My first class was English, but I was too stressed to really retain what was talked about. The second class was Stats. I sorta paid attention, but by the time I walked out, I already couldn’t remember what was discussed. I was having a hard time with my usual coping strategy, which was to bury it deep in my mind. It kept digging itself back out, and dancing to the front of my mind. I really needed to get this under control, or there was no way I would pass any of my classes. English wasn’t as big of a deal, but I couldn’t get away with not paying attention for long in my math classes. I wasn’t good enough in those subjects to be able to breeze through, like I could in English.
All morning, my eyes had darted around the rooms looking for signs of the green man, and my thoughts had revolved around him. I couldn’t help but think he had to be connected to that gateway thing that I saw in Travis’ woods. I wondered if he would talk to me again about it. If not, maybe David would. I was driving myself batty. I really hoped I could find one of them soon.
As I wandered through the hallways, I saw Travis down the hall in front of me. He looked like he was looking for someone. He was peering over the crowd, eyes searching the faces up and down the fall. He had just turned back when his eyes locked on mine, and a look of relief crossed his face.
“Evalia! Thank God! We need to talk. Right now!” He grabbed my arm, making the fabric of my shirt rub painfully against the scratches, and started pulling me down the hallway.
“Travis! Let go of me! Stop pulling on me!” I was prying at his fingers to no avail. Several students gave us looks, but no one tried to stop him. One even snickered at us. Fat lot of good they are. He could be assaulting me, and no one gave a shit.
He opened a door and put his head in. “It’s empty. Let’s talk in here.”
“What?” He let go and I sat down in the chair closest to the door, rubbing my arm. My skin was extra sensitive today, and his grip had felt a lot tighter then it probably was. I moved my sleeve a little and glanced down, but there was no mark, even though it felt like there should be. He glanced out into the hallway and then shut the door.
“A messenger stopped by my house last night. Someone from Shadoewynne saw you through the gateway in my woods, and now the rumor is the Svikari are looking for you.” Travis was running his hand through his black hair as he paced the room.
I stared at him, stunned. His words were not making sense to me. I deliberately shut a door in my mind on the small voice that was screaming that the visitor last night may be related. “I don’t understand. Why does it matter that someone saw me? Who are the Svikari and what do they want with me? And how do you know it was me they were looking for?”
He rolled his eyes at me. They were dark blue today. “I don’t know why it matters, and as for how I know it was you they were looking for, they described you, of course. I have a guess as to what the Svikari want with you, but I’m not sure. The question about who they are is going to take a while to answer. There’s a lot of history we have to go over for you to understand. Do you have time now, or do you want to meet for dinner?” Travis ran his hand through his hair again.
I stared some more, and not just because I was confused. After he ran his hand through his hair, it gave him a tousled look, and I realized how cute Travis was. Normally, I would love to go to dinner with him, but I wasn’t sure we could wait for that. “Uhhh, I have a class in about ten minutes. But, something happened last night and it may be related. Its been driving me insane today trying to understand it. I woke up in the middle of the night and there was a green thing in my room that was about four feet tall.” I described him in detail while my hands flailed around in front of me. I finished my retelling with, “It smiled at me, said ‘found you’ and disappeared.” I didn’t mention the feeling of something settling into my skin. I had no reason not to tell him, but I just couldn’t bring myself to mention it.
Now it was Travis’ turn to stare. “Shit. That’s not good. That was probably a Lorgaire Scath. They are special trackers employed by the Svikari. Their magic is especially suited to capturing magical creatures. Most of the time, Lorgaire’s don’t bring back their target alive. We need to get you somewhere safe now.” He pulled out his cell phone as he talked and started texting. “I’m texting David. He also knows about Shadoewynne. Come on.” He grabbed my arm and started pulling me.
My brain had stopped at the comment ‘they don’t bring back their target alive’, but he snapped me out of my thoughts when he tugged on my arm. I dug my heels in and pried at his hand. “Travis. Stop pulling on me. You need to explain what is going on. I know David knows. I talked to him last night, but you’re scaring me. I don’t understand any of this.”
He let go, and ran his hand through his hair again while pacing the room. “We need to move. They could be tracking you right now; this is not a safe area. I’ll explain in the car. We can’t go to my house, it’s too close to the gateway, and we think it’s being watched. David’s house is warded enough that they should not be able to follow you there. You need to move faster.” He stopped and sighed as he looked at me. I was carrying all my school stuff for the day, plus what I needed to work on a report I had due soon in my Business Communications class. My bag probably weighed close to fifty pounds. He took it from me and slung it over his shoulder. “There, you should be able to move faster now. Let’s go!” He set off at a faster pace than before. It was fast enough that it stopped my questions because I was breathing too hard to talk. He didn’t seem to notice that although we were close to the same height, his legs were definitely longer than mine. I am pretty sure I took two steps for each one of his. He was going to hear about this once I could breathe again!
We reached his raised deep blue beat-up Ford F250 Super-Duty truck. He opened the door and threw my bag in the middle of the bench seat. He turned and looked at me, then back at the truck. He grinned. “Do you think you can get in, or do you need help?”
I said breathlessly, “I’m not that short! I can get in on my own. Did you have to go so fast? It’s not a race you know. My legs are shorter than yours. You could have slowed down a bit.” I reached up and grabbed the bar and pulled myself in. It was a little higher than I originally thought, but I made it.
He laughed as he started the truck. “Yes, I did. I told you, it’s not safe here. We need to get you to a secure location. We can’t dilly-dally.”
I grunted at him. Maybe we couldn’t waste time, but that didn’t mean we had to practically run, did it?
Travis kept talking. Either he was ignoring the scathing looks I was sending his way, or I wasn’t as good at them as I had thought. In a perfectly normal, not out-of-breath voice, the bastard said, “You know nothing about Shadoewynne, right?”
I huffed. “That’s right. I had never heard of it until this week. I thought you were making fun of me. David filled me in a little last night, though.” My hand grabbed the end of my braid and started twirling it.
“Your lack of knowledge is going to make this hard. What did David tell you?”
“Basically, he said the same thing you did, that he assumed I knew about Shadoewynne, and that your gateway looks different. I may have yelled at him and changed the subject.” I felt myself turning red as I stared at the floor.
“So he told you practically nothing.” He ran a hand through his hair again. I really wished he would stop that. He looked so cute, it was making it hard to keep my attention on what he was saying. “So, there is a magical world called Shadoewynne. It’s what the tales of fairies and creatures like unicorns are based on, but it’s nothing like the legends. They are magical beings, but they are so different from us, they might as well be aliens. They don’t think, look, or behave like humans. Most don’t even move like humans. Anyway, Shadoewynne is ruled by a Monarch. About seventy-five years ago, the royal castle and everyone in it disappeared. The land the castle was on looked untouched, as if the castle was never there. Over the years, almost all the workers who disappeared have randomly reappeared aro
und the realm. The thing is, they are completely unaware of how long they have been gone. They don’t even appear to have aged. No royal, or anyone extremely close to the royals, have reappeared though, and neither has the castle. The current theory is that something transported them to another dimension.” He paused and glanced at me from the corner of his eye.
He continued, “In the last couple of years, the king’s researchers have noticed that the natural magic is decreasing in Shadoewynne, and pure magic beings, like dragons, have been found dead with no obvious cause. The researchers believe that whatever happened to the royals caused a vacuum in the magic, and all natural magic is being sucked to wherever the castle went. I don’t know what this has to do with you, but the Svikari are directly related to the disappearance of the Castle, which I’ll explain in a bit.” He took a deep breath and glanced at me again. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to judge how I was taking this, or if there was something more to the glances.
He reached over and ran a finger over my hand where it clutched my braid, causing that warm breezy feeling again, then said, “When I touch you, I can tell that you have Shadoewynne magic in your blood. Since magic usually appears no later than sixteen, and you could see the gateway, I thought yesterday that you knew about it. Our gateway is directly connected to the royal household, so it looks different. I just assumed you had never seen a royal gateway, and that was why you were confused.”
He glanced over at me and sighed. He must have seen the disbelief on my face. “Does anyone in your family seem a little odd?”
I thought about it. My mom was sorta different, but in a hippie sort of way, and she had some mental health issues off and on, but I didn’t think that was what he meant. Her family was pretty normal, but I didn’t know my dad’s family. There was some kind of falling out years ago, and as far as I knew, he never spoke to them. He never told me anything about them. I said as much, and added “Why?”
“In order to protect you, we need to figure out what your family is and why they are here. We can start by figuring out what you are. David should be able to help us with that. I asked him to meet us at his house.”
“What I am? That’s a shitty way to put it. What am I, a dog? Am I a Rottweiler or a poodle?” I sighed, and ran my hand over my face. Something about that breezy feeling had helped settle my mind, but I had so many questions I didn’t even know where to start. “I talked to David last night and asked him about the gateway, but he didn’t say anything about being able to figure out what I am. You said your woods holds a gateway to the royal compound, but why?”
“The woods are a long story, and we’ll go into that later. David and I are descendants of creatures from Shadoewynne, and we both have a bit of magic, as well as being able to see, and cross, gateways. My Father is what humans call a sylph, and David’s grandmother was an Elf. My powers involve the air, and David’s powers involve plants, and he has some mild telepathy. The telepathy helps him identify what peoples powers are when he touches them.”
Oh my god. David could read minds! I really hope I hadn’t thought anything super embarrassing around him, and I was pissed he hadn’t told me that part last night. “All David said last night was that he could tell I had Shadoewynne ancestry when we met. He didn’t tell me he could tell what kind of Shadoewynne I am.” And I didn’t feel anything with him like I did when Travis touched my hand, but I didn’t add that part. “Did he notice something and didn’t say anything to me?” I vaguely realized I was repeating myself, but I decided I was entitled to be a little shell-shocked.
He shrugged as he pulled into David’s driveway. David’s car was already parked, and as we pulled up, David got out of his car. Travis said, in a sort of ominous way, “We will have to ask him.”
Chapter 4
I slid out of the truck, walked over to David and smacked him on the shoulder. “I can’t believe you can read minds! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Hello to you too.” He smiled down at me. “First, I don’t randomly tell people. That would be weird. Second, it’s not really reading minds. I can feel if a person has latent magic and I can get a sense of the way their mind is working. I don’t get words, exactly, more like feelings and sometimes pictures. Most of the time, I have to actually focus on it as well. It doesn’t just come to me.” He unlocked the door and led us inside. Even though it was a nice, sunny day outside, the inside of the house was dark and stuffy. The curtains were drawn and it smelled like garlic. “Come on, my room is upstairs.” We followed him through the dark house and up the stairs. In the darkness, the old decor and ancient furniture gave the house an otherworldly feel.
He led us into to his room, and switched on the light. I glanced around. This room felt completely different from the dark hallways we had just traipsed through. The butter yellow walls bounced the sunlight streaming in the windows around the room, giving it an open, happy feeling.
“Come on in and make yourself at home. This room is warded separately from the rest of the house. My mom is half-elf, and she likes to snoop, so I warded it against her, but it should hold up against the Svikari too. Travis didn’t explain much, just that you were seen and now they are looking for you. Care to fill me in?”
I shrugged. “I got nothin’. I don’t know who they are or why they are looking for me, and I don’t understand what is going on. Travis was giving me a crash course on the way over.” And, the panic that had started last night was beginning to swell, but they didn’t need to know that. I just kept shoveling dirt over it in my mind, because I knew, eventually, I would succeed in burying the fear. I’ve done it before, and I can do it again.
Travis rolled his eyes at him. “I told you, I need you to help me figure out what kind of Shadoewynne Evalia is, and then we can go from there.”
“Oh, yeah. Okay, Evalia, come here.” He sat on the bed. “I need you to sit in front of me, and close your eyes.”
I pushed my shoes off and did as he asked, turning toward him, and crossing my legs on the bed. I closed my eyes, then felt his knees brush mine. A second later I felt the hair on my forehead move. I opened my eyes, and jumped back. He had leaned in and was only an inch from my face. “David! What are you doing?”
He opened his eyes. The grey in them almost seemed to swirl as he stared into mine. “I asked you to close your eyes! I need you to loosen up and let your natural barriers relax. Close your eyes and breathe deeply.”
I sighed. “Okay.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I let it out slowly. I could feel David’s breath on my face again, but I tried to ignore it as I focused on the air moving through my lungs, like I did when meditating. I didn’t really know how to relax my natural barriers, but I tried to relax my whole body. It must have worked because a sensation like I was slowly sinking into warm water started moving up my legs. It moved up my whole body to right under my nose and stopped. There was a sharp metallic smell, like the water was part copper. The feeling slowly retreated back down to my toes. I opened my eyes, to see David staring at me with what looked like fear in his eyes, but it went away so quickly, I wasn’t sure I had really seen it.
“Well, that was interesting. So, you have water nymph blood, and it seems to be pretty strong. You really didn’t know anything about this before this week?” David sounded upset, but I couldn’t be sure.
“That’s right. I wish y’all would stop asking that. This is all news to me.” And, I was beginning to feel like I was drowning, but I didn’t say that part. Have to look brave, even if I’m not. Just keep going.
“Okay, well, you are safe here. You really need to talk to your mom to see if she knows anything. We can leave to give you some privacy, why don’t you stay in here for a few minutes, and you can try to call her?” There was a definite waver in David’s voice this time. He wasn’t telling me something, but I decided not to call him out on it, mainly because I was already unable to focus on what I should do next. I didn’t need to add any more uncertainty to my already unstable mind.
“Okay.” They left the room, softly closing the door behind them. My mind was going through horrible scenarios where they were trying to kill me, and awesome scenarios where I was a long-lost princess. Being a magical being could be cool, but bad guys may be hunting me. It was making me crazy so I did what YouTube had suggested to calm anxiety and focused on the lyrics to a simple song to pull my thoughts away from the anxiety. After a few repetitions of The Song That Doesn’t End, I calmed down, so I pulled out my phone and dialed my mom.
“Hi, Mom. What’s going on?”
“Not much, Honey. Is everything okay? You don’t usually call me this time of day.” My mom’s sweet voice helped calm the last of the jitters.
“Oh, it’s been a week from hell. Do you have a minute? I need to ask you some questions.”
“Yeah, let me turn down the TV. Okay, what’s going on?”
“Uhhh, Everything sounds so crazy, I don’t really know where to begin.” I stood up and started pacing as my mind took off again. My free hand found the end of my braid and started twirling. “So, Sunday, I went to a friend’s house and played paintball in the woods. While I was there, I saw something strange in the woods, and Travis, that’s the friend, later told me it was a gateway to a place called Shadoewynne, and that it was dangerous, and I should just stay away from his woods. I thought he was crazy. Then, last night I woke up and an all-green, like Green-Giant green, four-foot-tall thing was standing in a corner of my room. He smiled at me, but it wasn’t a nice smile, and his teeth were all red, like he had been eating raw meat, then he said “found you” and he held out his hand and it felt like something wrapped me up and soaked into my skin and then he disappeared. Whatever he did made my skin hurt, and I can still feel it. Today, Travis told me that someone is hunting me, and the green guy is their tracker, and David tested me and says I have water nymph blood, but that means I got it from either you or Dad, but no one ever told me anything, and I don’t know what to do. So, now I am hiding in David’s house because he says it’s warded and I’m safe here, but I’m not even sure that all this is true, other than I saw the green guy, but he could have been a dream, but I don’t think he was and… help, Mom. I don’t know what to do.” I took a breath and realized that was the first one I had taken since I started speaking.
A Glint of Shadoewynne: Book 1 of the Shadoewynne Series Page 3
