The Moonstone (Enchantment Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

talk to you, it’s very complicated…”
    She stops talking and her whole body begins to tremble…she looks like a rag doll. You know, like those subliminal images that are inserted in commercials, images that appear for a fraction of a second and that somehow leave a mark on your soul. That’s exactly what I’m looking at. For a fraction of a second I see a vision of horror. The whole room becomes a nightmarish scene filled with a fetid odor, and then everything becomes normal again. The woman suddenly stops trembling and takes a small brown leather bag out of her apron. She opens it, throws the contents into the air, and it falls like a rain of shining dewdrops.
    “Darn Charles, he lied to me, it lasts for minutes, and not the hours he told me it would.”
    “What are you talking about Gertrude? You’re scaring me.”
    And with that my vision of horror materializes. A wave like a color television show that slowly goes to black and white rolls through the room, except instead of the colors disappearing, it’s the comfort and joy that escapes the room. The music squeals, producing a disembodied voice worthy of the greatest horror films. The solid wood furniture transforms into damaged wrecks. The perfectly shined parquet flooring becomes a series of greyed and used planks on the floor. The walls are lined with bare boards and spider webs fill the space at the same time as a layer of dust settles on the floors and walls. The scent of sweets and flowers that filled the space are replaced with an odor of putrefaction. But the most troubling part of the image is the old woman facing me. She starts to tremble once more and her body rises into the air. She is taken over by frantic spasms and morphs in front of my eyes. Her body thins, her skin wrinkles and becomes dry and milky. He hair lengthens as I watch and becomes matted and pure white. She drops onto her feet on the ground and when she turns around I am faced with a ghost from my past.
    “The old white-haired lady,” I utter without considering my words.
    “Is that what you call me, my love?” says the woman in a much less honeyed voice.
    “You are…who are you?”
    “My dear, goodness. You know who I am!”
    “I don’t know anything anymore.”
    “Listen, Lou, I got some illusionist’s powder from a friend to create a soft little nest here for you, to give me the time I need to explain a few little things without you running away, but my friend didn’t tell me that the magical effects would be of such short duration. I wanted to create a reassuring ambiance before revealing everything, but the effects were supposed to last much longer!”
    “Magic? Are you a fairy?”
    “Oh, my dear, no, not at all! Fairies don’t exist.”
    Well, somehow that doesn’t reassure me at all. After all, maybe these stories of magic are just illusions and the pastries have made me hallucinate, but I want to hear the old woman out, who, after thinking about it, doesn’t seem so mean; although her appearance would have me think otherwise.
    “It’s true, I am a witch, and yes, magic exists, and that’s only the beginning, dearest.”
    Ok, that’s not what I was expecting for an answer… she must be senile, the poor dear. I sit down on the sofa trying to avoid the springs that literally replace the usual cushions. I have to close my eyes. Maybe if I do, when I open them I’ll find that all this will have disappeared. The stench is so bad that I can’t stay here for long. Opening my eyes, the décor seems to have stayed the same, but the woman is no longer there, where can she be? I lower my eyes for an instant and what do I see at my feet? Nyx! I am instantly calmer. I must grab her as quickly as I can and go home before Gertrude returns with a pot to cook us in. As I advance towards her, she backs away. Already she has betrayed my heart once today, this little feline who shares her life between us, it’s unbearable.
    “Nyx, come here sweetie, let’s got back to