Paranoia, Pixies and Prophecies

by Melinda Chase

  If there was one thing I'd learned about magic it was that, in these moments, I had to let go of control and just be. I had no other choice.

  I glanced around, taking everything in, until there was an abrupt tugging at my back, as if someone had grabbed the fabric of my shirt, twisted it up in their fist, and started to yank me back.

  "What the…” I started angrily, spinning around to confront my aggressor.

  But there was no one there. The street was completely empty, save for a softly glowing fold that just hung there, ghost-like.

  A dark, hesitant feeling twisted my stomach into a tight knot.

  This isn't normal, I thought. I didn’t even know how I could tell, but I just knew. Even when I'd had my first vision, a fae power by all accounts, I hadn't thought it was unusual. But this was a completely different story.

  Curiosity overwhelmed me, and even though that suspicious feeling sat dark and heavy in my stomach, I forced myself to ignore it. Slowly, I stepped toward the fold, trying to discern what it was.

  A ripple of wind whispered down the street, rustling the fold as if it were a curtain, pulling it open and letting in a sliver of bright, pure sunshine.

  “What on Earth…” I started to whisper before I realized that was just the thing.

  Nothing on Earth. Whatever this strange, rustling curtain was, it wasn’t a part of Earth. It was otherworldly.

  My footsteps were silent as I wandered toward it, palms sweaty, heart pounding. Logic didn’t exist for me just yet- it was drowning in curiosity and wonder. I should have been on guard, should have wondered why this portal to an entirely new world had suddenly appeared, but I couldn’t.

  A soft breeze hit my face, warm and welcome when compared to the harsh wind that had been blowing down the street moments before. This breeze was fresh, smelling of the most delectable floral combination ever.

  It’s the world of the fae. I knew that with a sudden, unbending surety. I had somehow managed to find a portal to the other world.

  The world my grandfather was in.

  All of a sudden, a large, rough hand wrapped around my bicep, jerking me so suddenly that the shadow world and the curtained portal fell away, dissolving back into the Portland I knew so abruptly I couldn’t even follow it. All I heard was a loud, long horn honking at me as my body flew backward through the air. A car whizzed by, smacking me with a harsh, hot wind that was nothing like the gentle breeze I’d welcomed moments before.

  I slammed to the pavement and all of the air left my body, rushing out of my very cells. I could vaguely hear people scream in the background while others gasped in shock. But it was all I could do to gasp for air, pulling oxygen back into my body. My mind flashed back, for a brief, tremulous moment, to the last time I'd felt this way.

  The fae woman had been after me. Her magic had been curling out of her, called forth by harsh, ugly words, trying their best to kidnap me.

  Terrified, I flipped over, fully convinced I was in the middle of my backyard again on that awful, terrifying night.

  But instead of seeing her sickly pale skin, and her monstrous eyes, Hunter's face was right above mine. His thick eyebrows were creased downward, and the look of absolute terror he wore was enough to bring me back to the present. With an abrupt, crashing whine, everything truly fell into place around me, and my mind caught up to the moment.

  “Shannon!” Hunter was shouting, shaking my shoulders with the violence of an earthquake.

  It was only then when I finally looked into his enormously freaked out gray eyes, that I realized I was lying on the pavement of a Portland sidewalk, surrounded by at least a hundred perfectly normal humans.

  “Shannon, what the hell was that?” Hunter hissed, helping me to my feet.

  “Let's just get to the car," I whispered, taking note of the many pairs of eyes who were standing around us, whispering and watching.

  Hunter looked at me inquisitively, and I could tell his first instinct was to demand more information, and now. But he also knew that wasn't his place anymore, and the best thing to do would be to walk me back to his truck, just like I'd asked.

  "Lady, are you okay?” A young guy with a maroon beanie asked, stepping up to me and looking between my face and Hunter's like he thought my boyfriend somehow had a hand in the fact that I’d been walking down the middle of the street.

  “It’s this new medication I'm on," I responded quickly, sidestepping the worried bystander and hurrying away from the prying ear and eyes of the crowd.

  As soon as we'd slammed the doors of the truck, Hunter whipped around and said, “Okay. What the hell happened back there?”

  His voice was rough with demand, but where I would have gotten mad at anyone else who might have spoken to me that way, I found myself wanting to cry at the pure fear and empathy lacing his tone.

  That was a strange and slightly unnerving realization, but I decided to file it away for another day. My love life revelations could wait.

  “I saw…” It wasn’t until I attempted to explain it to Hunter that I realized I had no freaking clue what I'd just seen.

  And also, that my spandex was cutting into my stomach like a piece of floss cuts through a cinnamon roll. The sharpness was so unbearable that I could hardly even think.

  “Saw what?” Hunter demanded.

  “Hold on," I hissed. Then, in a moment that I could only characterize as being brought on by an intense, immeasurable amount of stress, I reached up under the pretty pink dress I was wearing and yanked the Spanx down my legs and all the way off.

  Hunter merely raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, waiting for me to get myself comfortable before delivering the explanation he so desperately wanted.

  “Did I almost get hit by a car?" It suddenly dawned on me that the massive honk and the whooshing of a massive object as someone yanked me from the street might not have been just a coincidence.

  “Yes,” Hunter said impatiently. "Why do you think I threw you to the ground so fast? It didn't hit you, though. So can you tell me why I had to pull you out of the street before you got squashed to bits?"

  “I saw… well, I’m not exactly sure what I saw," I replied, searching my brain for the best way to explain it. “Everything sort of disappeared and there was this window in the middle of the street. To the fae world. I think. the breeze smelled like flowers and the sunshine was so pure and light that I don’t think there was any way it was from this earth.”

  Hunter’s brows knitted together and he fell back against the leather of his seat. His gray eyes went far away, unfocused, but not lazy. I could almost see all of the thoughts rushing through them. He was deliberating something, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe he didn't know if he should tell me what he was thinking?

  “Did the breeze tinkle?"

  “Excuse me?" The first thing my mind went to was pee, and that was so absurd I wanted to laugh out loud, but the mood was not conducive to laughter.

  “Like wind chimes," Hunter explained. “When the breeze was coming towards you, did you hear what sounded like wind chimes?"

  I thought about it for a moment. I'd been so caught up in the curiosity of it all that

  I hadn’t even thought to figure out what the breeze sounded like. But as I dug down into my memory, I found myself nodding.

  “Yeah, it did.”

  “That's what I thought,” he muttered darkly, though the words were directed more toward himself than they were me.

  I let him stew in silence for a moment, watching as he sat hunched over the steering wheel with his arms crossed and an angry, yet inquisitive look on his face. Half of me wanted to jump in and start asking him a million and one questions, but the other half knew that Hunter did not appreciate being interrupted while he was trying to think.

  For my part, I turned to look out across the parking lot and see if I could conjure up that strange curtain once again. This time, if I saw it, I planned to make a beeline right for it and jump straight through. I knew from experience tha
t when magic was trying to tell me something, it was best not to question it and just follow its lead.

  “We should get you home.” Hunter turned the key in the ignition suddenly, as if all of his thinking had led him to the conclusion that I simply needed to be at home.

  “That’s it?" I asked him with an eyebrow raised. "No dark warning? No thoughts? We should just get me home."

  I was suddenly, virulently resentful of the way his words made me sound like I was some drunken teenager out too late on a school night. I didn't want to just go home, crawl into bed, and fall asleep to the nasty, churning thoughts in my mind. I wanted to figure this out.

  "Not tonight,” Hunter shook his head casually like this was a perfectly normal situation.

  Which, taking into account all that he and I had been through over the last few months, it unfortunately was.

  I glared at him for a half of a second, desperately trying to see if I could morph my visions into sudden telepathy before it dawned on me.

  "This isn’t normal, is it?" I asked. “Not for a fae, not for a witch, and not even for a halfling?"

  Hunter, of course, was the only person who truly knew what “normal" was for someone like me. He’d spent plenty of time hunting us down under the orders of the Council, after all.

  That was how he'd figured out I had fae powers.

  The brakes squealed as Hunter came to a stop at a red light, chewing on his bottom lip as he tried to find his words.

  “Nope.” That was all he needed to say. One word to cover an entire book full of questions.

  Great. So now I wasn't even normal for a halfling. This whole magic thing just kept getting better and better.

  We rolled along the quiet streets of Portland in silence, each of us caught up in our mind-boggling revelations and world stopping questions.

  First and foremost, I wanted to know how the hell the fae got from one world to another if they weren't able to see these magical curtain things. And then second of all, I wanted to know how the hell I was able to see these portals.

  I knew Hunter could answer my first question, but I wasn't so sure I was prepared if he had the ability to answer my second.

  As we drove, he slipped his hand quietly over the center console, bringing it to rest right on my now Spanx free thigh, and squeezing ever so gently, letting me know he was right there.

  A flare of embarrassment popped up as I remembered the rather uncouth way I’d ripped off my undergarments, right in front of my new beau. I was sure that wasn't how he'd imagine our first date going, but I was also sure that it wasn't enough to make him dump me.

  Not if he was squeezing my thigh with the most gentle, loving caress and making my insides go all warm and tingly.

  Hunter turned the truck into the driveway, and I started to mentally prepare myself for the myriad of questions that I was sure would follow as soon as I told my family about the strange curtain that had appeared in the street. But when we walked in the door, all was quiet. Not a single soul was downstairs. Even Herman had seemed to disappear.

  “Where is everyone?” I called, leading Hunter up the stares. Nerves took over as we walked up the wooden steps, and the avid worrier that loved to live in my head started to wonder if something had happened to my family. Hunter grabbed my hand, soothing me instantly and simultaneously stopping me from shaking like a leaf.

  We peeked in every room, silent as ghosts, but each one was empty. Just as we hit the bottom of the stairs, though, I heard Grams’ soft voice floating down to us, and instantly breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Didn’t you guys hear us?" I demanded as I marched up the stairs, ready to chew them out for giving me such a scare.

  But I never got the chance. The moment I walked into the attic, the old, comatose elf suddenly sat straight upright and stared at me with milky, blank eyes as he gasped for air.

  “Shannon!” he gasped, wheezing at me with so much intensity I felt myself get a little scared. “Shannon!”

  4

  “Shannon!” His voice was as rough as sandpaper, filled with the dryness of someone who had been out for far too long. Marcella instantly sprang up to grab him a glass of water, while I rushed forward.

  All thoughts of the portal to the fae world fled my head as I bared down upon the blind elf. If I could speak to him and get answers, everything I’d been wondering for the last hour wouldn’t

  even matter anymore. This would be enough.

  “I’m right here,” I told him, carefully positioning myself on the very edge of his bed, trying not to move him too much. Marcella returned from the kitchen with the water, and the two of us helped him tilt his head back so we could pour the liquid down his throat. Mom, Grams, and hunter watched on, all trying to figure out how they could both be of help and stay out of our way.

  The elf suckled on the edge of the glass, taking in the liquid droplet by droplet as he tried to soothe his rough throat. Marcella glanced over at me, and I saw the worry cloud her soft brown eyes. She didn't have to say a word for me to understand what she was thinking.

  The old elf didn't have long.

  “That's enough, thank you,” he murmured, pushing the glass away and back into Marcella’s hands.

  She nodded quickly and sank back into the little wooden chair by his bedside.

  The elf turned his milky white eyes toward me once again, somehow giving the illusion that he was honing in on my face even though he didn’t have his sight. Slowly, he reached on aged, gnarled hand up toward my cheek and stroke down the skin, letting his fingertips glide over my face.

  My first instinct was to pull away at the unwelcome onslaught, to push his hand back and demand he answer the plethora of questions that had been sitting on the tip of my tongue since he’d first called Laslow’s name in the jail cells below the Hunter’s Council. But I fought against those instincts, recognizing that this was a creature from another world and another culture, and it was in my best interest to let his strange exploration continue.

  Finally, after a long moment, he let his fingers drop back down to his lap.

  "You remind me of him,” he croaked out. His mouth moved slowly, blowing a weak breath across my face that I only felt because of the proximity. It was a bit putrid-smelling, but I forced myself not to sin out with worry at what that could mean.

  “What's he like?” I heard myself asking before I could stop myself.

  The old elf paused, glancing right over to Grams. The way he was seemingly able to focus on each one of us as if he could actually see us through the milkiness of his blind eyes, was unsettling.

  “I am not the one to answer those questions, child of Laslow," he murmured before bursting out into a massive coughing fit. It was so intense that I could see even his lower back shaking as he clutched two hands to his mouth and worked to minimize the hacking. Marcella was there in a flash, holding the cup to his lips helpfully. The elf drank, graciously.

  “Who are you, then?” I asked him instead, hoping I would at least get answers out of that question.

  “That is not important.” The elf grimaced as he pulled away from Marcella. “I am dying, as you may well have figured out. I suspect Marcella has certainly come to that conclusion already. And there are two—”

  Mid-sentence, he was overcome by yet another fit of coughing, as if to drive home his point- the elf was dying, and he certainly didn’t have long to convey to us all he needed to.

  “How can I help you?” I asked. To my surprise, the question came out in a half sob. I was suddenly overwhelmed with desperation. I wanted to save him, but my motivations were purely selfish.

  I wanted him to stay with me and answer all of my questions. I wanted him to be my fountain of knowledge, spouting truth as if it was light, bringing the shining yellow to the spaces that had previously been completely dark, devoid of anything.

  I needed him to show me what I was supposed to do, and who I was supposed to be. Even with Hunter and Marcella here, I knew I had been stepping across thin
ice, trying to poke and prod at the space ahead of me so that I didn’t fall through. But one day, I knew, I wouldn't explore my surroundings well enough. One day, I would miss a section. I would step on it, and my foot would go straight through the ice, cracking it all around me, and I would be unceremoniously yanked into the dark, freezing cold depths of the lake.

  And that was where I was sure I would die unless I had all of the knowledge this old elf could give me. that way, I could make sure my ice was thicker. I could throw a layer of freezing water over it and watch proudly as it turned to ice almost instantly, creating aa thick barrier between me and the dark waters below.

  So, my wish to help him was a bit selfish. But maybe it was time I did something for just me.

  The elf, though, gave me a sad, forlorn smile.

  “There is nothing you can do,” he croaked, fighting back another coughing fit. “I need to tell you something, though.”

  Once more, the coughing overtook him. He grabbed a corner of the sheet and yanked it towards his mouth, spitting out bright green blood as he hacked his lungs up.

  “My hearts are bleeding,” he said, holding the forest green stained sheet up for evidence. “Listen carefully. Your grandfather has been imprisoned by the king of our world, a nasty, brutish ruler who stole his power nearly a millennia ago, and has done nothing but abuse it terribly. We are on the brink of a civil war, and Shannon, that is why you exist. That is why you are a powerful halfling. I have seen it in my mind's eye.”

  I shook my head vigorously, attempting to process all of this information.

  "So you’re saying I’m some sort of chosen one?” I demanded, thinking of all of the traditional, tragic stories of heroes.

  They all lost so much on their journey to victory. I didn't want that to be me.

  “No,” he croaked. His words were coming slower now, punctuated each time by a massive, horrendous cough. “I am saying you are the one who knows. No one chose you, Shannon. But you must save your grandfather. He will know what to do.”