by K.N. Lee
“I will get them back,” she swore, eyes finally wide-open. “On the graves of every wrongly-taken vidaya, on the lives of every tortured vidartan, I swear this.”
There was not a hole in her chest where her heart had been. There was no heart at all. Nothing beat inside her rib cage but destruction and vengeance.
“You can’t,” Bertha said urgently, focused on Mathilde’s face. She grabbed Mathilde’s arms, shaking her, demanding she listen. “You have no way to fight them, girl. You are marked vidaya. It would only be your sons they would fear. You have no power, no magic.”
Bertha argued. Mathilde didn’t want to listen. No magic. Nothing. My whole family is gone. Gone.
Along with all my hope.
“I know enough of the ways of the vidartan to know your father could never completely master the magics. He never could, not in forty years of trying. Once in a while, the magic worked for him, but it wasn’t enough to save your older brothers. He told me in the first smuggled letter I received a month ago. Enrich couldn’t save his own sons. And the magic didn’t come fast enough to save him, did it?”
Mathilde stood there, mouth open, breathing in the dust of betrayal and the cold hard truth.
“And now there is just you. And me.” Bertha stood there, right in front of Mathilde, right in front, taking it all on the chin.
Mathilde knew the truth, that Bertha had betrayed her family. But saved me? She didn’t know what to say or how to say it.
Emotions bottled up like shaken soda.
Bertha kept talking. As if her words would get them through the ‘rough’ patch. “On my doorstep, there are four battalions of dogs ready to eat you alive. Four hundred men. What do we have? Kitchen knives and spatulas? Aprons and your red hair? Mathilde. Listen to me,” Bertha begged.
It was hard to hear anything. Hard to think about my brothers and mother, bound as Hollyoaken prisoners. LOST.
“I saved you. I tried to help. But we cannot fight this.” Bertha spoke, trying to clear her head. I don’t want to understand her pain. I don’t want to wait. Attack! That was what Mathilde itched to do right then.
Right. Now.
“Evil like this grows unchecked until it meets an oppositely powerful foe.” The tavern woman had tears running down her reddened face as she spoke the stark facts. “We need vidartan priests. That would be best. They are really the captives’ only chance.”
“No one is coming. No priests. They are all gone,” Mathilde stumbled out the wretched truth. It hurt to admit how badly her world had spun into chaos and darkness.
“My great grandfather was the last one anyone ever heard about. And he left none of his talent to his son, grandson, or to my brothers.” Except that little wax-covered book. And a pile of his elaborately-embroidered shirts.
Owned by the dead. Carried by the living. Except those secrets so sacred that only the chosen could look upon the pages and live.
USELESS.
Johan. Fritz. Ten-year-old twin brothers. Too young to fight. Too young to do much of anything. They hadn’t even begun training in the ways of the vidartan. They knew nothing. Worse still: they were literally the last hope of thousands of vidaya, already captured.
Without magic, who would defend the helpless?
And now, the dog soldiers had her brothers. “You just sold the last candidates of vidartan magic.”
The trains were coming. And I have nothing but the guilt of a traitor to help me save the helpless.
“Only your brothers can hold that power?” Bertha guessed that much. “It’s sacred, right? A weapon that bends men to its will, who doesn’t want that?
Mathilde retorted without even thinking, “This is known. It cannot be handled by women. All vidartan priests are male. You have to be to even begin training. It is the way of the magic itself.”
Bertha watched her face. As if her numb expression let the big bosomed woman read Mathilde’s anger like an open book. “You cannot. You dare not attack the dogs. You will die. And then your family will, too. What’s left of it.”
Mathilde snarled. She wanted to strike out Right Now. She wanted to punish Bertha. Who is just as trapped and powerless as I am.
Bertha gulped.
“We’ve got nothing, just a box of empty dreams and some embroidered shirts.”
Mathilde knew any rescue attempt was over before it began.
I can escape. I can run. But why? And run where exactly? No one was waiting over the mountains. There was no contact she had been given by her family. Whatever their plans, Papa and Mama had never spoken of specifics, after they escaped. They expected to be here, to guide us to freedom.
That plan was smashed to pieces.
There is nowhere for me to go but back to Hollyoaks and the fate that waits all vidayans. Even now, the death trains howl for our blood.
“I can’t change the past. I can’t save Ethan or Edgar. And I can’t live with a future this bleak.” The moment Mathilde admitted it, the reality crushed her.
The empty hole in her chest went cold, colder than the winter storms. Icicles grew to fill in the space where her heart once lived.
Bertha opened her mouth to speak. But she couldn’t change the truth.
We lost. Everything.
And then, from the back corner, a chirpy, little voice whispered, “Mathilde?”
Out from underneath two boxes, crawled one creature made of dust and dreams. Then it looked up at Mathilde with those trusting eyes.
Fritz.
5
Breaking the Mold
A bucket of ice-cold joy shocked her out of apathy.
“Fritz!” Mathilde screamed.
His smile was about the only thing not dirty on the poor kid’s body.
That was all she needed.
They slammed into each other with all the grace of spinning tops, arms and hands. Laughing. Crying. Scared out of their minds. Happier than they had a right to be.
“Mama.” he said. “Mama didn’t mak-” he stuttered out the brutal, hard truth. The one Mathilde was already living. The one forced on Bertha by the dogs of war.
“I know. I know, darling levav. I know.” She tried to smooth down the rat’s nest of his dark reddish brown hair. It did no good. The hair was as wild as the boy. “They took her. And they got Johan, too. Right? But you? How did you escape?”
“Johan and I were playing hide and seek.” Her little brother shook while he talked. He was already mostly skin and bones. Travel had been hard for all of them.
With each sentence, the shaking got worse. “And it was my turn, so I-i had to count silently to one hundred. I had to keep track and go slowly. And they came at thirty-six. I had to count. I couldn’t stop counting in my head. Even when I heard Mama cry. Even when I heard them hit Joh-” He gulped.
She hugged him tighter until the shaking calmed down.
“I had to count. And I kept counting as they dragged … I kept going until the loud men and the guns were gone. But I c-couldn’t come out. I couldn’t…”
The poor, dear thing wailed. Crushed. Tears poured down his face, snotty tears.
Mathilde was grateful to have him, so thrilled to touch his face that she let him cry all over her, tears and runny nose and every bit of fear and gratitude. Marks of the lovesnail, slimy but sweet. She didn’t care.
It was disgusting.
Boys were gross.
Mathilde wouldn’t trade one second of any of it. Just to have Fritz back in her arms. Just to touch the familiar again. Family.
Mathilde held him tight. She determined to come up with a future that included hope. Somehow.
She held him there in the dusty storage room for a few more minutes before Bertha locked the storm-cellar’s outer door. Then she ushered them out of the dank cold.
Above, the tavern was closed. Happily, the fireplace welcomed travelers, no matter what horrible things they had done or seen. They sat there, right in front of the flames. Mathilde hugged Fritz, keeping a hand on him. Almost to
o smothering in her elation-mixed sorrow.
Warmth seeped into their bones.
Bertha brought hot soup and some rolls. There were no more customers out in the town. Not after the Dogs paraded through the main street with their prisoners. No one wanted to be a part of that.
“We have to do something.” Fritz declared exactly what had to happen. What they had to do: just the impossible. “Mama and Johan are out there, As long as they are held prisoner here, we can free them.”
He looked at Mathilde with sleepy eyes, full of confidence, ready to believe anything she told him. “Well,” Fritz said solemnly, “...at least we have a chance, don’t we?”
Not so much a chance as a prayer, Mathilde knew the slim odds.
Fritz look hopeful.
Bertha looked angry. She got angrier every time Mathilde suggested they sneak in and attack. Or sneak in and grab. Or sneak in and spy?
There seemed to be no good answer. “They have Mama and Johan and Bertha’s captured son, Tomas. If we reach the prisoners that means six of us, including Ronan the cook. We can’t fight three or four battalions of dogs. That’s more than three hundred men. We aren’t soldiers.” Mathilde wracked her brain.
There has to be a way. Has to be. “We have no guns, no training. And the transport to the docks and Norwava leaves in two days. If we can’t rescue them here, we will never see them again.”
“We have precious little time. It’s true.” Bertha’s old heart was trying not to break at the loss of her Tomas. Mathilde could hear the longing and desperation in her voice, “Unless there is a miracle hiding somewhere in this garbage pile, the situation is hopeless.”
Bertha and Mathilde sat staring at the fire, watching the embers slowly burn out.
“Except…” Mathilde looked at her sleeping brother, snoring lightly on her shoulder. “Except, we have Fritz. And he can use vidartan magic. He can.”
“Has he been taught the ways of your people, then?” Betha asked, reluctant to agree to a child magician.
“No,” Mathilde could only shake her head. “No, parents don’t start training the boys until they are twelve. Fritz and Johan are ten. Papa would never ask that of them. Edgar was eighteen and Ethan was almost seventeen--they were the ones who knew any magic. They could save u--” But her older brothers were gone. Vanished away. In fact, their disappearance was the tipping point for the Shawsman family. The reason they all ran.
Without her older brothers, without their magic, the family’s pell-mell flight from Hollyoak was all but doomed.
“Fritz is the answer.” Mathilde didn’t mean to speak that out loud. “I have to teach him.”
“Yeah. You just have to teach him magic you can’t do,” Bertha’s voice carried the doubt they both felt. “When he is not old enough to learn and you are not allowed to read the texts. This is our hope? We have two days.”
“When you say it all together like that… it sounds impossible.” Mathilde hugged her sleeping little brother close. Just listening to his steady breathing was calming.
“We can try.” Mathilde felt that swirling of bottled up emotion inside of her suddenly stop. She made a decision.
With steel in her spine and an invisible ring of fire around her heart, Mathilde announced, “We have to at least try.”
Mama, Tomas, and Johan. All of them are there, waiting. For someone to come rescue them.
For us.
6
Heated Exchanges
With a deep breath, Mathilde bent to the task.
Delicate strokes with the edge of the sharpest paring knife in the kitchen made headway. But only a little. The wax resisted most of her attempts. Too hard of a cut and the book could be damaged. But this wax is more stubborn than Papa, she thought, trying to work out how to break the seal. We need this book. We need this.
Mathilde rubbed her eyes, eager to sleep. But with only two day to uncover the magic of her family, she couldn’t waste a minute. I’m still awake.
So now was as good a time as any.
Lifting the knife blade to the candle’s flame, she watched the steel go black with smoke and heat. Then, she tried again.
Touching the knife to the wax, the seal transformed into a liquid. Not just any liquid though. It was hot and fluid wherever the heat came into contact. Mathilde held it in both hands. The wax package wasn’t hard to hold. Until the heat spread.
Instead of pooling off the book, revealing the text, the hot wax kept the shape of the seal but added heat to its defense. Now, she couldn’t touch it without scalding her finger tips. And the heat kept increasing.
Alarmingly.
She dropped the wax-covered book as her hands began to blister.
“Ouch!” was the kindest word out of her mouth. The rest, the good swear words, she bit back.
Fritz looked up at her with eyes that shined, full of hope and confidence she did not feel. “We can do this. You are smart, Mattie. You can figure this out.”
“I’m not so sure, levav. These protections... I don’t even know how to fend off wax.”
Fritz patted her arm. “I believe in you, achut.” He said the simplest thing, the hardest thing to bear.
Mathilde felt humbled, blown away at her little brother’s resilience. He’s lost everything, too. She mulled that thought over. There’s just us. And maybe that is forever. If we don’t die attempting to save Mama...
If we find those miracles, lost to time and ages...
And if H--V--N lets us wield that drop of mighty power.
A boy child—the last hope of his captive people.
It was every story told since the dawn of time. And the boy always found a way to defeat giants, to win the battle against dragons, to save the dying. She knew the stories Mama told. The stories her father had spoken aloud to Ethan and Edgar over their studies. Mathilde remembered them all. Word for word. Detail for detail. Bits and pieces came back floating in her memory.
Intractable wax, though? No idea, she thought. Heat hadn’t changed its nature. Steel hadn’t pierced its duty.
“Do you have any ice blocks in the root cellar?” she asked.
Bertha nodded. “Of course,” she said, “We use them to keep meat and vegetables all year round. We have them, though this time of year, they are mostly melted.”
“Can you take us there? To the ice?”
Bertha hesitated and then gave a timid nod.
“It’s across the yard. In sight of locals. And… it’s daylight now. So eyes will be watching this place.”
Mathilde nodded. Seemed like every decision here on out was real risk. Death, prison, whatever lay at the end of the train tracks—none of them were good options.
He was looking for her now. And with part of her family already captured, the dog soldier would have eyes everywhere. He knew she was close. He knew Fritz was missing.
There were traps as soon as she went outside.
Risk.
Fritz snuggled against her shoulder and fell back asleep.
It was dawn and she still hadn’t slept, not since Mama and Johan were taken. Not really well since she was discovered down the stairs by a drunk.
“Wait a minute and I’ll go with you. Don’t mind my words outside, either,” Bertha snorted as she walked past. “They won’t be pleasant. You’ll just have to trust me.”
Betray me once, shame on you… Betray me twice… And what?
What could I do?
Mathilde didn’t know much, but she was certain Bertha would be dead at the end of any hint of treason. Dead by my hand, I swear it.
Fritz stayed by the embers of coals, sleeping on the only comfortable stool.
Bertha grabbed a rolling pin, looked at Mathilde. Walked over to a pile of stew. Then she turned and spilled half the cup on the front of Mathilde’s apron. A rich brown stain smeared the fabric.
Bertha winked. “Ready?”
Startled, Mathilde nodded.
“Get out,” Bertha cried, throwing open the door.
Startled citizens looked wide-eyed at the tavern, drawn by the noise. “You stupid, stupid girl. You’ve ruined breakfast and then stolen more than a month’s wages from me. If your mother wasn’t my best customer, I swear you’d never see daylight again.
“To the cellar with you! Maybe some time in the veg will help you see exactly how dull your actions are. And how much you were wrong to go against me.”
“But... but, but,” was all Mathilde managed to stutter.
“There’ll be no excuses. You want a job with me? Girl, you need to clean up your act. And do it fast!” Bertha yelled while whipping her across the back with a bit of belt.
The lashes didn’t sting, but Mathilde would have bet that they looked ferocious. Bertha’s arms moved in big circles, laying on the public punishment. Mathilde did her part, cringing and horrified to be so humiliated.
Bertha pulled open the cellar door, level with the ground. She practically threw Mathilde into the dark. Then she tossed in a candle, a flint, a bucket, and a paring knife.
“Get to work, like you mean it!” Bertha shouted for good measure. “I’ll be back in three hours. Make it count.”
Mathilde nodded from the bottom of the cellar. Daylight was a long way up. ‘Take care of Fritz,’ she mouthed.
If anything happened to him. .. I’d be lost forever.
Gathering all the items, Mathilde found a dinged-up wooden stool among the bags of potatoes and carrots, squash and other unknown food. The ice blocks that were left were still a formidable wall of cold, locked inside the earth.
First, she lit the candle.
Above, Bertha slammed the upper door and stormed off.
Mathilde was on her own. And getting colder by the minute.
Inside the wooden bucket, the liquid-wax covered book still smoked to the touch.Waves of heat came off the impossible thing. Protective spells still held power, set to defeat the enemies who might find it.
“But I am a friend, achut,” Mathilde talked to the dark. The light of the single candle bounced back from the wall of ice. It was enough to see. That’s all she had to work with.