by K.N. Lee
But the second Edgar saw her, his face became feral. His eyes went blank. Without even thinking, he turned and lunged at her, knocking her down, slapping her in the face.
Captain hauled him off of Mathilde. As skinny as Edgar was, Captain made short work of his flailing fists.
“This is all your fault,” her older brother cried out, his hands tied in front of him. Anger made him savage. Loss made him brutal, cutting. “You did this, you witch. You stole our father’s—My father’s magic. You killed my brothers, my father. You are the problem, the family curse. The stain on our traditions.”
“You have no right to use that magic. That’s mine!”
“When you burned the Geisprom, you ruined everything like a spoiled child. One stupid act stole our whole future. Every vidaya’s gift and security, and you burned it away, in your pride.” Edgar sneered.
Falling to the dirt, Mathilde was barely strong enough to fight. Her injury had already taken so much energy from her tired body. She lay on the ground, stunned while Edgar gloated over her fallen body.
“Who will protect us now?” he demanded.
All the vidaya gathered in a tight circle around the two of them. Shoulder to shoulder, row upon row, everyone paused at the end of one chant and the beginning of the next. They all waited.
For her.
For Mathilde to answer. For her to explain how a girl ended up holding the most sacred power of all. For a girl to break every tradition they had been taught to hold dear. For her to hold the vidartan magic. She must have a reason.
They waited for her to explain.
“I can’t,” she answered her brother’s accusations with concentration, mindful of the living earth that stomped around the valley and turned the land upside down.
She turned to the vidaya she had freed—no, the magic had freed—from the lies of the death camps. She looked them all in the face. “I have no right to hold this magic,” she admitted the fact.
“I am a woman. Daughter of a vidartan priest, descended from the line unbroken since Melchen the Just ruled these lands. I am a believer.
“So understand this: I have no right to this magic. It is not mine. It does not belong to one person. It belongs to us all. That is what the witch knew. That’s why she hunted us down.”
Several in the group nodded. We all know the unspoken truth. “The vidartans discovered that as well.”
Mathilde tried to help them understand. Tried to explain colors to a blind man, tried to explain taste to a person with no sense of smell. They listened to her. They tried to understand.
“The words I use are but wishes and dreams,” she said. “Magic is all around us. I only opened the door to talk to the ancient power. I cannot control what it does.”
Bravery demanded that she come clean. At this moment if any, they might listen, they might understand. “I have killed people,” she admitted. “I have made mistakes. I have turned enemies into cats,” she almost smiled at the memory. “I have seen miracles. But, I did not do any of these things.
“The magic did.” That was the unvarnished truth. Mathilde was just a frail girl, a vessel for a much greater power. “At first,” she continued, “...the power acted because of the blood of my fathers. And then later, the spells worked because of the unshaken belief of my little brother. I am not vidartan. But I am vidaya.”
Mathilde stood proudly in her blood-soaked dress, uncertain of how the vidaya saw her. Unsure what they could handle. How much truth to reveal?
“All vidaya hold within them the same ability I have, to speak to H--V--N and be heard.” With that bold statement, she finished.
Silence filled the shattered mountainside as a thousand men, women, and children listened to her breaking their revered traditions into bits.
“That is sacrilege,” Edgar spoke first, dismissive, abrupt. “That is the great lie witches always use, trying to justify their theft.” Edgar’s face screwed up with so much hatred, so much anger, almost all of it heated by jealousy. “Because of you, Ethan and Mama are gone. That is your fault, witch. You did this.”
Mathilde looked in his heartfire, at the seed of hate that still sat there, a toad at the end of the the world. And she knew what her older brother needed. Meanwhile she gulped back tears about Ethan. About Mama.
Tears she could not afford to shed. Edgar had to listen. Right. Now.
“Edgar,” she said, “I understand that this is hard. That these changes make no sense according to what we have been taught.
“But, brother,” she continued, trying to reach him, “if we must face the enemies of Hollyoaks and the Shelke, we as vidaya must be able to find our own vidartan power, within our own hearts.”
Reaching across to him with light and truth, Mathilde could see the flickering light of his heartfire. Far less powerful than Fritz, Edgar’s fire was dying the farther he fell into hate. The longer his voice among the vidaya was not respected.
He did not understand her.
He did not want to understand.
He did not want change. Everything he had been taught said she was wrong. Even though she saved them all by understanding the way of the vidartan, Edgar would never stop feeling cheated by her success.
Blaming her for the loss of the Geisprom.
Blaming her for everything that went wrong every day until she doubted or hated herself.
Until the vidaya finally believed him and drove her away.
In the near future, he would destroy anything she tried to build. Mathilde could see it all.
Edgar, even with his small grasp of magic, only understood that Mathilde reached out to him. He could feel the power blooming from her heartfire, towards him. His fear reared up—clouding his heartfire, distorting his mind.
“She’s attacking me!” He cried out, frightened, even though that was never Mathilde’s intent. Immediately, he flew into rage, summoning the best spell work he had.
“Vahagn,” Edgar cried pointing at her heart. “Hadesma,” he spoke the spell words, urging fire to destroy her body and soul.
He struck with the spells of sorcerers, attacking Mathilde.
Right as the weak spell reached her, Captain stepped in front of Mathilde shielding her again with his body, refusing to let jealousy and spite hurt her.
Vahagn and Hadeshem spat out of Edgar’s mouth. They fell like burnt feathers, tiny sparks of ash and light, barely a spell at all.
But Captain burned the brighter for the magic hitting him, full in the chest.
Mathilde gasped.
Fritz screamed.
All around them, the desperate and starving people watched Mathilde’s brother attack. A shout went up. Even the golem leaned in, watching the fire that consumed the man who shielded her with his body.
Captain burned with vidartan magic.
But unlike the linen spellbook, he did not flare out and crumble to ash. Instead, Captain burned brighter.
Quickly, the uniform he wore fell away, curling at the edges under the heat. The black shirt and pants burned off, floating away in ashes. Those clothes were gone, exposing a shirt of brilliant blue covered in embroidery, detailed as her own. How? Mathilde could see that every stitched story was different.
“You will not touch her!” he shouted at the confused vidaya.
Addressing the stunned people assembled, Captain spoke loud enough for them to hear him. No one made a sound. Not even a throat was cleared as he demanded they listen.
“You must not hurt her. She has broken no law.
“And I will tell you why. Forgive me, but first you must hear part of an ancient vidayan story.” Captain looked at them all in a sweeping gaze. “Listen,” he told them. “Hear the truth.”
“A long time ago, Melchen the Just fought the demons of the Great Night. They had come, hunting for magic, greedy for power. And Melchen,” Captain winked at Mathilde. She could have sworn he did.
Why would he do that? she wondered.
“Melchen went to fight the enemy. They had great control over
the magic, warping it into darkness. The same kind as the old woman in Gelshiesen held. Fueled by hatred, coated in malice, the demons of rage destroyed everything they touched, including magic and the pure in heart.
“It was a mighty battle, a terrible fight, but one by one, Melchen the Just defeated the distortion, breaking the chains that twisted the magic of the bravest priests. He stopped the madness. Cleansed the lands. And the people were grateful. For a while.
“I ask you to listen to me, because,” Captain looked directly at her, his gaze never wavering, “I am Melchen. I am that man.”
Everyone stood there, mouths hanging open.
Mathilde was no exception.
“Demons, that rage, that hatred, even fighting against it—changed me. My spirit was hurt by a thousand small cuts. And only one person stood beside me, through all my suffering, through the madness, through my anger and tears. Malakhian.”
Awed, the vidaya listened to Captain, uh, Melchen speak.
Their faces caught up in the glow of light and truth that Hadesma lit inside his heart. Every word he spoke was living scripture. No one doubted a thing he said.
More than a few people started crying as he told them of his pain, of the sacrifices he had made a thousand years ago, to save them all. To lead them to a free land. And then to keep them free.
The way he felt about the vidaya was plain on his face. This man was a leader. And a man who had suffered everything to save his people.
To save them.
“I was lost in my own pain, lost in the madness until Malakhian found me. Lost. Just like you.”
Melchen looked at the crowd, meeting each person eye to eye, marking their faces, counting the hairs on their heads. Vidartan magic flowed through him. Vahagn and Hadeshma did not destroy truth.
The spells lit the man by his heartfire.
“She saved me. And then, Mathilde saved you.” Melchen measured all the vidaya, even Edgar.
With one hand, he touched Edgar’s forehead.
With the other, he touched Fritz’s heartfire. “Be like this,” he said, “Let go of the darkness. Be like this, child.” Under Melchen’s hand, Edgar’s anger softened. And then the grotesque hatred Edgar carried in his chest cracked right down the middle and fell away, a broken mold for a man who no longer was held bound within its grasp. Shocked, Edgar looked at Melchen. And then at Fritz, with his doubting eyes finally opened wide.
Grabbing Fritz, Edgar wept.
Melchen looked at the two of them, “These are the last of the vidartan priests. These are men you can trust. But they are not the last of the vidartans.”
Several people fainted.
“You are all gifted. Mathilde was right when she said, the Magic is within you all. Your blood is powerful. And you must be taught. We need you now. Immediately.”
“Our enemies gather at the gates. Even three years ago, there were more than twenty thousand vidayans living throughout Norwava and Hollyoaks. Twenty thousand.”
They knew what he was going to say. Still, it hurt to hear the truth.
“You are all that is left. A few scattered here and there are unaccounted for, but this group, you are the precious, few vidaya. You are the vidartan. Magic is in your blood. We need every drop. From men and women.”
Melchen let that sink in for a while.
In the distance, the living mountain stepped on small hills, flattening them. Stomping around the valley, the golem waited for directions. From the sorcerer who called the creature from its eternal sleep: from Mathilde.
Each step the creature took, the crowd of vidayans adjusted their balance.
Just like they did with Melchen’s words.
Slowly, quietly, the people felt the reassurance of Magic in their lives, linking them mind by mind. They could feel the truth, coursing through their blood, uniting them in purpose. Survival. Freedom.
Ancient as the mountains, deep as the ocean, Magic held all the answers.
Mathilde still hadn’t said anything.
Captain? The hatred. The confusion. The cold-hearted bastard. The yowling cat. He was all of those things. He was also at his core, a vidartan priest, wrapped in a web of hundreds of spells.
“You undid each one, you know,” he spoke only to her.
“You refused to leave me alone. The moment I saw you on those docks, I tried, even through the madness, to save you. I tried. But the demons had damaged me, far more than I knew. I lost myself. I wandered. But then you appeared—you on the dock. You in the bar. Always you called to something buried in me, waking magic long-forgotten.”
Mathilde’s mind kept spinning.
“Melchen?” she asked a thousand questions just saying his name. “You must be a thousand years old. Or more? The things you’ve seen. The places you’ve lived.”
Like the vidaya, she struggled to grasp how things change in an instant.
“You said I saved you.” She asked him, “How? I am not even a priest. This magic—it chose me. Magic turned you into a cat. I never would have thought of that.” Mathilde wanted to understand.
How did an untrained girl break spells that had lasted centuries?
For a few moments, Melchen ignored all the people milling around, relearning their own history.
Pulling her toward him, Captain wrapped his arms around her waist.
“Mathilde,” he started and then tried again. “Magic is not limited. Time is not limited. You are exactly who I needed. The one who heals me so that I can fight the demons. The one who holds me so I can fight the Shelke. You.”
Mathilde’s heart raced, trying to keep up with the surprise and the odd certainty she felt.
“Are you an angel?” she asked, trying to link his words around the cruel world she experienced.
“No, far from it,” Melchen snorted. “But I can be, I will be whatever you need. Mathilde,” he looked deep into her eyes, still her Captain. “I want a life with you, far away from here. A long life. We need to fix this mess first. But I plan on spending every day with you.”
“Every day?” Mathilde felt stupid. This was hard. “Captain,” she said, “I know that’s not your name. But there are so many changes around me, I’ll just keep that one for a while.”
He nodded.
She continued, “I don’t understand. I am trying. Please. Tell me.”
Melchen smiled. That same smile she already knew. The same way he looked at her, on the docks long ago, in the heat of the oven’s destruction.
“Don’t you know? Mathilde, you saved me. You saved me over and over. You.” He kissed her nose. And then her lips. His hands brushed her face, holding her gaze tilted up towards his. Every promise she had felt in that first mysterious bond, the strange power of their immediate connection—finally began to make some sense.
Mathilde’s heart kept jumping.
The golem made of mountains kept stomping.
Melchen stood firm, through madness and hate and time.
“Mathilde, you are mine. You always have been.”
He whispered as he kissed her gently. His teeth grazed her lips and he kissed her again. Right there in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a thousand strangers.
Melchen looked right at her, seeing her soul, her worries, her doubts, and her great love for her family.
She closed her eyes, listening to her heart and the magic humming between them. There was no darkness. None. Mathilde opened her eyes, seeing him for the first time.
“My Captain,” she murmured, filled with wonder.
Melchen the Just held her tight and said, “You hold your own magic. The kind that lights the heart. The kind of magic that inspires people to change the world. You are more than a vidartan priest, Mathilde.
“You are my Malakhian.”
Epilogue
“They will never stop looking for us. Never. There is no freedom in the whole wide world if we stay.” Mathilde told the bleak truth.
As she did, she looked each vidaya in the eye, meeting gaze for gaze,
refusing to bend to any compromise.
“We will die.” Simple. Ugly. Fact.
“But beyond, farther than the second sea,” she said, “the Geisprom told me that there is a land we can find, a land that was built by vidartans. Filled with ancient, crumbling buildings, and a thousand mysteries we have never considered—it is the place we can begin dreaming again. Far away from here, the palace of the vidartan has room for us all. And the space for us to learn again ancient magics and great truth.
“We go together. All or none. What say you?”
She asked the impossible of the exhausted men, women, and children. Magic demanded she tell them. “You have to choose this,” she explained, “You have to give away everything you hold familiar and trust me.”
Families talked. Strangers whispered.
Through it all, Edgar and Fritz stayed by her side.
Solemnly, the worn and ragged people gathered again around her. In one large circle, they stood arm and arm. One man stepped forward. A man she had never thought to see again. Tomas. Bertha’s son.
“I will go with you, vidartan.” His word were clear and strong. The wind carried every syllable, along with his deepest conviction. Magic glowed around him. Strong. He was as strong in the magic as Fritz’s grasp on the ancient power.
“You are not vidaya,” Mathilde asked. “How can you be here?”
Tomas looked uncomfortable, before he answered, “My mother was not of the people, it’s true. But my father was. A boy she knew a long time ago,” he said. “A stranger named Enrich. The magic comes from him.”
Mathilde looked at him, deep in his heartfire. And that was when she knew. On the train, on the way to Gelshiesen, she had asked the magic to find her brother. And it had. Rodak found Tomas.
And now I’ve found him, too.
“Who else will come with me?” She asked the weary vidaya. “What say you all?”
One by one, two by two, they all stood, braver than they had the right to be. As brave as she needed them. All the vidaya voted with their bodies, putting everything on the line. All of them committed to fight for their future.
All of them chose to live.