Chapter two

Getting Home

I made it to the P.T.A meeting. Not that being stuck in a painting with a self proclaimed "dark sorcerer" made that a given. The tower was now in an unknown frame because in a moment of irritation I "zapped" (is that the right term?) the lever. Still after acclimatizing to my beautiful alterations I had made I marveled at the light that came from the high walls and ceiling with no obvious source.

Alistair was knocking on the door and listening to the sound it made. I ventured closer.

"Can we open the door yet?"

"No."

His deep smooth voice echoed in the huge space. He hadn't turned away from the door and his eyes narrowed as he tapped the frame of the door lightly with his wand. His wand was narrow and elegant and made of wood and bone in rippling horizontal bands. It seemed both very powerful and ordinary at the same time. It was odd to look at.

I examined my own again. It was a smooth taper piece of wood, pale like holly and slightly darker at the handle. It gave me the same strange feeling in my eyeballs of ordinary and weird.

I slide it back up my sleeve and it fit even though it shouldn't. I was doing what "normal" people did when confronted with magick. They always look away. As a general rule I would look deep into those places, into the shadows with faces, yet this was different. It wasn't an overlay to the world which I and a few other could see, this was, standing in a magick tower in a painting, or where ever we were.

Alistair was listening to the door with an empty upturned glass now.

"Where does the light come from?"

"What?" 

Alistair put down the glass and turned to me and really looked at me. He pursed his lips and paused.

"You won't like the answer."

I blinked at him and he continued.

"Wigan."

"What?"

I said it quietly because I didn't understand. Alistair turned away and continued as a deep sigh.

"I am busy you know. The light comes from Wigan. I only take, what about 50% of it."

I have no idea why steal half the light from a cold northern town incensed me but it did. I lost it.

"You can't take the light from Wigan!"

"Why ever not their not using it."

"Because it is wrong!"

"Yes, but is does make the place so much more comfortable."

I was taken aback. My mouth flapped open and shut. I couldn't really think of anything else to say.

"Are we done?"

He tilted his head and was slightly amused and oddly proud way that left me untrusting of what might come out of my mouth so I clamped it firmly shut. He raised and eyebrow and returned to tapping the door unruffled and seemingly amused.

Slightly guiltily I gazed around the room the trees were elegant and green and would not have been out of place at a botanical gardens. The deep beds of lush plants and exotic flowers filled the air with perfumes and butterflies. It was exquisite. 

"Ah ha!"

Alistair triumphant exclamation caught my attention. He turned the handle and with flourish opened the door.

Outside was nothing but a shimmering murky frozen waterfall.

"Shall we see where we are?"

I looked at the murk dubiously. This strange man in a dark suit took my hand again and I felt safer and he lead me through. We emerged from an old mirror half submerged in rubbish in an urban setting. Alistair, ever careful of his suit wrinkled his nose at the interesting urban aromas. I was back in the "real" world and I was flooded with relief and a torrent of problems.

"Oh, we're home then." I said to no-one in particular.

I was indeed back in my city, which I had never mentioned to Alistair.

"Did you know my father well?"

"God no, of him but no."

He was able to fill the sentence with humor and disgust in equal measure. We walked under a railway bridge and Alistair tucked away his wand which had been out and pointed like a weapon until that point. He turned and began to study the graffiti scrawl. I stood there wondering about my handbag, and my car.

"What time is it?"

"About 2.30pm."

  Time had passed in the tower, but it was much slower. I took a deep breath and turned and began my walk home. I tucked my head down and walked away from Alistair even though I could hear him talking. It began to drizzle and I barely took my eyes from the oil soaked puddles. I walked for about half an hour trying to make sense of all I had seen and heard. From the funeral and the men attacking me (or was it Alistair). I was almost home when Alistair pulled up along side me in the back of expensive silver car. He rolled down the window as the car crawled along side me.

"Amelia get in the car! Amelia, your getting soaked through! Come now!"

This kind of one sided conversation continued until I reached my tiny terrace house and I realised I didn't have my keys. Where I live it is not a good idea to keep a spare key under a brick. Alistair got out of his car (or was it someone else's) with a large black umbrella. In fairness his suit and car made him look like my social worker or my pimp as they were the only people to drive high end cars down our street.

I stared at my door. Then started to go to the alley between my house and my neighbors when Alistair stopped me with a cough.

"Just use your wand Amelia."

"Yes, because that worked out so well before."

I loaded my words with cold anger and sarcasm. Softly like silk and velvet Alistair voice began.

"Well saving our lives certainly warrants admiration, and while it was a little difficult. We are alive and safe and well. This is your life now Amelia."

I slide out the wand from my sleeve and tried to think of exactly what I wanted, to hold it in my mind and condense those thoughts into simple words. I gathered my will. 

"Open sesame."

The door clicked open and opened smoothly.

It was odd to see Alistair in my living room. Drinking tea. Like a person. Yet there he was complimenting me on my Dar Jeeling. I picked up my spare key from my half eaten fruit bowl from the cluttered kitchen counter. I grabbed my folder (P.T.A meetings always involve notes). Whether as an instinct or something else I slide my wand up my sleeve and as it was really raining now I got into Alistair's car (with a driver with cap and all). I didn't give any directions but the car slide slowly to a stopped outside the school I tried not to notice the drivers glowing red eyes.

"Amelia, I have some inquires to make, but I'll be in touch."

All the questions still sitting limply on my tongue and he dismissed me with a smile and a wave.

The P.T.A meeting had been cancelled at the last minute so I went to pick up my daughter.

Awkward ends and awful beginings

I suppose I should tell you how my life started. Contextually my life before he showed up. Yet I feel like I will start with an ending. My normal life ended at a funeral. My father's. Or the man I had believed to be my father my whole life. I sat in a crematorium chapel listening to some minister I didn't know, say nice things about a man, he clearly didn't know and stared out of the window to the garden along side. I watched the blackbird hopping around the small lawn. I stood for the awful hymn that my father would have hated as a curtained table swallowed his coffin. It seemed far to small to contain him, yet it did. There were lots of people, though I had the feeling that many were there as I was; to make sure he was really dead. Closure or something? Stood in my new black clothes I felt my eyes began to prickle with tears. People nodded and patted my hand. We filed out of the chapel and I knew the next funeral would start again in only a few moments.

Even the flowers, laid so lovingly on the car park with a plaque for his name would be chucked in the skip round the back in a few hours. I knew this because I had parked a ways out, still deciding if I should go or not. I watched the crows in the trees and thought of omens and blessings. People milled around and some quietly shook my hand mumbling before wandering off. As I wasn't (thankfully) the focus for most of the folks, my step-mother (or more accurately the wife of my father) was I was able to slink away and sit in my car starring at the pine trees and in my rear view mirror the next funeral. Now came the wake which I would have gladly skipped entirely.

Most of the people there would be people I did not know (I had not even been sure I was at the right funeral until I saw my step-mother and her bloated son). Most people only new who I was when other distant family members pointed me out to them in clipped whispers. Yes the black sheep had returned, temporarily. Still, I told myself, it is only one day.

Back at the house, his house, people were milling around with plates and glasses. The house was neither modern or antique and smelled of lilies my Not-mother had placed everywhere and gin.

My father's drink of choice. After the staring and the whispers became too much I found myself in my father's study. No lilies here. His great Georgian writing desk dominated the small room and the french-windows let in the grey light of a mid-Autumn day. It was tidier than had ever seen it. The strange paintings that flanked the walls in lurid colours were not brightening but jarring against the beigeness of the room. I found a bottle and a glass in a small sideboard opposite the french-windows and held the glass to my lips. The smell it made my eyes prickle with tears again. A half smoked cigar still sat in a heavy cut glass ashtray. Suddenly I was angry. If he hadn't been dead, I could have killed him. Except that wasn't true. I was just so different? Difficult?I just wasn't like them. I had no aptitude for cut-throat business or money. No desire to bully, lie or viciously get my own way. I was born with a moral compass that my family despaired at.

“Just cheat Amelia.”

“Just lie.”

“Stop making such a fuss, everyone does it.”

“You are so quaint, so naive.”

“This is how the world works.”

Bile rose in my throat. No not the black sheep, the white in a family of black sheep. Yet I seemed to have my father's temper, and his nose and feet. All of this swirled in the glass and the room and I thought about screaming.

Suddenly the door behind me opened. A man came in. He was older, maybe the same age as my father wearing (unsurprisingly) a black suit. I didn't recognise him from the funeral but I had not really been paying attention.

“You must be Amelia, I am Alistair.”

He bowed dramatical and took off his hat showing his close cropped almost shaved head and shut the door behind him.

There was something about him. A power. An energy. His eyes were sort of grey and impossible to read. His smile was both warm and disturbing as though his face was unaccustomed to performing the task. He stood straight again and he looked at me his head tilted, eyes tightening.

“So you are the witch. Huh.”

He said with a deep grunt of amusement and something like pride.

“I am impressed.”

I hadn't said anything. Not for lack of words but more the startling sensation that I knew this man yet found no memory would come to mind.

“Alistair?”

I also gave him the deep penetrating stare I am often known for and he smiled.

Yes, Alistair Angelblood. Now we don't have a lot of time.”

He moved past me to behind the desk and reached into a painting. Now by this I do not mean reached through a painting, or behind it but into a painting (a hideous purple vase with orange flowers.)

He reached in deeper and deeper and I must confess I was slack jawed and and speechless.

“Ah, here we are. An excellent safe don't you think?”

He tossed the contents of the safe to me. This was slightly painful as the large labradorite pendant set in silver with a equally heavy thick chain does not land easily.

“Put it on. It is your inheritance, your birthright”

I put it on. As I did it zapped me leave a small pink mark on the inside of my wrist. Then he handed me a wand. It was wooden and silky smooth. It felt light and yet slightly warm. I moved it slowly and Alistair twitched slightly like I held a cocked gun.

He smiled and took my left hand in his.

“I am not your father. I know today has been terrible and that you are confused. Right now though there are two, possibly three assassins here to kill us, so we had better get moving, don't you think?”

I confess I thought that one or both of us had lost our minds. The sincerity of his eyes and the sweat on his brow were believable enough to say

“okay.”

He smiled like he won a prize and he put his hand into a different picture. A desert scene. Everything that happened next happen very quickly. We jumped. As we jumped he pulled out his wand from inside his suit pocket and fired off a pulse of vivid green light two two men bursting through the door also in black suits. He hit one and he fell hitting the picture frame and turned to black dust. The other still coming shot a spark of pulsing orange light that Alistair caught on his wand and returned to our pursuers. It hit him squarely in the chest. His crooked body fell into the painting with a wet and sickening thud right next to me.

“Huh!”

Was all he said, like he had hit a rabbit in the road.

“What? Who? Where?”

“Not the time my dear.”

With that he towed me through the painting. Where we are is still a little complicated. It was the painting but the sand dunes were carved from rock and covered in dust. Just behind the dunes was the top of a tower, and more importantly for me at that moment, a door. Though confused and rather annoyed I have a strong survival instinct and those guys were not shooting blanks. We ran.

The door was wood so old it was like iron. I reached out my hand and with my touch it swung easily open. I ran into the tower as did Alistair but there was a third pursuer and as he approached the door running at full pelt the door slammed it's self shut.

“What the hell is going on?”

I glared at him, it was a powerful glare, one usually reserved for drunken cat callers or someone trying to sit next to me on a train.

“I am not your father.”

“I know that. Stop saying that.”

I was yelling by now. I was having a tough day after all.

“Why don't we sit down and you can ask me anything you want?”

The room was large, large than the tower on the outside but not significantly so. The walls were plain white and the floor stone. Alistair dropped two coins onto the floor and the coins grew into chairs. I think that is the only way to describe it. They were about 5ft apart from each other and I sat down. Alistair sat down. He crossed his legs and took off his hat. For a while we just looked at each other. I was trying to breathe and calm myself while observing all I could. His suit was expensive, well cut and black but there were flashes of blue silk linings and his tie has an elaborate pin. His shoes too were though not brand new expensive and leather. He looked healthy, strong and smug. I searched the features of his face. Though my eyes are hazel and his grey our colouring was similar. His eye shape was more pronounced but not glaring different. We were not unalike.

“Where are we?”

“In a painting.”

“How are we in a painting?”

I was starting to get twitchy by this point and I began tapping my wand against my knee.

“You won't like the answer.”

I raised my eyebrows in indication I wanted him to answer.

“Magic. We are in a painting, that is constructed by magic. In a tower that is made of magic. That can move paintings.”

“I know about magic. Okay I am a witch. I am pagan. I dance the circle and all of that. Goddess and speaking to dead people, this, this is something else!”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why is it something else?”

“Because, this isn't real, it doesn't, you can't do things like this.”

He smiled again.

“You just did.”

He flicked imaginary lint from him trousers. My brain was just not accepting any of this.

“How did we do it?”

“Did you never wonder why the things you made were so different than that of others? Did you never wonder why you could do things so easily?”

“Other people can do what I do.”

“Other people...you have taught?”

“Well yes but...”

He smiled again. It was really starting to piss me off. There was a loud boom. The tower shook. Instinctively, I cast a circle around me. It hovered in the air a bubble of woven golden threads of light.

“Amelia, I don't think that was a good idea.”

“Shut up.”

There was another boom and the tower shook again. A fine dust fell crackling in the light.

“Amelia, on the wall over there is a lever and all we have to do is move it and the tower will move and they won't be able to get in.”

“Who is they? Why are they trying to kill me? Are they trying to kill me?”

“We don't have time.”

Boom.

I glare at him.

“Alright, I am a bad man, a terrible man, a dark sorcerer of immense power and wealth. Please drop the circle.”

“No.”

Boom.

“ I don't know if they were trying to kill you, definitely trying to kill me, but they will now. Please, please let me keep you safe.”

“No.”

I turned and pointed my wand at the lever. It glowed for a moment and moved. Then everything became blurry. It is like being really drunk and dancing. All the walls and floor moved.

The circle held. Yet the room was entirely different now. It was even bigger. It was taller by far and there were plants, flowers and trees everywhere. There were birds flying high above. Everywhere was infused with light. It beautiful.

I released the circle, drawing back the power through the wand into me. It felt weird. It was Alistair's turn to glare.

“What did you do? You couldn't have just trusted me?”

“Hello? Dark sorcerer! Who knows what ever plans you have.”

He stood slowly. He placed his hat onto the chair and came close to me. I clenched my wand like it was a weapon.

“Everything you say is true. I have many plans. Yet I would never ever hurt you.”

He was very close now looking down at me and I don't know why but I rested my head against his chest and I cried. He stroked my hair lightly and there we stood for a little while.

Gulping air like I had been drowning I pulled away and fished a tissue from my sleeve (funeral clothes rarely come with needed pockets).

I moved over to a rug of growing grass and sat down on it. Then I lay down. I lay there and looked at all the beauty. Alistair opens the door to try and figure out which painting we are in. There is only darkness outside.

“Should I just un-zap it?”

“No, no. It is fine.”

“We might be in a mirror...never mind.”

I then have the panic return. I have to get home. I have a P.T.A. meeting.