by Eliza Grace
But Tilda. She was living and blood of Elisabeth. She was everything the forest craved. She was the creator of it, the tender of it, the… No, she would not be the destruction of it.
I am watching Tilda hit the shimmering surface of the canvas Jen created on her side, caught in the witchfinder’s clutches. I wonder if the witchfinder has figured it out yet, that I have made sure Jen’s powers are hidden from him.
Looking down at my hands, holding them with palms facing the sky above, I study them. They are vibrating in and out of focus. They are fading from peach-hued to gray and back again. I’m out of time. Out of time. Out of time… I have to stay here. With an unfocused mind, I reach out and ask for more time. More time.
“Elisabeth, if you can hear me. I need more time. I need to stay. I have to stay.”
Silence meets my whispered plea. I knew she could not hear me, yet I hoped. She is in the Neverwhere. I know, because Arianna has visited her there. It is a designed place, a lasting place. Once, she tended this prison, another place of her own design, whilst also living in a safe haven she created for supernaturals, to save them from the sort of persecution the witchfinder subjected her people to. But when she died in truth and entered the afterlife, she could no longer reach past the divide as she once did. Arianna can, because she’s actual magic given form. All fairies were born of sparks of power.
I watch Tilda, as she works to free my sister, and I worry for what will happen. Jen will find herself safe, back in her home, when Tilda shatters the witchfinder’s illusory hold on her.
Then Tilda will know she is strong enough to yank back her power, her youth.
But I also know there is a way to truly destroy the prison. The witchfinder would not survive without it existing. He is a mortal tethered to its continuation. But there are terrible creatures here. The ‘others’, dark witches consumed by power. And werewolves. Vampires— not like Jon who are good at heart. Monsters. This forest is a world of monsters. And Tilda does not realize that the witchfinder is not even close to the worst of them. I want her free. I want Matthew back in his prison. But it must happen in a way that the Shadow Forest survives. Or all of mankind could be in danger.
I should not worry though. The key to breaking the spell is a mortal, without magic, truly loving a witch and sacrificing himself for her. Elisabeth found it an irony. The witchfinder could only be freed by one of his kind loving one of ours. That was in the beginning, before she started trapping other creatures here.
I’m fading faster now. I feel so weak.
Stumbling, I feel Jon catch me. “It’s okay, Heather. You’re going to be okay.”
“You know that’s not true, Jon.” I whisper out the words. “I’m so glad you were here with me. Like the son I lost.”
I hear Jon sniff, but he doesn’t say anything more.
It is funny to think… if the witchfinder had truly loved Jen, rather than being obsessed with her, he might have broken the spell himself. That was my first thought when Tilda told me of his obvious interest in my sister.
“Does it hurt?” Jon chokes out the question, a sob barely contained.
“No, not at all.” That’s a lie. Everything hurts. My heart especially.
There is no stopping the fading now. I feel the life and color bleed from my body; it is a small comfort to think he might understand now—how I managed to keep Jen’s power hidden. I was strong enough for that.
A Sacrifice
-Tilda & M.H.-
Tilda.
I’m doing this. I’m doing this!
I hit the shimmering once more, the shimmering that is now solid and hard, brittle and fragile.
It’s breaking.
Jen has moved closer now and she is gripping the upper edges of the canvas. She’s screaming my name.
“Tilda! Tilda!”
And then my mother’s name.
“Heather! Heather!”
I want to tell her not to worry, that everything will be okay, but I can only concentrate on the magic.
If I break the concentration, I’ll fail.
And I can’t fail again.
M.H.
The little witch is stronger, faster. Her mother could not have told her truth.
I made that impossible. Impossible!
She’s figured it out. The forest was hers all along. All along. I need more time.
I want more time.
I’ve only been free for so short a while.
I cannot go back to being less than a man, less than living.
I am nearly through the window, the glass melting and reforming around me as I move through it.
In places, it solidifies too fast and I have to break free, leaving behind little cuts created by shattering glass.
“Get away from the painting.” Are the first words out of my mouth when I am fully into the studio.
The baby witch has almost broken through.
Jen hasn’t answered me. She’s gripping the top of the painting.
“Get away from the painting!” I shout, rage warping my words.
Jen turns to me, away from the hole Tilda’s made in the canvas and the midnight-style light streaming into her studio. “You trapped me here.” She says, her voice trembling. “Who… what are you? What the hell are you! Where the hell am I?”
She’s moved away from the painting and towards me.
I lift my hands. “Forget this. Forget what’s happening.”
I say the words clearly.
Tilda.
I’m almost through the barrier. Something’s going on behind me. I can hear Jon talking to mom, but I can’t focus on them. I have to save Jen. I have to win against the witchfinder. He’s lifting his hands, telling Jen to forget. “Leave her alone!” I scream, hitting the glass with as much force as I can muster, using every ounce of my emotion to will the glass to fully break, not just crack and chip.
And it does. It bursts inward with an intense golden light.
It bursts inward sending sharp prisms of glass towards Jen and the witchfinder.
“Jen, duck!” I yell.
M.H.
I hate her.
And I do. I’ve never hated someone or something so intensely before.
I was weaving another forgetting spell. Jen and I would start over again. I’d make her forget who she is, who her family is. She’ll be… an orphan, with nothing to cling to.
But then the little witch broke through. She shattered the illusion.
Jen rushes away from me, towards the back door.
This time, when she races through the entryway, she can leave the house.
Because this is no longer the holding place I’ve designed.
It is her real house.
It is reality.
“I hate you.” I spit out, looking at the busted canvas still sitting on the easel.
The little witch is staring back at me, her body surrounded by a pale glowing.
Tilda.
“Give back what you’ve stolen!” I scream.
“I was nice, little witch,” he responds, walking toward the hole I’ve ripped between the forest prison and Jen’s house. “Now, I’ll take more than your magic. I’ll take your life.”
He picks up the canvas; I see the room change on the other side until the hole I’ve made is facing the ceiling. He is stood over it.
And then he is walking into the portal between our two places. He is falling into the forest.
He’s willingly coming back to the woods.
He somehow ends up on his feet, standing directly in front of me. He reaches through the gold glow and he grabs my throat, faster than I can react. His grip tightens around my neck. “Little witch. Stupid little witch. Jen is mine. She’s mine. Your power is mine. Everything is mine.” His speech devolves into hissing.
He lifts me into the air, my toes dangling above the ground. I reach for the ancestral magic, tighten it around me, and the glow of power intensifies until it envelopes me and the witchfinder in its bright light.
He’s gripping so hard though. So hard.
I can’t focus.
The world is blurry.
“No!” I hear a voice yell and someone running towards me.
I do not recognize it at first.
Not until he is pushing the witchfinder away from me and knocking us all to the forest floor.
M.H.
No. He can’t be here. I banished him to the Neverwhere. Elisabeth would never let him return.
She would punish him, a human. She would keep him as a toy.
But he is here. Elisabeth has let him go.
Why? Why?
I’m pulling myself off the ground, looking at the man who is leaned over the little witch, brushing a stand of hair out of her face. He’s whispering to her. She’s crying.
He loves her.
He loves her.
‘You will stay here in this prison, Matthew, until one of your kind falls in love with a witch.
Falls in love with a witch and protects her with his own body.
When he puts his life before hers.
Then your shackles will forever break.
But, beware. This forest will keep you alive.
If too much time has passed, you will be dust.
Even down to your bones.
Dust.’
That is what she had said just after bringing me to these woods and trapping me here.
So long, I’d pushed that out of my memory.
‘You almost brought this on yourself,’ a voice sounds in my head. ‘I never thought I’d see the day that the witchfinder himself would desire a witch. Care for a witch. What has become of you Matthew? So obsessed with the power that you cannot even recognize my kind any longer?’
It is Elisabeth’s voice; I would recognize it anywhere.
“How?” My voice is hoarse. “You cannot leave the Neverwhere. How?”
Something flits into view.
The fairy.
Arianna.
‘Pure magic, carried within the fairy who can traverse realms.’
I bat the fairy away, clipping her wing and sending her whirling towards the grass some yards away.
“I would never care for a witch.” I spit out.
‘You honestly don’t realize,’ Elisabeth’s voice says and suddenly the vision of Jen forms inside my mind.
“She is no witch.”
‘Yes, Matthew, she is. Even from the beginning, she knew there was something in the forest. Something to be feared. How do you think she knew?’
“Liar! She knew because the little witch found out a way to warn her. She is no witch!”
‘She is, Matthew. She is, and you are blinded by your obsession.’
She laughs then, laughs and it fills my head to the point of boiling.
I scramble away from her voice in my head. Scramble away from the man and girl on the ground.
Lifting my hand, I call the girl’s magic. I push it all into one concentrated orb.
“I will kill you,” I yell maniacally as I launch the power at the little witch who has ruined me. “Die!”
But the man is in the way. He sees what’s coming.
He places his body in the path.
When he is hit, I feel a pulse of white-hot power stream like a river away from his body. A mortal in love with a witch sacrificing himself. Putting his body in harm’s way to protect his love.
I have broken the spell by my own hand.
Tilda.
“Hoyt!” I yell, cradling his unmoving body against me. “Hoyt!”
He was hit with so much power. His shirt is singed in the chest, right above where his heart is.
“Hoyt, please.” I say, the tears leaving my eyes speeding up. “Hoyt, please, say something.”
I can feel a change happening around us, a great wall of power dissolving into nothingness.
“Hoyt, please,” I whisper this time. “God, no.”
We haven’t had enough time. We haven’t even had a proper first date.
This isn’t right. It’s not fair. He’s good. He’s so good. It should be me. Not him.
He is dying. I know he is. Or he is so close to that line of living and dying that his pulse is thready and weak. His skin is so pale. So very pale. Like Jon’s.
“Tilda, it’s alright. It’ll be alright.” It is mom’s voice, the ghost of mom’s voice.
I look up. She is see-through, her entire form vibrating and threatening to disappear fully.
“Mom. No, Mom. Not yet. I can’t lose you too. I can’t.”
“You will not lose him, Tilda.”
“He’s dying,” I look down, my tears hitting Hoyt’s face. “And so are you. Everyone dies around me. Everyone.”
Jon is helping to support mom. “Help me kneel, Jon.”
He nods, his face solemn. He’s been crying too. His cheeks are still wet.
“I love you, Tilda.” Mom says as soon as she’s kneeling. “I will love you forever and we’ll see each other again one day.”
“I love you. You can’t leave me. I’m not ready.”
“I have no chance. I’m already dead, My Little Witch. I’m already gone. But him?” She looks down at Hoyt. “It’s not his time.” She looks at me again. “I love you, Tilda. I love you so much.”
And then she is pressing both her hands to Hoyt’s chest. She is pressing it and murmuring something so low that I cannot hear what she is saying.
Her face tilts to the sky above. Her mouth opens in a silent scream.
And then she is gone. Just… gone.
And Hoyt’s eyelids are fluttering rapidly, open and closed.
M.H.
There is no one to mourn me.
No one.
I feel the blood drying in my veins.
I feel my skin begin to parch and peel.
I feel the bones inside of me begin to crumble.
The prison is broken.
I am at an end.
I look past the three people on the ground— the stupid baby witch, the man who loves her, the boy who cannot die—in the distance, I see them.
The others who have been trapped in this prison.
Who are now free…
I hope they exact a cruel and unstoppable terror upon this world.
And upon those who have stolen my second chance at life.
Love Bound
-Hoyt-
Fourteen days after Tilda’s disappearance…
Is it fourteen days? Time seems so meaningless still.
And all that matters is she is here. I can see her.
I want to run to her. Every particle of my being is screaming at me to. She is right there, so close, banging against the air, her fists alive with gold-yellow light.
But this could be an illusion.
This could all be false.
And who is the guy with the other woman, the one who looks like Tilda? Who is he?
As I stand hesitating, the fairy appears, flitting about my head and looking more energetic than last time I saw her. My eyes follow her as she flies. “Is this real?” I whisper, hoping I’ve spoken loud enough for her to hear, but not so loud that the girl that might be Tilda and the strangers might hear me also.
“Real, real, real.” She chirps out happily. “Real, real, real!” she chirps out triumphantly. “She let you go. She let you go. Elisabeth let you go.” There’s a note of disbelief in her words. But I do not care. This is real. She is real. In my head, another voice speaks. ‘Go to the girl you love. Go to her.’
I still hesitate. I hesitate until something unbelievable happens. Although, with what I saw in the Neverwhere, nothing should be unbelievable now.
A man is moving through the hole Tilda has created. A hole in the air. A hole in the universe.
He is stood in front of her, in a fraction of a second it happens, and his hands go to clasp around her neck. And he is gripping her, choking her.
That is when I start running. The fairy is flying not far ahead of me, a trail of sparkling in h
er wake.
I have not come all this way to have Tilda die in front of me. I will save her, no matter what.
My breath is expelled from my body when I slam into the man and knock us all to the ground. Tilda is not moving. I scramble to her, crawling across the ground. Her eyes are closed. I brush the hair out of her face. “Tilda, wake up. Please, Tilda, it’s Hoyt.”
I hear the man screaming then, the one who’d been trying to hurt Tilda. “I will kill you,” he yells psychotically. “Die!” I look at him, just as something large and electric flies from his hands. He won’t hurt Tilda. He won’t.
My body moves to protect her body.
My life for hers.
Forest of Monsters
-Tilda-
Mom is gone.
Mom is gone.
Forever.
The witchfinder is still hanging on for literal dear life. He is a ghost of himself. Fading, in his own way. Not like Mom, not like a graceful puff of final magic used for the good of someone she loves.
No, he is shriveling into himself, his face wrinkling and becoming paler and paler. He is turning from fresh paper, newly ripped from a notebook, to something held over a fire. But he’s skipping the part when he bursts into flame, the trail of fire moving across his skin. He’s skipping the actual burning, and jumping to the part where he crumbles into gray-white ash.
He looks at us, his eyes so human within his crumbling face. And what I see is defiance, until the bitter end.
When he is nothing more than particulates on the ground, a pile of nothingness, I feel that rubber band bounce back to me, a final time. A permanent time. I gasp as the magic, my own birthed magic, jumps around inside of me, clearly happy to be home again.