He wasn’t approaching, as if he was somehow superior and I should be the one to come to him. The grass squished beneath my feet as I made my way around the tables and the people who were beginning to gather. He sat down on a bench. The pretentious prick.

“Amarilla?” The familiar voice behind me made me turn sharply.

“Lincoln! What are you doing here?” I demanded. He had no business following me. “How’d you get here?”

“I’m not stupid, you know. If you were a little taller you might have seen the small window on the door in the back. I followed you.”

“Why? I didn’t ask you to come.” I turned sharply to make sure I didn’t lose sight of Dameldun.

“True. But I’m here now.”

I shook my head. He was too much of a distraction and now he was here, in the middle of what was meant to be my fight. I was too close to Dameldun to let him get away because I didn’t know how to act around Lincoln.

“You need to go back, Lincoln. This is something I need to do alone. I don’t want you getting hurt.”

Lincoln smiled at me. “Me get hurt? Is that what you’re worried about? Really? I guess you don’t know where we just came from do you?” he laughed lightly.

“We just came through a portal from your magical little town,” I answered, refusing to let him take away this chance, regardless of where we were or had come from.

“True, to both of those things. Most of us there have chosen to live where magic mixes with man. For example, Mr. Pickens is a Halfling. His mother is full human and his father was a wizard. I am the son of an enchantress. And over there, the man you are after is Mr. Pickens’ half-brother. Same father, but Dameldun was born in Sorseluna, the enchanted forest; before his father returned to my world and had Mr. Pickens.”

I looked at Lincoln in shock. I wondered how he could know.

“Oh yes, Amarilla, I know where you are from,” Lincoln said seriously.

“How?” I asked him curiously.

“Middleton shares a bond of some sort with the enchanted forest. We are like an entryway into the regular world. We are in the middle. Every once in a while, someone leaves Sorseluna, usually the dark ones. Sometimes someone like you would leave but find the forest much more desirable and they return. Very few of the dark ones ever go back.”

“You mean like Dameldun?”

“Yes. Like Dameldun,” he answered. “There is a story I heard growing up that must have to do with you and why we are standing in Atlanta right now.”

I looked at Lincoln a moment and wondered if what he said was true. If it was, it meant that it was even more necessary to stop Dameldun.

“This isn’t the time for me to be asking questions or speculating, Lincoln. I’m here because that man took everything away from me and I plan on settling up with him and making things right. And I don’t need all this information to get that done.”

“You must be the daughter Dameldun lost,” Lincoln said, ignoring me.

I rolled my eyes at his persistence and took a step away. He took a step towards me, not allowing me to move away or escape what he felt compelled to tell me.

“Go ahead, Lincoln. It doesn’t seem like you’re going to stop until I hear this. So, tell me.”

He turned up one side of his mouth into that crooked smile that didn’t mask the pity that would come through his voice.

“My mother told me of stories of a friend she had when I was a kid. Her friend had left the forest with Dameldun. She returned a few months later; and by that time she was with child.” He looked at me and waved his hand up and down my body.

I stood up and faced Lincoln, but kept an eye on my prey. “What do you mean?”

“Dameldun wanted you to know the fullness of life out of the forest and to develop your power out here where it could be even stronger. My mother told me your mother refused to stay with Dameldun out here and once she returned to the forest, I guess she refused to leave. Something must have happened between your parents but she never came back and eventually he couldn’t go back into the forest. He got very angry and destructive.

As he spoke I could see it play out as if I was there. It was true; Dameldun was at the center of it all.

___________

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