Come Witch or High Water

by Constance Barker

  “What do you want?” She asked with a sneer. One of those kids who clearly had no strong upbringing at home with no regard for authority.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked. Suddenly, I got the feeling of deja vu, it was like I had done this before. I could hear an echo of my own voice saying the same thing in the past. “Why are you hurting her?” Instead of the young girl on the beach, I was now seeing a woman at the witch school I attended in Nikatomia.

  “Why do you think it’s any of your business?” A woman in her early twenties jeered back at me. I felt white hot anger grow deep inside my chest. I felt dangerous. The woman was on the ground behind the bully. She looked like she had gotten a harsh round of spells thrown at her as well as some physical pushes.

  “I’m making it my business,” I replied icily. The crowd around us only grew as I stood up for the woman on the ground. I think she was unconscious, but I could still hear her breathing and see the rise and fall of her chest.

  “You don’t belong here,” The bully said. Aretha, I suddenly recalled her name. Aretha glowered at me, standing almost a full head taller than I was. The woman on the ground was Morgana...people told her that she didn’t belong either. We weren’t from the right side of the tracks. She was from a poor town on the outskirts of Nikatomia. I wasn’t even from Nikatomia, I was born there sure, but I had been raised outside.

  “We belong here just as much as you do.” The crowd made heckling noises. I couldn’t really tell if they were for or against me. It seemed like they were only out for blood, it didn’t matter who’s it was.

  “Prove it,” Aretha said nodding her head. My throat tightened as she choked the air from my lungs with magic. She was more than one grade ahead of me and was in her final year at Magartha’s School for Witches. I was only in my first. Still I was able to hold my own against her.

  “I will,” I choked out. Aretha rose from the ground, levitating up and up. She maintained some focus, though her spell restricting my breathing let up a little. I was able to gasp in a few breaths as I dropped her from at least ten feet in the air. The crowd booed as she hit the ground. I guess they were gunning for my blood.

  Aretha stood, looking wobbly on her feet. She was angry now. Before she was only entertaining the idea of me battling her. Underestimating my ability. I didn’t know my father, he died before I was born, but he was powerful and that meant I was too.

  She screamed as she ran towards me. I felt a gash open across my face, blood pouring from my cheek.

  “You’ll never be one of us,” she shouted at me. Another wound opened on my leg, not as deep but still painful. “In fact, I’m going to make sure you don’t remember that you ever thought you could be one of us.” I moved to lift her again, but it wasn’t fast enough. The next thing I remember was waking up in an infirmary with my cheek bandaged and no memory of how it happened. She’d hit me with a memory addler.

  “Vana!” Winnie shouted at me, pulling me from the memory. I looked around stunned. All the kids had run off, except for the two girls who were being bullied. There was a small pool of blood on the ground, that wasn’t from the girl who had been pushed. They looked at me in terror.

  “What happened?” I asked falling to the ground. All of a sudden memories rushed back into my head like a flood. I had a powerful father who died when I was young. A human mother, who brought me out of Nikatomia after my father passed. Things were still fuzzy, and I didn’t suddenly know everything about my past, but it was more than I had before.

  “You just kind of glazed over, and then that little girl bully started bleeding,” Winnie looked concerned. She was kneeling in front of me as if I had completely lost it. I only realized then that I was beaming from ear to ear and laughing, though tears were pouring from my eyes. I must have looked mad. “In the same spot where you have your scar.”

  “Did I hurt her?” I asked. I didn’t want to have really hurt the girl, though I hoped she'd learned some kind of lesson.

  “Not badly,” Winnie shrugged, also not too worried about the girl’s well being. In our defense she had been beating up another child. “They do think you’re a witch though.” I laughed again.

  “Thank you for stopping her.” The brave girls were standing up now and introduced themselves. The one who had been pushed thanked us as well.

  “I doubt she’ll be doing that again anytime soon,” the pushed girl, Natalie, said. “I don’t know how you did that, but it scared the pants off of her.” She laughed.

  “Are you going to be alright?” I asked both of them. My mind was still swimming with my own memories. It was hard to concentrate, but we did have a job to do.

  “Yeah, we’ll be fine,” the girls said in unison. They giggled and then walked off with their arms around each other’s shoulders. The motion tugged at my own memory and I could see myself linked arm and arm with Morgana when we were in school together. Morgana, what had happened to you?

  “Do you mind telling us what just happened?” Alan asked.

  “I got my memory back,” I said looking at them in disbelief. “Or at least some of it. I remembered stopping a girl from bullying my friend Morgana. The bully performed a memory addle spell on me and gave me this,” my finger tracing along the edge of my scar. “I woke up in an infirmary where no one knew who I was or how I got there. I think I stumbled out of there and met you not long after, Alan.”

  “A witch did that to you?” Winnie asked sounding horrified. She was of the belief that witches wouldn't harm each other.

  “I guess so,” I said standing up. “I didn’t remember a thing about my past, and that’s why. I’ve been having these nightmares, where I see flashes of my childhood, but I could never be sure that’s what they were. I’m from the normal realm, but I was born in Nikatomia. My mother was normal, and my father was a powerful warlock.” I felt like I was reading a Wikipedia page about my life. It all seemed too familiar, yet so distant at the same time. “He died when I was a baby, in the illness that befell Nikatomia all those years ago.”

  “I lost an aunt to that,” Winnie said solemnly. Nikatomia was the safest place for our kind. But a little over two decades ago an unknown illness rampaged through it, taking thousands of us with it. No one knew what it was, or its origin, only that it was deadly and once contracted you couldn’t be saved.

  “My mother tried to bring me back home, but she didn’t have a Nikatomian escort to bring her through the portal. Customs wouldn’t let her out, but she knew she had the illness and was dying. She had to get me to my grandparents. In a desperate act, she ran through the portal on her own. It nearly killed her, but she made it through and brought me to my grandparents’ house. She died there.” I didn’t remember this myself, but I could remember my grandmother telling me the truth about what happened when I was seventeen. My powers had bloomed, and I couldn’t control them. My grandmother knew it was time for me to go back to Nikatomia and study in school there. My mother had left her a book of instructions in case I had been born with powers like my father. They had dropped me off at the portal, I went through customs and became a Nikatomian citizen.

  “I’m sorry,” Winnie said placing a hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” I said, a little confused by how okay I felt. It was like I had never really felt okay before, and now I was. “I remember now. That’s what matters.”

  “Are your grandparents still alive?” Alan asked.

  “I don’t know,” I shook my head. “I lost my memory before I got the chance to visit them. I hope so, though.”

  “Maybe we can visit them before we go back,” Winnie suggested.

  “If we have the creature, or whatever he is, that won’t be possible. But maybe next time.” I wanted to visit them, I wanted nothing more than that. But I was also scared. I’d been away from them for so long, if they were still alive, would they forgive me for abandoning them? It suddenly made sense to me why I had felt so at home on our last mission when I’d stayed with Nan. She re
minded me of my grandmother. “We need to keep going.”

  “You’re right.” Winnie understood that I needed to work through this myself first, and in order to do that we had to finish this job.

  We made it to the cave without another incident. Once we got inside there was nothing but the remains of a fire that had been stomped out. There was one other thing there though, a long strand of auburn hair had been left behind by the man who had taken Tracy. That was enough for us to perform a spell to once and for all figure out what he was.

  I lit a small fire in the wood that was left over from the previous night. It had just been a normal fire. It was untouched by magic up until this point. The wood was still damp from the previous night. It would not have been easy to light, but they had managed somehow. I wondered if maybe Tracy had been the one to light it, she’d have the skill.

  “Unveil the truth to us, in the fire we will see the answers. Unveil the truth. Unveil to us to whom this hair belongs. What or who? Unveil the truth.” Winnie and I chanted this in unison. I held the hair above the flames as we spoke and dropped it in as we stopped. I channeled my energy into the fire making it burst.

  “He’s a water nymph,” I said after the flames died out. “Nymph’s are powerful creatures, and notorious for making mischief.”

  “Maybe he considers everything he's done so far mischief. Part of making the town believe in the lake creature was probably just a joke to him.” Winnie shook her head in annoyance. She didn’t like nymphs as they tended to make those around them look like fools with practical jokes and mischief making. They were adjacent to witches and warlocks as they had magic powers, but they were limited to spells that had to do with their order. If they didn’t have this limitation, then they would be far more powerful than any other magical species. They were divided into orders of elements; air nymphs, water, earth and fire.

  This one was a water nymph and certainly capable of powerful magic. The weather patterns and the storm that caused the shipwreck were a testament to that. Our job was more difficult now, we had been holding out hope that he’d want to come back with us, but likely the nymph did not want to. They enjoyed being around people in the normal realm too much. They were easier targets for their mischief.

  How could Tracy know him from before being taken by him? She clearly did, Alan had said she thought he was her imaginary friend. It could all just be a big trick, or she could know him. Nymphs took relationships seriously and would never fool someone into caring for them. We needed to talk to Judy one more time.

  Chapter Nine

  With my newly found memories, it was hard to focus on the tasks at hand, but I didn’t have a choice. I had a job to do. If I remembered correctly, then it was my grandfather who told me that there was nothing better than hard work and a job well done. My grandmother would nod in agreement. Even though I hadn’t remembered them, this was a lesson they had instilled in me. I even said the same thing to Winnie on more than one occasion.

  They’d understand. They would want me to get the job done, and then find them when I could.

  “Hi ladies,” Judy said as we entered the bakery. It had the CLOSED sign up, but we knew it would be unlocked. Judy looked worse than she had before. If she didn’t get sleep soon, she’d start hallucinating. I knew all too well the troubles that came with too many waking hours. We all did, a job a few years back had required us to be up for 36 hours straight. By the end of it, Winnie was talking to a rock and insisted it was her best friend. I had hallucinated that Alan was a chicken and nearly tried eating him. It wasn't the most pleasant memory...especially for Alan.

  “Judy can we do anything for you?” Winnie asked. She was concerned for the woman, and since she thought Tracy might have run off, she felt guilty.

  “Find my daughter,” Judy said harshly. “Sorry. I haven’t slept.”

  “It’s okay,” I assured her. “We do want to help; Alan nearly flew himself to death trying to follow her scent.” Judy looked gratefully at the bird and reached out her hand to him. Alan flew from my shoulder to her. She petted him gently. We had to go about this without upsetting her or letting her in on the nymph secret.

  “We spoke to Billy Joe,” Winnie said to start.

  “Did he tell you what he’s done to my girl?” She asked, glowering at the very idea of the man. “They’ve started sweeping the lake but haven’t found anything yet. I guess now I’m just waiting.”

  “There are still people out there searching for her,” I reminded her. It was important not to give up. We couldn’t tell her that Alan had seen Tracy, and it ate me up inside. But now we did know for certain that she was okay and wasn’t in danger of dying. She was in danger of never coming home again though. I didn’t want to have false hope. It was just a matter of if she could either escape the nymph and make it back or convince him to let her go back home. Or if we could find where they were hidden and free her ourselves.

  “There’s only one person out there who knows what happened to her, and it’s Billy Joe. He’s not talking, so what can we do?” She asked rhetorically. “I’m sure he didn’t say anything useful to you when you spoke with him.”

  “Not really,” I said. “But we’re not so convinced that he did anything to her.” Judy snorted.

  “He can be charming when he wants to be, I’ve never seen Tracy sadder than when she’s with him. He’s said before that he wouldn’t let her leave town, she made him too happy. He couldn’t care less about how unhappy he made her. Once she told him she was leaving, he would have stopped her. I don’t know how, but he would have. I can only hope he didn’t kill her to keep her here forever,” Judy looked like she wasn’t really in the room. I wasn’t convinced that she even remembered who she was talking to.

  “You don’t believe the creature took her?” Winnie asked. It was easy to ask her whatever we wanted. She was in a sort of trance brought on by too little sleep.

  “The creature isn’t real!” She shrieked. She was still calmly petting Alan. The intensity in her voice juxtaposed with the serenity in her actions was eerie at best. It sent a shiver down my spine. Alan was no longer happily sitting with her, but incredibly uncomfortable by the entire situation.

  “How do you know?” I asked. She laughed manically.

  “How could it be!? There’s no such thing as monsters, or lake creatures or whatever you want to call it. They are fictional! I don’t understand why it’s so hard for this town to understand what’s real and what’s fake. The whole story was born out of Roger’s trauma. And then it swept through the place like a virus. Even my own daughter made an imaginary friend around the stupid lake creature nonsense.” Winnie and I exchanged a look. Inadvertently we had gotten her talking about exactly what we wanted.

  “Tracy had an imaginary friend?” Winnie prodded. As soon as we were done talking to her, we’d put a sleep spell on Judy. She needed it more than anyone I had ever seen. If we did nothing, she’d wind up in the hospital for exhaustion.

  “Oh yeah,” Judy nodded. “She talked to that thing more than any real person she knew. I almost put her in therapy because of it. It was too expensive to take her though, what with the boat and everything. Tracy would just stand by the water, talking for hours. She’d laugh and giggle away down there. One day I asked her who she was talking to...she said it was her friend Llyr and he was the lake creature, except she kept saying he wasn’t a creature at all, and he was just a boy. A boy who lived in the lake. I don’t know how that girl came up with a name like that, Llyr. I looked it up once, you know, it means the sea. She’s such a clever girl. And now she’ll never come home,” Judy sobbed. Her hand dropped from Alan as she wept.

  “She’ll come home,” I said confidently. “She will.”

  “How do you know that?” She asked. “Do you know something?” She accused. She was still crying.

  “We don’t know anything,” Winnie said quickly.

  “How do I know that? You guys showed up just before she disappeared. You could have taken
her for God knows what reason.” Judy was hysterical now. I didn’t blame her, I had expected her to suspect us earlier. Based on timing alone it made sense.

  “We had nothing to do with it,” I said. “We’re trying to help you find her.”

  “I know, I know. I just want her back here.” Judy sobbed quietly. There wasn’t more for us to say. What we had to do now was act. With her head resting on the table, I placed my hand on the top of Judy’s head, willing her to fall into a peaceful sleep. A sleeping spell was easy to accomplish, but one with no nightmares could be difficult. I hoped that I hadn’t given her nightmares. At this point, I figured that she probably wouldn’t dream at all she was so tired.

  “I know she will come home too,” Winnie said. “We’ll bring her home.”

  We had to do something to get the attention of Llyr and Tracy. It was also getting dangerously close to the full moon. I had no desire to stick around for an extra month here. I wanted to find my grandparents but I needed time to recuperate from this assignment and also time to reflect on the memories that were flooding my brain. Likely if we missed the moon we would find them only days after and then have to hide out until the next one. On my list of things I wanted to do, that was far towards the bottom. It wasn’t on Winnie’s or Alan's list of favorite things to do either.

  “Now that we know he’s a nymph, we should try a new approach,” I suggested. Judy snored softly at the table. Winnie and I moved to a farther away table. Although she shouldn’t wake up, you could never be too careful. Our words had the potential of going into her subconscious mind and who knew how much she’d end up picking up on. The last time Winnie and I had a discussion near a person under a sleeping spell they woke thinking they were a warlock and tried to fly. They weren’t and took a nose dive off the roof of their house.

  “He would have seen our spells and ignored them,” Winnie said with an eye roll. She was already annoyed by the antics of the nymph. He had certainly brought bad weather upon us, and drowned our runes. “This Llyr guy is really getting on my nerves.” She looked at Judy with a sigh. He was doing more than just getting on people’s nerves.