Guardians Book One - Magic Rising

Prologue

Thank you for reading Guardians Book One! 

This book is dedicated to Mumkhar.

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When she was young, it hadn't been like this — cities and business and busyness — it had been empty and remote, the wind whispered secrets to her through the tree branches in the night and there wasn't just one world but many, overlapping and coalescing into reality after reality for her.

"Ye can hear 'em, Kathy, can't ye?" her grandmother would hiss, her darting eyes flicking around the barn kitchen, bright and knowing. The whole family — Kath, parents, brother, grandmother — clustered around the rough old wooden table, throwback to who-knew-when. Her father — bored — drank overstewed tea from chipped china, and her brother fidgeted with a puzzle. Only Kath was really listening, and she pulled her chair closer to her gran's.

"Don't upset her, mother," and that had been Kath's own mother, wringing her hands nervously, too afraid to pull her child away; too afraid to let her stay. "It's mice, mother. Bugs in the beams, mother. It's old oak, mother. You're getting a little deaf now, aren't you, mother?"

"Don't let 'em tell ye otherwise, Kathy," her grandmother would whisper in her ear, her bony fingers, half-dead, tightening on Kath's wrist. "Ye can hear 'em."

And because she could, and she could never understand why her mother couldn't, or why she was afraid of Granny, Kath nodded. The bony fingers relaxed.

"They'll try an' take ye away, soon," the old woman had murmured. "But ye mustn't forget. Ye canna forget. Someone has to remember."

"Come on, Kathleen, dear," her mother, cowed yet oddly defiant, pulled her gently away by the shoulders. "Granny needs her sleep and we have to get Ben home. You know he has the County Spelling Bee on Monday." She threw a proud glance at Kath's indifferent brother. Kath met her grandmother's eyes; the old woman slowly lowered one lid in a knowing wink. Kath grinned.

And a year later, shockingly unexpected, the old woman was dead and the barn house demolished, the fields turfed over and made into flats. Kath went back once but the land was silent, now — no voices. But she didn't forget.   

-

And twenty years later, ambling post-pub down the riverside, down a garishly-lit pathway at some long-gone-midnight hour in Richmond, London, she could hear them now.

You are ill welcome here. Bring harm to this place, and I will end you.

Water-Queen, as if you could harm me! I shall harm what I will, for my master.

So be it.

And this time, she could really hear them — not just the voices on the cusp of sensation, but the clash of metal on metal, scrapes and crashes of bodies hitting concrete and brick. Kath bit her lip and tasted steel and seawater.

She stared upwards.

It was only a heartbeat of a moment but as the nasty flickering streetlight dimmed for a moment, she could see a shadow on the roof of the closed beer hut, backlit by moonlight rather than florescence — a human figure, small, female, long hair in a swirling ponytail, lifting her leg and swinging it with inhuman speed in a roundhouse kick, leaping back into the shadows again.

Die, monster!

The air contracted, stifling Kath for a moment. And then there was silence.

When she was able to breathe properly again — when the dancing stars had faded from behind her eyes — very slowly, giving it a good, wide berth, she circled around the side of the beer hut to peer behind it. Nothing but weeds, and a large puddle, incongruous in the summer heat.

There was a vicious splash from the river behind her. Kath spun on her heel to see — again! — nothing but a few ripples spreading out. The ducks swam on, unconcerned.

No. It's late, I have work tomorrow, I probably drank too much, I...

Ah, but ye can see 'em, my girl. Ye can hear 'em. Ye never forgot. Ye buried it a'neath this world o' business an' busyness, o' crowds an' citylife, but ye never forgot.

Kath rubbed her eyes, silencing her internal dialogue, and with one last stare at the silent river, hurried on.