The Spell and the Scythe (Merrydian's Gate, #2)

by A. E. Wright

  Chapter Fifteen - The Cabin

  MADGE BLEW A breath of orange flame into the fire that flickered in the chimenia in the middle of the room. It was nearing the end of summer, brown, red and yellow leaves fell from the various kinds of trees that were dotted around Blossomdown village, yet Madge was persistently cold- a part of the curse I guessed. She rose from the fire and hobbled over to the small front window, which was now almost clear of ivy, to glare at Jestin as he finished the beds he was making from an oak tree-trunk.

  Around seven days had passed since Jestin had been changed back from his bared form with the Moonstone Scythe but Madge had not fully forgiven him for scaring Herborg half to death. As he regained a little more of his old self day by day, he'd tried to make it up to her by doing odd-jobs around the cabin. Madge now had a large table with four chairs, an empty bookshelf that she kept potions on and a comfortable trunk bed in the living room where she slept.

  The bed Jestin had made for Madge was the same as he was making for the two of us now. It was the trunk of a tree, sawn in three pieces, one for Madge, one for me and one for him, with a hollowed out middle. Bettery had given us six fabric sheets that she had sewn together and we filled them to the brim with duck-down to make comfortable mattresses. Madge's was charred and had nearly been set alight three times but she was happy enough.

  I had discovered when I'd moved into the cabin that a small rudimentary bathroom was through a concealed wooden door, with what can only be described as a well-like toilet seat that flushed using the power of collected rainwater. Although I missed most modern comforts on Falinn Galdur, I had always been grateful that at least they had a sanitation system. The spout or shower as someone from 'my world' might call it also ran on rainwater but happily, Madge would clamour onto the roof and slightly heat the iron water-butt before I took a shower. I would never have asked her to but she did it anyway, I think it was her way of looking after me. The bathroom was dark and cold though because the ivy that covered the heightened circular window had crawled through a slight crack that was Jestin's next job on a long list.

  There was another room in the cabin. It was of average size and seemed to have been a child's room, with etchings of butterflies fluttering all around the walls and wooden birds swinging from twine ropes attached to the ceiling. They were covered in dust and cobwebs when I first walked into the room but I spent a whole afternoon dusting them down with a rag and after that, they looked magical. Another candle chandelier hung amongst the floating birds and a small wooden bookshelf sat at the side of a large space where I assumed a bed had once been. That space was about to be filled with two oak trunk beds as Jestin effortlessly carried them in from the garden.

  "Put them close together." I said.

  "I was going to." He smiled back at me as he laid the beds directly next to one another. I placed the mattresses, which I had been lugging around clumsily, into each of the trunk beds and lie down at the side of Jestin who climbed into his bed at the same time.

  "How are you feeling?" I asked. The question must be irritating him by now as I asked it at least twice a day but if he was annoyed, he didn't show it.

  "Still a little strange." He admitted. It was better than the usual 'fine' I had become accustomed to hearing.

  For the first couple of days he hadn't said much at all. Apart from one occasion when he had told me that he loved me, he had made guttural grumbling sounds to express his feelings. He had eaten greedily, as if he was afraid that every meal might be his last and constantly surveyed his surrounding with a nervousness that I had never witnessed in him before. It was the third day after Merl changed him back to his human form that I began to get glimpses of the old Jestin.

  "How are you?" His question interrupted my internal musings. It was the first time he spoke without prompt. I smiled,

  "I'm better with you here." I answered. He smiled back, reaching out his warm hand to grab mine. I shuddered at his touch. I wanted to feel content to have him here alive but I couldn't shake the thought that maybe he didn't remember our conversation the morning after we escaped Agrona.

  He made a choice that day, he chose his people over me and who was I if I allowed him to forget that? How could I claim to love him if I took advantage of him at his weakest? The question had been nagging at me for days and now was the time to ask it.

  "Do you remember how we spoke in the woods, the day after Agr.."

  "I remember everything." He cut me off.

  "And so, this means..." My heart fluttered in anticipation of his words and I dare not finish the sentence.

  "I cannot pretend any longer that I have a choice. I cannot choose anything other than you." He said with intensity as he raised my hand to his mouth, breathing in my scent and softly kissing my knuckle. I leaned over to kiss him back but a creak from the door stopped me in my efforts. Madge popped her head in the room.

  "Are you decent?" She asked.

  "Of course." I answered embarrassed by her insinuation. Jestin chuckled softly.

  "Well then you'd better come to the door, you've got a visitor."

  "Tell him to go away." I already knew who it was and I had no intention of speaking to Merl anytime soon.

  "Will do." Madge chirped happily. Being mean to Merl was one of her favourite pastimes.

  "No wait." Jestin urged. I was pleasantly surprised. This was the most Jestin had talked since his transformation. He didn't say anything more, he didn't have to, I knew by the look in his emerald eyes that he thought I should go and talk to Merl.

  Madge huffed as I dragged myself from the log bed sluggishly and traipsed toward the cabin door.

  There he was, looking at the floor pitifully. I almost felt sorry for him before the feeling of lead in my stomach at the memory of betrayal set in, and then all I felt was anger.

  "Can I help you?" I hissed.

  "Violet," Merl began "I am so terribly?"

  "Treacherous!" Madge shouted from the living room. I walked through the door and shut it behind me.

  "You were saying?" I said a little petulantly. Sympathy began to pluck as my heart strings playing a slow staccato tune for my deflated ancestor but I wasn't about to let Merl see that. He had to know that what he did it wasn't okay.

  "I am sorry." He said simply.

  "Good, you should be." I said.

  "I hope that is an acceptance of my apology. If it is of any consequence to you, the incident during which Jestin escaped has at least demonstrated that the Bobbin barrier cannot be broken by the Moonstone Scythe." That was good news actually. We had been worried that Agrona wanted the Scythe to break the barrier.

  "Is that it?" I asked. I wasn't really in any mood to celebrate with Merl.

  "Please, let me explain." He implored. I nodded. "Falinn Galdur is in dire need of a hero, a hero that has no agenda, that is seeking no glory.."

  "I'm seeking to stay alive, and I'm no hero." I argued.

  "We both know that spinning more spirals on your mortal coil is not why you agreed to perform the spell. You Violet, have something that is required of the person that can save us all from Agrona." His eyes rose from the ground to meet mine.

  "I'm nothing special. I came here by accident, messed everything up, and now I have to put it right." I stated frankly.

  "Exactly." Merl said, and then surveyed my confused face in frustration. It was as if I was missing something obvious. "You Violet, have a deep seated sense of duty to the people. You are willing to put the needs of the many before your own feelings and desires. You are brave enough to make the sacrifice and humble enough to cope with the power that the curse will give imbue within you. Yours is a power greater than any magic that I or Agrona could perform." He said proudly.

  "I can't. I'm sorry, but I just can't." I said. The guilt weighed heavily on me, it was an anchor pulling my internal organs to the ground until I felt physically ill, but I couldn't go through with the spell. I had been talking to Madge about the curse in the last few days and although she had
never directly told me not to perform the spell, something she had said resonated with me. 'We must open our minds to all possibilities child, only then can we see with clarity the best path to take.' Her words had both terrified me and convinced me that there had to be another way to beat Agrona. It had been done before and with all of us together now, pooling the resources of every race in Falinn Galdur willing to fight, we could do it again. "I'm sorry." I repeated before leaving a disappointed and astounded Merl on the doorstep of the cabin.

  Jestin was asleep when I re-entered the room. I was glad, because all I wanted to do was cry. Instead, I chose to dust a rickety old bookshelf that loomed in the corner of the room. It was an unimportant task. The kind of task I needed right now to distract me. I grabbed a rag and set to work.

  I weaved in and out of the ancient books that were covered in layer upon layer of dust, working away the hollow spider corpses and long-dead moths, uncovering a few interesting books that I might try to read later. Some of the books were so old that they had all but rotted away and all that remained of them were fragments of paper stuck stubbornly to the back of the shelf. I wondered how long they had sat here for, unloved and unread and then I wondered who would have been here to read them in the first place? I couldn't ask Merl, not after what had just happened. The look on his face as I'd walked away indicated that we would not be talking for a while now. I would finish up here and then I'd ask Madge. I bet she knew who the cabin had been home to.

  I was almost at the top shelf when I noticed a thin red book that stuck out a little farther than the rest. I pulled away a huge cobweb from the cover prompting a large brown spider to scurry away quickly. There was no title on the book. I placed my hand on the well-preserved surface in order to pull the book free and inspect it better. The book didn't budge, neither did it feel like a book. It felt cold, like metal. I couldn't reconcile in my mind why something that looked like it was soft to touch, was actually hard and solid. I pulled it again yet it still did not move so I gave it a forceful tug. The metal book loosened a little from its position on the shelf but it did not come free, rather, it edged forward like a lever. A clunking sound came from somewhere behind the wall and the bookshelf begun to descend into a trap that opened below.

  "A portal." I heard the astonishment in Jestin's voice as he described the turquoise vortex that materialised before me. I jumped a little, I hadn't realised that I had woken Jestin and his sudden appearance behind me was surprising.

  "Shall we?" I prompted, feeling brave, curious and reckless all at once. I picked up a sharp piece of wood that was the remnants of one of the floating butterflies that had fallen and cracked in two as I'd tried to dust it, and dragged it along my palm to unlock the portal. Jestin grabbed my hand and we jumped into the spiralling unknown together.

  The room was dark with a singular stone window to allow in the light. The window, just above the trapdoor we had emerged from, was the only notable feature in the empty room. Water trickled down from the cracks in the perilous-looking ceiling. The hard stone floor underfoot was slippery. I held tightly onto Jestin's arm. The smell of wet stone and moss filled my nostrils.

  "Where do you think we are?" I asked. Jestin sniffed at the air using his keen Worlen nose to identify our location.

  "Deep in the middle of a forest." He answered.

  "Thistlewick Forest, or Galdur Wood?" I asked uncertainly.

  "Neither," Jestin shook his head, "This place does not smell of my world, it smells of yours." He said.

  "You can tell? Have you been to my world?" It seemed like a strange thing to say, Falinn Galdur was in my world, I just didn't know it until I flew through the portal and anyway, I didn't feel part of my old world anymore. I was certain I couldn't exist there any longer, not after everything that had happened.

  "The air is heavier, the earth drier, it just does not smell the same." He admitted. I scratched my head, why on earth would Merl need a portal to a tower in the middle of the forest? I suppose he didn't need it any longer, it had been abandoned along with the cabin in his garden. I peered through the slim, rectangular window hoping to get a better idea of where I was but all I could see was forest. Impossibly thick yew trees that were taller than any tree I had seen before stretched for miles around. Crooked branches reached toward the sky, flurries of emerald leaves resembled clouds floating below the skyline. There was nothing here but a dilapidated, empty tower and mile upon mile of forest.

  "Let's go. There's nothing here." I said

  "Other than the ruins of a castle." Jestin offered.

  "What?" I asked surprised. Jestin laughed softly. I grabbed his hand, I had missed that laugh.

  "Look," He stood behind me as he peered, over my shoulder, out of the slim window and pointed, "There are ruined foundations all around if your eyes are sharp enough to spot them." He said. Mine were not but it made no difference, if Jestin said that there was once a castle here then there was once a castle here. He was the one person I knew unequivocally would never lie to me. Merl was another matter entirely, a secret cabin in his garden, a portal to a ruined castle, none of it fit with anything I knew about Merl's life but he'd lived so many years what did I really know?

  "Are you ready to go back?" I asked. I had no desire to try to go down the crumbling stone staircase that descended from a narrow corridor just through an archway. Jestin nodded. As I lifted the damp wooden trapdoor that covered the portal, there was a scratch mark- a very small one just underneath the door. Obviously done by a child but it was neat enough to decipher,

  P. A, The cursed.

  "What do you think it means?" I asked Jestin who shrugged in reply before pulling my body close into his and tipping our intertwined bodies sideways.

  A flash of pale skin, piercing blue eyes, a little girls image, or shadow it was so fast I couldn't tell, appeared in the arched window for the briefest moment before we disappeared into the portal.

  I sat brooding as I stared into my glass of honeydew brew. I'd never actually been into the Dragons Scales for a drink before but Jestin had wanted to come.

  There was a stunning stone floor, decorated with the intricate design of hundreds of dragon's scales that hurt your eyes if you looked at them for too long. The bar was a simple wooden sideboard with a collection of barrels that sat on top. The landlord was a small Bobbin with wiry brown hair and a bald patch. A couple of patrons he was engaged in a loud conversation with, were referring to him as Knut.

  Jestin went over to the bar to fetch some drinks for us whilst I lingered in the doorway near a table where two taller people, with dark cloaks pulled over their heads, sat. They began to whisper quietly to one another, obviously they didn't want to be disturbed but I would be moving in a moment anyway. I noticed Knut pull out a long scroll and search for something, when he found what he was looking for. He took a feather from his coat pocket and put a scratch on the scroll. Not wanting to disturb the secretive couple any longer, I moved further into the room and drank in my surroundings.

  There was a huge stone open fireplace in the far corner of the inn where a Bobbin at the table next to it swayed drunkenly, dangerously close to falling in. The walls were redwood with paintings of all kinds of mystical creatures adorning them. The paintings differed in size and frame. There were centaurs, trolls, ogres all painted against the backdrop of recognisable places on the island. We took the table that sat below the painting of a Merrow emerging from the depths of Loch Du. I shuddered at the memory of the Merrow that had grabbed my foot and tried to pull me to the bottom of the Loch as I took my seat.

  Jestin twirled a strand of my long red hair in-between his fingers before leaning over his glass of mead to kiss my lips. I felt a mixture of passion and embarrassment display upon my face as a scarlet heat. His lips curled into a smile at my reaction to his kiss. I heard an old Worlen woman tutting from the table behind but Jestin paid no attention to her. He'd been so impulsive since he had the transformation, I was getting glimpses of the restrained, duty-bound Jes
tin I knew with each day that passed but there was something else, a more animalistic side to his nature that was more prevalent now. I felt a prang of guilt because I secretly hoped this side of him wouldn't fade completely. I'd fallen in love with him the way he was before, collected, resigned and determined and that wouldn't change, but there was something liberating about the way he so openly expressed his feelings at the moment. I suppose it was a selfish thought but I didn't want that to change.

  "So, what are your thoughts on the portal to the ruined castle?" I asked Jestin quietly.

  "I honestly don't know." He answered. "What's more, I don't know if it is all that important." He said frankly. I eyed him in confusion, of course the ruins of the castle were important somehow, why else would Merl have had a portal to them in his own garden? And the girl? Who was she? What was she? And why was she there? There was so much to discuss.

  "Jestin, I know a little about Merl and I'm telling you, the fact that there is a portal hidden in a bookshelf in a secret cabin in his garden is significant." I heard a stool shift from elsewhere in the bar. Jestin put his finger to his lips.

  "Forget it Violet, please." He quietly implored. I thought I should argue my point but the approach of the landlord as he pulled out his long checklist scroll, stopped me in my tracks.

  "So General Jestin, you're paying for these drinks and the rest of your tab by repairing the splinter in my bar?" He smiled. I was perplexed at first but then I remembered that although gold and silver could be traded, the main currency in Falinn Galdur was whatever skills someone might possess.

  "When I have finished talking." Jestin grunted, it was out of character for him to be so rude and he seemed angry at the intrusion.

  Knut maintained his smile, I guess he was used to bartering with aggressive drunkards and so Jestin's impoliteness didn't daunt him at all.

  "I think I can help." I chimed in. Knut observed me cautiously; I remained unpopular in Blossomdown and that wasn't going to change anytime soon.

  "Do you have a problem?" Jestin growled at Knut who shook his head in reply.

  "No, I have no problem I don't." I watched as Knut's cautious features rearranged into a smile although the smile was less genuine this time. I pulled out my chair and followed him to an area of the bar not far from where we had been sat.

  "Wow, that's a big splinter!" I exclaimed. The splinter was actually a crack that ran the whole length of the bar. Knut nodded.

  "Balthus can be quite clumsy after a few tankards of mead he can." He observed. I placed my hands on either side of the open crack,

  "Mendia" I stated confidently. The crack was big but I was getting better at magic and I knew I could fix it easily enough. I felt the magic flow through me and just as I had expected the wood reformed, the very smallest of fibres twisting back into place around one another. Knut gave the newly repaired bar a kick for good measure. The wood did not break but I was pretty sure I heard a crack from Knuts foot. Jestin's boyish laugh rung out from behind me. I turned to see him eyeing my handy work with admiration.

  "You are getting good." He said.

  "That's nothing, you should have seen what I did to a Gnarl at Thistlewick Castle." I laughed. "And that was unspoken." Jestin's eyebrows reached the top of his head in shock. He ushered me away from the open-mouthed Knut. "What?" I said defensively. It might have been a little boastful of me but I hadn't said anything untrue.

  "I doubt there is anyone worse than that busybody Knut to have witnessed you making such a statement." He warned as we walked toward the door.

  "Why? I haven't done anything wrong, the Gnarl was attacking me and I'm pretty sure the Bobbins are aware I'm capable of performing magic by now, what with me being Merl's heir and all." I said.

  "Violet, the last time a seemingly mortal girl inexplicably became powerful enough to master unspoken magic, it did not end well for anyone." Jestin said.

  "You're comparing me to Agrona? I didn't ask for any of this you know." I raised my voice in anger. Jestin put his finger to my lips to caution me. I felt a prang of anger at his action but I resisted the urge to bite down on his finger.

  "Of course not," he said in a hushed voice. "I know that you would never do anything to hurt anyone without good reason but the Bobbins, many Worlen, and Banshee are unsure of you." He explained.

  I wanted to storm out of the door in irritation. I intended to walk to the beach, it was the place I felt most at ease, the place that reminded me that the world I was in wasn't so far away from my old home. I would have too, if it wasn't for the cloaked couple who were flapping around in the doorway. At first, I thought they might be fighting as one of the figures stood over the other, the second be bent double in pain, but then I realised that the standing figure was actually trying to comfort their companion. I wasn't the only one who had noticed the commotion as the old Worlen woman who had sat at the table behind me pushed her way through the small gathering crowd toward the pair.

  "What's the matter?" Jestin said when he realised I had stopped in front of him.

  "I don't know." I answered sharply, still angry with him from moments before. I pushed my weight onto the balls of my feet and stuck out my neck in order to get a better view from over the shoulder of a timeworn Worlen man who had come to gather in the crowd and was now blocking my view. I noticed that one of the figures had taken his cloak off. A familiar feeling of annoyance and disgust rose within me at the sight of Idris who was stood over the other figure, now on all fours on the floor and howling in pain. What a surprise he had hurt someone. Well it was only a matter of time I supposed. I began to push my way through the crowd, maybe there was something Jestin or I could do to help the unfortunate being now writhing on the floor in agony.

  "Someone fetch the Bobbin Bettery, this one's having a baby." The snag toothed Worlen woman called urgently across the room.

  "Dahlia!" I cried, thundering through the crowd to the sound of a newborn screaming its first lung full of air into the world.