Black's Magic

Black's Magic

Chapter one

She sat outside looking up at the night sky. Every night she came out to watch the stars. Tonight they were aligning and she knew what that would mean. The portal was going to appear. She had to be there when it opened or she'd miss the chance to go visit her homeland.

    Carmen didn't like to stay long in this place. She wasn't your typical fairy. She liked the human world. She blended so easily into it with a simple spell to hide her wings, Carmen looked normal, except for her ears. They were slightly pointed at the top, so she just wore her long curly hair straight, so people wouldn't notice.

      Carmen had already changed her clothes and packed some gifts her family and friends would enjoy. Fairies lived in a plane that parallels our own. Sometimes in certain places the two planes become one. She didn't have to use release the spell on her wings. Once she was in the portal, they would return.

  She watched the goings on of the park and laughed to herself. If people knew that there was so much more to their world then what they saw, would they still be searching for their origin, or the knowledge that they are not alone here?

    A tingle ran down her spine. The portal was forming. She turned around to see Neil Jefferies running into the park. She had a crush on him for years. They had went to high school together, he even went to their senior prom together, but something kept him from ever trying to kiss her or be romantic with her. Maybe he didn't like her that way.

    Carmen didn't understand human boys. Some tried everything to get her attention and some didn't or wouldn't even try. She did flirt with a few just to see if they would flirt back, which they did perfectly. One even kissed her once. That is another story.

She turned back toward where the portal was starting to appear. Neil had seen her turn around; he had decided to approach her. Right when he got close to her, he saw the portal open. It was amazingly simple looking.

      There in front of Carmen and Neil, was a simple wooden door. Neil walked around the back of it thinking he would see some kind of tunnel or opening, but there was nothing behind it. When he came back around and looked at Carmen, she looked very different. Her normal straight hair was now very curly. It was spiral curled and hung down her back in between a set of what looked like Monarch butterfly wings!

        "Carmen, are you going to a costume party? You look amazing. What is this door?" Neil asked scratching his head.

Carmen turned to her left. She looked a little angry that Neil had picked now to show up. What was she going to do now? She couldn't let him leave now that he had seen her door.

      "Well, Neil. I am not going to lie to you, although this would certainly warrant a white lie or two. I am a fairy.  What you are looking at is the portal to my home land. Humans can visit but they have to be invited. In order for them to be invited, they have to promise with their life that they will tell no one of their visit and of the fairy that invited them. There is a consequence, if you  betray that fairy's trust, the human will die, and the fairy will lose their door for one human year. " explained Carmen.

      "Ok, so you are a real fairy? How can you tell if the person you invite is sincere in their promise? That is if they are invited along.' said Neil.

This time Carmen scratched her head. She had to hurry the door would only be there for twenty minutes. She thought hard about Neil's question.

"The portal will not work for that human and he or she will be stuck there in between the planes of existence until it sees fit to let them go." Said Carmen.

Neil looked at the door and then back at Carmen. He was curious about what was behind it. He didn't want to tell anyone, who would believe that his friend was a fairy? They would think he was crazy and ship him off to Sylvia Brenan's. He just couldn't do that to his friend. He liked Carmen. He did want to know more about her.

Carmen looked at her door. A warning flashed in her mind

"This door will close in ten more minutes. Enter or wait another year, Carmen"

"Neil Morris, I invite you to come with me to my home world. You must never tell anyone of your time here. Your heart must be true and you must be sincere in your promise." said Carmen reaching out her hand to Neil.

He looked into Carmen's eyes and back at the door. Then back at Carmen.

"I accept your invitation and promise with all that I am not to tell a soul about this visit. I also promise not to tell anyone about you or this world."said Neil as he took Carmen's hand.

      Once he completed his sentence, the door opened. Inside was a light, a warm yellow light. They walked into it, and disappeared. Neil felt his stomach drop and flip when he looked up they were flying. Carmen was very strong; she carried him under his arms without as much as a thought. He saw her in a different light now.

      Her wings were lovely. The edges were black and had white splashes on them. The middles were purple and as the color came to the edges it turned blue. The landscape was exactly like the park except the park didn't have so many flowers. There was jasmine and nightshade, in one part, in another there were blue roses. His mother would flip to know there really was a such thing, but she would never know of it.

      Everything here was bright, clear, and warm. The warmth radiated from everything. The people, the plants everything seemed to speak to him. Carmen was landing. She came down just in front of a row of jasmine. Once he landed, she sat herself down next to him.

    "Neil. I must tell you about my parents. They have only met a human once and he was very unfriendly and rude to them. Ever since then they have decided not to return to earth. This incident happened just before I entered high school. Fairies can      change their size and that day my parents had went into the woods near the park. They were looking for berries and other treats to try when they were caught in a butterfly net." explained Carmen.

    "Why didnât they escape? I thought only magic could capture a fairy." said Neil.

        "This net was not your normal net. It had been enchanted to catch fairy folk. The man that caught my parents was a wizard. " said Carmen.

"Oh, ok, but why tell me? Is there something about this wizard that resembles me?' asked Neil. He was wondering if that was the reason he never tried anything with Carmen? Was he related to this fairy catching wizard? He prayed that he wasn't.

That would also mean he had magic in him. He could feel himself start to swoon. Carmen reached out to catch him before he hit the ground.  She knew who the wizard was. It was no relation to Neil, but they had a close tie. He was actually their freshman science teacher, Peter Mack.

Why he passed out like this, she was not sure. She reached out and stroked his forehead and his cheek. Neil had locs and had them pulled back away from his face. Carmen had never been this close to him before. He lay there with his eyes closed. He was quite handsome. He had smooth chocolate skin, and the beginnings of a goatee.

She had to change his clothing or they would know what he was. Her parents hated humans because of their experience with this one wizard. He kept them locked in a cage for days. No matter how much they told him about them having to get back home, he did not let them go. He took some of their clothing and fingernails to test. They escaped by using a nova spell.

Since that incident they could no longer stay on that plane. They left enough for Carmen to pay the house bills on and get what she needed. Then one day they left. In order to keep up appearances they made copies of themselves. These copies went to parent teacher conferences, and other school functions but most of the time they were in a sleep mode.

Once Carmen turned twenty one, they vanished. Unbeknownst to Carmen, Neil was seeing all of this in his mind. She looked down at Neil. She had scooped him into her arms, and was sitting with him in her lap. She could feel someone watching them. She had to make them look away so she leaned in and kissed him.

Neil opened his eyes to find Carmen kissing him. Her lips were so, tasty he kissed her back, wrapping his arms around her waist. He thought she would stop him when he reached under her shirt. He found her bra strap and started to undo it.

"Uhm, what are you doing, Neil?" as she felt his hand on her bra strap.

        "You tell me, since you kissed me first," he said stopping so just his forehead was touching hers.

"Someone is watching us. Its considered rude to watch a couple kiss so I kissed you to make them stop watching. I have always wanted to be this close to you, just wasn't expecting you to kiss me back,"said Carmen.

Neil sat up in Carmen's lap. He was thinking about her kiss. He had always wanted to kiss her too, he just was so scared to try. He took his hands from around her waist and let them fall down on her legs.

Something about the way she felt in his arms. He had hugged and held other women before. Even kissed them, but there was something about Carmen's kiss that he couldn't quite put his finger on. Even holding her felt different. They stood up and walked out of the clearing Carmen had landed in.

They were only a few feet away from her parents' home. It was a large nut of some kind the outside, it was maroon and the bottom was beige, it almost looked like an upside down Filbert nut shell. They had cut windows into the front of it. The curtains inside looked as though they were made by a fine lace maker.

Outside the home was a small area in the sun. there were two rocking chairs, a small table and a large umbrella facing the garden.  While he was taking in the scenery, Carmen had knocked on the door. After a few seconds the door opened.  A woman stood in the doorway. She had sandy brown hair and cafe au lait colored skin. She looked quite young from where Neil was standing.

Carmen knew who this woman was instantly. It was her aunt, Mesi. This was her mother's sister. She had to be visiting. Aunt Mesi was a water sprite. She lived near the ocean. It must have been a well needed visit to come from her home near the sea.

"Aunt Mesi, how are you? Are mom and dad here? " asked Carmen.

                Her aunt looked a little confused.

"Your mom and dad don't seem to be here. I got here last night and the door was open. I looked around and since I didn't find any note, I just assumed they went to the store. I expected to find them when I woke up, but they haven't returned." said Mesi.

This time it was Carmen that swooned. Her aunt caught her.

    "Now we don't know that anything bad has happened to them. Use your bond to look for them. Your bond will lead you right to them." said Aunt Mesi as she helped Carmen stand up.

    Carmen walked to the center of her parents front yard. She closed her eyes and put her hands up. She began to think of her parents and slowly turn around. When she faced her motherâs rose garden she felt her presence very strongly there.

She flew to that garden as her aunt and Neil ran behind her.  She could see her mother lying there among her roses. She appeared to be sleep. Carmen landed near her feet. She bent down and touched her shoe.  Her mom wasn't dead. She was alive but someone had petrified her. Carmen was beside herself. She couldn't help her mom.

Neil and Mesi found Carmen at her mother's feet crying. Neil helped her up and walked her back to the rocking chairs in the front yard. He couldn't fly like Carmen. So he ran back to Mesi and her sister.

"Let's get her out into the sun maybe that will help."said Mesi as she pulled her sister into a standing position.

Neil took the other side of her and the two walked out into the sunlight of the garden. They stood with her in between them in the sunlight. One of Carmen's tears had fallen on her skirt. It had soaked down to her leg,  now along with the warmth, her leg lowered from its frozen position.

"Ms Mesi. Look. That was where Carmen's tear landed. Maybe if we can catch her tears, we can use them to unpetrify your sister." said Neil.

      Mesi looked down at her sister's skirt and leg. Where the tear had hit was loose and normal again. She looked over at Neil and then over at Carmen who had stopped crying. She could see that Carmen had brought a small glass with her. This glass was full of water.

              "I heard what Neil said. If that is true this will work. If it doesn't we might need help. Mom should be able to tell us where dad is. I couldn't sense him." said Carmen.

            Meanwhile, in a dark and gloomy cave on the outskirts of Yairf, sat a Hag. She was watching the goings on of the people that lived there. She saw Carmen's return, and her trying to help her mother. This was annoying. Now she wanted to return after being gone so long and she had brought a human with her.

She had the nerve to disguise him as an elf. Who would believe that? He did have some magic in him but what was he? She had already captured Carmen's father. He now sat in a cage across the room from her cauldron.

    "Why have you done this? You used to be so nice and friendly. I loved you once. What happened to you Lily?" asked Marquis from his cage.

"So you want to know what happened to me?" cackled the Hag.

      She left the cauldron and slinked her way over to the cage where she was holding Marquis. She wasn't an old ugly woman, in fact she was stunningly pretty. She had long reddish brown hair that flowed down her back to her hips in swirls. She was shapely, and had a body Jessica Rabbit would be jealous of.

She was pecan brown with jade colored eyes. Her skin was smooth as satin and just as soft. She thought they would be together forever. They had grown apart, and because of school had started to see less and less of each other.

Megan had hated going to the Academy for Magical arts. She would have rather gone to the college her mother and grandmother had went to. Megan's father sent her to his alma matter because she was given a full scholarship.

Megan fought to stay as long as she could but in the end her father cast a sleep spell and transported her to the school, before she could do anything. When she finished school, and returned home, she had found her first love married with a child on the way.

  "You left me Marquis. You didn't even try to fight for me. You never came to see me, or even wrote to me. I came home expecting you to have waited but instead I find you married Rosa Clearwater and she was due any day with your daughter. What did you expect me to do?" said Megan.

"I expected you to move on. There are quite a few things you don't know.  I thought you had found someone else, Megan. I got a letter from you a year before you came back telling me that you had met someone else and that you were to be married that spring. There was even a picture from you of you two at the founder's day ball." said Marquis.

      "What? I wrote no such letter. I had a horrible time at that ball. My father had me all gussied up and dancing with Emil Edwards. He was a total jerk. Why would I go for someone like that? Did you even try to write me?" asked Megan walking away from Marquis' cage.

"I wrote you every day. I told you everything that had happened to me that year. I had seen your mom in the grocery store and she seemed her normal self. She said how you were enjoying yourself and missing me. Your father visited me one year before you graduated. He told me how we weren't meant to be together. That I was bad for you. He told me if I didn't move on, that something would happen to you. I couldn't bear for that to happen so I stayed to myself. I had planned to find you. " said Marquis with a tear running down his cheek.

    "Megan, Rosa was there for me. She knew how I loved you and how you felt about me. She saw the letters I wrote and sent you come back marked return to sender. She even knew about your father visiting me. He had tried to get her brother, Clem to date you. He refused and soon after he was called to the armed forces. We hated  your father for what he was doing. She even tried to warn you what was happening. Don't you remember?" asked Marquis.

Megan stopped and put her fingers to her head. Could this be true? She remember Rosa telling her they had to talk. She waited for her but she never showed up. What could have happened to her?

She turned and walked back over to Marquis' cage. She didn't know what to believe. Her mother loved Marquis Black. She knew how much Megan loved him, so why would she not protect their love? Megan knew her father had pull in town because he had been the mayor, and a noble man, but for him to interfere in her life?

Marquis would never lie to her. Neither would her mother. She decided she would do some investigating of her own but first, she had to right the wrongs she had set in motion. She had to stop the petrification spell on poor Rosa.

She snapped her fingers and disappeared in a puff of black smoke.

        Carmen, Neil, and Mesi stood near Rosa. She had dried out a little but was still petrified. Carmen was now devasted. She had started to cry again. Neil was holding her and Mesi was using the wind to dry off her sister when Megan Snipes appeared.

"What are you doing here, Hag?" asked Mesi balling up her fists.

"I came to help. It seems there has been a terrible misunderstanding. I am here to set things right.  Let me help your mother. She tried to help me so long ago. I truly want to return the favor. I ask that you trust me. I think I might need your help, Carmen, to find the truth." said Megan

The three stood there looking quite confused. Megan wasn't called the Hag for nothing. She was mean and often did things to people. Most of the time it was directed toward her parents and their friends.

"I will help you if you set this right for now.Where is my father?"said Carmen.

                Neil looked at this hag. He thought she was stunning. Her eyes alone were hypnotizing. How bad could she be. She appeared to honestly want to help.

"Carmen, can I speak to you? " said Neil.  He was standing the closest to Megan.

        Carmen took Neil's hand and walked away toward the rose garden.  She looked up at Neil again. He looked different. Maybe it was his eyes or his ears but something was different about him.

  "I think you should listen to her. She is telling you the truth." Said Neil.

"How do you know that? She could be lying so well you are fooled. " said Carmen crossing her arms.

  "I just know. She is in pain. I can see it. Not sure when or how this happened but I can see what everyone is feeling. I know she is telling the truth." said Neil.

"Because you are my friend, I will believe you. Something has changed from you being here Neil." Said Carmen.

        "I think it might have happened when i passed out. I saw everything that happened to your parents with Mr. Mack. Since then, I just know when someone is telling the truth."said Neil scratching his head.

While Neil talked to Carmen, Megan was left alone with Mesi, and Rose. Mesi was still a little untrusting of Megan. She remembered how her sister was falling for someone else's guy. She tried to get her sister to date but she wouldn't.

"I am truly sorry, Mesi. I spoke to Marquis and he told me everything. Rosa never made it to me the night she came to speak to me. I didn't even know she was coming to speak to me. I will make this right." said Megan as she looked into Mesi's eyes.



Megan walked around Rosa. She looked over at Mesi and smiled. She went back to what she was doing, making symbols in the air as she circled the petrified faerie.  She stopped her circle and closed her eyes. A bright blue flash of light popped up, it only lasted a few seconds, but when it ended. Rosa Clearwater stood before Megan. She was already to give her a piece of her mind when she heard her husband's voice, whisper to her from the roses that grew around her home.



      " She is in pain, my love. Forgive her for the many things she has done. She never knew of her father's treachery. She had no idea how much of a friend to us you were. Tell her what happened. She is looking for peace." he whispered.

      Rosa looked at her sister and then back to Megan. She looked into Megan's jade eyes for a long time before she moved.

She flew close to Megan and pulled her into an embrace.

        "I am so very sorry, Rosa. I need help to get to my father. But i need to know what happened to you that night, we were supposed to meet." whispered Megan into Rosa's ear.

  Both women smiled and let a single tear fall. they ended the embrace and sat down on the lawn. Mesi wanted to hear this too.

"Megan, I will tell you everything. I know now how much you were hurt too.  The night i went to see you, I had proof that your father had threatened Marquis and tricked  you two into not being together. I had seen it and recorded everything in one of my crystals. I was bringing you the crystal when every thing went dark. It got very cold. When i woke up, I was back at home in my back yard, but the proof i had was gone.  I knew how much marquis loved you. I didnt want to date him out of respect for you. " said Rosa.

          "Wow." said Megan as another silver tear rolled down her cheek.

Rosa took her hand and raised it to her cheek.

          "I never wanted to fall in love with Marquis, but after that night, he had changed. He only told me about what happened to him after we were married. I was with him when he got your letter saying you were to be married to Emil in the spring. "



Megan let another tear fall and another. She couldn't believe this. it was too much to bear which meant it was the truth. She looked at Rosa and then at Mesi.

      "All these years, I was so angry with you, when you tried so hard to help me. I never knew my father did those things. We have to find my mother and that bag that was taken from you. Father has been dead many years so a lot of his enchanments have faded. We will work together. Rosa, you know it is our way when two are linked they can add one more to their union. " said Megan



Rosa blushed. It was heard of but to be linked not only to Marquis but to Megan too. maybe once this ended, they could all talk about it.

"Megan, you need to see the proof i had and we need make sure your mom is okay. Why dont you use your bond with your mother to find her too? Wouldnt it work the same?" asked Carmen.

      Megan shrugged, making the cloak she was wearing slide off. she was wearing a pale gold dress, that caught the sunlight in her hair.