Siren Hunters

Chapter 11 - The Origin Of Magic

After I murmured the first word on the page, once, the ink from the book started leaving the pages. It started jumping off the pages and surrounding us in a big ink cage. Gabriella put her hand on the ink and watched, as it pushed her off her bed and onto Maia's lap.

"What the fuck?" Gabriella asked, getting out of Maia's lap. She put herself between the two beds.

As soon as she touched the inked floor, the floor opened into a hole, causing her to fall through. Just before I was going to scream, it started pulling Maia and me inside the hole. The ink fell on top of our heads and we were falling through an ink tunnel. There was no light anywhere inside of the tunnel, making it all pitch black. The tunnel was slippery from the ink. After a few seconds of falling, I landed onto a grass floor, golden from the sun. Gabriella and Maia landed beside me. We weren't dressed in our normal clothing. We all had on red peasant clothing, not modern what-so- ever. It seemed like we were sucked into a picture from a history textbook. We were on the edge of a forest, next to a small cottage with lichen surrounding the edges.

"Where are we?" Maia asked, standing up, "And what are we wearing?"

I shrugged, realizing my hair was not in two braids anymore, but

instead, my hair was curled, with a braid going across the front of my head, almost like a crown. I plucked a red flower from the braid. All of us had flowers decorating our hair. The book fell from the sky, landing on my head. It wasn't black anymore, but a bright pink. The cover was glowing bright silver, with the words READ ME TO LEAVE, encased on the front.

Gabriella pushed me, "Go ahead, read it. I want to leave. They couldn't have normal books? No, of course not!"

"Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young lady. Her name was Alvara, and her hair glowed a beautiful silver," I said, reading the first lines of the book.

Almost as if on cue, a young woman came out of the cottage. She brushed her hands through her hair and sat on the tree stump in front of her house.

Maia got up and walked towards her. "Can she see us?" She asked no one in particular. Alvara walked through Maia and stared deeply into the forest. Maia jumped, almost shocked. "I'm guessing no. Keep reading, Ember."

I took a deep breath in and continued, "She was banished from her town by a priest, because she had not been quite like the others. Some think the priest was too soft, since she was actually ordered to be killed. They tried to murder her, but the priest's son was madly in love with Alvara. The priest and his son staged her murder, to get her to run away and have a chance at love, but she wiped his memory of her, to make sure he wouldn't get hurt. Her magic, her strange ability, was said to come from the moon. Her hair, silver, having the first and only magic from the moon."

The lady started to create silver magic, making the dried up grass, green again. No one said anything, motioning me to keep reading.

"Everyday, she got lonelier and lonelier, thinking of the days with her true love. Soon after, she felt herself wanting to be with him again, hoping that her magic would wear off. She started to talk to animals, her only company, who all ran away from her after observing her silver magic. Quickly, she grew old by herself, lonely and yearning for company. She was often fantasizing about the family she wished for- a kind, loving husband, and a household filled with joyful kids."

In front of us, there were multiple flashes of Alvara growing old, talking to herself, talking to the animals, and using magic on the grass to keep it alive and fresh.

"Alvara never once lived a day without wanting to be normal, although times did come where magic seemed useful. Magic was her only source of food."