Green Magic

By Scott James Thomas

GREEN MAGIC -- Book 4 of the Black Magic trilogy.

In the Australian outback, Elina survived her encounter with Araceli and Inessa Black, but being a morph does not equate to living a perfect life.

Thinking she killed her best friend, Elina flees the Bluedom that was her home to put an end to her unfair life. But instead, she finds other survivors in the jungle of New Guinea, and the struggle is on to save them. Things don't work out as Alina plans and it is not long before it's her own life that she has to fight for. However, Elina has become a powerful Blue and with whispers, she can make all the friends she needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott James Thomas
• Release date: Jan 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215994917

Scott James Thomas

Dr. Scott James Thomas has traveled the world as an exploration geophysicist, exploring remote locations in the search for critical minerals for society.He received his bachelors of science in geophysics from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, then his Masters and Doctorate from the University of Arizona in Tucson.He enjoys nature and creating, but since he can't draw, he writes. He favors sci-fi, but mostly his stories revolve around human interactions and life changes. His first novel was the sci-fi trilogy Darkmatter, which was started before E-Books existed. His second was Sakuya Stood In The Road, a fantasy fan-lit piece.Afterward was: Champ, Valkiree, The Elf War, and lately the Black Magic series.Scott currently lives in the Denver suburbs of Colorado.

Book preview

GREEN MAGIC – ELINA

Scott James Thomas

Book 4 of the Black Magic series

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Smashwords Edition, March 2023

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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~ ~ Chapter 1 ~ ~

Elina squatted on a limb of a Stringybark eucalyptus – a tree with stout limbs that she gripped with her feet. She knew all the larger trees around Umagico, spending much of her time in them – the mangroves were also good sitting trees. As usual, the eucalyptus was mostly wet since the Cape York Peninsula portion of Australia was an incurable rainforest, always dripping.

She frequented this particular tree – it had a view of Umagico, sprouting right alongside a road on the western side of the community. A year earlier she never thought she would spend so much time up in the branches of trees. But trees were peaceful, she could sit and feel the moss, study the orchids and birds – they never changed much, being the same as they were last year and the year before – unlike her own life.

While squatting in the wet tree, Elina felt her green hands – they were tough with hard callouses, but they were not the worst part of her. Her hands were strong, but she hadn’t been expecting callouses when deciding on what her new body would be like. She also hadn’t planned on being wet or poked with so many thorns. But then she had never thought she’d be a social outcast. It wasn’t that she couldn’t go into town, but she didn’t have many friends.

Elina looked up at the thickly overcast sky then closed her eyes, recalling the dying sorceress – time had been limited when she took the leap. It had been a hasty decision – seeking to be morphed. As a child her parents had taken her to Cape York – it had been a family vacation and she had been fascinated by the forest. That early impression, mixed with Hollywood fantasy, video games, and reading the wrong books, had filled her mind with an idyllic vision of living in the forest.

Now she was a freak – that was the price she had paid for being green and able to withstand the thorns. But being green was the least of it – she had foolishly given up her woman’s body. Everyone knew it and now her options were limited.

Elina lowered her hand and looked along Pascoe Street below her. The forest road was paved but overgrown to the point that only a path down the middle remained. Houses were along the road, visible through the tree growth, many of the houses were even occupied.

The street marked the western extent of Umagico , a small coastal town near the northern tip of the peninsula. It was a wretched little town with about fifty residents and was constantly dripping wet. But it was a survivor, still existing whereas the neighboring communities of Injinoo and Bamaga had been abandoned. The nearby abandoned towns were so overwhelmed by fast-growing trees that the roofs had been breached, letting the forest inside that only accelerated the rotting process. The Mavrikris—the Black Judgment—was two years in the past and already the decay had progressed such that only actively maintained houses on the peninsula were habitable.

Two strange years had passed—the riots even further back—and now the world was hardly recognizable. Sometimes, when she sat in a tree or looked at herself, it felt like a dream, as if nothing she did mattered because dreams didn’t matter. Elina wished it was a dream – that somewhere her family was alive and she could just open her eyes to be with them again. The feel of the moss, the thorns, being dripping wet, and the persistence of her new body were reminders that she probably wasn’t dreaming. Reality had become a slow-moving nightmare where each day brought a new struggle to find some reason to continue.

Elina breathed in, feeling her chest expand and her heart beating as she looked around, hearing the birds and smelling the loam, the forest around her, and smoke from the warm fires in the houses. There were still a few things she could look at and momentarily pretend the world was as it always had been, but the feeling of normality never lasted long. She did feel alive, although far from what she used to be.

Umagico had always been in a rainforest, but it was Minerva, the Blue living in the center of Umagico, who somehow made the plants in the area grow faster than normal. It was a constant battle to cut and burn the encroaching native vegetation, keeping the small fields that surrounded Umagico clear for crops.

Down below Elina, Melissa was walking along Pascoe Street, an event she had been waiting for. Melissa was one of her few friends – her best friend. Elina watched Melissa walking from her wheat fields, just across the road, carrying a large basket of threshed grain. Melissa had yet to notice her squatting in the tree – she blended into the foliage – both she and the tree were green.

Melissa, of course, already had a boyfriend but he wasn’t serious about the relationship. There were too few boys in town for the number of single girls – that made Melissa excess and therefore was not being treated properly. It seemed that Melissa should leave Umagico, going south to find a bigger, drier town. Elina figured the only reason she hadn’t already was because Minerva liked her.

Elina sneered to herself – nobody would have lived in Umagico if it wasn’t for Minerva, and anyone Minerva didn’t like was out. Minerva only lived there to hide from the rest of the world, as deep into the jungle as she could stand. For the time being, that suited Elina just fine – Umagico was a place to hide. But Melissa, she could leave the peninsula and brave the world once again.

Elina watched Melissa walk up the street with her heavy load of grain and thought about how wrong the world was. It wasn’t the E-Links, her body, or the death of her family. It was something more profound, something fundamentally unfair about the universe. Her life wasn’t turning out the way it was supposed to – the fight for survival, winners and losers, life and death – there was no escaping it, before or after the Mavrikris.

Two years ago she had still been living in Darwin, her hometown, where she grew up. Darwin was where she and her family had survived the riots. But Inessa came. The Mavrikris—the cruel judgment—never felt like a person, it was a plague, a biblical calamity, an inevitable darkness that tore at her soul to watch it come – and despite her screams and tears, it came and everything was lost.

Watching the Mavrikris had been terrifying, but by then death was expected. One night the electricity had gone out and dozens of fires could be seen from her house, all across Darwin – a bone-chilling feeling swept over her, one of dying. The telle was out, the radio was silent and the internet was down – not even her cell phone worked. The world was all wrong and it wasn’t because of a strong storm – it was because the universe had shattered and the sickening sensation that it was forever would not leave, and no amount of rationalizing about how it was all from a transitory cause, such as a global nuclear war, was not working. The food in the freezer was slowly thawing, her mother was crying, Dad was gone, desperately trying to get food from a grocer. But what was the point? If there was any feeling she had, it was a horrid gut-wrenching feeling that she was going to die – life was over. That was the start of the Spell Riots.

Civilization had built its foundation on a house of cards and the cards were collapsing.

The spell she used the most was the one to see electric fields – she could whisper it over and over, touching an impossible world, feeling the fear that the universe was profoundly different than she always thought – magic really did exist and it was more than just scary. Somewhere there was a girl from the states with blue-glowing eyes and she might as well have been a kilometer-tall burning tower of red flesh with horns and fire for eyes.

There was a night when she looked out her window, speeding cars were roaring along the street, screeching around corners. A few neighbors trying to pack their cars. Nobody was walking the dark street unless it was to join a militia – a group of men were talking and fires were everywhere. Always the fires—not far away—the ominous acrid smoke permeating the house. From her bedroom window she could see the flames of the store her father went to. Why? Had it started with an argument about a bag of chips? Was her father still alive?

There had been few answers to steady her thoughts. Were they going to stay in the house or run, were they going to become farmers out in the country? The only light was from flaming buildings – it felt like hell. It felt like never again would the air conditioning click on – never again would she have a normal Friday night with her family or friends – never again would she look forward to getting married, having a family, and a comfortable suburban life.

The future was mortally wounded and her life would ebb into death. There were twenty-four spells and they were killers, teases, and taunts. She had never put much faith in an afterlife, but there, looking out her bedroom window, whispering forbidden words, and thinking of atomic explosions killing nobody, the spells, the stench of approaching fires, and that her father was likely dead, the universe was more mysterious and unfair than she ever thought possible. The blue-eyed demon was unstoppable, for obvious reasons.

Downstairs her mother was crying over a bible, which seemed appropriate, although ineffective. All that was left to do was to die – and it was a feeling that she would always remember, of utter hopelessness, despair, and thinking that it was not just her, but that the entire world, perhaps the universe, was going to simply cease to exist. She was breathing her last, dawn would never come, and all her hopes and dreams were already ashes.

There was a saying – there’s no panic in helplessness. Only the telly had shown survivors, plenty – there was a cause to scream and fight and thrash for. She should run for her life – but part of her already died, the vision of a future had gone black and so all she could do was wait for the end. She started to relish the impending end, as if fulfilling her destiny – maybe there really was an afterlife and she should be downstairs reading the bible with her mother.

Then she saw her father drive the car into the garage – he was driving fast, as if he had a plan – and that made all the difference. She bounded down the stairs to see what he had gotten.

Elina opened her eyes, seeing Melissa walk the old road, her best friend. Elina looked away, trying to picture her parents and brother, but the only images that came were of them scared and running. After the riots, like a finger of God, the Mavrikris killed her family – the image of her father’s corpse was never far. But even before then, the world had changed into something unrecognizable – something terrifying, as if gods were touching her very soul. The entire universe teetered on the brink of destruction. But day after day passed, the universe didn’t rip apart. However, nothing was the same, as if she was living in the shadow of the great world that was no more.

The Mavrikris came and went, leaving her alone and confused. With nothing left, she just kept doing what always did, living in her house, crying over the remains, and go to college. School was only a communal gathering of survivors – in a numb day-by-day sort of way. Then one day a visitor came to the physics department, Doctor Steve Worbinsky. He was different, like a calm and knowledgeable pillar of strength who spoke of spells like they were just an invention – like electricity. E-Links were now open to humanity – that’s all it was. The physicist was heading to Wanaaring and looking for assistants, she and her friend, Keisha, volunteered. But the adventure went bad and Keisha died. Along the way, she met a sorceress like none other. The powerful sorceress could do amazing things and, intoxicated with dreams of what had happened and what might be, Elina asked the sorceress to change her.

Elina looked at her hand again, which was a much different hand than she used to have. She used to be short and pudgy. Now she was tall, strong and green. She was also not a woman anymore, not on the outside. She had become what she thought she wanted and had asked for – it was too late for regrets. She never wanted Keisha to die, or to cry over her father’s corpse, but it happened anyway.

Time moves on and so did she. From Wanaaring, she traveled with Inessa Black herself to the peninsula, living in Umagico ever since. She even had a job – the town guard.

She could have gone back to Darwin from Wanaaring, continuing with her physics studies. Perhaps that was what her father would want her to do. But what was the point? She wasn’t going to change the world, tame the links, or invent something great. She was only freaky Elina, the green, half-male tree monkey – all that was missing was a tail and a red clown nose.

She didn’t cry as much as she used to. Remembrances of her parents and brother were becoming more infrequent. There were photographs of them, the family albums were still at home in Darwin, but it had been a year since she had been there. Also fading away was Keisha and the trip with the equally dead physicist.

What she could remember, and often did, was the night she stood with Inessa Black, looking down at the glowing Moon Goddess. She could still remember the perfect skin and gently glowing eyes. With all the torment in her life, it was strange how easily every detail of the goddess came to mind.

There was a movement and Elina looked out along the road stretched out below her. Melissa was almost home with her basket of wheat. Melissa wasn’t a baker, but she provided much of the wheat the town used.

Elina jumped out of the tree, landing in a smooth walking glide on the old, duff-covered asphalt. Elina was walking toward Melissa when the girl saw her.

Elina raised a hand, saying, Hi.

Hi, Melissa replied with a bit of a smile. I didn’t see you.

Patrolling. You know, Elina replied, trying to return the smile.

Yeah. It’s a hot day.

I saw you out in your field. Looks like hard work.

Melissa said, Winnowing’s the hardest. Don’t have anything to shake the blanket with. Grinding isn’t so bad.

I can help, Elina offered.

Melissa shrugged and said with a smile, Sure.

Elina followed Melissa into her house. On Melissa’s back porch the old grain grinding machine sat on a stout wooden table. The grinder had a hand crank but the crank was rarely needed, simple turning spells sufficed. Elina had been in Melissa’s house before, helping Melissa with her chores, but nothing ever happened.

Melissa said, Mind if I take a shower? I want to clean up first.

Elina looked at Melissa, who was carrying the large basket of wheat to the back porch. A shower made sense – Melissa was sweaty and tired from bringing in the day’s harvest. Perhaps she would have put off the grinding a day if she was alone. Was Melissa being more friendly than usual?

With the load of wheat on the back porch table, Melissa came back inside and Elina said, Go ahead.

Thanks.

Elina sat on a chair in the kitchen, listening to Melissa in the bedroom, then enter the bathroom shower. Elina contemplated that Melissa really was being friendly, as if enticing her. She was even sending a message by taking a shower.

Elina contemplated that she too was a bit hot, patrolling the perimeter of Umagico – Umagico was always hot and muggy. Elina screwed up her courage and stood. She slipped out of her tunic and pants. She didn’t wear footwear anymore.

Melissa was kind, never mentioning her mutated feet, pointed ears, or skin color, which could mean she didn’t mind. But Melissa had never seen her boy parts. What’s the worst that could happen?

Elina took a deep breath, opened the door to the bathroom, and stepped into the shower with Melissa.

~ ~ Chapter 2 ~ ~

Elina was in her own closet in her own house and looking at her body in a mirror. She was nearly a hundred and eighty centimeters, much taller than she had been a year earlier. Her toes were long and her feet could curl to grasp tree limbs. Her skin was a dark shade of leaf green and she had a dark mop of brown hair that her pointed ears sometimes poked through. Her ears were not the same as Elvis’s, Minerva’s son – Elvis had longer ears and they went out to the side more, while hers were more like Vulcan ears. But it was the green skin that really made her ugly, like Beast Boy from the old comics. It was just as well her parents were dead – hopefully they weren’t spirits looking down upon her.

Elina wiped at a tear. If her parents had lived—either one of them—her life would have been so much better. But the universe wasn’t fair and she had been stupid.

With her green body had come increased muscle strength. It was what she had ordered, a body that could travel through the trees with ease. The Sorceress Araceli gave her what she wanted and it was a curse – it was never so obvious as now, looking in the mirror at her horrid body.

She had so misread Melissa. Melissa had been her closest friend – now she had none. Melissa hadn’t killed her, but she was probably thinking of it. Dying wouldn’t have been so bad – joining her family in oblivion where she belonged.

A knock sounded at the door making Elina jump. In a flash Elina instinctively knew who it was, who it had to be – Minerva. She quickly finished dressing and the demanding knock sounded again.

Her hands were shaking, adrenalin flowed through her body – it was the fight or flight response. What was the punishment for rape? Death? Jail? Umagico had no jail. At the very least it would be banishment. But Minerva wasn’t one to cross. The Blue could kill with a touch, and a Sending wasn’t even considered killing. Perhaps she could become a spirit to smack stupid little crybaby girls like Melissa.

The knock sounded again Minerva called, Elina! I know you’re there! The sharp message chilled her – she had enough, it would be flight.

Elina ran out her back door and, in a few quick steps, leapt over a fence then had hardly touched ground when she said, "Garvice wants to fly!" while pushing off hard. There was still plenty of daylight left – she could be seen. She stayed low so she could rapidly push herself along using the rooftops.

Her heart was pounding as she strained to push the lethargic spell as much as she could. She was defying Minerva, someone who had given her a home, her only home. Just as she entered the forest, she could hear Minerva shout, Elina! Minerva was a Blue, even able to fly, but she had to find her first and the forest around Umagico was thick – Minerva’s own doing. Elina glanced behind her – Minerva was flying over the few buildings of the town, but not in fast pursuit.

After the disastrous incident in the shower, Melissa had run crying to Minerva and now there was no going back. Umagico was lost to her – forever.

Turning back to the forest, Elina plunged into it. She relaunched herself with Garvice then, when it faded, she perched high in an eucalyptus and waited, her senses wide open to the forest around her, listening for pursuit.

She was kilometers from town, deep in the thick forest. Elina could hear the many birds, the trees were alive with life. With her dexterity and tree-climbing skills, she saw more than most. And when she was still and quiet, the forest seemed all the more alive.

She spent a lot of time in the forest, more than anyone else in Umagico. She knew the animals, the echidna, platypus, quolls, dunnarts and bandicoots. Dingos prowled and crocs were plentiful – if you knew which ponds and rivers to look in. There was a spell for putting animals to sleep, which you had to be careful with since tree animals can fall and crocs can drown. But her favorite creatures of the forest were the colorful birds. If she stayed still long enough, the birds couldn’t tell she was right beside them.

After several minutes of listening to every little sound and looking at every shadow for movement but all was calm, Minerva had chosen not to chase her into the forest. Still, she wasn’t safe yet, Minerva might have tricks she kept secret. Elina stood on the branch and said, "Garvice wants to fly." With practiced ease, she launched straight up, then arched her back to flatten her trajectory, and twisted in midair so she wasn’t flying upside down. After two minutes she settled back down into another tree, another comfortable kilometer from the town.

Elina nervously looked around the forest. There was no sign of Minerva. Minerva might be a Blue, but she didn’t know the forest.

An hour ago she had raped Melissa, or at least Melissa thought so. It had just been fun and games, until it wasn’t – perhaps it never had been. Perhaps she was too ugly and having a green boy body was just stupid. Never would she have a lover, it just couldn’t happen to a freak.

Perhaps Minerva would send a message that it was okay, that she could come back. Elina snorted, it was unlikely – not with the way Melissa had run away crying.

The road leading south was the obvious escape route. She took another flight, circling under the canopy to where she could look down on the old road that led to Umagico, three kilometers to the south. She could follow the road south, perhaps going back to Darwin, but what was the point? She sure as hell wasn’t going back to the university. Besides, Darwin and Cape York were still connected – people came and went on occasion, delivering messages – her crime would follow her.

The world was dark and scary, there was no place where life could just be normal, normal was something that melted at the slightest touch. She just had to wait for Minerva to calm down. She would lay low, spend more time in the forest and avoid the community eating times so nobody would see her. There was no other option.

~ ~ Chapter 3 ~ ~

It was late at night when Elina snuck back to the edge of town. But something was wrong – she could smell it and had smelled it for an hour. She had spent the day exploring the decaying ruins of other villages, something to keep her mind off what was happening in Umagico – now she was tired, thirsty, and just wanted to go to bed.

When she cautiously approached Umagico, silently leaping from tree to tree with the help of the drifting spell, she saw what she feared, her house had been burned down.

In the moonlight Elina looked at the smoldering remains of her home, a dark area amongst the other houses. Her blood ran cold, her anger rising. It must have been Melissa, who had been a friend but now wanted her dead. It couldn’t have been ignited by Minerva, who saw every building in town as a resource, but by someone who really hated her – someone who wanted to hurt her so much as to burn everything she had.

Elina didn’t have much in the house – clothes, her bed – all the stuff the house came with. It wasn’t a lot, but it was all she had. The house was where she was making her new life. Everything had been going well, she was surviving. Now her life was as burned to ash as her house – it had been stolen from her.

It was so easy to put out a fire, the words to activate the E-Space reflector were, ‘damn it burns’. But apparently, her house wasn’t worth the effort. Melissa wanted her dead and nobody cared – nobody cared about the green boy-girl freak. How could they? She had seen beautiful morphs, women turned into exotic animals and models who all the men looked at with desire. But she had made a horrid mistake – ruining her body.

Elina looked up at the moon resting high in the night sky – she could feel the Goddess. Not many could, in that she was special. She turned her gaze to the part of town where Melissa lived. She now saw Melissa in a new light – the girl was weak. But even in her weakness, she had destroyed everything, like a stupid coward. Nobody cared about freaks.

It was easy to silently glide through the night sky over Umagico to the Stringybark eucalyptus where she could look down upon Melissa’s house. Everyone was in their homes, going to bed – but she had no bed. Did Minerva even care? She couldn’t tell if Melissa was home or not, perhaps at her real boyfriend’s house, perhaps with Minerva talking about how the freak Elina needed to be killed.

Glaring at Melissa’s house, Elina gritted her teeth – it was a life for a life. With her heart full of indignation, she spat, "The towering inferno!"

The house roof burst into flames, the biggest fire she ever lit. It was loud, the rush of wind and the heat on her face. The flames were growing, lighting the night. The tall flames must have been just how her own house burned. Staring into the red flames, Elina recalled the riots where house after house in Darwin had been reduced to ash. It hadn’t happened all at once, the spell battles stretched for days as people killed so they could live their own lives how they chose – just who were the evil attackers and who were the heroic defenders seemed muddled.

The fire felt overly intense, as if it was a homage to all that was wrong with her life. But the roof fire wouldn’t destroy the house, someone would put it out first. The roof would be damaged and Melissa would have to move. But if Melissa wanted a war, she would get one.

With a sneer, Elina turned and slipped a bit further into the forest, just far enough to ensure nobody would see her.

There were many unused houses in town, Melissa would have to spend the night in one of them, just like herself. However, Melissa had the option of spending the remainder of the night with her boyfriend – perhaps she would find out the hard way just how serious he was about her. That would be justice, to see the crybaby Melissa having to find a new house to live in – all by herself.

The seconds seemed to creep by. The intensity of the flames grew and yet nothing was happening. Was Melissa home? Elina could see the front and back of the house, nobody was running out. She didn’t think the fire would last this long. It would take a while for the hot yellow flames to eat into the interior, but they were so tall, three meters already! The entire roof was engulfed. And Melissa wasn’t running out.

Certainly Melissa knew the spell to extinguish a flame. It was easy. Was Melissa still sleeping?