by R. M. Webb
We are interlopers. Intruders.
And I’m scared.
Turns out I have every reason to be.
After passing who knows how many identical doors and turning down too many new hallways, Daya comes to a stop in front of a heavy set of double doors, sealed with thick chains and a padlock.
“Unlock it,” she says and I just stare at her.
My mouth opens and closes a few times, another chance for me to make my best impersonation of a fish gasping for air while I try to work out what to say. “I don’t have a key,” I finally manage.
Daya just widens her eyes and sits back on her heels. She rests her hands on her considerable hips and blows air through her mouth. “Are you really as worthless as Becca said you were?” Her words hit me in the chest and I can’t catch my breath. Just hearing Becca’s name has me reeling in images of an entire life spent at her side, loving her like family, trusting her implicitly. And then she betrayed me and now she’s dead and I might just dissolve into big puddle of tears and regret and grief if I don’t lock those thoughts up lickety split.
“You are a witch, you dumb little girl.” The scorn in Daya’s voice chafes at my self-esteem. “Open the lock.”
Right. I’m a witch. A very nervous, slightly terrified, not sure what’s going to happen witch. “Why are you doing this?”
“Do as you’re told.” With a slight wave of her hand, Daya sends a jolt of magic into my arm. I’ve never been physically hurt on purpose before and I’m not sure what’s worse: the pain in my body or the pain in my heart. I look from the blackened skin on my forearm - cracked and seeping some kind of sticky fluid, raw skin peeking through, angry and red, screaming as the air hits it - and then back to Daya, both managing to be the scariest thing I’ve seen in all my life.
“Now, you get to heal your arm and open the lock.” Daya watches me with lifted eyebrows and I realize how much I don’t know about this woman.
I focus on the lock and imagine the tumblers inside, lining up all proper. It’s hard with my arm screaming obscenities at me and my heart jackhammering away like it is. There’s another jolt of pain in my arm as Daya’s magic sears my flesh.
“At the same time,” she says as if I’m an imbecile of not thinking of it first. “Things are going to be hard for you if you can’t figure out how to follow directions better than that.”
I close my eyes and tears I didn’t know where gathering slide down my cheeks. The healing spell is too similar to the unlocking spell. They both need me to focus on moving things into their proper places, fitting pieces together like a puzzle. Both spells are born of light magic. Daya lifts her hand, magic coalescing around it’s edges, and I really don’t want to get hit again. On a whim, I focus on my tiger, harbinger of my light magic, and ask her to heal my arm. She flares into existence and begins licking the wound, her tongue warm and soothing against my burned flesh.
I focus on the lock but with the tiger channeling my light magic, I don’t have enough to draw from to work the spell on the lock.
Shit!
Panic flares too hot in my throat with anger right on its heels. I could get caught in a big long tirade of why me’s and what now’s but I don’t. The anger flips a switch and I clench my jaw and focus on the lock. I may not have enough light magic to heal my arm and undo the lock at the same time, but locks can be broken. My dark magic is seething, feeding on the pain and fear and anger and grief that I’ve been pretending not to feel.
I touch the chain and focus on fire, hot and bright and filled with all the fury I’ve pretended not to feel for a long time now. Red-hot heat oozes from my finger into the metal which starts to sag and bend, distorting out of its original shape before it drips to the floor.
Chapter Thirteen
“It feels good, doesn’t it?” Daya asks as she presses on the door. It swings open into a large courtyard and she gestures for me to enter ahead of her.
Good is an understatement. My dark magic swirls inside me, this big ball of frantic thoughts and energy and it’s like I’ve been set free. Like I can finally breathe naturally after trying to fight my breath into a strange rhythm for years. The tiger pads into the courtyard beside me, her whiskers twitching and her tail swinging. I reach down to scratch between her ears and half expect her to take a big swipe at me. She’s the personification of my light magic. Surely, with my dark magic raging inside me like it is, she’d see me as an enemy of sorts.
Instead, she presses her great head into my hand and sits back on her haunches, her bright blue eyes closing in pleasure. “At least you’ll take me the way I come, won’t you?” I press my forehead against the wide space between her eyes and breathe in her scent, feeling comfortable for the first time in days despite my strange surroundings.
Once upon a time, this courtyard might have been beautiful. There’s a couple trees in the middle of the space, and while now the branches are like skeletal fingers reaching towards the sky, barren and stripped of life, they were sure to be lovely when they were alive. There’s a man-made pond in the corner, covered in muck and murk and smelling of decay. The stone benches surrounding it are broken and the grass is dead. Despite all that, it’s easy to see what this place must once have been.
“We’re gonna start easy today, but it’s still going to be the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life. Just remember, you asked for this.” Daya waddles towards me, her gaze turning up to the darkening sky.
“You keep saying that, but I don’t think I asked for anything.”
“Oh, Daya,” she says in an insipid little voice, part whine, part pout. “I need to learn about my dark magic in order to control it.”
I realize she’s mocking me and I’m livid. I straighten and magic crackles around my edges, a strange combination of dark and light, of hope and fury. “Right.” The word is hard and doesn’t sound like me. “But I guess what I’m saying is that I never asked to be what I am. I never asked for this.” I sweep my hands over my body and can’t help but smile when thunder rumbles in the distance. Couldn’t have planned it better if I’d tried.
“Aren’t you tired of whining about what you are, complaining about things you can’t change? Aren’t you ready to finally take some responsibility over who and what you are?”
I want to lash out and tell her that’s the exact thing she’s been making fun of me for. That each time I tried to learn more about my dark magic, that was my attempt to take control, but a tiny little part of me kind of thinks that Daya’s trying to manipulate me. That she wants me to struggle with my thoughts and emotions.
I’m not going to give her the pleasure.
So, I sigh and purse my lips, biting back all the words I’d love to say to her. The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m choosing not to speak rather than wishing I could speak. “I’m more ready than you know,” I say, careful to keep my voice level and hold eye contact.
Something - satisfaction maybe? - flashes across Daya’s face. “Wonderful.”
And this time, we both smile when thunder rumbles, closer now.
Daya tells me that this used to be the place they’d bring the children to practice their healing magic, confirming several things all at once. First, I am at the ranch that Luke and Noah survived as children. Second, I was right to distrust Daya. And third, this place probably was beautiful once upon a time. My heart breaks a little, thinking about the children that lived here. What happened that ended up with so many of them dead?
As rain starts to fall, dripping and dropping onto my hair and face, Daya tells me that it’s my job to heal the garden.
I can’t help but make a face. “I’ve done this before, remember?”
“Arrogance is the first step towards failure.” Daya reaches her hands up towards the sky and turns her face upwards. “Pluvia deluvium.” Her harsh voice rakes out across the courtyard and goosebumps run down my back as electricity gathers around us. The hairs on my arms and neck stand on end. “Tonitrui fulgur perdere!”
; The sky unleashes a holy fury and rain pelts the ground, matting my hair to my head. Bits of hail bounce off my back and shoulders. Wind whips around me, tries to knock me back. Daya’s still speaking, but the wind and the rain steal her words.
Lightning strikes one of the trees and there’s a massive crack that snatches my breath away and flash of light so bright I’m left blinking and rubbing my eyes. My ears ring and throb as I rub my face and try to swallow.
Rain runs down into my eyes and I swipe it away. Daya’s chanting and the wind is howling and the hail actually really hurts and it all blends together into one heart-pounding moment. How does she expect me to heal the garden when I can’t hear my thoughts over my own fear? How am I supposed to focus on calm and find a place of serenity when the entire courtyard is chaos?
Maybe, if I focus on my breathing, that’ll help drown out all that’s going on. I take a big breath of rain water in through my nose and choke.
“You’re worthless, Zoe!” Daya screams at me over the wind and the rain. “Look at you! Covering your eyes and ears, choking and gagging in fear! You’re lucky Lucy hid you from me because you never would have survived the training here. You’d have been the first to die. You’re weak!”
I crumble at her words, mostly because they echo everything I’ve been thinking about myself. She tells me I’m nothing and I agree. She calls me a failure and I know it to be true. All the magic dies down inside me, the golden light of the healing spell I’d been trying to maintain hardens into a tight little ball of something hard and pointed and ugly. My stomach flips and flops and falls to my feet and my magic seeps out of me, this dripping black sludge, flickering with fury.
The grass at my feet, already brown and brittle, doesn’t just die, it shrivels away until there’s nothing but this big patch of desiccated earth that just keeps expanding away from where I stand. I’d like to say that I hate the way it feels, but I don’t. Not entirely. It’s terrifying. It’s thrilling. I hate it and I love it and I want it to stop and I want to give in.
“Look at you. You worthless little thing. You’re killing it all!” Daya shrieks, a primal thing and the wind finally manages to make me stagger back a few steps. Thunder rumbles and hail bounces and I just want it all to stop.
I want it all to stop.
The thought brings another one hot on its heels. I could stop time. Maybe. I think. Or at least I could slow it a little, give myself some time to think. A chance to calm myself without Daya and the wind and the rain.
The tiger’s pacing and roaring and doing all the things that used to make me so uncomfortable. I call her to my side and place my hand on her head and for just the briefest of seconds, all seems right in the world.
“Tempore prohibere,” I whisper and hope for the best.
Imagine standing in the middle of a maelstrom of rain and wind and hail and then imagine it completely ceasing. No sound. No movement. The ripples in the growing puddles are now just concentric circles gradually increasing in size. The hail striking my shoulder is now just resting there and when I step off to the side, it hovers in the air beside me.
I have just a second to appreciate what a surreal thing this is before time rights itself. There’s a flash of movement and Daya’s in front of me. “Clever girl.”
And then I’m wrenched from the courtyard and find myself standing next to the cot I woke in this morning. I spin and find Daya closing the massive door. There’s a moment of metal grinding against concrete and then a hollow, metal thung followed by the clunk and clank of the lock turning into place.
I lower myself onto the cot and hold my shaking hands out in front of me before clenching them into fists and pressing them into my lap. What in the world was all that about? To say I’m confused might be the biggest understatement of all times. Why is Daya hurting me? I check the burn on my arm. I’d forgotten about it in the courtyard what with all the thunder and lightning and Daya telling me I’m worthless. My arm’s fine. Unless you’d been there to see the wound she’d inflicted, you’d never even know I’d been hurt.
My head though? It’s less fine. It’s got too many thoughts and questions swirling around up there and I’m still shaking like a leaf. I survey the room again. Take it all in. Filthy window. One way mirror. Plastic bin with stacks of clothes. Dirty walls. Dusty floors. Door that looks like something out of some prison movie. Folding table and chair.
My gaze settles on the notebook and pen on the table. Every time my thoughts are all out of whack and I can’t make sense of them, I write. Without another thought, I scuttle over to the chair, scrape it back against the concrete floor, fling open the notebook, and start writing. I’ve always written when I’m upset.
I pour out every thought I’ve been struggling since everything went sideways. I write about meeting Noah, about learning my life was a lie, about Luke’s betrayal. My hand shakes and stutters as I try to write about Becca’s betrayal and I end up just writing her name over and over and over, etching her name into the page and dripping hot tears onto the paper.
I write about my time at Windsor, how confused I’ve been, how much I miss Noah’s friendship. I pause and draw us under that tree, that beautiful tree with the red leaves, the day he kissed me and it was perfect and led me to the water’s edge to calm me down with his magic. All the how’s and all the why’s and all the things that I’ve been trying to ignore and deal with, they all come pouring out onto the paper. I ignore the lines, just scrawling in the margins, scraping my pen across the page as my emotions take control of my words.
This whole time I’ve been trying to roll with the punches, to deal with the cards I’ve been dealt. Or at least that’s what I thought. Turns out, I wasn’t dealing with anything at all. I was moving forward like a good little soldier, ignoring all the questions and worries and upsetting thoughts I had. That’s not dealing. That’s … what? Surviving?
Whatever it is, it’s left me with a big ball of sadness locked away in my stomach and now, all alone, locked in a tiny little concrete room, soaking wet and wearing some strange green jumpsuit, it all comes bubbling up to the surface and I cry.
I cry for Becca.
I cry for my parents.
I cry for the old me who thought that all she wanted was to speak.
I cry for the loss of Noah.
I cry for Luke not being what I thought he was.
And in the end, I cry for me.
And when I’m done, I wipe my eyes on my hands and sniffle and run my hands through my hair and maybe, just maybe, I feel a little better.
And that’s when I realize I’m not alone.
Chapter Fourteen
“Why are you crying?” The voice is as pure as light streaming into water
I spin in my seat, the metal legs of the chair grating against the floor, and find a little girl, maybe eleven or twelve, all knees and elbows and hair so blonde it might as well be illuminated from the inside. She smiles and my tears feel useless. I wipe my face one more time.
“I don’t know.” Of course I know, but there’s something so pure about her, I’d just get her dirty trying to explain it all.
“Sometimes I cry and don’t know why either.” The girl crosses the room and puts a hand on my hand and calmness stretches out all languid and warm into my heart. Her eyes shine with a brightness that reminds me of leaves crunching under my feet and warm sweaters and I realize that she’s a remnant. “But, this time,” the girl continues and I hear her voice in my mind as well as with my ears, “I think you know why you’re crying.”
I don’t know what to do. The last time I was with a light remnant, he ended up twisting around and saying awful things to me until I lost control and nearly killed Tony. I don’t think I’m ready for this little girl to start doing anything that looks like that. Not now. Not when I’m so fragile.
The girl sits on my cot and pulls her long legs up so her knees are tucked under her chin and hugs them tight. “This isn’t a happy place,” she says.
“No
,” I finally say, “it’s not.” I watch her while she watches me and I realize that once again, I’m pulling back from the situation and waiting for something to happen. Here I am, rolling with another punch. Maybe, it’s time to start throwing some of my own. Not that I want to punch this little girl or anything, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe I should start participating in the things that happen to me.
“I’m Zoe.”
The girl smiles and I think it’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. “I’m Celine.”
“Why are you here?” I can’t help but look at the girl and feel sad. If purity had a face, it’d be hers. I think of the things that Luke and Noah alluded to, all the terrible things that happened here at the ranch, the eight kids who dwindled down to only two and I want to wrap this little girl up in my arms and apologize to her for the world in all its cruelty.
Celine smiles. “I keep thinking that if I stay, I’ll be able to tell everyone not to feel bad for what happened.”
“What happened?”
“I think you know.” Celine unwraps her arms from her legs and stretches out on her back, kicking one leg up to rest on the wall, letting her head fall off the edge of the cot so she can look at me upside down. “Everyone who came here cried, you know.”
“Why did you cry?”
“I cried because I couldn’t stand to watch my friends do bad stuff. I couldn’t do it and they all yelled at me, but I just couldn’t.” Celine raises her hands up to face and taps her fingers together. “I wish my friends couldn’t either.”