Curse of the Night Witch

by Alex Aster

  Melda held a hand up. “How can that be true? I’ve studied hundreds of treatises of villages and cities in Emblem Island and none—”

  Jeremiah was quick to cut her off. “Described a place in the Shadows? A place fully without color? Not particularly surprising. A leader like you would never learn about a place with hardly any people to lead.” He shrugged. “It really shouldn’t be such a shock that you three don’t know about the Shadows or the settlements around it. I’m quite sure not many people in your village have traveled far outside of its borders at all.”

  Tor gritted his teeth. Somehow, everything that came out of Jeremiah’s mouth sounded like an insult.

  Still, the know-all’s words were not lost on him. He started to worry about practical things, such as food, water, and shelter. If no one lived in the dark corners of Emblem Island, where would they find resources?

  Jeremiah handed Tor the map, which he quickly put into his backpack, shoved up against the other one. The know-all then turned, humming to himself. He looked as if he was about to reach into one of his glass cases, but stopped suddenly to stare at Melda.

  No…at her necklace.

  He grabbed the pendant between his fingers before she could tuck it away. “Great Zeal.” Jeremiah’s eyes were wide. “Your eyes, are of course, a very peculiar shade. I’ve only seen one other person with that color on their face. But this? This is downright priceless.” He gave her an accusatory look. “How in the world did you come to possess a drop of color?”

  Tor and Engle shared a shocked look. That’s what that was? Drops of color were extremely rare—they could only be extracted by special creatures. The liquid from Melda’s necklace could turn anything in the world that shade of blue.

  Melda stared down at the ground sheepishly. “It’s a family heirloom,” she said, taking a step back so the necklace fell out of Jeremiah’s hand.

  Why didn’t her family sell it, then? Tor wondered. They clearly needed the money.

  The know-all opened his mouth to say something else but then he seemed to think better of it, and cleared his throat instead.

  “Well, I’ll just state the obvious. The three of you are incredibly unequipped for a journey of this magnitude, I would wager you will all die a painful death at the hands of any number of threats you might encounter on the way. Also, by the looks of your lifelines, I would say you have at most a little more than a week of life left. I believe giving you this map and gift is as good as kissing them goodbye forever. A great and utter waste…”

  He took a deep breath.

  “However, the queen has spoken, and as her word is as good as law, I present you with this gift to help ease the pain of this impossible journey.”

  Jeremiah walked over to one of the glass display cases, slid open the top, then grabbed what sat inside: a dagger with a razor-thin edge and a single ruby on its silver hilt. He faced Tor. “A blade crafted out of the purest silver from the Alabaster Caves. The surest way to slay the Night Witch.”

  Tor swallowed, remembering his promise to the queen. He didn’t want the weapon or the responsibility that came with it. But he took it anyway, slipping it into his pocket.

  “And for you…” He turned to face Melda. He had a finger to his chin. “Well, I should say, and for me…”

  “What?”

  “I will be needing that drop of color, of course.”

  Melda looked at Engle and Tor, her head shaking ever so slightly as she took a step backward.

  Jeremiah sighed. “Haven’t you ever heard of reciprocity? I gave you a gift, and I expect one in return.”

  “No,” Melda said firmly.

  He grinned. “While I admire your boldness…” The know-all knocked against the wall, and footsteps sounded in the hall, along with clashing metal. “I wasn’t asking.”

  Tor looked at Engle’s pocket, where his friend’s snake statue was poking out. It had turned a remarkable shade of blue.

  Melda grabbed Tor’s hand, and Tor grabbed Engle’s. Just as the guards burst into the room, they ran toward the only other exit: the balcony door. They crashed through, the group of armed men right behind them, and only stopped when they reached the railing.

  Engle gulped. “It must be, what? Five hundred feet down?”

  “More like a thousand,” Melda corrected.

  By the time they turned back around, the guards had followed them outside, blocking the balcony door.

  “There’s nowhere for you to run,” Jeremiah said. “I just want the girl. You two are free to go and complete the queen’s task.”

  Tor stepped forward. “Never,” he said. And he meant it.

  The know-all shrugged. “Very well, then. Guards?”

  The men stepped forward, swords drawn. Engle, Melda, and Tor pressed themselves against the banister, the sounds of the city far below—pops of sparkler animals, distant children’s yells, and the chatter of haggling marketfolk. The know-all was right. There was nowhere to go.

  Then, something peculiar happened. The lips on Engle’s wrist parted and spoke just one word: “Jump.”

  And they did.

  The Markless Boy

  Once upon a lilac dawn, there was a boy born markless—the only one in his family without an emblem.

  Each night, he would go to the sea that bordered his home and pray. Wish for a power that would make him special. The coast bordering his village was supposed to be sacred, ever since a queen had walked into its waters and never returned, sacrificing her life for her child’s.

  He brought gifts for the water spirit. Golden apples, which bobbed on the sea’s surface. Shells the color of sunset, which he had collected after a storm. Earrings he had taken from his mother’s jewelry box, when she was not looking. But nothing worked.

  One day, he found a child’s toy—a doll—and offered that to the ocean.

  The waters gleamed silver, and from its depths a woman appeared, glowing brighter than the moon behind her.

  “I will grant you a single gift,” she said, words echoing across the sea. “One that will need to be earned.”

  “An emblem,” he said desperately. “I will do anything for an emblem.”

  The sea spirit smiled. “I grant you a Grail. A quest that, if completed successfully, will earn you an emblem rarer than any other on the island. Are you up to this task?”

  He said yes.

  “I must warn you of many dangers. An almost certain death. And I offer a single comfort—the wish-gods will be watching. To save you once, should you need it.”

  He nodded solemnly. “I am up to this great task.”

  “Good. You may bring two others. They will be your comrades.”

  The boy knew exactly who he would take. His two brothers, who had fighting emblems and were always up for adventure.

  “They, too, will be gifted glory, should they survive the journey.”

  “What is my quest?” he finally asked.

  “Return this feather to the silver falcon,” she said, as a plume floated toward him, landing in his palm. “So that he may roam the skies once more, whole, and able to help those in need of guidance.”

  7

  Cristal Town

  For a moment, they were falling. Engle was screaming. Melda was gasping. Then, she was grasping, catching a long, thin piece of fabric that hung in the air like a rope.

  She held it tightly—then Tor, then Engle, hanging on for dear life, one swinging over the other.

  They were floating.

  Tor squinted up toward the sun and saw the top of their cord was a glorious red balloon the size of his house. It was a hopper, a balloon typically enchanted to take visitors to Zeal. He had no idea where it had come from but was grateful nonetheless. It took them up just far enough to see Jeremiah’s shocked expression. And then they sailed away.

  They broke through clouds,
and Tor did his best not to look down, focusing instead on the threads from the fabric that had magically wrapped around and around his hand, keeping him attached. He felt the weight of the dagger still in his pocket, its tip poking through the fabric and grazing his leg each time the balloon lurched in a different direction. They flew until the tall city of Zeal was blocked by even larger mountain ranges.

  He finally glanced toward his feet, and saw them kicking over thin air. Far below, fields cut into different-colored squares sat, looking very much like his grandmother’s quilts. It was a strange feeling, flying. Tor had expected it to be freeing, but found it was the exact opposite. He had never felt so chained to an object as he did now, his sweaty fist tied to the balloon’s string.

  He shook his head in disbelief. They had just jumped off a balcony! What were they thinking? Worse, when the lips on Engle’s wrist had spoken, he hadn’t even given it a second thought. He had simply acted. Was he losing his mind?

  They were getting more reckless by the minute.

  Still…though it felt like he could fall hundreds of feet at any moment, Tor couldn’t help but smile.

  Yes, he was most definitely losing his mind.

  The balloon began to lower. Tor watched the ground get closer and closer, rushing toward him, the roar of the wind making his ears itch and nose go numb, until his feet were on solid earth once again, and the string released its hold. He fell forward, off-balance, landing on his stomach, and relished the feeling of dirt against his cheek. Melda, then Engle, joined him moments later.

  The balloon broke through the clouds, disappearing from view.

  After recovering from bouts of dizziness and letting their rapidly beating hearts settle down, Engle, Tor, and Melda gathered together. They all stared at the same thing—the lips on Engle’s wrist.

  “It spoke,” Melda said firmly.

  Engle looked up at her. “Well, we know that.”

  Who had spoken was the mystery. Who had helped them?

  Tor pressed his mouth into a line. One possibility came to mind, but it was very nearly impossible. Still, he couldn’t resist throwing it out there. “Well, you know, I am technically markless.”

  “So?” Engle said.

  “If the Night Witch is real, then maybe some of the other legends are true, too. The ones told on the nights before Eve, in particular.”

  Melda blinked. “You don’t actually think—”

  Engle snapped his fingers. “Of course!” A giddy smile spread across his freckled face. “Well, this makes things interesting.”

  Melda shook her head. “But those things aren’t even real.”

  Engle smirked. “Well, we didn’t think curses were real, did we?”

  “I suppose so, but—”

  “But what? Tor has been sent on a quest! A Grail.” They had read stories of Grails in Cuentos—devised by the wish-gods to give markless children a chance at earning an emblem. And not just any emblem, but a marking that was one of a kind.

  These quests were not easy, Tor knew. Legends of Grails were full of man-eating monsters and long travels. Most did not make it very far, given the risks. Life on Emblem Island for the emblem-less was bad enough to make it worth it, however.

  Still, to give them a chance at success, in Cuentos, children on a Grail were often helped by the same spirits that granted wishes on Eve: the wish-gods. The voice that had spoken through the mouth on Engle’s skin must have been one of them.

  Engle paced around the field they had landed in and threw his hands up. “It all makes sense. Your Grail must be to defeat the Night Witch. Once you do, who knows what kind of emblem you’ll be gifted!”

  Tor felt excited, but also like he was about to be sick. Engle’s eyes widened, and he made an excited expression usually reserved for especially good bites of cake. “And we’re your comrades!” In each old quest tale, the markless child was assisted by two especially gifted partners, called comrades. If their quest was successfully completed, they, too, enjoyed fame for ages.

  Melda didn’t look convinced. “Well, Grail or not, one thing is for sure. If we don’t find the witch soon, we’ll all be dead.” She held up her shortened lifeline to drive her point home.

  Daylight was fading. Soon, a carpet of stars would be blinking back at them. Tor’s grandmother used to say the nighttime sky was simply sparkling fabric that could be cut into pieces. She told stories of a seamstress who had a ladder so tall she could climb to the heavens, cut the stars into cloth, and use it to make the most beautiful dresses.

  By the time Tor had started training, and the fairy tales from The Book of Cuentos had been revealed to be silly lies, he had felt foolish for once believing his grandmother’s stories.

  Perhaps he should have listened to them more carefully.

  “We’ll have to find food and shelter for the night. Tomorrow, we set off toward the Shadows.”

  * * *

  The red balloon had dropped them off just a mile short of Cristal Town.

  Tor’s allowance was enough for a warm meal at Pasty Pub, a narrow light purple building squeezed in between the town’s bank and theater. They ate quickly—except for Engle, who ordered two more rounds of pie, gifted to him by the sympathetic bar owner. The woman took pity on them once again and offered a room for a quarter of the price. Tor fell asleep to the faint sound of an opera show next door. His dreams were dark and full of shadows.

  Down to his last dobble, the next day’s breakfast consisted of stale pastries for half-price and a few canteens of water they stored in Tor’s backpack, which had become harder to zip—and carry. Now that they had Jeremiah’s map, Tor decided to trade the hermit’s for two loaves of bread and a block of cheese, which the pub owner wrapped in paper, before retreating into the kitchen.

  Tor pulled the remaining map out of his backpack. “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

  Melda smirked. “Great, that’s just what we need. Another idea from you. What did you wish for this time? A plague?”

  He ignored her and rolled open the scroll so that it covered the length of the bar. “Emblem Island is bigger than we knew. Whichever path we take, making it here,” he pointed to the large dark hole that was the Shadows, “Will take days. Five if we’re lucky. Possibly six. Not a lot of room for error.”

  “What are you getting at?” Engle asked, trailing a finger across his empty plate.

  “If we don’t take the exact right way, we’ll be dead before we ever find the Night Witch.”

  Melda sighed. “All right, but what choice do we have? We don’t know the exact right way. We have just the faintest idea of where she lives.”

  The night before, Tor dreamt of monsters that hadn’t filled his nightmares in years—not since he was Rosa’s age. Though he had woken up covered in sweat and panting like he had run a mile, those dreams might have been a blessing. They had given him an idea. “Jeremiah said no one has ever found the Night Witch and lived.” He pulled something out of his bag and dropped it onto the table with a thump. “But what if someone has?”

  The Book of Cuentos sat before them, the copy the hermit had given Tor. The silver-piped cover caught the light coming from the pub’s single, dust-glazed window. It gleamed, almost like a wink.

  “Whoever wrote this book might be the only one who met the witch and lived to tell the tale. The storyteller traveled across Emblem Island, and in the end found the Night Witch. Think of the storyteller not as a writer…but as an explorer.” Tor closed his eyes and swallowed, knowing he was about to sound as nutty as a cashew. “What if we treated this book as less of a collection of stories and more as a map to her?”

  Engle blinked. “How would we do that?”

  Tor opened the book and scanned one of its first tales.

  “There,” he said, sticking his finger right in the middle of one of the legend’s last paragraphs. “The husband and wife
were turned into a giant snake with one head at each end. Forever connected.”

  “They turned into a hydroclops,” Engle said excitedly, nodding. “A cousin of the two-headed wrangler worm. A bit deadlier, I would say. Makes an anaconda look like a caterpillar.”

  Melda thrummed her nails against the bar. “What in the world does that have to do with finding the Night Witch?”

  Tor took a deep breath. He hoped his plan sounded better out loud than it did in his head. “If we can find parts of these stories that match up with places on this map—geographical features, names, descriptions, animals, anything—then it might lead us directly to the witch. She’s the last chapter, after all, ‘The Night Witch’s Castle.’ We can follow the storyteller’s path through the island right to her.”

  Engle sighed. “There are dozens of stories in the book, though. That would take forever.”

  Tor had thought of that, too. But he had an idea. “What if we only followed the monster myths?” Though there were many chapters in The Book of Cuentos, only a handful described the origin of wicked creatures, the monsters Tor and Engle had been fascinated with for years. “The Faceless Man,” “The Weeping Woman,” “The Night Witch,” even.

  “But how do we know the person who wrote Cuentos—the storyteller—even started his book on this side of the island?” Engle brought up a good point. The storyteller could have started his travels at the very southern tip of Emblem Island, in Manzana, where caves made up the coast. Or even the fishing town of Perla, a city known for its harbors.

  “The very first story is in Estrelle,” Tor said, referring to the tale about their village’s founder, one he had always thought had been a lame attempt at explaining why Estrelle was so colorful. Now that the chapters in Cuentos didn’t seem so far-fetched, Tor realized the storyteller was really more of a collector, gathering the island’s stories on his travels and writing them down.

  “Think of the storyteller not as a writer, but as an explorer,” Melda repeated. She squinted down at the parchment. “So, you’re saying if we can figure out where the first creature origin story supposedly took place, where the hydroclops lives…”