The ordinary girl

Chapter ten

We flew apart.

"Hello mother." Ash said, his voice a bit uneven, but still with a lazy smile.

She scowled. "I was gonna remind you that it's time for you to go." She glared at him and the smile slipped from his face. I shivered a bit, if someone wanted to stare more icy then this woman they'd have to take lessons from the North Pole.

When she left I asked carefully. "So where are we going?"

His smirk was back as he said. "To the elvish court."

I just gaped at him. The elvish court? What kind of place was that? And more important, why would he take me there? But the only thing I managed to get out was. "I thought you didn't call yourselves elves."

He chuckled low. "We don't." And before I could ask another question he turned and walked out so that I had to jog to keep up pace with him.

I had prepared myself for a long walk but he stopped just a few yards from his house.

"Take my hand." He said.

I glared at him skeptically, as if.

He rolled his eyes at me. "Come on I'm gonna show you something."

Hesitantly I took his hand, ignoring the tingles where he touched me. I arched an eyebrow, I couldn't see anything different.

He surprised me by sounding a little nervous as he spoke. "Now close your eyes and, I don't know, feel the forests power. It is small, compared to the world. The distance to where we're heading is so very small."

I did what he said and tried to imagine that the place where we were going was just out of sight, it was just one problem.

"I don't know where we're heading." I said and broke the silence that had surrounded us after his words.

He sighed. "That doesn't matter."

So I tried again, and suddenly I felt a sort of power. I opened my eyes and shot him a playful glance, before I let go of his hand and took off running.

I laughed a little, I loved this. I felt like I could run all day, but sadly it just took a few moments before the court appeared in front of us. You might be wondering how I knew that it was the court since I've never seen it -or even had it described to me- before in my life. But it really couldn't have been anything else. It radiated power like the sun radiates light. I felt an unintentional shiver run up my spine and the urge to turn away and run came over me. In front of me was a big mansion that looked old fashion with quite a lot of smaller houses around it.

I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around to watch Ash come towards me between the trees with a genuine smile spreading across his face.

"I knew you could do it." He said happily as he reached me.

I laughed and felt stronger than ever before. I twitched self-consciously as my voice echoed crazily through the woods.

"Come on, lets go." I said fast to cover it up.

I'd never seen something so beautiful, nor so terrible. There were creatures, fae, everywhere. Creatures with to many wrists, creatures who had eyes with nothing but white in, creatures who looked bruised and beaten. I was shaking by the end of the first corridor. Yet they all had a certain wicked beauty in them. The too big deer eyes or the thin blue arms on a body could pull my gaze there, only for me then too see the horrors behind.

I couldn't do this, they were to many, and they all seemed to be looking at me. I felt week and I tried to tell Ash that I didn't think this was such a good idea, but I couldn't find the strength to get the words past my lips.

It seemed like I'd passed out. How embarrassing, I thought.

"She can do this, she is strong enough." I heard a voice say, sounding desperately sure.

"She couldn't even take the arrival here." Another voice said doubting.

"You don't understand. She is stronger than any other halfbreed, she ran from Gaia here in less than ten seconds, you know what that means." The first voice continued persuasive.

Halfbreed, Gaia? Were they talking about me? Obviously they didn't know I was awake yet -and I planned to keep it that way- so I refrained an urge to open my eyes, even though I was deadly curious about who the other voice belonged to. Since I'd now identified the first voice as Ash's.

I heard the first voice sigh and then say. "Okay she can stay, but I hope for her own sake that she is as strong as you seem to think she is."

I heard two pairs of footsteps and then a hand touched my shoulder lightly.

"Fairy, I have done something really stupid, please forgive me. But I know that you can do this and it's the only way." Ash didn't sound very happy over winning the argument, but he still sounded just as convinced when he said that I could make it.

So I'll have to, I thought to myself. I'll prove him right.

But I had no idea what I had just decided on.