it in the air between them. “Those are just silly stories told to keep the little ones from trying to open a gateway to sneak away from their familiar fey.”

  Traflier looked at the back of the scroll as his memories of the first gateway he opened returned to his mind. The green suited nazieth clutching at his hand as the wall began to thicken, and how it again turned to a thin liquid when he regained focused. Maybe you get stuck in the wall, or become a part of the gateway itself?

  “Maybe they are only rumours, but do you want to test it on your first visit to the human realm?”

  She lowered the scroll and peeked over at him with bright eyes that crinkled at the corners. He knew the scroll hid her wide smile, a smile unique to when she thought of the oceans she dreamed to see. “Okay, let’s find a gateway then.” She shoved the scroll in her hands back into its place and heard a rustle of paper.

  “Be careful, those things are older than your father.”

  She frowned at him then knelt down. She pulled the scroll free and leant down further to see another smaller scroll scrunched up the back of the tube. Stretching
her arm as far as it would go she finally felt the edges of old paper brush against her fingertips. She pinched it tightly and began to pull. But with the awkward angle of her arm and fact that she was flexing in order to keep her grasp on the paper, the tube was now tight against her skin. Her eyes went wide. “Help.”

  Traflier rushed to her side. “What is it?”

  “I am stuck, the tube is too tight.”

  “You got your arm in.”

  “I know but I am holding the paper.”

  “Then let the paper go.”

  “No, it could have been there forever, don’t you want to see what it is?”

  “It will be another gateway description, that is all there is in this entire section.”

  “But how can you be sure?” she asked, raising her brows twice.

  “Okay, lean back a little and I will try to help wedge you out.” She did as he said and her head rested against his thigh. Traflier heart raced in his chest. Reaching down he laid one hand flat over her arm and forced it down into the pipe against her skin. It was a snug fit, but with him squeezing her arm she was able to pull it free, the scrunched paper clung between two fingers.

  She jumped up again and he still sat there on the floor of the library looking at where her head had rested moments before.

  “T, come see this. I think it is the description of an old gateway, and it just might be perfect.”

  Traflier read over her shoulder as she pressed out the creases in the old scroll. The ink was like new, but it had obviously been scrunched up behind the other scroll for a long time. The paper refused to stay flat and wanted to bend and curl back into its hidden position.

  “Here,” Traflier said, grabbing a scroll weight from the edge of the table and placing it in one corner. Annabella grabbed another and used it to hold the opposite side. With the help of the weights, Traflier could see what she was talking about. The scroll described a gateway. One that claimed to be surrounded entirely by water.

  “Can this be right?” Annabella asked, pointing to a particular line. “Now only an Island the gateway stands almost alone in the middle of a blue expanse. It is only twenty-seven steps from the gateway in any direction to the water’s edge.”

  “Anna, I think you have found your gateway.”

  She pushed the weights off the paper and it curled and crinkled back to its misshapen half rolled wad. “Pack the rest, this is it, this is my ocean gateway. I can’t believe it, T, I am finally going to get to see the human realm.”

  “Now you just have to get your father to agree to let you go.”

  Her eyes saddened, and her smile fell for a moment before she forced it back into place.

  Traflier didn’t see the sadness in her expression, he had already began packing up the scrolls. He was trying to think of a way that Annabella could present her wish to her father in a way that would let her go without him. Everything he could come up with was unlikely to work. Since her mother’s death he hadn’t let her out of his sight. Except when she was with Traflier.

  He wanted so desperately to help her see her dream. Annabella did something to him, gave him a strength he didn’t know he had. More than the power that swam inside him, she made him feel like anything was possible.

  At least the island gateway is as far from everything else she could get. If it is still there. Maybe I should do the cast for her. I would be more likely to get it right. I can send a projection through first, see if it is safe maybe?

  “T, when do you think I can go?”

  “I will show your father the scroll tonight and if he says it is okay, you could probably go tomorrow. Your father is an elder, he could push through the gateway pass for you no problem, right?”

  “Maybe if you ask him. Thanks T, I can’t wait. We should get back and go over the description fully, it is not like anything we have ever seen, it won’t be easy to picture it.”

  “Right, so home then?”

  “Home.”

  She took his hand and they walked like they did every day for the past ten years, together, hand in hand, past the centre stalls and people selling wares, past the podium where she had saved him, and finally down a path to an old tree that sat taller than most in front of a cottage surrounded by silver dandilillies that glistened under the Feydom’s pink sky.

  ***

  CASTING THE GATEWAY should be easy. He had created the cast necessary a hundred times before, always to a fabled land, never to the place he travelled now. Not since his mother. The image of the island gateway flicked in and out of his mind. The detailed description allowing his imagination to piece it together perfectly, but then his heart would race, his hands would become slick with sweat, and the image in his mind would flicker and falter back.

  “Come on, T, let me try?”

  “No, I will get it. Hold on.” He thought of what the scroll had said. White sand, soft and warm. Palm trees littering the landscape and sections of soft spongy plants that could almost be grass if not for the thickness of them. The gateway, the same as the Feydoms, black onyx, glistening in the human realm’s golden sun. The sun he knew well. The sky, too. He could see them perfectly. He tried not to focus too much on them alone, but used his memory of them to solidify the image his mind was creating.

  “You are doing it, T, the gateway is opening, keep going.”

  He felt her hand on his arm and the warmth of it spread from her touch across his entire body. The finer details of the island gateway cemented into place. Tiny rocks scattered along the ocean’s shore, shells that looked like twisted cones and were the colours of human realm sunsets. The ocean as it moved, like the world was breathing. Its foamy white edges lapping up the shore, changing the glistening white sand to a darker, muddy tone for a moment before the sun kissed its grains and brought them back to brilliant white.

  He felt the gateway move like the water over his hand. Annabella’s hand ran up his arm to join with his within the moving wall.

  “Is it time?” she whispered, so closely her breath tickled his ear.

  He stumbled his reply, “Yes, I will send the projection, see if the other side is active.”

  Traflier pushed a part of him out towards the gateway. His mind went through, his sight. He saw the white sand, the blue water and the palm trees the scroll spoke of. The gateway was open, and it was amazing on the other side. She will love this place. He thought as he brought back his mind.

  “Is it there T?” Annabella asked jumping from one foot to the other in excitement.

  Before he could change his mind, he pulled her through to the other side with him. To the white sandy beach of the island. They came through with heads down, which was almost always the way. You knew where you wanted to go, but you wanted to see that first step too. To see where you were putting your feet. Traflier had almost stepped on a wriggling seven-legged worm like creature when entering one of the fabled realms, luckily he knew of the need to look down and was able to dodge it in time.

  There was no wriggling worm beneath their feet now. Only soft white sand. He slid off his shoes and took a step forwards enjoying the feel of the grains as his toes sunk deeper. Annabella did the same, her pink painted toenails sinking into the sand beside his.

  “T, you are here, you came through. Why?” She asked watching her toes wriggle in the white sand under her feet.

  “Happy birthday.”

  “Oh, isn’t it incredible?” she gasped.

  Traflier lifted his head but didn’t reply. Instead, he reached across and placed his hand under her chin, tilting her head upwards.

  “Oh my Fey!”

  The ocean breathed before them. Only fifteen steps from where the gateway stood. Fifteen steps and her skin would feel the wave’s cool touch.

  “What are you waiting for? This is your birthday present after all, go on. Enjoy it.”

  She looked away from the water for a moment to meet his eye. Annabella’s were welling with happy tears that all at once overflowed down her face and over her rosy che
eks.

  “Thank you, T. It is the best present in the whole world.” She looked back at the ocean that had been her dream for so long. And then she was off, walking the first two steps then racing across the final distance in a rush of excitement. She splashed and kicked at the water’s edge. Traflier watched her from a seated position under a palm tree a few meters away.

  He watched how she became almost like the child he had grown with and played with all those years ago. She squealed with delight as the water rose unexpectedly and soaked the bottom half of her.

  “Come on, T, come play in the water. We don’t have to be back for ages.”

  “We actually have to be back in fifteen minutes, not exactly an eternity,” he replied, looking down at the human realm watch now required to be worn. The wards were in place. And those wards stole away their magic, kept it in the Feydom. He would not be able to open the gateway to get them home from this side. Having permission to come, he was able to schedule their departure with the nazieth guards deployed to watch the gateway. They would open the gateway by looking for him and if he is near enough to the onyx when they search, the magic will activate the gateway and they would be able to return home. If he strayed too far from it, they would not be able to connect, and they would be stuck on the island for another human hour.

  Something told him Annabella wouldn’t mind spending an eternity splashing in the waves of the human oceans. But this was an island, and in all directions Traflier could only see water. No other land masses. If the seas turned violent, the little island offered no protection and he had no magic to shield them from the storm.

  “Come on, T? Please share my birthday present with me. I promise you won’t need to bring me back to the human realm for at least another year.” She kicked water towards him and it spotted the white sand where it landed.