“What are you thinking of when you find a door?” Lyra asked, her voice heavy with sleep.
Gwyn stared at the sky some more. A star-man contemplated three rosebushes before reaching out an plucking a rose from the middle bush. The rose melted away into a beautiful princess, and the other two bushes turned into her sisters. They cheered and danced as the ancient curse had been broken. At long last, they were free.
Free.
“I don’t know. Being able to visit with you. Doors to your realm are the only ones I’ve ever been able to find.”
“Hmmm. Well, what are you thinking when you try to summon a door?”
“I don’t know. Being able to be free? Hoping my magic will be enough to make it happen.”
“It seems to me,” Lyra’s voice was just barely above a murmur now, “that if you want a door, you have to want to go somewhere. The more specific you can be, the better your magic will be able to work.”
The magic binding Gwyn to the Garden tugged at her stomach again. Sharp and impatient.
With a sigh, she rolled over. She stirred the grass with her finger, that must have appeared when she was staring up at the sky.
The Garden came unbidden to her mind. With its neatly trimmed shrubs that could be anything as simple as spheres or cones or fancier things like unicorns and teapots. Flower beds were laid out in orderly plots, and a pale stone walkway that led you through the Garden in an orderly manner. Small looking glass pools that reflected the sky, and a tiny waterfall in the southwestern corner.
“Ack!” Gwyn jumped backward as sparks flamed out of her fingers, igniting the grass.
“Hmmm? What?” Lyra sat up, blinking sleep from her eyes.
Gwyn’s heart pounded in her chest and her head felt strangely light, but wonder pushed her fear aside when she realized it wasn’t fire glowing in the grass, but magic.
Magic!
Her magic.
A delicious feeling settled over her as she crept closer, hardly daring to breathe lest she disturb the magic taking root on Lyra’s floor.
“You did it!” Lyra gasped, clapping her hands.
The sky, the grass, and even the hill vanished as a cosy sitting room faded into view. Even though Lyra’s Otherwhere had changed again, her magic was still firmly in place, a perfect circle that swirled with gold.
“I made a door.” The words felt unreal, hesitant as they tiptoed off her lips. Was it another fluke? An accident?
But, no. She’d been thinking of the Garden. Remembering it in as vivid of detail as she could. The tugging feeling in her chest both lessened and tightened after her magic took hold. Almost as though it knew she’d discovered the way back . . . well, not home. Back to where she was supposed to be.
Lyra knelt down beside Gwyn’s magic, studying it with an intensity she rarely showed. She dipped a finger into the magic, only the tiniest tip of her finger, and brought it back sharply. “It tickles,” she explained, giving Gwyn a reassuring smile.
The door rippled, a river of magic someone had tossed a pebble into.
“But it worked?” She sat down next to Lyra. Her fingers hummed with her magic, but to her relief, were otherwise quiet. No shooting sparks, no falling stars.
Lyra gave her an impish grin. “Only one way to know for sure. Are you ready?”
. . . TO BE CONTINUED . . .
© 2015 by Danyelle Leafty. All rights reserved.
Ah. There’s nothing quite like making your first door. Well do I remember my own. The real wonder is that the magic of door making is ready and available to all. It just takes practice–first, in believing that you can make doors. Second, in being able to see doors in potentia in the first place. And third, a willingness to stand there waving your arm, likely feeling incredibly stupid the entire time, for as long as it takes for the door to appear.
Some take much longer than others to mature from dream to reality. ?
Join me next Tuesday to see if the door really leads to where Gwyn thinks it leads.
If this is your first time visiting, check out the first installment of this episode. Feel free to gather round the hearth and read the other stories that are going on too. The more the merrier! ?
If you like, feel free to join me tomorrow as we follow the adventures of a certain Queen of the Nearly Dead Fae in training. 🙂
Happy Tuesday!