by Erin Hayes
None of the other initiates had shown any sign of discomfort during the process. Whatever was in the smoke of that last taper must have dampened any pain they felt—assuming anything painful had been done to them. But for whatever reason, its effect on me had worn off sooner than expected.
My eyes watered in agony, and I managed to gasp out one word before the pain contorted my muscles and I fell to the ground. “Please.”
I wasn’t even certain what I was asking.
Please stop. Please don’t hurt me.
Please don’t force me out of the only home I’ve ever known.
Please don’t make me stay with the witches who’d orphaned me.
Please.
The elders—other than Mother Jonas—glanced at one another, their worried expressions suggesting they hadn’t expected this. They moved forward, but by then, I couldn’t tell what they were doing. Everything around me blurred into a blackening haze that seemed to stretch out forever.
When the fog cleared from my vision, I was sitting on the split log again. Sister Susana sat next to me as she gave me sips of water from a small, wooden cup. The other elders still stood around me.
“Harper,” Mother Jonas announced, “you are council-chosen. You shall be our eyes and ears in the wider world.”
I had just enough time to realize that was how they would banish me without a true banishing—with this unorthodox Choosing—before Mother Jonas placed her hand on my forehead, sending a jolt of magic through me, and blackness again coated my vision.
The last thing I saw as I lost consciousness was Susana watching me with tears in her eyes.
Two words floated through my mind.
Help me.
Chapter Two
Help me.
The words drifted through my mind as I fought my way to the surface of the dark, oily lake I’d sunk into without realizing it. The thick black water covered my head and face, blocking my vision and forcing its way into my mouth and throat. I gasped, but it only pulled more foul stuff into my lungs.
And it was cold. So unbelievably cold—as if this frigid water had worked its way into my very bones and frozen them, leaving me brittle and shaking.
If I trembled any more, I might fly apart, shatter into a thousand shards of black ice, forevermore reflecting only the horror of drowning in this lake of terror.
No. I would not allow that to happen.
I have to survive.
So, I fought. Reaching deep into myself, I tugged on a tiny strand of magic, coaxing it out and unspooling it from the hard casing it had created around that magical ball of lead in my abdomen.
It came away sticky, like the taffy the kitchen witches made in the summer with salt water and allowed the little ones to pull. My magic wasn’t sweet—in fact, there was a strange, bitter undertone to it—but like the taffy, the more I worked with it, the more flexible it became. In only a few seconds, the strand I had pulled turned malleable, open to my suggestions.
As soon as it understood what I wanted, the power zipped through me, spreading out to take heat to every part of my body.
I would pay for that later. There were no actions without reactions. That law held, both in physics and in magic—with the addendum that in magic, sometimes the rebound was stronger than the initial action. So much so that we were conditioned to expect not merely an opposite and equal reaction, but a threefold return on what we put out into the world.
Or, in this case, what I put into my body.
The warmth allowed me to survive, though. My shivering stopped. I gave a great, kicking surge toward the surface of the black water that covered me. When I broke through, it shattered like glass and melted away… even as I opened my eyes and realized I had been drowning in my own unconsciousness.
But the cold was real. I could’ve died.
I rolled over from my back, coming onto my hands and knees on a rock covered in a thin layer of crunching ice, and retched.
What spewed out of me was as black and oily as the lake water in my dream—but the vomit was made from the remnants of the spell the elders had set free inside me.
It still tasted faintly of peppermint.
The magic I had used before I woke up continued to warm me, but it wouldn’t last much longer. I would have to find some non-magical source of heat, and soon.
Wiping my mouth with the back my hand, I stood to try to figure out where on the witches’ island I might be. As far as I knew, ice was used only in the food-storage caves. Looking around, I saw no food stores in the daylight that filtered in from outside.
In fact, the cave was entirely empty except for a single, lumpy brown bag made of sackcloth—the same kind of cloth we stuffed full of straw to create the base mattresses that the Conjurers then spelled for us to sleep upon. When I opened the sack, I found a few scant supplies—some hard bread and cheese, a canteen of water, more sackcloth.
And a note.
I’m sorry that this is all I had the time and power to give you.
Beware the backlash.
~Susanna
I read over the short missive several times, trying to figure out what the elder meant. Why had she given me such an odd package? And what was she trying to tell me in that last line? Witches were all taught from an early age to consider the possible repercussions of any magic we might perform. In that sense, we always watched out for backlash.
On the other hand, she might be suggesting I watch out for some backlash from the Choosing. If that were the case, I didn’t even know where to begin considering the ramifications of the strange events from the night before.
But I did know if I didn’t get out of this cave, the cold was going to seep into me again.
I started to leave the sackcloth bag behind, but decided at the last minute that anything Susanna might have been willing to send was worth hanging onto. When I reached the cave entrance and gazed out, my heart stuttered to a stop. I stood in my summer-thin black Choosing dress and sandals, clutching a rough-woven sackcloth bag that held maybe, if I stretched it, three or four days’ worth of provisions, and a scrap of sackcloth I realized was meant to be used as a blanket or another layer of clothing.
A few feet out from the cave, the land fell away into a deep ravine, the vertical drop interrupted only by the narrow path zigzagging down in sharp switchbacks. Clutching the edge of the cave entrance, I turned my head up to see that path apparently continued to the top of the mountain that housed this cave.
A mountain that was not part of the witches’ island at all.
In fact, it was the first mountain I had ever seen in real life. The island was ancient, the volcano that created it long dead. All its sharp edges had been rounded off by time, ground down into gentle, rolling hills.
Not so the landscape stretching away from me. These mountains were young, jagged, their peaks thrusting high into the sky as if to impale it.
Up and to my left, the trail seemed to wind around and possibly pick up on the next peak over.
Not that the trail would do me much good.
All the mountains, for as far as I could see, were covered in snow.
Even if I could reach a mountain pass, I wouldn’t survive that kind of a hike on my few supplies and in my thin clothing.
And if I should manage to survive, I had nowhere to go. I didn’t know how to return to the island. For that matter, even if I had known how to get back there, I wasn’t certain I would.
Because, although I had never actually seen a mountain before, I had spent enough time around the visionaries, scryers, and diviners to recognize this particular mountain range. I didn’t know much about the land beyond—the elves had magical blocks to prevent us from seeing anything truly important—but I knew where I was. Mother Jonas might’ve claimed I was council-chosen, sent to gather information about the outside world—but she had dropped me as far into the neutral zone as possible, given the blocks against witches’ magic.
For all intents and purposes, she had plopped me down r
ight on the edge of Fae territory with virtually nothing in the way of supplies, leaving me few options. Die… or hope to find refuge with the Fae.
I didn’t intend to die.
Three days later, I huddled between a large boulder and the edge of the mountain where it shot straight up. The wind howled, the rock providing only minimal protection as I shivered under my black dress and two layers of sackcloth. Within hours that first day, I had ripped holes in the sacks to wear them, tying my supplies up in the front like I might if I were carrying apples in an apron.
My magical energy was almost depleted, in a way it had never been in my memory.
I hadn’t really slept, and even the short naps I had taken were fraught with the terror of rolling off the edge of the path. There had been no true shelter since I left that cave. And the paths were slick with ice, so as often as not, I slipped almost as far down as I managed to climb up.
If not for my ability to warm myself with my magic, I would have been dead already. As it was, I had been doling out less and less warmth. My fingers and toes were beginning to go numb and turn blue.
There was nothing here I could use to regenerate my power. Back at home on the witches’ island, I’d had several sources from which to draw energy. Life was my element. Some people called it Spirit, but that implied something more ethereal than my magical source. Plants, animals, people—any of them might help me replenish my magical energy.
There were none of those here. I had awoken well above the tree line, something I was sure Mother Jonas had known when she picked the landing spot for her teleportation spell. What plants existed on this barren, craggy mountain top were buried under ice and snow, hibernating for the winter. Just a few thousand feet lower, I would have been able to reach some of them by shoving my hands into the snow and sending my senses questing through the rock. But that would cost almost as much magic as it netted me. Anyway, this high up, there was nothing more under the snow.
My magic was nearly gone. Ever since I’d convinced it to hide, my mother’s power had stayed balled up and locked away. Every hour or so, I tried to convince it to save me, but with no luck.
If I made it to the pass, the path would head back down and I would once again be able to find some minor plant life.
It was either that or go back to the cave—and I didn’t have enough magic to survive long there, either. Without food or magic, my body would consume itself in the attempt to stay alive, but it would fail.
For that matter, I had been using tiny tendrils of power to heat snow one mouthful at a time, enough water to keep me going. But the returns were diminishing.
I had to face the fact that I was dying.
That was what my logical, rational mind told me, anyway.
I refused to accept it.
Instead, I took another swallow of water, sent enough heat into my fingers and toes to keep frostbite at bay, and used the rock to haul myself to my feet. I clung to its uneven angles as I made my way around it, head tilted down to face up the mountain trail. On the far side of the boulder, I rested for a minute, then used my hands and feet to push off from it. Leaning into the wind, I began the cold, miserable trek up the path toward the only chance I had at salvation.
I had all but given up on looking at the path ahead of me, choosing instead to focus on placing one foot in front of the other. I kept my left shoulder against the rock wall at one side of the path, hoping it would be enough to guide me and keep me from tumbling into the deep ravine to my right.
But I was beginning to think a fall into oblivion might not be such a terrible thing.
If not for the landing at the end, my internal smart-ass replied.
I was also tempted to sit down, go to sleep, and never wake up, if only because it seemed easier than continuing to move. I was too stubborn to do it on purpose, but I knew I’d reached the point that if I stopped to rest for even a moment, I probably wouldn’t get back up.
My hands trembled when I took them out of my armpits, where I had tucked them hours ago—or maybe days?—in the long-gone hopes of warmth. My legs were so tired they were as numb as my toes.
When the wall to my left ended, I realized I had made it to yet another switchback. I stopped and drew in a deep breath, trying to prepare to cross the short distance required to set my other shoulder against the next rock wall and continue my trudge.
It took every ounce of willpower I had at that moment not to simply lie down and die.
Not that it would’ve done any good. Just as I had gathered myself enough to lean in and make the crossing without anything to hold onto, something—or someone—came whizzing down the path, his sharp turn on skis throwing up a heavy shower of snow. He must not have seen me until it was too late to stop, and he let out a single yelp as he barreled into me.
We went down in a tangle of arms, legs, and skis, and tumbled down the path. As we slipped sideways toward the ravine that had called to me so clearly over the last few hours, I threw out my last line of usable magic to catch us. I was almost too weak, only managing to catch my arm in the web I had created. With my other hand, I closed my numb fingers around the collar of the creature who had slammed into me.
This time when I glanced down into the ravine, it didn’t seem to offer any comfort at all. Instead, all I saw was jagged, painful death.
And I saw it as I looked down over the Fae I held dangling from my grip.
For a long moment, I considered unpeeling my fingers from the fabric of his shirt and letting him fall.
After all, his people were the reason I was here. If they had not started this interminable war generations ago, stealing witches and using us as power sources for their own wicked desires, I would not have been sent to spy on them—for I was certain that was what Mother Jonas had in mind for me should I survive this initial insertion into Fae country.
I had almost convinced myself that dropping this elf to his death was the right thing to do. The only thing to do.
But then, he looked up at me. Whatever shade his face might normally be, it had turned a white that would have matched the snow on the path above, had it not been for the sickly green tint that overlaid it.
He was just a kid—barely in his teens, if that.
“Please,” he rasped, his voice hoarse with fear.
Please.
That simple word connected us. It was the same one I had used to beg the elders not to hurt me, not to banish me.
They had done so anyway, and had almost killed me in the process.
Whatever it might cost me, I would do my best to be a better witch than that.
I had used the last of my own power, and I was certain my mother’s gift remained inaccessible, locked away in its lead-ball casing at the center of my being.
But I had to try one more time. Tightening my grip on both the elfin boy and the strand of magical webbing that attached my hand so precariously to the rock path above us, I closed my eyes and shoved my awareness as deep inside me as it would go, burrowing down to that ball of magical lead in seconds. Once there, I poked it, prodded, battered it, and silently screamed for its attention. I didn’t have long. We didn’t have long.
Just as I prepared to give up and withdraw once again, a tiny, almost minuscule sliver of metallic power flaked off the ball and attached itself to me.
There.
When I opened my eyes, nothing had changed—the boy still dangled, I still held on, and we could both fall to our deaths at any instant.
But I knew I could save us.
Closing my eyes once more, I focused on coaxing that magic I had never used by itself into working with me. I felt its reluctance to become another web. Somehow, I understood it was unwilling to simply attach me to the wall—that being pinned to the side of a mountain offered little advantage over dangling from the side of the mountain, as far as the magic was concerned.
Let me work, it seemed to whisper to me.
So… I did.
All my life, I had been taught that the only wa
y to use magic was to shape it—that we, the witches, were the keepers and guardians of the true power, that without our will to give it form, the magic that suffused our world was of no use to anyone.
Even the Fae, I had been told, needed our magic to use their own. It was why they had hunted us, enslaved us when they could, and waged war upon us when they could not.
Without witches, magic remained an elemental force with no direction. And without using the witches’ magic, the Fae were merely a mostly powerless people with pointy ears, an allergy to iron, and delusions of grandeur.
In that moment, I began to suspect that perhaps not all I had been taught was true.
That sliver of metallic magic slipped out of me on a breath and began to expand, no longer like lead, but like hammered gold beaten to an airy thinness—and then thinner still, until it was broad enough to wrap us both in its embrace.
I fought to contain my terror as this new magic sliced through the web that had been the only thing holding us up. The elf boy dangling from my grip whimpered.
But we did not fall.
Instead, our strange magical cocoon sprouted wings, fluttering us back up to the path as if we were inside some giant, frightful butterfly.
When we reached the top of the path, a voice called out, bouncing off the rocks and echoing through the mountain. The magic had set us down and was spooling back in on itself—which meant making its way back to the center of me—when an adult Fae male came striding down the path and around the switchback.
He stopped suddenly, almost stumbling to a halt at the sight of us and our retracting butterfly cocoon. I froze in place, eyes wide. If there was anything worse than freezing to death on a mountainside or falling to a bloody death in a ravine, it was landing in the clutches of an evil elf.
Not just any elf, either. A Fae lord. Elven magic―or rather, stolen witch magic used by elves―blocked our scryers from seeing into the heart of the Fae realm, so my knowledge of their social structure was limited to what I’d learned in my training. The instructors had supplemented those lessons with time at the scryers’ pools, watching the Fae move around the edges of their part of the kingdom.