Part 7 (1/2)
He gave me a warm smile and I immediately felt at ease, grinning back. ”Don't fret,” he said. ”It'll take time for you to learn what you can and cannot do.”
Without breaking stride he took my upper arm and jumped. We pa.s.sed high over the wall then fell. Conall's feet hit the ground and I was left dangling from the floor at an awkward angle. He carefully set me down and continued walking. To my credit I didn't freak. I'd done the stunt before, and I was practically a veteran.
The sun had begun to set and the sky was sapphire, contrasting beautifully with the green of the treetops. We reached the Wall and Conall stopped, to stare hard at the buzzing wires, red hot with electric current.
”You're doing what Breandan did last time? To the Wall, I mean.” Babbling beside him I straightened my clothes. ”You somehow stop the current without tripping the klaxon. I think I've done it before, by accident.”
”Could you be quiet for a moment?”
Another blush crept up my neck. ”Okay, shutting up now.”
”It's done. In answer to your question, yes.” Conall pointed to a small man sized hole now in the Wall, moved through it and disappeared into the trees.
Biting my lip, I climbed through and stumbled after him. As we moved I entwined my hands in the coa.r.s.e gra.s.s swaying about my waist. Tugging a few clumps free of the earth, I ran my fingertips over the petals of a wild flower that tickled my palm. The thrumming of crickets and rustle of life in the undergrowth made me smile. The air, heavy with the scent of soil, felt alive as we basked.
Conall breathed in deeply. A satisfied smile danced on the edge of his mouth.
”Do you know how drop your glamour?”
”No.” I slid up my hood.
Standing legs apart, his hands came to rest on his narrow hips. ”You understand the physical of your nature?”
I let the clumps of gra.s.s fall and wiped my hands on my jeans. ”I'm fast. I heal.”
”Have you measured your strength?”
Disconcerted, I rubbed my nose. I hadn't thought of what being a fairy really entailed. I knew that they were fierce and hard. They healed fast and were the most powerful of the demons. They had strong characters and were beautiful. They had buckets of pride and protected what they thought was theirs. They had magic. I was one of them. But what did it mean to be a fairy? Was there a pecking order like there was within the Sect and who protected, and guided them? Did they really live as nomads and in small families by choice? Or was it a result of the Rupture, like the Wall was.
”I haven't thought about it. I haven't thought about much to be honest. Stuff keeps happening a tad fast.”
”If I was human,” he snorted, ”and discovered I was much stronger, faster I would not be able to stop myself.” He shrugged. ”My nature is proud.”
I thought on it for a while. ”It's hard to believe all of this. You all seem so real.” Conall gave me an odd look. ”Understand, in my world demons are odd not humans.”
”A complicated way of saying you're adjusting.”
I stuck my tongue out at him and placing my legs a foot apart, bent my knees like I was to do some damage. Balling my hands into fists, I pushed thought to the back of my head to clear up some thinking s.p.a.ce.
”I'm ready. Let's do this.” The sooner I got this done, the sooner I could get back to Tomas.
”You know you're fast?” I bobbed my head. He grinned, a slash of white against the dark tan of his skin. ”When the spell broke how did you feel?”
There was that buzz word again. Spell. Breandan had mentioned a spell breaking and something being painful. My heart picked up. Was this going to be painful? Is that the real reason why Breandan wanted this fairy to show me instead of him? I realized Conall was waiting for my answer.
”Uh” I thought back to running away from the Clerics, their dogs chasing me down; believing I was about to be ripped to pieces by teeth. ”Scared.”
His brows pulled together. ”Scared? Not a strong emotion, and certainly not strong enough to break a spell.”
”I was completely bricking myself.”
I watched as he translated that into something he could understand. ”Better,” he concluded and looked at me hard. ”Before the speed what was your state of mind?”
I hopped from one foot to the other. ”Did you not hear me? I was terrified. I wanted nothing more than to be far, far away from an ugly painful death.”
”Precisely. Your state of mind is crucial when conjuring. Glamour is no different.”
”Ah, no incantations over a cauldron bubbling with chicken feet and grave dirt?”
I had a flash of myself doing a tribal dance in front of an open flame with mud on my face, an animal fur slung about my naughty bits. and bones plaited into my hair. I m.u.f.fled a sn.i.g.g.e.r.
”If you are a witch laying a spell to hide than yes, but not fairy glamour. It is done with little concentration. Eventually you'll conjure and drop your glamour with ease. When we glamour ourselves we suppress our nature. This cloaks our ears and makes us less otherworldly by fixing our features to one state. A safeguard is created around our being. Once sight pa.s.ses through it makes us look more human. We dislike when people are in our,” he pursed his lips, ”the humans call it personal s.p.a.ce unless they have a close connection to us.”
I struggled to understand. ”So, the ears and the glowing still exist but we just can see it?”
”The glamour disrupts what the mind perceives to be true. If you cannot see, smell, touch or hear a thing why would you believe it is there?”
I remembered the s.h.i.+eld over Breandan, the pulsing around Devlin. ”As fairies we can sense glamour.” I said and nodded.
I had definitely gotten it wrong. Devlin wasn't human at all. He was a fairy, a fairy hiding in plain sight at Temple. How he had managed such a thing was beyond me. To enroll you have to meet the Priests and take a vow to uphold Sect Doctrine.
”I think I'm there, but what do you mean about fixing ourselves in one state?”
”You notice how in fairy form we are severe one moment then jovial in another.” I tilted my head to signal yes, and remembered Breandan's crazy mood swings. ”This is because of the depth of our temperament. Suppressing the fairy nature helps us blend. The drawback is you are slower, weaker. Your senses are dampened as is control over magic. Our power comes from the Source of course, and it is vast and limitless. It is energy. Energy lives in all things, constantly evolving and blending into something new. Fairies have the strongest natural awareness of the forces surrounding us and can draw from the Source, manipulate its power for our needs. The majority of us think of it in broad strokes. It makes for easy focus and quick action.”
”Source?” I grinned like a loon. ”You mean you're going to show me magic.”
He nodded manically, feeding off my enthusiasm. ”The most simplistic way to conjure is to seek the power surrounding you, reach out to it and summon whilst channeling the energy. Watch me.”
A pinball of light appeared overhead, bloating to become a small ball of fire. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen, cooler than seeing purple in the dark or bouncing over walls. Suddenly it was there, like it always had been my whole life. Like falling out a window as a child and not having a scratch on you. Like dropping a full cup of water and it landing right-side-up without spilling a drop. Like making a hole in the Wall without tripping the klaxon. My whole life the strange things that happened around me had been attributed to freaky good luck since I couldn't be a witch. None of it was under my voluntary control, and never did I really gain anything. But now it all lined up in perfect order. The power was in my reach and mine for the taking.
Something pulsed close by, a mini sun of colour and heat that seemed to be nowhere and everywhere. Instinctively I drew from its warmth. It was like turning the faucet of an unexpectedly high-pressured tap. The flow of energy flooded into me, and spilled over the lip of who I was. To save myself drowning or burning up I changed the feeling into a thing. Fire. A ball of flame exploded into existence, hurtling toward us. I watched the self made instrument of my rapidly advancing death in awe.
An urgent sound muttered from Conall cut over the oncoming hiss, and just before impact, the fireball imploded. It left nothing but a ringing in my ears, white spots across my vision and enough heat to singe a few strands of my hair.
Conall's ball of fire hovered mockingly above.
”That was not as good as I thought it'd be,” I said faintly.
Conall's pupils were huge with shock and his pointed ears twitched. His face was stark white. He released the white-knuckled hold on my upper arms and eased himself away. He'd thrown himself at me and lurched into an odd crouch when the fireball was coming our way, ready to drag me out the way if needed.
”Why do you perceive a giant ball of death coming toward you as a good thing?”
I ignored him. ”You call the energy to you then you make it into what you want in your head?”
”In a basic way, yes.” His voice returned to normal and the repressed panic in his eyes ebbed away. ”You must give yourself time to focus on what you want to achieve.” The looked leveled my way was laced with warning. ”The greater the focus the more effective the spell. It comes packing a punch.”
”More of a punch than the fire ball?”
”Yes,” he said wary. ”We will leave further conjuring to another time. Agreed?”