Indigo Magic (23 page)

He was still beside me, but upright, while I had folded forward onto the sand. When I lifted my head, I saw Lily Morganite above us, her face pulsing with rage.

‘If you had kept up with your studies, young Zircon, you would know he could not die outside of time.’ Her voice swelled like an angry wind, louder than my mother’s wails. ‘
That
is why.’

‘You—’ Meteor’s voice choked off.

‘How dare you try a Feynere fraud again?’ Lily shouted
down
at me. ‘Did you think I would not know? Your foolish trick with the human weapon only removed my last doubts about what you are!’

My mouth tasted of grit. She knew.
Feynere
.

‘The true aevia ray, Zaria. Now!’ Lily’s wand was fully infused. ‘
Kenor mortel
.’ A second dagger appeared just above my mother.

‘Wait!’ I floundered in the sand, my gown tangled. I had to find the pocket, the right one. The aevia ray.

There. There it was, the crystal flask. Fumbling, shaking, I lifted it up, and Lily took it.

This time, there was no Tumble to rescue it; there was only Lily and her triumph. She pulled on the stopper, but of course she couldn’t open it. She bashed it against the sapphire wall, but it didn’t break. It chimed like a perfect bell.

No one and nothing but me can break or open this flask
.

‘Now, Zaria,’ she said. ‘For your brother, you will open this flask and you will open the bottle of aevum derk.’

T
O GAIN LOVE IS TO GAIN MORE THAN LOVE
. A
ND LOVE, ONCE BROUGHT TO LIFE, DOES NOT DIE BUT TRANSCENDS ALL WORLDS, ALL PLACES AND ALL TIMES
. S
OME DISPUTE THIS, BUT SUCH DISPUTE DOES NOT ALTER ITS TRUTH
.

Orville Gold, genie historian of Feyland

FLASHING SILVER, A
colour I loved. Dark hair against granite. A whispered spell. ‘
Transera nos
.’

Leona.

And in the same instant, Meteor’s hand on my shoulder. ‘
Transera nos
.’

They took my mother and me away from Anshield.

We landed on the spiral pattern of tiles in my mother’s room, and there we lay, weeping, gasping, clutching the floor as if it might turn to sand.

Someone was stroking my hair. It should be my mother. She was here, really here, the one I’d longed for, whose guidance would help me through my troubles.

But the soothing hand on my head wasn’t hers. It was Meteor’s. ‘Zaria, I’m sorry I took the choice away from you, but I …’

Jett. He meant the choice to save my brother or
save
Feyland. Meteor had taken it out of my hands.

‘No one should have to make such a decision,’ he said.

I couldn’t speak.

His arms lifted me and put me in the pillows of the nest. Andalonus laid my mother beside me. Her breath was weak and frantic, her eyes vacantly staring. Unlike when she first awoke from the glacier spell, she didn’t seem to recognize me. I felt pain worse than being wrapped in the troll cloak. Shutting my eyes, I cried helplessly.

‘
Obliv trau
,’ I heard.

Opening my eyes, I saw my mother in a deep sleep.

Leona was there with her wand out. ‘I’m sorry, but it had to be done, Zaree.’ Her voice was more gentle than I had ever heard it.

I nodded. Cinna Tourmaline had spent five years in glacier cloth, and less than an hour after waking, what she needed most was sleep. And when she woke again, how would she bear the grief of her loss?

And how would I bear my grief? My father had been murdered before my eyes. He’d been freed from a wretched spell only because that spell protected him from the finality of death. Seeing him die wasn’t any easier for having once believed him gone. If anything, it was worse to lose him twice. His last living glance had rested on me, and it haunted me now.

If I hadn’t been so slow, hadn’t waited endless moments, too stunned to move, he would be here in this room. Alive.

‘Lily killed him to punish me for tricking her,’ I mourned.

‘No,’ Meteor said, his green eyes watery as he leaned over me. ‘She always meant to kill him.’

‘I could have saved him,’ I wept.

‘Zaria. She baited a trap just for you.’ He caressed the side of my face.

‘And now she has the aevia ray, and my mother has nothing to live for.’ My words ended in a sob.

Leona touched a wing to mine. ‘Yes, she does.’

Andalonus hovered beside Meteor. ‘You brought her home.’

‘She has something to live for,’ Meteor said. ‘She has you.’

My friends and I gathered in the hearth room, sipping sonnia tea. I was silent, listening as they assured me that Lily would spare Jett for as long as she was unable to open the aevum derk and the aevia ray.

Too exhausted and sad to speak, I didn’t voice my fear that Lily could be working with the trolls – or my knowledge that troll magic could easily open my Feynere seals. No, I didn’t want to mention the trolls at all. Too well, I remembered their fortress and the crowd of them shouting, ‘
WE WILL HOLD YOU TO YOUR WORD
.’

The king had claimed the trolls ‘took an interest’ in the plight of Feyland. He had said it was no trivial battle we fought. But if he wanted to help the fey, why didn’t he
inflict
his magic on Lily Morganite? She might be powerful, but she was still a fairy. If he could impose his magic on me – a Feynere – then surely he could impose it on her.

Rather than helping Feyland, it seemed more likely that the King of the Trolls had schemed with Lily somehow. But either way, he would soon discover I’d broken my promise to deliver the aevia ray to the rulers of Feyland. The trolls would come for me. And when they did, all the magic I had left would not help me.

I traced my wrist, my fingers stopping at my crystal watch and then opening it. The little golden hand rested on the mark just below two and a half million. I had fulfilled Lily’s plans for me in so many ways, including depleting millions of radia from my reserves since the day she met me.

How would I tell my mother how much magic I had squandered? When she heard everything that had happened, would she still love me, or would she blame me for my father and Jett the way I blamed myself? And how would she take the death of Beryl Danburite, the friend she had trusted to look after me? I sat curled inside my wings, staring at the dark ash the aevum derk had left on the hearth.

‘My mother,’ I said to Leona. ‘I didn’t look at her watch. Did you? Did she drain her magic fighting the glacier cloth?’

Her expression told me the news before she spoke. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Her radia is completely gone.’

* * *

Hours later, I remembered Sam Seabolt when Leona interrupted my gloomy thoughts.

‘Zaree? Did you hear what I said about the human?’

‘Sam?’ I sat up straighter in my perch.

‘Is that his name? I put him in your room under a sleep spell. I didn’t know what else to do.’ The new softness in Leona’s voice was odd to hear but comforting. ‘We should go and see him so you can tell me where to send him.’

The four of us hovered around my nest, where Sam lay like an enchanted prince, his hair a cloud of curls.

‘How long till he wakes?’ Andalonus asked.

‘About ten more hours,’ Leona said.

Andalonus pulled his ears and turned to me. ‘How do you know him?’

‘He’s Laz’s godchild, and he helped me find the comet dust.’ I was telling the truth – just not all of it.

Hovering stern-faced near the door, Meteor said nothing.

Andalonus whistled. ‘Laz’s godchild?’

‘He looks familiar,’ Leona said. I was glad she didn’t remember where she’d seen him before – in a room with the human who had stolen her wand. Sam didn’t deserve her scorn and hatred; he’d had nothing to do with the theft.

‘Why did Lily try to use him against you?’ Andalonus asked curiously.

‘She must have hoped she could get what she wanted,’ I answered.

‘But what will we do with him?’ Leona touched the worn pillow next to Sam’s head.

‘I don’t know,’ I answered. ‘If we send him back to his family, Lily will take him again. If we hide him somewhere on Earth, she’ll fix a scope and find where he is. We can’t order him to live underground the rest of his life, and I don’t know how much radia it would take to conceal him for years.’

Andalonus scratched his nose. ‘You could tell him the truth,’ he said. ‘Let
him
decide.’

‘The truth?’

Andalonus shrugged. ‘Maybe a spell isn’t what’s needed; maybe it would be wrong for
you
to decide what should happen to him. It’s
his
life.’

I watched Sam’s light breath, peaceful as if he slept in his own bedroom on Earth. ‘I never thought of that,’ I said wonderingly. ‘But you’re right.’

However, the thought of telling Sam all that had happened made me feel even more tired. So tired, I considered asking Leona for a sleep spell that would last at least a year.

‘Our mission isn’t very daunting,’ said Andalonus as we left Sam to sleep. ‘All we need to do is get back the crystal flask and the indigo bottle.’

‘And find out what Lily and her armies are doing on Anshield Island,’ Leona added.

Meteor looked at me. ‘And keep Zaria safe from the trolls.’

‘And find Jett,’ I said quietly, floating towards the hearth room.

‘It’s not too much,’ said Leona. ‘We’ve already proven the four of us can work wonders.’

You’re home, Mother, sleeping under a spell again, but this one is different to the nightmare you were caught in for five years. This time, a spell was cast on you because of compassion. Nothing can take away your suffering when you waken, but I hope the true rest you’re getting in your own home will help at least a little
.

Now that you’re here, it’s somehow harder for me to write to you. I pictured your arrival as joyous, not overflowing with such sorrow as this. When I began this letter, all I wanted was to find you. Now I have, but so much more has happened that I would never have foreseen
.

I shiver whenever I think of Lily Morganite. By taking Father’s life, and Beryl’s, she has shown deeper evil than she did when she stole the magic tax from all of Feyland. She still has Jett. And now, because of me, she has both the aevum derk and the aevia ray. Also because of me, she has breached the sapphire wall on Anshield Island
.

I want to make this right, Mother, and so do my friends. I could not ask for better than Leona Bloodstone, Andalonus Copper and Meteor Zircon. You knew them as children, but as you get to know them now, you will be awed by who they have become. Together, we are far more than each of us alone. Because of this, I have not lost every hope
.

Even asleep, you look so fragile to my eyes, like thin glass that could easily shatter. I don’t want to add to your pain, and so until I’m sure the time is right, I will keep this letter hidden away and look forward to the day your strength returns
.

I will do all I can to help you, and to save Feyland
.

Your fairy
,

Zaria

Thank you Jessica Clarke, editor for
Indigo Magic
, for telling me what needed to be added and subtracted: Every writer knows that without magical math, a fairytale can’t fly. Margaret Hope designed the beautiful cover. Writing buddies Rebecca Rowley, Lisa Pere, and Jeannie Mobley read several versions of this book and contributed helpful comments. Son Emrys used lots of humour to point out plenty of places in need of revision. Daughter Rose cheered me on and provided insights during the early stages. And husband Tim put up with all the bizarre hours I kept while communing with fairies, genies, gremlins, and trolls. Many thanks to all of you!

Victoria Hanley learned to love stories at an early age. She has had many different jobs such as house painter, child-care worker, Montessori teacher, folk-singer, waitress, cook, baker, bookkeeper, school registrar, massage therapist and anatomy instructor, among many others. She lives in Colorado with her husband and two children.

Also by Victoria Hanley

Violet Wings

The Light of the Oracle

The Seer and the Sword

INDIGO MAGIC
AN RHCB DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 409 04623 3

Published in Great Britain by RHCB Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
A Random House Group Company

This ebook edition published 2012

Copyright © Victoria Hanley, 2012

First Published in Great Britain by Corgi Books, 2012

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