Sorceress' Blood

by Carl Purcell

  Edward opened the door to her. She looked over the tall, dark haired man and in her mind, suspicions slowly fell into place like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. Everything had been so convenient for Edward to keep Ashley away from Rebecca. He always had a reason to say no or something that kept him from answering at all. Then there was the night before when he had been there but simply vanished. Of course Lord Edward had been in his office when she arrived. Rebecca had heard him and he had left simply because he willed it. Just the way Benjamin had willed Rebecca and Ashley out of Lord Sebastian's castle. The strange behaviour, the obstacles he placed in her way, and even getting handed off to Jin to be kept happy, all led to one thing. There was only one question remaining.

  Rebecca stood up and entered Lord Edward's office. He closed the door behind her and sat down at his desk.

  “I apolo—”

  “Where is she?” Rebecca interrupted. She wasn't interested in excuses, lies or apologies.

  “Who?”

  “Ashley. Where is she?”

  “She's in the Tower, of course. She's always been there.”

  “Then I want to see her right now. I don't care what she's doing; I want to see her.”

  “That's impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  “She's not there, is she?”

  “No. She isn't there.”

  “Where is she?!”

  “What makes you think I have any desire to tell you?”

  “Because you want me to know. You've wanted me to know what you were up to since I got here.”

  “Is that so? What makes you think that?”

  “Because if you really wanted to keep everything a secret, you would have sent me off to hide in some little Chinese village the world has never heard of. Instead of getting one of the knights to keep me occupied right from the start, you had me here where you could tell me lie after lie about why I couldn't see Ashley. Suddenly you started cutting me out of the loop and being too busy. Right up until last night when you were in here talking loudly. You were probably talking to yourself and then you used magic to leave before I could ever see you. You wanted to make sure I knew you were hiding something from me. You've wanted me to know right from the beginning; you've just been rubbing your plan in my face and so now you're going to tell me what you've done for the same reason.”

  “Isn't that something?” Lord Edward bowed his head and laced his fingers over the back of his neck. He was quiet for a time. Rebecca stood on the other side of his desk and waited.

  “I did want you to know. You're right. I always planned to do this and I couldn't keep it a secret. I felt so guilty ever since I started but what choice did I have? I couldn't say anything because they'd know. I just hoped you'd figure it out in time to stop me and if you couldn't... maybe you could save her. I'm so sorry, Rebecca. I wish I could have been stronger.”

  “Edward, tell me what you've done.” Rebecca leaned in closer to him. He didn't talk but made small noises that sounded like sobbing. “Edward?” She asked without any anger left in her voice.

  Then Lord Edward became louder. He threw his head back and Rebecca heard those sobs for what they were – proud, hysterical laughter.

  “You're such an idiot. I've had you wrapped around my finger from the start. I only wanted you to know so you could watch me gloat when it finally dawned on you what's been going on. Ashley isn't here but I'll tell you where she is just to see your face when you realise how helpless you are to do anything now. You could even try to rescue her; I won't stop you. Your futility will be all the more entertaining.” Rebecca's face turned red with rage and without thinking she raised herself up and brought her hand down hard across Lord Edward's face with a painful slap!

  “Tell me where she is!”

  “Of course. I've given her to the thralls. By now she's where it all started and where it will all end. Our Order has been fighting a losing battle. A losing battle I inherited. I was forced to take this responsibility and now I've had enough. I've ended it once and for all and made sure I'm the one who comes out on top. While the whole world bows to their new queen, I'll be at her side.”

  Chapter 5

  The maid led Ashley away from Lord Edward's dinner table and to the Tower. She said something once but Ashley didn't know what it was. Then no one said any more. They went silently down the elevator, out the door, across the grounds and to the Tower. Then the maid bowed at Ashley and walked away. She figured she was meant to wait there. The night was cool and the breeze was cold. Stars were starting to decorate the sky like swarms of fireflies. Ashley had never seen so many stars in her life. Did China have more stars than home? They were all pretty. She wanted to stay and look at them forever. Ashley checked to see if anyone was coming for her. The maid was out of sight and the closest thing to someone near her was the vague outline of dragons she could see wrapped around each-other on the doors to the Tower. Ashley looked at them, focused on them and felt powerful words coming up from places deep in her body that she didn't know she had.

  “Open!” She commanded. Her voice echoed back at her and then it was quiet again. The doors had not opened and the dragons had not moved. “Please open.” A softer voice earned her no better results. Ashley sighed and looked around again. The world, huge in every way, was slowly sliding into deeper darkness. A shiver ran down Ashley's spine when she realised she might be stuck outside in the dark. Ashley gathered all the courage she had in her little body and started to walk around the Tower in hopes of finding another way in or someone to help her. She took one last look up the steps to the door and the dragons and felt disappointed to be leaving the only company she had out there. Then she took one step, another and another step and before she knew it she was turning the corner and walking along the side of the Tower. All Ashley saw was more and more grey bricks that made the foundation of the Tower. There were no other doors and there were definitely no other people around the Tower.

  She became sure of this and abandoned all hope when she rounded another corner. She stopped there and sat down against the wall. The night had gotten even darker by then and soon the only light would be the stars. Ashley gave her surroundings another scan while she tried to think of something. There was Lord Edward's castle but she'd been kicked out of there. Ashley knew that when the grown-ups tell you to get out it means they don't want you to come back until they tell you to and when they tell you to you'd better do it quickly. You do it, or else. Ashley quickly pushed the thoughts out of her mind. She didn't want to think about the home she didn't have and she didn't want to hear his voice. She forced herself onto happy thoughts. Benjamin's magic lessons, the magic still to come. There would be nothing she couldn't do, eventually. She could even fly, if she wanted. Ashley saw a new light come into the world. Somewhere far beyond the castle she saw a big fire light up and people were gathering around it. At least Ashley thought they were people. Houses too. From where she was they looked more like little black twigs moving around the silhouette of a bunch of blocks. What else could they be? Ashley got to her feet and started walking away from the Tower. Past Lord Edward's castle were long fields with things growing in them and they were surrounded by low, paling fences. The fire, which must have been huge up close, was a long way away and small enough that she could squash it between her fingers but it was warm and it was people and Ashley saw her choices as walk over to those people or freeze to death by the Tower.

  The decision was an easy one to make and Ashley was soon stepping off the well-kept grass around the castle and onto the loose dirt of the road between the fields. She peered down the road in hopes that she could see where it went but it, like everything else, faded into the darkness and its destination was unseen. She turned towards the fire. If she went straight for the fire, she wouldn't get lost. Ashley started walking again but had only gone a few steps before she was met with a fence. The boards stood between her and her destination. The fence was low but Ashley didn't have t
he strength to climb over it. Determined to stay on her path, she mustered up the all the willpower she had and commanded the fence as loud as she could.

  “Move!” Nothing happened. “Rats. Maybe I'd be better off wishing.” She took a look up at the stars. She'd been watching TV once and a person had made a wish on the star and it had come true. Maybe hers could come true too. They never had before but what could one more try hurt? “Star light, star bright. Star... Star...” Ashley's voice drifted. “Twinkle... No, that's not it.” The right words were lost to her. “Oh just move, you stupid fence!” Ashley belted in frustration. There was a loud cracking noise and a section of the fence fell forward. “I did it!” Ashley continued walking with a proud grin. She stepped with little care and occasionally heard something squish or snap but she could barely see her feet, let alone whatever was growing in the dark swirl of browns and greens beneath her. She was fortunate in that there were no more fences that she could see. She had a clear view of the fire again and the people and their houses now and they were coming closer all the time.

  Then the ground fell away and Ashley fell face first into mud and a deep puddle of water.

  “Gross.” She sighed and began to wipe the mud off her face and arms. Her dress was soaked and she was feeling even colder now when the breeze blew against her. She was starting to feel the whole world was against her that night. She wished Rebecca was there. If she was with Rebecca then she wouldn't be all wet and muddy. Ashley reoriented herself with the fire and waded forward. The water was cold and it made it harder for her to move while taking more energy. Then she had an idea. Ashley stopped walking and turned back the way she had come. She raised her arms and stretched her hands out as if reaching for something.

  “Come here,” she said with a soft voice at first. Then she closed her eyes and she listened for a moment. She felt a familiar rumbling deep inside her and grasped it with her mind. That was the feeling Benjamin had told her to find and to use. That was magic, he said, inside her and if she spoke with all the power in that hungry feeling inside of her then she could do anything. Ashley's muscles tensed and her toes curled against her feet. She mouthed the words first and then spoke her command like a waterfall breaking through a dam and bursting over her tongue and out her mouth. “Come!” For a second, nothing – and then the sounds of something whistling through the air. Ashley opened her eyes but, before she knew what was happening, she had hit the ground again. Resting on top of her aching arms was the broken piece of fence she'd called. Ashley rolled it off her and it sank into the puddle.

  “Ow,” she cried softly while she lay there, half submerged in water and her hair sprawled through the mud. She was dazed for a few minutes, unaware of the cold air licking her body. When she pulled herself up, the first thing she noticed was that her palms were bruised and her arms hurt all the way up to the shoulders. But she refused to give up when she knew she was doing so well. She wouldn't let herself be beaten just because her arms were hurting. She'd hurt before and she'd been frightened more than this. This was nothing and Ashley was going to show everyone just what she was made of. They could have their cartoon character bed spreads and their new toys, but Ashley had something no one else had.

  Ashley could fly and, if you're a girl who can fly, you don't give up when things are hard. One foot after the other, she climbed onto the planks of wood.

  “Alright, you,” She told them, “we're going to get to that fire.” Ashley was already picturing it in her mind just the way it would happen. First the fence boards would lift up out of the water and then they'd carry her over the mud and the plants and even over the other fence and she'd land right there by the fire. That's exactly what was going to happen and then she'd never have to set foot in this water again. She looked down at her planks of wood and with all the magic she had she commanded it:

  “Fly!” She waved her hands forward to direct it. Then, just as she'd pictured it, the wooden planks that had once been a fence lifted up off the muddy ground, out of the water and into the air, just like Aladdin's flying carpet. It jerked forward and flew swiftly over the land. Ashley almost fell off at first but she knelt down and held on. The fields of who-knows-what zipped by beneath her one after the other and Ashley thought she could feel the warmth of that fire already. And suddenly

  she could see just how huge the fire was and it kept coming and coming and it wouldn't stop.

  “Hey, slow down!” Ashley pleaded with her flying carpet but it did no such thing. It didn't slow and it didn't stop even after it had gone over the fence. With only seconds to make up her mind, she felt the world slow. The flames flickered and danced and reached out like gasping tentacles at her. Ashley let go of the wood and threw herself back. She hit the ground hard and then she heard her flying carpet hit someone's house even harder and the wood shattered. Ashley was hurt again but she sighed a heavy sigh, full of relief. The fire was warming her cold bones and she knew that she had won some small victory over the world and one day she'd let everyone know what she'd done.

  Then no one would want to tease or hit Ashley the Flying Girl any more. That was why she smiled, in spite of all the pain surging through her body as if it were her blood.

  When the villagers, who had been enjoying the festivities around their bonfire, saw Ashley lying on the ground and smiling like a fool, they began to whisper to each other. It was all a different language. Some of them tried talking to her.

  “Sorry. I don't know what you're saying,” was all she could think to say in response. A couple of the village men helped Ashley to her feet. Ashley immediately sat down again and shook her head.

  “I need to sit down. I'm really tired.” The villagers looked at her with the same confused expressions that she gave them when they spoke to her. “Does anyone know how I can get into that place?” Ashley pointed to the Tower. The villages followed her finger and then one of them asked her something. Ashley shrugged. “I don't know what you're saying. You don't know what I'm saying either, do you?” Ashley sighed and looked at the fire. The flames raised and fell and twirled and Ashley saw some people examining the splintered pieces of her flying carpet. Now that she had stopped talking, many of the villages were going back to what they were doing before she arrived. Ashley didn't bother them again. She was just happy to be warm by the fire.

  “Are you a sorceress?” Ashley heard someone ask. She was too surprised to respond at first and then she saw the boy talking to her. He was much older than Ashley and Ashley right away noticed that he had green eyes. The boy had a thick nose, the first signs of acne creeping along the bridge of it. Then Ashley noticed something else strange about him but at first she could not place it.

  “You can understand me?”

  “Yes. I had to learn English when I was trying to become a knight. I was very good at it.” The boy had a thick accent but he was fluent and Ashley understood him without trouble.

  “Are you a knight?”

  “No. I never passed the squire test. So I came back home to be a farmer like my father.”

  “Oh. Why did you fail?”

  “I broke my leg when I was very little. It didn't heal right so I can't run or jump very well.”

  “That's sad.”

  “It's okay. So are you a sorceress?”

  “No. I'm still learning. Rebecca brought me here so I could learn in the Tower but I couldn't get in.”

  “Is she your mother?”

  “Yes,” Ashley answered without thinking. “She's in Lord Edward's castle.”

  “Why are you here and not in the Tower?”

  “I couldn't make the doors open.”

  “I saw what you did with the fence boards. I'm sure you'll make a great sorceress.”

  “I hope so. But I can't even get into the Tower to learn more.”

  “Do you think you could teach me to magic?”

  “No.” Ashley shook her head. “I can't really explain how to do it. I just do it and sometimes it works.”

  “Oh.” The
re was a pause in the conversation. Somewhere on the other side of the fire a woman was laughing. “Do you think you could make my leg better?”

  “I'm sorry. I don't know how. I've never done anything like that. I just know how to make things move. I'm good at that.”

  “Oh. What's your name?”

  “Ashley.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ashley.” The Chinese boy stood up and brushed the dust from the seat of his pants. He walked away and Ashley watched as he talked to some grown-ups and then went inside. The grown-up he had spoken to, left the village by the road. All alone again and feeling like an outsider she lay down by the fire and closed her eyes. It was late and the day had seemed long and exhausting. She tried to remember what she'd done that had made the day so exhausting. Not long after she had rested her head on her arm, she fell asleep. When Ashley woke again the fire had gone out and she was cold, her arm had fallen asleep and she could barely see her own hands in the dark. She blinked and rubbed her eyes and then noticed someone standing above her.

  “Ashley?” He had a deep voice that made her feel uncomfortable.

  “Yes?”

  “I'm from the Tower. I've been wondering where you got to.”

  “I couldn't open the door so I came here.”

  “You were told to wait, weren't you?”

  “I was cold and I didn't think anyone was coming.”

  “I see. Your choice was foolish but, by the accounts I have been given, you showed considerable skill in making it here. Take my hand and we will return to the Tower.” He extended his hand and Ashley stood up and took hold. She blinked wearily and when her eyes were open again she was no longer in the darkness of the village. Lanterns hung from beams above her and lit up the red room she now stood in. Tapestries lined the walls and in front of her were a thin mattress, pillow and blankets on the floor. Ashley looked around her and saw an empty book shelf, a wooden chest with silver framing. Then Ashley looked up at the man whom she had met in the village and saw only his leather jacket and a hood that cast a shadow over his face.