Penny frowned and lowered her head. “No, no…that’s not what I meant,” she shrugged. “I’m just―I’m not from around here.”
“Indeed,” the man replied with a nasty tone that said he did not believe her. “Anyway, it’s fifty diamond Yuebells for the large clusters just there―and they’re of excellent quality, I promise you that.”
“Fifty? Isn’t that a bit high?” Penny asked in awe.
The man seemed to be losing his patience. “Times are hard, Little Miss. Magic is growing scarcer by the day. The people continue to live wasteful lives, in spite of the shortage. But I expect a foreigner wouldn’t know that,” he said with a raspy laugh.
Not knowing how to react to this, she shrugged and walked away to a bench to puzzle over this strange form of magic. The air was rife with the crispness of early autumn, balancing out the sun’s heat.
Penny’s rest was interrupted by vague noises of excitement in the center of the square. A man with an entourage was making his way through a crowd gathering around a wooden platform. At the same time, someone else appeared to be pushing in the opposite direction, leaving a trail of disgruntled people. The cause of the commotion emerged and Penny’s jaw dropped. His cape and top hat made him easily recognizable as the magician she had met in the coffee shop.
It…it can’t be Simon Shaw!
He stepped out from the wall of glaring people and straightened his clothes out, huffing. Penny charged in his direction.
“Hey, you!” she yelled in what she suddenly knew was English. Several bystanders glanced over at her outburst.
Simon gave a little gasping scream when his eyes fell on Penny, and he broke into a relieved smile. His grin faded when Penny grabbed him by the front of his shirt.
“I knew you had something to do with this!” she snarled.
“P-Penelope Fairfax! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” Simon sputtered, his voice high pitched and nervous.
“Care to tell me why? How did you get here?” Penny demanded.
“Oh, you have no idea what I’ve been through. It was awful,” Simon moaned, grasping her shoulders.
Taken aback, Penny broke away from him. “Start talking. Now.”
Simon’s expression was anguished. “You and I are both in huge trouble…like the we are probably going to die kind of trouble. Please, you’ve got to help me. That lady―the one with the wings―the one who sent me here―she wanted me to give you something…s-so I could make up for getting us into this mess. She said you’d know what to do with it,” Simon said in a frightened whisper, rummaging around in his pockets with trembling hands.
“Whoa―slow down. What are you talking about?” Penny stuttered.
From behind the crowd came the sound of brass instruments blaring fanfare. Out of the crowd, a tall man with a strip of gauzy cloth covering his right eye ascended the wooden platform and marched toward the center of it, waving as the crowd cheered. The man was dressed in finery and his long brown hair was pulled back into a bristled ponytail. Amongst the din of applause, Penny heard Simon give a terrified whimper and turned just in time to see his face drain of color.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as Simon wobbled backward. Without attempting to answer her, he dashed away as fast as his legs could carry him.
“No, wait!” Penny rushed after him, making a desperate grab for his cape. Simon proved to be too quick and disappeared into the crowd.
The man on the platform was in the middle of announcing something to the crowd. “—and I promise each and every one of you the magic miners have been working grueling hours to find more resources. Word has been sent from His Majesty the King that we are to assemble―”
“Baron Deimos!” interrupted a voice from the crowd, and the man stopped speaking and turned toward the voice.
“Yes?” the man called Deimos replied in a silken tone.
“Please! Has there been any news about―about the wraiths?” the man yelped and a hush went through the crowd. Penny looked around, intrigued as she observed the disturbed looks on the faces around her. The team of men that comprised Deimos’s guard muttered amongst each other and eyed the crowd. Penny looked his entourage over, and her heart skipped a beat.
Something was wrong with the man standing closest to Deimos. He wore a tattered hat with a green silk band over his messy mop of black hair, and his face was whiter than milk. One of his eyes was missing and in its stead was a deep, concave indent coated by metal and streamed with electric blue lines. This depression was covered by a thin sheath of glass fused into his skin. His remaining eye stood motionless, his face devoid of all life, and his right arm had been replaced with a steel, claw-like contraption. Penny felt a rather ominous throb in her chest that made her want to find Hector.
Deimos sighed and lowered his head. “I...do not wish to cause further alarm, but it seems we cannot keep this from the public any longer.” He looked out at the crowd with the utmost seriousness. “The rumors are all true,” he said, and a torrent of dread stirred itself into the mutterings and whispers.
“The number of wraith sightings has become more numerous than we could have ever anticipated. The claims can no longer be dismissed as rumors. We have begun to look into the incidents, though we can offer no definitive proof of a cause at this time. Please exercise the utmost caution when traveling in the hinterlands or close to any burial grounds. If you encounter a wraith, alert any town official immediately and we will call in the province’s High Priestess to have it taken care of,” Deimos instructed. “We are in constant communication with the capital on finding the source of the problem, so please be patient. In the meantime, please remember to keep all records of your Hidden Names well concealed and contained.” Deimos broke off and his expression hardened; he looked as if he were having trouble speaking. “And I must assure you that my brother is still properly detained and is in no way associated with the appearance of these wraiths.”
“Of course not,” a portly man near Penny breathed in a sarcastic sneer to a woman beside him. They exchanged dark looks.
“You really think it’s his fault, don’t you?” she asked in a hushed tone.
“How could it not be? The man’s been convicted of using forbidden forms of Nomamancy before, hasn’t he? He was the one who made a wraith out of the last baron some years back, remember? His own father, can you imagine? I heard he completely lost his mind because of it, too. They haven’t got him in jail, no...He’s locked up tight someplace very different. Or at least he was…”
“You can’t think that he’s escaped?” she whispered.
Penny was shaken from her eavesdropping with a start when a cold, wet nose pressed to her ear and sniffed. She yelped as she batted the nose away and turned around, finding herself face-to-face with a bizarre, yet charming, creature.
It had a dog-like snout, soulful brown eyes, a long, slender neck, and stubby horns that somewhat resembled a giraffe’s. Its whole body was strong and muscular and covered in sleek, ebony fur that was silky to the touch. A saddle was hitched on its back. Penny marveled at it, and it stared right back, sniffing.
“Things are going to be very difficult if you keep running off like this,” said a familiar voice. Penny saw Hector standing next to the tall beast, holding its reins.
“What is that thing?” asked Penny as the creature whined, pushed its nose to the side of her face and tickled her into laughing aloud.
“Transportation,” Hector said, eyeing the beast with disdain.
“We get to ride on it?” Penny stroked its neck and the creature groaned with contentment. Penny broke away from this momentary distraction and turned to Hector. Hurriedly she told him about her encounter with Simon in the coffee shop and how he’d appeared again just moments ago.
“That’s…odd. To say the least.” Hector’s expression was one of clouded wariness. “I daresay someone might be trying to target you in particular.”
“Oh, you think?” Penny retorted and Hector frowned. “What get
s me is it makes no sense, Profe―I mean, Hector. Why would someone go through all this trouble to attack me? Aside from the fact that I started producing all that magic, I’m nobody of any real importance.”
“I haven’t the foggiest, but if I were you, I’d stay away from that Simon fellow. It seems to me that following him would only lead to a trap. Come along, now.” Hector gestured for her to follow and she did, the creature lolloping at her side.
The walk through town was a quick one; after only a few minutes they exited Dewthorne through the northern gate into the wilds. The long-necked creature galloped out and began snuffling at everything in the tall grass. Hector withdrew the map from his pocket and set about studying it.
“From the looks of this…and the signposts…it’s going to be about a five-day journey to the next town,” he said as Penny joined him and looked over the map rattling in the wind. “It’s called Lindenvale. From there we can take a carriage into the capital, I believe.”
Observing Hector trying to get control of the beast was a sight that reduced Penny to paroxysms of laughter. Hector was intimidated by its low growls every time he tried to get up on its back, and he had to hold fast to the reins to keep it from bolting off. Once Hector’s struggle to get up on the saddle was at last over, he helped Penny up behind him.
“Move, you blasted thing!” Hector shouted in frustration, tugging at its reins. The creature snorted and reared back. Penny grasped Hector around the waist as they took off at a mad gallop. The landscape jostled by as the creature’s flat paws flew faster and faster through the yellow-green grass. Penny’s breath came back to her after a few minutes and her grip on Hector loosened. They passed by an orchard, smelling sweet fruit that had long since ripened. Lazy clouds wandered through the sky like huge white whales traversing the ocean. Brilliant fire-bursts of autumn leaves sailed through the air.
The ride through the grasslands continued for several hours. In the late afternoon they reached a seemingly endless field of lavender-colored blooms shaped like delicate bells. The beast was quite enjoying the romp, inhaling with loud snorts and then letting out a long, shuddering breath every so often.
“I wonder if they’ve realized we’re missing yet,” Penny shouted to Hector over the whistling of the wind. He seemed to think it over for a moment.
“Assuming that time follows the same flow as on Earth, it seems possible. It should be Sunday by now, so at least by tomorrow someone from the college will have noticed my unannounced absence. Will anyone have come looking for you by now?” Hector wondered.
“I don’t think my mom has returned yet. She went to her mother’s house for the weekend, so there’s a good chance she’s still there. Grandma, at least, will be pleased that I’ve gone missing. Maddie will probably just think I’m refusing to answer her calls ‘cause we parted on iffy terms,” Penny reasoned, feeling guilty and wondering if those were to be the last words shared between her and her closest friend. She thought hard, but could not remember if she’d even told her mother that she loved her before they parted. She touched the rune pendant that hung around her neck.
“What about your father?” Hector asked over the wind.
“I don’t have one,” she replied. “Well, I mean I have a father, I just never met him. He was some guy my mom met on her trip to Scotland―he ran off before I was born. It’s why most of my family hates me; I’m their shameful secret,” Penny said, and sighed. “I wasn’t even supposed to be born, actually…my grandmother tried to convince my mother to…but Mom didn’t have the heart to get rid of me, I guess. Oh God, why am I even telling you this?” Penny looked down at the pale purple flowers carpeting the meadow, feeling her face burn with humiliation.
Hector paused. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be―it’s not like I care. How can I miss someone I never met, anyway? And the rest of my grandma’s family combined hasn’t got enough brains to fill half an eggcup, so why should I care what they think?” Penny said with a forced laugh, still aching with shame.
Several hours later the sun began to sink and bathed the whole world in a golden-orange light. They stopped in the middle of a wide meadow and sat down under a tree laden with clusters of deep indigo blossoms. The fallen flowers created a blanket of radiant color underneath the ancient boughs and they decided it would be a good place to spend the night. As Hector gathered up sticks for a fire, Penny roamed around the hills in search of a stream. The tall beast loped wearily beside her and she ran her hand across its soft fur.
“You’ll need a name, I think,” she said to the creature, as if it could understand her. The view was magnificent as she gazed out over the lost hills, spotting a little creek. Penny stared into the creature’s animated face, then dipped the basin she’d brought into the water and smiled as it came to her.
“You’re to be called Humphrey from this moment on, is that clear?” she said to the beast in mock seriousness as she shouldered the heavy basin and made her way back to their camp under the tree, an obedient Humphrey following.
Hector and Penny set about roasting some vegetables they had bought from the market on sticks over the fire that Hector had lit with a burst of magic. Jerky and bread completed their simple meal.
“Here you go, Humphrey.” Penny scooped their dinner scraps onto the ground in front of the tall, happy beast and he greedily ate them up.
“Who is Humphrey, pray tell?” Hector asked with raised eyebrows. Penny was sure he already knew the answer, so she patted Humphrey with affection and tried to look aloof. Hector shook his head.
THE NEXT DAY they covered many miles and Penny observed the landscape getting greener and denser with trees. They camped in a small, moss-blanketed glade. As evening fell, Hector produced large flares of energy from his hands, and when Penny asked him what he was doing, he acted shy.
“I’m practicing this spell. I realize that knowing no magic that could help in a life-threatening situation was a sore oversight on my part. We got very lucky last time―it might not happen again.”
Penny watched with interest as he moved from energy fields to glowing discs of concentrated energy, noting that with each spell he conjured, her head grew dizzier. Humphrey watched the bursts of runes and light with his ears flat against his head, low growls rumbling in his chest. Seeing Hector’s magic put Penny into a thoughtful mood.
“How come your world and Elydria have magic, but Earth doesn’t?” she asked, staring into the campfire and furrowing her brow.
“Earth’s got magic, too―something the inhabitants probably take for granted, I think,” Hector said as he took a seat beside her.
“What do you mean?” she questioned, nonplussed, and Hector smiled.
“Dreams,” he said and let her think about it for a moment. “Magic is expressed through dreams and the control over them in your world.”
“What?” Penny wondered.
“It’s true,” Hector continued. “I was surprised at the concept of dreaming in the animals and people of Earth when I first came to Earth four years ago. I cannot dream, no one from my world is able to dream, and I doubt anyone in this world would be able to either.”
“No way, that’s impossible,” Penny argued. “Isn’t dreaming like…just a stress release mechanism or something? And how is it that people can’t use dreams to perform all sorts of miracles or make things burst into flame or something?”
“They may have the ability, and the potential to develop it, but that sort of thing isn’t considered credible in your world, therefore no one takes it seriously. Once something like that disappears from society, it becomes hard to replicate, much less master. Like a lost language. I’ve read books about the ancients of Earth manipulating the power of dreams, but it’s classified as mere myth. You know, soothsayers, telekinesis, empaths, those who can communicate with the dead…I’m sure there are people to whom this power comes naturally, but they are dismissed as insane or fraudulent. Or perhaps they simply choose to walk among the world of dreams and don�
��t care to return to the waking world. That’s just my theory, anyway―take it with a grain of salt,” Hector concluded with a shrug.
“Interesting…and you can feel the energy coming from us?”
“Precisely. When you dream, your aura gets replenished. But just as I expend the energy when I perform enchantments, people from Earth should theoretically should be able to harness the ability of raw dream material and use it however they’d like,” Hector explained.
“So maybe even I could have the ability to weave dreams?” Penny smiled at him. He grinned at her little quip and nodded. Penny marveled at this concept for the remainder of the night. Lying beneath the canopy of whispering leaves, her eyes grew heavy and she fell asleep with a faint smile on her lips, hoping a dream would come to her.
Penny awoke to a sky of opaline white. The effects of sleeping outdoors, with only a few thin blankets for comfort and warmth, were catching up with her. A penetrating chill blew as Penny and Hector ate their meager breakfast and gathered up their things in a daze.
As the day wore on the wind picked up and the trees around them grew thicker and taller. Humphrey romped through the huge piles of leaves that littered the forest floor, and Penny and Hector spoke in quiet voices. Something about the quiet of the forest inspired a hushed tone.
“This place gives me the creeps. Can’t you just teleport us out of here or something? Wouldn’t that save a lot of time and energy?” Penny murmured to Hector, staring up at the high boughs. The canopy sent a shower of leaves down at a steady rate.
“Teleporting is possible, but it’s extremely dangerous to jump to a place you’ve never been before―and the amount of magic it requires is staggering. It would surely render you unconscious, or perhaps strand us somewhere awful, like the middle of the ocean. The magical shockwave can sometimes be enough to cause serious medical issues or even death,” he said.
“Hold on, why didn’t you just teleport us away that night at your house?”
The Angel of Elydria (The Dawn Mirror Chronicles Book 1) Page 6
