by Blythe Baker
“It’s not,” I said. “It’s targeting people that I care about. Especially the Ungifted. And Mitch’s family, by extension. I’ve had some werewolves placed as guards around their property, so the monster shouldn’t be able to get close.”
“That’s a relief…” Lady Margaret said. “Because I attempted to fight it off myself, and…” She pulled back the sleeve of her traveling cloak, and I gasped.
Along the length of her forearm, there was a long, deep gash.
It seemed she had put some sort of spell around it, as a soft, green light seemed to pulsate around the outside of her arm, almost like a cast protecting it.
She pulled down her sleeve, her face hardening. “I was barely able to get away…” she said. She shook her head. “I feel just terrible about how we treated you at the council meeting. I realize most of us were just afraid something like that existed, but the truth is – ”
“The truth is my mother soured the council on faeries,” I said. “I know.”
Lady Margaret bowed her head. “I’m ashamed that I ever took them at their word. I didn’t become a member of the council until about eight years ago, so I never knew your mother. But…I am starting to wonder how true the things I’ve heard about her really were…”
It wasn’t completely made right, but it was definitely a start.
“Marianne, will you come back to speak to the council with me?” she asked, her eyes widening again. “This monster…if it grows any stronger, I’m afraid there won’t be a force big enough to stop it. You are going to need all the help you can get in defeating it.”
“Why do you think it’s going to be me?” I asked.
Lady Margaret blinked at me. “Because whether we spell weavers like it or not, faeries are the real magic users. And the only one strong enough to beat this monster is you.”
My mouth went dry.
I thought back to the image in the shard, of me standing in front of the monster with all these people on either side of me. Would the council members be some of those blurred faces I hadn’t seen yet?
“Alright,” I said. “I’ll go with you. But I only have one request.”
“What’s that?” Lady Margaret asked.
“Could we tape Delilah’s mouth shut? Or is that just too much to ask?”
10
I wasn’t really sure what to expect when Athena and I went back to the Hollow with Lady Margaret. Part of me imagined a squad of spell weavers waiting for us on the other side, dressed in combat gear, ready to take me down like I was some kind of enemy force. The other part of me wondered what they were going to do to Lady Margaret for bringing me through in the first place, especially after I’d been exiled.
Not sure which way the cards were going to fall, I tried my best to make it through the rest of the day as quickly as I could before I met with Lady Margaret at my cabin just as it was getting dark.
She drew the portal against the back of my bathroom door, just like I had.
“Do you – ” she started to say, her eyes darting to the deep blue wand in my hand. “Is that a real wand?”
“Yes,” I said. “I was given it.”
Lady Margaret’s mouth opened, then quickly shut. “Well…given the circumstances, it seems someone made a very rash judgment…but I don’t disagree with it.”
That was a relief.
The portal hub was quiet, aside from what appeared to be a few people leaving the Hollow to head for home in Faerywood Falls.
Lady Margaret insisted I wear her traveling cloak, so as to avoid suspicion. “They knew I was leaving to pay respects to my brother’s family, so they won’t be surprised to see me return through a portal. You, however…we need to keep safe until we can get to the council hall.”
It all made perfect sense to me.
Athena did her best to stay close to me, and I wished I’d had a chance to try the transformation spell I’d briefly glanced at in the book Zara had given me. But no one we passed seemed surprised about the fact that a fox was walking along beside us; perhaps fox familiars weren’t all that uncommon?
“Now, when we get there, let me do the talking, alright?” Lady Margaret asked in a low voice. “We need to wait until the very last minute to reveal you, lest they all become violent and attack.”
My stomach twisted in knots. “Why would they attack you?” I whispered only loud enough for her to hear.
“Because I’m standing with you,” she said. She grabbed onto my arm. “And I am with you. You have the support of two of the council members; that’s quite a powerful number.”
How was that powerful, when there were still nine others we had to convince?
The beautiful trees and their softly glowing tendrils of magic gave the night a dreamy appearance. I was exhausted, and thought it might be nice to just curl up underneath the glittering constellations I didn’t recognize, and allow the cool grass to gently envelope me as I fell asleep.
But there were more important things to be dealing with, which involved a lot more people than just me. If I failed, if this monster succeeded, it would be the end of all life in Faerywood Falls. Perhaps even outside of it.
The council hall seemed busy for so late in the day, but I had to remind myself that the last time I was here, I was running from sight in the dead of night. These were people heading home after a day of work. They all had normal lives, too.
It made me wonder how many of them disliked me. I wondered how many thought my mother was nothing more than a traitor, or a liar. How much of what the council said did they believe?
Bliss acted like the council’s word was final. Was that what all spell weavers believed?
Lady Margaret lead me to the deep purple doors, the delicate silver bells hanging still against the wall. There were a few others standing along the wall, waiting.
As soon as Lady Margaret made herself known, though, people began to take notice; the woman in front bowed deeply, mumbling her name on her lips. The man beside her paled. The elderly spell weaver behind them gasped and tucked the book she carried underneath her long, silk cloak.
“My apologies to you all,” Lady Margaret said. “But I must speak with the rest of the council at once. It’s a matter of emergency.”
No one seemed to mind; how wise would it be to defy a member of the council of eleven anyway?
She reached up and struck one of the bells with the tip of her finger. It chimed and echoed down the length of the hall.
The other bell on the other side also hummed, and both doors opened.
I was starting to get used to walking in through here. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
The council hall smelled of burnt wood and something floral. There was a copper kettle the size of a minivan in the middle of the stone floor. Embers glowed beneath it, and some kind of minty green liquid was bubbling softly inside.
Lady Margaret’s demeanor suddenly changed as we stepped inside. No longer was she the sad, timid woman I’d met in the shop. She held her head high, and pulled a narrow, green wand from the inside of her sleeve.
With a swift wave and a mutter of some words I didn’t recognize, the copper kettle and the glowing embers beneath it were lifted into the air and moved off to the side.
“Lady Margaret, what are you doing?”
It was Lady Yurl’s voice.
I looked up, doing my best to keep my face hidden by the wool hood, to see her leaning over the balcony.
“Members of the council of eleven?” Lady Margaret said, her voice booming with a surprising volume across the large room. “It is time for us to meet and discuss something important.”
Quiet muttering greeted her.
“Weren’t you going to visit your brother’s family?” asked Lord Benjamin, the only male member of the council.
“I did,” she said. “And I learned something invaluable while I was there.”
She pulled back the sleeve of her dress and revealed the same wound to them that she had showed to me.
I heard a gasp from somewhere above me, along with a nervous, jittery cry. Something about that wound was enough to frighten most of them.
“What on earth happened to you?” Lady Yurl asked.
“The monster that Marianne Huffler was telling us about attacked me,” she said. “And this is the proof I have of it.”
“Marianne Huffler?” came a sneering voice. “Has she wrapped you around her finger now as well?”
Delilah Griffin, who was seated on her crystal chair, was smirking. I could just make her out from beneath the shadows.
“Brainwashed is more like it,” said Lady Rue, who was just a few seats down from Delilah. She chittered like an obnoxious child.
“Now see here,” Lady Margaret said. “Marianne was telling the truth. And you all treated her so unfairly, dismissing her without so much as a – ”
“We treated her unfairly?” Lady Ferrin said, folding her arms. “I seem to recall that you were just as against her as the rest of us were.”
Lady Margaret glanced at me out of the corner of her eye.
“That was before I learned that this monster killed my brother,” she said.
No one seemed to think that was funny.
“Who is this you’ve brought with you?” Lady Yurl asked.
Lady Margaret hesitated, and Lady Rue leapt to her feet, pointing down at me.
“It’s Marianne! It must be!”
I didn’t fear pulling the hood back and revealing my face, not when I knew that they’d think twice after I threatened them last time. I still had the upper hand…as long as I was willing to use it.
I lowered the hood, and was not the least bit surprised when Lady Rue gasped, and Lady Ferrin’s voice jumped three octaves.
“It’s the faery! Don’t let her get away!”
I pulled my wand out from the waistband of the jeans I wore beneath the cloak.
“Who gave her a wand?” asked Lady Delilah in an incredulous tone.
“How did she get one?” Lady Rue squeaked.
“Silence!”
Lady Yurl’s fist striking the edge of the balcony was enough to draw everyone’s attention away from themselves and back to reality. Heads swiveled in her direction, along with glares and dangerous frowns.
She was, though, the first seat on the council of eleven. Even if they all claimed to have equal authority, Lady Yurl was the one with the most power. And it emanated off her in waves.
“Marianne….you have dared to enter the halls from which you were forbidden,” Lady Yurl said. “And you, Lady Margaret…escorting her in here, against the judgment of the council?”
“She needs to be punished,” Delilah said.
Lady Yurl’s glare in her direction was enough to make me quake in my boots, too.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Lady Yurl asked.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Lady Margaret held out her hand, stepping in front of me.
“I shall be speaking for her,” Lady Margaret said. “I witnessed this monster. It was just as she said it was. More than that, Marianne has told me about a shard of the orb of ages that has come into her possession – ”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake…” Delilah said, rolling her eyes exaggeratedly.
“I’m serious,” Lady Margaret said.
With a hard expression, she swirled her wand above her head in a circular motion, words coming from her mouth I’d never heard before.
Soon, a contraption that I’d never seen appeared in the air in front of her. A silver crescent moon resting in a crystal holder, inlaid into a solid, polished, dark wooden base.
It floated gently down to the ground, resting at about the same height as my waist.
Lady Margaret looked over at me. “Would you care to show them?”
“How?” I asked.
“The shard of the orb,” she said, gently touching the inside of the crescent moon.
I pulled the leather cord out from the inside of my shirt, along with the little velvet pouch it was attached to. I lifted it from around my neck, and opened the bag.
My footsteps echoed on the hard, stone floor as I walked over to this mystical item that Lady Margaret procured literally out of thin air.
My heart was pounding in my ears as I reached it, feeling every eye in the room on me as I upended the bag over the moon.
The shard tumbled out, but then as if the silver moon was a magnet, it hovered in the empty space inside it.
A brilliant beam of white light shot upward from the shard, bathing the domed ceiling overhead in what looked like a porthole looking out as some dense mist.
“Now…if you touch the shard, Marianne…we can all see what you see,” Lady Margaret said.
I stared at her. “Was this thing used for the orb of ages once upon a time?” I asked. “I mean…from when it was still whole?”
“How does she know about the orb?” asked Lady Rue. “I thought only council members knew about it.”
“Yeah, and how did she just happen to find a shard?” asked Lady Ferrin. “I thought they were all hidden away.”
“Magical items will often allow themselves to be found in times of great need,” Lady Yurl said. “As to how she knows about it…I know that Lady Silvia was a little too loose with her words when she was teaching her classes…”
Which explained how Bliss knew about the orb in the first place, it seemed.
“You ready?” Lady Margaret asked, gesturing to the shard of the orb of ages that was tumbling in mid-air.
I nodded, and reached out to touch the shard.
It was different this time.
I can see it! Athena said from the floor beside me.
I could, too. But that wasn’t any different. How could she –
And then it hit me. I wasn’t inside my own mind. I was staring up at the domed ceiling, far overhead, seeing the image I’d seen in my head, over and over again. It was like this weird machine was a projector for the things it had been showing to me.
There was a strangled gasp from someone, and another said, “Oh, my…” in a breathless tone.
“What is that thing?” asked Lord Benjamin, his strong voice faltering.
“That…my friends…is the monster,” said Lady Margaret.
“It’s even more hideous than I imagined…” Lady Yurl said.
“But – that can’t be – that can’t be real, can it?” Lady Rue said. “I mean, this monster. She’s making this up somehow! She’s a faery! How do we know she’s not manipulating our thoughts or something right now?”
“I thought you’d be wise enough not to reveal your utter naivety,” said another woman I hadn’t heard speak yet. “This machine has been used by spell weavers for many generations, and was used exclusively with the orb. It shows us all what it has revealed to one, allowing us to interpret the visions as they are revealed to us.”
“There’s power in numbers,” I said, my gaze still fixed on the image.
“Who are all those people around?” asked Lord Benjamin.
The image, I realized, had become clearer. More faces were revealing themselves. Lady Margaret was there beside Cain. I thought I could see Lord Benjamin toward the back. I hadn’t recognized either of them before for who they were, but now their importance in this matter was just becoming clearer by the minute.
“These are the others who have agreed to help me fight this monster,” I said. “I can’t do this alone. This image has proved it to me. I’ve asked for help from the shape shifters, the vampires, and now from you, the council of the spell weavers. This monster is unlike anything else I’ve ever witnessed. And I think that the forest has been preparing me for this moment, helping to protect me as I tried to become stronger and learn more about who I am. But…there is still so much I don’t know. And all of you have so much more experience, so much skill, that I’d be insane not to ask you for your help with it.”
Lady Margaret nodded. “I believe it is our duty to help her,” she said. “Becaus
e if she falls…then so will all of Faerywood Falls.”
The weight of her statement fell heavily on the room around us. And yet, I knew it was the truth. I’d known it deep in my bones from the moment I’d touched the orb of the ages.
“So…it is real? It’s…real?” Lady Ferrin asked, staring up at the ceiling. “And it looks like that? How do we even fight something like that?”
“Oh, please…” Delilah said, getting to her feet and coming to the balcony to glare down at me. “The only reason why this one would have a hard time fighting something like that is because she’s inexperienced. She doesn’t know any spells, and just because she can steal people’s gifts doesn’t mean she’s powerful. She’s useless if she doesn’t know how to use any of them.”
“Lady Delilah’s right,” Lady Rue said with a nod of agreement. “Just because she says she’s – ”
“So I say we fight this monster,” Delilah said. “Just so we can show her what an utter weakling she really is.”
“You’ll live to regret those words,” Lady Margaret said in a low voice. “You have no idea what you’re up against, do you?”
Delilah shrugged. “I don’t really care, if I’m honest. But I think it’s pretty clear everyone’s against me on this – ”
“I’m not against you!” Lady Rue said, flinging her hand into the air. “I’m still with you, all the way.”
“Shame on both of you,” Lady Yurl said. “We should present a united front, especially when faced with something so grim. Yet you still choose to pick your petty feelings over the good of others. You are no better than your sister was.”
Delilah’s head snapped in Lady Yurl’s direction, and I could’ve sworn I heard a soft hiss.
Lady Yurl looked down at me. “Marianne, I take it upon myself to apologize on behalf of the entire council for ever doubting you in the first place. While your acts of deception were unwanted and unwarranted, your desire to warn us was admirable. Do I have the support of the council to unanimously pledge ourselves to the cause of fighting the darkness?”
Hands slowly began to raise around the room, Lady Margaret’s being the first. Soon, though, all but two hands were in the air.