The Witch's Curse (Legend of the Dreamer, Book 1.1)
Page 3
“You are beautiful, Magda,” he said into my ear. “But you are not as cursed by darkness as you think you are.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you meant.”
I said, “But I am, Samuel. I am cursed. You’ve seen my mother. You know that is my destiny.”
“I know,” he said. “But Magda? Look up at the stars one last time before this night becomes day.”
I turned and felt the world below me drift away until the only thing I saw was a vast ocean of night and stars and moon.
Samuel’s lips touched my neck, softly.
He whispered, “The stars shine so brightly before they die, Magda. And even after they blink away, we can still see them. Stars don’t fade like people do. In ways, they are forever pieces of an infinite sky. We are the same, Magda. You are my star, and I am yours. There might be a piece of our forever that we cannot see, but we must believe it’s there, waiting at the end.”
He breathed, “Our love is infinite.”
I closed my eyes.
“Samuel,” I whispered, and I felt my words bounce back at me against the black door of the church.
And then, without looking at the sky or thinking of my heart, I knew the one thing the curse could never destroy: I would find Samuel again in the forever sky of our infinite love.
One day soon the curse would break me, bind me in blood so dark it turned the sun into the moon’s shadow, but it could do nothing to break Samuel, my star waiting at the end of this cruel road.
Without looking back, I stepped forward.
~
“Are you ready?” Momma asked.
White candles filled the tiny church, burning small flames in the wake of teeth piled high. Bowls and tiny, brightly colored bags dotted the floor; empty things that once held the charms of witches.
I didn’t hesitate. “Yes, I’m ready.”
She smiled and leaned into the round table in the center of the room. “Sit and listen.”
I fell into the chair by her side, watched her drag a sharp blade across her finger and bleed forty drops of crimson blood into a tanned basin on the table.
“Forty drops for those before me,” she said as she brought several handfuls of teeth to her mouth and chewed. “Their teeth to make the ages speak.”
I closed my eyes and thought of the wish I made that night Samuel told me to look at the stars, and even though there were no stars here, I saw the bright spots in my mind and I wished it again.
I wish the witch who takes my place never knows the pains of heartbreak or love. I wish her to be stronger than me, more powerful. I wish her to live with her heart and defy her curse as I could not. I wish, whoever she may be, that she find her love, her star, as I did, and I wish that she do anything to keep him.
I opened my eyes to truth divided.
“Don’t you see the beauty, Magdaline?” Momma asked as she swirled the blood with her finger. “Don’t you see the beautiful power the blood holds?”
I said, “There is always darkness underneath such beauty, Momma. Always.”
“Darkness,” she said, “can be beautiful.”
My head fell. “Darkness cannot be good.”
Her smile was as brutal, as savage as my heart. “Good is just another shade of evil, Magdaline. Remember that.”
I said, “I’ll never forget.”
“You’re thinking of him, aren’t you? Thinking of what you could have done to protect him. If he would have loved you even as you became a damned servant to the blood. There was nothing more you could have done, I told you that. You saved him, Magdaline,” she said.
My lips cracked dry. “It didn’t feel like saving.”
“Do you miss him?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Do you still love him?”
Words broke out. “So much.”
“How much?”
“I feel as though I’ve died, Momma. I can’t breathe anymore. My heart - I’ve died.”
“Then you saved him, and that part of you is gone forever. Once this legend has been spoken, you will move to Ashfall to take my place.”
Against-
hope-
my heart-
my past-
I nodded.
When Momma touched a bloody finger to her lips and spoke the words that unleashed the legend, I saw pictures in the air around me. Life danced in remembered moments woven into the spell; words played before my eyes in forms of dangerous dreams.
As the Legend of the Dreamer left my mother, so did her soul abandon her. Slowly, her body faded into something less, as though the light of a very distant moon was shining inside of her.
She said, “We keep our secrets in the stars, Magdaline. You are the Woman of Prophecy now, my daughter. You must save the world by saving the one who is the Dreamer. Help him understand his destiny. Keep our secrets safe.”
With those last words, I felt my own soul change.
Chapter Five
The Unsaid Weight of Hearts
It died.
Finally, my heart.
My curse lived.
“My heart is dead, Emaline,” I said.
She touched my arm. “There is no such thing as a dead heart, Magda. Even the most broken of hearts can heal.”
Cold memories fell silently down my face.
“Don’t cry,” Emaline whispered. “Momma is in a better place.”
Something broke then; a different part of me died and began to live again in that moment. A side to me I had only seen in the violet shadows of my mother’s eyes.
“That’s not why I’m crying,” I said.
My heart drummed to a different beat; consumed by the darkness of my shadowed soul, I became enveloped in my curse as baleful as my violet eyes.
“Then why?”
Momma was right. We do not need love to live, but without love life seems impossible.
I breathed, “I never told Samuel I loved him.”
There, against that unsaid weight deep within my heart, I fell into my destiny.
Epilogue
When Blood Calls
The blood called.
I would wait-
for it to take me-
hold me-
need me-
want me as much as I wanted it.
I would wait for the blood
For him.
For the girl with violet eyes and the dark spell of blood beneath her heart.
For her to take my place.
For the Dreamer to find me.
I began to feel the darkness take me, ruin me; the madness of it touched me daily, and I hoped that the next born with violet eyes would be stronger than this. Hoped that she could defy the need for blood.
Blood.
This was about the blood calling to a place much stronger than any kind of love could sing. Love might not be able to take a breath from blood, but I could.
For darkness holds my heart.
Always.
Author’s Note
THE WITCH’S CURSE is not a beginning and it is not an end. It is a piece of a much larger story that began in LIGHT OF THE MOON and will end in SHADOW OF THE SUN. I decided I had to tell Magda’s story after spending so much time with her in LIGHT OF THE MOON. I wanted to show how the events in Magda’s life mirror Kate’s in many ways; Kate’s journey might not be so easy if she wants to keep loving Calum.
Magda’s story is a dangerous one filled with a lot of choices. For her, these choices often prove to be nearly impossible because of the addictive darkness of witch’s magic. Blood magic doesn’t come without a price, and I hope to have conveyed that in this story.
Throughout the story there’s the idea that love and blood cannot mix. We see, however, that this is not always the case. Actually, the idea of love empowers blood magic as we see when Magda and her mother bleed from their third fingers. The vein in that finger, the vena amoris “vein of love” was once thought to be the only vein in the fingers that
connected directly to the heart. Though proved false, I liked the idea of that original myth and used it as if it were true.
But what is the witch’s curse?
Magda loves Samuel, but her magical heritage forbids her to keep that love. Perhaps it’s not the blood that is the problem or the curse, but the desire to keep love even when the circumstances prove difficult. Magda is a flawed character, but her flaws come from the lack of connection between her mind and her heart. Her love for Samuel is deep, and in her mind the only way to save him was through his death. By killing him, she thought she was setting him free.
Did Magda’s blind love for her mother, along with her understanding of her fate as a witch, prove too strong for her to trust any other path? Did she even truly love her mother, or did she simply believe there were no other options?
The true witch’s curse is this: Love is not an easy truth to live with when you are destined to be consumed and destroyed by dark blood magic. When the world tells you that your love is fated to end, will you stop love just because you believe it will eventually end? Or will you fight to keep it? Like all truths based in love, the answers are different for everyone. THE WITCH’S CURSE was written to show that there are those people who fight for love, and those who don’t.
Because THE WITCH’S CURSE is a short story, it is meant only as a taste of the overall story arc that began in LIGHT OF THE MOON and will continue in SHADOW OF THE SUN.
THE WITCH’S CURSE is complete at 7500 words.
David James lives in Michigan. He has worked as an editor and a teacher, and still dreams to one day be a Power Ranger. He lives for cool autumn days, gummy worms, bad movies, popcorn, and books.
Learn more about David’s writing process at
http://djamesauthor.blogspot.com
Read what happens when Magda
Meets Calum and Kate.
Light of the Moon
The story that started it all.
One night long ago, a constellation fell from the sky in the form of a boy. He made a wish for love and found a girl who changed everything.
Available now
in paperback and E-format
Watch out for
The Warrior’s Code
Zack’s Story
And find out what life was like
for Kate and Zack on their
journey to become Warriors.
Available in e-format
Early 2013
Find out what happens next in
Book two
Shadow of the Sun
With Kate bound to live in
Ashfall, Calum is left to
Protect her sisters and help
bring the Order back to grace.
With more blood, more magic,
and more romance on every page
this second chapter will
leave you breathless.
To be released Late 2013