"Rachel, listen to me," Numair began. I interuppted him.
"No, you listen. I am in a land that in my world shouldn’t exist and I can’t get home and you just expect me to forget everything I knew, get trained in magic I shouldn’t have and just settle here? Are you crazy?" I yelled at him.
"Rachel LISTEN!" Numair bellowed at me. "You can’t go home because you don’t belong there!"
That got my attention. "What?" I asked, momentarily struck speechless.
"You belong here. Look, how can I explain this?" Nuamir sighed. "Magic is passed down from family. Mother to daughter, father to son etc. You get the idea. You have magic Rachel, you can’t deny it. And as you say if magic doesn’t exist in your world, then that means..."
"Means what? What Numair?" I demanded.
He hesitated, then said, "The parents who brought you up aren’t your real parents. Your real parents are here somewhere in Tortall, people who have the gift."
I was stunned speechless for exactly one moment. Then I blew up.
"HOW DARE YOU!" I screamed. "How dare you come in and make accusations about my parents. How dare you! Get out!"
"Rachel- " Numair began.
"Get out!" I screamed.
He reluctantly went away. I turned and buried my face in the pillows. The tears came and I drifted off into a dreamless sleep.
*****
Attention!
The narration is momentarily changed so that Numair is narrating the story, so that a crucial point of the story is played out, while Rachel is asleep. I just thought I’d let you know. After this the narriation goes back to Rachel.
I slowly opened the doors and walked in, shutting them after me. All the people inside turned and looked at me. "Well don’t stand there gawping," I snapped.
My wife Daine, smiled gently and said, her voice serious, "How did it go?"
"Not good," I sighed. "She blew up at me, refusing to see the logic of it and screamed at me to get out."
"Well you can hardly blame here," Jonathan commented. He had got a certain soft spot for Rachel. "I mean she is from a different world and well, this would be hard for her."
"She has strong magic Numair," Alanna said seriously. "It takes a strong gift to lift things in the air and as she has a strange combination, her magic is even stronger. She must be trained."
"But she won’t listen to me!" I cried, feeling defeated.
"Then someone else must convince her," Alanna said. "Someone her own age..." She trailed off and we all looked at a young person, who was sitting beside Jonathan at his right side.
"Oh no," Roald said. The young prince looked startled to be suddenly included.
"Roald," Alanna said patiently. She was prepared to stay here all night to convince him. "You are only a few years older than her. You might make her trust you."
"Six," Roald grumbled. At that moment he looked so much like Jonathan that I had to blink to make sure it wasn’t him.
"You might just make her realize that she must be trained in her magic. She may be our greatest defence," Jonathan told his son.
Roald sighed, but obediently rose and asked, "Where is she?"
*****
The narration now goes back to Rachel.
The door opened. I groggily rubbed sleep from my eyes. I waited , expecting to see Numair. I was actually kinda sorry I’d yelled at him. He was only trying to help me after all.
Instead a guy, probably around six years older than me again. I knew instantly that it was Roald, Jonathan’s and Thayet’s eldest son. Which was pretty cool, considering I’d only ever read about him being nine years old.
"Um, Roald?" I asked, tentatively, not a 100% sure it was him. "Wait how do you pronounce your name?"
Roald smiled gently and told me the right way. Then his expression turned to surprise. "How did you know it was me?" he asked.
"Uh, you probably know," I told him.
"Not really," he replied and said on the chair beside my bed. I was painfully aware of how awful I looked, and believe me when you’re sitting next to a guy who is totally gorgeous and immaculate looking, that is not a good feeling. "No one else really knows either." He settled comfortably and said, "Tell all."
Well, I couldn’t exactely refuse the King’s son could I?
So I told him everything. The fortune teller, the car, me awakening in Tortall, Numair, meeting his father, my magic and now my decision to either stay in Tortall and be trained or to go home and remain ignorant about my magic for the rest of my life - if I could find a way home. Which if I couldn’t well remaining here was the only thing I could do.
"Wow. Even a bard couldn’t tell a story like that," Roald said finally. "What - what’s your world like?"
"What do you want to know?" I asked. During my whole story, I’d become more comfortable with him and now could talk easily with him.
"Have you got magic?" Roald asked immediately.
I shook my head. "No. We do things by thinking and then doing them ourselves. We don’t do it by magic, because we have none."
"That must be hard," Roald commented.
"Not really," I answered. "Your land had become too used to getting magic to do things for you. We never had that comfort."
"We do a lot of things ourselves!" Roald cried indignantly.
"Maybe so, but your magic is always there as a last resort," I replied.
"You have magic too," Roald pointed out.
"True, but I only found out today. I’ve never had the luxury of magic before," I pointed out.
"Will you... will you decide to be trained?" Roald asked quietly.
"Give me time to think about it," I told him honestly.
Roald nodded and rose, saying, "I look forward to hearing your answer." But I think he knew what my answer was going to be as much as I did.
