Chapter 15 Enchanter
When Lizzie walked into the kitchen the next morning, Brun barely restrained a sigh of relief in seeing her fully dressed and wearing a bra this time. He had spent the best part of the previous night awake, picturing how her breasts would bounce should he have ripped her T-shirt open while making love to her on the kitchen counter.
Not once since he met Triarell had he felt such hunger for a woman, and not even Triarell had caused him to have so little control over the urges of his body.
After her death, he had felt dead inside and had seldom sought any female company – or any company at all. He had spent most of the past century or so hidden away from the world like a hermit, coming out occasionally to check whether the Endellys Clan had produced any female child and making sure that Glennloch did not fall into ruin, fulfilling his duty faithfully, as it was his nature, but dispassionately.
It had been Lizzie’s birth that had finally brought him back from his self-imposed exile. Acting as Brun Ian MacLugh from his home in France, he had made sure to prepare Glennloch to welcome the new Lady Lochellen and had only appeared in person as Brun James MacLugh eight years before, to personally oversee the estate, but he felt no need to approach the new Elizabeth Endell until it was time to hand over her inheritance, convinced that she could not possibly have any Fae magic.
Clearly a huge mistake from his part.
“Good morning, Your Ladyship,” Brun greeted, bowing his head in an old fashioned way, glad that he did not need to pretend he was a twenty-first century man in her presence anymore, “May I serve you breakfast?”
Lizzie presented him with a tentative smile that did not quite reach her eyes and his heart sank in disappointment. There was clearly a lot of work to do if he wanted to recover her trust.
Along with other feelings that he hoped she still harboured for him.
“Thank you,” she replied timidly accepting the chair he had pulled for her and reaching for the jug of juice. Then she examined the spread of food on the table and frowned, “Though if I keep eating like that I’ll be as plump as a partridge!”
He offered her his best smile, “Surely you cannot seriously be worried about that?” he asked, sitting across from her, “You must know how beautiful you are?”
Lizzie nearly choked with her juice, staring at him in disbelief and Brun was more than pleased to see the blush creeping up her cheeks. Frowning, she wiped her face with the napkin.
“Coming to think of it, it is the third time you have food ready as soon as I wake up…” she eyed him suspiciously, but he was not surprised by her perspicacity.
“I put a tracking spell on you,” he explained, feeling no need to beat around the bush.
Her eyes widened in shock, “A what now?”
“Please do not be alarmed,” he lifted his hands, “It is for your safety only, I swear. I can only sense your location and general things like whether you are sleeping or awake. I would never dream of invading your privacy.”
She lowered her face to her hands, rubbing her eyes from under her glasses.
“You know that this is all too much, don’t you?”
Brun sighed, “Yes, I do. But we shall face it together.”
They said nothing else while they ateand Lizzie was grateful for the silence, because she needed to digest everything that had happened since the Lammas Fair.
After Brun left her room on the previous night she had done nothing other than think. She felt as if she had fallen right inside one of the fantasy books she liked to read, with the pathetic twist of having a crush on the man who loved her long dead ancestor.
Down, down, down into the rabbit hole!
Once they finished breakfast, she helped him clean the table and store away any leftovers.
“Well,” Lizzie finally broke the silence after wiping out the last crumbs of toast from the table, “I am ready for my first lesson of Fae Magic 101.”
Brun frowned.
Oh yes, he’s been leaving under a rock for two centuries.
“Never mind,” she waved her hands dismissively, “Where shall we start? You know, teaching me to control my… powers.”
She shivered at the word and he bobbed his head in understanding.
“I think I ought to take you to the library first.”
It was Lizzie’s turn to frown, “Do you have books on Fae’s magic in the library?”
He chuckled, reaching for the kitchen door and opening it, making way for her to pass.
“No, I mean Aranna’s library. She kept her workshop in a hidden underground chamber in the manor, away from human’s eyes.”
“Ah lovely!” she exclaimed sarcastically, “Now you’ll take me to the dungeons!”
Brun laughed again, “Not quite! This manor never had dungeons!”
“Why can’t you teach me the spells you know?” she argued, not feeling the prospect of crawling underneath the manor particularly appealing.
“I can only conjure magic from my ring,” he explained pointing to the thing in his hand, “It is quite different for an Enchanter I’m afraid, since their power is part of their very nature.”
Lizzie bobbed her head, though she was not entirely sure she had grasped that concept at all.
With a gallant gesture, he pointed in the direction of the manor’s library and she obeyed gingerly, feeling a little uncomfortable with his massive presence close to her back. Something in his attitude had changed drastically since the Fair: his eyes were constantly darting everywhere and he was angling his body in the direction of the windows as they walked by, as if he were ready to protect her from an attack, like a bloody bodyguard or some similar nonsense.
She entered the library and Brun walked past her, going straight to the bookshelf at the far end of the room. Glennloch’s library was one of the largest rooms in the manor, with shelves from floor to ceiling filled to the brim with books. With a small smile, Lizzie recalled how impressed her father had been about the vast collection of books. Had she said that he could sleep there for the duration of his stay, he would have nodded happily.
Brun reached for a thick volume with royal blue cover and pulled it back. Lizzie heard a rumbling noise and the bookshelf swung backwards, revealing a dark passage.
Her jaw slacked open.
Why am I surprised that this place has secret passages?
The passage’s walls were made of roughly cut stones and ancient sconces lined both sides. Brun stretched his hand and muttered something she could not understand, then his ring shone ominously in the gloom and she yelped when all sconces flared to life at the same time, their light creating phantasmagorical shadows down the stone passage.
“I shall go ahead if you do not mind,” he gently held her shoulders to steer her behind him, “This passage has been sealed for centuries and I have no idea what might be down there.
Lizzie gulped and nodded, wondering whether she genuinely wanted to know what was in there.
They walked down the corridor for a few yards before reaching a narrow staircase. The air was unsurprisingly stale there and occasionally Brun stretched his hands to break apart cobwebs which were as thick as curtains. Lizzie only prayed that none of the respective spiders had landed on her hair.
She shivered at the thought.
“Are you cold?” Brun turned to face her and scanned her from head to toe. She had a light T-shirt on and had not thought about bringing a jumper.
“No, I am fine,” a rat scurried by and she flinched, scooching closer to him, “sort of…”
He grunted in disapproval and began to unbutton his flannel shirt.
“Really, Brun, I am fi–” Lizzie swallowed her words when he glared at her.
In silence, he shrugged off his shirt and wrapped it around her shoulders. It was so big for her it went almost to her knees.
For a moment Lizzie found herself hypnotized by the muscles of his very broad chest pushing against the simple white T-shirt he had underneath.
Seriously this man should walk around with a biohazard sign taped to his forehead…
Brun stared at her for a moment longer, his hands resting on her arms. Then he exhaled, letting his hands fall away from her, and turned back to the passage, starting to climb down the stairs.
At the bottom of the staircase, he muttered again and the whole place burst with light.
They were inside an ample chamber, where most walls were taken by shelves. The vast majority had ancient books on them, but there were also flasks and bottles, strange devices and wooden boxes.
At the centre of the chamber there was a long table littered with more flasks, opened notebooks, yellowed sheets of paper, and ancient inkpots long dried out. If it were not for the hefty layer of dust and spiderwebs covering everything, Lizzie would have thought that the owner of that place had just stepped out for a moment.
“Was this Aranna’s workshop?” Lizzie asked, brushing dust out of a book.
“Yes,” Brun replied slowly and there was a note of nostalgia in his voice as he touched an inkpot, “She was such a bright woman! Always working on a new idea…” he blinked and pointed to the bookshelves, “Well, we have work to do.”
Two hours later, Lizzie and Brun were sitting in the library’s comfortable armchairs, each with a volume in their hands, while a small pile of ancient books lay on the coffee table. Brun was doing all the reading, because unfortunately for Lizzie, all books in Aranna’s collection were written in the Fae language, which – to her eternal disappointment – had little resemblance to the languages created by Tolkien as she had initially hoped.
The Fae’s alphabet resembled intertwined vines, with words covering the pages from top to bottom rather than from left to right and at a first glance they could pass for drawings of flowers. Only at close inspection it was possible to identify patterns being repeated in the same way a language would.
Despite having no clue what she was looking at, Lizzie still carefully flipped the ancient pages, fascinated by the unusual texture of the paper and the high quality of the book binding, both were not like anything she had seen before. She would bet that the materials used were not from this world.
A very weird thought, one she was still far from coming to terms with.
Down the rabbit hole indeed…
Like a child who cannot yet read, she studied the illustrations in detail. It had images of forests and beaches, not too unlike the ones of their own world, and of buildings with a very unusual architecture, quite different from anything she had seen before. There were colossal constructions with long white towers and turrets which she surmised were the equivalent to castles, and smaller dwellings with arched doors and windows.
There were also depictions of people (none of which bore pointed ears, sadly) of all kinds of colouring, from ebony to ivory skinned, with all tones in between, bearing hair of all shades of the rainbow and dressed in long bright coloured robes, occupied with a variety of activities: some every-day, like reading, writing, and farming and others unfamiliar to Lizzie.
The magic ones, she mused.
And there and then, Lizzie finally accepted that her old life was well and truly dead.
Surprisingly, that realisation did not make her half as upset as she ought to be. Rather, it made her think that the oddness she felt all her life could finally be explained. Finally she could understand why she felt so little connection to her parents, why she always found so hard to make friends.
Finally she felt a sense of belonging.
“Lizzie?”
She blinked, finding Brun standing right in front of her with the book he had been reading open on his hand. There was concern in his eyes.
He seemed to be constantly worried she was going to blow up again.
“Are you all right?” he asked, crouching beside her chair, his eyes trained on her face.
She shifted on the chair, tilting her neck sideways to ease the strain on her muscles and rubbed her shoulder.
“Yes, sorry, I was just lost in thought,” she answered, “Were you saying something?”
Brun did not reply immediately, still analysing her face as if he could read inside her mind.
Hopefully, he cannot!
If he did, he would find a whole universe of erotic fantasies about him there and that would be bloody embarrassing.
“Yes,” he placed his book on her lap and pointed to the left page which was covered in Fae writing. On the right, there was an illustration of a girl with purple hair holding an orb of light, “This books speaks of many, shall we say, beginners spells, designed to teach children how to summon and control their power. They are like… nursery rhymes if you will.”
Lizzie offered him a sugary smile, “Lovely!” she muttered between gritted teeth, “Now I am back to bloody kindergarten!”
Lizzie’s grumpiness made him chuckle. He was so proud of how calmly she was facing it all, when she had every right to be unhinged by what he had told her. He had been a grown man of nearly seventy when he discovered that he was in fact a human who had been abducted from his family by the Fae and had not taken it lightly.
Conjurers had spoken of his reaction for decades.
“Have no fear, Your Ladyship: from what I saw yesterday, you shall not stay in the kindergarten long,” he reassured her, and then pointed to the words in Fae language again, “This spell should be fairly easy for you to learn, because it gave origin to the Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star rhyme.”
She gaped at him, flabbergasted.
“Human nursery rhymes are Fae spells?”
He was amused by her outrage, “Not all, but similar to the ballad you heard at the Lammas Fair, a number of Fae spells made their way into human language,” then he indicated the first line of flower-like symbols on the edge of the page, “Here you will find the music notes. I have only a marginal knowledge of music, mind you, but I would wager they are not too dissimilar to human ones.”
Lizzie bent over the book to study the symbols and for a moment Brun was lost in the smell of her hair, still fresh from her shower that morning.
Roses, roses, roses.
“I studied a bit of music when I was a child. Piano,” her voice snapped him back to the present situation, “Like horse riding, my mother thought it was a skill every girl should have,” she added rolling her eyes and he grinned, having trouble in picturing Lizzie sitting still by a piano practicing Für Elise.
“Excellent!” he said instead, “Then you shall learn Fae music notes in no time,” he slid his finger down the subsequent lines of symbols, “These are the lyrics, or the spell per se. It is quite a simple spell, designed to summon the light of a star,” he trained his eyes on her, “Are you ready to try?”
She lifted her eyes to him and pushed her glasses back, taking a deep breath before replying, “Not at all, but let’s grab this bull by the horns, shall we?”
His smiled broadened. Despite the fact that she was trembling, her expression was determined.
A true Endellys indeed!
“Very well. Let us practice the words first and once you feel confident, you can try singing the spell.”
With tight lips, Lizzie nodded with resolve, but looked like she was about to be sick.
He patiently pronounced each word,pointing at the corresponding symbols on the book and breaking them into smaller syllables. Lizzie had never had much knack for languages, having learned but a few sentences in Spanish and French in school, but she reckoned that Fae language was more difficult than Mandarin.
I’m never leaving kindergarten…
After about one hour, when she was certain that her tongue had twisted into a knot, he made the most astonishing declaration of his life after saying that he was five hundred years old.
“I think you’re ready. Sing for me.”
She swallowed hard, “Are you sure? Maybe I should practice a bit more–”
He placed his hand over hers, cutting off her words.
“You can do this, trust yourself.”
She stared into his blue eyes and saw the same confidence there that she had read in the note he left on the dress he had gifted her. It was as if he could see something in her that no one, not even herself had seen before.
Infused by that confidence, she felt capable of setting the entire world ablaze if she wished.
After clearing her throat she began to sing in the Fae language.
At once, she felt a humming inside her chest, as if she were standing right next to a loudspeaker.
Scared, she swallowed the words.
“Don’t stop, Lizzie,” Brun encouraged, “I can feel the pull of your power, allow it to come forth and fill you. Do not be afraid.”
With fascination, Brun watched as Lizzie closed her eyes, took a deep breath and began to sing again. Triarell had had a beautiful voice, but it did not hold a candle to the crystalline quality of Lizzie’s. Her very tone was magical and her power so strong that made his chest heavy with worry because it was a power that the Dreams Thief could not fail to sense. If he were still in the human world, sooner or later he would come for her.
The difficult words in the Fae language rolled on her tongue again and again until Brun felt that the magic had filled her completely. She smiled, even as tears rolled down her cheeks, but he knew they were tears of joy because he could sense her exhilaration with astonishing clarity, as if it were his own.
And that made him hold his breath.
Brun had been the protector of the Endellys sisters for nearly four centuries and had placed the same tracking spells on them as he did on Lizzie. Never before had he been able to sense their feelings.
What could be so different about Lizzie that made him tuned to her emotions in such a way?
Well for starters she is human.
Yes, that ought to explain it: Lizzie was human and until days before had no notion that she bore magic powers like her ancestors. The Endellys sisters had been trained from the cradle to master their powers, surely they could protect their minds and conceal their emotions and thoughts.
Yes, that ought to be the explanation.
She was lost in the most amazing sensation of blisswhile she sang the Fae song when something foreign invaded her mind.
A feeling of worry.
And it astonished the living soul of her to realise it was Brun’s worry.
Her eyes snapped open.
“Is there something wrong?” she asked him.
He stared at her, clearly as bewildered as she was.
“I am not sure…” he replied studying her face as if he could find the answers there, “Please don’t stop now, I feel you are very close… Here, put your hands like this…”
Before she could protest, Brun reached for her hands, gently placing them on her lap with the palms up.
“Try again,” he commanded firmly.
She heaved impatiently but decided to put a pin on it for the moment. From Brun’s expression, he likely needed to brood over whatever he was worrying about for a while before telling her what he had in mind.
“Picture the light of a star. Try to summon the image in your mind,” he instructed, “Once you have the details clear in your head, release it.”
Nodding, she closed her eyes again, doing as he asked.
Then she resumed singing.
The now familiar humming filled her even faster than before and Lizzie focussed on the beautiful sensation of fulfilment it generated.
She allowed the image of a white star to form in her mind, its glorious bright rays spreading in all directions. She pictured it throwing its light into the library, brightening every corner and then she let the image go.
Lizzie blinked when something flashed on her face.
She opened her eyes, finding a bright orb of light hovering a few inches above her hands.
Brun was kneeling in front of her, a wide smile on his face and she could sense his pride.
She smiled back, her chest filled with excitement.
“Well done, Lady Lochellen,” he bowed his head, “You are an Enchanter now.”