Faeblessed

Copyright (C) 2017 Jenna Elizabeth Johnson

All Rights Reserved

Faeblessed is posted for your reading enjoyment only and not to be reposted anywhere else. Thank you and happy reading!

FAEBLESSED

Jenna Elizabeth Johnson

There are two things you need to know about the Otherworld. First, it is a wonderful, beautiful, magical place full of color and life and amazing things. Secondly, it is a terrible, terrifying, dark place full of things that could never happen in the mortal world. I learned this the hard way when the Morrigan first kidnapped me in order to trap my sister. But that is another story, one I'm not ready to tell yet. A story that still wakes me up in the middle of the night, my heart racing so fast I think it might burst.

I'd rather focus on something happier, though I'll admit, this particular memory doesn't necessarily start out so. I want to tell the story of the first time I stayed with the Wildren in the Weald.

After the great battle with the Morrigan, lots of stuff happened pretty fast. I learned my parents weren't my real parents, but that Queen Danua, the high queen of Eilé, was my mom, and my sister Meggy's, too. To be honest, I wasn't all that upset when I found out. I still love my mortal mom and dad, but somehow I always knew I had come from somewhere else; belonged somewhere else.

Despite being the queen's son, I was allowed to live with Mom and Dad during the school year, and then I'd stay in Eilé with my Otherworldly family. Meggy and her boyfriend Cade got married in the spring after the fight with the Morrigan, and they lived in Eilé, too. I would have stayed with them at Luathara Castle, or maybe with my real mom, but I guess the battle with the Morrigan didn't destroy all the creepy things that were causing trouble in their world. So, in order to keep me safe, they sent me to the Weald, a huge, magical forest on the western end of Eilé. Meggy and Queen Danua told me that of all the places in the Otherworld, the Weald was the safest. The scary monsters the Morrigan had created and all the magic that had been hers couldn't get in, so they wouldn't have to worry about me. It bugged me a little. I was nine years old, almost ten, after all. I wasn't a baby anymore. But Meggy had given me that serious look, and although she was my mom, Queen Danua scared me a little. So, I went along with their plans without making a big deal out of it. And to be honest, I was looking forward to spending the summer in a magical forest. What kid wouldn't?

So that is how I found myself standing in the middle of the woods, staring wide-eyed at a scene that could have been plucked from a medieval village and dropped in the middle of Sherwood Forest. The guardsman on my left, Gannon, knelt down so that he stood at my level. Queen Danua had insisted on sending me with her best soldiers since the journey from Erintara was pretty far.

Gannon's pale green eyes flashed to turquoise, and he smiled. "Welcome to the Wildren's village. You will be well taken care of here, and you might even enjoy it better than Erintara Castle."

I blinked up at him, wondering if my eyes changed color here, too. Meggy's always did, even in the mortal world, but mine hadn't. And now that I knew more about myself, and that the reason I struggled with simple things at home was because of a geis on my glamour, I wouldn't be surprised if their shade changed like the surface of a lake. I would have to remember to find a mirror when I got a chance.

"Why's that?" I asked, remembering what Gannon had said.

"Because," the tall Faelorehn woman on my other side replied, "there are many more children here than in the castle proper. You'll have lots of playmates to tell you all about Eilé."