Six
I stare in disbelief, it’s just not possible. All those people are apparently just my imagination? No, no I don’t believe it.
“You have gone quiet, the girl with so many questions now seems to doubt her own mind,” he grins at me.
“Doubt?” I laugh, “Doubt isn’t the word I would use. Crazy more like it, how can those children, Doreen, Margaret, all of them, how can they be just my imagination? I felt them, spoke to them, and ate with them the morning before the disappeared.”
“You think you did,” he gets up and sits next to me, “Doreen, she was there to look after you, your mother asked her for your help. Do you ever wonder why Doreen became distant and why it was the orphanage, to you, appeared to be run-down not long after it was that Henry died, or why it was you spoke to someone as a child when no-one else could see them?”
Okay, this man is freaking me out, how does he know about things I have no even mentioned?
“That was your father’s demon minion. He would appear to you, try and get you to use dark magic, try and get you to go to them.”
“Wait a minute,” Toby interrupts after being sat so silently, “you’re trying to tell me that she, I mean Willow is an evil Warlock?”
“No” Alfie laughs at him, “she is a witch, a dark and powerful witch of the Lefire Warlocks, the most powerful Warlocks in the world and her father is their lord, the most powerful Warlock there has ever been, but it appears Willow has inherited more magic than her mother and father anticipated. And you,” he points to Toby; “you are drawn to Willow are you not?”
“What him?” I point to Toby, “Don’t be silly, he’s not drawn to me, I barely even know him, we only met a few hours ago if that!”
“Know me? Funny, I barely know you; this is all types of crazy,” he utters.
“Well I told you to leave,” I mutter to him, “but you chose to stay didn’t you so don’t blame me for the crazy okay.”
“That’s because he feels connected to you,” Alfie interrupts the childish squabble.
“How can he feel connected to me, like I said, I barely know the guy.”
“Because of the goodness in you. You see, your mother’s magic also flows through your veins and it is that he is drawn to, it is that in which makes him feel like he needs to protect you. He was supposed to meet you, that’s why you ended up in his field.”
“Look,” I shuffle away from Toby who is seriously giving me some ‘this is crazy’ look, “I ended up in his field because of a thought, not sure how exactly but hey, it happened. Alfie, this all sounds a bit much, how can he drawn to me, how would I even know him when I just met him, this is not making sense.”
“Do you ever wonder how you can think of something and then suddenly be there, why you have never fallen ill, why when you do something bad you may sometimes regret it but at the time you cannot help yourself.”
Okay as weird as things were when I came here, now they are getting far weirder, “how do you know all of this?”
“Because I have been watching you since you were born. As a duty to your mother I watched you and saw everything that you did.”
“How, you can’t even see,” Toby rudely states to him, I give him a slight nudge and mouth at him to be quiet.
“I maybe blind physically my boy but it doesn’t mean my mind cannot see,” he states unimpressed at Toby’s remark. “Willow, you can do things like that because the dark magic within you compels you to do dark things, but the goodness in you from your mother tells you that it’s wrong. You are being pulled between light and dark and it is down to you which you choose to use. The darkness within you is how they found you. The powerful magic inside you created the orphanage, as you were just a child when Doreen died of course she was a real person but when she went, the rest was your imagination, the run-down building and neglect you felt was your deep subconscious coming to surface after she died, you created all those people. ”
“I don’t understand; how can someone create all of that and not notice the things other people saw and if they wanted me and they found me then why didn’t they just take me? Surely if my father is so powerful then there is no need for the mind-games, the nightmares and the darkness chasing me, he can just grab me can’t he?”
“You would think so, but your mother’s magic stopped them from doing so. They wanted you to come voluntarily but now your father is running out of time as the light magic draws closer to him and a battle is on the horizon, and this is what has caused the surge in use of your dark magic.”
“If that is so, then explain to me why you say I created an entire orphanage full of people if my magic is so dark, wouldn’t I use that magic to escape something that made me feel so....” I seem to have lost the words all of a sudden.
“Lonely?” Alfie finishes, but I’m not sure it was loneliness, “when Henry died, Doreen hung herself not being able to live without him after seeing the darkness that destroyed him, her heart was broken without him and things only became worse for her.”
I narrow my eyes confused, “but, Henry wasn’t killed by magic.”
“Yes he was,” Alfie interrupts once again, “Your mother trusted Doreen to look after you. When your father’s men found her, they killed Henry trying to force her to give you up, but you still refused to go, you clung on to her like she was the mother figure you craved. Darkness swarmed her life and her dreams pushing her to the point of insanity, she could no longer bare the dark things she saw and she hung herself.”
Memories flash in my mind of Doreen hanging from the ceiling, “I.... I saw her, I saw her hanging. Something chased me, I....”
“You saw her hanging when you were very young, people came and took the children away but your magic blocked you from their grasp. When the children left, you manifested them from your own mind, creating an imaginary world you knew nothing about. This is why the orphanage seemed to deteriorate, you made this up as a child and to you it was Doreen’s fault why the orphanage was so run down, why you had rags for clothes, why the children barely had anything to eat. You imagined the worst because you were left alone and experienced the worst, don’t you understand, everything you saw was created by you and how you felt.
Deep in your memories your mind knew the truth but your magic overpowered this and as such created an alternate world where you lived with the children and Doreen was a cold person who didn’t care for you. When she kept telling you that you had to go, or when she advised you of things that did not make sense, these were all things she once told you as a child and as your magic grew, those things surfaced in your massive mind creation, when you saw your mother and Doreen suddenly handed you the locket, it is because you let your guard down and allowed the creation you had made to progress because you wanted answers, because you wanted it so your magic created it.”
I cannot believe all those years living at the orphanage with all those people was simply my own imagination. “How can that be? Ruby, what about her, she was sweet” I whisper in disbelief but then I remember how dark she became.
“Because you wanted a world where the children and Doreen was still around you. It was all you knew, the people you imagined, Doreen’s distance with you and Margaret’s constant stares, were the result of your memory and your imagination turning those people into reason for blame. Blame for you being alone. And Ruby, she was sent there by your father as a way to entice you into the darkness, the sweetness of the little girl is what you imagined her to be, you only saw Ruby how you wanted her to be, she wasn’t real, but the darkness came out in her after failing to entice you quick enough and although you still felt drawn, the goodness in you told you to run away.”
“But you said my father is running out of time now, if he took them away when I was a child then surely he could have taken me then.”
He sighs, “You are more powerful than you realise and your father has been trying to take you since you were born but all of his attempts have failed. Your father is the lord of the
Lefire Warlocks and you are the rightful darkened Princess. Your magic can bring about dark things in the world but the good magic in you tries to fight it off.”