The Moonstone (Enchantment Book 1) (5 page)

“Nyx, come here sweetie, let’s got back to your real house!”

The next second, the velvety creature transforms under my eyes into…Gertrude!

“What? I can’t understand any of this. What’s going on? What do you want from me? What did you do with Nyx?”

I feel completely hysterical and get up to shake the woman with all my strength.

“Lou, I am Nyx! I’ve been her since the beginning. I have the power to transform into animals, that’s part of who I am.”

I back up to catch my breath; I pace the living room and grab a pastry as I walk by. At least they’re still as tasty as before.

“Ok, if I admit for a moment that all this is real, which it most certainly isn’t, why would you have come to my house for so many nights over all these years?”

“Lou, I promised your mother I would take care of you and that’s why I’m here.”

“My mother! You don’t know my mother, I’ve never seen you with her.”

“Your biological mother, dearest, I was one of her closest friends.”

How dare she say something like that? Incredible to think that she would play with someone’s emotions without the slightest concern about the impact it might have. She certainly did find out many details about her neighbors; that’s for sure!

“Lou, I can see that I’ve upset you and I knew your mother whether you like it or not. I think that the time has come for you to know the truth and she is part of that truth.”

I am furious and if she weren’t so old and frail I would clock her good and hard, the old bat. But, I must say that the rest of her story is intriguing…I really want to know how far she wants to go with this.

“Fine, I’ll listen, but no creative explanations or lies, only the cold, hard truth. I want to ask a few questions and I insist on answers,” I say firmly.

“That’s all I ask, my little Lou. I’ve tucked you in and watched over you for so long! I’ve been waiting impatiently for this day!”

“Perfect! First of all, if it is true that you’re Nyx, why spend all that time with me without revealing the truth? Why did you wait for me to figure it out on my own?”

“Today is the first full moon since your twenty-first birthday and I wanted to wait until you reached that age to reveal the truth. You weren’t ready before, and I’m not sure you’re ready now, but time is of the essence.”

“You have access to Facebook and you saw that last month was my birthday. That proves nothing and I don’t see a connection with the full moon.”

The woman walks towards me, staring at me with her hypnotic eyes, at least, what is left of them, given their color. She grabs me by the shoulders and forces me to sit back down.

“Sit down, Lou, and let me explain. In order to do so, I need to start at the beginning and I must speak quickly, if not, we’ll be here all month.”

“As you wish. Any chance you might have some popcorn? It would be more appropriate than the pastries given that you’ll be telling me more of your fairytales.”

I settle into the sofa, trying to find a comfortable position, and crossing my arms to signal my impatience.

“Well, you certainly have your mother’s feistiness. First of all, let me enlighten you and ask you to keep an open mind. The world is not as it seems, Lou, and I know that deep down inside you already believe that. Why do you think that you are so fixated on myths? Don’t you feel different than the others, as if you belonged to a different type of people?”

“I’m a dreamer, yes, that’s not hard to see. Only someone like me would dare go out alone out at 10 p.m. and walk into a complete stranger’s house.”

“Lou, I’m not a stranger, I’m the person who has known all of your joy, your sorrow and your suffering for more than a decade. That must count for something, doesn’t it?”

“Listen, magic and all that mumbo-jumbo, it’s ridiculous. I’m sure that Nyx is somewhere in the basement and that you’re trying to pull my leg, for whatever sordid reason.”

“Well, as you like to say, desperate times call for desperate measures!”

With that, and in front of my eyes, she morphs into a beautiful tiny black and white kitten, and not just any kitten, my Nyx as a kitten, just as cute as I remember. A few seconds later, she grows to take on the form of an adult Nyx. As I approach her, the cat morphs into a majestic black panther that roars convincingly. I’m rooted to my seat on the sofa, and stop breathing. So, it’s true! It’s real! No need to pinch myself, the large feline slowly approaches and stops mere inches from my face. I can feel it’s warm breath on my neck and it’s black eyes stare at me as if it could see into my soul. She roars once more; I tremble.

“Ok, ok, I believe you, come back Gertrude! I get it, I get it, I understand!”

Instantly the feline backs up and Gertrude takes her normal shape, as normal as she can be considered.

“So, now that you believe me, are you ready to listen sincerely? I’m not your enemy and I can promise you, Lou, that I have your back. Seconds are being counted now, so you have to absorb all that I will tell you and you can have time to process it later. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes, yes, I’m ready to listen, I…go ahead.”

I finish eating my delicious pastry that has been flaking away in my hand during all the prior excitement.

“Magic exists, it’s quite real and much more than simple magician’s illusions. There are two species of living beings on earth, enchanters and non-enchanters. Your adoptive parents, other humans and animals are part of the non-enchanter group, which is the largest one. The enchanters are sorcerers, mystical creatures and demi-Gods. You know, the mythology that you love so much is quite real. The Gods exist, however they only came in contact with humans at the very beginning of creation. They created the world and the two classes of beings and then went to other planets to create other worlds. Enchanters and non-enchanters must live in harmony. When the Gods left, humans outnumbered the sorcerers and hunted them down, killing most of the mythical creatures. Since the time of antiquity, witches have had to hide in order to survive. Of course, there have been other massacres since the war at creation, Salem being just one example.”

I can’t help it and interrupt her, saying:

“To listen to you, we are the brutish and sadistic ones, but if we go by history, witches are known as being devil worshippers and on the side of evil.”

“My dear, don’t believe everything you read in books. There are, in fact, evil sorcerers, as there are evil human beings. I must say, though, that most witches care for humanity, and I am one of them.”

That is only slightly reassuring, but the whole thing isn’t making sense to me.

“Why aren’t we aware of this war, or the witch-hunts, or even that we are all living together? Until today, in my eyes, you were only the subject of fairytales and not part of reality.”

“The war at the beginning of time has been forgotten because we managed to erase most of its traces. When we realized we would be defeated due to our reduced numbers, our clans decided to live on the margins of society, a little like a mirage in the desert. If humans think of us only as legend, all the better, as that gives us protection. The majority of us are happy with this secret way of life, but some who are power-hungry wish for only one thing, and that is to regain their status. There were a couple of escapes through history, Salem being one of them. But, believing in witches is believing in something that escapes us, believing in a world filled with the unknown and that has been our best cover. If someone were to yell it from the rooftops that he knows some real witches, he would be taken for a fool.”

“It’s actually quite logical, actually, I understand. I know what it feels like to be excluded and I would love to be considered a mirage.”

“I know, Lou, that my appearance is repugnant and believe me, I wanted the illusionist’s powder to work so that you wouldn’t have to see me like this,” she said, pointing at her face.

“I understand that some witches like me inspire disgust, but we’re not all as hideous as I am. Let me tell you my story and maybe then you will feel more at ease. An enchanter lives on average two hundred years, and of those, I still have many to come, if the universe allows. Twenty-two years ago I was still a young and beautiful woman. Your mother and I were good friends. One day, while out shopping for a new still, I met up with a young scientist named Nathan. He was magnificent and I fell head over heels in love with him from the instant we met. He felt the same; we loved each other deeply. With him I discovered feelings of great love and that humans were not the way they were portrayed in tales the wizards read to us in our childhood.”

“How crazy that you had “human” fairytales when you were growing up!”

“No, not at all, the wizards wanted to protect us because we must preserve a distance between ourselves and the human world. Of course we are acquainted with the other world, but we only go there for business and we must be discreet, so in general our lives are lived on the margins of society and we keep to ourselves.”

“How can it be that you looked so young twenty-two years ago and now you look…?”

I don’t know how to describe her without hurting her feelings, but I think that my disgust must be apparent.

“Atrocious, I know. That’s where the story gets sad. To strengthen the bonds within our community, the committee of wizards created a pact a hundred years ago. No enchanter is permitted to share a life of love with a non-enchanter, and risks banishment for doing so. When an enchanter is banished, she must choose a place to make her home. She may use her principal magical skill anywhere, but her secondary one is confined to use only in her home. Her physical appearance, and that of her home will deteriorate to mark her as a banished one.”

That explains a lot!

“What happened to Nathan?”

“We were together for a few months and nobody was the wiser. It was pure wonder; we talked about moving to California and getting a house on the beach. I would have loved to have children with him, but sadly this is impossible between two species that are so completely different, the children would not have survived their birth. I hadn’t yet revealed my powers to Nathan, but I knew that someday I would have to, he would certainly eventually notice when he started to age, and I didn’t. We were walking in the park one afternoon when I spotted Lord Black, the vilest and the most evil of the enchanters. He denounced us to the council of wizards, of which he is a member. I thought of trying to escape with Nathan, but the thought of him being hurt was unimaginable. I left him after a last night of love and wrote him a letter telling him that I had decided to move to Europe. To ensure that he wouldn’t follow me, I told him that I’d never loved him and that he’d only been a distraction for me. As he didn’t know any of my friends, it would be impossible for him to track me down.”

“Why did you abandon him? You can’t abandon the love of your life. He would’ve understood and you could’ve run away together.”

The old woman, her glassy eyes glistening, answered me in a tone that transmitted her sadness and desperation.

“Lou, did you ever love someone so much that it was hard to breathe when that person wasn’t by your side? A love that was so pure that you would die for him. Nathan was my reason for living, but I couldn’t imagine watching him die for me. It was the only solution. Once the letter was delivered, I went before the council. They branded me with the seal of banishment.”

She lowered her white linen shirt to show me a scar in the shape of an X at the base of her neck.

“Once the brand was applied, they gave me twenty-four hours to find a property and I happened upon this one here. I fought the urge to go and see him one last time to explain because I knew he would have tried to follow me and I didn’t want him to ever see me like this.”

Gertrude pointed to her chest, her eyes and voice were charged with powerful emotion.

“I still see him once a week, he lives near here in the village. After my departure I could see him wandering in the park every day for months. I saw him showing my photo to strangers and papering the town with notices. I changed into a mouse several times to spy on him and watched him first destroy and then re-glue the photos that we had taken together. I tortured myself and watched him cry and even beg me in his sleep. I couldn’t continue to watch him suffer, so I had a friend prepare a forgetfulness potion that would erase all the memories we had created together. I followed him to a restaurant and put it in his coffee when he wasn’t looking. And that was it. A few months later he met another woman; today he is married and they have three children. I console myself knowing that she was able to give him what I was not able to.”

I feel as if my heart is splitting in two and I feel an immense sense of pity for Gertrude. The poor woman was deprived of her only love and condemned to forever watch him be happy without her. It’s similar to what I’d been through, but a thousand times worse as he had really loved her.

“Oh my God! That is the saddest story I’ve ever heard. Your witch’s laws are stupid!”

“We see it as a survival mechanism, but I do agree with you that we should be able to live in harmony with each other and not against one another.”

“You said that all this happened twenty-two years ago and I’m twenty-one years old, does this have anything to do with me?”

“Yes and no, my dear. You mother and I were fervent in our need for harmony between the two peoples. Long before I met Nathan, we dreamt of a day when humans and enchanters would be at peace. The events that transpired with him only served to cement that desire in me. Humanity has evolved and I believe that they are ready to get to know us. The wizards are still stuck with their prehistoric prejudices. They gather warriors who find the best young wizards to train them for combat. Most of us are happy to have the warriors because we know that we’ll need them for defense. Humans could destroy us in mere days if we’re not prepared. But, this preparation also serves to widen the breach between our two cultures.”