Enchanted Ever After (Mystic Circle) (20 page)

Absently she moved around the room, feeling the magic. All the elements were mixed and balanced. She
could
tell the difference in the atmosphere in here and the computer room at Eight Corp—which felt mostly of Jenni’s fire and some of Lathyr’s water. Closing her eyes in memory, she let her tongue curl to the top of her mouth. Eight Corp was mostly air. If the Air King was the most powerful dude who usually hung there, that would explain it.

And she’d made a circuit of the room, liked it. Definitely special.

She could do this. Being a naiad or a mer would be wonderful. Smiling, she went through her door and back up to her house and smelled luscious odors—brownies had left a rich stew on her stove along with a mouthwatering small loaf of bread that Kiri knew Tamara had made.

She dug in.

Then she followed the instructions, bathed and meditated to music and fixed her will to become Lightfolk, her intention in her mind, rooted in her heart.

She donned the raw silk robe, light but opaque, for which she was thankful. It felt odd, only wearing one long thing, but she figured so many other new and wonderful things were about to happen that she’d soon be distracted.

Kiri was ready when Amber Davail came to lead her to the circle—transformation or doom.

Chapter 21

AMBER SPOKE TO
Kiri about the day, the pretty sky, the warm weather, the small slice of waning crescent moon low in the sky, everyday matters, as they walked downstairs and through the tunnel to the new community ritual chamber.

When Kiri saw everyone there to dance the ritual for her transformation, her eyes stung. The Emberdrakes stood in the south of the circle, Jenni smiling at her. Rafe awaited Amber in the southwest and nodded at Kiri. Tamara Thunderock took the exact northeast compass point. All of the brownies were there. So was Jenni’s old cat, sitting, tail around her feet, smiling smugly.

Kiri’s breath hitched as she saw the King of Air, Cloudsylph, taking the power point of due east, and Mrs. Daurfin and a strange dwarf directly north.

Amber’s firesprite, Sargas, wasn’t the only sprite there, another firesprite hovered in the south, and a trio of airsprites in the southeast. The west point had Lathyr, of course, and a naiad and naiader on either side of him. There were even a couple of women Kiri stared at until she realized they were dryads. Fascinating.

“Who are these people?” Kiri asked Amber under her breath.

“Part of Eight Corp’s technology-magic Meld team.” Amber grinned. “We invited them to take part in the ritual and everyone came!”

“That’s
so
nice of them. Thank you all for coming!” Kiri projected her voice.

“We are honored to be here,” Cloudsylph said.

Huh. Wow. Excitement bubbled through Kiri.

Amber walked Kiri to the opening of the spiral path, then took her place next to her husband.

“Everyone join energies, please,” Cloudsylph said.

One of the dryads bobbed up and down on her toes. “Oooh, such lovely
strong
and balanced magic.” She aimed her comment at Lathyr with a fluttering of lashes. Kiri didn’t like that.

Whoops. No negative energy. That could make things go wrong, she was sure.

The king nodded to her and smiled, and her feet stuck to the ground. “We will begin our dance as you dance the spiral path.”

She didn’t consider herself a good dancer, and it was unexpectedly hard to take that first step onto a path with her bare feet.

Of course, once she did that, she was committed to everything. Maybe her “dance” down the spiral would center her mind and her will. She told herself it would.

She felt the focus of everyone’s eyes, but no one spoke. She thought that’s what she was waiting for, some prompt. But as a minute stretched into two, she understood that they were all respecting her choice.

People, Lightfolk and human, respecting her. She liked that.

One last question to her heart. Did she really want to do this? Risk her life for the chance to become magic? No guarantees of what elemental being she might become. No guarantees of her skills or spells.

No guarantees of life.

Her gaze went to the Air King, the beautiful elf. His expression remained impassive, and it seemed as if he could await her forever. He had a preternatural patience.

Supernatural. Just like she wanted to be.

She looked in the opposite direction. Lathyr, too, was serious. Handsome in a different way than the king. And he, too, gave no prompting, no smile, no tiny nod of his head.

All up to her.

She closed her eyes.
Felt
the magic. The great and balanced elemental magic imbuing the chamber, just outside her grasp, for now. But if she believed in herself, she could have it, stand there in the outer circle and dance together with others who had magic.

Yes, she
yearned
for that.

So one last huge breath...one of the last breaths she hoped to take as a human, and she uncurled her toes from the tiny groove they’d found in between the mosaics and stepped onto the path. And felt a huge rushing of exultation from the others. Respect. Appreciation.
Belief.

Dance! Dance on the path. She shuffled and swayed and music surrounded her, air rushed in her ears, her feet kept time with her pulse, then came a lapping tide, the roar of surf. Patter-patter-thump! Her dance. She raised her arms, swayed. Fire crackled and she could almost see it leap joyfully in a bonfire.

Yes!

Joy. Believe.

Now and then she heard low and earthy drumbeats from an instrument held by the dwarf, who circled, elbows linked, with others around the room in a blur of colors. They sang, magical elemental ancient songs with notes so sweet and pure Kiri wept.

And then she reached the center of the room and magic struck her.

Who are you?
the magic whispered as it whirled.
Where do you belong? To whom do you belong?
Grammatical magic, who knew? But it shuddered and demanded the cells in her body answer.

The room disappeared and she hung in rainbow-glitter-streaked blackness. Awesome. The chamber was beautiful, but she hadn’t liked it as much as the image she’d had in her head of a proper ritual room, a conservatory, like the one at the Castle, but without a pool. In the ritual room there were no living beings other than those in the dancing circle down here. No plants, not even an insect.

Then she thunked down.

Who are you? Where do you belong? To whom do you belong?

She stood in a...crib...bending and straightening her legs, whimpering, thin hands curved around the rail. People were shouting. People she loved. So she screamed.
Look at me! Look at me! Pay attention to ME!

The man and the woman turned and yelled at her.

Black and rainbow glitter whirled her.

She stood on the shadowing staircase at seven. Her father opened the door and it was cold and he took a suitcase and left, slamming the door. The woman cried and cried and cried, and Kiri did, too, but nothing changed.

And she began to feel more than the wind that whisked the memories around her, yanking tears from her eyes, tangling her hair into painful snarls. Heat crisped the tiny hairs along her skin. Fire.

Searing her lungs as she gasped. Then a vision formed of her grandmother’s living room, a modest ranch-style home in Denver. Peace. Rules, but no hysterical demands from her mother, no cold orders from her father.

Yes, this was a home.

Who are you?

I am Kiri Palger and I am singular. I am special. I am unique.
She could scream that to the wind, that gut-heart-soul belief because she knew it to be true. Everyone was special and unique and so was she.

Her dorm room, with Shannon sitting in an institutional desk chair, went up in flames that licked Kiri. Love for friend. This one friend.

Memory flashed of her own green Mohawk hair, chains, a belly ring. Yeah, that had hurt.

She carved her own meaning of special into her soul. She had to, because she was creative...with games, with stories for games. Yeah, that got real respect in the outer world, sure.

Who. Are. You?
The elemental powers mocked as she was torn apart, cell ripped from cell.

And she was screaming and crying from pain but nothing escaped her lost mouth, sounded on her lost ears, affected the rainbow sparkling night at all. But without sight or smell or hearing or touch, she yet knew who she was, yet kept the kernel of herself together, protected the seed of who she was and could become.

The searing fire stopped, the piercing wind, the tumbling earth that had smothered her, all washed away by a sea-green-white-frothed flood that threatened to send her molecules tumbling away and never to be gathered again, lost to the salt of the ocean and the four winds and the desert sands and motes of the universe.

Who are you!
A demand she felt.

A demand she answered silently. She no longer had words, nor concepts, that she’d always thought were the basis of her being, a rational mind. No, the demand pulled something from her that she’d never imagined...a
shape.
Her heart, her blood, her marrow, her
being
fashioned it, threw it into the restless storm—a many-pointed star.

And with that burst of light, pain consumed her, and all she knew was enduring, surviving,
being.

One last pummel and she lost herself, struggled all the way back for one last instant. She could not survive another. But the robe took on the water and the earth and twined around her and felt so heavy she fell.

She hurt. She lived.

A wild thing whimpered, desperate, but she couldn’t help, could only hunch in the present.

“It’s done!” some woman said-shouted, sounding happy.

Kiri wept—the woman was not her mother.

“We must immerse her in the Castle pool immediately,” a man said, not her father, and she was glad and she liked the voice, the faint accent and should know it, should know him, but didn’t and liked the feel of this man’s arms under hers and his grip as she slipped and wiggled.

A light blue arm with four-jointed fingers, woman’s arm, flopped before her milky vision, then away.

Air rushed by her, drying her lips and her skin and seemed to be putting little cracks in her that dirt and dust caked around and hurt!

All of her hurt!

Blackness—without any rainbow sparkles. Had they all gone into her and turned into fizzy champagne? Sorta felt like it and she was smiling and her cheeks bunching and she cried and giggled—darkness swooped around her, then she was shoved into something warm and soft and liquid and she knew she was being born.

* * *

Lathyr and others watched through the window of the saltwater chamber as Kiri curled, then stretched, then curled again. She was in complete mer form, including tail, tail fin, fins along her arms and her legs and webbed feet and hands. Her skin was a slightly deeper blue than his own, but he had elven blood. Her hair was long and deep green. She lived.

His body wanted to sag against the tank wall, but he kept it straight. Naiad Kiri had nearly died in the pool, so they’d moved her to the saltwater tank.

A person nudged him and he forced his feet to shift aside so Amber Davail could look in. She smelled of perspiring human, not unpleasant, but not mer, and he wished to have mer around him. Wished to be with Kiri, but the Emberdrakes would not allow that. This last test she must pass alone, waking as a Lightfolk.

“Wow,” Amber said. “That was incredible.” She turned with wonder in her eyes and met his gaze. “Thank you for letting me participate.”

He inclined his body. “You are quite welcome. We could not have done it without you.”

Rafe Davail pushed close to his wife, looked in at the new water Lightfolk fem without a glance at Lathyr. “You think such a transformation will always take so many people of mixed races? And in a magically balanced chamber? Not sure it’s cost effective.”

“I—we—hope to refine the process,” Lathyr said.

“Is she a merfem or a naiad?” Amber asked.

“A naiad,” Lathyr and the other Waterfolk said.

“How can you tell?” Amber persisted.

Lathyr was in his two-legged, hardscaled form and gestured to his skin and the silver pattern of ridged scales. “Naiads and naiaders don’t have these designs, and mers are born with them.”

“Oh.” Amber stared at his chest, and then gazed back at Kiri’s unmarked blue torso.

The earnest young naiader said, “It’s mostly a matter of power. Mers have more magic.”

“Ah.” Amber grimaced. Like the rest of them, she’d wanted Kiri to become one of the greater elemental beings...a merfem, dwarfem, djinnfem.

Rafe smiled and his lashes lowered over gleaming eyes. “Let’s go home. All that magic was...energizing.”

Sexual, he meant. Lathyr nearly begrudged the couple their happiness when Kiri remained in danger. Nearly. Now that he’d come to know them, he understood they’d fought battles in the past and would in the future.

Most of the others of the circle left, too.

“We did a great job. The project is a success.” Jenni stuck out her chin.

“Yes,” Lathyr said. Kiri still had to wake and accept her fate.

“Kiri will be fine,” Aric said, wrapping his arm around his wife’s waist. “Later, Lathyr.”

“Yes,” Lathyr repeated. The couple walked away, murmuring.

He stood by the window and brooded, watching Kiri. For a moment or two he’d been terrified that he’d lost her, and sickness welled through him, poisoning his blood. He’d convinced her to take this chance. He’d wanted to prove his new powers were valuable. That
he
was valuable. He’d wanted to win his estate. Have a true home, a place of his own, forever. None of that was worth Kiri’s life.

A small, wet cough attracted his attention and he saw the naiader who had helped in the circle, a member of the Meld team. The naiader was very young, under four decades.

Lathyr turned and bowed formally to the man, expressing gratitude with swirls of his hands. “Thank you for taking part in the circle.”

The naiader shifted his weight, ducked his head. “It was great. Great circle, biggest—um—most important I’ve ever attended.” He shoved a small note bubble at Lathyr.

Lathyr took it with a questioning look.

The young naiader said, “Jenni says that Ms. Palger might need to try out rivers and streams and whatnot.”

“True,” Lathyr said.

“I, uh...” The naiader shifted again. “My father lives in Maroon Lake. Anyway, he, Stoneg, is interested in this project, and if you need to show Ms. Palger options, like such a lake, Stoneg says she could visit.”

There weren’t that many lakes in Colorado, and Lathyr had memorized them all. Maroon Lake in the mountains was beautiful, but there was something—

The naiader continued. “I know, it’s not a very deep lake, but with it being so shallow, not much harm could come to her. It’s a mountain lake, not a city lake, stocked with trout, and natural enough. Twenty-five acres for her to roam and feel right in. Good exercise for her bilungs in a natural setting, and for learning to mask her appearance.”

Only a naiader would want to live in so shallow a lake. This Stoneg must cloak himself in illusion all the time. Lathyr repressed a shudder. “I will consider that. I thank you for your offer.” Again Lathyr bowed.