Wyrd: Book One of the Witch War Trilogy - WATTYS 2018 WINNER!

Chapter 3: Where Will learns Gramps has secrets

Even if it weren't for the exquisite wings – powerful and expansive, arched elegantly above the shoulders and fledged with slate grey feathers that looked somehow soft and strong at once – Will still would have been staring helplessly.

If she'd been a normal teenage girl walking down the street, he'd still have been dumb struck. Ethnically, she looked like she was from everywhere and nowhere. More than biracial, it was as if she had a small trace of Asian, Aboriginal, African American, Caucasian, and other origins he couldn't place, within her ancestry. Her hair was black and thick and loose around her shoulders, her skin like coffee with cream, eyes creased but ever so slightly slanted, her high cheekbones and thin nose dotted with unexpected and adorable freckles. She was tall and athletic, but unquestionably--Will resisted the temptation to linger on her form--feminine. She was perfect, Will thought. He wanted to memorize every little detail.

The angel wore a warrior's garb with a full skirt and a studded brown-leather bodice, intricate Celtic looking designs embossed on it. A sword with a golden hilt handle, feathers in relief, was strapped to her hip. One ear was cuffed by an earing, the duplicate of one of her spread wings. Two silver necklaces hung around her neck: one shorter and with a pendent of a crescent moon and one, the outline of three overlapping triangles, hanging tantalizing between her breasts.

She was undeniably flesh and blood and standing directly in front of Will... waiting.

So he stepped forward, cheeks burning, and reached out a hand. "Hi. I'm Will," he managed.

As she took his hand, as her lips parted to say the word Will softly, as their eyes met, electricity shot through his arm to his heart and he knew he had looked into the soul, hiding behind her golden calico flecked pupils, before. Stretching between an instant and thousands of lifetimes, his heart called out that it knew her, yearned to know her again. A moment of intimate connection rewrote his convictions. Past lives no longer seemed a farfetched possibility as he stood in front of the woman he was sure was his soul mate. For the times he'd scoffed at the idea of love at first sight, he was sure he was being chastised. Had he loved her before?

But her stunning face warped into an expression of pain and shock. She pulled her hand away like Will had burned her and stepped back to the very edge of the dry tip of stone, surveying her surroundings.

"My name is Skuld," she said, playing it off like nothing strange had occurred, as if the world hadn't just tilted on it's axis. Just as deadpan as can be, "But you can call me Sky."

Will's grandfather wore the friendly smile he gave to old friends who'd gone away for a while. Will's sister Laina just stood there, a deer frozen in headlights, incredulous.

"Will," Laina asked cautiously, "do you see a ...?"

"Winged-woman who opened up a crack in the sky and flew down to say hello? Yes, yes I do."

"So I'm not...?"

"Crazy? Not unless we're all having some sort of group delusion. Technically possible, I suppose, but I'm pretty sure she's real. And that she really did say her name was Sky. Enchanting name by the way, Sky." He threw out the compliment hoping to catch her gaze again. She didn't react.

Angels didn't seem such a stretch after the last few months. Will was more likely to believe in absurd occurrences -- he'd had a few of his own implausible incidents of late, a few secrets he'd tucked under his cap. He hated keeping anything from his twin, Laina. He'd always thought they'd never keep important secrets from each other, but she'd already been so worried about their grandfather. Will hadn't wanted to worry her over him, too.

Laina continued to stand in place looking amazed, but the raven-haired angel turned towards Will's grandfather, her body language and expression conveying she was more than a little pissed off.

"Oleander!" she barked. "How is it they don't know about me?"

Will had never heard anyone call his grandfather Oleander, only Ollie. He hadn't even known his grandfather's full name until the moment it had graced her lips.

"Well..." his grandfather quibbled, "maybe we should go inside and I'll explain over tea. There's an awful lot we all need to discuss. Somewhere," he looked around the yard "more private."

"I cast a privacy spell," she said, like that explained everything. "Nobody will see anything but the breaking of an early summer day." She sighed heavily, her bosom rising and falling ever so slightly as she surveyed Laina and Will's confusion critically. "But it was a long flight and I really would love some tea."

A long low ribbit came from a toad at her feet.

She looked at the rock and the creature and the white drawings on stone. She knelt down and collected three toads in the folds of her skirt, leaving the frogs to sun on the rocks near the water. Her tanned and slim legs showed underneath her dress as she made her way to a bush in the grass and let the toads free in its cool shadow. Then she turned back towards the lake, her hand rising in the air towards the rocks. Grandpa and Laina both moved swiftly forward, darting to the bottom of the hill and away from where she was pointing, but Will stood trustingly still. She mumbled something under her breath, her hand making circular sweeping gestures as their grandfather's scribbles faded from the jetty underneath him like she was using an eraser on a chalk board.

"How?" Laina asked, her eyes widening in her head. It wasn't showy, but it was still magic.

In response, Sky's eyes flew to Will's grandfather.

"Do you mean to tell me," her words came out slowly, lower than anything she'd said before as she punctuated each perilous syllable, "that you've told them nothing of the world they're from? Taught them absolutely no magic? Haven't explained their destiny?"

Her hands were in angry fists at her side, whilst their grandfather was ringing his own.

"Our destiny?" Will and Laina both asked, looking from the angel to their grandfather, from one to the other.

If they were from another world entirely, did that make them aliens?

"Tea first," Ollie said, as he began to bustle up the hill in his blanket, leading the way. "Tea first."

Will was relieved that his grandfather wasn't going crazy. He was also relieved that he wouldn't be the one disciplining his Gramps (though he had certainly landed in someone else's dog house). And though he was mollified on those accounts, all the talk of magic and other worlds and destinies had him concerned. But what had Will worried most of all was that throughout the walk up to the house and, then again, sitting across the table from each other, the beautiful angel, Sky, had pointedly avoided making direct eye contact with him.

All Will could think about was the way he had felt when their eyes met. He wanted to talk to her alone, to hear everything there was to know about her. He knew he had no right, but even now, with his family puttering around the kitchen, he felt like leaning across the wooden boards and kissing her sweet pink lips. His curiosity about anything else was eclipsed by her. He knew, under the wild circumstances of their current situation, that was very troubling indeed.

Angels didn't fall for teenage boys.

***

So rejection stings. Should Will move on? Let me know what you think. And if you're enjoying the story so far, please vote!