River's Dream
Chapter 5

The girls had to wait until almost midnight to sneak out of the bus. They had to make sure everyone was asleep before they did what they had to do. Wendy picked a spot not far from the front of the bus and blasted it clean of any rocks and other debris with her powers. Carrie laid out the special cloth she had made, and with the help of a compass she set it down on the ground so that the pattern laid within the four directions. Lindsy placed five of the candles she had bought into their holders and Amber supervised their placement on the cloth. And with the easy work behind them, they each sat down on their spots, Wendy sitting on the purple Western section, Linds on the green Eastern part, Amber on the red Southern segment, and finally Carrie on the blue Northern portion. They all pulled out lighters and together lit the white center candle. Then at the same time they lit their own candles.

Justin, being the light sleeper that he was, watched the girls though the bus's windshield. He saw everything from the spreading of the strangely shaped cloth, to the lighting of the candles. Now, they sat and held out their hands to one another, although none of them touched the others and completed the circuit. 'Okay,' he thought. 'They're meditating or something. Leave them alome and go back to sleep.' Suddenly, the girls began to glow with lights of different colors and four small, laser-like beams formed from the spaced between their hands and stretched out to meet each other in the middle, about the white candle. Justin climbed off the bus too late, he saw the beams merge and flow straight up into the night sky in a single white pillar of light. Like a moth heading toward a flame, Justin tiptoed forward. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Joey following him from the other bus. 'What's going on? Who are they?' He and Joey snuck up on the girls, and Justin hesitated before tapping on Lindsy's shoulder.

"Honeybear, what are you doing?" Their presence broke the girls' concentration, and the beams and glow faded to nothing. Four pairs of angry, empty eyes turned to glare at the guys.

"They saw." Amber said to no one in particular. Her voice was toneless, like a machine. The three others flicked their eyes towards her for the moment.

"What are we going to do?" Wendy asked in an equally toneless voice. She looked as though the life had been drained from her. Then, a change happened. All their eyes became sparkling with vitality and life agian. Amber smiled slyly to her friends.

"We'll tell them." Justin and Joey were standing side-by-side, looking like scared rabbits that would go bounding off if any of them moves.

"T-Tell us what?" The other girls stared at Amber as though she had gone crazy. She had opposed to telling anyone since the beginning. Now, she was going to be the first to tell not just one, but two ordinary mortals their dseepest darkest secret.

"I guess I should start. I am a tenth generation Pyromancy." Carrie felt relieved. Amber was only going to tell them a half truth. as long as she was around, no creation of theirs would know they existed. Justin and Joey both had confused looks on their faces. Joey began shaking his head.

"What the hell does that mean?!" Wendy began to laugh, she knew what Amber was trying to pull, and it was just fine with her.

"That means she's a Fire Witch. I myself and a fourth generation Wind Sorceress, and Carrie is a third generation Water Sorceress." The guys' mouths dropped open and Justin turned to his girlfriend. Lindsy looked away from his gaze and shrugged her shoulders. "What can I say? I'm the first Earth Witch in my family." Joey appeared to be having a bad dreams, except it wasn't. He was awake and standing in the road, in his pj's.

"This is totally unbelievable. You mean to say that you, all of you are... witches?"

"Oh, God! Haven't you been listening, Rocks-For-Brains?" Joey's face lit up like a kid's on Christmas.

"Hey, you're talking to me!" Carrie said nothing, but she glared at him murderously. Lindsy tried too late to save the jerk from a fate worse than death.

"Um, Joey, I wouldn't get her mad if I were you." All of a sudden, small rain clouds formed over his and Justin's head and they started to pour down rain. Joey tried to run from the rain but the cloud followed him. Amber and Wendy began to laugh. It was a pretty funny sight to see. Their laughted spread to the now hot tempered carrie and cooled her down. The clouds delpleted and left the guys completely soaked and freezing. Justin spoke through chattered teeth.

"How did you do that?" His girlfriend was beginnning to agree with Amber that he was, in fact, an idiot.

"Duh, we're witches. We have powers that we can use for anything."

"So, is it black magic or white magic?" Amber was getting annoyed with all the questiong being asked. Her red candle floated up into the air and hurled itself at Justin's head. It hit smak in the middle of his forehead and fell to the ground. "Ow! Damn, that hurt!" She said nothing, only held out her hand, and the candle floated to her.

"Now, look what you made me do. I have to relight this because of you." She tried to use her lighter, but it wouldn't work. "I was sure this was brand new. I only bought it at the airport. Looks like I'm going to have to use an alternative method." Amber reached over and placed her hand around Wendy's flame. She noticed that the guys flinched when she did this. Maybe they thought it would be painful. The flame was gone as she lifted her hand from the wick. Slowly, she unfolded her fingers to reveal the flame, dancing across the palm of her hand. It split in half when she blew on it and placed one of the flames on her candle, while the other jumped back onto Wendy's. "There, all better now."

"How? Holy shit! How did you do that?"

"We're definately for white magic."

Things always got ridged and tense whenever the buses stopped and everyone mixed and mingled, and it was all because Carrie wasn't speaking to Joey. One afternoon, when the buses were parked in Albany, Lindsy was left alone with Joey pestering her. Amber and Wendy were rummaging through every store they could find, and Carrie was sleeping in the back. All the other guys and crew members had mysteriously vanished somewhere, so there would be no one to save him if Joey got on Lindsy's nerves.

"Please, do this one little thing for me?"

"No!" Lindsy half yelled. She didn't want Carrie to wake up grumpy because of her. She grabbed a water out of the fridge and twisted the cap off. "I am not going to trick her into going back out with you. If she wanted to make up with you, she would have." Joey slumped down onto the couch and hung his head.

"Has she dropped any hints?" Lindsy leaned against the counted of the little kitchenette, she could see out of the door and the other girls were coming back.

"Why would she? She hates you."

"You know hate is such a strong word. Couldn't you tone it down a bit, so it doesn't sound that bad?" Lindsy was about ready to dump her water on his head, but that would only be a waste of her time. He wasn't cooling down anytime soon.

"I'm only stating a fact. She hates your guts, but she doesn't want to do any jail time, so she didn't kill you when she had the chance. And you had better be quiet, she'll wake up if you're too loud." Joey uttered a noise of disgust and heaved himself off the couch.

"I don't care about that right now." LIndsy laughed.

"Now, I know why she really broke up with you." She said and walked off the bus. Joey thought he was slone on the bus and started a conversation out loud with no one in particular.

"Why doesn't anyone talk to me?" He didn't see Amber's smirking face peek around the wall separating the lounge from the front of the bus.

"Because you're annoying, like a fly that just won't go away." Joey whirled around to see Amber sitting where he had been only a few moments before. 'How did she get there? I didn't even hear her get on the bus!' She smiled knowingly at him as if he had said his thought out loud. Joey wasn't going to be scared off by Carrie's watchdog this time though.

"I am not that annoying!"

"More annoying than Lindsy." Amber hadn't said anything loud enough for anyone other than him to hear, but Lindsy poked her head into the bus.

"Hey! I heard that Miss Witch!" Amber smiled kindly at her friend.

"That was the whole point to why I said it." She told her and climbed off the bus, bored with Joey and his idiotic dreams of getting back with Carrie. He'd have to pull a death defying stunt to win her back now.

"So, before we get to New York, Johnny says we're stopping at a motel." Lance said over the phone to Jc in the other bus. There was some cheering as Jc told the others about the plan.

"Thank God! We all need to get away from Joey forr a while." Lance chuckled softly as he held his hand over the mouth piece. He finished laughing a returned to the conversation.

"Anyway, everyone's planning on going to a club while we're there. Sound good?"

"An excellent idea, my good man!" JC spoke with his imitatiion of a British accent. "All the chaps here will surely be thrilled."

"JC, could you stop? You're freaking me out man. I'm aboutt ready to think you've lost your mind."

"We all lose our minds sometime." JC laughed evilly and hung up the phone. He turned around and saw Joey sittting at the table, staring out at the other bus in front of them. "Joe, what are you doing?"

"Just thinking. About Carrie. I miss her. I miss talking to her. I miss kissing her. I even miss playing with her hair." JC grabbed an ice cream cone out of the fridge and then came to sit next to his friend.

"I thought playing with Carrie's hair was a big no-no."

"Yeah, you're right, but, I can't eat, I can't sleep, not without her." Jc held out his cone to Joey, who looked at it with disgust. Jc went back to eatng it and thought about what he was going to say next.

"Do you know what your problem is? You're totally in love with her, weird habits and all." Joey stared off blankly for a minute. Was his friend right? Did he love her, now that he knew she was a witch? By God.....

"You're right. I do love her. That's why I'm going crazy without her!" JC snapped his fingers, and Joey jumped out of his seat.

"That's it! That's how we're going to get you two back together!" Joey stood in the middle of the aisle confused to the breaking point.

"How?"

"Well, we're all going to a club tonight. Dedicate a song to her." Joey grabbed his friend and lifted him out of the booth, huggin him to death.

"you're a genius! And I know what song I'm going to dedicate too. Thanks man." JC was struggling to breathe, but he did manage to get a few words out.

"Joe... you're... I can't breathe man!" Joey let go and JC crashed down onto the table, sending stuff everywhere.

"Sorry, JC."

"S'all right." JC said as he picked his flattened ice cream cone off his shirt.

Chapter 6