When my mother left me a few weeks later, I didn’t cry. I wrapped her body in the white linens as she’d taught me and followed what we’d done together for so many others. I watched her body float onto the lake, glowing brilliantly like a million fireflies dancing around her.

Fire was a cleanser; that’s what I’d understood but it didn’t feel that way this time. The smoke filled the woods over the lake, blowing gently in the breeze away from me. I imagined it took her spirit with it to the place I couldn’t go yet.

I went to the family of trees growing near the lake. It was already filled with the names of all the family and friends who had gone on. Sarana, my mother, would be added to the list carved into the wood. She would be the last.

It was too familiar to feel sadness again and the tears were gone. I suppose I might have been in denial. I was now the last of the enchanted forest people. The last from my world of magic and the only enchantress.

Within two years our forest went from a magical, happy home with hundreds of people, fairies, and animals to just me, the animals, and the fairies.

No one could prove it was the banished Dameldun who’d cast a spell but the dying began soon after he was cast out. He’d been cast out for practicing the dark magic. No one ever said where he’d gone when he was cast out of Sorseluna. Before him, I had no idea of evil, of death, or the hurt and pain I’d felt when my friends and family began dying.

Mother had warned me of Dameldun as well. When he was in the forest I wasn’t permitted near him. He would try to come around but mother and father wouldn’t allow it. All I knew was that he had been banished from our beautiful home and if I came across him, I would know. I wasn’t told how I would know, just that I would.

My mother told me something else. That even among the people of Sorseluna, I was special. Dameldun’s curses could not affect me. At the time, it sounded magical; now looking back, I believe it to be an even crueler curse. I can never again be with them here or in the new Sorseluna world.

That is, unless... and this is the thing, unless I defeat Dameldun; thus ending his curse. At nine years old, scrawny and small, defeating Dameldun would require a miracle. It would also likely mean I would have to go out of the enchanted forest to find him.

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I made mother a promise to never leave and he is forbidden to return. If he does his power is lost, his magic is void, and he can never leave again. I don’t know if Dameldun knows that was what the fairies and the enchantresses had done, but at least it will keep me safe in here.

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Thank you so much for reading. Check back next week for the next part.

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