I can’t believe I forgot to post this earlier. Sorry about that. Each month there is a chapter from a book in the upcoming Oak Hill Series. The first Book: Tansy Moves in, was posted here in monthly Chapter format as well, letting everyone read it before it comes out. Last month saw the completion of Book one and now begins the posting of Book 2: Tansy Stays a Spell. Book one will remain up until this Friday (June 3rd) Then it will be taken down and will go through final revisions and be released. Here is the first chapter of Book 2 Tansy Stays a Spell. I hope you enjoy it.
Tansy Stays A Spell: Book 2 of the Oak Hill Series
Chapter 1
Tansy sat at the kitchen table in the large kitchen of her Aunt Eunice’s house. ‘My house now,’ Tansy thought. The thought still didn’t feel right. It had been three weeks since the fire at her apartment cause her to relocate to the old family home. The family home that she inherited from her Great Aunt Eunice after she died in a tumble down the steep courthouse steps.
Tansy didn’t think it was an accident. Eunice was looking for information, files in the old courthouse records. She was sure Eunice was looking for a set of old rings, passed down from one generation to another through the old bloodlines from the original Oak Hill founders.
Since its founding, Oak Hill had grown into a small bedroom community for the nearby city. Even though it’s population swelled, it kept its old small town charm and quaint down town. The downtown served as a bit of a divide between the old and the new. The newcomers tended to build their houses on the side of town closest to the interstate while the original families stayed on the other side, in the section of town that lead first into the agricultural land and then into the forests. Part of the forest was private property but much of it was a protected nature preserve. Neither was budging for more housing developments.
Tansy always thought that was the reasoning behind the newer housing staying on the other side of town and not really mixing. While there was a fair amount of blending in the schools, churches and various shops and entertainment venues, there had always been a clear division between the old and new. Tansy thought it was some form of snobbery, a land occupation hierarchy. When she stayed here with her Aunt Eunice as a child she remembered hearing complaints from some of the older families who had lived in town for generations that they still weren’t considered a part of Old Oak Hill. To them it seemed that unless you came in with the founding of the town, you would always be a newcomer.
She thought it just as odd as they did, even though her father’s family had lived in Oak Hill since the founding and even though she only visited occasionally, she was considered one as part of the old families. It wasn’t until recently that Tansy began to understand the divide. It wasn’t until she saw poster’s moving and paintings of ships leaking water and sheep stepping out of their painted landscape that she realized that split the original families from those that came after was magic. All of the original families had magic in their blood. When Eunice passed, Tansy’s own magic began to wake.
She was given the choice between accepting it and learning to use it as part of the hidden magical community of Oak Hill or turning away and locking the magic down forever. She chose to accept the magic. Since then she had managed to craft a protection spell on an anklet woven from colored string and keep any more sheep from stepping out of paintings. As the sheep tended to explode into paint globs when they were exposed to sunlight, Tansy thought not having to clean up after an explosion was progress.
“Although I suppose it would be worse if they exploded like real sheep,” she said. By comparison paint was much easier to clean up. As she thought of exploding sheep, painted and otherwise, Tansy toyed with the necklace she had taken to wearing.
While it was given to her when she was a child, the last gift her father gave he before he passed away in fact, it spent a lot of time in her jewelry box. It was a bumble be pendant necklace where the body of the bee was carved from an amber stone. She always liked it, beyond sentimental value and after Eunice died, Tansy started wearing it. After putting it one she managed to drive to work with no automotive delays, her car working perfectly, the lights cooperating and her passage through traffic smooth. She was no longer late to work or running to avoid being late and the regular mishaps that seemed to plague her attempts to fit in and become the perfect office drone disappeared.
She thought of the bumble bee as her good luck charm and had been wearing it under her clothing ever since. She was wearing it when the fire possibly started by the Weathersbys consumed the personal possessions she kept in the apartment.
As Tansy toyed with the chain the bumble bee slipped free of her shirt. It swung on the chain the amber catching the light and for a second it seemed to glow. A glow wouldn’t have surprised her as she was sure it was the stone from one of the magic rings Eunice was looking for. In Eunice’s bedroom there were pictures tacked to the wall. There were also newspaper articles and wedding announcements. Birth and death records, from both the newspaper and the court records were pinned to the wall as well.
Before she died Eunice created a time line, following the rings through the years, tracking them. Why she was tracking them, Tansy didn’t know. There seemed to be one ring for each of the seven original families of Oak Hill. Somehow at some point the ring from her family was turned into the bumble bee Tansy now wore. She knew one of the others was on the finger of a man named Franklin. He was her closest neighbor and the current council chair.
Tansy was still uncertain what power the title granted him but when she needed to tell someone about her apartment burning down and the Weathersby’s trying to kill her, he was the man she was taken to. After she told her tale, Franklin summoned Margaret and Roderick Weathersby to give their side and then he pronounced judgement. At the moment the judgement was not to interfere with the police investigation and to be further investigated for attempting to kill Tansy, but it seemed powerful enough to her.
After the discussion, Franklin noticed Tansy’s attention to the ring. She recognized it from Eunice’s search and noted the similarities between it and her necklace. He told her it was one of the few remaining rings and that it held great power.
“There are some powers too great to wield for most. Only the truly powerful could control them,” He told her. “Others simply went mad when they tried. Those abilities were locked inside a single stone and to ensure they couldn’t be released, the stone was separated out. Even wearing it for official events I can feel it pulsing. And because I can feel it pulsing I know I am not strong enough to wield those powers. It is both a symbol of power and a stark reminder of our limitations.”
Tansy nodded at his explanation even though she didn’t really understand how power could be locked inside a stone. She then asked him what would happen if the rings were united, the stones once again brought together.
“Some believe bringing them together would release the magic,” he told her. “But that simply isn’t true. When the stone was carved into pieces parts were lost. Dust and chips from the carving and shaping the polishing. The stone itself, as it was when it was enchanted can never be whole again. Which is for the best.”
As Tansy saw Roderick and Chris use what magic they had to try and attack her, she was glad that powerful magics were locked away. Tansy stared at the bumble bee. It hadn’t reacted like Franklin said his ring did. She felt no well of power or really spark of anything. It was just a pretty amber stone encased in a metal bee shaped framework. Yet she was sure it was the stone from her family ring.
“Maybe when they shaped it like a bee they had to cut it and more magic was lost,” she thought. She shrugged the thought away and tucked the bumble bee into her shirt again, hiding it from view. Displaying power or not, Tansy decided it was best not to let others look at it too closely. “If Eunice was looking for the rings then someone else might be as well.”
Tansy half suspected that searching for the rings was why The Weathersbys wanted to get into the house so badly. In the photos it looked like they were one of the families that kept their rings. “At least it was in the photo when Roderick and Margaret were married.” Tansy remembered seeing it in the photo tacked to Eunice’s time line. “At least I think it was the same ring.” The photo was a grainy newspaper one and Roderick’s hand, and more importantly the ring were circled in red. The ring bore the same shape as the one circled on Roderick’s father’s hand and the one on his grandfather’s as well.
“But it doesn’t have to be the real thing,” Tansy thought. “They could have lost the original or kept it away for safe keeping and worn the replica for photos. No one could tell if it is fake or not in the pictures.”
Tansy shook the thought way, uncertain where it came from. There was no reason to think the ring was lost other than it was still on the wall in Eunice’s room. “But she crossed out the rings where she knew the locations. “Three were crossed out, but not the Weathersbys.” One of the crossed out rings was Franklin’s. At the time she died Eunice hadn’t known of the bumble bee necklace and marked their family ring as missing.
“I wonder why Dad didn’t tell her.” Tansy frowned. “I wonder why she was looking for them?”
While she could see someone like Roderick looking for them to try and gather power, Tansy didn’t think her Aunt was that sort of person. She couldn’t see Eunice gathering power for anything. She enjoyed cooking and gardening. She wasn’t the sort to attempt to rule the world.
“Maybe she wanted to keep them from someone like Roderick. Hiding them away.” Tansy frowned. While Franklin’s ring was marked off and Eunice had written a note stating that the ring was with Franklin. The other two she had marked off the list were marked as found and safe but no location was given. “I wonder if Eunice found them and then hid them away. If she did it would be in the house.”
Tansy wasn’t sure where in the House her Aunt would hide them, but given the protections on the House Tansy could think of nowhere safer for her to hide them. Tansy reached for her coffee cup and made a face at the dregs of the cold coffee. She stood up and walked it over to the sink. She rinsed out the cup and put it in the draining rack. She checked to make sure the coffee pot was off and not likely to burn whatever remained in the pot. She then rolled up her sleeves and put her hands on her hips. She wasn’t sure where her Aunt would hide the rings if she had them here, but she was determined to search and find them if she could.
“I just need to figure out where to begin.”
Ten til Midnight 