Memorybound

Chapter 04

"Miss, are you all right?" Hailey blinked. Her head throbbed. Standing over her was the mother of Juliana. She had a look of concern on her face.

Hailey sat up. "I'm ok." But she didn't know if that was true. She had hit the tree pretty hard. Her ears were ringing and her vision was still a little hazy. She touched the back of her head and her hand came away sticky with blood and bark. What had happened? It came back to her in a flash. "Aaron!" She pulled herself to her feet, using the tree to steady herself. Her vision threatened to leave again.

The sky was black. A man stood over Aaron, holding a lantern.

Hailey stumbled towards him. "Is he ok?"

The man looked up at her. "I don't know. He's breathing, but he won't wake. I tried shaking his shoulder."

Hailey knelt beside him. She should have stayed by his side and made sure ehe was ok. Running after the girl had gotten them nowhere. Her heart ached for him. Gently she rolled him to his side. His back was a mass of bruises. One of his arms had been sliced by a stone when he fell. The bone had to be broken.

"Miss, what's going to happen to our daughter?" Hailey hadn't noticed Juliana's mother coming up beside her.

"I'm not sure." Hailey said, feeling like she owed them the truth. "Children who have the potential to become mages are being taken from their homes all over the kingdom. That's why we came. We wanted to protect her from whoever is taking the children."

The woman was crying into her husband's chest. "Do you know where they went?" He asked her and Hailey got the distinct impression that if she told this man where her daughter might have gone, he would wander into the shimmer and get himself killed.

"No," Hailey said. "Not exactly, but if you go into the forest, you won't find her. You also won't come back. This is a problem I have been working on and I will try to solve it, but right now I have bigger concerns. I believe that your daughter will be safe. I don't think the woman in black would have dragged her out of here if she wanted to kill her." She is keeping the mages from Taivalon for a reason, Hailey thought. I just need to figure out what that is. She wanted to make it very clear to him what he would be risking if he tried such a thing.

"Is he going to be ok?" A small voice said. It was almost a whisper.

Hailey looked up and glared. "I should be able to heal him, but I need to get him back. I'm pretty sure he can be moved." Hailey couldn't remember all of the spells that he would need to recover his health, but she knew it was in her books somewhere.

Esmerelda just stood there, like had not done anything wrong.

"Can you bring the horses back to the castle?" She asked the couple. The mother nodded and Hailey felt a stab of guilt. She had tried. She should have been able to get the girl away from that woman. Hailey had not been fast enough and in the end, this couple would have been happier knowing that their daughter was safe in the castle, then who knows were in the forest.

"Thank you," she said. "I'm sorry things went so badly. I do need you to step back now."

Hailey created a glyph near Aaron. He still hadn't moved and Hailey had wasted too much time already. She created a portal, a shimmering sphere of translucent light. The image in the center of the portal was of the roped off section of the great room. Gasps came from the people behind her. Portals were one of the coolest looking spells that Hailey had learned to do.

Then she lifted Aaron off the ground. The magic kept him perfectly still. She pushed him through the portal ahead of her and stepped through.

Hailey had gotten some pretty strange looks as she floated Aaron to her bedroom. She needed another place to keep people who were injured. But she did not want to face the soldiers and have a million questions about what had happened to him. She needed silence.