Ch 3: Meeting and Healing
Felix had been aimlessly wandering through the forest neighboring Luxton the next day in much fairer weather when the first wave of light flowed across the hazy sky with a roar. Resonating from a point nearly directly overhead, the trolling lights pulsed like a heartbeat, deep emerald in color. The surges of color repeated like waves in a pool ringing out from a dropped pebble. After the leading edges of the third wave dimmed, a sharp crack sounded, followed almost instantly by a bolt of light streaking down through the sky to arrow at a tall oak, the light the same color as the waves. Breaking into a sprint, Felix followed the burning spear of light with intent eyes. He knew a crossing when he saw one.
Positioning himself beneath the leafy boughs of the tree the frozen green lightning was targeting, Felix rolled back on his heels, burrowing long hands in the pockets of his trousers as he leaned back to watch the spectacle. Narrowing his eyes against the bright light, Felix blinked when the bolt of crackling energy evaporated. In its place, a black disk the size of the ring on Felix's thumb spread high above, and he felt a fierce crook of his lips when a small figure fell through. It was a high crossing point, lending to the greater distance of the wizard's travels.
Felix had never actually attempted a crossing. His father preferred the castle's door, but had scribed a circle or two when it was necessary. However, Felix had studied crossings in depth, and was puzzled by the wizard's stillness. He should have started slowing his fall by now—it took time to halt so much generated momentum.
Suddenly, the traveler exploded in a flurry of movement. It was no slowing spell, but at least Felix was certain that the wizard was conscious and wouldn't splat all over the ground. After what seemed far too long, the wizard's fall started to gentle. Eventually, he settled softly on a long branch high in the crown of the oak. Felix's brow lifted at the feminine face he could see through the leaves. So the wizard was actually a witch.
Interesting. Felix was just processing the concept when the branch the witch was standing on, presumably recovering from the crossing, snapped like the clashing of teeth.
"Damn," Felix muttered. She crashed through the branches of the tree, and Felix rolled his weight back on his toes, following her violent fall with dogged eyes. He couldn't slow her; she was moving too fast and erratically for Felix to get an appropriate lock on her body mass and slow her down. But he could cushion her landing. Hopefully, she wouldn't break anything.
He heard the witch yell something as she cleared the last ten feet of foliage, but her accent was too thick to understand. It sounded like a warning, but Felix wasn't about to move right out from under her. His hands ready, Felix softened his spine and knees, ready to lessen the impact. As she tumbled free of the foliage, Felix sucked a deep breath, letting it ease out.
The witch was lighter than he'd estimated, but the collision still sent the two of them rolling to the ground. Felix did his best to shield her from the blow, but her head still rapped sharply against the dirt, and Felix winced as her eyes rolled close. She had fallen across his body, the curve of her spine fitting across his ribcage. Moving carefully, his lungs still scrambling for the air knocked out of them, Felix lifted the witch's legs, slipping out from under her while simultaneously setting her limp limbs slightly over.
Pulling a breath deep in his lungs as he rolled to his feet, Felix moved over to her side, dropping down on the ground with a huff. For a moment, he sat still, listening for hoof beats or footsteps. It was unlikely that he was the only one in the area that had recognized the crossing, and it had turned out to be a lightning crossing, no less. There was no doubt that any Arsalans in the immediate area would leap at the chance to drag such a prize back to the capital and their mistress, Lady Witch Sylvia Apollo.
However, it wouldn't have been worth the hunt. The woman bore incredible amounts of power in her blood, but it was wild, and untapped. This was no witch. It was unlikely she'd ever even called upon her gifts. And for all the crackle of energy around her, she lacked a talisman, or a spirit form. So if she hadn't traveled, Felix deduced, she must have been sent.
Silence continued to reign, and Felix let out the breath he didn't remember holding. Looking back at the woman, he was relieved to see her eyes blinking open, a hand moving to her forehead. She glanced around, a lost expression flitting over her eyes before sinking away again as she caught sight of the tree. She started to get up, but immediately laid back, a grimace twisting gentle lips.
"Here," Felix said quietly, offering a hand to help her sit up as he stood again. She took it reluctantly, and he watched her brow furrow as he helped lever her up, shifting to press a supporting hand between her shoulder blades. Kneeling back down in front of her, Felix cradled her pale face in his hands. The pupils in her jade eyes were still rather large, and the cuts scattering her face, especially that large one under her left eye, marred a quiet, regal beauty. Her nose was straight and small, and her slightly gathered brows a mildly darker tone than her midnight fire hair. Gently running his thumb over her cheekbone, just under the wound, Felix started talking to distract her from the pain.
"Rotten luck to have landed on a weak branch. I've heard crossing is hard enough without having to deal with falling through a tree." Felix made clucking noises with his tongue, keeping his eyes on the woman's as the wound knit close with a soft blue glow. Once healed, Felix ran gentle fingers up over her face and into her hair, checking the area she had cracked against the ground. She winced, but he didn't sense any blood gathering heavily under the skin or bone.
She watched him with wary eyes, like an animal recently beaten. Felix wasn't surprised—any human who crossed without prior knowledge of magic was certain to feel afraid. But he was unused to the expression turning his way, and it left an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach, justified as it was.
Settling back on his heels, he looked over the woman as she studied him, both kneeling only half a foot apart. There was something about her. She was so very different from his time and place; it was like handling a wild animal—foreign and disconcerting. And yet, somewhere deep in the back of his mind, her face tickled like a feather, a memory long forgotten and never touched since.
As he looked the stranger over, Felix had to admit that his first impression of beauty was an accurate one. Her hair, though threaded with bits of branches, leaves, and grass, curled wildly, thick as rope and red as a dead sun as it tumbled untamed over her shoulders and down her back. She had a fair complexion, under the smudges of dirt and what little bruising had escaped Felix's initial once-over.
She was wearing some sort of strange, baggy tunic that exclaimed in faded blue letters "University of London." Felix was certain that he had never heard of such a school, or such a city. Her trousers were a strange blue material that Felix had never seen before, frayed at the ends and faded along the thighs and knees. Scuffed, sensible boots completed her ensemble, and left him confused. Where had she come from?
Judging from her attire and demeanor, it was certain that she was as confused by him as Felix was by her. So, standing with a sigh and brushing at his legs, Felix offered her a hand to stand. He didn't miss the wince in her eyes when she stretched the left side of her body upward to swing out her leg. Dropping her hand, Felix looked outwards again, this time sweeping with a spell for anyone in the nearby vicinity. Working something like the sonar of bats, it came back uninterrupted. They had time yet. Turning back to the woman, Felix cordially extended a hand, softly arranging a gentle smile on his face.
"My name is Felix, a mage and the son of Howl. And you are?" She swallowed as she took his hand, but her grip was firm—and aspect that reminded him of his mother, and so always earned his respect.
"Ana. I suppose I owe you my life, Mr. Felix-"
"Please," Felix interrupted with a raised hand. "It's just Felix. I have too many surnames for any one of them to be of use. And while you would have been in some rather serious trouble had you fallen out of that tree with no one around, I doubt you owe me your life." He pressed his free hand to the one clasped in his other hand, granting her a smile he hoped was warm and gentle. It had been a long time since he'd had to truly comfort or reassure someone. Her accent had softened, her voice rich and smooth like dark cream.
She nodded in understanding with a rueful smile. Felix smoothly released her hand as soon as he felt the tendons in her long, almost fragile hand start to tense.
"Well, Ana, considering you don't know how you got to be here, can you tell me where you're from?" She started a little, surprised at his knowledge. Ana was a private creature, obviously, unused to others knowing pertinent information about her.
"Um… I'm from London." At the perplexed look on Felix's face, she rushed on, lilting her voice to change the statement into a question. "You know, the capital of England?" When his expression didn't clear, Ana blew out a hitching breath. "Ok, so if I can't tell you where I came from, can you at least tell me where I am?" Felix was a little worried. Maybe she had hit her head harder than he thought. But where did she get those strange clothes, and that accent? If he listened carefully enough, it sounded like his mother's. So how did she end up being sent through a crossing?
"You're near the town of Luxton, close to the border."
"The Scottish border?" Felix frowned—he'd never heard of such a province.
"No. Close to the border of Calimar." Ana started to look upset, pressing a hand to her forehead as she turned slightly away. He could hear her muttering under her breath, catching a few choice snippets. "Crazy," "Calimar," "Martha," and "What the hell?" was all the more Felix could make out of her conversation with herself. Settling his face into benign lines, he folded his hands and waited for Ana to resettle. Talking to yourself was nothing strange—it was just conversations with the other parts of your soul. His father did it all the time. It was just that Calcifer was outside Howl's body, instead of inside it.
While Felix didn't feel comfortable with pushing Ana while she was clearly upset and disoriented, he caught the faint report of hoofbeats, raising the hairs on the back of his neck almost instantly. It was time to go. Ana was still puzzling away when Felix snatched her arm, tugging her away from the tree, its branches blatantly broken and pointing their broken, irritated fingers straight at them.
Felix had been keeping out of Sylvia's sticky clutches for quite some time—he had no intention of being caught now, especially with some disoriented, upset foreigner in his care. Ana tried a short complaint, but Felix quickly hushed her as he dived into some underbrush, shielding her while he looked out through the leaves. Moments later, a platoon of cavalry men, totaling about 10 or 12, raced by, the shouts and grunts of command edged with the impatience of hunters. Their horses cleared a heavy log blocking the path with the thunder of racing hooves, and silence again fell.
Stepping clear of the bushes, Felix set a steady pace back to Luxton, careful to keep away from the main trails that the Arsalans were sure to comb. Ana went along willingly enough, but not without some questions. Felix tried to keep his patience about him—her questions seemed painfully obvious, but he had to remind himself that Ana was not of this world.
"Who were those men?" she asked, sensible enough to keep her voice down.
"Arsalans," Felix answered shortly, trying to discern a passable way through a thicket of dense huskberry bushes. But Ana continued to talk, and unwillingly drew Felix's attention away from the puzzle of the bushes.
"What are Arsalans?" she queried, her voice wavering a little. Clenching his teeth to swallow the short, disbelieving retort that wanted to shoot out of his mouth, Felix turned back to Ana. She was starting to come out of the daze induced by her fall from her world and the tree. And it was scaring the living daylights out of her. Felix had to keep that fact in mind.
"Arsalans are dogs of the Lady Witch Sylvia Apollo. They're her private army, her bounty hunters, and her personal guard. In short, they want to take you back to their mistress in Kingsbury as a prize, a symbol of their devotion," Felix explained as he bent low and weaseled his way through the bushes, pulling determinedly on Ana's hand to encourage her to follow.
"But…why do they want me?" Ana managed as she followed Felix through the wall of bushes. They weren't thorns bushes, luckily enough, but tightly entwined and furnished with hard, winding branches. The going wasn't easy, but they were making progress.
"You came… through a lightning crossing… one of the brightest I've ever seen. Whether the power comes from you… or the one who sent you… you are a source of energy and power that Lady Apollo would… do anything to bring under her control." Just as he was ready to lunge free of the bushes, the loose contact of Ana's hand in his tightened and tugged him to a stop. Glancing back, Felix's brow furrowed at the pale sheen of Ana's skin. "What's wrong?" Felix asked, concerned when Ana's eyes widened.
"What's…wrong?" she cried, her knees trembling a little. "I'm being hunted for reasons that I can hardly comprehend! And you! I don't even know you! Can I trust you? What about—" Ana's questions, quickly spiraling out of control, were cut off when Felix pressed his lips to her's. Her emerald eyes flashed wide, and Felix was relieved when the hands that flew up to his shoulders didn't push him away. Their eyes remained locked on each other's, and Felix's gentle fingers rested softly on her cheekbones. Her green eyes were focused so completely on Felix's sapphire eyes that she didn't see the blue glow quietly growing from their joined lips. Drawing away, Felix smoothed a hand over Ana's wild hair. She stood quiet and unmoving as Felix pulled away and took up her hand again.
"Your lips were bleeding. I didn't see that before. Come on," he urged gently. Ana followed quietly, her questions and fears effectively silenced for now. Finally, the pair left the trailing edges of the forest, approaching the border of the town proper. Drawing Ana into the shade cast by a dairy, Felix quickly conjured a rough black cloak out of the air with an artful twist of his hand.
"Here," he said as he whipped it around Ana's shoulders. "It's not only a cloak, but also a spell. No one will be able to see you as long as you don't speak." Ana opened her mouth to confirm that she understood, but Felix quickly held up a finger for silence. Nodding instead, she carefully pressed fingers to Felix's elbow as he strode around the building and headed down the main street he had traversed alone only yesterday.
A few people nodded greetings, but otherwise, the people of Luxton went determinedly about their ways without noticing the handsome stranger striding easily through their midst. Felix didn't need a cloak to make himself invisible, nor did he wish to be. A softening of the sight, however, did wonders to keep the busy from poking their nose around and noticing people they shouldn't. They were almost to the inn when the ring of hoofbeats echoed down the street.
"Hey, you!" one of the Arsalans called, pushing his horse up to a trot to catch up with the swiftly striding Felix. Ana's fingers tightened on Felix's arm, but his face remained easy and clever as he turned to face the mounted rider.
"Remember, Ana, stay quiet. It'll be all right," he murmured under his breath as the rider approached. "What can I do for you, sir?" he asked in a polite enough voice to the Arsalan. His fellows caught up, the dozen of them the same troop that had nearly caught Felix and Ana in the forest. Their gold and green uniforms were well-pressed, and the pistols and rapiers at their hips shone with quality and care. The handles of every man's weapon, be it blade or bullet, was well-worn, warning all that these were not men to be trifled with. The eagle entwined with a red ribbon clutching a staff decorated their right shoulders, the personal seal of Lady Apollo.
"Several of the town's people saw you enter the forest earlier this morning. What can you tell us about the crossing that happened half an hour ago?" the leader asked in a gruff, almost rude tone. He clearly didn't recognize Felix, or, if he did, he shared Lady Apollo's feelings towards Howl and those affiliated with the wizard.
"Crossing? There wasn't a crossing today," Felix countered in decisive, dismissive tone. He could feel Ana drawing closer to his side the longer they were delayed, but willed her to remain quiet and still. A little longer, and they'd be in the inn and briefly safe.
"Of course there was. We're well aware that you are Felix, son of Howl. Resistance will make your journey all the more difficult. If that doesn't affect you, we could always burn this decrepit little village to the ground to convince you." Felix ground his teeth, but kept a neutral, even impatient look on his face.
"Gentlemen, have you ever witnessed a crossing before?" At their shady exchange of glances, he barreled on, trying to walk the tightrope of convincing them in the quickest manner. "I thought not. The disturbance today was clearly caused by a neighboring town's harvest ceremony."
"This isn't the season for harvest!" one of the men exclaimed.
"Maybe not in Kingsbury, but here at the border the calendar is arranged a little differently. If you gentlemen would get out of the city more, you would know that already," Felix added for his own personal satisfaction. Believing their altercation over, he turned towards the inn, Ana a shadow clinging to his side.
"Halt, wizard! We're not done with you yet!" the leader bellowed. Felix flashed the Arsalan a look his mother would have blinked at, it was so close to the grinning, blade-keen glance his father had once pinned on a scorch-marked table. With a wave of his hand, Felix hurled the horses into a rage. Several animals bucked off their riders—others tumbled off as the horses bolted. Still more struggled with their mounts as they rose up into towering rears, screaming and slashing. Felix and Ana were almost to the gate when she happened to glance back.
One of the men, struggling up from the cobbles with a hateful grimace twisting his face, wrenched his pistol free of its holster, aiming its gleaming snout right at Felix's retreating back.
"Felix!" Ana cried as she shoved him down just as the pistol roared, the bullet burying harmlessly in the stone of the inn. The pair tumbled down, Ana landing on Felix again. They were just catching their breath when both simultaneously realized that Ana had spoken, and was now visible.
"That must be the witch from the crossing!" the Arsalans cried. Felix and Ana were frozen briefly, looking at each other with wide eyes. Suddenly, they shot to their feet, racing to the alleys, the thwarted Arsalans tight on their heels.
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I'm sorry, everyone. I know this chapter took a very long time. I actually had to re-watch the movie to get motivated enough to finish it. But I'm pretty satisfied by it so far. Felix looks almost exactly like his father, and some of his expressions and mannerisms are the same. But he's got enough of his mother in him to hold off tantrums for the most part. You'll see that when I get them together. That won't be for a while, but it's something to look forward to. I've also got some of the plot lined up more definitively, which always helps to push me along. My greatest vice when it comes to writing is actually finishing something. We'll see how far along I get with this one. I might, might just be able to finish it. A novel thought!