The Deception of Magic

The caretaker

The elf seemed to walk quicker now, and broke away from Ciara and started to veer off the path. Ciara called out to him but he walked quicker, almost at a run and soon disappeared. Great, how was she going to get back to the tree now? She stopped walking. Defeated and loosing hope, for some reason she turned to the sky, as if it was going to open up and transport her back to her bed. Reality settled in however and she soon found herself on the ground sobbing. Tears flowed like a mini ocean down her face and the day’s events caught up with her, escaping through her eyes. Her head was soon in her hands, holding it up from falling towards the earth. There was a small rustle in the bushes, which didn’t register for Ciara. A hand was Ciara’s shoulder and she shot up in the air in fright. Letting out a rather loud scream, she had startled her visitor and he jumped back. Seemingly as frightened of each other, they took a few steps back, a safe distance to examine each other. Ciara's heart rate slowed down so that she couldn’t hear it in her eardrums and the tears stopped and started go dry on her face.

'Who are you?' Managed to fall from her, mouth and lingered in the air.

The stranger quickly grabbed the words and replaced them with his own.

'I’m Paul, I’m the 'caretaker' of this place’, Paul said using his fingers to emphasize the word caretaker.

'Oh, what does that mean you do?' Ciara asked.

'It means I make sure everything runs smoothly in the area and no harm comes to anything.' He said- 'I'm currently unemployed' he added.

'You know I’m not from around here' she asked.

'I do. I've been trying for find you for hours. I felt it when you entered our world and needed to make sure the Queen didn't capture you.' He said.

'But I’ve already met the Queen and she let me go' she said.

Paul suddenly grabbed her and pushed her down to the ground.

'What!' He looked around above the trees as if they were filled with cameras.

'Um, some elf made me go see her; she looked me over and let me go,’Ciara said, confused.

'And she didn’t follow you?' He asked.

'Not that I know of, the elf disappeared off the track a little while ago and I’ve just been sitting here until you came along' Ciara said with a sniff, her voice faltering. She seemed like she was at the end of her emotional tether.

Paul looked around the forest again and stood up, hooking his arm into Ciara's. 'Come on its time to go'. Along with her lacking emotional energy, she suddenly lacked physical energy too, and walked while leaning on Paul, she wandered like she was in a haze of denial. They approached a stream, the water flowing steadily along the willow encrusted banks. There was a gap where the track for the horses led and Paul took Ciara down to the water, bent down and scooped up a handful of ice cold water, throwing it on Ciara's face. She blinked as if awakening from a dream and seemed oblivious to the water now streaming down her face.

'That’s better, let’s go.' Paul waded through the water leaving Ciara at the bank. Ciara turned around to make sure nothing was following them, and to see where she was, her memory seemed blank up until this point.