Blackthorn: In the Tween

by Jamie Ott

  Chapter 10

  Rik said nothing as they galloped past trees so fast that they were a blur. Lin felt ridiculous with her large hands around his tiny waist. Still, Rik was strong and solid. They leapt over a fallen tree in their path, causing Lin to grip tightly, and it didn’t hurt him at all.

  Lin didn’t realize how far off they were, until an hour later, they made it to the town center where it appeared that everything was wrecked. What was Mara’s dress shop was now a pile of torn clothes; across the street, Stanley’s café was a burnt crisp that smelled like a giant roasted coffee bean.

  “They were here and still fighting only a short while ago,” said Rik.

  “So what, now?”asked Lin.

  “We track them.”

  Lin slumped forward a few inches as Rik stepped off his horse and looked around.

  Grabbing the horses reign he walked past the water fountain and down a street Lin had never been down before.

  “They must’ve gone back to his castle. There are scorch marks here and there, as Golshem likes to travel by fire when he’s in a hurry.”

  Rik leapt back onto the horse and they took off so fast that Lin felt dizzy. Just when she was hoping they’d slow down, Rik screamed, “We need to go faster!”

  The horse ran even faster. It was like being tied to a comet. Then they stopped in a forest and waited for the others to catch up.

  When the others caught up, Rik pointed to a spot just beyond the trees. Together, they moved ahead and stopped just short of a clearing and peeked through. In the front clearing of a castle, several men were sharpening swords and braiding rope. Blair, Angel and a few others were there, too.

  Next to a fire, the remaining Blackthorn residents were bound by a magic rope. On the fire, a large cauldron boiled. Lin guessed it was for the hostages; to subdue or brainwash them.

 

  “What’s the plan?” asked Lin.

  “You tell us, for you’re the new Princess. Queen Morgana has ordered us to obey you,” replied Rik’s henchman.

  “Great. Well, I’m no warrior, so the best I can come up with is we go in fighting.”

  She stepped off the horse and ran into the clearing.

  Lin ran at the first person, a man, who dropped his rope in surprise. She flung her right arm, and as if by string, the man’s body flew over the tops of trees.

  Rik and the other Fairy’s horses ran around her and towards the men in the center, who were preparing their spell potion. At that moment, arrows flew all around her, swords clinked, and spells blasted through the air.

  Lin decided to focus on the hostages bonds. She tried a knife, but the magic melted it in half, leaving her with only a blade handle.

  Someone kicked her in the back. She turned and blew him off his feet with her hands; then turned back to the hostages and tried think what kind of spell would counter such binds.

  “Behind you!” one of the tied women screamed.

  She spun around and, instantly, recognized his dark, raging brown eyes, and the stark white of his hands, just like all the nights he’d watched her. It was different seeing Golshem up close, even with his hood still up, his face was visible in the light.

  “I know what you are,” he said. “I knew the moment I saw you: Fairy woman. I wanted to offer you a place with my people, but I knew that I’d be wasting my time. And now, I see that I was right.”

  Before Lin could reply, droplets of rain spattered down in a funnel on his head. The funnel came down and pointed its tail in Lin’s direction. Suddenly, water jetted forward, punching her in the chest with the strength of a fire hose. It sent her flying back. She smashed into the trunk of a tree and slid down to the ground.

  He smirked and said, “Now that’s how you control a storm.”

  Then he turned and walked back toward the fight.

  She tried to stand but her back was seriously hurt. Lin looked around for Rik and the Queen’s warriors. A man aimed a gun at one of the knights. Lin concentrated on it, telling it to heat and then he dropped it.

  Golshem floated high up onto a tree branch, and then looked down to watch the men kill each other. One Fairy was out cold in the grass. Copious amounts of blood issued from his body.

  Lin called his bow to her. It levitated across the air and landed in her grip.

  She took careful aim at Golshem, who seemed none the wiser, and shot the magical arrow straight into his chest. His eyes turned up and locked with hers, before he lost his grip on the tree and fell, crashing, to the ground.

  He lay there, stunned a moment; then managed to heave himself up from the ground. His front was completely smeared in blood.

  He stumbled his way toward Lin, but suddenly, Rik appeared. His horse leapt through the air toward Golshem. As they landed, he swung his sword right to left. Golshem’s head flung some feet away into the trees. His body fell, lifeless, to the ground.

  Lin closed her eyes, “NO! Don’t fall asleep!” she heard someone scream.

  She wasn’t sleeping but she was trying to remember a spell she’d learned in a book her parents had gotten her for Christmas one year. A spell to clear her enemies from her path: a great alternative to a mass vanquishing.

  When parts of it came to her, she opened her eyes. Rik was fighting Angel Craig who had tossed out magic and preferred to do it vis-a-vis. He landed a punch on Rik’s chin, and he flew through the air back into the trees. On the other side of the clearing, another Wacken shot a handgun at the warriors. He hit two of them, and they fell to ground in pools of blood.

  Lin couldn’t let him shoot them all. She said the spell over and over in her mind.

  “Lecem, otem, eatem,” she said over and over.

  After repeating the spell for the twelfth time, she felt a change in the atmosphere, almost like the pressure was getting heavier.

  There was a loud explosion.

  Lin opened her eyes and saw that everyone had gone from the clearing.

  Lin tried to stand but still couldn’t.

  “Hello?” she called out.

  But there was only silence.

  Again, she tried desperately to stand but the pain was too terrible. Then she passed out.

  When she woke, Rik was lifting her up onto a small carriage.

  “What happened?”

  Rik ignored her. He brought her to another clearing of the forest where he told her to be quiet while he healed her.

  Sitting in various sections of the clearing were the remaining hostages.

  “I always thought Fairies were way more powerful than humans. But that was a terrible fight.”

  “Humans magic is much stronger here than it is on Earth,” Rik explained.

  “I tried a spell to get rid of my enemies, which would be all the Wackens,” she said and sat up, slowly. “Did it work?”

  “You got rid of the Wackens alright, but you almost got rid of us, too.”

  “How?”

  “It’s hard to explain. For a moment, I was back in the castle, but then I was here, again. Open up,” he said, gesturing to her mouth. “I’m guessing the spell wasn’t to destroy, but to displace us. I think you might have sent the Wackens home, to Earth, or to some other some other distant place. It’s hard to say.”

  He screwed a cap back onto a little vial.

  In his other hand, he held a purple velvet bag. He pulled the little gold string. Inside it were large granules of sand looking fibers. He passed one granule to each person, and with a quick spell, they’d gone in a poof.

  “What about me?”

  “You are to return with us.”

  “No! Give me that bag.”

  She tried to reach for it, but suddenly couldn’t move again.

  “What have you done to me? I demand that you let me go,” she yelled.

  Then Lin felt sleepy. Her eyes became heavy, like someone had shot her up with sedatives.

  “Sleep,” said Rik. “Sleep.”

  Princess Plea

 
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