| Fern
sat down at a park bench to watch the fairies eating among the pigeons
for a while as she thought for a moment about running over to visit her
sister, but Perla had visited nearly every week and would most likely
be responsible and decide that it was too dangerous for Fern to be
outside just yet. However, the outside world didn’t seem that
dangerous, certainly not now that she knew what was going on. The
fairies had for the most part ignored her, and unlike people who
couldn’t see fairies she could easily avoid going near the bad ones.
“If anything,” Fern thought as she sat on a park bench “my parents are
in more danger than I am.”
A
loud squealing laugh caused Fern glanced over at a little boy who
running through the grass. She smiled as she recalled the few times
that her older sister had brought her to this park when they were
younger. Not often of course, back then the two of them hadn’t been
nearly as close as they had become. The little boy went running up to
his mother with a handful of clover flowers and dandelions a big grin
on his face, but something seemed wrong. Fern thought about closing her
human eyes and only leaving her spirit eyes open, but she hesitated.
Whenever the denizens of the ‘Other World’ killed someone, or kidnapped
them they would replace that person with an automaton of leaves, mud,
wood or other natural objects that was disguised so well by a glamour
that not even medical tests would reveal them for what they really
were. Fletcher had told her that about one in a hundred people was one
of these changelings and she hated the idea of seeing who was no longer
human.
The
little boy was skipping away from his mother, and her smile had turned
into a pensive look of concern.Something was clearly wrong, and if Fern
was going to find out what she’d have to risk taking a look. She took a
breath and closed her eyes, the world seemed to change around her as
she saw each persons four souls rather than their bodies and the trees
turned into mansions which housed the spirits within.She glanced over
towards the little boy, but instead of the four souls which people
normally have he only had three, he was missing his defensive soul.
Each human has four souls, one to give life, one which allows them to
be creative, the other which allows them to be destructive, and a final
one which provides them with a small amount of magical power. Most
people used this fourth soul without realizing it to protect themselves
from accidental curses which others might place on them without
realizing it as well as from minor fairy curses, and other similar
sorts of things. Without it the boy would be thousands of times more
likely to get anything from cancer to epilepsie.
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