Mistweavers 01 - Enchanted No More (26 page)

BOOK: Mistweavers 01 - Enchanted No More
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She could push and pull air. Though she felt more djinn than elf, her father had been half-elf and she could use that part of her nature with a little more difficulty than her fire side. Pulling air toward her, against the cave door, should move it, she thought.

Or she could ask for help. But if she did that, she wouldn’t know whether she could move the door if she had to.

This door was the least of the major tests that would demand all her strengths.

CHAPTER 26

PUSH AIR TO OPEN THE DOOR. RIGHT. SCUFFING
sand and grit out of the way, she turned off her flash light and darkness pressed upon her. No light, no fire. Absence of all light.

Darkness could be a blessing, she knew that. It could be a soft comfort. Breathe and breathe again, listen to the ocean. The human and air portions of her nature loved the steady sound of ocean surf, the fire not so much. There was no storm outside to whisk her away, the beach would be fine at low tide.

Her heartbeat had slowed to regular and she tucked the fire bit of herself that still flickered uneasily deep into a corner inside her, set her feet, gathered all her own personal power and
pushed
. Air sucked out of her lungs, whistled through the tunnel, ground the door open a half inch. Sweating, she panted and wiped an arm across her forehead, dredged up more and pushed again—and fell into the darkness of unconsciousness. Mistake.

She wasn’t out long and woke to a bright glow of Cloudsylph’s white-violet light. Aric and Diamantina were with the king. Some of the other naiads and naiaders might be behind them, but Jenni figured that humiliating herself before those three was enough.

Aric must have informed them when he’d sensed her consciousness fade through their bond.

The elf king stooped. “Stand aside,” he said to Aric and Aric moved. Even though the touch of the elf sparkled across her senses and he held her as if her weight was nothing, she wished it was Aric. Tilting his head, the king stared at the heavy rounded rock door that was cracked an embarrassing tiny amount. “This door—”

“Is not defective! Especially if Dark ones come.” Diamantina’s voice was as shrill as the screeching of a shark.

“No, not defective,” the king said. “But obviously too difficult for Jindesfarne, and she must have easy access.” He tapped it with his toe and it swung open as if a soft breeze had blown against it. The rush of sunlight and sea scent and the deep thunder of the ocean flowed in. On the release of a breath that barely moved his chest, he lilted a few elvish words and the rock door swung back and forth. Envy surged through Jenni and burnt away the last of her weakness.

“I’m fine now, and I’d like to walk on the beach to study where I should stand for the ritual.”

She felt the lightest feather-brushes of his great power against her as he verified her health, then he set her on her feet. Discreetly watching each step and trying to appear like she wasn’t hurrying away from them, she strode out onto the beach.

To her dismay the others followed—Aric with solid sturdy steps that set footprints in the sand, the Air King and the merfem gliding along and leaving no trace of their passage.

“Do you sense anything of the bubble energies?” the merfem asked. Jenni thought the woman had just battered Cloudsylph with the same question.

Jenni would have been happier to explore the beach and extend her magic without company, even Aric. Too late now. She’d botched that.

“I’ll check.” Pacing, she studied the water, sending all her magical senses toward the depths of the ocean, where she thought the bubble would rise, walking the tide line until she felt a tiny fluttering that might precede bubble energies. There she stopped and turned to look inland. Of course it was where the cliff had risen up to make the bluff.

Everyone watched her, and again she turned and scrutinized the sea, more with her other sight than with her eyes. She didn’t think that the bubble would come more than a couple of hundred yards out in the ocean, easy enough for her to see—for everyone to see. For the Dark ones to be interested in the house on the bluff and the Eight’s great ritual dance. And Jenni on the beach.

“Will it be there?” the merfem asked.

Jenni glanced at her to see the slightest wrinkle of her brow, the shift of her gaze toward the south. Ah. Maybe she’d been thinking the bubble would rise directly under her own water home.

Rolling her shoulders, she spread her hands. “I think so. Maybe you can tell if there’s a shifting of water energy? Or you, King Cloudsylph, if there is a hint of air?”

All three of them joined her, Aric standing a few more handspans away than the two greater Lightfolk. Jenni took the pace to come close to him, put her arm around his waist, connected with him mind to mind.
There, in the direction of that last spur of cloud ahead.

He smiled easily and answered,
Asking a Treeman, even a California coastal Treeman, about sensing strange things in the Pacific Ocean is useless.
He smoothed his hand over her wind-tossed hair.

“Nothing.” Diamantina pouted. She glanced at the ocean as if she wanted to check herself, hesitated, then inclined her torso toward Cloudsylph. “Do you sense anything, my lord?”

But the king was shaking his head. “Not underwater.”

Again his gaze lingered on Jenni and she felt it. “I doubt that the Emberdrakes would sense any fire energy, though it is a quake zone.” The tiniest lift and fall of his shoulders, too small to be called a shrug. “The dwarven royals or the Greendepths might be as perspicacious as Jindesfarne.”

“You’re sure you felt something?” Diamantina persisted.

What if she hadn’t? What if she was wrong? No reason to try to save her pride. It had already been shattered. The back of her neck tingled in continued embarrassment. “Yes. Very faint, but…yes.”

“But you can’t tell us how fast it is rising or when it will appear?” Diamantina said.

“No.” Frowning, Jenni wondered if she’d really be able to keep track of the progress of the energy sphere, how fast it rose. Would it be like Yellowstone’s or move faster? Not that she recalled much of anything at Yellowstone except that the bubble was
there
and about to break. Maybe she’d be able to give the Eight warning, maybe not. “Surely you who know the land and are more powerful magically will sense it better than I when it’s rising.” Them doing a lot of the work would be good.

“Of course,” Diamantina said.

Jenni studied the rocky angle of the earth up to the merfem’s estate. “I can see the area where your dancing ritual will take place. Good job, Aric.” She squeezed his waist. “I’ll be able to keep an eye on the bubble and the Eight’s ritual. When I’m out of the interdimension you can watch me and the bubble.” Sounded good to her.

“Yes,” Diamantina said. Her smile was sharply smug and Jenni realized why when a cold wave lapped over her feet. She yelped and slogged in toward the cliff.

“Do you know what the tide will be at the time of your ritual during the spring equinox?”

Diamantina raised her brows with another implied
of course.
“Currently the ritual is set for the precise time of the equinox, which is 10:32 a.m. human time. The tide will be ebbing, but not at the lowest. The moon will be waxing but the tides will not be high,” she ended sweetly.

Jenni flexed her jaw. Why hadn’t she checked the details out on her pocket computer? It would have taken a few strokes of her finger. Then she forced a smile. “Thank you, that’s good to know.”

“And we should return to planning the influx of the Eight and our retinues and the ritual,” Cloudsylph said, offering his arm to the merfem. She took it and beamed at Jenni and Aric, beamed
down
on them as the Air King floated them up to the house. “I will need your input, Aric,” the king said.

Aric turned and enveloped Jenni in a hug. “Everything will go well,” he said. His mouth came down on hers and she was kissed quick and hard. Then he was loping to the nearest tree in the fold of the earth, then gone.

He was being optimistic again. As for her, if she thought things would go well, she was a damn fool.

 

The whole household ignored Jenni that afternoon, and she was fine with that. For a couple of hours, she just lay on her bed and stared at the shells encrusted in the ceiling and let the elemental energies wash around and through her. Now and then she would close her eyes and visualize the areas she needed to know.

Earlier on the beach she’d been tempted to enter the interdimension, but decided to limit her time there. The spring equinox was in two weeks. Before that, she’d be balancing the land under the dancing circle, the beach and the house. If she balanced the area, would the sphere itself be drawn in this direction? Another shudder passed through her. She needed to ask her father’s friend, the elf scholar, wondered if he would be welcome here. She was sure he didn’t have a cell phone…though now that she considered it, cell phones would be natural to Airfolk. Of course the merfem Diamantina would have a crystal ball.

And Jenni had to consider that she’d be spending time in the gray mist for however long it took for the bubble to rise. That was a lot of mist walking.

Everything might not end well, but she was trying her hardest to shape events for a good result, and that included being very responsible.

So she let energy come to her.

The thick “sheets” of the ocean ebbed and flowed like the tide, soothing. There was more fire energy than she expected, but she’d never been in an active earthquake zone and this was close to the Mendocino triple junction where three of the great tectonic plates of the earth’s mantle collided together. The magical elemental energies reflected that: shifting and mixing and separating more than she was accustomed to. Those energies were more changeable under the ocean than here on the hill.

Flickering streaks of fire magic rose from the earth’s core upward to the ocean, then into the air. Faintly, faintly, she thought she sensed the unique encapsulated energies that might be a hint of the next bubble and shivered. She definitely wasn’t ready for that and, looking back on the Yellowstone bubble event, was glad she hadn’t been there alone—or even with just Aric—when it had burst. All five of them had formed that creative energy, shaped the force of it and sent it to accomplish different things. She wasn’t too proud to admit that controlling the energies within that bubble would have been beyond her. Balancing them with other energies for a while when the bubble popped, yes, she could do that,
did
do that, but imprinting the creativity with a purpose…no.

She was glad that the Eight and their dancing circle would be here to forge the power in the direction they pleased. She gave a few minutes’ thought to the spell they were preparing…but their minds, too, were beyond hers. She wouldn’t presume to understand what beings who’d lived for centuries might do with bubble energy.

If she continued to sense the bubble energy, she’d be fine. But she worried that tiny indication would vanish under the influx of all the great elemental energies of the Lightfolk who would be arriving. So after everyone had left her alone on the beach, she’d drawn a pillar of flame energy toward her, and attempted to “affix” it to a spot where immense water energy met earth energy and air was churned up. Even in the real world, she should be able to feel the fire energy pillar and know that was the location on land just east of where the bubble might rise from the sea. That’s where she would stand to balance the energies as the bubble broke.

But right now there was blessed peace and quiet.

The warm afternoon enveloped her and she drifted off and her thoughts were drawn to her brother Rothly. He, also, seemed to be drifting, alone in a quiet, cold, dark house. She
felt
his loneliness, his grief, his depression. His longing for contact and anger at himself for lashing out at others…and his need to punish himself for his failure at the portal so long ago.

I forgive myself,
Jenni said to him, not quite knowing if she was dreaming or not.

Of course you do,
he sneered.

Not dreaming, then, just in that half-awake state where almost anything could happen. But his words couldn’t hurt her.
I forgive you, too.

You have nothing to forgive me for!

For not standing by me. For not sharing our grief.
Since she was in that mellow state it was easy to let harsh words that might have come to her tongue melt away. She didn’t remind him that the basic tenets of their family were loving, generosity, forgiveness. She hadn’t allowed herself to remember that for a long time. Her parents would have been grieved at what their children had done to each other and themselves.

No reply snapped from Rothly and Jenni absently decided that was good.
You are too alone,
she said.
Time to enter the real world. I know that.

He waved his healed arm.
The “real” world. The only world I have now that the interdimension is closed to me.
But his bitterness seemed halfhearted.

Your magic was transmuted by the bubble energies in Yellowstone. You’ll find your new magic. Your new STRONG magic.
Her vision of him shifted until he was more energy and magic than human.
Yes, strong magic within you.

He said nothing.

Aric asked for help for the dryads and help has come. You asked for help for yourself and it was granted. Why are you not exploring it?

Again, no answer and this time she was sure he was nothing but a construct of her mind, her elder brother listening to her as he hadn’t for so long. Maybe never.

You are too alone,
and the sight of him was thinning, as was the house, and she knew she was retreating from them.
I will send you…

Send me what? Irascibility.

Let me check on that….
Then she was in her kitchen. Her sparkling kitchen with new and better cabinets gleaming, newly painted in her favorite soft yellow.

Hartha whipped around at her, ear tips curling and tucking a dishtowel into her apron pocket; both were spotless. “What are you doing here, Jindesfarne?” The brownie glanced down at Jenni’s feet. “Ah. Astral traveling. Well, spit it out, what do you need?”

BOOK: Mistweavers 01 - Enchanted No More
12.16Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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