by K.N. Lee
Again the cat called out, “Mawrrrr!” desperation in his yowl. Mathilde pulled a nearby body onto her own.
The pain in her ribcage spun her mind until she almost lost consciousness. She fought it. She had to. He needed her.
“Captain,” she cried through her gag, through the damn burlap sack. Her muffled scream barely made any noise in the roar of the furnace.
“Captain!” She cried again, trying to hear where the meow had originated.
In response to her grunt, one last, weak yowl was all he managed. The rising heat was too much. Too much for any living thing.
Guilt held her prisoner. All the things she had ever been told poured down on her head with the intense and rising heat: I am not worthy of the magic of my ancestors, i cannot have that power. I am not male.
It is not mine.
It is unlawful.
All those words, all those years of teaching rested on her shoulders, her history of sorrow was heavier than any vidartan priest had ever known.
Everything she had been raised to believe, the place of women, the rights of men, all of it…. It all died in the face of her friend’s pain.
His need crushed every doubt.
Mathilde gave it all to the fire, her own sacrifice.
“I’m coming, Captain. I am coming,” she yelled into the gag. A shriek was all that came out. But the magic knew.
Ancient magic heard her battle cry.
Picking up a dead man whose corpse lay nearest her, Mathilde tested the weight. And then, she pulled the dead body on to her shoulders and climbed onto the pile of burning soldiers.
Using the dog’s body as a shield, Mathilde focused on that one spot where she had heard the last sound from Captain.
“Not you. They don’t get to do this. Not to you,” Mathilde got angry.
But not hatred. Not jealousy. Not rage. Righteous love filled her indignant heart.
Mathilde Shawsman held the dead between her reddened skin and the consuming flames, but her mind, her spirit focused on the man whose bond she could even now feel.
“Captain. I’m coming. Captain?” Listening, she couldn’t hear him. Frightened as time slipped away, she couldn’t find him in the chaos. Hands bound there was little she could do but stumble forward.
“Captain!” she cried out, devastated, determined, to fight. Focused on saving his life, she forgot about her own. Collapsing under the corpse’s weight, Mathilde barely had the power to rise again. Mathilde stood, face to face with horrors. All around her flesh cooked, smoked, and popped.
Scorching flames were everywhere, eating the dead. Everything blackened.
“He needs me,” she fumed. He needs me. And tied like this, bound like an animal to slaughter, I can do nothing.
We will both die. He will die, after all he did to help me.
His mistakes, his stubbornness, Mathilde remembered it all.
Every interaction she had of Captain Richaron came to her mind, clear and clean as if she lived in each moment again. There was no time.
There was only that bond she felt: that long ago night when her father had died, when he was the smuggler that sent her to the next part of her escape.
When their eyes met, and she felt like this complete stranger knew her heart and soul, far more than any other person ever had.
Or ever will.
Mathilde remembered Captain Richaron’s gaze, deep and unflinching. His stubbornness that matched her own. That touch of his body against hers. The way he yowled when the magic she held turned him into a cat.
His defiance became hers. His resistance became her own. And his annoying obstinance was a goal she would work on achieving for the rest of her very short life.
“Captain. My Captain,” Mathilde felt everything, all at once, all in one glorious, shining moment. “Captain!” The sun is in the sky somewhere over Hollyoaks. Grass is green in the springtime. Wheat is golden yellow when it is time to harvest. All these things are true.
And so is this: Captain, he is mine. Forever.”
Those words. Those feelings. She had never felt such certainty, never knew such plainness… This wasn’t love. This wasn’t some fairy tale. In fact, Mathilde didn’t know quite what she shared with the unrelenting man.
“But….. He is mine. Mine!” she cried out. Knowing that bond still existed tied Mathilde to the one thing that mattered.
“Vahagn!” Mathilde screamed into the gag. “Hadeshma!” She commanded. Fire. fire and the healing fire of the gods! Rodak. Find him, magic that is not my own. “Find Captain. Save him. Kubonera.”
The burlap sack around her face burst into flames. Around her eyes, the blindfold caught fire and turned to ash.
Heat filled the room, far beyond what human eyes could withstand. But Mathilde could see, through the vidartans’ power. Her eyes went white with the force of magic, brighter than the sun, hotter than the furnace in which she stood.
“Captain,” she cried out. “Where are you?”
Obeying her call, the magic found him.
The ropes burned off her skin as she threw off the protection of the dead man and went in search of her heart. And soul.
There.
“Hadeshma,” she cried out, her tongue free, her will realized. The brilliant energy forked through her feet. It found her heart, laying under the bodies that burned in the bitter heat.
Exhilarated, she shouted, “I see you!”
The light that shone around the cat’s body was a mirror of her own. He glowed. His ribs still moved. Relieved, still Mathilde knew the window of hope rapidly closed. He was so close to death that he might not survive even this.
“Vahagn,” she cried, demanding the magic of her ancestors understand her need. Mathilde didn’t know enough words. She only knew one thing to the very bottom of her soul: Captain was her Achiezeer. Protector. She would die rather than lose him.
There was no other choice.
Magic flowed around her body and shone around the fragile, injured cat, “Lyuba.” She named him. “Xinai de,” she spoke, not to the collapsed body but to the soul that was held within it.
“You are mine,” she cried. “Come back! Shuv. Teshuvah.”
Across the cramped space of burning bodies and flaming fat, clothes, and skin, vidartan magic brought Captain back to Mathilde.
She opened her arms to catch his weakened body. At her touch, Captain shivered and was still.
“Xinai de?” She called to him. “Lyuba. You are mine.” Mathilde whispered as she held the black cat’s shaking body. Around them, all the rest of the corpses burst into flames.
She saw a whisker move. And then another. Gradually, the cat lifted his head. Enough that he looked Mathilde in the eye, stare for impudent stare.
“Racham,” she called to him, in the midst of fire and flame.
And in that very moment, the spell around him broke.
Magic shone from his eyes, a reflection of her own. Ancient vidartan magic remade the yowling, stubborn, brave cat back into the man he had once been.
He returned, but not to his old heart.
She held him as the fires purged all the flesh around them, as the stink and the smoke and the heat burned every last bit of their old life away. Mathilde held his gaze as once again he stood in front of her, a man.
Everything about that one singular moment was familiar. Everything. Down to the way he gazed at her. The way she felt when he touched her hands. The way the binding that connected them on the docks of long ago united their souls forever.
“Mathilde,” he spoke her name. “Mathilde.” He whispered it again.
She just stood there, listening to his voice and thinking how the cat’s yowl really didn’t do any justice to the baritone he possessed.
“Forgive me,” he said, bowing his head. “I was wrong. So wrong. I saw you but I didn’t understand. I had forgotten.”
Fire raged all around them. But nothing was as hot as the light in his eyes. Or the way her wonder shone through both of th
eir bodies.
Flame could not touch what Vahagn and Hadeshem had already claimed.
“I’m sorry—,” Mathilde spoke at last, to him. To the man. To the loyal friend who had protected her at the cost of his own life. “I really shouldn’t have turned you into a cat.”
For a moment, they looked at each other, across a distance of hatred and misunderstanding. And then, he laughed at her apology.
And then she laughed, too.
19
Running the Gauntlet
In ashes of men, they stood.
He held her hand.
At that exact moment, Mathilde was happy. Really happy. Escaping death gives perspective.
“Everything in my world is upside down,” she said squeezing his hand, “...but this—this is my gravity.”
Magic returned his clothes with his body. That was a good thing. Captain’s uniform was burnt in places, but he was not. Magic remade what the fire had taken down to the last button.
Even so, everything about him was different, kinder, softer. Perhaps because of the light in his eyes when he looks at me?
Wonder and curiosity swirled around her heart and his. She could feel that connection even with her eyes closed. Real magic. It had to be. Nothing else explains the odd timing or the magnetic bond between us.
There they were, unburnt by the oven’s heat—covered in ashes, head to toe.
The vidartan shirt was the only thing she wore that had not burned. Each of the colored threads were more vibrant than before. And as she read the stories, the brilliant blue shirt mended itself, rips and tears. And then it grew longer, down to her calves, covering her unmarred skin.
Mathilde thought about their options. Wonder and curiosity were a strange mix. She opened her mind to the struggle in front of them...
A powerful wicked witch rules this camp. She holds the loyalty of these dog soldiers, the hearts of my family, and the nation of Hollyoaks.
Whatever I am, she is the opposite.
A great deal depended on the choices she made in the next few minutes. Those doors would eventually open. The dog soldiers would return to shovel out the drifts of ash. They were coming back. And Mathilde had to do something, right then. But she didn’t know what.
She wracked her brain for some inspiration. There had to be an answer, if only she could track down the right one. Looking around, she said, “We need something to defend ourselves.”
She looked around, hoping for inspiration.
“Ash: that’s all that fills this room.” How could bone ash be a weapon?
On the floor near her feet, a piece of pottery lay discarded. Sharp like a dagger. Familiar as her own hand, Mathilde smiled fiercely the second she recognized it.
It was like angels had sent her a key, waiting for her to look down from Captain’s face long enough to recognize the gift.
The handle.
Soaked in my blood.
Buried in the living earth.
Dipped in the wax of the ancient spellbook. With her magically-enhanced vision, the broken bit of pottery shone like a fallen star.
Mathilde gasped. There was so much power—it was impossible to even consider the potential uses for such a weapon.
Unlimited magic, that’s what the handle held. There was possibly enough stored energy in that artifact to light the whole nation of Hollyoaks for a year. That’s what the handle looked like viewed through the lens of the vidartan spells. Anyone who picked up the broken pottery shard would instantly become a formidable spellcaster.
Reaching down, Mathilde squatted in the ashes of her enemies.
“We need a protector, now that my cat is gone,” she spoke aloud.
She looked up and a ghost of a smile flitted between them.
Captain stepped back, letting Mathilde sense the magic alone. She had to decide the best use of magic. It was hers to control. The bond between the two of them went both ways. Through it, she felt his connection to her heart, and to the incredible power.
He stood quietly while she figured out the path they should travel.
He offered little suggestion other than to say, “The golems were pretty effective, if you think about it.”
But the old woman, the Yaga witch had destroyed the golems with a snap of her fingers. It took almost no effort at all for the old woman to break the bond between Mathilde and the living earth.
“She will just break them again,” Mathilde retorted. “The twisted, old witch is clever and strong. She will not be afraid of one golem or ten. She already knows the magic to defeat that spell.”
“She does.” Captain conceded, he shook his head, thinking. “But what choice do we have? You don’t happen to have a copy of the Geisprom on you? Do you? Cause that would come in handy right now.”
“Yeah, that’s what I need,” Mathilde snapped, “More sarcasm. That helps loads.”
Nothing made of paper and wax survived the heat of the cremation oven. Nothing mortal could have. Besides which, the Yaga witch had the linen pages.
“Ethan and Edgar are even now attempting to open the spells that enchant its secrets. When they do succeed, what can I do? They are the priests. I am not.”
“Would vidartan fight vidartan?” he wondered. So did she.
“Will they become real vidartan , if the witch had any say in the matter?” Mathilde couldn’t answer her own questions. “Would they even survive the spell release? Madam Yaga doesn’t care. Her kindness is an illusion. She holds tight all of her secrets. She steals any magic she touches. Yaga won’t give anything away. She won’t share power with anyone, that’s obvious.”
“So, if Ethan and Edgar open the Geisprom, they will die,” Captain finished her thought. “If they break the wax, she will have no further use for them. Too much power becomes a threat.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Mathilde said, looking around the room in one eyeroll. “Look at how she dealt with resistance from me. Ethan and Edgar are probably dead already. The best I can hope for is that they are too dumb to open the spell book. Or that they pretended not to know?”
He shrugged. Either way was a bad idea. “Yaga only keeps them alive while they are useful. And not a minute longer. Do your brothers really understand what that woman is? Do they see their danger?”
Captain asked the questions that Mathilde felt bubbling around in the core of her heart. There was no good answers.
“Can I reach them?” she asked, “and if I did, how can I show them the truth?”
Despite everything they had done, even her own mother, she still loved them all. She wanted only the best for them.
“You can’t. Anything you say will be seen as a lie.” Captain answered her worry with blunt facts.
“Besides, I don’t think that your brothers will even talk to you. What the witch has done to your family, what is that called? Betrayal. Lies. Distortion. She’s cursed them with something powerful. Mere words won’t break the cloud they are under.”
“I don’t think it’s even magic,” she replied. “That kind of dismissal of … me. Of me. Of a family member, it happens so rarely in our culture. And I don’t think it was an act. They really do hate me. And whatever they think I have done.”
Captain let her think, gave her space to find her own balance.
“We have to escape.” Mathilde knew it was true. Everyone at Gelshiesen who could be rescued had left with Fritz. “There is no one left to rescue. Johan’s still out there. He needs us. And, we have to make sure the vidaya who followed the golems get free of Gelshiesen.”
She looked at Captain, waiting for his input, “How do we fight? You and me, against an army, a heartless witch armed with a spellbook, and three or more vidaya.”
“We are at a distinct disadvantage,” Captain agreed. “The list of our mighty weapons is pretty substantial. I estimate we have a broken pottery handle and a few unpronounceable words.”
“That seems fair,” Mathilde nodded, a wisp of a smile on her face.
“No spellbook,”
she said. “Just us.” A witch and her … familiar?
Is that what he was? What did the magic do to us?
This thing I feel when I am with him, what does it mean?
She shook her head but said nothing. He watched her and waited. Mathilde could have sworn he almost started cleaning his paw.
Once a cat, always a cat, she thought. Even that was a little bit of cheer in an overwhelming set of circumstances.
I have no idea how I feel. How he feels... I just feel better when he is near me, yowling cat or no. The rest... I’ll have to figure out as we go.
Deciding was the hard part.
Once she made a choice, the rest of what she needed to do came easier to her mind. “I can’t wonder about a future that will never come. It’s now that I must fight. We must fight,” she added, holding out her hand to his. Their touch was electrifying. Sparks and feelings flooded the room. Thoughts she could not identify. Not now.
Right then, she knew in her gut what she needed to do.
Picking up the handle, Mathilde drew words and signs in the thick ashes piled around the room. She waited until the words were recorded, until the magic held by the signals was set free. Unleashed, the spell tunneled deep in the earth. Through the magic’s sight, she could follow the spellwork into the ground. Where it reached down deep and yanked on the roots of a thousand hills and valleys.
“Achiezeer,” she spoke the word calmly. Mathilde held the truth in her hands and commanded the earth once again. “Emet, Kubonera. Lo Tadesma, I must ask again. Help us. Truth. Wind. Do not sleep. Hear our prayers.”
The handle glowed, the words glowed, the center of the written spells turned white hot. Mathilde held her breath, waiting for the magic to appear. Waiting for the strongest defense she could summon to her side.
The earth shook.
And then settled again. Everything went still. Along the magic’s energy, Mathilde detected a distant popping sensation, just out of her reach.
What was that?
Exactly then, dog soldiers pulled on the oven door. The outside locks screeched as metal scraped against metal.