“Can I go to them?” I asked Pandora. They were so close. Close enough to touch, and yet try as I might, I couldn’t move.
I stared at the scene, memorising every inch of it.
And then, it was tiles again.
“No,” I sobbed. “That’s not enough. I have to see more!”
“Time is immeasurable. A second can be as valuable as a decade. It is how you use the time that determines its worth. And now, your time here is up.”
I stared again at the two white doors. “Which door?” I asked, choked.
“You choose,” Pandora replied.
“But, which door is which?”
“Now that I cannot answer.”
My eyebrows shot up. “What? Then how will I know if I’m choosing the right door?”
“Only you can know the answer to that,” Pandora told me.
“But I don’t! I don’t know! They look exactly the same! What if I go through the wrong one?”
“Your mind does not get to decide—your heart does. Pick a door. I am sure your heart will follow its true desires.”
“But what if my heart picks the wrong one?”
When no response came, I turned to Pandora, but beside me stood an empty chair. My fortune teller was gone.
I was alone. And I had a door to go through.
In my fifteen years, I’d come to discover that the best way to make difficult decisions was to do it with my eyes closed. So that was precisely what I did. I shut my eyes and walked forward, blindly feeling for one of the silver doorknobs.
My hand landed on cool metal.
I’d picked a door. Where it would lead me, I honestly had no idea.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Behind Door Number One…
“She’s responding!” a woman declared. “The antidote is working!”
Antidote? My eyes were too heavy to open. Was that Ness?
“Can you hear us, Sophie?” the woman asked.
Yes, it was definitely Ness.
“I picked the right door,” I mumbled.
Sam’s voice came next. “She’s talking crazy. Someone slap her.”
“I came back,” I murmured. “Sam, wash your best shirts on a delicate cycle.”
He exhaled in relief. “Sure, sure!” my brother exclaimed. “Whatever that means,” he added.
I blinked into focus and saw Jaxon’s eyes in line with my own. I drew in the final breath he gave me before he pulled away.
“I came back,” I murmured, deliriously happy. “My heart brought me back.”
Epilogue
October came and went, and November brought with it colder days and darker mornings.
It was on one of these cold winter dawns that Jaxon and I decided to take a stroll through the holt. The trees were bare now, and their branches stretched out like long, spindly arms. The fallen leaves laid out a carpet for us as we walked through the awakening woodland.
“I wonder what happened to him,” I mused, mostly to myself.
“Who?” Jaxon asked. A chilled breeze whipped his hair to the side, spreading the strands in a fan across his brow.
I held my gaze to his. “Rueben,” I answered quietly.
Jaxon shrugged. “I don’t know,” he replied. “He could be anywhere by now.”
It had taken a long time for Jaxon to be able to hear Reuben’s name without wincing in rage, and even longer to speak about him.
When Reuben’s attempts on our lives had failed, he’d fled the holt. No one had seen him since, and I was beginning to wonder if we ever would. I hoped not. But I often contemplated how a phoenix would survive in the real world. The rest of his kind were here. Of course, Reuben the Magnificent was no longer part of that fold.
“He won’t be back,” Jaxon said after a brief pause. “You don’t have to be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” I told him. And I wasn’t. Not anymore.
Absentmindedly I touched the bite mark on my neck. It had healed, but the scar remained. I wore it with honour.
We came to a fallen tree that had been uprooted from the previous night’s storm. I stepped onto the trunk, walking along the curved bark like a tightrope.
Jaxon took my hand and walked alongside me.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he murmured.
It was a phrase I’d heard pass his lips often.
“You saved me,” I reminded him. “You breathed life into me. Your life.”
He smiled.
I reached the end of the tree trunk and hopped down. Jaxon’s hand remained loosely around mine as we walked towards the Academy boundaries. Fingers woven, we fit together perfectly. We, I decided, belonged together.
“Look,” Jaxon whispered as we crossed into the stone-walled enclosure. “We’re being watched,” he smirked.
There, in the window of her office, Ness peered out at us.
I waved and she quickly looked away, pretending, rather unconvincingly, to have been looking at something else.
I laughed. “Well,” I reasoned, “at least she’s letting us spend time together now.”
Jaxon grinned. “She had to give in eventually.”
I stopped on the path and turned to face him.
I loved him—hopelessly, desperately, indisputably, and eternally.
And as sun rose over the holt, I welcomed the colours of the new day. At that moment, I knew that whatever the future had in store for me, I would meet with open arms and an unconquerable heart. Just like the dawning of the new day, my life began now.
Here’s an extract from
The Witches of the Glass Castle,
available from bookstores now.
Prologue
ADDO VIS VIRES
Mia gasped for unpolluted air, but the opaque purple smoke poured into her mouth and spilled down her throat, filling her lungs and suffocating her. As she scrambled up the rickety step ladder, flames licked at her legs like the venomous tongue of a serpent.
‘Dino!’ she cried, choking on the thick fumes. She clung to the wooden step ladder, her slate-grey eyes scanning her surroundings. But she could see nothing beyond the flames and smoke that engulfed the stone-walled basement.
Mia covered her mouth and nose with the sleeve of her knit cardigan. Her eyes smarted in the toxic air, but she forced them open.
‘Dino!’ she called out again, her voice hoarse.
And then her brother ruptured the flames, diving for the step ladder and pushing her up to the hatch door.
In a scuffle they burst into the hallway, coughing and sputtering. The hatch door slammed shut, enclosing the blazing basement. Mia staggered to her feet, but her legs buckled and gave way. As she fell forward her palms hit the wood floor with a smack.
Dino lay several feet away, clutching his head with both hands and writhing in pain.
Mia crawled to him, reaching out to him.
‘Get away from me!’ he spat. His coffee-brown eyes were fierce.
Mia shrank back, afraid of him for the first time in her life. Although he was only a year older than her, his barbed voice suddenly seemed to propel him to decades her senior. Even his face no longer seemed like the face of a seventeen-year-old boy, but more like that of a grown man.
Dino let out a tortured cry.
Dazed and frightened, Mia called out for help even though she knew nobody was home. She and Dino lived with their mother and their aunt, but neither of the two women had been home when the power had cut out. Mia and Dino had gone down into the basement to investigate and that was when the explosion had happened.
But to Mia’s surprise, she heard the sound of footsteps descending the staircase. For a second she wondered if she was imagining it, but then a familiar form appeared in the hallway.
‘Aunt Madeline!’ Mia cried in relief. ‘There’s a fire in the basement. Dino’s hurt!’
Madeline crouched over her nephew as he seethed in pain. He gripped his head, his chocolate-brown hair darkened from sweat.
Mia pushed her o
wn hair back from her face, freeing strands that had been stuck to her tear-stained cheeks. The brunette shade was identical to her brother’s.
‘He’ll be OK,’ Madeline confirmed, calmly. She placed her hand on Dino’s brow, her fingers cluttered with colourful rings. After giving him a cursory glance, she rose to her feet.
‘Cassie!’ she called for her sister, though with no real urgency.
Mia, still huddled on the hallway floor, watched as her mother appeared on the scene. Standing beside each other, Cassandra and Madeline were like mirror images. Both were beautiful, with wild red hair and bright-blue eyes. Only from their dress sense was it apparent that Cassandra was a little more conservative than her free-spirited sister. At that moment, both women wore the same blasé expression on their faces.
Dino let out another tormented howl. ‘Get away from me! All of you!’
‘What’s happening to him?’ Mia cried. She reached out to him again, but he swiped her hand away.
‘He’s going to be fine,’ Cassandra said in her usual motherly tone. ‘Maddie, darling, perhaps you should take Dino upstairs while I talk to Mia,’ she suggested – although it was more of an order than a request.
Madeline nodded her head and hauled Dino to his feet, guiding him through the hallway. He stooped and stumbled into the wall with a thump.
‘Oops!’ Madeline chuckled light-heartedly. She aligned him back on course to the staircase.
With her aunt and brother gone, Mia returned her focus to her mother. ‘There’s a fire in the basement,’ she blurted out. The words seemed to jumble in her mouth as she spoke.
‘Don’t worry,’ Cassandra told her. ‘It’ll burn itself out.’
Mia paused. ‘No. It’s a…’ she stuttered, trying to explain herself, ‘…it’s a huge fire. There was an explosion. I lit a candle and it…it just blew up. The entire basement is on fire.’ She waited for the severity of the situation to sink in for her mother. But it didn’t happen.
‘Yes,’ Cassandra said smoothly. ‘I understand. Did you read it aloud? The writing on the wall, I mean.’
Mia’s head whirled. There had been writing etched into the stone wall: ADDO VIS VIRES. And she had read it aloud.
‘Did you, Mia?’ Cassandra pushed.
‘Yes,’ she admitted, confused as to whether or not she should be feeling accountable for something disastrous. After all, what repercussions could there possibly be for reading out some nonsense words?
‘Oh, good,’ Cassandra breathed. She helped her daughter upright and carefully steered her into the living room. ‘I had a feeling it might happen today.’
With her legs still trembling, Mia collapsed on to the beige couch.
‘Oh, no!’ Cassandra sucked in her breath. At last her reaction seemed appropriate. ‘Mia,’ she went on, ‘there’s a hole in your cardigan!’ She picked at the torn fibres on Mia’s shoulder.
Mia stared at her, aghast.
Mistaking her expression, Cassandra added, ‘Never mind. I’ll sew it for you. It’ll be as good as new.’ She tugged at the loose threads on the cherry-red cardigan.
Mia gawped at her now. She couldn’t understand why her mother was so concerned about the cardigan when there were clearly much greater issues at hand. For one thing, their house was on fire!
“Mum!”
With a reluctant sigh, Cassandra took a seat on the couch. She stroked her daughter’s hair. ‘You are fine. Dino is fine. Everything is happening just as it should.’
‘But the basement?’ Mia whispered. Her usual peach complexion was now ashen.
‘Let me explain this to you as best I can. You were destined to go to the basement today. Actually,’ she corrected herself, ‘today, tomorrow, yesterday – I suppose it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that the writing was on the wall. And it was, wasn’t it? You saw the words?’
Mia nodded shakily.
‘You read the phrase out loud?’
‘What does it mean?’ Mia asked. She didn’t dare speak the words aloud again; all of a sudden they felt like a lot more than just words.
Cassandra took off her own cardigan and draped it over Mia’s shoulders. ‘Loosely translated, it means, “To give power. It’s Latin, I believe.’
‘What sort of power?’ Mia murmured. Her heart was pounding so wildly that she felt as though it might burst out of her chest at any moment.
‘The power which was already yours. Your birthright. Myself, Aunt Maddie, Dino, you, we’re all entitled to it. And now is your time to take it.’
All of a sudden Mia felt short of breath. ‘Take what?’
‘Power, my love,’ Cassandra said each word meticulously. ‘You’re sixteen now. You’re old enough to use it. I suppose you could think of today as a sort of rite of passage.’
Mia dropped her hands to her lap. She noticed that they were trembling. She was scared. Scared by the explosion, scared for her brother, and even scared of her own mother.
‘Mia,’ Cassandra said, smiling gently, ‘you’re a witch.’
Books by the same author:
How I Found You (2012)
Evanescent (2013)
The Witches of the Glass Castle (2014)
Look out for the sequel to The Witches of the Glass Castle,
coming December 16th, 2014!
For more information visit: www.gabriellalepore.com
Or follow on Twitter @GabriellaBooks #PhoenixHolt
Thanks for reading!
Secrets in Phoenix Page 22