Faerie Folly and Wizard Wands

Chapter Eight

One evening, as Sabine was singing with the birds, as dusky evening touched with night, she felt him come. Odd; as he had left for the day, and he never came those nights, but come he did.

She stood, and the birds flew off, and she greeted him,

"Well, puppy, tonight you'll stay?"

He gave a gentle ruff, and followed her into the house. She turned to him once the door had shut and smiled.

"Well, I feel as a bride on her first wedded night. You may be a dog, but you are still male. Where do you wish to sleep, then?"

He half-barked in laughter, and started to turn around in front of the fireplace.

"Want me to light that?" she asked, and went to find matches. When she returned from rummaging for a discouraging time in the kitchen, she found him with newspaper packaging from the box nearby already packed in the grate. It was times like those that she truly sensed huge intelligence within him, and grew to love his companionship even more.

"Ayeah~thank you, pup," she said, and crouched to start the fire, with him watching beside her.

When it was a high, happy, merry blaze, she sat next to him to watch the flames.

She grew weary quickly, and laid next to him; his shaggy fur comforting and homey. Son, she drifted to a fair sleep, but was inevitable interrupted by the dream, though it had changed incredibly.

She heard her own voice in this dream; youthful, high, and child-like~the voice of her four-year-old lungs. Yet in this youth, she spoke completely and fully, and in the strange, exotic language of the lady. And she fully saw Her, too, in all Her petite, pixie, slender ways; her quick, bird-like movements and Her delicate voice, and childish wonderment. And Sabine knew, now, She was a fairy~a woodland sprite; she smelled Her pine and rosemary, and she heard her own young voice call her mother.

Mother! Sabine tried to catch hold Her in her dreams, and ask of her where She was, and as she did so, She jumped to the air and flew away~she knew She had gone, literally, forever. As she jumped from her dream the doors of her mind opened on their rusted hinges, and~

Sabine awoke; in doing so so violently, she woke the dog beside me.

As he sat up to look at her inquisitively, she put a hand to her hair, and looked back with wonderment and understanding.

"My mother!" she breathed. "The lady of my dreams is my mother-and she is a fairy!" Sabine frowned. "But I still don't understand or know who-or what that man-perhaps next when I dream of him, I shall hear his words clearly!"

With that, she went, determined, back to sleep to conjure up the man she remembered. She was not disappointed. Come he did, just as she expected; a flash of hair, a deep laugh, twinkling eyes, and the halting words he spoke in a seemingly foreign tongue for him...

"My love, my dear Luelinea, you've lured me here-not quite against my will, I warrant...now what?"

And her mother's voice answered his, full of a teasing laughter.

"Stay and play in the wilds with me!"

"It is a fairy's desire to dance prosy with a man?"

The airy voice of the pixie returned; "You're not a man!"

There was laughter, then, both his and hers, and a spin of the greens of the forest depths of her youth.

And then he was going, reluctantly, and very sadly, saying to the woman pixie;

"She is my daughter, too, Luelinea, and I have left much of me, just as you have left much of yourself. It breaks me, but I must return."

The fairy voice was sorrowful; and so very low and burdened.

"So young, you leave her with me? I am wild, I am, and she will not learn the ways of my kind quickly enough. She will be old when she first learns of her powered blood. Take her-she is hindering...delightfully amusing, but hindering."

"You shall have to give up your merry romps for a while with the others, Luelinea, love. Besides, what are a few years for your eternal youth?" The man had picked up her, the babe, as he spoke, and whispered in her ear, though she was but a tiny child;

"Someday, we shall meet, sweet little Saquoya."

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In the late morn, Sabine woke, hard and stiff, in front of the dead fire. She looked at the grate, puzzled, for it looked as if it had been cleaned in the morning early, and then she realized the dog had gone.

Confused again, she wondered if he could open doors as well, as her front door needed someone with a strong arm to turn the knob and pull. Sighing, she stood, bending to release her taut and sore ligaments from their intense stiffness, when she recalled her dream in sudden, brilliant color.

Sabine wished with fervor that he, her dear pup, would return-she wondered where he had run to, and when he could come back. Shell shocked from her dream, and still marveling and mulling over things in her topsy-turvy head, she went to sit on her front step to wait. She could hardly fathom how, in one night, she remembered her language of youth and birth. The locked doors had swung wide, leaving her mind swirling with memories long lost. She recalled the carefree days in the forest with her mother faerie, her ways and her voice, her miry wild smell, and her never-ending love for her father.

She recalled how her mother would speak of him, and how at their parting, she had given Sabine the quick and simple memory. Somehow, even more than her mother had planned had leaked into the young daughter, for she had given Sabine the gift of how her parents and met and parted, a part of Sabine's history and past that was vital to discovering her home and her bloodlines.

Odd and peculiar, it seemed, that of the night past, she had dreamed far more than a remembrance of a memory-clearly and truthfully, she had seen and heard her father, he seemed a man to her, yet she knew that he was great indeed, and more than just a man.

And she believed this dream, for she felt its realness, and somehow, she had reached into her father's very heart and memory, and this drew her nearer...

She sat long, reminiscing her past, when she was struck with her mother's words... "She will be old when she first learns of her powered blood..." And she remembered her flying forever away, unable to miss Sabine, or give long thought to her, for she was wild, and truly only lent her heart to Sabine's father.

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Suddenly, she wondered if Sabine, herself, too, could fly. As she wondered thus, she felt two things simultaneously. He was coming back, and her blood became light, the feeling of being bound to the earth was gone, her being was hollow. She stood, without thinking about it, and was rewarded as floating a half foot from her top step.

He came around the corner to her yard, then, and gave a startled half-yelp, then barked urgently.

Sabine laughed at his discomfort.

"Yes, puppy, I have discovered I can fly, as my faerie mother can do."

She settled to the ground, and he climbed the steps to sit near her.

"And I dreamed of them both..." Sabine retold her entire dream, and he listened, attentively, almost too acutely, and as she finished, she pondered aloud;

"I believe my father is near, as I dream forever stronger every night. But he is not a man-this I feel, but then, what could he-who could he possibly be?"

She looked at her pup. "Ah, puppy, if you could but speak-I fear I shall believe anything, now, and this could certainly be an asset."

They stared at one another before he turned abruptly and left her, running swiftly t o his hilly mountains.

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He did not return until dusk, two days later, and she felt him come, as he came with a sureness and distinct permanence.

So shocked was she with this, she went to greet him at the gate.

"You come so late this eve, pup, and I feel great excitement."

He licked her fingers, then went to her front door, waiting for me.

"You will again spend this night with me?" she asked, at once gay and delighted.

He barked, and again she went in and lit the fire, though this night, she went to sleep up in her own room, leaving the dog to his own devices in the happy comfort of the fire. She was very aware of his presence the entire night, as if it tinged the color of her dreams.

When morn dawned hours later, she woke, and at once, her senses swivelled to the presence in her living room. After she readied herself for the day, she went down and spied him, covered completely by a quilt on the couch.

"Good morning, pup," she harkened, giving him plenty of space. There was a severe shifting under the blanket, and then the tussled head of a man popped out from the covering.

"Morn to you!" his British accent was thick and deep. "How light is it outside yet?"

She found her tongue enough to spit out, "The wee hours, kind sir, but the crack of day. It is quite dark out yet."

He stretched, and asked, "Mind not putting on a light, would you? I would do well not to be seen."

Sabine wondered if this was perhaps because he was some sort of murderer who was here to kill her...though why he would do so was beyond her.

She laughed forcibly, "There is none to see you."

"Don't be too sure." He sat up, revealing tattered, ripped, and dirty grey robes, and stretched yet again. "Bit surprised, dear woman?"

She regained movement enough to blink, and faltered. "A-a bit, indeed. Where's my-or-my puppy..." Suddenly she remembered what she had stated but the only day ago...that it was a pity her pup didn't speak, for she would believe anything by now, and his advice would be... "But...you are he, then?"

He smiled; quite handsomely with clean cut features, brown, dark eyes, and chocolate hair. He was strong, and tall, it seemed, and very much out of the ordinary.

"Quite right. It's time I tell you and take you home."

The permanence swelled around her and settled into her marrow. "Dear me-how things never seem to happen gradually!" She sighed, and cautiously approached the couch to sit beside him, keeping a few feet between them.

"I am Sirius Black. Animagus, graduate of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Azkaban escapee, and wanted murderer who is completely innocent by the way. And you are?"

She was unused to this dry humor and wit, along with his jumbled, made-up words and places. So he was a murderer indeed? She decided to ignore all of what he said, and spoke;

"My mother, she called me wee 'un, but everyone else calls me Sabine-no last name; not a real one, at least. Daughter of a fairy, and...my father unknown, holder of what my mother calls 'powered blood'."

Here he smiled. "Well, Sabine, I believe I know what the other half of you is. Oh, I am, by the way, a wizard."

She swallowed. "Indeed."

He grinned. "Yes, indeed. And an Animagus is when a wizard can turn into an animal, just as you've seen me so much in my form."

She nodded slowly. "That's...really quite interesting."

He stared again at her, grinning, then burst out in incredibly infectious laughter, and if circumstances were different, she would have laughed with him, and he reached across the couch and took her hand. It was limp and surprised.

"Ah! Dear Sabine! You haven't even expressed fear or wonder at my appearance!" His eyes sparkled with mirth. "How right Dumbledore was to say you were an intelligent one!"

She pulled away her fingers. "I know no man Dumbledore."

"No-you wouldn't. He's my kind-a wizard is what I mean. The best there is-that's Albus Dumbledore; you'll never find a fairer sorcerer!"

She swallowed. "Er, so, I gather...he's...who you went to visit these two days?"

"Ah-yes!" He stood, and prowled the floor in front of her, his hands behind his back. "I needed to check with him to make sure you'd be alright to tell about, well...me." He looked to her. "You don't know who I am."

"Sure...you just told me, Mr. Black. Although I warrant I haven't the faintest idea of what you were talking about, and I would like to discuss the part about you being a murderer."

He winced and shrugged. "Sirius, please. Yes, well, that's odd you don't know me, really, I mean...Have you been living in a hole-." He stopped short, gave a laugh that sounded much like a bark. "Of course! Listen to me! I know all! You've told me every nuance of yourself these months. My turn, for you!"

He took a deep breath.

In those few seconds before he dove into his tale, she felt the deep truth in his words. This man, this wizard, was true, and she marveled at the fact that she was not upset by any part of this new world of wizardry. Should she shun this stranger? Should she scream and be upset? Her heart felt almost whole, listening to his promise of telling of a new world. She was coming closer to the truth of her spirit, her blood...

So she listened to his story, and he told it briefly like so: