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kajones_writingPart 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Alder watched as Willow sat down on one of the chairs in front of George’s desk. It gave Alder a few moments to look around the room and begin to learn some small things about the Prime Minister of England. There were bookcases full of books about British history, but few of them looked like they’d been read., and the ones that did looked like they’d be reread more than once. On George’s desk, along with the notebook he had in front of him, was a pile of what looked like read letters, a couple of large binders, a pot of pens, and a couple of pictures. Unfortunately it was impossible to tell what the pictures were from the back of the frame. Smiling to himself, Alder sat down next to Willow.
“The fae travelled to Earth through a doorway created by magic,” Willow started, tapping one finger gently on the desk, which Alder knew was a sign she was thinking about something. It made Alder wish he knew what she and George had been talking about before. “I, due to my bloodline, have certain abilities that some of the other fae don’t, and some of the other bloodlines have abilities that I don’t. If you’d like I can give you a list of all the different bloodlines who have travelled to Earth, so you know who has certain abilities.”
“That would be very useful.”
“Good. I’ll get that to you by the end of…” There was a silence before Willow continued, sounding more than a little confused. “The end of the week?”
“It’s a Tuesday,” Alder said quietly, feeling sorry for the Princess, because she hadn’t had time to even think about the calendar. It was hard enough for Alder to remember what day it was and he’d been there much longer than Willow. “The month is January, and it’s winter.”
“Thank you,” Willow replied, sounding grateful. “I think the end of the week works for me, if it would work for you, George.”
“Yes, that would work.” George lifted his head and smiled at Willow. “I guess we work by a different calendar to you.”
“It’s about three months difference. On our world it’s Samhain, the last day of the month you call October, and here it’s just after the winter solstice.” Willow sighed. “We lost a season, but it’s better than losing our lives.” Another silence followed and Alder wondered what Willow was thinking about. “Some of the shifters also followed us, although the majority went with the Dragons to a different world, and it won’t be long until you have mer people in your seas, because they made the choice to follow us. They never buried their heads in the sand. I just had to guide them to a door that would bring them here safely.”
The elders knew that Willow would have to tell the Prime Minister about all of the races who had travelled to Earth and there were lines they wouldn’t want her to cross. Giving George a list of the bloodlines was, probably, crossing one of the lines, but that was one they wouldn’t mind her crossing compared to some of the others. Alder was almost certain that he was going to help Willow cross some of the others, because there were things the humans needed to know that the elders would never want told to anyone, let alone someone outside their race.
“The mer people are, I’m guessing, half fish half human.”
“Most of them are, but there are some half bloods that are more human. Basically there are three types of mer person: the mer who can only live in the sea; the mer who can live in the sea and on land; and the mer who can only live on land.”
Raising an eyebrow George wrote down everything Willow had said and then looked at her. “I never knew very much about the mer people.”
Willow smiled. “They’ve kept their secrets a long time.” Alder nodded, remembering the surprise he’d felt when one of the mer people had walked into one of their meetings. “The shifters that followed us include selkies.”
“I’ve heard of selkies,” George said, looking up at Willow, and Alder could see the worry in the Prime Minister’s eyes. It almost made him smile, because he could remember the selkies looking at them in exactly the same way. “They’re seal people, who can only change from one form to another if they have their seal skin.”
Willow nodded. “The stories are mostly right about the selkies, but they will be under our protection. It’s something we promised them when we arrived here, because you aren’t the only race who tell stories, and all the selkies have heard stories about what humans may do to them if they’re found. We have three colonies with us, who are all slightly different, but they do all need their skin to change. It’s strange, even for us, because shifting is normally simple magic. For the selkies it’s harder. Their magic…”
Sighing, Willow glanced at Alder. Alder could see the question in her eyes and knew the answer without even thinking, because if the fae needed to know about their history then so did the humans. It wasn’t something he was comfortable with keeping the knowledge they had a secret. When he thought about it he knew that his hatred of withholding that knowledge was why he’d left the book Willow had loaned him laying around where anyone might see it and become interested. At the same time he hadn’t expected anyone to be interested, especially not Esra. Nodding, he waited to see how Willow was going to tell George.
“This isn’t the first time the fae have moved from one world to another,” she said finally, and Alder found himself smiling. “Millennia ago we lived on what we only know as our ‘home world’ and the fae back then managed to use up the magic that had once filled the core of the world. We know very little about what happened, because it’s not something that the fae have ever talked about, and I only found out recently, after I found a book my father had hidden in his desk. If we’d passed the story on from when we first made the mistake maybe we wouldn’t have made it again, but we didn’t, so…” She shook her head. “I know that we’re going to do our very best not to make the same mistakes a third time, which is part of the reason we choose Earth.”
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.
