The Land in the Sky

4

A/N: I take no credit for the photo above!

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"No!" My voice ground out, shaking my head along to my thoughts, "there's no way someone snuck into my house."

Even though it was the logical explanation, I dismissed the idea that some person was walking around my house unnoticed. I shivered the feeling of being watched away, creeping back over to the nightstand.

Taking a few breathes hoping to calm my rapidly beating heart as fear still trickled through me, I reached my trembling hand towards the leather exterior. This time when I picked up the black cover, a sudden gut wrenching feeling took over my body.

A prophetic type of feeling that screamed: Something terrible was going to happen.

I refused to let it get the best of me. My hands gripped the cover and turned through the pages. Just as it was every other time: it was blank. No type of clue as to what this book was or who it belonged to.

"What was the point of this book if no words were going to be written in the damned-." I abruptly shut up.

I had gone through the book at least five times now, and each time it had been empty white paper.

Until now.

On the first page, rested black cursive letters. Whispering to myself, I read them out loud, "Under the Samhain Moon I call upon the secrets within."

Shiny glitter poured out of the book, swirling around the paper, until it finally melted into the page. New words transformed into the book, each parchment now filled with black writing.

I blinked my hazel eyes repeatedly, hoping to understand what just happened. This wasn't physically possible! The book had been blank just moments before. Yet out of no where, words materialized throughout it.

Almost like the words I spoke were some sort of spell that unlocked the magical letters inside. Pulling it closer to me, I peered at the cursive words littering the no longer blank pages, trying to make out what each one said.

Words like sprites and trolls and bogarts and nymphs cause my eyebrows to scrunch curiously, as the author explained how to catch them. Within moments I realized the book wasn't actually a novel, but some kind of research journal that someone had once owned.

Inside were pictures of each creature, diagrams of their anatomy, and their likes and dislikes. There were even scribbles along the margins in a language I had no clue how to pronounce.

But something caught my attention more than anything else in the book. There was a drawn out illustration of men and women - some with long horns or cat eyes or wings or glowing skin. And they were dancing among the moon, as a girl was situated in the middle of the circle, crying in agony.

I dropped the book, it smacking the wooden floorboards as it left my fingertips. But the page never changed, the colorful drawing stared menacingly at me, just like the dreams that haunted me every night.

The girls face in the journal mimicked the way I had felt last night when I figured out I no longer had control of my body. That some kind of magic had been placed on me underneath the beautifully bright moon. It was magnificent and amazing and terrifying all at once. Never had I wanted to die so badly and that thought alone terrified me more than anything else.

And how strange that this book kept finding its way back to me, and I stumbled upon information for my nightmares. After having them every night for five years. Since the incident.

Chills covered my skin as I scrambled to my stomach and reached my long fingers towards the book. My mossy brown eyes surveyed the rest of the page.

In big bold letters, underneath the picture, were words:

"Samhain Festival.

Every year between October 30-November 1st, A royal faerie picks a human girl to join them for every night during the festival. The girl is usually one that the faerie is familiar with whether it be by bloodline or sex."

My heart constricted, bringing me back to memories five years ago, when everything changed. This couldn't be the reason everything happened. None of this could be real. Faeries don't exist.

No!

Tears streaked down my face, as memories flew through my brain. The flashbacks of the cops, the case, the incident. . . I couldn't let it consume me again. But after all the confusion and the unanswered questions, my curiosity got the better of me

For the first time in five years, my routine changed as I took to the back of my closet, in between the wall, where I forced it to become unhinged. And there sat all the old newspaper articles and missing person flyers All of them spoke about the same person that had disappeared five years ago. That same person being my mother.