The World of Nightingale

Chapter 3

May sure hoped that Blair hadn't caught certain parts about their conversation, and part of her felt like she had been caught doing something forbidden, like she was somehow breaking some sort of law just by talking to Jake Lace.

"Her book." Jake said, trying for a careless shrug, the lie so close to reality that it would've worked had Blair not been the undeceivable girl she was.

"Yeah right. And that flower is a beanstalk." Blair snorted, flipping her multi colored hair, squeezing between May and the windowsill so that she could sit on the small square of roof.

"He says he's an alchemist!" May finally blurt out, holding up the picture in the book so that Blair could see, not able to contain her bubbling excitement any longer.

Blair visibly paled, how that was possible with her already pale face, May had no clue, but it was obvious the term brought her great discomfort. She blinked, her eyes taking a second to refocus on the conversation. "May you know that people like that aren't real. They're just fairytales."

"I think you and I both know that's not the case." Jake butt in, raising an eyebrow at Blair. May glanced between the two, almost certain that Jake had somehow just said something telepathically to Blair. Either that or Jake had hit a nerve inside Blair's mind. Either way, Blair glared at him, and without a word promptly left the balcony, her cheeks puffed out the way when she was thinking something and desperately trying not to say it aloud.

"What's that supposed to mean?" May asked once Blair was out of earshot, but Jake shook his head, unwilling to divulge in the revealing of her sister's secrets.

"That's not for me to tell, but you know how an Alchemist can sense things?" Jake waited for May to nod before continuing with his statement, his hand reaching up to his dark green hair and running through it. "Well, let's say your sister is in a lot of danger at the moment. She needs help, and soon."

The words were probably not intended to make May's throat constrict with fright. Something was wrong with Blair and she'd been oblivious this whole time? How could she have not noticed something was wrong with her very own sister? Was she just that much self centered to not notice something that obvious that a stranger would be able to tell upon first glance?

"What do you mean? Do I need to take her to the doctor?" May asked, nibbling on her nails.

Jake's face twisted with what could only be guilt. "I didn't mean that, but what I do mean is that- keep an eye on her okay?" He paused again, waiting for May to nod before he stood up, getting ready to go back into his house. "When's her birthday?" He suddenly asked.

May shrugged. "Why is that important? Like I'd tell you, I hardly even know you." May huffed indignantly, refusing to tell him something as though payback for him not telling her what was wrong with Blair.
Even though her sister's eighteenth birthday was in a mere week, she wasn't about to tell that to Jake.

"Because." Jake breathed in slowly as though he were trying to keep his emotions under control. "Okay look, I'm only trying to help. And if you already know I'm not human, which is one of my biggest secrets, even though it may not seem like it to you since I showed you without really knowing you. I knew I could trust you the moment I saw you in that crowd. Because you are one of us, one of the Nightingaleians." He ended with finality, as though he had just explained the world's deepest secrets to her.

May wanted to laugh. "Ha! Right, I think if I were part nymph or something then I'd know about it by now." She argued, refusing to agree with the boy on this matter, regardless of how she wished it were true.

"Firstly, not all of the Nightingaleians have physical alterations. Look at me, I look decently normal looking right? Not all of us have horns or hooves or even antlers, believe me, I'm not mistaken. Secondly, some of us take time to start showing signs of our ancestors, and you're still in the age range of showing these signs. And to prove that brings us to my third point. If you aren't a Nightingaleian, then how the hell are you doing that." Jake pointed behind her, where the objects in her room had begun to float, each starting to glow with a light blue color.

May gasped, her fingers tingling as everything dropped as her heart caught in her throat. "That wasn't me! It could've been you-" she began, but she knew better than that, each alchemist was only capable of using one color, and Jake had already proven the color his magic was was yellow.

But since no runes popped up, as they did with alchemist magic, then May began to severely doubt exactly what happened as not some sort of trickery. She glanced around, checking to ,are sure that there weren't any people hiding in any bushes or anything before she stuck out her tongue at Jake, who's confused reaction was priceless. "Dummy, if it was me, then tell me what species I am. I'm waiting." May crossed her arms, raising one of her eyebrows at him. She knew that there weren't any species that matched doing magic without either a staff of some sort of runes attached to the spells. The only magic other than those two were from the people in which were born with an arcana inside of them. An arcana meaning a piece of the element in which they dwelled around. For example, mermaids had the ocean arcana, or gryffins had the air arcana.

"Wizard." Jake said after an oddly long pause of him rubbing his chin and staring at the ground as though he had been in deep thought.

"False, any wizard needs a staff to perform magic, that's the oldest rule in the book. On page three hundred and ninety four, of the Nightingale encyclopedia, it says that for a wizard to connect to the magic around them, they must first create and bond with a staff of their own, this will in turn be like a bridge connecting the wizard to the world around them." May recited off of the top of her head, thinking that she had stumped the boy once again.

Jake simply shrugged, shaking his head as though he knew arguing with her was a pointless feat. "Look, I'm not entirely convinced myself either, but that's what it's telling me you have the genetics of, ever since I touched your hand, it was like your energy levels had been stored up, almost as if you have subconsciously been suppressing yourself from using magic. And there have been known wizards, the most powerful ones like Merlin or Morgana, who have used magic without their staffs."

May hated it when he made good points, and she hated it even more when he suggested that she be as powerful as two of the most powerful wizards in Nightingale. And she hated it even more so when he also explained how she had built up some sort of mental barrier against her own magic, or suppressing it, as he called it.

"Jake how old are you?" May suddenly asked, hoping to change the subject so that she didn't have to admit he was right.

"I'll be eighteen in a couple days." Jake shrugged. "We moved here because we fund the portal to nightingale not far from here, and you know what happens to any nightingaleian who stays in earth for eighteen consecutive years.

May nodded gloomily, just when she thought she had found someone who she could annoy and simultaneously fan girl about the book series, he was going away. "Wait so you mean to tell me that you waited until you were almost eighteen to go back to nightingale? And that the portal is somehow near here even though I've never seen it before?"

Jake nodded, and May didn't want to think about what that could've meant for him had he not located the portal sooner, what could've meant for his health. Any nightingalian that spent eighteen years away from their planet, would loose their genetic heritage binding them to the world.

So if Jake hadn't found the portal, he would've been stripped of his powers and he could've died, the nightingalian blood in him erasing itself from his genetic code.
The same would happen to any eighteen year old nightingalian, no matter how much they took care of themselves.

At first the person would get severe headaches, and then be dizzy, and not eat or drink much for weeks before their eighteenth birthday, then they would start throwing up as if to purge the magical genes from themselves. Not that May could know how many people wouldn't be able to survive this process, she guessed that whoever underwent this process had no pleasure in doing so.