Witch Clan: Warriors! by John Stormm (good book club books txt) 📕

are your finest feature. I am Elder Scylla of the Dawn Children. I will help prepare you for your trip to Logres. We have much to do in a few days until your crossover. You may leave him with me, Shan. I will return him to his matriarch after we get him measured and outfitted.”

The tall Sidhe nodded and smiled, observing the unlikely pair and turned to leave the courtyard. John turned again to admire those eyes for another eternal moment when he was aware that not only was her mouth moving again, but something had landed on his shoulder.

“I said, this is Indigo,” she repeated with a laugh like crystal chimes. “He is my personal guardian. Did you not hear me?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, blushing. “It sort of happened to me again. I’ll be okay now. You said indigo?”

Looking over to his right shoulder, a purple globe of light dimmed its radiance to show a tiny winged man about two and a half inches tall, bowing courteously. His tiny face was stretched into a grin that showed he was clearly very amused. Remembering Shan’s instructions about the faeries, he pictured the purple ball of light and then a small fox leaping through the tall grass and stopping to bow on its front legs. In a flash of violet wings, the tiny man kissed him on the center of his forehead and dashed to the Sidhe woman where it hovered over her left shoulder.

“Indigo approves of Little Fox,” she said, raising a finely arched eyebrow. “You speak pixie as though you have always known them. He is duly impressed.”

“I’m getting the hang of things here,” he said. “This seems remarkably like the stories of the sky people I used to hear when I was a boy. By any chance, you wouldn’t know Sky Woman. Would you?”

“We are all related after some fashion,” she replied. “Here she is known as Emerald Sky.”

“I always pictured her as blue skies,” he replied puzzled.

“Indeed. You have eyes much like hers, but Emerald is a designation here for one who holds a dominion,” she explained. “Much like royalty in your own plane but here it goes beyond just an individual with a title to a personage of considerable personal power and command. Here a title signifies something deeper than social status.”

“So then the terms Eldritch and Elder have something more to do with what you are as who you are?”

“Indeed,” she replied. “The Elders here are the Firstborn of the Dawn Children. We predate humanity by a considerable margin. Obviously, not all the Sidhe, like even Master Shabriri are not of the Firstborn, but that status does not hinder his personal reputation in our court in any way. My cousin, Shan is an Elder but serves in an ancillary capacity to Master Shabriri. We all serve in the ways we are best suited. Eldritch Siara is my mother. She is one of the originals of our race and has no parents save for the Maker, the Ancient of Days.”

“That’s incredible,” he remarked. “If you are of the Firstborn of a race older than men, then you must be incredibly ancient. You must be immortal.”

“We do not measure time as you do,” she responded. “I was already millennia old when men first began working copper and bronze. As for immortal… all of us are immortal. Even your kind. Though here, without some sort of mishap, our bodies will endure untold years, and like you, our spirits go on forever. Your flesh does not make you who and what you are but rather the spirit that resides in it.”

“Wiser words never spoken,” he replied in open admiration.

“Come with me,” she said indicating an ornate doorway, “we have much yet to do with you.”

* * *

Emma followed the Eldritch Siara through countless treasure rooms of fine fabrics and clothing that would put an Empress of China to shame. Everything from the sheerness and strength of fabrics woven of spider’s silk to gold and platinum weaves of thread almost too thin to see with the naked eye, the degree of fae workmanship was staggering.

“As you will pose as a witch Matriarch from the plane of Atlantis,” the Eldritch explained, “you and your party will require clothing befitting your status. However, it must not be of obviously Fae design or it will raise suspicions. I think it will better suit us to make it of fine materials of richness and strength to protect the wearer somewhat, but of a cut reminiscent of your own home world. It is important that it looks and feels natural to you.”

“I agree,” she replied. “The longer we stay there, the harder it will be to keep up a heavily fabricated ruse. It will be easier on all of us just to exagerate what we already have in place.”

“You have a sharp mind for one so young, Emma Silverlock,” the Eldritch replied. “My confidence in you is well placed. We have a number of jeweled artifacts of varying capabilities, but as you represent a human plane, we need to keep what you carry down to a minimum to avoid suspicions of Sidhe interference. There’s an Emerald Tiara of note that I would like to show you.”

“I’m going to look like the Queen of England in all of this,” she exclaimed.

“Not precisely, dear,” Siara said, “though it is important that you appear to be the ruler of more than a single island nation if we are to capture Mordred by his greed. This one is a bit understated in design but its function will be particularly useful to you. It grants the wearer dominion over others. So when you issue a command, it will carry a little extra weight. You are far too humble a woman to be the Matriarch of an entire world or nation. With your wisdom and a little boost from this tiara, no one will ever doubt that you are.”

* * *

“At your fullest speed, I want you to run at that wall,” Shabriri said, indicating the wall in question.

“You want me to splat my face against that stone at high speed?” Johnny asked incredulously.

“Not at all,” the Sidhe Master replied patiently. “I want you to continue running up the side of it. You will have to raise your center and move it ahead of yourself as well as pick up your feet as you close on it to continue your stride up the wall. How far you make it depends upon your speed and how well you can move your center of gravity.”

It sounded do-able when stated like that. Johnny bounced on the balls of his feet, getting a feeling for where his center and gravity were and then shot for the wall. Upon reaching it, he lifted his forward leg chest high and managed two steps up the wall before he pushed off and twisted in the air so that he would land with his feet under him.

“Not too bad for a first try,” Shabriri coached. “Now I want you to try that at a diagonal angle towards the corner and try to continue your run across the adjacent wall.”

“You don’t seem to think you’re asking for too much. Do you?” Johnny retorted.

“Just keep thinking of where your feet are as ’down’ and keep your knees a bit more flexed to absorb the impact,” the Master said. “You’ll get a little more distance out of that and then later we can introduce you to an artifact that will take things farther still.”

“Something to make me fly?” he asked excitedly.

“More like ’weight control’,” Shabriri replied. “Now run as I’ve told you.”

Johnny dashed for the corner of the wall making his two steps up the one and another two off the other, coming down at an angle and continued a full run up a tree and perched on a branch with an obviously improvised air of nonchalance that left the Master Sidhe shaking his head at him.

“I really want to fly, you know,” he said, casually buffing his fingernails on his shirt.

“I’m sure you do,” the Master replied while lifting into the air to join him on the next branch. “But flying is for birds, faeries, some insects, sylphs, zephyrs and certain other types, but not for Sidhe boys and men like ourselves. We must align with others more capable of flight to accomplish the illusion of flight. You are aware that your night of flight was not due to your own inherent power, are you not?”

“Yes,” he said dejectedly, “It was the wind that took me along for the ride. I was just wishing is all.”

“Be careful what you wish for, my friend,” the Master gently admonished. “Especially to be what you are not, when what you are holds so much more promise.”

“Sometimes I don’t think anybody knows for certain what I am,” he pouted. “Especially me.”

“I do,” Shabriri said with a toothy grin. You’re an Emerald like your father.

“What’s that mean?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow. “I’m Irish or something?”

“As Irish as the Hollow Hills,” the Master replied, “the sidhs of ancient Ireland which was once your father’s domain. I imagine that he had returned to re-establish a domain in Abred since he had lost his when the first Celts came to Ireland. You seem to have all the knacks of an Emerald with your own peculiar human twists. I think you will have a very interesting life ahead of you, boy.”

“I heard he was a very bad man,” Johnny said. “Was he like a king or something?”

“Or something,”