Magic in the Air

Chapter One~ The Maid

A/N: Well everyone, here's yet another story for you. Again, I had a dream about one specific part of this story, a part that is probably going to be in a shortly future chapter. Anyway, on with the show.

Magnolia had always been a quiet girl. Books had been her solace through the years, stories of far off lands and magic and heroes. She kept to herself and never bothered anyone. It helped her fly under the radar most of her life. Most of the time.

During middle school, there had been several girls, of different cliques, that decided to target the weird, quiet girl in their classes. For three years, they had ramped up their torment a little at a time. It started with snide remarks in her general direction, things that Magnolia largely ignored. It was only when they started insinuating about her home life, that she started to be hurt. Not many people knew anything about her, she only had one real friend, a girl named Emily. So, they girls, as a whole, had cornered Emily one day and basically dragged information out of her.

That's when the real pain started to set in. They loudly inquired at lunch amongst themselves about why her father had left when she was three. Was it because her mother had nagged him too much? Or maybe he was seeing another woman? Or maybe he just couldn't handle the thought of being a father at the age of 23 and had gotten tired of it? He'd gotten tired of her...

Magnolia didn't let them see her hurt, but she went home crying that night and demanded of her mother to know why he had left.

It turned out it had been a mixture of all three. As her mother explained, they had been high school sweethearts and she had gotten pregnant when she was nineteen and he was twenty. They had made things work for a few years until another woman got her claws in him and he decided to sneak out in the middle of the night and never come back. Magnolia was heartbroken to know that she had not been wanted. It changed something in the girl that day. She stopped talking to anyone, stopped answering questions in class. Her grades fell, though only slightly, not enough to really warrant attention. She would get up, eat breakfast, go to school, come home, go immediately upstairs to her room and not come out for the rest of the night. Her mother became worried, as she had stopped eating at night.

But something else changed in her as well. One day, while the girls were taunting her from the next table over, Magnolia started staring at one in particular, the leader. Apparently, it had weirded the girl out and she went to confront Magnolia. In her focused stated, she silently wished the girl would trip and hurt herself enough to leave her alone. She felt something inside her start to burn.

Lo and behold, not a second later, the girl tripped over her own feet. This was something that never happened, as this girl was in gymnastics and was quite good. She never tripped over anything, and certainly never fell. Until this day. Her feet got tangled up in themselves and she went tumbling to the ground. She smacked her head against the table and fell to the linoleum. The momentum had landed her right in front of Magnolia, who only stared in wonder and fear at what had just happened. The girl, still in shock, looked up at her. Fear crossed her face and she quickly stood, despite teachers trying to get her to stay where she was until the nurse could get there.

From then, the remarks turned to calling her a witch, a voodoo practitioner, someone who could make you hurt without doing anything. And it spread through school like a wildfire. Nothing ever happened like that again, because Magnolia began to fear herself. She didn't tell her mother what had happened, for fear of her pulling her out of school or sending her to the nut house. And things did happen throughout the years, though only minor things that no one really noticed but here.

But at least no one ever directly bothered her again.

The summer before high school started, they moved...to England. Talk about a culture shock. Her mother had gotten a job offer she couldn't refuse. Magnolia managed for the most part to never be noticed there either. She went to public school, never really made any friends, and no one knew anything about her. Most people didn't even know who she was when graduation came around.

And that's where our story starts.

)0(

"Maggie!" Shonda, one of her coworkers at the hotel she was a maid at, called from down the hall on the first floor.

Magnolia stopped her cart, waiting for the older woman to catch up with her. "What's wrong?" she asked quietly. Even in her semi-adult life, she was a quiet person. She never spoke up unless someone else asked her a direct question, and never approached anyone with anything unless the need was dire. At 19 years old, she was a mouse. Between her big dark brown eyes and frizzy brown hair that was always up in a ponytail, she looked the part. But, it worked for someone who worked as a maid. They were supposed to do their job as quietly as possible and then be out of sight.

"Room 310 needs to be cleaned before you leave. The guy is just now checking out, but boss man wants it clean ASAP. We've got a ton of tourists coming for summer break any time now."

She had already been cleaning all night, and she was exhausted. But, with no more than a nod, she went off to the third floor. This was often the one she was assigned, because people tended not to linger very much on the top floor of the hotel. They usually just got their things, packed them up in the car, and then checked out. As such, when she pulled up to the door in question and knocked, she didn't expect to hear a voice answer here when she called out as loudly as she could (which was not that loudly at all) "Maid service." But, in fact, not only did someone answer, someone opened the door quickly then moved away to finish collecting their things. Magnolia waited out in the hall with her cart, not wanting to get in the man's way.

From what she could see of him, he was tall and a bit thin, if the way his clothes hung off him was any indication. He wore a fitted cap on his head with a brim that covered what little she would have been able to see of his face. She watched quietly as he rushed around the room, catching a glimpse of high cheekbones and, in a flash, what she thought were blue eyes as he turned to look at her momentarily. Something in that look, brief though it was, put a twang of sadness in her chest. The feeling rocked her back a step. Once it had passed, she looked down at the carpet, confused. She had never felt such sadness in all her life.

Suddenly, the man rushed past her, leaving nothing more than a breeze behind. Magnolia shook herself and went into the room to clean. The first thing she noticed, besides that the room was almost immaculate, was a single, strange object sitting on the end of the bed. It looked to be a snake scale, only much, much larger. It was almost the size of both her hands put together. Picking it up, Magnolia realized that it was extremely hard and seemingly made of gold. Or painted gold, at least. She ran out of the room.

"Sir?! You left your..." she trailed off. He was nowhere to be seen. It was a long hallway with no elevator. She would have heard the door to the stairs open, as it was rusty and loud. But he was not there. He had just vanished. With a huff, she stuck the object in her pocket and turned to the doorway. She would have to take it down to the main desk and give it to them for Lost and Found, just in case he called in and asked about it.

As she had first noticed, there wasn't much wrong with the room. Bed was made, almost as if it hadn't been slept in. The shower had been run, as there were droplets in the bathtub, and the cheap soap they supplied had been used, as well as the shampoo and conditioner. The used towel had been folded neatly on the counter. There was still coffee in the machine and a mostly empty cup beside it, probably from where he had tried the beverage and realized it was horrible. This hotel was cheap, an ideal place for budget travelers, however, the accommodations were less than grand. She threw the used products in her cart, and replaced them with new ones. Because it was policy, she stripped the sheets off the bed as well and replaced those as well. What had he been doing all night? He hadn't used the bed, and one would think he would drink as much coffee as he could get if he'd been up all night.

Tourist season was just starting, and the hotel would be busy for the next few weeks, while the weather was bearable. As for the reason they would be busy, it wasn't just because it was summer and people from all over the world would be visiting England in general. No. It was because, supposedly, they were smack in the middle of what was once the seat of the king of 'Albion', which was the old name for England. The king, obviously, being King Arthur Pendragon. Everyone knew the stories. Everyone came to their town to explore the old ruins and take guesses at what really happened for a once great kingdom to fall.

Honestly, she was always curious, like everyone else. When her and her mother had first moved to the area, she had gone to all the usual spots as everyone else did. She'd done the research and read the stories and wondered at the tales of chivalry and magic. If they had moved here when she was several years younger, she probably would have made wishes at the old fountain to be put back in that time. But, she was older, wiser. She knew things like that didn't happen. And she knew that the tales were probably just that. Tales. None of the knights ever fought dragons or griffins, Arthur most likely hadn't pulled his famous sword out of a bolder in the middle of the forest, and Merlin the sorcerer certainly hadn't used magic to help Arthur ascend to the place of king.

As Magnolia vacuumed the room, deep in thought, she wondered if maybe, just maybe, all that was real. If there had been mythical creatures roaming around causing havoc in those times. If the knights were really men of honor and fought for the good of the people, if they had really found the Holy Grail and brought it back. Surely, there had to have been some good men back then. It couldn't have been all raiders and rapers as history suggested.

Suddenly, Magnolia felt something strange start to happen. Her pocket had started vibrating. Thinking it was her phone, she turned off the vacuum and reached for it. But it wasn't her phone. As she realized she had left her phone in her locker that day, she pulled out the strange scale the man had left behind. The object was buzzing, and it became more aggressive as she stood there with the thing in her hand. As the vibrating grew, the air around her began to heat up and vibrate as well. Everything around her became fuzzy as Magnolia's mind raced in a panic. As fast as she could, she turned and bolted for the door. She had to get away from the room. Before she could even take two steps, the room melted away, and she was falling.