The Fairy Portal Second Edition

Chapter Nine

"Blake? Blake!"

"What did you do to my brother!?"

"I didn't think this would happen. I wasn't expecting him to be so sensitive."

"Blake? Sweetie, can you hear me?"

"Blake!"

Two quick, sharp taps against Blake's face brought him back into the woods. He opened his eyes to nothing but white light, and as his senses came back to him, the dirt and leaves and twigs of the forest floor beneath him, the hot, humid air sticking to his clothes, hands everywhere, on his face, on his shoulders, on his chest.

For a brief, terrifying moment, Blake thought he'd gone blind, but slowly his vision came back to him. Clementine's and Emily's faces were the first things he saw, Clementine's wreathed in purple, Emily's in... shimmering air, like a heat wave, with flecks of glimmering quicksilver light. But it was only around her head.

There was fabric underneath his head, warmth, and he tilted his head back to see his Grandma Florence kneeling with his head in her lap.

"What did you see?" Clementine bit.

Blake's eyes went wide and he sputtered, "Nothing! It just went black and then white and then..."

"And then?"

"And, like, now there are colors? Around you?"

"He's seeing auras?" Dix's voice came down from his feet. "Has that happened before?"

"What's an aura?"

"Where? What color? What does it look like?"

Blake was able to get out a description in half-coherent words, the purple around Clementine's head, the shimmering air around Emily's, the dark green waves around the crushed leaves and scarred bark where the construction workers had been dragging equipment, the lights, the lights, like dots of mercury swimming around the tree branches and flowers, everywhere.

Clementine's eyes darted around the clearing, up to the trees, over to Emily, down to the broken branches and leaves on the ground. Even in the soft breeze, her hair moved unnaturally slowly and smoothly, as if on its own, separately.

"He's describing it accurately," she said.

"What's going on?" Blake's voice was a plaintive whine, and he started to sit up, but Emily pushed him back down.

"You fell," she said. "Take it slow."

"You're seeing auras," Clementine explained. "Energy fields around people and things. I don't... I didn't expect this to happen. The connection shouldn't have --"

"Shouldn't have what?" Blake demanded. He pushed Emily's hand away and sat up, rubbing at the back of his throbbing head. At least there was no blood.

"It shouldn't have been that strong," she finished. "It was so faint, I could barely feel it, and you..." Clementine held up her hands and gestured vaguely. "It seemed like an electric shock? It threw you backwards."

Blake finally found his head enough to look around the clearing. He'd been thrown feet from the tree. He looked down at his hands. There was a mark on his left, the one that had been over the spiral... the portal door? where it had come in contact, soft golden yellow, bright and shining like a star swirling underneath his skin. Clementine gently cupped his hand from beneath and ran her fingers along the pulsing light in his palm.

"What is it?" he whispered.

Clementine's head was bowed, but he could still see the downward pull of her brow.