Seeing Magic (The Queen of the Night Series Book 1) (12 page)

Then someone lit the bonfire and the glow it cast was so bright compared to the Sidhelas that it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust so I could make out what was happening.

A group of boisterous, young boys began lining up on one side of the bonfire.

I looked at Fiona. “Why would anyone
want
to jump over a raging fire?”

“It’s a tradition,” she said as we took our seats behind the first-aid table. “They say if you successfully jump over the fire three times, you’ll have good luck for the rest of the year.”

“No way…really?”

“That’s what they say.”

“They sound pretty stupid to me.”

She laughed. “I agree, but they start with just a small bonfire, so everyone who wants to can have a real chance of making it. After that it becomes a contest. Only the most athletic boys will participate then. They keep adding wood to the fire until only one person is left. Most of the time, the boys will chicken out before they get seriously hurt. Most of the time...”  She trailed off and I understood her meaning. She might be using my life energy to supplement her own healing magic again.

She looked over at the fire. “Then again, you don’t need to be athletic if you’re Sidhe.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused. She nodded toward the fire. Buach was standing at the front of the line. As I watched, he started rising off the ground from a standing position. He floated over the fire and lightly touched back down on the other side. Everyone laughed at him. A few people clapped.

“Oh yeah,” I grumbled. “I’ve already seen Buach fly.”

Chapter Thirteen

Playing with Fire

All of the boys from our farm stood in line. They pushed and shoved each other, but laughed the whole time. Craig became our first patient of the evening when he slipped on his third jump and caught the sleeve of his shirt on fire. Shrugging good-naturedly, he walked over to us. Fiona cleaned his wound, applied the poultice we’d brought and bandaged him up. He walked away, still smiling.

I asked her, “Why didn’t you use healing hands?”

“They like having the badge of courage for a few days. Besides, every time I treat someone with the hands it takes a lot of energy. It’s better that I save my magic in case someone is seriously injured.”

Once the competition started we seemed to have a steady stream of patients. Most of them had cuts or burns. We treated them all. Eventually, the boys from the farmer families, seer families, dowsers and poets dropped out of the competition and only the strongest young men with warrior and hunter gifts remained.

When the line thinned out to a few competitors, Fiona looked over at me and said, “It looks like all of the children and idiots have finished participating in the games. From here on out the contestants will all be highly experienced and skilled. I doubt there’ll be many more injuries. You might as well go off with Evan and enjoy watching the games yourself.” 

To my surprise, Evan stood right behind me. I hadn’t heard him approach. His habit of always showing up at the perfect moment started to unnerve me. “How do you do that?”

“It’s a gift.”  He smiled mysteriously and, offering his hand, said, “You should view the bale runs first. Shall we?” 

One look in his deep blue eyes, and I would have followed him anywhere. Shaking my head to force it to behave sensibly, I stood up and accepted his warm hand, anticipating the tingling sensation of his touch and schooling my body’s response. For a moment he paused, looking at our intertwined hands curiously, then he masked any emotion from his face and, dropping my hand, led me away from the medical station.

We left the meadow, walked past the wishing well and back out toward the road. When we were close, Evan explained, “We had to have another competition for the boys who aren’t magically predisposed to leap tall buildings in a single bound, so we started the bale runs.”

“Why?”

“So the others can believe they have a chance at good luck, too.”

“Okay, so how does this work?”  We walked down the road toward where the pavement ended.

“You light a bale of hay on fire and you start to roll it down the hill.”

I interjected, “You mean toward the Cacapon River.”

“Yes,” he continued. “If the fire completely goes out before you hit the water’s edge, you’ll have a good crop this season. So naturally, all the farmer boys come down here for this event after they give up on the bonfire.”

“Because boys will be boys,” I concluded.

“I bet you got that from Fiona.”

“Yup,” I grinned.

“Well there’s a little more to it. The guys who have a successful bale run save the scorched hay. If they have a complication later in the season, like an insect infestation or a fungus on part of their crops, they mulch the affected area with the charmed hay and the problem is fixed.”

“Does that really work?”

“I’m not a farmer so I don’t know first-hand, but all the guys around here swear by it. On the other hand, they might just like playing with fire.”

After we’d watched the bale runs for a while, Evan looked over at me and said, “Well, the bonfire should be about fifteen feet across and eight feet high by now. It’s about time for me to make my entrance as the defending champion.”

“This I’ve got to see,” I countered, so we went back to the sacred meadow. As we walked past the wishing well, Evan surprised me by pulling a quarter out of his pocket and tossing it in the well.

“Is this what I think it is?” 

“The whole forest is magical. What do you think?”  He fished another quarter out of his pocket and handed it to me. I made a quick, silent wish that my relationship with the Cacapon clan wouldn’t end in September, and threw the coin down the well.

When we emerged into the clearing, the bonfire was humongous.

“Okay,” he said, “You should stay well back from the fire, but be able to see my performance clearly.”  He scanned the area. “Go wait by the altar. When it’s my turn you’ll know it.”

“Okay,” I responded, “but the fire is huge. You seem a little too confident.”

“Don’t worry about me. Just watch.”

I waited by the altar with my curiosity piqued. There were only three competitors left in the line as Evan approached from the crowd of spectators. They all laughed at him, but they didn’t stop him from taking his place with them.

The others amazed me, taking running starts and leaping like gazelles over the flames. When they touched down on the other side, they turned around and backed up. They took another running start and leaped again.

Eventually, Evan took his turn. I gaped with my mouth open as Evan stood very close to the fire and then, as Buach had done earlier, he rose in the air, floated over the flames, and touched down lightly on the other side. Everyone clapped. Again, he rose into the air from a standing position. This time as he floated over the fire he pretended to be doing the breaststroke. Everyone laughed and applauded again. He was halfway across on his third pass when suddenly, a look of abject horror crossed his face and he,
poof
, disappeared into thin air. Everyone gasped. A few people chuckled as if confused.

Simultaneously, two things happened. Evan emerged from the trees to the left of the clearing near the starting line for the bonfire. He strode toward me at a fast pace and had a look of pure anger. Instinctively, I backed up because it seemed as if his rage was directed at me, but I bumped into the altar and was cornered. To my right, Dariene approached.

I turned to face her as she started speaking. “Child, I am sorry, but members of my flock are ill and this is a danger to all of us. We need your help. We cannot afford to wait for your gifts to mature in their own time. You must realize your true power.” 

Even the tone of her voice scared me, so I reached into my pocket and pulled out the battered sprig of rue, but it was too late. Dariene pushed two fingers into the center of my forehead. A burning white light sensation exploded there and encompassed my entire body. For a moment, I experienced nothing but the whoosh of pain searing my brain. She took her fingers away and stepped back.

Suddenly, I saw, heard and felt everything. Millions of noises assaulted me, like discordant music. The people who hovered around were bathed in rings of bright colors. I fell down to the ground, and the sprig of rue lamely rolled out of the palm of my hand into the meadow grass. After a few moments, I could pick out voices from the din. People were asking me if I was all right and behind them Fiona shrieked at Dariene. “What did you do?”

“Only what I must.”

I became aware of Evan, wrapping his arms around me and drawing me close to him. He asked me what was wrong, but I couldn’t respond. Finally, knowing I could only get help if I answered him, I put into words my experience. The warmth of Evan’s arms around me was a stronger sensation than anything else, so I focused on the way my skin tingled where he touched me.

Eventually, I blocked out enough of the sensory input to form words. “It’s as if there’s a rainbow around every little thing. Music is coming from every person.”  I opened my eyes and tried to focus on the grass around my feet. “Even that mosquito has a green mist surrounding it. What is happening to me?” I was truly frightened.

Evan’s face floated in a golden mist. The din was deafening. My head wanted to split open. Behind him, dozens of mist-shrouded people were disappearing. The entire Sidhe clan left through the portal. Still, thousands of creatures floated in their own individual clouds of color around me. I squeezed my eyes shut and hid my head in Evan’s t-shirt, trying to block out all of the other noise and focusing on Evan and Fiona’s voices.

Fiona asked, “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

Evan replied, “I think so. It sounds like she’s seeing auras and hearing harmonic vibrations.”

“You think she’s seeing people’s auras?”

“No. It sounds like she’s seeing the auras of every living thing around her.”

“But this is not a Healer’s gift,” Fiona gasped.

“You’re right.” Evan sounded pissed. “It’s one of mine.”  He continued, “It’s much worse than you think.”

“What could be worse?”

“Her ability is exceptionally strong. Seer families start to train their children to control this gift from an early age. That way, when the gift becomes this powerful, they can filter out the images and sounds emitted all around them and focus on important things. Maggie hasn’t been trained. Dariene thrust this gift on her. She doesn’t know how to filter anything out. The sensory overload must be smothering her.”

“What does that mean?”

“If we can’t teach Maggie to control this ability, she’ll go insane.”

Fiona gasped. “Mother Goddess, protect us. What can we do?”

Evan looked around and replied. “We’ve got to do something to minimize the bombardment of sensory information. Quick, let’s get her over to the medical table and try to find a way to help her.”  His arms wrapped around me and he picked me up as if I was nothing but a doll. He carried me from the altar to the medical table and sat me down in one of the chairs. Again, I focused on listening to his and Fiona’s voices over the din.

“Now what?”

“Maybe we can minimize some of the pain by blinding her,” Evan mused.

“What!” Fiona gasped for the third time in five minutes.

“Not permanently,” he said, “only until we can get her out of here. What would you use to treat an eye injury?”

“I’d use thick cotton compresses held down by an ace bandage.”

“Let’s do it.” 

Fiona rummaged around in the trunk. She came back to my side a few moments later, tearing open the paper packaging. They worked in tandem. Fiona held the compresses over my eyes, and Evan wrapped the bandage around my head to hold them in place. He was right. Some of the pressure in my head lessened when I couldn’t see anything around me, but music and buzzing still pushed at me from all sides. I tried to pick out their voices.

“How about ear plugs?  I think I have some of those disposable safety earplugs in here too,” Fiona offered.

“No, it wouldn’t help,” Evan countered. “She’s not hearing things as much as feeling harmonic vibrations through her body. Ear plugs would only cut out the sound of our voices and we’ll need to give her instructions to get out of here.”

“Okay…no earplugs, then.”

“She’ll be better once we get away from all these people.” 

Evan’s warm breath touched my ear as he whispered, “It’s okay, Mags, and we’re going to take care of you. Stay next to me. I’ll get you out of here. We’ll find a way to fix this. I promise, baby, I promise.”  He held my arm firmly and forced me to stand up.

I was so shocked, not only by his words (he’d called me
baby
…and gave me a nickname), but by the emotion in his voice. I was too distracted to resist him as he steered me out of the chair and through the crowd across the width of the clearing. Still musing about the tenderness in his voice and the fact that the words were directed toward me, I barely flinched at the onslaught of vibrations hounding me as we pushed past the hundreds of people still in the meadow. The questions I had about the meaning behind his words bounced around in my head until I realized we’d left the party behind us. We were back on the trail and the noise had lessened considerably.

I still had a killer headache from the earlier deluge of sight and sound, but I was almost able to think again. “Why is it so much quieter here?”  My voice cracked as I voiced the question, as if I hadn’t used it in a while.

“Animals and insects and birds are in closer harmony with nature than people. Their harmonic frequencies are much less discordant to us. Humans, in particular, always seem to be struggling in one fashion or another.”

“Can I take off the blindfold, then?”

“I’m afraid not,” came his quick reply. “Just because forest creatures aren’t as noisy doesn’t mean their auras won’t affect you. There are thousands more living creatures in the forest than there were people in the meadow. The colors shining off all of them would be overwhelming.”

“Oh. I don’t want that.”

“I know,” he grasped my arm more firmly. “Let me lead you back to the truck. It’ll be better once we reach the cabin. You trust me, don’t you?” 

Just the way he said those words made me shiver. “Completely.”

I focused on putting one foot in front of the other, nestled between Evan and Fiona. My nerves were taut. I hoped fervently that I wouldn’t trip over a rock or branch and fall flat on my face. The walk back seemed to take a lifetime.

And then finally, Fiona announced, “We’re almost there. I can see the parking lot now.” 

“Uh oh,” he said suddenly.

It seemed as if I’d been shoved into the middle of a parade with all kinds of noises and sensations pushing at me from all sides. We’d emerged into the parking lot just as the farm boys were wrapping up the bale runs. They were loading the remains of their bales into the backs of their trucks, laughing and teasing each other. They were shouting and whooping and playing around. The noise they made probably would have given me a headache if I hadn’t just been attacked by a fairy queen, but with my newly acquired sensitivity, I was unable to control my body’s response.