They both turned around to face the centaur. Leesa was not at all surprised to learn the woman possessed magic, not after everything she had seen so far in this place.

  “Where did they go?” she asked.

  “That’s difficult to say,” the centaur replied. “You see, they never really existed.”

  Leesa’s eyes narrowed in puzzlement. “Huh? What do you mean they never existed? We saw them. We heard them.”

  “They were illusions, meant to serve as a distraction for any strangers who somehow make it through to here.” The woman grinned. “I’d say they do their job quite well, wouldn’t you?”

  Leesa’s lips curved into a wry smile as she remembered how frightening the cats had looked and sounded. At least now she understood how they had managed to come upon her and Rave without Rave’s volkaane senses detecting them.

  “Yeah,” she replied, nodding. “I’d have to agree, for sure. They were totally distracting.”

  “What are your names?” the woman asked.

  “I’m Leesa. And this is Rave.”

  “I am Ariandre. Welcome to my home, Leesa and Rave. It’s clear that you two are far from your own home. How did you come to be our world?”

  Leesa and Rave looked at each other in confusion. Instead of answers, so far all they were getting were more questions.

  “We thought perhaps you brought us here,” Leesa said.

  It was Ariandre’s turn to look puzzled. “No, I did not—not intentionally, at any rate.” She studied Leesa and Rave more closely. “You are from the world of the Seven, I can see. Yet you seem so very different from them.”

  “The Seven?” Leesa thought about that for a moment. It was all connected to her dream, it seemed. “Do you mean the Miracles? Leah and her friends?”

  “Yes, the Miracles. I opened a portal for them, so they could cross from your world into mine.” Ariandre frowned. “But I opened no portal for you, and I know of no one else with the power and skill to do so. So how did you get here?”

  “We don’t know,” Leesa said, sighing. “We don’t even know where ‘here’ is.” She explained about her dreams, and how Ralin had seen the same vision. Then she described Ralin’s uncontrolled magic and the green explosion that preceded their arrival in this place.

  Ariandre listened closely. When Leesa was finished, the centaur thought for a few moments.

  “I sent out many magical calls for help,” she said finally, “not knowing where or how one might be answered. Perhaps that is the explanation, though this is totally beyond anything I could have expected. Somehow, your son’s magic must have combined with my message to transport you here. I did not know such a thing was possible. His magic must be quite powerful indeed.”

  “It is,” Leesa agreed. “He inherited both my magic and Rave’s. We’re only beginning to learn some of the things he can do.”

  “What sort of magic do you two possess?”

  “I’m a wizard and Rave is volkaane, if you know what that means. We could show you, but something about this place has greatly weakened our magic.”

  Ariandre smiled. “Oh, yes…I had forgotten about that. It’s for my protection, just like the cats and the forest.” She waved her hand in front of her again. “That should take care of it. Your powers should work normally again.”

  Leesa didn’t feel any change, but she hadn’t felt any change when her magic diminished, either. The first thing she did was to call up a shield, just to make certain she could. To her delight, the barrier formed quickly and easily. Her magic had definitely been restored.

  “I sense that you just used magic,” Ariandre said. “But I cannot see it. What did you do?”

  Leesa let her shield dissipate. “Oh, sorry. I created an air shield, just to be sure I could do it again. It’s the thing that alerted me to the weakening of my magic in the first place—when the one I was using to protect us from the dangers of this world disappeared, and I couldn’t create a new one.”

  Ariandre smiled. “There are indeed many dangers in our world. Cast a shield again, please. Right here between us. I wish to test it.”

  Leesa called up another shield, placing the barrier a foot or so in front of her.

  “It’s there,” she said. “Right between us, as you requested.”

  Ariandre held out her index finger. A narrow, pointy beam of bright silver light extended an inch or so from her fingertip, almost like the focused blue flame Leesa had seen Rave use when Ralin’s arm had been stuck in the wall. Ariandre eased her finger forward, until the tiny beam contacted Leesa’s shield. The light flattened against the invisible barrier, unable to pass through.

  “Make your shield as strong as you can,” she instructed.

  Leesa doubled the thickness of the barrier, creating as strong a shield as she had ever cast.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ve done it.”

  The light on Ariandre’s fingertip grew slowly brighter, glowing so intensely now that it was almost white, like the magic Dominic commanded. Still, the beam failed to penetrate Leesa’s shield. Instead, it spread over the invisible surface like a rapidly growing magical cobweb.

  Ariandre let the light go out. “Very good,” she said, smiling. “Very strong indeed. I think perhaps at full power my magic could penetrate your shield, but it would not be easy.”

  Leesa wasn’t sure she liked hearing that Ariandre might be powerful enough to break her shield—not because she feared the centaur, but because that meant there might be other things in this world that her shields would not protect Rave and her from.

  “What else can your magic do?” Ariandre asked, clearly impressed with Leesa’s display so far.

  Leesa thought for a moment. The grass at her feet looked similar enough to the grass back home that she thought she could probably make it grow, but she doubted that would seem like much to a woman who seemed to have controlled the branches and underbrush in the forest behind them. Leesa considered firing an energy beam at something. Glancing around, she saw nothing she would wish to destroy. The trees were far too beautiful, and there were no fallen trunks or boulders she could bore holes into.

  Finally, she had it. She silently mouthed a levitation spell, allowing herself to float upward until she was five feet off the ground and looking down at Ariandre. Next, she focused her telekinesis on a nearby tree. Since the tree was too solid to move, Leesa was pulled toward it instead.

  “You can fly!” Ariandre shouted excitedly, clapping her hands together once. “And without wings!”

  Leesa turned around and focused her telekinesis on one of the trees at the edge of forest, pulling herself back toward Ariandre and Rave. When she reached her original position, she let herself float down to the ground.

  “It’s not really flying,” she told Ariandre. “It’s a combination of levitation and telekinesis. After I use a levitation spell to make myself lighter than air, I focus my telekinesis on something too big to move, like a large tree. Since the tree won’t budge, I end up being pulled toward it instead.” She smiled. “It’s not as cool as really flying, but it’s proven useful a time or two.”

  “Very clever,” Ariandre said approvingly. “One of the Seven possesses telekinesis.”

  Leesa nodded. “I know. She’s called Plush for some reason. I saw her in my dream.”

  Ariandre turned to Rave. “What about you, Rave? Your magic feels very different to me than Leesa’s. What does your power do?”

  Rave shrugged. He wasn’t used to talking about his volkaane fire with strangers. Still, he figured he should show the woman something.

  He spread the fingers of his right hand and let his blue fire flash outward a few inches from each finger. Each tongue of fire was as tightly focused as Ariandre’s silver beam had been.

  “I have volkaane fire inside me,” he said. “It can get pretty hot.”

  Leesa grinned. “Pretty hot is an understatement,” she said to Ariandre. “In our world, Rave uses his fire to slay vampires. He can fry one to ashes in less than a minute.”

  Ariandre smiled. “Then it must be very hot indeed. We have vampires here in our world, so I know how dangerous they can be.”

  “Rave is also incredibly strong and fast,” Leesa added. “Stronger and faster even than Kai, at least as far as I could tell from my dreams.”

  “Strong and fast can be useful qualities here,” Ariandre acknowledged. “I’m sorry you two were brought here without your intent. I would return you to your world if I could, but alas, I fear I cannot. Not until something that was taken from me is returned, at least.”

  Leesa was disappointed to hear that Ariandre could not help them right away, but not really surprised. In her experience, things were seldom as simple as you wanted them to be—especially where magic was concerned.

  CHAPTER 20

  “RALIN TOLD US you needed help,” Leesa said to Ariandre. “Is that what you need—help getting something back? What is it? And where is it?”

  Ariandre considered Leesa’s questions for a moment. “The answers to your questions are both simple and complex,” she said finally. “The Seven and their companions should be here soon. Can we wait until they arrive so I can explain matters to all of you at once?”

  Leesa didn’t really want to wait, but she realized nothing was likely to happen until after the Miracles arrived. After all, they were the ones Ariandre had intentionally brought into this world to aid her. Leesa was glad to hear they were expected soon—she was curious to meet them. She had been a lot like them a few years ago—a teenager with magical powers. She hoped her experiences might prove useful for them.

  “I guess we can wait…as long as it’s not too long.”

  Thinking about the arrival of the Miracles made Leesa realize something that had slipped her mind until now. Leah and her friends might be from the same world as her and Rave, but they were from decades in the future. Somehow, she and Rave had not only been pulled into another world, but they had been transported through time as well. Unless perhaps time and space were different in this place. Something from her physics class back in college flashed in her mind: “Time is not a line, but a dimension.” The concept had made her head spin back then, and it was making her head spin now.

  A tiny red glow flashed in one of the nearest trees behind Ariandre, catching Leesa’s eye. There were other things she wanted to know about this world, she remembered, things that maybe she could understand a bit more easily than the whole time and space thing.

  “Maybe there’s something else we can talk about in the meantime,” she said. “Rave saw some faeries back in the forest, but they disappear too quickly for me to see. I’d love to see some, though. Are they friends of yours?”

  Ariandre smiled. “They are indeed.” She clapped her hands together twice. “Come out, my friends. There’s no need to hide. Someone wants to meet you. Come say hello.”

  The centaur’s words had barely melted away when the air began to fill with scores of glowing red lights. A few floated out of the scattered trees behind Ariandre, but most appeared from the forest. The high-pitched chirping Leesa had initially attributed to unseen birds accompanied them. Some floated slowly, like bubbles on a breeze, while others flitted back and forth so quickly they reminded Leesa of hummingbirds in flight. As the lights drew nearer, she could see the outlines of tiny figures inside the glow.

  The faeries all seemed to be female, no more than six or seven inches tall, with short dark hair. Their lacy, translucent wings were nearly the size of their bodies. The light surrounding them shone in various shades of red, from a deep blood red to an almost pink hue, and it seemed to glow brighter or duller in accordance with the volume of the chirping.

  “Do they speak?” Leesa asked.

  “Not in a way that you can understand,” Ariandre replied. “But you can tell from the amount of noise they are making that they’re excited to meet the two of you.”

  “Well, tell them I’m just as excited to meet them. They’re very beautiful.”

  The chirping grew even louder, seemingly in response to Leesa’s words.

  “They can understand you well enough,” Ariandre said. “They say thank you, and that you are quite beautiful as well.”

  Leesa had an idea of how she could bond even more with the faeries. It wasn’t something she had done before, but she was pretty certain she could pull it off. Calling up an illumination globe above her palm, she made the glow red to match the faeries. The color was easy—she had experimented with different colors enough times, starting way back when Cali had wondered if Leesa could add color to her air shields. Next came the new part. She made the sphere grow larger and larger until it was taller than she was. Then, she simply stepped inside it. The result was that she was now surrounded by glowing red light, just like the faeries.

  The twittering of the tiny creatures grew louder than ever, and their lights flashed brighter in an almost fireworks-like display.

  Ariandre was grinning. “They are laughing,” she said, “and they say you look even more beautiful now.”

  Leesa smiled, pleased that her display had worked as intended. She left the light around herself for a few more moments before letting it go out.

  One of the faeries hovered close to Ariandre’s head and seemed to be whispering in her ear.

  “Fiona says that Rave is VERY handsome,” Ariandre said when the faerie had floated away from her ear. “She’s such a flirt, this one.”

  Leesa took hold of Rave’s hand. “I think he’s very handsome, too,” she said to Fiona. It felt strange speaking to someone she could not understand, but Ariandre had assured her the faeries understood her words. “And he’s taken,” she added with a smile.

  The red glow around Fiona flashed brighter several times in quick succession. Leesa took that to mean Fiona was laughing. The faerie chirped in Ariandre’s ear again, and then her light flashed a few more times.

  Ariandre smiled. “Fiona says Rave is a bit too big for her—otherwise you might have a fight on your hands.”

  Leesa laughed. “I’m glad we won’t have to do battle, then. Do these faeries possess magic? Beyond their light and flying, I mean.”

  “Oh, yes,” Ariandre replied. “They control the magic of the forest. Without their aid, you would have found it quite impossible to pass through, I think.”

  Leesa thought back to how the pathway opened and closed in the impossibly dense underbrush, and how the limbs of the trees above them bent back to allow some daylight through. It was hard to believe the tiny faeries had been responsible for all that.

  “Really? They did that? I thought it was you.”

  Ariandre shook her head. “No. I can pass through the forest if I choose to, though I seldom do. Most others need the faeries’ help, or must fly over the trees. We have defenses for that as well, though, to keep out the uninvited.”

  Leesa looked up. She saw nothing but the same pale gray haze above them. Whatever defenses Ariandre had up there were invisible, but after what she had seen so far, she trusted that they were there, and that they would be effective.

  “Fiona, while we’re waiting, why don’t you show Leesa and Rave a bit of your magic,” Ariandre suggested.

  Fiona flitted from where she was hovering near the centaur’s head to the nearest tree so swiftly she seemed to leave a trail of light behind her, like a tiny red comet flashing across the sky. As she disappeared into the thick foliage, the rest of the faeries floated off to the side so they wouldn’t block the view.

  Though the air here was perfectly still, the upper leaves of the tree began to rustle as if beset by a steadily rising breeze. Soon the entire canopy was shaking, until finally the tree seemed to split in two, with half the branches bending to the right and the other half bending away to the left.

  Leesa thought it was a pretty impressive display for a tiny faerie, but Fiona wasn’t done. The two halves came back together and then parted again, and then again, and again, almost as if the tree was silently clapping. Next, the foliage split into four sections, each bending and swaying independently of the others. Leesa was even more impressed now. She had thought a whole horde of faeries necessary to open the pathway through the forest, but now she saw that a small group of them could probably have accomplished the task.

  Finally, the tree grew still once more, and Fiona appeared from out of the leaves. She sped back across to Leesa and Rave, hovering in front of Leesa.

  “Very impressive,” Leesa said. “Are you sure there weren’t any more faeries hiding in that tree helping you?” she added jokingly.

  Fiona twittered rapidly as her red glow flashed.

  Ariandre translated. “She says if you keep that up, she just might fight you for Rave after all. She’s joking,” Ariandre hastened to add.

  Leesa laughed. She remained just as anxious to be reunited with Ralin, but at least Ariandre and the faeries were making things fun while they all waited for the Miracles to arrive.

  LEAH

  CHAPTER 21

  WE SET OUT FROM KAI’S VILLAGE early in the morning, after enjoying a quick breakfast of kookiya fruit. Each of us has found room in our packs for one or two more of the delicious fruit. They’re not all that big or heavy, and they’ll provide a very nice change from our canned rations.

  The size of our company has increased by one—Raj is coming with us. Whether it’s to help his brother on the quest or to give himself the chance to get to know Doc better, I’m not sure. Judging by the way he and Doc smile whenever they’re near each other, I’m guessing it’s probably some of both. I find myself wondering if Kai and I smile that much when we’re together—I’m pretty sure I do, but I’m going to have to start checking whether he does.

  Raj and Kai take turns leading us through the tangled, vine-infested woods, so I get more time with Kai than usual, which is just fine with me. And he does seem to be smiling a lot as we talk, which makes me smile even more.

  It takes us almost half a day of steady hiking to reach the end of what was beginning to seem like a never ending forest. If the portal hadn’t deposited us on the rocky hillside the other day, I might have started thinking that this entire world was covered by gnarled trees and poisonous vines.