Long before I got to the chapter where Ann discovers her magical abilities in the first story I already had the explanation for it planned out and finally here it is.
The next several days flew by as Ann and Zoc finished moving the last of the stuff out of the old house and worked on unpacking.
Ann had just finished unpacking the last of her books and organizing them on the shelf then headed outside.
"Are you sure you don't want some help carrying some of that stuff in?" she asked as she watched Zoc carry another box of stuff into the house from the truck.
"I'm fine, anyways I don't want to risk you straining yourself," Zoc told her.
"Some of them really aren't that heavy, most of what's left are the boxes of Christmas decorations and lightweight stuff," Ann pointed out.
"And those need to go clear up to the attic," Zoc said setting the boxes down that he had been carrying and walked over to Ann, "I don't want to take any chances of anything going wrong," he told her, resting one hand on her should and the other hand lightly on her stomach.
Ann sighed, part of her wanting to be annoyed that he was being so over protective, but another part of her knew that he was right, they really didn't know what to expect or what could cause complications. In a normal pregnancy Zoc's behavior may have been over protective, but this wasn't a normal pregnancy and they both knew there was a good chance the baby wouldn't survive. He was just doing everything in his power to ensure it had the best chance of surviving, so she would just have to get used to being babied a little. "Alright, I'm going to go work on getting some of the cobwebs out of the basement then," she told him.
"If you need help with anything you'll let me know?" Zoc asked.
"All I'm going to be doing is using the broom to clean up the cobwebs I don't think I'll need any help, but if I do, I promise I'll let you know," she assured him giving him a quick kiss on the cheek before grabbing a broom and heading down to the basement.
Once Ann had finished getting the cobwebs down she started to sweep the floor. She froze suddenly when she noticed her ring starting to glow even though she wasn't making it glow. She started to walk towards the stairs to ask Zoc if he knew what was wrong with it, but as soon as she moved away from the wall it stopped glowing. She walked back to the same section of wall and it started to glow again, she moved along the wall for a couple of feet in either direction and it would stop glowing. Moving back to where the crystal glowed the brightest she magically tried pushing on the bricks to see if any were loose, a section about two feet wide and three feet high shifted back about an inch, but she wasn't strong enough to move it any farther, so she headed upstairs.
"Zoc I need you in the basement," Ann said as Zoc walked in carrying another box of stuff.
"What do you need?" he asked as he set the box down.
"I think there's something behind the wall and it's making my ring glow," Ann told him.
"It's making your ring glow?" Zoc asked in shocked.
"Yeah, kind of like it does when it gets near your staff, but a lot brighter, bright enough I noticed it with the lights on," Ann told him as they headed into the basement.
As soon as she led him over to the section of the wall, the crystal on her ring began to glow, "See?" she asked holding the ring up for him to see.
"Yes, I've never seen anything like this, but I wonder why it doesn't seem to effect my staff," he replied as he handed his staff to Ann to hold so he could inspected the wall.
As soon as the staff was in Ann's hand the crystal began to glow, "You're not doing that are you?" Zoc asked.
"No," Ann replied as Zoc took the staff back and the crystal stopped glowing.
"This is making absolutely no sense," Zoc said before handing the staff back to Ann and kneeling down to inspected the wall, "It's sealed, it has a magical seal on it," he said after a moment.
"But I got it to move a little," Ann pointed out.
"I think that's because it's a seal that can only be opened with the crystal," Zoc explained then stepped back and, taking his staff back magically pushed the wall open reveling a small room behind it.
Zoc looked in then hesitantly stepped down into the room and glanced around again before turning back and taking Ann's hand as she stepped down off of the cement floor of the main basement that had obviously been added long after the room had been sealed off.
The room was small, no more than five feet by seven feet and the air smelled stale as if there had been no air circulating at all, which seemed to be confirmed by the fact that there were no signs of spiders or other bugs having ever been in the room. They slowly walked around the edges of the room, which appeared to be empty, until they found a section of the wall where Ann's crystal glowed the brightest.
Zoc knelt to look at the wall for a moment then said, "It's another magical seal, but this one is different, I'm not sure how, but I can sense that it's different," Zoc said as he tried to open it, "It won't budge," he finally said.
"I wonder what's back there." Ann said as she knelt to take a closer look at what appeared to be a hand print on the large rock. She pressed her hand to the handprint wondering who had left it there and why, then gasped and jumped backwards as something sharp suddenly popped out of the rock and cut into the palm of her hand. Her hand moved away just in time for them to see what looked like a small piece of metal pull back into the wall. A second later light flared around the edges of the stone, the crystal on Ann's ring flared brightly and the stone slid to the side.
"Well I've never seen anything like that," Zoc said holding Ann's hand in his and applying pressure to the small cut, "Are you alright?" he asked.
"I'm fine," Ann replied taking a step forward to look in to the small opening that was only about two feet square, "It looks like there's something in there," Ann said reaching forward to see what it was.
Zoc caught her hand, stopping her, "Let me, we don't know what's in there, but if it was magically sealed it could be dangerous," Zoc said, then before Ann could protest he added, "I don't want to take any chance with you two,"
"Alright," Ann relented taking a step back.
Zoc reached in and pulled out a large old trunk, "Let's take this upstairs to look at it," Zoc suggested.
"Okay," Ann agreed and they headed up stairs.
Once they got upstairs Zoc set the trunk down in the middle of the dinning room and looked at the large lock on it, "Ann, maybe we shouldn't mess with this, it could be something dangerous, I've never seen magic quite like this, there's no knowing what to expect," he said.
"We've come this far, we have to at least see if we can get it open," Ann said resting a hand on his arm, "It'll be alright, I- I don't know, I just get this feeling that what ever is in there isn't dangerous," she told him.
Zoc looked her in the eyes for a long moment then finally said, "Alright, but the lock is magical too, we may not be able to get it open."
Ann looked at the lock, or at least it was shaped like a lock, but it had no place for a key or a combination, just smooth metal except for a small indentation on the front of it and what looked like a dragon on the hooked part of it.
Zoc tried to open it but was unable to get it to open, "Looks like it'll be staying locked," he told Ann.
"I have an idea," Ann said squeezing her hand to make the cut on it start bleeding again then allowed a drop of blood to fall onto the indentation on the lock and the lock began to glow dimly.
"Well you've gotten it to do something, but it doesn't look like it's going to actually unlock," Zoc said as he watched her.
"Maybe it just needs a little magic," Ann said then concentrated on trying to open the lock, her ring glowing brightly.
The lock seemed to move slightly, but didn't unlock, "I don't think I'm strong enough," Ann said as she grabbed Zoc's hand.
A second later the lock popped open, Ann grinned at Zoc, "See this isn't so hard."
"Yes, now we just have to worry about what's inside," Zoc said, protectively slipping in front of Ann to open the chest.
He removed the lock and unlatched the latches then hesitated a moment, "Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked.
"As long as my intuition is right, it'll be fine," Ann told him.
"I certainly hope you're right," Zoc said then lifted the lid.
They both stared into the trunk for a long moment, somewhat surprised by the contents.
"Well I know I said it wasn't going to be anything dangerous, but I was expecting something a little different," Ann said as she looked at the piles of letter and books that filled the trunk.
She reached in and pulled out one of the books and gasped when she opened the cover, "Oh my gosh, Zoc, it's a diary, it's Rachel Fisher's diary, if she is related to grandma Sarah it should mention her in one of these," she said excitedly as she started checking the other books to find that they were all diaries, "And even if she wasn't related to grandma Sarah these diaries will contain a massive amount of first hand accounts of pioneer life."
She picked up a pile of the letters and carefully started looking through them while Zoc pulled out what looked like a wooden jewelry box, a moment later she froze as she looked at one of the letters, a large grin spreading across her face, "It's a letter to Rachel, signed, your loving sister Sarah Bordner!" she said excitedly carefully setting the letters down before throwing her arms around Zoc's neck, "My great, great, great, great, great, grandparents, aunt and several cousins are buried in our back yard," she practically squealed with joy. "What's wrong?" she asked when Zoc didn't respond.
"Why would you're family's stuff have been magically locked away and why would they have had this?" he asked turning the box so she could see it's contents.
Ann fell silent when she saw the contents of the box, inside carefully wrapped in red velvet was a crystal about the size of her fist, almost identical to the one on Zoc's staff and her ring.
"I- I have no idea," she breathed barely able to believe what she was seeing.
She gently took the box from Zoc's hands and looked at it, the sides were covered with intricately carved dragons and on the top was an image of a dragon and a human standing side by side and another dragon handing what looked like the crystal to the other dragon, underneath the picture were a couple lines of writing in another language.
"Do you know what it says?" Zoc asked as Ann ran her fingers over the words.
"I think it's Latin, I know it, but not as fluently as ancient Egyptian, but it says,
etsi nunc homo apud species,
ab haec recordor tuus-a-um magnus hereditas," Ann read.
She took a moment to go over the translation in her mind to ensure it said what she thought it did, "Although now human in appearance, by this remember your great heritage," Ann breathed, her hands shaking slightly.
"Ann, what's wrong?" Zoc asked taking one of her shaking hands in his.
"I- I think it's saying that whoever originally owned this box and the crystal inside was no more human than you are when you've used the potion to make yourself look human and everything else in that trunk obviously belonged to Rachel. Most of my life there's always been this part of me that for some reason has believed I was part dragon. No matter how many times I told myself that was crazy and impossible I couldn't help but believe it. If Rachel was really a dragon so was grandma Sarah and if that's true, the blood line may be thinned, but maybe that's why I can use the crystal," Ann said.
"It would be the most reasonable explanation we've been able to come up with," Zoc said, taking in her pale complexion, wide eyes and shaking hands he asked, "Are you alright?"
Ann looked up at him and smiled, "I'm fine, just really shocked," she laughed, "I'm married to a talking ant, I'm pregnant, I have magical abilities and the government is after me, you'd think nothing would shock me by now," she said running her fingers over the carvings on the box. "Now I just need to find some type of proof that I'm right about all this,"
"That's a wonderful idea, you look like you could use a break after all this excitement, why don't you take one of the diaries and go put your feet up and relax a bit," Zoc suggested.
"That's a good idea, and I do feel a little tired," Ann replied as Zoc stood up then helped her to her feet after she had grabbed the oldest of the diaries.
Ann lie down on the couch, carefully reading the diary, which seemed to be a perfectly normal diary of a pioneer girl in her late teens except for occasional comments that made it pretty obvious that they weren't human, but never actually said what they were.
May 1, 1831
Mama says Sarah and I should keep diaries about our trip out west, because it'll give us something to do on the wagon train.
Sarah and I don't want to leave all our friends, but Mr. Baker accused mama of being a witch, so papa said it was time we moved and that there is enough wide open space out farther west that we won't have to worry about any nosy neighbors.
May 7, 1831
Daddy is being so mean! I want to go flying, but he says it's too dangerous because someone might see us. It's the middle of the night, everyone is asleep, it's not like I was going to fly directly over the camp or anything. I'm 17 I'm old enough to do what I want, but mama says I'll have plenty of time to fly when we get to our new home and we can't take any chances, we have to make sure everyone here believes we're human. I hate having to hide like this.
May 14, 1831
It's so boring out here, just miles of prairies and tall grass, nothing exciting ever happens.
May 16, 1831
I was wrong, it's not all that boring after all. We were attacked by Indians today, they came out of nowhere and started shooting at us with bows and arrows and guns. One grabbed me and tried to carry me off, but George Fisher jumped out of one of the wagons and onto the Indian's horse then held a knife to his throat and made him let me go and drop his weapons then George let him go instead of killing him. Later when I asked him why he didn't kill the Indian like most of the older men would have he said that the Indians are just protecting their land and he didn't like killing someone over something like that. He certainly seems smarter than most of the other human men here. He got a bad cut on his leg during the fight and can barely walk, so I offered to take turns with his mother and sister to help take care of him until he can walk again. It was the least I could do after he saved my life.
Before long Ann dozed off, exhausted from the long day of unpacking and excitement.
A little while later Zoc came in and carefully set the diary on the end table, "Sleep well my loves," he whispered, gently kissing Ann's stomach then forehead as he covered her with the afghan off of the back of the couch, then left to finish unpacking.
