by Lucia Ashta
Mordecai continued the explanation, but it was for his benefit, not the smith’s. He was still trying to work out what happened. How their baby sister could’ve slipped from their grasp and from this world while they watched on. “Everything in the magical world revolves around balance. Every spell, every magical request, comes at a cost. Usually those costs aren’t great, or the elements of magic naturally balance themselves beyond our awareness. If we urge fire forward, somewhere else in the world, fire retreats. When we take from one place, another must give.
“But what our sister tried to do—did—isn’t natural. Death is a natural part of life, but she interfered with it. There’s nothing within the natural magical world that can compensate for her request. So the spell took her life to give to him.”
The smith gasped again, but Mordecai barely heard him.
“She probably didn’t realize that’s what would happen. We didn’t teach her this unnatural magic, and she’s never really understood how important this balance is to all magical arts. But magic will seek balance wherever it must.”
Albacus reached for the book tucked beneath Oliana’s skirts. He didn’t expect to find a miracle solution within its pages, but he’d look for it anyway. “The Elementes of Darke Magyke,” he whispered. “She should’ve never found this book. Our parents won’t even let us examine it. They wouldn’t just leave it out in the open for her to see it.”
“No they wouldn’t have. But you know Oliana. She would’ve found the way. She always did.”
“Oh Mordecai, oh no. I taught her a locator spell just last week! I might as well have killed her.”
Mordecai’s shoulders slumped and he lifted himself from the ground to trudge over to his brother’s side. He sat next to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “You didn’t kill her. Of course you didn’t. Her naïve, hopeful heart did. Her resolve to achieve whatever she wanted. Her love for this boy and her inability to let him go.”
Albacus screamed, a sound so terrible Damien’s little sister covered her ears and turned away up on the hill. A sound that threatened to break Mordecai’s heart the rest of the way.
He pulled Albacus to him. “It’s not your fault, brother.”
“But I taught her what she must’ve used to find the book! Without me, she wouldn’t have found this book. Without me, she wouldn’t have known how to do this magic, she would’ve been forced to let the boy go.”
“No, you’re wrong, Albacus. Oliana would’ve managed anyway. She’d have figured out another way.”
“Perhaps, but she wouldn’t have done it in time. There must be some kind of limited time frame after death for the spell to work.”
“Don’t do this to yourself,” Mordecai said. “This isn’t your fault.”
“But there’s nothing we can do to save her now.”
“No, I don’t think there is. But let’s check the book just in case.”
Albacus moved the book between the two of them, not daring to have hope. He was doing everything he could to hold his heart away from the pain; hope would only make him hurt more.
Mordecai and Albacus read with desperation, and then Mordecai reached across his brother to turn the page. But there was no more. No counter spell. No way to reverse what had already been done.
“How could she have done something like this?” Mordecai said. “She’d have to know the spell had ramifications. She couldn’t expect to bring someone back from the dead and not pay some steep price for it.”
“There are even warnings written in the margins, that the spell has grave consequences.”
“How could she have done this? Why would she ignore the warnings? Didn’t she spend a single second thinking before she launched into doing unnatural magic? Dark magic? That’s how little her life was worth to her?”
“She didn’t know she would die, Mordecai. You remember when she made us wait in the courtyard before we headed over here?”
Mordecai went rigid. “Yes.”
“Well that’s when she must’ve been finding the spell book and reading the spell. That wasn’t enough time to study the spell properly or to consider what logical cost the spell would have.”
“Of course it’s not enough time,” Mordecai snapped. “What was she thinking? How many times do we have to tell her that magic is about balance? If she gave life, obviously the spell would have to take it from somewhere to give it.”
“And did you hear the words of the spell? She wove her life with his.”
“Which means…”
“Which means that she and Damien will be linked together forever in this place between life and death,” Albacus said.
The smith interrupted. “What do you mean, the place between life and death? Are Damien and your sister dead or alive?”
“They are neither,” Mordecai said.
“How can they be neither dead nor alive?” the smith asked.
Before the brothers were able to respond, Damien began to stir.
Chapter 11
Damien moved his legs and arms, stretching, as if he were waking from a restful night’s sleep. When he finally opened his eyes, blinking into the sun overhead, he smiled at the prospect of a new day. He seemed unaware of the dent in his skull roughly in the shape of a horseshoe and of the hours he’d spent in death.
He pushed onto his elbows and his father ran to his side. Behind them, Damien’s mother shot a hand out to her younger children, directing them to stay, and ran down the hill, skirts hiked up.
“Hi Da. What’re you doing here?”
“Don’t sit, son. Take it easy.”
“Why? Where am I? Why am I not at home?”
“You’ve, uh, been in an accident.”
“An accident? What kind of accident?” But then Damien turned his head and saw Oliana, spread on the ground next to him, her pail hair fanned out behind her head, her lips parted, her limbs limp.
He scrambled to his knees, surprisingly nimble for someone who’d been dead and stiff just moments before. “Oliana,” he whispered, panic already coloring his voice, as if he sensed death. “Wake up.”
Gently at first, he shook her shoulders, and Albacus and Mordecai’s eyes widened. When she didn’t respond, he shook her harder. The brothers watched his every movement, every time he touched her body and it appeared solid to him and to them.
Damien turned to them. “You’re her brothers, aren’t you? Why aren’t you helping her?”
They both opened their mouths to respond, but managed nothing. They might be far more experienced than Oliana was, but they’d never seen someone returned from the dead.
“What’s wrong with you?” he said. “Help her!” He turned back to Oliana, traces of her desperation at the sight of his dead body beginning to form in his face. “Oliana, my love, please wake up.”
By then, Damien’s mother reached them and went from a dead run to a full stop, right at the edge of the blanket. She gaped.
“Ma?” Damien said. “What’s going on? Why are we here, and what’s going on with Oliana? Is she hurt?”
Tears welled in his mother’s eyes and she lunged at him, arms spread wide to embrace the miracle that was her son. “Oh Damien,” she began. “We thought you were dead.”
Then her arms met the edges of where his solid flesh should have been. They swept right through it.
They all saw it, even Damien.
His mother withdrew her arms and hugged herself with them.
He squeezed and grabbed at his own skin. “What’s wrong with you?” To him, his flesh was solid. So was Oliana. “Oh I know. It’s a dream. Of course it is.”
He smiled the same smile he’d had upon waking and laid down next to Oliana. He caressed her cheek, with the infinite care of a lover who believed he was safe in a dream, where there were no spectators. “Wake up, my love. I want to kiss your beautiful lips and let you feel the love I hold for you in my heart.”
Mordecai hadn’t cried at the sight of his sister’s prone form, but Damien’s adori
ng words blurred his vision. He’d loved his sister as much as she’d loved him.
They’d all paid the price of their impossible love—the one determined to find the way to exist despite its nature.
When she didn’t wake, he drew back up to his elbows and kissed the tip of her nose, then her forehead. Methodically, as if there were a system to his love, he showered her face with his affection.
He bent to whisper in her ear. “Wake, my love.”
And she did.
Chapter 12
“Oh good, you’re awake, my love,” Damien said, lowering his lips to Oliana’s.
He kissed her, and she kissed him back, with all the awareness of what she’d done and why she did it.
His face hovered above hers. “I want to show you how much I love you, and in my dreams, I don’t have to hold back.” He lowered his mouth to hers again and deepened the kiss. But when he began to shift his body farther over hers, she pushed him back gently.
“We have all the time in the world for our love now, and I want to enjoy every moment of it. But will you give me a minute first?”
Damien looked confused, but moved back so she could sit up.
Oliana faced her brothers, looking sheepish and regretful, something she rarely did in life. “I’m sorry, so sorry,” she said, her words sounding as real as if she were still the same girl who’d arrived at the inlet earlier.
But she wasn’t. She never would be again. “I didn’t realize what would happen when I performed that spell, and then I couldn’t turn back. I tried, but I couldn’t stop what I’d started. I know I’ve disappointed you, and I’m so very sorry.”
She’d disappointed them in a profound way they’d likely never overcome. But it wasn’t because of her actions, it was because they’d have to carry on without her as a part of their lives.
Mordecai and Albacus tried to speak at the same time, but both struggled to find their voices over the lumps in their throats and the tears in their eyes that made Oliana already appear as a vision. Albacus managed words first. “How will we live without you? I don’t think I can.”
Damien interrupted. “What are they talking about, Oliana?” But Damien still thought he was in a dream, and things didn’t often make sense there.
Oliana patted his hand. “Don’t worry, my love. We have all the time we’ve ever wanted together. I’ll explain everything to you once we leave here.”
Then she offered her signature smile to Albacus, the one that always brightened his day. Today it wouldn’t manage that feat. “You’ll live a long, beautiful life without me, Albacus. You’ve been a wonderful brother to me. I will love you always.”
“But… but you’re my sister. My favorite sibling! You can’t leave me alone just with Mordecai, to deal with mother and father.” But of course, she already had, and Mordecai wasn’t as bad as he made him out to be.
“I can always be your favorite.” She winked at him, and Albacus thought his heart would explode into a million fragments.
Finally, Mordecai managed a strangled “Oliana.”
She offered him a smile too, one that attempted to warm his heart and hold the pieces together. “I’ll miss you, brother. And I’ll always love you.”
“I love you.” His words were soft enough to be fit for a world of dreams.
“I know it. I carry your love with me.” She placed a hand atop her heart.
“I’ll take good care of him,” Oliana told Damien’s parents, but they were too dismayed to answer, standing with mouths open, hands hanging at their sides.
Oliana turned to Damien again, the one she’d made her entire world. “Come on, Damien. It’s time to go.”
He stood, helping her up. “Where are we going?”
“Wherever we want to go. It’s just you and me now.”
“How wonderful!” he said. The space between life and death was much better when thought a dream. Perhaps Oliana would never shatter his misconception.
He took her hand, and again it was solid in his. “Which way?”
“That way. Across the river, toward the sun.”
“Wait,” Albacus said, panicked, grief-stricken, unable to speak with the intelligence he usually possessed. “Mother. Father. They’re coming.”
Oliana smiled to both her brothers for the very last time. Her lips were cherry red, her teeth bright, and her skin possessed of the glow of health, just as when she’d been fully alive. “There’s nothing our parents can do now. There’s nothing any of us can do. We’re already between life and death, I can feel it. We can’t go back to the world of the living from here. Tell mother and father I’m sorry and not to blame you, that it was all my fault.”
But their parents could punish them for the rest of their lives and they wouldn’t care.
“I set out looking for that book even though I knew it was forbidden. I thought my love would be strong enough to counter any negative effects of the spell.” Her smile turned rueful. “But I guess love and hope don’t work that way.”
“It’s not that,” Mordecai said. “Your love brought him back to life. It’s magic, especially dark magic, that doesn’t work that way.”
“So you’ve told me. It’s all about the balance, right?”
“Right,” he said, but his words were no longer audible, the pain in his heart too loud for him to talk.
“Goodbye, my amazing brothers. I don’t know how this works, but if I can, I’ll visit. Always remember, I love you.”
Then she turned toward the sun and the water and let Damien lead her away.
The living they left behind began to crack and wither, even while the people they loved were still in sight.
“But I don’t understand,” the smith blubbered. “I thought she brought him back to life.” His wife cried in the crook of his arm.
Mordecai’s words were thick with unshed tears. “There was only one life left to share between them. Oliana split her life in half to share with him. Neither of them is fully dead, nor are they fully alive. They are half of each.”
This was one time where two halves couldn’t make a live, complete whole.
“What will happen to them? Where will they go?”
“I’m not exactly certain. I suppose they’ll live out the extent of what would have been Oliana’s natural life together, sharing in their love. But they can’t be where the living are, or the dead, at least not for long. Because they don’t belong in either place.”
“But…” the smith started, but didn’t finish.
Mordecai wouldn’t have answered him anyway. He was already withdrawing into the pulsing, empty cavity of his chest while he held onto his brother as if he were a lifeline back to wholeness and sanity. It didn’t matter that his brother was shaking next to him. They’d find the way out of this together.
It was all they could do.
When the sounds of pounding hooves filtered down into the inlet, it was too late for their parents to do anything but watch. They led their horses down the hill in time to see their only daughter walk across water, a part of this world and not. A miracle and a tragedy. A specter and a memory.
Holding the hand of the boy she loved enough to venture into death to retrieve him, she slipped into the blinding light of the sun. By the time she should have emerged, there was nothing left of Damien or her. There was only sunlight playing across the water of the river, casting a rainbow into the world.
Magic Awakens
The magic continues in Magic Awakens, Book 1 of The Witching World series.
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Chapter 1
Father and Mother stood at the entrance of my chamber, minimizing their risk of contagion. They’d forbidden my sisters to be anywhere near the quarantine zone. “What is it, Doctor? What’s wrong with her?” Father called from across the room.
Doctor Whittling was the second physician to see me in as many days. The first doctor had no real understanding of what to do
with me and left in a hurry, pocketing the payment he’d done little to earn, while murmuring far-fetched hypotheses and generic treatment instructions.
The fidgety Doctor Whittling had no more of an idea of what was wrong with me than the first physician but truly wished to see me recover. With meaty fingers, he brushed aside strands of red hair, plastered against my forehead, saturated with sweat and dark as blood in the dim light.
Mother ordered the servants to change my soaked bed linens just before sunset, but it made no difference. The fever was strong. The fresh sheets clung to my slick skin.
Doctor Whittling lifted my eyelids with gentle fingers and drew a candle near to examine my clouded eyes. Before shifting his gaze to my parents, he let out a heavy sigh of resignation. The round little doctor froze, knowing he couldn’t retract it, while everyone in the room pretended to ignore his lament and what it implied.
“I’m uncertain of the cause of her affliction, nor do I know why it settled into her body so rapidly, but I can say that her condition is very dangerous. Unless her fever breaks shortly, you may lose her.”
Doctor Whittling looked toward the doorway with a practiced expression of regret. He delivered this kind of news regularly. It was an unavoidable part of his profession.
Unlike the physicians and my parents, I knew what had caused my illness. Over the last several feverish days, between hallucinations, I realized that I’d claimed it. I told my mother, “I am sick.” And so I’d become.
I’d never had a thought like that before, and now I wonder if the feverish hallucinations were what allowed me to reach through to what had not yet come.
But first, I had to survive, and the fever had a vise-like grip on me, fragile and devastated as I was.
Chapter 2
It all began on a particularly cold day. Nestled in the countryside, Norland was a beautiful place, but during the winter months, a bone-chilling, damp cold was the price to pay for the future reward of sunshine and verdant landscapes.
I woke to the subdued sounds of my lady’s maid stoking the fire. Her trembling silhouette clinched her shawl closer around her neck and shoulders. Her body relaxed only when the fire stretched from the night’s sleep and awakened.