Chapter 3: We Are Family

No one in the entire history of Seibjerg was more surprised than Rhys when he awoke lying on a pristine lawn, surrounded by towering, whitewashed buildings. Judging by the opulent surroundings, it looked as though he was in the grand courtyard of an aristocratic castle. He glanced around and saw Jade and Katarina slowly stirring, looking equally bewildered. They were all dressed in simple white nightgowns, their bare feet clearly visible beneath the hems. The vast sky directly above their heads was a brilliant azure, and a fragrant, gentle breeze stirred the pleasantly warm air.

“Is this the fabled Land of the Ancestors?” he wondered aloud. “Am I dead, and my spirit has come here?”

A new voice laughed warmly. “Not your ancestors, at any rate.” Rhys spun around to see who had spoken. An older man was standing casually in the arched doorway of one of the buildings. If there was ever a person who looked like the archetypal wizard, it was him. He sported a long, flowing grey beard, a deep red cap, and a lightweight gown. In Rhys’s imagination, the only things missing were the gown’s silver star and planet motifs. And a wand. With a golden star on the end.

Katarina, Jade, and Rhys scrambled hastily to their feet, instinctively coming together and throwing their arms around each other in a fiercely tight embrace. The older man approached slowly and politely cleared his throat. The group hug broke apart, and they turned to face him.

“I expect you have a few questions?” he asked mildly.

The three perplexed arrivals looked at one another. “No kidding!” Jade exclaimed sharply.

The older man sat on the soft grass, comfortably crossing his legs before him. The other three hesitantly did the same. “My name is Cadellin Wildwood,” he said softly. “And I am, or rather was, Katarina’s great-great-grandfather. I had a clandestine relationship with one of my servants, Katarina’s great-great-grandmother. This,” - he waved his hands expansively around him - “was part of my enduring gift to our daughter and all her descendants.”

“Where exactly are we? Are we dead?” Jade demanded.

“To answer your second question first: no, you are certainly not dead. You were a mere heartbeat from being dead, but Katarina brought you all here instead.”

“I brought them here?” Katarina whispered in wonder.

“The way to this place lives deep within you, and has done so all your life,” Cadellin explained patiently. “You didn’t know it existed - no one does until they are within a heartbeat of death. Normally, their spirit comes here, leaving their mortal bodies behind, but you and your two friends broke the rules.

“I sense that your friends here possess raw magical talent. So do you, young Katarina, but we will come to that shortly. When death approached, Jade channelled her natural flux; Rhys focused it; Katarina provided a safe place to go. It took all three of you working together to save yourselves and to bring your consciousness AND your bodies here. None of you knew you were doing it - it was, if you like, a self-preservation reflex from your magic. None of you could do it on your own, but together you had the necessary skills to make it happen.”

“Where exactly are we?” asked an inquisitive Rhys.

“That is a profound concept. I will explain in the simplest way I can, but you will inevitably learn the deeper and more subtle answers yourselves,” said Cadellin. “Put simply, you’re in a place parallel to your familiar mortal world. An entirely different plane of existence, if you like. This is the place that magic comes from.

“Everyone with a magical talent has a connection to here, of one type or another. Katarina has a unique connection to this particular part of the plane because I expressly created it for our family. You and Jade have a broader, more general connection that actively drives your talents. You both inherited your connections from one or both of your parents, exactly as Katarina inherited her connection to this, our ancestral family home, directly from her mother.”

“But now that you’ve brought your bodies and your spirits to the magical plane, your connections here have strengthened significantly.

“Jade, you’ll now find that you can collect and store flux far better than before and will even be able to focus it, although you’ll never be quite as proficient at it as Rhys. How that manifests in new abilities, you will need to discover for yourself.

“Rhys, you’ll be able to channel and store flux better, but, again, you’ll never be close to Jade’s raw talent. It seems like you’ve not yet discovered what type of magic you have. Once you do, the magic will now be stronger than it would otherwise have been. Your father’s ring will also help.

“Now, for my dear Katarina. Your abilities to generate and store flux and to focus your own magic have also increased. Unlike Jade, I can show you what your primary magic is because you inherited it from me.

“But before we get to that, all three of you will also be able to find your way back here, whenever you like, effortlessly. It will, thankfully, no longer need you almost to die.” He chuckled warmly at his own dark joke.

“Katarina, will you let me introduce you to your magic?”

Katarina hesitated and glanced at Jade and Rhys before nodding to her distant relative.

“As I said,” Cadellin continued, “you’re from my line and already possess some of my talent. I was a healer and, even if I say so myself, a good one. Please, go and kneel behind Jade and place your hands firmly on her shoulders. Jade, could you please kneel too, and hold your hair up on top of your head, just so that it’s out of the way?” Both women dutifully did as he asked, and an intrigued Rhys shuffled around so he could see more clearly what was about to happen. He noticed that Jade bore a distinct mark on the back of her neck, which her hair had previously hidden.

Cadellin had moved to kneel right behind Katarina without touching her. It was important to him that what was about to happen came only from Katarina. “Concentrate, please,” he said quietly, “and see if you can feel anything from Jade. Jade, hold your flux for a moment, please. Katarina must try this on her own.”

“Oh, my goodness,” squeaked Katarina, “I can feel her heartbeat!” Cadellin nodded gently and smiled at her in approval. Smiling back at him, she scrunched up her eyes and frowned as she concentrated. “And she has a rather badly healed break in her left arm!”

“That’s a perfect diagnosis,” Cadellin smiled. “I could sense Jade’s broken arm as soon as we got close. You’ll be able to do that eventually, but physical contact with a patient takes less flux. You don’t have much of your own flux yet, although that will develop quickly, so I’m going to ask Jade to kindly send you a little of hers to help.”

Katarina immediately felt a deliciously soothing warmth spreading up her arms from where they touched Jade’s shoulders. Cadellin nodded, looking thoroughly pleased.

“Now concentrate hard on Jade’s old injury,” he said. “Visualise the old break and imagine it is healed as strongly and smoothly as the rest of her bones.” He waited a moment as Katarina worked. “Splendid!” he exclaimed. “Jade, can you feel anything?”

“My arm is strangely tingling, almost like it does when I lie on it for too long?” she hesitantly said.

“Well done. Extremely good,” said Cadellin, clapping his hands. “Katarina, that was excellent work for your first healing. Now I’d like you to remove Jade’s slave tattoo permanently. It’s essentially the same mental process, but it will require considerably more effort since that awful tattoo has some of its creator’s dark magic contained in it. You should seek that out first and remove it, then work on removing the physical mark. Jade, if you could help again, please?”

Katarina concentrated again, and instinct took over. Leaving one hand on Jade’s shoulder, she moved the other hand to touch the tattoo with her index finger, moving it around, using her finger to focus her senses on the individual parts of the tattoo, mapping the magic it contained. Satisfied, she touched the centre of the tattoo and, theatrically, blew on it. She laughed, then whispered, mostly to herself, “The magic’s gone. No contest.” Rhys, watching in amazement, saw the visible part of the tattoo move; the letters and numbers swirled around each other as though they were autumn leaves caught in an eddy, before fading away, leaving Jade’s neck as pristine as the rest of her skin.

Katarina exhaled and released Jade. “It’s done,” she told her.

Jade moved her own hand to feel where the tattoo had been. “It feels cleaner, somehow,” she said. “I hadn’t realised it felt dirty until, you know, it stopped feeling that way?” She turned, still on her knees, leaned forward and gave Katarina a peck on her cheek. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you. It means more than you know to have that gone.”

Katarina raised her hand to touch the spot where Jade had kissed her. She looked at her fingers, as though expecting to see blood, or some kind of mark, but, of course, there was nothing to see. The mark that was on her cheek wasn’t physical. It was emotional instead.