House of Secrets

by Chris Columbus

  One person with real magic.

  “Dahlia!” she called. “Wind Witch! I’m lost, and I need your guidance! Please, please, please, come and get me out of here, and I’ll bring you to The Book of Doom and Desire, I promise!”

  Cordelia was hardly finished when she heard a rustling sound. The hay on the floor began to rise and pirouette in the air, along with her cell phone. The straw swirled faster and faster, turning into a mini hay storm, whirling like an egg-shaped cocoon. . . .

  And the Wind Witch appeared in front of Cordelia, exploding the hay across the chamber. She was unmistakable—bald head, fierce blue eyes, purple robe—but something was different about her this time. At first Cordelia couldn’t figure it out. Then she saw.

  The Wind Witch had a big smile on her face.

  “Cordelia, my dear,” the Wind Witch said, eyeing the scroungy surroundings, “this doesn’t seem like the proper room for someone of your stature.”

  Cordelia didn’t realize it, but she was on her knees, her head bowed low. She had sunk in terror when the hay had come to life . . . and now that the Wind Witch was in front of her, she felt it was appropriate to stay on the floor.

  “I agree,” said Cordelia, “but I had no choice in the matter. Will locked me in here.”

  “Well, it’s obvious what he thinks of you as,” said the Wind Witch. “A pig to be kept in a pen.”

  Hearing those words aloud made Cordelia wonder if Will could be that cruel. She rose to his defense. “Will’s not a truly bad person. He just doesn’t understand—”

  “He understands perfectly well! The world has always been difficult for women like us, Cordelia. Do you think that’s by chance?”

  “Well, I never really—”

  “Of course not. We’re a threat. And all men know it. Originally, they were better at hunting, so we let them take charge. We needed their strong arms to operate bows and arrows. We needed their fast legs to chase wild animals. But times have changed—in my lifetime and yours. Hunting has become a routine trip to the supermarket. Defending the home has become something we can do ourselves. We don’t need men anymore, and they know it. So they’ll do anything—lies, tricks, murder—to see that we don’t rise up against them.”

  “We?” Cordelia asked.

  “People like you and me,” said the Wind Witch. “The world’s brilliant women.”

  Cordelia smiled. It had been a long time since anyone had called her brilliant. Her father was so stressed out about not having a job—and before that, about the job that he had—that he hardly found time to praise her. Her mother said she was smart . . . but that was what mothers were supposed to say. Her teachers at school took notice, but there was nothing worse than having a teacher give you a compliment. A teacher’s compliment only meant something if you were in college and your teacher had a PhD.

  “And as brilliant women,” said the Wind Witch, “we have a right to use this powerful book.”

  “When did you first learn of it?” asked Cordelia.

  The Wind Witch sighed. “Do you really want to hear the story? It won’t bore you, coming from an old woman like me?”

  “Of course not,” said Cordelia. “Please, tell me.”

  “I was eight years old,” said the Wind Witch. “I snuck out of bed one evening, followed my father, and watched him use the book. As you can imagine, I was enthralled by what he was able to conjure . . . but he was upset that I had found him. He screamed at me. I started to cry. To calm me down, he did something with the book—and a new stuffed animal appeared for me. I understood that, somehow, the book made wishes real. First it was the stuffed animal . . . then a dollhouse . . . chocolate . . . it was a young girl’s dream. But he made me promise never to open the book myself. It was a promise I kept for a few years. Until I was thirteen.”

  “What happened?” asked Cordelia.

  “I started to have issues with some classmates at school,” continued the Wind Witch. “There was one girl, Charlotte LeVernais, who was particularly cruel. She made fun of the way I spoke, the way I dressed.”

  “You were bullied?”

  “That’s what they call it now,” said the Wind Witch. “Back then it was just called being young. It got so bad, so hurtful . . . that the only thing I could think to do was sneak into my father’s hidden chamber and use the book to grant a wish. To make Charlotte stop.”

  “I can understand that,” said Cordelia. “I’d probably wish for something like that too, if some awful kid was messing with me, and I was only thirteen—”

  “I wished for Charlotte to lose her voice,” explained the Wind Witch. “For her vocal cords to evaporate, so she would never speak again, never hurt another person for the rest of her life.”

  “Wow,” said Cordelia. “That’s a bit extreme.”

  “But it worked,” said the Wind Witch. “And as a result, I started using the book for more wishes. I wished for popularity. I wished for the most handsome boyfriends. I was suddenly happy. It could have lasted forever, if not for my father’s interference.”

  Cordelia just stared at her, waiting for her to go on.

  “He was weak,” said the Wind Witch. “Worried that using the book would turn me into someone different, the way he became the Storm King.”

  “And how exactly did that work?” asked Cordelia.

  “He believed that removing the book from its original location had somehow been responsible for the Great San Francisco Earthquake,” said the Wind Witch. “And that gave him an idea: What if he had the ability to control weather? To create natural disasters? That would be the ultimate power. The power of a god. He began to conjure storms, each one more turbulent than the one before. His last was so treacherous it caused the deaths of thirteen people.”

  “That’s horrible,” Cordelia said. “Why would you want a book that let you do that?”

  The Wind Witch didn’t answer. Cordelia wasn’t surprised. Deep in her heart, she knew the answer: power.

  “We had a creepy old gardener who was always staring at me,” said the Wind Witch. “This made me feel uneasy. So I used the book and blinded the man. When my father confronted me, I admitted to him what had happened. He was furious. He forced me to restore the gardener’s eyesight, and then hid the book from me. He met with Aldrich Hayes of the Lorekeepers. It was Hayes who taught my father the magic that enabled him to hide the book in the world of his novels. But before he got the chance, I transformed myself into the Wind Witch. I wanted to convince my father to share the power. To make him realize that together we could rule over anything . . . any city, any country.”

  “I assume he did not react well,” said Cordelia.

  “He was livid. At that point he was far more powerful than I, so he banished me from our home. He thought he could keep me from the book. But I was smarter than that.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I disguised myself as a man,” said the Wind Witch, “and became a member of the Lorekeepers. They taught me strong magic, and soon I learned ancient spells that enabled me to enter the world of my father’s novels. I began my search for the book. . . .”

  “But when your father discovered this,” Cordelia said, “he put a curse on the book so you could never go near it.”

  “Exactly. But now I have you. And why should you not use the book? Unlike your siblings, you had the courage to open it.”

  “I don’t know if I should have. It felt good at the time . . . but Will told me it was hurting me. Changing my face.”

  “What does he know? Your siblings and Will don’t deserve the book. They aren’t as clever as you. They’re holding you back.”

  “That’s not true,” said Cordelia. “Even though we fight and disagree about almost everything, my brother and sister love me, care about me.”

  “Stop fooling yourself,” the Wind Witch said—and she took Cordelia’s hand.

  Cordelia had never felt the woman’s skin before. It was papery and dry, rough and old—but electric, charged with a
force that surged into her.

  Cordelia’s arm hairs stood up like fiber-optic cables. Her fingertips tingled like they were dipped in mint. The Wind Witch’s grip grew tighter. Cordelia stood at attention, trying to hold herself together despite the spider-crawl pinpricks blooming in her spine—and then something snapped, and she stood outside herself, seeing a vision of her own mind.

  It was blue and etched with fine lines. Within it she could see her memories. Each one was like an old movie reel, a ribbon of images recording something that had stuck with her, that she cared about. Some of the longest and most important ones had to do with her siblings. There was the time she saved Eleanor from playing in the dryer in their old house; the time she and Brendan got caught making potions in the bathroom. The time they went to Disneyland; the time Brendan caught a foul ball at a Giants game and he talked about it for a month. She saw these memories twist into a small bundle—

  And then they disappeared. And with them her love for Brendan and Eleanor. It was replaced by the pure, true knowledge the Wind Witch provided: Her siblings were really just average kids who’d never cared about her, never really loved her. Her parents were failed protectors who were too weak. And Will? He was a pale imitation of a real pilot, a real fighter.

  Only one thing in Cordelia’s life mattered now: The Book of Doom and Desire.

  “Is it all becoming clear?” asked the Wind Witch.

  “Very,” said Cordelia, snapping back to reality in a docile state, the Wind Witch’s hand still clutching hers.

  “Good. And without those others in your life, you are free to concentrate on your own dreams.”

  “The book,” said Cordelia.

  “It wants you. Needs you. It’s your destiny.”

  “Yes,” said Cordelia, as a creepy, otherworldly smile covered her face. Her eyes were dead.

  “And I promise: if you take me to the book, we’ll both be free.”

  Cordelia stood, suddenly eager. “I can take you. But you have to get me out of here. You’re powerful enough to blast away these bars—”

  The Wind Witch shook her head. “We don’t want anyone to hear us.”

  “Of course . . . ,” said Cordelia. Every second that the Witch held her, her mind drifted more into a fog.

  Her fingers suddenly got very cold. The intense chill moved through her arms, chest, and face. Her legs started to freeze. She noticed that her hands were losing their color and hardening into something transparent and shimmering.

  “What are you doing?” she asked the Wind Witch.

  “Getting us out of here.” The Wind Witch’s body had also begun to transform. Cordelia couldn’t decide what was more fascinating: watching her skin solidify into something translucent and cold, or seeing the Wind Witch’s do the same. In minutes, although they could still move and speak, they were both completely transfigured from flesh into—

  “Ice!” said Cordelia. “You turned us into ice! Why?”

  “Come,” the Wind Witch said, pulling Cordelia toward the bars of the cell. “The pain only lasts a moment.”

  “Pain?”

  But it was too late. The Wind Witch and an unwilling Cordelia were running together, hand in hand, straight for the metal bars—and when they slammed into them, their icy bodies shattered into a million pieces.

  The shards flew past the bars, landing in a pile in the hall. Cordelia, who somehow maintained consciousness, realized, I’m mixed in with the Wind Witch now. I’m part of her.

  The ice pieces sprang to life, skittering toward one another, connecting. Piece by piece the Wind Witch and Cordelia turned back into ice-sculpture versions of themselves. Then the ice warmed and colored to flesh, and they were human again, although Cordelia still felt a bit of coldness inside her, somewhere in her chest, that she couldn’t quite place.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” asked the Wind Witch.

  “Not so bad? It felt like a billion parts of my skin were being stung by jellyfish. Like that time in Florida with Mom and Dad and Brendan and Nell, when—” Cordelia paused as the old memory returned. The Wind Witch quickly noticed and grabbed her hand, transporting her back into a state of mental mishmash that only permitted one feeling: selfish desire.

  “Now, my dear. Show me the way.”

  Cordelia led the Wind Witch down the hall, knowing just where to go—she could almost taste the book. In a few minutes they reached Sangray’s chambers. But someone was there.

  Her sister.

  “Deal!” Eleanor said. “I was worried about you; I came—why are you holding hands with the Wind Witch?”

  Cordelia surged forward. It was an instinct deep inside her; her memories of Eleanor weren’t as buried as they’d seemed. She looked at the Wind Witch. “Why are you scaring my sis—”

  The Wind Witch clutched her hand so tightly that all the blood drained from it. Cordelia was back under her spell.

  “Don’t let her stop you. Open the door!”

  Cordelia tried, but it was locked.

  “Deal! Stop!” Eleanor cried.

  The Wind Witch waved her stump—and a sudden gust of wind knocked Eleanor over. She waved it again—and a bolt of lightning blew the lock off the door.

  “Cordelia!” Eleanor screamed, lying on the floor. “You have to listen to me. Whatever this old lady is shoving in your head, it’s not true, and you have to fight—”

  “Shut her up,” said the Wind Witch.

  “Yes.” Cordelia put her feet on either side of Eleanor’s small body, raised her free hand, and made a fist.

  Although her brain was given over to the Wind Witch, Cordelia still had her intelligence, and her intelligence had a cruel streak. She realized that hitting Eleanor would be far less effective than getting her where it really hurt.

  “Did you even skim The Heart and the Helm?” she asked. “Or did you just pretend while you got Brendan to read it for you?”

  “What?” Eleanor asked. “You know I read it! You were in the same room as me!”

  “I think you were faking,” said Cordelia. “Because we all know you can hardly read at all. You couldn’t even get the address of Kristoff House right. Sometimes I don’t think you’re dyslexic; I think you’re just dumb.”

  Eleanor burst into tears. The Wind Witch purred as she clutched Cordelia’s hand. “Good. Now, I can’t get close to the book, because of the curse my father put on it. So I need you to take this”—the Wind Witch gave a slip of paper to Cordelia—“and put it inside the book. Can you do that?”

  “Yes . . . ,” Cordelia answered. “But why? What’s on the paper?”

  “That’s not for you to know. Just do as I say, and you’ll learn the book’s true power.”

  The Wind Witch let go of Cordelia’s hand . . . but Cordelia remained under her spell. It was as if the tiny piece of the Wind Witch that was inside her was exercising its power. She entered Sangray’s chamber with her sister wailing in the background. She moved toward the book, a blank look on her face—

  But suddenly she heard a thud behind her, and when she turned around, the Wind Witch was sitting dazed against the hallway wall.

  In her place stood Will, looking like he’d just shoulder-checked a rugby player. Behind him was Brendan.

  “What’s happening?” Cordelia asked, lucid again.

  “We heard Eleanor call for help,” said Will, “and I—”

  “Maggots!” the Wind Witch yelled.

  She got to her feet and shot out her bad arm. A cone of air howled from her stump, spiraling across the chamber. Will hit the deck, avoiding the powerful blast, but Brendan was right in its path. He was lifted off his feet like a doll and blown across the room toward the opposite wall.

  CRACK! Brendan’s head hit the ceiling. His neck bent forward at an odd angle, and he dropped to the floor in a heap.

  “No!” Cordelia said, charging for him. Will grabbed her ankles: “Be still!”

  “Children have such short memories,” the Wind Witch said, panting as the veins in
her head pulsed.

  “Keep her talking,” whispered Will to Cordelia; he started crawling backward across the floor as Eleanor stood frozen.

  “A few moments ago you agreed that your family was useless. Now you defend them?” the Wind Witch continued.

  “You better believe it,” said Cordelia.

  “Don’t you still want the book?”

  “Not in a million years. That wasn’t me. That was you, messing with my head . . . you tricked me. Changed all the good memories I had about the people in my life into dark feelings.”

  “Those dark feelings were your own,” said the Wind Witch. “No one can be tricked into hatred. Some part of you might even be happy to see your brother lying on the floor right now, possibly with a broken neck . . . possibly never to walk again.”

  The Wind Witch beamed with horrible pride—but like most proud, narcissistic people, she had a tendency to overlook details. In this case, the detail of Will opening Sangray’s trunk to get the spell scrolls. By the time she noticed, he had unrolled his favorite ones—

  “Inter cinis crescere fortissimi flammis!”

  The ball of fire whooshed toward the Wind Witch like a comet; Cordelia dove. The Wind Witch shrieked, waving her disfigured arm at the flaming orb—

  And a rainstorm suddenly slashed through the room, dissipating the fireball and pushing everyone toward the broken stained-glass windows.

  “Who do you think you are now? A wizard?” the Wind Witch yelled.

  “He’s a better wizard than your father! At least he’s not crazy!” said Cordelia.

  “Don’t speak of my father!” The Wind Witch sliced her arms through the air in strange motions. The rain pounded harder. The wind blew faster. Eleanor clutched Brendan’s limp body as she and Cordelia leaned into the indoor storm, as if they were trying to walk in a hurricane, but the Wind Witch’s anger caused it to reach an intensely violent level. They were ripped into the air with Will and blown toward the sea—

  “‘Terra ipsa fenerat viribus!’” Will read.