by Ashley McLeo
Lily’s skin crawled as the flames dancing upon Brigit’s body became multicolored, almost cartoonish. The scent of burning skin began to permeate the fresh air of the woods.
“Solvo!” Brigit screamed. Then, the flaming rope became a snake, wiggling and thrashing in the air as Brigit unwound it from her torso.
Lily’s heart hummed and her breath shortened, urging Brigit to hurry, as the stench of burnt flesh surrounded her.
Finally, the last coil unwound and Brigit tossed the flailing rope upon the flames.
A silent scream escaped Lily as Brigit slumped to the ground, her raw skin hitting the dirt with a sickening thud.
Then Lily felt it. The twisting of her insides and spinning of her body through space. She closed her eyes. It was happening. Flashbacks of every carnival ride she ever dared go on came flooding back. She flexed her abdomen, hoping to quell the nausea. She chanced a glance around the circle through slitted eyes. Why was it everyone else was standing still, while she felt like a top?
Oh my god, she thought, eyes popping open. I’m not moving, my insides are!
She stood rooted in place. Her body trembled violently as a double helix of energy unraveled deep in her groin. The helix unzipped its way up her spine, gaining momentum as it ascended. A curious sensation of leaping came over her and beams of blue light shot from the top of her head. The light illuminated the night sky above before falling to shower the trees around them.
“Whoa,” Lily whispered, as smaller beams blasted out of the ends of her fingers and the toes of her shoes and rushed into the dark wood after their predecessor. Lily cast a glance at Evelyn and Sara. Had the same thing happened to them? she wondered.
Her questions slid down her throat as the sound of hundreds of boulders cascading down a mountain overtook the quiet forest. The ground cracked to form a crevice that cut Morgane, Nora, and Fiona off from the rest of the circle and lifted the others onto a platform two feet above the forest floor. Small rocks pelted Lily’s legs, all the way to her hips, as the earth shook beneath her. Chunks of earth ripped themselves from the ground and flew five feet in the air before falling back down with a thud. Dirt and dust whipped around them like a tornado. Tree branches swayed menacingly above and a dozen stout oaks shot up like dandelions next to their kin to climb heavenward.
Shit, shit, shit! Lily’s legs flexed, primed for flight.
“STOP!” Gwenn bellowed, and Lily’s body seized, controlled by a will that was not her own, as a ring of fire sprang up from the ground behind her.
Evelyn screamed and shook out a smoking sleeve, her eyes wide with terror.
We’re trapped, Lily thought. Her panic grew as the flames circling the triplets rose to block Aoife, Mary, and Gwenn from sight. Sara’s voice cut through the commotion and fear, and Lily pivoted to see Sara, her hands flying through the air in a flamboyant manner. Lily watched in awe as the tiny redhead manipulated the fire, allowing them a momentary glimpse of their aunts. Sara was saving them!
A neon glow flashed in her periphery. Lily gasped when she saw the center bonfire transform into an unnatural green hue before her eyes. The green flame acted like a living being, crawling insidiously from the pit toward Brigit. “Uh, Sara, I think you should—”
“Hebeto!” Aoife howled. A beam of light shot past Lily and the green fire whined and retreated into the pit.
“Sara! Stop casting!” Aoife demanded.
The circle of flames shot twenty feet high before falling into embers and dying.
“Sorry! I—”
A roar of wind shook the treetops, overwhelming Sara’s apology.
“There!” Evelyn shrieked, pointing into the forest.
Lily gasped. Full-grown trees were collapsing beneath a wave of water fifty feet high. A wave on a trajectory straight for them.
“Shield charm together on three. One. Two. Three!” Mary shouted, her high soprano a whisper over the roar of the water.
“Arma!”
A sparkling silver dome rose up to enclose the circle, joining at the center milliseconds before the first wave crashed upon it.
Lily rose from her protective crouch. Relief flooded through her as the last of the great waves cascaded over the dome. A delicate sound of trickling water surrounded them. The witches released their shields, and Lily choked back a sob.
They were alive! She ran her hands over her body, feeling for anything different, anything other. Besides the insane amount of adrenaline coursing through her veins, she felt unchanged. For the first time in what felt like hours, Lily cracked a smile. Nothing too terrible happened. At least nothing that can’t be healed with time, she thought, turning from her aunts to go to Brigit’s aid. She froze.
Deep in the forest a bright blue light barreled toward them, shattering the few oaks and bushes still standing after the tidal wave. The hairs on the back of Lily’s neck rose, and her muscles tensed. There was only one thing it could be.
The magic penetrated her mercilessly, pushing past her body’s protective barriers to the depths of her heart. An ethereal mix of pain and pleasure rose inside her as magic rolled through her skin, fascia, muscles, and bones. She shuddered at the intensity, at the raw, rebellious energy flowing wild in places where she knew no shape, in the liquid and gasses between her tissues. It was home.
She was whole.
Only later would Lily recall the fall. How her limbs convulsed, her muscles seized and released. How she clenched her jaw so hard it threatened to shatter her teeth. And how three screams pierced the quiet Irish countryside.
“Thank the Goddess you’re here, Fiona,” a worried voice sighed into Lily’s consciousness as her eyes eased open. Damp dirt, mounds of it, surrounded her, enclosing her in a small trench.
Forcing herself upright, Lily let out a yelp of pain and collapsed. Holy hell, she thought, clutching her chest to numb the stabbing sensation radiating from her heart down her limbs.
“Lily’s coming round,” a voice said. “Where’s the potion?”
Mary rushed over from out of nowhere and raised a canteen to Lily’s lips. “Drink this. It’ll help.”
Lily swallowed and gagged.
“It’s awful, I know, but it will work wonders. Drain the canteen; we brought one for each of us,” Mary urged, tilting the silver container back.
It tasted terrible, but she knew Mary was right. Already the throbbing in her chest had subsided. She chugged the potion, stopping only for breath.
“It’s working. Your eyes are clearing already,” Mary said, looking pleased as she sat back on her heels. She wiped the dirt from her face using a soaked sleeve with marginal success.
Lily wondered bleakly if she looked as filthy as Mary did.
“It’ll be the forest,” Aoife’s deep voice called from somewhere past the trench walls, “She’s strong here. Let’s hope the others recover as well.”
Tossing the empty canteen beside her, Lily grabbed the sodden ground. She was determined to sit up, to see what had happened. Her fingers trembled with the effort of lifting her torso.
“Easy now, Lil,” Mary said, righting Lily as she swayed.
Aided by Mary’s strong arms, Lily pulled herself to her knees and leaned over the side of the muddy trench. Downed trees, puddles masquerading as backyard ponds, and chunks of displaced earth the size of small cars littered the clearing. Brigit, Evelyn, and Sara lay amongst the destruction, limbs splayed out at awkward angles. A metallic scent hung in the air, and Lily’s heart lurched when she spotted a large puddle of blood by Brigit’s head.
“Is Brigit alive?”
“Brig hit her head on a rock on the way down, and her burns are worse than we’d prepared for. But we have Fiona, and she’s a fine healer. She hasn’t detected any irreparable damage,” Mary said.
“Evelyn and Sara?”
“They’re fine. Or they will be when they wake up. They’ve had a bit of a shock to the system . . . Well I suppose we all had a bit of a shock, didn’t we?”
“D
id our magic do this?” Lily asked, scanning the destruction again.
“We’ll have a time keeping this under wraps. Let’s hope none of our enemies were within fifty kilometers of this place tonight.” Mary pulled her blonde hair up and back with mud-covered hands.
They knelt there in the muck, taking in the destruction, until suddenly Mary hooked her arms beneath Lily’s and helped her to her feet. “You should be over there,” she said. “Your sisters will want to see your face when they wake.”
I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Lily thought. She took in the fierce scowl on Evelyn’s unconscious face and veered toward Sara.
Aoife was wiping Sara’s dirt-caked arms with a cloth when Lily lowered herself to the ground next to her. Sara’s face was covered in small burns that trickled down her neck, all the way to her hands.
“She’s a brave wee thing. Foolish, but brave. Thinking she could help, but fire . . . well, it’s difficult to control, even for the strongest of us,” Aoife said without a glance up.
“How did she know what to do?” Lily breathed. The sight of Sara battling the flames would be forever etched in her mind.
“She’s already used magic once without knowing, as a child. That’s how she escaped the car fire that landed her in foster care. Aye, we know about that. It was the only way she’d have survived such an inferno. Our best guess is that Sara formed a shield around herself and crawled out of the car. There are always loopholes in bindings—danger to one's life is one. The difference between you and Sara is she already knew the feeling of magic. She remembered it and called it to her when she felt threatened.”
“But I thought it all left and came back? That’s what hit us right?” Lily said recalling the bright blue light.
“Most of it,” Aoife said with a nod. “There’s another exception for you. Not all your magic could leave you during the unbinding process, though you can bet it wanted to run free for a bit, pent up as it was. As witches, it’s impossible for magic to leave us entirely. A small part has to stay behind. It’s part of us always, deep within.”
Lily nodded, not quite sure she understood, and took Sara’s limp hand in her own. She felt both very close and very inadequate compared to her sister. I can only hope I catch some of her bravery, she thought, looking down at the angry marks marring Sara’s pale skin. She closed her eyes and began to . . . pray? Were witches allowed to pray? Despite her lack of prayer in the past, now seemed as appropriate a time as any to beg the help of a higher power.
“Goddess be! Look at her eyes,” Aoife whispered. “Mary! Over here with the tonic! Sara’s waking!”
Lily’s eyes flew open and locked onto two bright pennies. Thank God! Goddess? Oh whatever, she thought, throwing herself at Sara.
“Ooophh!” Sara grunted.
Lily shot back up.
“I’m sorry! I’m just so relieved you’re awake.”
“What happened?”
Mary thumped to the ground next to Lily, a cup of vile concoction in her hand.
“It appears we have a fledgling healer on our hands, Mary!” Aoife said, patting Lily on the back. “I wasn’t expecting Sara would wake for at least half an hour after she tormented the fire like that.”
“Healer? No, I was,” Lily paused, she could feel her cheeks growing red. “Well, I was praying . . . I guess.”
“Be that as it may, I’ve no doubt it was your touch that woke her. I performed a body scan not two minutes before. Sara was out cold,” Aoife said, watching Sara sit up and drink her tonic unaided. “Go to Evelyn and do the same. Let’s hope it will work again. The sooner we make it back to the house, the better. All our protective wards around the clearing are gone.”
Lily approached Evelyn warily. Though they had made up, verged on friendship even, Lily still recognized Evelyn for the mercurial being she was.
Please don’t be pissed at me if you wake up, she thought, grabbing Evelyn’s ringed hand in her own and closing her eyes. This time Lily felt the faint spasm. The warming of Evelyn’s hand when their skin met. The palpable quickening of Evelyn’s pulse, and the sharp sip of breath.
She opened her eyes and saw Evelyn’s eyelashes flutter before snapping open with the urgency of a person being woken by a bomb.
“What was that?” she screeched, shooting up before collapsing back into the mud.
“The light?” Lily asked, jumping back and feeling stupid for the question. “It was our magic returning to us. It hit us in the chest, and we passed out.”
“Up,” Evelyn grunted, holding out her arms to Lily, who stared back dubiously.
Aoife materialized to lift Evelyn from the ground with an ease Lily doubted she’d have been able to pull off.
“As long as you three can walk, we should get moving. The rest of us are going to take turns carrying Brigit. We can’t float her out of here. Too many trees, she might hit her head again,” Aoife said, glancing back at the sagging form held aloft between Gwenn and Nora.
“Should I try—?” Lily began looking at her hands.
“Brigit’s lost a lot of blood, not to mention used up a tremendous amount of power. It’s going to take the work of a serious healer to fix her up. We’ve all the materials at the cottage. Fiona can tend to her there,” Aoife said, steering Lily onto the path.
The walk to the cottage felt like it took twice as long as the walk to the clearing. Lily, normally surefooted from years of trail running, stumbled at least a dozen times on the uneven forest floor. Evelyn and Sara were even worse off, stopping every few feet to catch their breath.
“I thought we’d never make it,” Evelyn sighed dramatically, tripping through the front door of Fern Cottage and sinking into the couch cushions.
“Clear the table,” Fiona said, as the caravan carrying Brigit entered behind them.
Curiosity trumped exhaustion and Lily followed the witches to the dining room.
“Aye, this will be good for you to watch,” Aoife said, a grim look on her face. “Our Fiona is the best healer in Ireland. It’s a true pity you’ll have to settle for me as a teacher most of the time.”
It was the first time Lily had looked at Brigit up close since the unbinding. Dried rivers of red ran from Brigit’s temples over her high cheekbones and down to her lips. Her body sported many small cuts and bruises surrounded by serious burns and raw, oozing skin. The aroma of metal and burned flesh clung to Brigit. Lily winced. She looks terrible, she thought, her hand reaching out instinctively.
Fiona’s eyes shot up and Lily pulled her hand back.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean—” Lily said, a faint flush creeping up her neck.
“Go on, touch her. It can’t hurt,” Fiona replied, her hands flying in and out of her medicine bag at lighting speed.
Lily hesitated. The thing was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She had no idea where this sudden compulsion to touch people was coming from. She’d always considered herself an introvert, fully comfortable around only a select few, none of whom were in Fern Cottage. It does feel natural, though, she thought, her hands hovering awkwardly in the air before coming to rest on Brigit’s shoulder.
She waited for what felt like hours before finally admitting Aoife had been right. It wasn’t going to work. The fact that her talent had failed her, even if she didn’t yet understand how it worked, left a bitter taste in her mouth.
“It’s alright. We’ll get Brig sorted out,” Gwenn said, patting Lily’s shoulder, her dark green eyes understanding.
God, I’m getting tired of people reading my mind.
“We’ll teach you how to guard against that soon enough. Right now it’s impossible for me not to hear you. Must be the stress of the unbinding. I’d wager even Mary can hear what you’re thinking loud and clear. Mar?”
Mary smiled sheepishly. “A bit.”
“And she’s shit at mind magic,” Gwenn said, throwing an apologetic glance at Mary.
“Can you hear the others now, too?”
“Sara’s locked up tight. Exce
llent mind-body connection, that one. Evelyn seems to have control over what we hear, though I doubt even she realizes it.”
Lily wrapped her arms around her waist.
“Did you see that, Fiona?” Gwenn asked, staring wide-eyed down at Brigit.
“Her arm. But I wasn’t sure, it was so small,” Fiona paused as if considering. “Goddess be . . . put your hands back!” She guided Lily’s hands to Brigit’s stomach, and peered under Brigit’s eyelids. “Her pupils are nearly back to normal. The damage must have been worse than we thought, possible brain damage or a hemorrhage. Your magic must have been fixing the worst of it first. Don’t move,” Fiona instructed as she added bits of leaves and bark to a small, smoking vial.
Lily watched, trying her best to identify the plants Fiona was using. Maybe my botany degree will be useful after all.
“It will be most useful, I’m sure,” a puff of air drifted past Lily’s face, and she looked down to see Brigit smiling weakly up at her.
“You’re awake! How do you feel?”
“Like hell, but it was worth it. Seeing this makes it worth it.”
“It’s not like I actually know what I’m doing,” Lily said, trying to tamp down the swell of pride blossoming within her.
Brigit lifted her fingers an inch, waving away Lily’s modesty.
“This one saved you, Brig,” Fiona said, lifting Brigit’s head and guiding a small vial to her lips. “I expect she’ll crash any minute with the amount of energy she’s expended.”
“Um, I do feel a bit tired. I’ll go sit down,” Lily said as an uncomfortable sensation of being scanned came over her. “Feel better, Brigit.”
Aoife followed, and while Lily felt she should mind being followed around like a child, she found she didn’t have the energy.
“Where are Sara and Evelyn?”
“I sent them to bed,” Aoife said as if she were referring to a couple of five years olds. “You should join them. You look like hell.”
“Feel like it, too,” Lily said, comforted once again by the Rena-esque honesty.