Hidden Magic

by Melinda Kucsera

  At the moment, her friend’s usual gusto looked a bit dimmed. Jessa hadn’t had time to scan the crowd of guests, but she could still guess at the reason.

  “I take it Relle didn’t come?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Katie’s lips twisted. “She said she’d try, but probably couldn’t get anyone to look after her grandma for the night.” She shook her hair off her shoulders as she might her disappointment. “No point trying to get close to someone who barely leaves her farm. I can find more interesting company than that. We’ll make it my birthday resolution.”

  Jessa smiled with her mind if not her mouth. Katie found resolutions at New Year to be desperate, brittle promises while those made on the day of one’s birth as binding as a vow. She didn’t quite believe Katie would give up on their neighbor just yet. Too much mystery surrounded that family and its century-old sunflower farm for her friend to have lost all interest.

  She set the trash can down. “I think I’ll head home and think things over.”

  “Stay a bit. You might figure out what you want if you take your mind off it for a while.”

  “There’s not much chance of that happening. I should probably tell Ruben.” Once she knew what to say. Contemplating that made her want to withdraw from thinking about it entirely.

  “What do you think he’ll do? Will he come back?”

  “His social media profile says he’s getting married next month, so doubtful.”

  “Ugh,” Katie’s face scrunched up. “Gross.”

  “Yeah. To think all this could’ve been avoided if I’d looked him up beforehand.”

  Katie smacked her knee. “A hex on his nuptials then,” she said. “May he drink too much and embarrass himself on his wedding night. I’ll find something to burn in effigy.”

  “You’re the best,” Jessa said and pulled her friend into a fierce hug.

  The temperate night air felt good on her skin when she left Katie’s house. The boom of music followed as she made her way past the stables on the far end of her friend’s horse ranch. July nights in agrarian Skylark, Michigan had wonderful breezes. Walking through them was a tactile experience. It fluttered through her fine hair and past her cheeks, whispering indistinct phrases.

  Some of her best work had been inspired by walks like these. Now, they stirred nothing. God, how she missed words, the way they tangled and straightened on the page, the way she could mold them into forms that tested the limits of what language could convey. But for that, her heart had to be more than the heavy, useless thing forcing blood through her veins. Even the poetry course she taught at Skylark Community College did nothing to jumpstart it as she’d hoped. It was all salted earth in there. She touched her belly. How could she create life if she was barely alive herself?

  Jessa shook herself, recognizing the spiral of her thoughts. “Watch for red flags,” Linda always instructed, “and change course.”

  Deciding on a literal interpretation, she veered off the path and headed toward the farm of Katie’s neighbor and long-standing crush. Maybe she could convince Relle to spend a couple hours at Katie’s birthday party if Jessa volunteered to watch after her grandmother. It would be a long walk home afterward, but worth it to make her friend’s birthday wish come true.

  Plan firmly in mind, Jessa picked up the pace to cross through their woods. Unlike Jessa’s own little plot of land with its small house and extensive gardens, the Neverstem family owned five hundred acres. They used less than half of that for their sunflower farm and left the rest fallow. Great, towering trees grew there instead, and though rumor had it they’d had many lucrative offers from timber companies, they’d flatly refused every one. Add in the fact that whenever Relle and her grandmother were in town something strange always happened, and speculation abounded. Aside from the weather, the Neverstems were Skylark’s favorite topic of conversation.

  Personally, Jessa didn’t mind them. They kept to themselves and cared for their land. She’d met Relle a few times, always in Katie’s company, and found her sweet, if a little reticent. It was her grandmother Ionia who made her uneasy. Even at ninety years old, Ionia had the look of a queen on a throne more than a senior citizen in a wheelchair. Jessa hoped the woman was asleep so she wouldn’t have to interact with her. Something about her gaze made one feel as if all their thoughts were out in the open for perusal.

  She glanced at her phone. It was only nine o’clock, but older people went to bed early, didn’t they?

  As Jessa neared the edge of the wooded area that led to the sunflower field, movement caught her eye. She slowed. The Neverstems had flood lights situated at intervals along their property and she could’ve sworn she saw—yes, someone was there. Jessa ducked behind the nearest trunk, suddenly aware that she was too far to call for help if she needed it. Had some drunk from the party wandered this way?

  Peering around the tree, she frowned at what she saw. A man appeared to be digging a hole by the roots of a trunk right at the break in the tree line. No, not digging, she realized, squinting. He was filling one in. Rapidly, too, shoving the dirt into place as if his life depended on it. Just what the night called for, a nutcase burying who knew what on the Neverstem property.

  Jessa shielded the light of her phone with one hand and shot a text off to Katie.

  There’s a trespasser by Relle’s woods. Let her know ASAP. I don’t have her family’s number.

  Putting the volume at maximum, she readied the siren ring tone. Maybe she could scare this dummy off. If he came from Katie’s party, she didn’t want to get her friend into trouble by prematurely calling the police, and the closer she tiptoed to him, the more certain she was that he’d been there.

  He wore a militaristic outfit like a cross between medieval-Europe and Tolkien-esque fantasy. Instead of the usual cos-player armor, he wore sleeveless leathers that hugged his upper torso and spread into a tunic-like apron down his thighs. Dark boots reached the shins of his dark trousers. He had a bandolier of knives over his shoulders and leather gauntlets tied to his forearms. At his hip, a sheathed sword completed the ensemble.

  His look brought to mind a grown-up, warrior version of Peter Pan. With wings, she noted when he shifted his back toward her. They had the double-tiered structure of a dragonfly, beautifully transparent with a crosshatched mesh like a screen door. Handcrafted, surely, given how they fit into his outfit like they grew out of his body, but they looked the worse for wear. Sagging down his back, one aft wing had a hole, and the other had a stick poking through the upper section.

  Then she noticed all the blood. It saturated his back, a wet crimson stain that spread to the edge of his leathers. His right arm was a sleeve of red.

  Jessa’s heart took off at a gallop. He’d been attacked. Maybe that stick in his back wasn’t part of the costume. But then, what was he doing around the roots of a tree instead of getting help? He’d stopped digging in the dirt. Hanging his head, he braced a hand against the trunk before him. His breath wheezed. Jessa glanced down at her phone, torn between leaving to call for help or stepping forward to stay with him while she did so.

  Opting for safety, she started a new text this time to Text-to-911. Katie, likely not looking at her phone, still hadn’t replied to her first one. This way, Jessa would be able to stay close without revealing her presence while still getting an ambulance sent over.

  Jessa was halfway through her message when she noticed something had changed about the quiet. The crickets still sang. The wind still rustled…

  The injured man, she couldn’t hear his strained breathing anymore. She looked up, expecting to see him passed out.

  He wasn’t there. She had only a second to take in the sight of his absence before hands grabbed her from behind. She was hauled backward, heels dragging over the ground. The tree slammed into her back. With a startled cry, she dropped her phone. Cold metal pressed against her throat as a pair of even colder eyes glared down at her. The stranger. A spurt of panic jetted through her body as she realized
what he pressed to her skin.

  A knife. He was going to kill her.

  “Who are you?” he rasped. “Who do you serve?”

  She clutched at the arm holding the weapon. It was sticky with blood and as solid as stone. “S-Serve?”

  “Are you sworn to the Thistle Court, or another?”

  What was he talking about? Jessa’s mind trembled and shook. She couldn’t think of any words to answer.

  He watched her another moment. Then his gaze moved up to the bunny ears of her costume and back down to her furry boots.

  “A pooka?” he frowned, but the murderous scowl he wore lightened. “You are far from your burrow.” As suddenly as he’d grabbed her, he let go and stepped back. “Did you arrive through the Jaded Grove as well? Do you know what place this is?”

  Jessa’s pulse hadn’t slowed, her eyes tracking every movement as he slid the knife into a sheath on his bandolier. His hand trembled slightly. She tried to focus on what he asked.

  “This—This is Skylark.”

  His frown deepened. “Where?”

  “Uh. Michigan.”

  “I’ve never heard such a name.” He passed a hand over his brow, smearing blood beneath sandy brown strands of hair. “I am lost indeed.”

  “Maybe you should sit down.” That would certainly give her an advantage if he grabbed for her again. She edged to one side in hopes of putting the tree between them.

  “If I sit, I’ll pass out,” he muttered, but he looked close to falling over anyway.

  “What happened to you?”

  “An ambush. I trusted those I knew better than to trust and set my life against a foolish hope.” He laughed hollowly. “It seemed little enough to risk.”

  He wore such a bleak expression, she almost felt sorry for him. He was unstable, clearly, the weird formality of his speech making her wonder if between putting on the costume and the fake pointed ears, he’d mixed up fantasy and reality. Those injuries weren’t fake though. She shifted a little farther around the tree. Her foot bumped against her phone.

  “You need a hospital,” she said, forcing herself not to look down.

  “A what?”

  “A doctor. You’re hurt and bleeding a ton.”

  “It’s the iron in my shoulder. I can’t heal till it’s removed.” He examined his blood-soaked arm. “I managed to draw out one arrow but can’t reach the other. Perhaps you could help me?”

  She’d been about to dip down for her phone when he turned his attention back to her. She froze, then made a show of tugging at the cuff of her boot to draw his notice from the shiny black casing by her heel. He didn’t even glance at it, his gaze fixed on hers. The pained appeal in his eyes tugged at her.

  “Help you how?” she asked.

  He turned his back to her and sank to one knee. “It’s not too deep. A strong pull should pry it loose.”

  She stared. “You want me to yank that stick out of your back?”

  “Yes.”

  Her stomach turned. “Won’t it bleed more?”

  “The iron is a far greater drain on my strength.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.” He couldn’t have an arrow stuck in him. No one shot arrows at other people in Skylark, especially not a strange guy dressed like a winged Peter Pan out by the Neverstems’ sunflower field.

  He looked over his shoulder at her. “I will repay your service, pooka. A favor for a favor, so long as it’s within my power.”

  She stepped forward, reaching a hesitant hand toward the feathered end of the shaft. “Just promise to let me go afterward.”

  A chagrined crease formed between his brows. “You are not my prisoner. I didn’t recognize what you were before.”

  Confused was what she was, and nauseated by the torn flesh around the hole where the arrow had imbedded itself. Good God, there really was an arrow in his body. She took hold of the shaft with both hands, wincing at his hiss of pain.

  “Don’t move,” she said, her voice shakier than her arms. He obeyed, leaning forward to brace a fist on the ground.

  He gave a nod. “Ready when you—”

  Jessa pulled hard and fast, wrenching the arrowhead from his back. It ripped a chunk of flesh out with it. The arm he’d leaned on gave under him and he collapsed with a gasp.

  “I’m so sorry!” Jessa chucked the arrow away, bile in her throat. She kneeled next to him. His complexion was practically grey, features constricted with pain. Blood spouted from the wound. “I told you that you needed a hospital!”

  He didn’t answer. With nothing else at hand for a compress, she tore the bunny tail off her costume and pushed it against the bleeding. The touch elicited a strangled sound from him.

  “Take…that…off,” he panted.

  “I have to do this to stop the bleeding.” At least, she thought so. Her medical knowledge extended to hazy memories from her high school CPR class, and whatever she’d gleaned from dramatized emergency room scenes on TV.

  “Just give me a moment,” he gritted out. “The iron will diminish and then I’ll heal it myself.”

  “That makes even less sense than all the other gibberish you’ve said so far.” Where had her phone been? She cast her gaze about. “What were you even doing by the Neverstems’ fields?”

  “Would that I knew, pooka. Do you think I’ve a desire to be in the Michigan instead of my own lands?”

  The Michigan. An incredulous sound pushed up her throat. “You didn’t come from Katie’s party, did you.”

  “Is Katie-party a name or a place?”

  A shuffling to their left silenced the exchange. Something moved at the base of the tree where he’d been shoveling dirt. The mound of soil there shifted and scattered. A hand reached through.

  Jessa leapt to her feet and skittered back a few steps. “What is that?”

  An arm followed the hand, then a hulking shoulder. In the pale wash of the floodlights, she could’ve sworn the skin was dark green.

  The winged stranger struggled unsteadily to his feet. “That,” he said, “is a troll. More will follow.”

  She could only shake her head at him. “Trolls aren’t real,” she whispered, yet with a pair of fangs jutting from its lower jaw, and eyes like yellow flashlights, the figure emerging from the ground was definitely not human.

  He touched her arm. “Go, pooka. It’s me they want.”

  “For what?”

  “Retribution.”

  His meaning didn’t sink in at first. “Wait a minute,” she held up a hand. “You mean they’re here to hurt you?”

  Resigned determination filled his face. He pulled free a pair of knives from his bandolier.

  Jessa’s breath thinned with mounting horror. “You can’t.” In his condition, confronting that monster was suicide. “You need to run, not fight.”

  “Find the Thistle Court and tell the Helms where Simith of Drifthorn fell. Tell them to lay what’s left of me beside Rimthea of Hazelglen.” He turned away, his voice low and hopeless. “Maybe there I’ll find peace.”

  He gave her no time to reply. A knife in each hand, he rushed headlong toward the creature that had come to kill him, leaving her behind to watch him die.

  Chapter Three

  Simith dispatched the first troll easily. He plunged both blades into his bulbous eyes and pressed him back into the ground until the dirt swallowed his screams. By his count, that cut his pursuers’ number down to three.

  With one foot, Simith scraped the soil back over the hole. Just as before, he couldn’t seal it closed. With the iron removed, his magic slowly returned, but his many injuries siphoned it away. Wincing, he redirected the magic toward the hole. His conduit burned hot on his chest.

  An arrow punched through the cavity of dirt, narrowly missing his head. Simith reared back, shaky muscles almost pitching him off his feet. Before he could recover, another troll leapt fully from the hole, as if boosted by his fellows below. Simith hurled the pair of knives in his hands, but the troll spun out of their path, and c
harged.

  He retreated into the lanes of sunflowers, drawing his crystal sword. Forged in sun-kissed waters, the blade glowed, an amber-gold spike of daylight. The shallowest of cuts could petrify a troll’s limb. The creatures usually avoided direct combat with those who wielded them. Watching as the last two trolls emerged from the ground, he deemed that would not be the case tonight.

  Simith moved farther into the lane, sunflowers standing alongside him like a sentinel army. The trolls fanned out into adjacent lanes, skirting his blind spots to flank him.

  “Withdraw.” He brandished his sword, flaring its light. “I came in peace and have no desire to cut you down.”

  “Your body weakens,” the troll in the row to his left said. The clink of chains reached his ears, the scent of iron on the air. “You cannot fuel magic to your blade for long. We like our chances.”

  “I won’t be taken so easily.”

  “Yes. You will.”

  In unison, they attacked. The one to his right burst into his row. Simith ducked the swipe of his broad blade, rolling past him and coming up with a thrust. He missed, the troll moving quicker than anticipated. A footstep whispered behind him. He dove, evading a blow intended for his head and turning to strike. Something impacted his injured shoulder—the chain—making his vision swim and throwing him against a bank of sunflower stalks. How stealthily they moved, these trolls! If only his wings were not so tattered, he could fight from above.

  Ignoring the pain, he pushed himself up, shadows in the light of his blade revealing two silhouettes. Where was the third? He whirled, swinging his sword in a wide arc that decapitated a trio of sunflower heads. No troll stood there. Simith realized his mistake as two pairs of hands gripped his sword arm. A kick slammed the back of his knee, sending him to the ground. The weapon was knocked from his hand. Chains went around his other arm and his neck. Two trolls pinned him on his back while the third approached.