“Nay, he had a lovely wife—as beautiful as she was delicate. She was from the Isle of the Monsters—a Sprite like my mother, but one with a gentle nature. Lady Amadeen knew that being away from her kind was dangerous to her health, but unlike my mother who didn’t mind leaving my father and me to return whenever she needed, Lady Amadeen loved Simon Black more than anything in the world, and she refused to be apart from him. I gave her a gift that helped her regain her health when I was nine. I was working on the docks on the Isle of the Giants, and the Sea Wasp had come to port. I knew that she was a Fairy the moment I saw her. I also knew that she was very ill.” He looked down at Tonya with a faint smile and continued. “She was carrying a basket of flowers. Being nine and wanting to impress a certain young lady who had caught my eye, I took a few of the flowers in exchange for a unicorn hair bracelet that I had appropriated during my travels,” he explained.
“Unicorn hair! You have unicorns in the Seven Kingdoms?” she exclaimed with awe.
He chuckled, nodded, and lifted a hand to tuck a stray dark hair behind her ear.
“Yes, there are unicorns. They are inherently shy and difficult to find. However, they are extraordinarily powerful and intelligent creatures. They have the ability to heal. The bracelet was given to me by a unicorn that I had befriended. Xyrie healed me when I was sick and gave me the hair as a gift when I left. I made a bracelet out of it, and then I saw the Lady Amadeen, who clearly needed it far more than I. Unbeknownst to me, someone observed my modest transaction,” he said as he turned and looked back out at the ocean.
“Who saw you?” she quietly inquired.
“Simon Black, Pirate King, and Lady Amadeen’s husband,” he replied.
He started walking again. He had answered most of her questions, but he wasn’t ready quite yet to share everything. The reactions of those who knew his secret in the Seven Kingdoms were enough to make him hesitate. How could he expect Tonya, a human with no magical skills, to accept the power that he now possessed?
She fell into step with him. The tide was out, and for the moment, the skies were clear. He could feel a storm building off the coast. It would be here later tonight.
When he didn’t continue, Tonya said, “When I was twelve, my parents were killed in a bomb blast while reporting on a Civil War overseas.”
“They were good parents to you?” he asked.
Tonya smiled and nodded. “The best. From the earliest moment that I can remember, they would take me with them. The world was my classroom. They covered humanitarian issues—the effects of climate change, war, drought, floods, and more on different societies. They also reported the good things that people could do for each other. I came down sick with the flu the day we were supposed to fly out. A neighbor volunteered to let me stay with her. They were only supposed to be gone for a couple of weeks,” she said.
Ashure paused when she stooped to pick up a pretty shell. She carefully brushed the sand off of it. She was silent as they began walking again.
“What happened when they didn’t come back? Did you go live with other family?” he pressed, wanting to know everything about her.
She shook her head. “There was no other family. My parents were only children. My dad was raised in foster care and had been on his own since he was sixteen. My mom’s dad had died and her mom had dementia and was living in a nursing home,” she explained.
He frowned. “What of this neighbor with whom you were staying? Did she care for you?” he inquired.
She released a short laugh. “Pricely wasn’t the motherly type. The day after my parent’s funeral, Child Services showed up. I didn’t come with money, and as Pricely so eloquently put it—she wasn’t a charity,” she replied.
“Where did you go?” he asked.
“The Robinsons, the Ramseys, the Adams, the Parsleys, two different Williams, then the Peters, Lances, and a few more that are best forgotten before I ended up with the Rollings. I started to lose count of the bedrooms that I’d slept in and the schools that I’d attended. It’s hard trying to be normal when you’ve never lived normal before. I didn’t fit in—until I met Max,” she confessed.
“Max—this is the man you spoke of earlier. The one that woke you up,” he said.
She nodded. “Max was a cop. He still is—but he’s a detective now. He never gave up on me. Max talked me into giving the Rollings a chance. I did—for him. When Mr. Rollings had a heart attack the night Decker almost killed me, it looked like I was headed for Juvie, so Max and Angela took me into their home. For the first time in my life, I had a normal family. They had Little Max, then Angie, but they never treated me any differently than their own kids. It was nice,” she said, tossing the shell she had found back on the ground.
Ashure reached down and threaded his fingers through Tonya’s. Warmth and peace swept through him when she curled her fingers around his. They walked nearly a mile in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, but he never felt alone. For the first time in his life he felt—normal.
6
Seagulls squawked as they flew overhead. Tonya followed them with her eyes as the birds soared and landed near the edge of the water. She reluctantly pulled her hand free from Ashure’s grasp and brushed a loose strand of her hair back from her face.
“I’m going to bring you to someone who can help send you back home,” she blurted out.
“But—I’ve only arrived! Surely there is no rush,” he protested.
She looked down at the sand. “If you just disappeared, won’t someone back on your world be worried? I’m nobody here and there were people looking for me,” she pointed out.
Ashure shrugged. “My men are used to me disappearing and returning,” he responded.
“And they don’t worry about you? What if you are hurt or in danger or—or—I don’t know, sick or something?” she asked.
“I have been on my own since I was seven. I believe I can handle just about anything,” he dryly answered.
“Yeah, it looked like you were doing pretty good early this morning when you were on the floor eating a mop,” she retorted.
“That was a bit of a surprise,” he admitted with a grin.
She shook her head. “Still, this isn’t a good place for you to be. Our world is nothing like yours, Ashure. You can’t wiggle a finger and have the dishes clean themselves here. People in small towns like this are nosy. They want to know other people’s business. The sooner you return to your world, the better it will be for all of us,” she insisted.
“How do you know about my world?” he asked.
She glanced at him before she stopped and turned to face the ocean. Wrapping her arms around her waist, she stared out at the rolling waves. He stopped and faced her.
“I’m a reporter. In case you don’t know what that is, it’s a person who investigates what’s going on in the local area and the world. It’s a lot harder now-a-days to break into the news field. I’ve been writing freelance for the last three years. I don’t make a lot of money from it, but it pays the bills—most of the time. I overheard Max talking to Angela about a couple of strange disappearances in Yachats and thought this could be the big break I was looking for. Getting a scoop on a case like this could open a lot of doors. It was frustrating because things felt weird from the beginning, but there was nothing I could put my finger on. Ross Galloway, a local fisherman, was the primary suspect in the disappearances of two women, Carly Tate and Jenny Ackerly, yet there was no proof that he’d murdered anyone. No proof that anyone had even been murdered, they were just gone,” she said, taking a deep breath as she remembered her frustration.