Frey (4 page)

As I stood there, frozen
before the garden, I was overwhelmed by the scene, overtaken by
emotion, and had to close my eyes. I raised my head to the sky and
drew in a deep breath when the light rain began to fall. Cool water
trickled down my face, calming me. But it didn’t clear my head, I
still couldn't
understand
.

A painful fear shot through me, and I tilted
my head forward to run through the growth. Vines, thorns and leaves
turned to muddy ash as they touched my outstretched arms and mixed
with the rain. When I reached the edge of the onetime garden, I
stopped and knelt, digging my fingers deep into the soil to form a
trench. When I saw the bared roots, black, dark and rotted, I was
suddenly exhausted. I mindlessly turned and walked toward home,
void of any sensation save the slow rain on my skin.

When I entered the house, Fannie was there. I
ignored her as I trudged past on the way to my room. However, I did
notice her face. I couldn’t place the expression she wore, a mix of
tight, wicked grin and surprised, suspicious eyes while she
scrutinized my face and wet hair. I didn’t care to stop and ask; I
was spent. I made my way to the dark room and collapsed onto the
bed, dropping swiftly asleep to the comforting thrum of falling
rain.

I woke gasping from another dream of my
mother and destruction. The rain had stopped, and the sun was
rising. I wiped the sweat from my brow and went to the hall pitcher
to splash my face. When I noticed the dark roots of my hair in the
mirror, I recalled the dream. The memories of my mother were fuzzy,
but I'd always thought she'd had light hair, beautiful and golden
like Junnie's. In the dreams, it was black... as black as the roots
of my hair now were.

I stood there for a moment,
staring at the darkness, and then spun as I made a rash decision. I
quickly slinked past Fannie’s room to the makeshift vault she’d
created. She kept all the things I wasn’t allowed to have or touch
in that room; it was supposed to be completely off limits. I hadn't
often bothered trying because there was a large flat stone on the
floor I’d never been able to move.
But that
was before
.

I wasn’t sure how the magic
had worked with the bird but I knew it
had
, so I dropped to my knees, held my
hands above the stone, closed my eyes, and concentrated as hard as
I could. Nothing happened right away, and my mind wandered a bit
with thoughts of what might be inside, how I wanted to see and
needed to touch my family heirlooms. I heard the scraping sound of
the lid shifting across the floor.

It didn’t go far but I didn’t need much. I
reached down and drew out a small velvet pouch, laid it aside, and
reached back in. I felt a tube, probably a scroll case. I started
to take it out and heard a wheezing growl behind me. I froze.

The stream of profanities that followed was
long and harsh; part sounded like it was in another tongue. I
released the tube and turned slowly toward Fannie. She was livid,
red-faced and shaking. She stepped toward me, and I cautiously slid
the pouch that lay against my leg behind my sash. She hadn't seemed
to notice.

The blow came so fast I
didn’t see it coming. My head turned with the contact and then
whipped back toward her with shock and anger. Her eyes lit with
anticipation. Did she
want
me to fight back? I had never even talked back to
Fannie. I didn’t have the size to fight her, let alone the magic.
And she was conniving. When I’d first come to live with her she had
sent me to council repeatedly, complaining of my behavior. I had
undergone hours of “evaluations” under the scrutiny of council
members. Exams and trials and endless questions. Black blots on
parchment that made abstract shapes. “What do you see, Elfreda?” I
knew what they wanted to hear–butterfly and flower species. But I
was so resentful toward Fannie for putting me there, I usually saw
a black blob of death consuming her. “A Monarch,” I’d
say.

She looked past me for an instant at the few
inches of open floor, and I took the opportunity to bolt past her
down the hall, straight out the door at full speed. I ran from the
house ignoring the paths; other elves would be no help to me. I
kept running until I was certain she wasn’t coming, and then I
collapsed at the edge of a meadow. I dropped my face into my hands
and considered weeping.

“
Freya?” a soft voice
asked.

I looked up, startled. Chevelle stood just in
front of me. He dropped to his knees and reached out to touch the
mark across my cheek. I turned my head to hide the evidence and his
hand became a cradle on the side of my face.

Chapter Four

Flame

“
Freya,” he repeated in a
softer, soothing voice as he lifted my face. He appeared to have
real concern as he glanced from what I was sure was now a welt to
my eyes and I struggled to keep the tears that were welling up from
falling. I’d not had a caring touch or this kind of regard from
anyone for so long I didn’t know how to react.

“
You’ll need to learn
protection spells.”

“
I… I can’t…”

“
We won’t tell Francine or
the council,” he promised, and I didn’t miss that he’d used
Fannie’s real name. Then, softer, “We won’t even tell
Junnie.”

I didn’t understand. “I mean I can’t do
magic… just useless stuff… light candles…”

“
Then we start with
fire.”

He lowered his hand to mine and stood,
pulling me up and toward the center of the clearing. When we'd
distanced ourselves from the tree line, he abruptly stopped and
turned back to me, still holding my right hand. My eyes followed
his as he looked down at our clasped hands and a cool blue flame
lit on my right sleeve.

Immediately, my other hand jerked up to
extinguish it. Chevelle took the hand to keep me from smacking at
the flame, which had already disappeared. “No,” he said, “use the
magic. Feel it.”

I nodded and he returned his
gaze to our hands, now both connected, as a spark lit at the hem of
my left sleeve and slowly worked its way up my arm. I
wanted
the fire off my
arm, needed it put out
now
. When I concentrated on that, the
flame flickered. It flared again and Chevelle squeezed my hands;
I
had
to be able to
do this. I focused hard at the base of the flame as it wavered and
then fell back toward the hem where it finally choked off. I
glanced up at Chevelle. He looked pleased.

“
Again,” he said as he
stepped back and released my hands.

A circle of fire grew in
front of me where our hands had been. It was blocking my view of
Chevelle, I tried to see through it and then it was gone. He was
further back now; he raised his right hand and a stream of fire
followed it and then curved in my direction. I was afraid I
wouldn’t be able to extinguish it before it was to me but my feet
were frozen in place. What was the old saying?
Fight fire with fire
. I flung my arm
toward the incoming stream of flames and a tongue of fire akin to a
dragon’s shot out and collided with it. I was shocked. I'd only
used my fire to light candles and lanterns, I had no idea I could
produce such a vicious plume of flames. I looked at Chevelle.
“Yes,” he exalted.

He raised his arms above his
head to produce a massive circle of fire. When his eyes returned to
mine, he smiled. He
liked
playing with fire. And then he shoved the fireball
toward me with frightening speed. I threw both hands in front of me
palms out and forced the largest mass of flame I could toward the
ball of fire. Chevelle twisted his hands and it dodged up and then
angled back toward me. I shook my hands frantically, spitting small
bullets of heat at it, hoping to break it up. He pulled his hands
apart and it split, each side curving back toward me; there were
suddenly two now, closing in fast.

I leapt forward just as they
collided where I'd been standing and lost my footing while I
watched the fireworks behind me. I spun into a tumble to keep from
landing flat on my face and was still thrilling from the fire play
as I rolled to my feet.
Magic
. I let out a breathless laugh
and Chevelle joined in, though he may have merely been amused by my
fall.

We spent the next several hours there in the
meadow, sculpting my craft. The exercises grew increasingly more
difficult but it seemed Chevelle was only toying with me. He must
have had much experience with fire magic; the flames he produced
behaved like an obedient dog. Mine acted more like a wet cat.

Exhausted by the day’s work, I began to sway
a bit. Chevelle led me to the base of an old willow and I slumped
against the trunk and then slid down to lie on my back. Chevelle
reclined against the tree, his legs coming to rest just above my
head on the ground.

I gazed through the immense mass of leaves
and branches overhead and breathed deeply. I felt I needed to
explain. I rolled my eyes up to look at him as I lightly touched my
cheek. “I was searching for my mother’s things…”

He didn’t respond, he merely continued as he
had been, staring straight out into the meadow, so I returned to
watching the canopy of leaves.

“…
I can’t remember her…” I
hadn’t really discussed this with anyone before but now I was
talking and I didn’t know where to stop without a response from
him. I kept on, explaining my dreams (leaving out the part I had
read about the northern clans) and closed my eyes in an attempt to
see them clearer. I was recalling the details, her dark hair
blowing in the wind, the feeling of being trapped, when my thoughts
faded into the blackness of sleep.

I woke in my own bed, lit by the dim light of
a single flame suspended above my table. A flash of embarrassment
hit as it dawned on me Chevelle must have placed me there; he must
have seen my home, my room. And then I smiled, because he had left
me a flame. I stretched my entire body, rejuvenated from the rest.
I was unsure how long I'd slept but it looked like the sun was
rising again and I wanted to be out of the house before I ran into
Fannie.

It was probably too early to hope to see
Chevelle. I'd spent the last two days with him but he hadn’t
revealed anything of himself and that had only made me more
curious. I retrieved the documents I'd hidden after my second trip
to the library to find out whether they'd add anything to the
terrible report from the council’s recorder. There wasn’t much new
there, more names, but I did notice a watermark on one of the
pages. I held it up to the light to better see. It was a council
marking and something else.

I dug out the first pages from under my
mattress and examined them closer. The pages directly from the
recorder’s report all included the same council mark plus a string
of characters. I tried to decode them, it seemed one of the symbols
might have simply been page numbers. And the others, could they be
locators? They did remind me of the codes used in the library,
though more elaborate. No one really used the codes, you didn’t
need them with magic, but they were added to many of the pages when
the fairies had started tracking clan histories.

Then it hit me I might have had what I needed
to find the northern clans in the council library. I suddenly found
myself getting up and heading toward the village, regardless of the
consequence.

I was back and forth the entire way to
town.

I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t
keep
myself from doing
it.

What if I got caught?

Surely I could claim ignorance, I was pretty
sure the entire clan thought I was an imbecile.

Maybe I would just see how close I could
get…

And then I was there, standing in front of
the council building and walking in. I began to attempt stealth. It
was a poor endeavor but no one ever seemed to pay much attention to
me anyway. I casually leaned around a doorway to see into the next
room I needed. There was a small group of villagers talking in low
voices, I was trying to figure a way past without being noticed
when I overheard something that caught my attention.

“
Evelyn has been a model
citizen… doesn’t seem right…”

They were talking about Evelyn? My stomach
pulled as the worry from that day returned. I strained to hear but
could only pick out parts of the conversation.

“
Well on her way to becoming
a council member… if anyone should leave…”

“
Yes, but who can trust
him…”

“
Why can’t we simply banish…
who knows if the spells will even hold… dark magic can’t be
trusted…”

I was furiously trying to hear them, fully
irritated they were talking so low, and the harder I listened, the
more I perceived a dull, buzzing hum. And then, at once, the group
began to scratch at themselves feverishly; a forearm, a stomach,
and a face. Each wore an uncomfortable, even frightened, expression
as they hurried out of the room in a tight formation into an inner
council chamber.

I was considering how strange they'd acted as
I made my way through the now vacant room, but quickly switched to
concern when I spotted the library door, unsure if there would be a
protection spell on the entry. I walked right through without any
obvious repercussions and assumed that, with so many council
members around, they must not have thought it necessary.