Forbidden Road, page 19
“Get on the bed,” he commanded.
There was so much enticement in that sentence, that I sighed before I obeyed.
“Lay back.” He took off his shirt and threw it on the floor behind him.
I started to take my dress off.
“Leave it on.” He unbuckled his belt and stepped out of his pants. “Just take your bra and underwear off from underneath.”
My heart began to pound fast.
I watched him undress, his eyes on my every move, and then the shimmering waves took over.
Lunch was an array of sandwiches that my mom made for us to take outside for a picnic. She was glad that Seth and I had met so soon after last night.
I still had no idea how I was going to bring up the trip to London, but the problem got solved on its own shortly afterward. One of Seth’s coaches wanted to schedule a training week in the city. I quickly texted him that I was planning to go down too. He said I should stay with him.
“He loves you,” my mom said.
“Or, he’s just afraid I’d party too hard if left to my own vices.”
She laughed. We spent the afternoon working on my magical training, now that my powers had ascended. She would give me advice and then I’d take a dream-realm nap and practice.
She knew my powers, or a variation of them. The core was similar to hers, but there were differences.
Conjuring was her forte. It seemed I had a lot of power there, but overall my magic was more intuitive. I’d always found telekinesis to be my strength.
My powers were in tune with natural elements. Fireballs and wind seemed to come at a strength and magnitude that amazed her when I described them. My range was larger, too, though I lacked her spread. Her weather spells could cover an area the size of a large city. Mine were more limited in space, but I could affect a farther place.
The passive awareness of the world around us was also different. Hers had more detail than mine, but I could feel things far away.
“You’re much like your grandfather. That’s how his powers work.” She couldn’t wait for us to meet. She said he was also an excellent trainer.
Her instructions were with me in every practice, but she wasn’t the only one there. With many spells, I would find myself back in the sports center, with Seth. His words on fencing now applied to my magic. Blending my new powers into the old was like connecting to the sword he had put in my hand. He was teaching me, part of me now, in every spell.
“Have you thought about telling your friends about magic?” my mom asked when practice was done and we were waiting for my dad to finish off some business, so that we could go together for an early dinner.
He was working hard at closing last things before the trip, going over an old file he and Mom had prepared right before traveling back in time, of all the things they’d need to know upon their return.
I said I wanted to tell Jane, maybe Mindy at some point, but not Scarlett. “I don’t think she’d get it, no matter what I’d say. I can’t help but feel bad about that.”
“Honey, we all have different types of friendships. Scarlett is more your fun buddy. That’s wonderful too. You have a deep connection with Jane and Mindy.”
Though she didn’t speak much about the life they’d left behind, I knew she had a friend who was in on the big secret. Someone named Kendra.
“Mom, I have a question.”
“Sure.”
I looked at her. The question I was about to ask had been on my mind for many years. “How powerful are you?”
She took a breath. “Does it matter?”
“I can’t talk about magic with other witches. All I know is you and Harley, so I’m thinking that if you’re very strong, then I could be too.”
She smiled. “It doesn’t really work that way. It’s more like…musical talent. You can find a family of musicians where some of the siblings are tone-deaf. Your magic would feel similar to that of other family members, but its strength depends on your own ability to connect with its depth.”
Again, her words reminded me of Seth’s fencing.
“Also, I don’t want you to think that the amount of power is what counts.”
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
She grinned. “Yes. You’d find that your smarts serve you far more than your magic ever will.”
“Right. So...what is the answer to my question?”
She laughed. “Persistent. Just like your father.” She paused. “I never really knew, but based on what our family had seen in other witches, we assumed...”
“That you were one of the top mages of your time.”
She didn’t answer.
“Is that what happened? Is that why you and Daddy needed to run away? Were you persecuted for your magic like the witches in my college?”
“No. It wasn’t like that. It’s…best you don’t know certain things. Not yet, at least. There will be time. Lots of time, after things settle.”
Yes. She and Dad didn’t really know what they would be going back to and how they would deal with the dangers they had escaped. Their only certainty was that Harley and I were now adults, and in control of our powers.
“Kim, I’m so glad your powers ascended before we had to go back.”
My dad joined us shortly after that conversation. He had just gotten off the phone, explaining to the tenants who had rented our house the complex workings of a boiler.
During dinner, an email arrived from Harley and Amber, addressed to all of us, and Mom read it out loud. They were somewhere in Canada. Hiking. There was a college there that Amber wanted to have a look at, and they’d be staying for the rest of the week.
It was a relief to my parents. Harley and I would be their largest secret, and the fact that they were mobile during this critical time made them safer.
After dinner, they went over the flight details again. They had arranged for a safe time barrier, to allow them to arrive at the time they had planned.
Looking at their itinerary made it all suddenly real.
“I’ll miss you,” I heard myself saying.
“Really?” said my dad. “I recall how eager you were to leave home. Get your independence.”
“Yes. I know.”
“We’ll see each other very soon,” said my mom. “It’s just that we don’t know exactly when.”
My dad suggested an evening walk to look at the town. He loved Oxford. When he’d first come up with me, he had me walking around for hours, getting in and out of colleges and visiting touristy areas, or places where famous films had been made.
Before going out, I had a quick check of my phone and the Junior Common Room inbox. Some people had ignored our request to use the helpline, and left messages for us. I quickly replied that they should contact it. Then, I searched online for any news. One more student, from Magdalene College, was missing.
“Try not to think about it,” my mom said. “Get some sleep tonight. Tomorrow you’re going to London with Seth.”
I got a message from him, right before going to bed back at the hotel, asking whether I could be packed and ready for the four p.m. train to London. I replied that I would, and he said he could pick me up and we’d walk to the station together.
He ended with, “My concentration has been completely off today. Can’t stop thinking about this afternoon.”
His words made me feel a nice warm sensation in my chest, and relaxed some of my worries about the missing students and our safety. I also felt more confident about the tension that had built between us. We would get through it. Even though he needed his distance. Maybe slowing down the pace was good for us, after all.
As I drifted into a deep non-magical sleep, I started dreaming of that trip long ago, when my mom took me to Glastonbury.
I was at a charity shop, holding an old book, that I could tell had been well cared for. It had beautiful pictures of knights and castles. My mother was looking out the shop window at the rain-covered street. The drive up had been long, and we’d spent it singing along to our favorite songs. Loudly.
Many witches lived in Glastonbury, and it was also a pagan center. People spoke about magic freely. It was the safest place to have the talk.
I knew it was important for her to do it right, and I was eager to finally find out why we were living under such restrictions.
We had a quick tour of the town and got lunch. The shop was just across the road from our hotel, and Mom seemed to want to take our time before we got there. I could tell she was stressed under the happy-tourist facade.
She went to pay, and I put the book in my bag.
“Anything else you want to see?” she asked when we were outside the shop.
“Not really. I think we should check in.”
Waiting would have just made it more stressful. I was like my dad, preferring to be hit with all the information at once and sort it out in my own way. I didn’t like to delay dealing with things.
We went upstairs. Once in our room, my mom locked the door and closed her eyes. I knew that she could feel the building, the other rooms, and the people inside. She was checking whether we were alone.
Then, she cast the tent spell around the small table. We both took a seat and she pulled out her laptop and turned it on. That last action had seemed strange to me.
“I know you have a lot of questions about magic,” she said after a short silent pause.
“No, Mom. Not a lot of questions. Just one.” My dad often said I was an easy teen. Most of the time. “Why do we keep our magic a secret?”
She smiled. A sad smile. What she was about to tell me was clearly difficult for her. “I want to show you something.”
She punched two words into a search engine, then turned it to me. The words were “Mark Ralston.” A few results came up, including an address of a startup in New York, near the Hudson River. She clicked it and a website loaded. Then, she hit the About section. On the screen was an image of a young man who looked like my dad. He was much younger, with different hair and minus the beard, but there was a definite resemblance.
Then, she opened another window and typed the name “George Evans.” The search results showed a middle-aged doctor, also in New York. She opened an image of him with a beautiful woman and beside them was a young woman who looked like my mother. There were differences, but they were in many ways still very similar.
“I…don’t get it.”
She waited, giving me time.
“Why are you showing me people who look like you and Dad?”
The power of denial could not be underestimated. It took what seemed like forever for me to notice that they also had the same first names. Well, sort of.
“Something happened to your father and me,” she started again. “We got threatened. By very strong mages. And I was pregnant at the time. Nobody knew. In order to protect you, we chose to do something radical.”
I looked at the images on the screen. It was as though the things that she was saying were trying to come together in my mind, but it was impossible.
“What exactly are you saying to me?”
“Your dad and I...we chose to go back in time.”
“What?!” Was she serious?
And then, I started laughing. I didn’t know why. It just all seemed ridiculous. It couldn’t be real, of course, could it?
“Kim.” She laid a warm hand on my shoulder.
“You’re joking, right? This is funny, right?” I took the computer from her and looked at the images. Then at more images.
“I can cast an age spell to show you what I used to look like.”
I heard her voice, almost as though it were underwater. It made no sense. Time travel was impossible. And yet, here were two people who could be her and Dad when they were younger, alive in our time.
“No witch could travel in time,” I said in the end.
“It wasn’t a witch who cast the spell.”
Suddenly, I was angry.
If she was telling me the truth, why did she wait this long? Surely, she could have trusted me enough to keep this secret, or at least parts of it. And I had a family! A family who never knew me.
I got up and held tight to the computer, tears in my eyes. “I’m going to tell them. I’m going to write these people and...”
A force of power sent the computer flying out of my hands and into hers, reminding me that my mother only avoided heavy spells, not that she didn’t have the ability to cast them. I had often wondered how strong she really was.
“You can’t do that!” There was alarm in her voice.
“Why not? I might even prove you’re lying.”
She closed the lid. “For you to be born, an exact combination of sperm and egg has to happen. You cannot contact these people. You can’t have any interference with their lives. Anything you do...”
“Can mean I won’t be here,” I completed her sentence, my voice weak, breaking. In that moment, I finally believed her.
I sat down and looked at my knees. How did this happen? What did this mean about who I was?
I had a thousand questions. I wanted to know why they did it, what had happened that caused them to be persecuted. She said she couldn’t tell me that, because it wasn’t safe.
I kept asking questions: Why didn’t they go forward in time? They’d thought it was safer to go to a time that they knew from experience.
And then, I asked, Why didn’t they ask the Guild for help? The Guild was the top authority of mages in the world, dating back to Avalon days when they had been called the Order of the First Shrine. Her answer there was evasive, and the way she reacted to the very mention of the Guild made me suspect that they were somehow supportive of the people who threatened her and Dad.
In our long conversation, one thing was certain: They didn’t have a choice. Nobody could help them. No place was safe enough for them to hide, so they chose to time travel. To save me.
I walked out of the hotel room that evening, confused, and wandered the streets of Glastonbury alone. For the first time, I didn’t hear her say the family warning: Remember, no magic unless you absolutely have to. In fact, there was never a need for her to tell me since.
I wandered aimlessly, ending up somewhere in Glastonbury Abbey, where I sat between the ruins and cried. I was angry at her, angry at the world. At myself, too, for not pushing them, for not making them tell me who I really was.
That gap between my parents and me that formed back in Glastonbury took a long time to bridge. It happened gradually, during my college years.
I had waited so long for the time to arrive when they’d be going back to their lives and I would have a family. Witches I could speak with and relate to.
Finally, this was going to happen.
I woke up in the middle of the night, back at Oxford, in the hotel with my parents, thinking about the fact that I had an aunt in London! And I was going to meet her tomorrow.
Something was making flashing lights in the room. It was my phone. I looked at the time. Two a.m.
The number was Zhi Ruo’s. I cursed her and rejected the call. A text followed.
“I need to know what side you’re on.”
Chapter Seventeen
Western Scotland, AD 500
The armies started arriving shortly after dawn. They marched slowly, rhythmically, a small but growing dark cloud in the distance.
Kim stood at the top of the northern tower of Seraphim’s castle.
She had awoken to the sounds of footsteps going up and down the halls outside the guest room, where she’d spent the night. She lay awake, listening. The servants were speaking, recounting stories of the damages that the marching troops had already caused on the way. Horror and violence spread where they treaded. It made her heart sad to hear it.
Why did war extend beyond battles? Why was there kidnapping, theft, slavery, rape and murder?
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that there was a world, far away in another time, where things were, to an extent, better.
Was that world ruled by mages?
If not, was it the choice that she herself would make about the prophecy that could cause things to change? But which choice was the right one? How could she have memories of a better world in the future, where she and Seth were also together, if she reversed the Curse now?
Maybe she was not his guardian then? Or was it that she didn’t reverse the Curse, and it was Arthur, when he became king, who changed the way that people behaved and set an example that created this better world?
Now, from the tower, she looked at the waiting troops of Fergus Mór’s forces. Mercenaries were arriving all the time, joining the army lines. Seth was there, dressed in the first knight’s armor.
That was her doing—her healing him that enabled it. He was first knight again. But where was Niall?
They desperately needed a mage. They may have found a few who could help, but the power needed to offset a ruthless army like Alt Clut, with the head of the Order on their side—it would take someone like Seraphim, and he had betrayed them.
“You’ve impressed me, Kim.” She heard his voice, climbing up the tower from below. A second later, he appeared and joined her. “Two days ago, you were the daughter of a traitor. Now, you’re about to join the Order and become queen of the world.”
It wasn’t for those reasons that she was going to the Order. And though it hurt that he called her father a traitor, it was ironic coming from him. “I’m doing what’s right.”
“You’re doing far more. Without the child-king, Camelot won’t become the kingdom Ivan spoke of and you and the other mages will align and reignite the fire of Avalon and reverse the Curse.”
She turned to look at him, the dying mage. How powerful he still was at the end of his days. If it weren’t for the fact that Rokus had told her, she wouldn’t have guessed that his life was nearing its end.
“What was the world like before the Curse?”
He shook his head. “My dear, you have no idea. The type of power we mages had… There was magic in Avalon that your generation can’t even dream of. You’d know something about that, of course, being Ivan’s kin. No one now can create dragons. Avalon was the center of the world. People came from all over to marvel at it. We could heal anything. You think Seth’s wound would have been a challenge? It’s why Harthenon created the Curse in the first place. He never believed anyone would take the chance of starting a course of events that would lead to this power being lost.”
