Chapter One

Into the Dark

Nihandra figured she had it all planned out. She'd take the boy to some God-forsaken place and then slaughter him. Get rid of the threat right then and there, have the service to her lord go in the tales of her people's history. When she visited World 44, the world best known for its riots and unexplained killings, she found a moderately large country called the "United States of America." Nihandra didn't know who America was, but she had always been a bit partial to the number fifty, and that's how many estates there were. Her reasoning for choosing America was (besides the whole fifty thing) that its inhabitants must be pretty dumb if they couldn't even spell "estates" right.

So she took on the form of a human again and sat in the middle of her circle of crushed poison ivy leaves and repeated the spell which she had memorized only two hours before. Repeating the words, gathering speed as Dizziness grabbed her mind and shook and spun its new toy, she at last took a hand, her left, and tore the air with it. Up, left, down, right.

Everything came to a heartwrenching stop. In her mind's eye, Nihandra watched Tranquility gracefully, slowly arise from the depths of her mind, soft blue clouds of silk billowing around her and then kill off Dizziness calmly with her trident. Peacefully, Nihandra sighed, stood, and crept through the rather large opening in the air.

This was the only truly difficult part of her task. She'd kidnapped the boy, chosen the place to kill him, but hadn't yet decided on the specifics. She was stuck between two of the estates: Alabama and Missouri. They both seemed nice for a murder.

In the end, she decided to check both of them. How hard could it be? They hadn't looked too far apart on the map in the monastery. She was going to look in both starred places the map had shown. The starred places seemed special.

She was now standing in Montgomery, Alabama. Since Alabama began with an "A," it held precedence.

The window was in the middle of a grove of woods. Not bad, but it could be so much better... She spoke a few words of magic and watched with pride as her magic grew to the perimeter of the trees. Bouquets of thistles sprang to life all over the leaf-blanketed ground, wrapping around trees to nearly waist high. The sky above was the deep hue of black velvet. She sniffed and nodded with satisfaction: Smoke and other favorable smells; no world would be good for a killing without toxins. This world seemed to have plenty.

She changed her shape to that of an owl and flew through the trees, searching for a nice, homey place to wreak havoc.

A short while later, Aurora Hutchinson crouched near the window, not seeing it. Her attention was focused on merely a few things: the feeling of a thorn digging hungrily into her palm, the two girls crouched in front of her, the pain of holding her shoes and carrying her heavy backpack as her bare feet ached from being bent for so long. Something, probably something dead and icky was oozing between her toes. This was worse than she remembered from before; she couldn't remember brambles like these from the last time they'd done this stupid, imbecilic idiocy. All this was dulled, however, by the sight of a flashlight, belonging to one of the security guards, bobbing up and down, its wide beam searching the woods.

"Scoot farther back!" Dana hissed.

As Aurora obeyed, trying not to make any noise, she remembered that Dana hadn't said anything like that before. It had been more along the lines of "Oh, come on. Let's go after dark, just for old times' sake." Aurora shook her head silently. "For old times' sake" was also why they had run from the security guard.

The guard worked in Blount's Cultural Park, home of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival theater and Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts along with acres of green grass, lovely lakes, and even geese and swans. His job was to keep people from coming into the park after dark and having sex in the parking lots of either the theater or the museum parking lots. Apparently, there were at least two guards, but one was eating doughnuts in the security hut or something, leaving only one to patrol the two areas. Sadly, the three girls had been walking between the theater and the museum when the security guard had left the theater to patrol the museum.

Aurora, watching the headlights come closer along the winding road, had been saying, "It's no problem, really. We'll just tell him we didn't see the sign saying not to come in after sundown." Not hearing a response, she'd risked looking away from the ominous pair of lights and turned to her right to see how this went over with Dana and Hannah when she saw them running like mad to the clump of trees. She had taken after them like a gazelle and had soon passed them, getting to the woods first and diving in. The last time this had happened, getting caught by a guard in the park after dark, she'd been in front and had been forced to put up with Dana hissing at her to get farther down and to hide better. She'd never felt adequately concealed. So now Dana was hissing at her to get farther back. Perfect.

Dana had stopped using words as the guard had gotten closer. Instead, she was waving frantically at Aurora to back up. Aurora inched farther back.

Suddenly, Aurora fell backwards onto the ground. Sitting up, she wondered where all the trees and brambles had gone.

In World 44, Dana watched as the light went out and the guard started cursing. As the guard walked away, Dana breathed in relief and said softly, "Okay, Rory. You can stop backing up now. Let's get out of here before he comes back."

Caley and Eadoin both had splitting headaches by the time they got to Abri's house. The house was a two-room hut made of straw and mud. One room Abri and his mother shared, along with the eating room and kitchen. The second was reserved for the animals.

"Yes," his mother said. She was peeling carrots with an old knife, its blade dull. Her brown hair, beginning to gray, was springing out of its bun vivaciously. Her clothes were dirty and already sweat-soaked. Her name was Miriel. "Abri just left with a rather nice-looking woman."

Caley and Eadoin looked at each other.

"How long ago was this?" Caley asked.

The woman tossed the carrot into a wooden pail as she considered. "A tree," she said at last.

"Huh?" Caley said simply.

"A tree," Miriel repeated impatiently, as if the answer were obvious. Seeing that these two (Men! she thought with distaste) still didn't get it, she sighed and pointed to the semicircle of trees surrounding their house. "One tree, two tree. So awn an so awn."

The two men turned to the trees.

"One tree," Caley mulled. "About a phase, wouldn't you say?"

Eadoin turned back to Miriel, silent.

Caley looked at him oddly. Usually, Eadoin was the closest thing to a chatterbox he knew. "Which way did they go?" he asked her, not wanting to dwell on it. He had to find Abri first.

The woman pointed up the mountain.

"Let's go," Caley said quickly. "If we hurry, we may be able to beat them to Amsha." Swinging onto his horse, Eadoin doing the same, he remembered his manners and hurriedly called back to Miriel, "Thank you!" before riding off.

Nihandra fluttered back to her portal, a happy, bright butterfly. She'd finally found a place, a big white building downtown where men in stiff (which usually meant expensive) clothes had been talking about killing Bills all the time. The perfect-

What did those humans think they were doing?

There were three of them: Two girls and a man. The two girls were backing up toward her portal; the man was pointing a torch into the woods, trying to find the gateway. Well, without sight, these humans wouldn't be able to do a thing. Everyone knew how powerless humans could be without sight.

She dove at the man, changing her shape to that of an owl as she did so. She silently grabbed the torch, careful not to touch the man for fear of germs, and flew off low to the ground to lure the man away. Using her magic, she helped the man mislead his thoughts. Now that the torch was out, none of the humans could see. They'd be forced to give up searching for her portal.

The security guard looked around, waiting for his eyes to get used to the dark. One of those mangy fricking kids had come up behind him and taken his flashlight. Well, screw the kids. He wasn't their dad. Thankfully, he wasn't even related to them. He didn't think so, at least. Muttering his thoughts on low-life teens, he stumbled back to his truck.

Dana and Hannah sighed in relief as they saw the guard stumble away and not come back- not even turn around. They grinned amiably at each other. Another close call.

"Okay, Rory. You can stop backing up now. Let's get out of here before he comes back."

After a few seconds, she heard Hannah ask, "Rory?" Another few seconds passed as Hannah's eyes searched the darkness behind her. "Dana? Rory isn't here."

Dana checked her car keys. Rory usually returned whatever she took, and she only took things for fun and games, but Dana didn't really like to take chances. Finding her keys (and her wallet) where she'd left them, she turned around. The growth was so thick around them that no one could have crept through the brambles past them completely without making a sound.

"There's something there," Hannah said, pointing at a faint outline of light. She yelped as something bit her finger and yanked it back. A small voice called out a word neither one of the two girls understood. They both shrieked as air rushed past them in a loud pop.

Nihandra grinned maliciously and picked the girl's skin from her teeth as the two ran away in fear. Watching them stumble and fall, terrified, almost made her feel better for having to close the portal and waste all that power. She'd wait until her power was fully restored and she could do the spell again. The loss of time didn't matter, really. The boy wasn't going anywhere.

She grabbed a duck from a nearby pond, made herself comfortable on a branch, and used her waiting time to eat.

"Hello?"

Aurora sat up groggily, her head pounding and shrugging her backpack off so it wouldn't weigh her down. Looking around, her eyes went a bit vague. The ground hadn't had a slight tilt before. There hadn't been a clearing before. There weren't any brambles. The trees were taller and wider. The air was cleaner. Dana and Hannah were nowhere in sight. It took her a moment to realize that too many things were different, and slowly she realized why.

"Hello?" a voice asked again.

Aurora turned and frowned, her forehead wrinkling. The speaker was a boy of eight or nine, locked in a crude metal and wooden cage. Getting up and dusting herself off, she walked over to the cage, looking at it. She eyed the surrounding area cautiously, looking for signs of some other life.

Guessing what she was doing, the boy said, "She left. I don't think she'll be back for a while. She closed the portal. You fell asleep when she did it, too."

"Who is she, where is she, and why are you in that cage?" Aurora asked. She reached for the lock on the door. It was iron, heavy.

"Ahhhhhh!" a deep voice yelled, getting louder quickly.

Something hit her left side, forcing her down. She shrieked as she fell but didn't hear it. Her mind seemed to disappear in a flurry of arms and legs as she hit, kicked, bit, anything and everything she could think of. And the more her assailant began to win, the more ferocious she became.

She grabbed something- it felt like a hand- at long last and sank her teeth into the flesh with all her might. Someone yelled furiously, and she heard or felt (it was hard to tell which) something hit her head hard. She watched the stars sparkling before her turn into black holes.

Maybe it came from watching too much television, but she could have sworn that the government had something to do with this.

"She bit me!" Caley exclaimed again, examining his hand. "She bit me!"

"You attacked her first," Abri said, standing outside of the cage and stretching. He stood with his feet parted a bit. "I told you not to."

The man examining his hand looked up at him, his expression between shock and haughty anger. His face was pale, his hair an orderly mass of short black curls. Between high cheekbones and bushy brows were piercing eyes of icy blue. He was a bit on the lanky side, but judging from how he had fought, Abri could tell the man's dark green lose shirt hid powerful arms. Brown breeches had been tucked into black leather boots which looked as hard as the man's character seemed to be.

Abri stuck his hand out. "Abri," he said clearly.

After considering for a few moments, the man's hand engulfed his own. "Caley, son of Mordecai. That guy over there is Eadoin." His voice turned to steel. "We're here to help you."

The boy turned to the other man, who stood tall and straight yet seemed much more relaxed. Warm, light-brown eyes smiled at him. Dark brown hair with streaks of blond curled softly above tanned skin. He wore a loose brown shirt unbuttoned at the top and faded green breeches tucked into worn brown leather boots. The two readily shook hands.

"She tore the skin," Caley remarked, glaring daggers at the girl's body. She wore the oddest clothes he'd ever seen. She actually wore breeches, such a light brown they were almost white. Pockets all over, and the bottoms spread out. Her shoes didn't come past her ankles, were held to her feet with laces, and they seemed to reflect the light in some places. Her shirt was tight, light blue with no sleeves, with her emblem on the front: a silver, glittering butterfly.

Abri followed his gaze. The girl was tiny compared to either of the men, skinnier than Abri but taller. Her face had been hard before, but now that she was asleep again her features had softened. She had green eyes, closed now, and a deep blush that spread through her cheeks. He liked her hair the most. It was long and blond and shiny. She didn't have a tan, not even a sunburn, and a small mouth. Everything about her seemed small somehow.

Caley grumbled. "We've got to get to Freya Castle." He looked at Abri. "The Wise Men said someone was coming who would lead us to Ciel. They say you are he."

Abri looked at him blankly.

The raven-haired man sighed and turned back to the girl. "We'll have to take her with us. She probably knows something that might help us." Picking her up, he tossed her across the back of his horse.

The boy made a face. He wouldn't want to be treated like that. "Don't forget her rucksack," he said suddenly.

Caley glared at him again.

Shrugging while Caley hesitated, Abri quickly ran to get it. Its material was funny. It had funny writing on it. Everything about it was sort of funny.

"You'll be riding with me, I think," Eadoin said. Abri nodded. Eadoin led the boy to his horse and picked him up, rucksack and all, mounting the horse behind him.

Grumbling again, Caley mounted, propping the girl up in front of him so she at least wouldn't fall off. Immodestly dressed, that's what she was.

Once they got to Freya, his dad would know what to do. Caley wouldn't be able to talk to Eadoin as they usually did with the boy around, though. At least when they found Ciel, he would fulfill his family's prophecy. He'd be the greatest king ever.

© February 2002. This is my latest story, and the first I've ever truly considered publishing. So, please, tell me what you think.

Love ya,

Dleet