The Night Sorceresses

by Erica Griswold

  She opened her bag and took out the shell. Immediately, a vision flashed in her mind. She saw several Faeblood Wraiths crowding around Celestia’s bed and sucking her soul out of her. She then saw an image of Willow, Ambrosia, and Desdemona appearing in the middle of a forest. Anger flooded her, and Celestia tried to protect Willow from Ambrosia and Desdemona. Desdemona flashed a symbol of Tareth, and suddenly, Celestia felt forced to obey it. Then, Willow’s vision abruptly ended. She realized at that moment that the Faeblood Wraith she had encountered on Enchantica was trying to protect her from Desdemona and Ambrosia, not kill her.

  “Thank you!” she said to Celestia. “We will return you to your body!” Celestia smiled widely at Willow.

  “Do not use the transporter spell Tareth taught you. All of his spells are dark magic. The stone ring near Mount Pyraxia has opened due to magic’s return. It’s also the rainy season, and that means there are plenty of mushroom rings everywhere. The dust in your necklaces will guide you to them,” Tristan said to Angelina.

  “Tristan says that we should use the mushroom rings to travel to Seaside,” she said to the others.

  They remembered to bring coats with them this time when going to Mount Pyraxia. They ate lunch, packed some food supplies for their journey to Mount Pyraxia, saddled their horses, and rode out of the city. Angelina remembered where the one she had seen from the air as she flew to Fernhollow was.

  When night fell, Willow felt the fairy dust guide them off the road and through the forest. They stopped when they came to a small circle of mushrooms, and stepped through the ring and traveled to Faemoor. They found The Terminal, and sure enough, there was a ring outside of Seaside. They traveled through the ring and stepped out into a forest.

  “Now where do we go?” Willow asked.

  Angelina smiled and said, “Allow me! I can see the village from above. You three just stay here!” She turned into a barred owl and flew high into the air. She spotted the village about a block away, and flew back down to where the others stood. “I see the village! Follow me!” Willow lit her hands up to light the way.

  Angelina wondered how Cecilia would react when she found out that her granddaughter could be saved. Angelina resumed her human form once they had found the house. Angelina knocked on the front door, and Cecilia opened it. Willow held up the conch shell cauldron. Cecilia burst into tears at the sight of it.

  “Cecilia, these are my friends Willow, Christabel, and Riordan,” Angelina said.

  “We killed Tareth, also known as Halvor, the palace alchemist,” Willow said.

  “There was something about that man that was just . . . off. I just couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was,” Cecilia said.

  Angelina knew they needed to get down to the business of saving Celestia. “We think we can save your granddaughter.”

  “That’s impossible! The police pronounced her dead the morning after the attack,” Cecilia said in disbelief.

  “It’s hard to explain how she can be saved. Could Celestia eat meat?” Angelina asked.

  “No, but what does that have to do with saving her?” Cecilia asked.

  “A lot. She turned into a Faeblood Wraith, which is a creature that eats sorcerers’ and fairies’ magical abilities. Since Celestia could not eat meat, she could not consume magic,” Riordan said.

  “How do you know this?” Cecilia asked.

  “I . . . it’s hard to explain. I’ll prove it to you. Could you show us where you have buried her?” Willow asked. She could tell from the expression on Cecilia’s face that she thought it was an odd request.

  “If it can bring her back, I will do anything for her!” Cecilia said. Her face turned stony. “You had better not be lying to me!”

  “I’m not,” Willow replied.

  Cecilia took them through the city street and out into the forest. They walked down a small, winding dirt road. Willow saw a large stone wall through the trees, and behind the wall were several small stone buildings. “That’s the graveyard,” Cecilia said. She opened the gate, and they walked inside. Now, Angelina could see that the small stone buildings were above-ground family tombs. Cecilia led them up to one of the tombs.

  She unlocked the gate, and Willow walked in. Willow tried to lift the stone slab off the top of Celestia’s coffin by herself, but discovered that she couldn’t. “Can you guys help me?”

  Christabel and Riordan walked to one end of the coffin, and Angelina joined Willow on her end. They all lifted the coffin lid, and it came loose. They moved the slab off and set it down beside the coffin.

  A wooden casket sat inside the coffin. Cecilia turned and hid her eyes. They opened the lid, and a terrifying scene befell their eyes. There was a woman’s body lying there, obviously in some kind of mummified state. She was wearing a long, shimmery blue dress and a shell crown. Willow guessed that this might be some kind of mermaid burial attire. Seashells surrounded her.

  Willow had expected a rotten stench to waft forth from the casket, but there was no smell. Celestia’s eyes stared straight up at the ceiling, and her mouth gaped open in terror at the thing she must have seen in the last moments before her death. Angelina hoped that this would work and that they hadn’t exposed Cecilia to the sight of her granddaughter’s corpse for no reason.

  Angelina received guidance from the belt’s power as to what to do. “Put the shell on the body,” Tristan instructed.

  Willow cringed and gently placed the shell on the corpse. All of a sudden, a blue light emitted from the shell, and they could hear the sound of ocean waves crashing against the shore. Blue smoke surrounded the Sea Sorceress’s body, and her skin began to take on a lifelike appearance. Her eyes and mouth closed, and Angelina saw the wrinkles on her face disappear. In place of the mummified corpse was a beautiful young woman. Once the cloud disappeared, they waited for something to happen.

  The young woman blinked her eyes and sat up. She had beautiful bright-blue eyes and black hair. She looked at her hands and legs. “You helped me!” Celestia gasped.

  Willow felt Cecilia push her away from the coffin. Cecilia screamed at the sight of her granddaughter, and embraced her. “I am so happy to be back, Grandma! I was transformed into a Faeblood Wraith, and it was so horrible!” Celestia sobbed.

  “I am so happy to have you back too!” Cecilia said.

  Willow, Riordan, Christabel, and Angelina wondered what kinds of horrors Celestia remembered. “I wouldn’t have been saved if I had been able to eat meat like a regular human! I watched so many other sorcerers lose their souls because Tareth stole their abilities, and then they went and ate other people’s magical powers. He controlled us from the moment we turned, and we couldn’t ask for help or anything!” Celestia said.

  “How many other sorcerers were turned into Faeblood Wraiths?” Riordan asked.

  “Twenty. And Willow, in case you are wondering, Desdemona stole her magic from a Knowledge Sorcerer, and Ambrosia stole hers from a Woodland Sorceress. They could only use just a little bit of their powers since the women they stole the magic from weren’t fairies,” Celestia said.

  “Well, an old tradition might have saved your life,” Riordan said.

  “What tradition?” Celestia asked.

  “There is an old tradition that when a sorcerer or sorceress dies, their most prized magical object goes to another magical person for safekeeping. Willow just happens to live in the town right next to yours,” he replied.

  “A dolphin brought it to me when I was fishing,” Willow said. “Well, how did the dolphin get it, and how did it know to bring it to you?” Celestia asked.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Willow said.

  Celestia started to climb out of the coffin but found her legs wobbly after months of not using them. Riordan and Christabel held her arms as she struggled to climb out of the stone box. “Tristan is the only one who hasn’t turned yet, but you’re gonna have to be quick to help him,” Celestia said as she pointed at Angelina’s belt.

  “That’s wh
at we are going to do next!” Angelina said.

  Celestia hobbled out of the tomb, aided by Riordan and Christabel. She regained a little bit of her balance. “I am going with you to help him!” Celestia said.

  “Celestia!” Cecilia protested.

  “Grandma, I want to help other people who had the same thing happen to them as I did,” Celestia protested.

  “Please be careful! I don’t want to lose you again!” Cecilia moaned.

  “Do you have a coat?” Willow asked. “You’re going to want to have a coat with you where we are going. There might be a blizzard.”

  “Yes,” Celestia said. All of them walked back to her house, and she got a coat.

  They took off and walked back to the fairy ring.

  They explained how fairy rings worked to Celestia, and then they all held hands and jumped into the ring. They came to the hub where all the gateways to the other rings were.

  Celestia marveled at her surroundings. She watched as fairies flitted about through the forest. “No one ever told me this place existed,” she said.

  “Your mother didn’t tell you about it?” Riordan asked.

  “She told me about rings of islands where sailors disappeared that were portals to other worlds, but not rings of mushrooms. That must be a Land Fairy thing,” Celestia said.

  Angelina remembered the stories of sailors and airplanes disappearing over certain island rings in her world and wondered if that was what brought her to Ethermoor. She hoped that they could find their way to the Celexia Mountain Range. It was the first time she could not get directions from Tristan’s belt because he had not been in the fairy worlds for many years and did not know about the many changes that had taken place there. Willow looked for a ring on the chart that was near the Celexia Mountain Range. Sure enough, she found one.

  “Here. A stone ring has popped up in the mountain range,” Angelina said as she pointed at the chart. “Tristan built the circle before the exile so that there was a connection from Faemoor to the library.”

  Riordan rolled his eyes and said, “I hope you don’t lose your psychic connection to him once you give him his powers back.” Christabel giggled. Angelina turned bright red.

  They walked up to the edge of the ring, grabbed hands, and jumped through the ring. Willow fell face-first into the icy snow. The raging blizzard had not stopped, and this time, they were not near the door.

  Angelina looked around, wondering where the door was. “This way,” Tristan’s voice in her head told her. She began riding Starfire in the direction that Tristan was leading her.

  “What a nightmare!” Celestia said, pulling her coat around her in the freezing air. Willow started to sense her abilities returning to her.

  Angelina was incredibly thankful that it only took about five minutes for her to find the entrance to the vault. She placed her hand in the snow and shouted, “Florida!” The snow melted away from the side of the mountain, revealing the door. “Please?” she asked, and the door swung open. They all walked inside. Celestia sure was thankful to be out of the snow.

  They walked until they got to the place where the trap door to Safire’s cave was. Riordan pulled on the rock that jutted out of the wall. The floor opened up, and he shouted, “Safire, it’s Riordan! We need your help!” Angelina saw the body of the bright-blue dragon covering the hole.

  “What is it, Riordan?” the dragon asked.

  “My friends and I need a ride to Tristan’s vault,” Riordan said.

  “He’s dead!” the dragon replied.

  “Not quite. We can help him.”

  “How is that?”

  “We have the object that Tareth put Tristan’s powers in. We can bring him back. Angelina killed Tareth!”

  “That’s amazing!” the dragon squealed. “Climb on board!”

  Riordan said, “Um. We’re way up here.”

  The dragon soared out of the trap entrance. Celestia stumbled backward and tripped over a rock in shock at the size of the dragon. Riordan turned to Angelina and asked, “Can you make a harness to ride her?”

  “Uh, we don’t have dragons in my world,” Angelina replied. She had ridden rollercoasters and imagined what sort of harness she would need to make for riding a dragon.

  Starfire and Jinx Lightning whinnied and stamped their hooves in protest. “We will come back for you,” Willow said, assuming they were jealous of their riders riding a dragon and not them. She made a post grow out of the ground and tied all their horses’ reins to it.

  Angelina climbed on the dragon’s back and held out her hands. Vines shot out of them and wrapped themselves around Safire. Five seats formed in the wood. “All aboard!” Angelina yelled.

  She realized that she was the only person in her world ever to ride a dragon. As soon as everyone was seated, she conjured other vines from behind and under the seats. They strapped everyone in so that they would not fall off in flight. Angelina hoped they would be strong enough.

  “Are you ready, Safire?” Riordan asked.

  “Yes!” she yelled happily. She leaped off the ground and flew through the cave.

  It was unlike anything Angelina had ever experienced before in her life. They were all pinned to their seats by the gravity of the dragon’s speed. Angelina was jerked around by the dragon’s sudden movements, and each one of them screamed at least two hundred times during the entire flight. One dive was so quick that Angelina blacked out and regained her consciousness when the dragon started flying forward again.

  “Melvil and the other sorcerers laid him on his bed as if he were asleep. That’s how they buried him. At least, that’s what Melvil told me,” Safire said to them.

  She flew up to the double doors to Tristan’s vault and lowered her tail so that they could climb down off her back. They were all extremely dizzy, and it took a few moments for their bodies to acclimate to being back on the ground. When they were all ready, Angelina took off the restraints, and they all climbed down Safire’s tail and stood on the ground.

  They opened the door and walked through the vault, taking care to avoid the traps as they did before. They got to Tristan’s living quarters and found his bedroom. They opened the door, and Angelina saw Tristan’s corpse lying in bed. Suddenly, she felt the belt unbuckle.

  Angelina walked up to where the corpse lay, took the belt off, and laid the belt on it. There was a light, and Tristan appeared in the room with them. He stared into Angelina’s eyes. “Thank you!” she heard a voice whisper.

  The corpse started turning back into a human form, and the apparition slowly dissolved into it. The corpse now looked like the handsome young man Angelina had seen in her dream. He blinked his eyes and sat up in bed.

  “Tristan!” Riordan shouted. He ran over and hugged the other sorcerer.

  “Riordan, thank you so much for helping defeat Tareth,” Tristan said. Celestia’s face lit up, and she hugged Tristan. “I am so happy that you, too, were able to be saved!” He stood up, walked over to Angelina, and smiled. “I knew you could do it.”

  “But how?” Angelina replied.

  “Faeblood Wraiths can sense the magical knowledge and abilities that a person has. It is how they find sorcerers’ magical powers to consume. It is also how they identify who’s whom among the Faeblood Wraiths, by sensing each other. I was the only one who still had their soul when I found you two nights ago. I sensed that you had magical knowledge that Tareth knew nothing about,” Tristan said.

  Angelina laughed. “I couldn’t even get jobs performing for birthday parties in my world! Say, I heard that you lived in Florida? That’s where I came from!” Angelina said.

  “When the banishment occurred, I was sent there. I eventually found a job working at a theme park. I figured that was where someone with magical abilities could easily disguise themselves. One day, I was visiting one of the nature preserves in Florida, and I saw a skunk ape. Next thing I knew, I was standing in a swamp in Ethermoor,” Tristan said.

  “So, you know all about airplanes an
d things like that?” Angelina asked.

  “Yes, and computers and internet and beaches!” Tristan said, smiling.

  “It was the year 2020 when I left Florida.”

  “I arrived in the year 2010, and when I left, it was the year 2016!” Tristan said. Angelina knew there would probably be plenty of time to ask him more questions later.

  Willow wanted to ask him the one thing that had been bothering her. “Tristan, what happened to Desdemona and Ambrosia?”

  “They’re still out there, and they still have the rings,” Tristan said. He smiled. “I want to go with you and put an end to Tareth’s evil once and for all!”

  “Oh, please, do come with us!” Riordan begged.

  All of them walked outside and climbed aboard the dragon. Angelina made another seat in the harness, and she strapped everyone into it. They flew through the caverns. “We have to go back and get Jinx Lightning and Starfire,” Angelina said.

  “They will be okay until we finish at the library,” Willow said.

  “No, there’s something she hasn’t been able to tell you,” Angelina said.

  “Tell me?” Willow knew her horse was smart, but was there something that she couldn’t tell Willow?

  “She wanted to keep something secret when Tareth was alive for fear for her life,” Angelina said.

  “Well, what is it?” Willow said.

  “She wants to tell you herself. She’s not a horse. She and Jinx Lightning can’t even talk to the horses.”

  They flew through the caverns and back to where they had left their horses. “There is a second entrance to the library not far from here. I’ll take you there,” Tristan said. They untied Starfire and Jinx Lightning and followed Tristan.

  They all walked to the entrance to the library. Tristan knocked on the door. Melvil opened the door, and Tristan threw his arms around him.

  “I thought you were dead for sure!” Melvil cried.