Welcome back! Dakota here with chapter 4! Thank you all so much for your comments and ratings, I hope you like this chapter as much as the last! Don't forget to rate and comment, I love reading them!
Yesterday, James Faraday had awoken in his tent, having slept on hard ground. In less than twenty-four hours he met and became intimate with a selkie, a vampire, and a woman who appeared to have magic powers. The word witch was rife with expectations and presumptions but that was the word that came to mind in seeing his hostess now.
They stood in her garden, blossoming plants all around them, fat fruits and vegetables growing amongst curled tangles of foliage.
Gwendolyn was naked and covered in moving vines. Her exposed skin, what wasn't concealed by the green vines, was decorated with strange symbols in blue paint.
"Morning, lover," she said, curving a green tendril up her opposite arm with a finger. "Ready to do some magic?"
James, having seen and experienced a variety of sexy and supernatural things since arriving here, knew he ought to choose his next words carefully.
"Are we going to kill Batman?"
Gwen cocked her head at him. "I've never encountered such a creature."
"Nevermind." He hazarded a few steps toward her. "I've never done magic before."
Gwen smiled warmly. "Oh, I very much doubt that."
"Okay, once I scared my nephew by pretending to steal his nose by tucking my thumb between my fingers."
Gwen walked toward him, her expression dreamy and seductive.
"And I got pretty good at tying a cherry stem using just my mouth."
"Mmmm."
"One time I—"
Gwen put a finger to his lips, silencing him. A small green tendril wrapped around her finger and a flower bud formed at the end. The bud grew and then bloomed into a white flower that seemed to rotate in the sunlight like a lazy windmill. James stared at it, mesmerized.
"Magic is just a way of seeing the world around you." Gwen's voice was soft, and soothing. "It is the act of perceiving the hidden and the forgotten." She ran her other hand down his chest and he felt a vine wrapped around his waist, pulling him close to her.
The white flower puffed out a small cloud of pollen directly into Jame's face.
He inhaled, surprised by it, and immediately turned his head to sneeze.
"Jeez, sorry," he started but Gwen pulled his face back to hers and kissed him full on the lips. She was warm and soft and it was like pulling a blanket tight around his shoulders. He became light-headed almost immediately and realized it suddenly took an extraordinary effort to stay standing. His legs tried to collapse under him but the vines kept him standing.
"Just breathe," she said, stroking the side of his face. "The worst of it will pass shortly."
"Oh fuck. You poisoned me again." James tried shaking his head as if he could dislodge the vertigo he suddenly felt. "You really need to quit doing that, lady."
"I promise this is not to take advantage of you. But you need to see what I see if we're going to hold a palaver."
"A what?"
"I've lived so long, watched the world change so many times, and watched so many generations of people be born, live, and die that it's a struggle to remember that I was once human myself. With human fears and human desires." She kissed him again, delicately, as if savoring his taste. "Now I have this man in front of me. This strong, handsome, virile man, and it's hard to put myself in his shoes. What does he want, I ask. Money? Power? Glory?"
"No," he whispered. James' vision gained a depth in color he didn't have names for. The plants and trees around him separated into a thousand shades of what his brain stupidly thought of as 'green'. The dirt under his feet became a fractal pattern of bronze that flowed as if he were standing on the surface of a raging ocean. He held on to Gwen to steady himself, sure that if he didn't he might fall into the Earth.
Gwen's face, beautiful and mysterious, shifted in this new spectrum. Her eyes seemed to sparkle, their color shifting continuously. "Most people are easy to read," she continued. "Their motivations are visible when they speak. But you . . . " She pulled his shirt off. "You are an enigma to me."
Her fingers were dripping in that blue paint—were they always dripping? Or hadn't he noticed—and she began drawing on his chest.
"Can I ask you a question, James?" Gwen's voice made him think of honey.
"Yes."
"Why did you come to our island?"
Storm clouds crashed above him and it began to rain. He looked up. "What? Did I just make that happen? Or, did you?"
"Sometimes we see without seeing."
Fat drops of rain fell on them, but Gwen drew another symbol on his chest. There was a crack of thunder in the distance.
"What brought you to our island?" Gwen asked again. Her voice was far away now, but seemingly all around him.
"I was gathering samples," James said automatically. But it was like he was reading a script. Not even he believed it.
Gwen kissed a symbol after she wrote it. When she pulled back those eyes unraveled him. "I see you, James. It's alright, lover."
Rain fell harder. Smashing into his face as he looked up. That same fractal pattern crawled across the sky and James felt like he was underwater.
Am I drowning?
"I . . ." he started, then stopped. "I just wanted to be alone if I did it."
Lightning curled across the sky in a spiderweb flash. Thunder boomed closer.
"I wanted to find a spot overlooking the sound. I thought I might watch the sunset, then I was going to put a gun under my chin and kill myself."
Gwen nodded, tears forming in her eyes as if he only confirmed what she'd suspected. When she blinked her tears away they fell upward. She traced and retraced her fingers around the symbols on his chest. His skin felt electric. "And now?"
"Now, I'm . . . here."
"Magic is funny sometimes," Gwen said. "It has a mind of its own. A personality, even. A love potion will often rebound to someone you despise. A conjuration of rain to end a drought leads to a flood. And a protection spell can protect more than what it was originally intended to. I know now why our hearth let you in."
She whispered in a language he'd never heard before.
And the world focused again.
