Rogue Magic, Free Novel, Chater 56

The prequel to this — Witchfinder — is now up on Amazon.

This novel will get posted here a chapter every Friday or Saturday, or occasionally Sunday.  If you contribute $6 you shall be subscribed for the earc and first clean version in electronic format.  I think it will probably take another three months to finish.  Less, if I can have a weekend to run through and get ahead of the game.  It hasn’t happened yet.

NOTICE: For those unsure about copyright law and because there was a particularly weird case, just because I’m making the pre-first draft of my novel available to blog readers, it doesn’t mean that this isn’t copyrighted to me.  Rogue Magic as all the contents of this blog is © Sarah A. Hoyt 2013.  Do not copy, alter, distribute or resell without permission.  Exceptions made for ATTRIBUTED quotes as critique or linking to this blog. Credit for the cover image is © Ateliersommerland | Dreamstime.com

The Enchanted Cottage

 

It is my firm belief that men are very daft. Women too, mind you, but not in the same way. The peculiar way in which men are daft is this consistent belief that not only should every woman everywhere be protected, but that every woman everywhere wants to be.

Even Jonathan subscribed to this credo. I knew – I have ears – that Jonathan was a rogue, what people considered in general a bad lot, and what my uncle had once stigmatized as a loose fish, something I’d never fully understood, since I could see no resemblances between my dapper brother and a fish. Nor could I figure out what a loose one would be.

Yet, even when he was very drunk, he would say things like “that is not fit for your ears,” and “I will not sully your mind with these events.”

Oh, a sister develops her ways of knowing. I’d worked around and found some things that Jonathan surely would not have wanted me to know. I can’t say they shocked me overmuch. His letters from and to his friends, the parts I could understand, seemed to be a lot of tomfoolery, with drinking till you were blind and then… and then consorting with the sort of women that didn’t seem to be much fun. But there it was. He thought that would shock me, doubtless.

The disappointing thing was finding out that such a grand personage as the king of fairyland who, by all accounts, didn’t have the same sort of interest in women that other men did – though I wasn’t sure of that, since, after all, that was also something my ears shouldn’t be sullied with – also though I needed to be kept safe.

No. worse than that. He thought I wanted to be kept safe.

He sort of pushed at me as he vanished, and I felt myself pushed through an envelope of sorts, and then—

I was in a fairytale cottage. Not the ominous looking one, where you’re sure the grandmother has been eaten by a wolf. Nor the one made of candy, because anyone would know that was a trap. Not even a realistic cottage like the ones in the home village next to what papa had called our principal seat.

No.

I was standing in the garden of a cottage so unreal, so perfect, so beautiful that it could not have existed anywhere but in fairyland. For one, the garden was all wrong – trust a man not to know when things bloomed or what needed sun or shade. This garden was a riot of colors, with everything blooming at the same time, a sweet buzz of bees in the air – I bet none of these bees stung, either – and a path of shiny, polished pebbles leading to the white-stone cottage with the arched doorway, the window boxes full of flowers and the chimney set on at an adorably crooked angle.

I started up the path, and of course, a beautiful baby bunny loped across it, pausing only to look at me with eyes that were too big and too innocent.

At the door, I pushed it open.

It was exactly as I expected. There was an entrance area, with a fireplace which was burning brightly even though it put out no warmth and no warmth was needed.

Around the fire place were two chairs and a lot of books. And yep, the books were just exactly the sort I read, about pirates and grand adventures.

Past that was a kitchen, with everything scrubbed and bright and the table set for tea, with scones and jam and a pot that – I touched it – was just the right temperature under a cheerful red cozy.

And then a blue bird perched on the flower box outside the open window and started to sing.

I believe I could have endured it, otherwise. Doubtless behind the kitchen there was the perfect bedroom with a comfortable bed, and I was in fact very tired.

But the bird was too much.

If I’d believed that this was one of those traps set by fairyland, I could have endured it, too, and tried to defeat it from inside.

The problem is that I thought it wasn’t a trap at all.

When I was very little, nurse had a sort of fence she carried along and would set around me, so I could play outside and still be safe in its confines.

This was a fence like that, a safe box where the king of fairyland thought he’d keep me away from anything unpleasant and dangerous.

I don’t like unpleasant or dangerous things. Would you?

But I was also not blind to my own failings. I might be a wretch as mama says, or ungrateful, as papa used to say, or the most trying creature alive, as Jonathan has been known to say – though with a twinkle – and normal moral lectures might bounce off me like a cat off water. But I do realize when I’ve brought about a great deal of ruin and trouble. And that was now.

I had, in fact, got lost in this world, caused Mr. Merritt to come after me. I might have got him killed, since we were in fairyland, where he had, I gathered, rather old business. And by now, Jonathan might have come after me too. Other people wouldn’t, but he might.

And I had a strange feeling I was also responsible for whatever was happening to the king of fairy.

Which meant I couldn’t just be here and safe and let them fight this battle alone. For one what if they lost? Would I go on living forever in this cozy place with the obviously false bluebirds? I thought not.

It took me a second to figure out what to do. In every fairytale, the heroine is cautioned not to leave the safe spot and not to go into the woods.

The king hadn’t warned me of this, probably because he hadn’t had time.

But as I opened the kitchen door, I saw, past a strip of garden with more flowers, butterflies and blue birds, a fence. And past the fence – woods. Dark, ominous, unruly wood.

“I thank you for my share of the favor,” I told the warm air of the cottage and the singing bird. “But I’ll have none of it. We Blythes might be many things but cowards we aren’t.”

I ran down the path to the fence climbed on it and leapt off it into the dark woods.

The world tore like a piece of paper.