"Someone will find you eventually. You practically glow."
"You could drain my magic off to nothing. I could come to Madison from time to time for you to drain more."
"No!" she said. "You can't go to Madison unclaimed!"
"I go to Madison a couple of times a year, especially for Christmas shopping. Nothing has happened."
"You've been lucky. Lucky, Moira."
"Please release me, Arianna."
She turned away from me, staring out the window. "I'm sorry, Moira. Where would you like to do this?"
I was scared and angry. She didn't have the right to do what she was doing, but she was doing it for deeply selfish reasons. I lashed out.
"This is your fucking ritual, Arianna. It doesn't matter what I want, so don't throw me any bones."
She didn't turn around, but she spoke quietly. "We will begin in one hour on the front lawn. Please prepare yourself."
She had made it a request.
I got up from the table, stepped past her, and entered the bedroom, closing the door. Then I listened at the door.
I heard her go out the front door. I opened the bedroom door cautiously, then stepped out into the hallway. She wasn't in sight. I crept through the cottage to the back door and opened it. But as soon as I tried to step outside, I couldn't go any further. My body wouldn't let me. She had forbidden me from attempting to escape, and the obedience spell seemed to be working.
I strained and willed myself to break the spell, but all that happened was that I trembled in the doorway.
Arianna found me like that. I heard her come in, and I turned around guiltily. I thought she would punish me. She looked at me sadly, but then simply collected an end table and carried it outside, not saying anything.
I walked to the front door and stepped outside. The spell let me do that. I stepped onto the grass and turned to the right, intending to walk around the cottage. I got to the edge of the cottage and stopped. I struggled, but couldn't go any further. I heard Arianna approach and watch me. Again, she said nothing.
I turned to face her. "Are you going to punish me?"
"Is that the first time you tried that?"
"Yes," I said.
"Get it out of your system," she said. "Then please go get ready. I want you to dress in something nice."
I stepped past her and tried to walk into the woods to the front of the cottage, walking past where she had set the end table. The spell let me step three steps into the tree line and then immediately I turned around and walked straight to Arianna. I didn't stop until I was touching her.
"The separation clause just kicked in, I take it," she said. "I am very sorry, Moira."
"But not sorry enough to let me go."
"No. Not sorry enough to let you go. I don't know if there is enough sorry in the world to give you up."
"I have no choice," I said.
"You have many choices," she said. "You may choose what you will wear. You may choose to accept the ritual willingly. You may then choose to defy me and pour out the spell. You may choose to put the best face on the situation you are able. You may choose to trust me or distrust me." She paused. "You get the idea."
"You broke your spells," I said.
"Yes, but I can manipulate magic. You cannot. And it took me nearly two decades."
"Where is Neal?"
"I told him to do whatever he would normally do on a Saturday," she said. "I did not want him here for this."
"You will free him."
"And offer him to Caroline," Arianna said. "It will be both their choices whether to accept the offer."
"Caroline will accept."
"Neal will, too, I believe," she said. "But I won't force it. I will only open his eyes and make sure he understands what he is turning down."
"And if he turns her down, Caroline will be crushed."
"She won't know until he has decided."
"You will do this even if I do not willingly accept the ritual?"
"Yes. I will do it even if you defy me, but not until you are properly bound."
"I will go get dressed," I said.
I returned to the cottage and stepped into the bedroom. She had asked me to change clothes. She said she wanted me to look nice. She hadn't ordered either.
I found my rattiest pair of jeans and a faded, torn tee shirt. I put them both on. I went into the bathroom then tangled my hair until it looked like I had just gotten out of bed. I turned to my makeup and applied it garishly, then smeared it besides. I couldn't think of anything else to make myself as unappealing as possible.
Then I sat on the bed and waited for her.
She came in to find me some time later. She stepped into the bedroom, took one look at me, and hissed. "Look at me!"
I looked up at her, my face garish, hideous. I smiled sweetly.
"You petulant child!" she screamed. "On the floor! Now!" I immediately dropped to the floor in front of her. "Bend down and kiss my feet!" she ordered. "Beg my forgiveness."
I immediately began kissing her feet. "Please forgive me. Please forgive me," I said, over and over, while kissing her feet.
"Stop!" she said after a moment.
I froze, listening to her take deep breaths, one after another. We stayed like that for a full two minutes before she spoke.
"You will listen to me, Moira," she said. Her voice was low and cold. "I am trying to be as kind as the situation allows. I am trying to give you as much freedom as I can. You have every right to be unhappy. The spells I cast should have made this easier for you, but I don't expect you to be happy about it. But you don't understand. I am the best you are going to get. We can have a good life together, and there are amazing benefits to being my familiar."
"I'm not interested in them."
"Shut up," she said. "Get up."
I stood up and stared at her.
"God," she said. "I can't even look at you." She turned away and took several more calming breaths. "Go clean your face and brush your hair. Hurry. Do it in a fashion that won't anger me. Now!"
I ran into the bathroom, unable to disobey. I cleaned the makeup from my face and brushed my hair, doing both quickly but thoroughly. When I returned, she was standing at the window, staring outside.
She turned to face me.
"I am sorry for making you abase yourself. It was not done with forethought. It's the sort of thing I made my old familiar do for the most casual offense, but it's not how I wish to treat you."
I looked away. I didn't want her apology.
She sighed. "I wish you would at least try to be civil."
"I am sure you could make it an order."
"I don't want to treat you that way!" she said. "I've tried to give you only enough orders to protect you."
"I don't want your protection. I want you to let me go."
"Consider this, Moira. I am claiming you as my familiar. I know you do not believe me, but it is the best thing that is going to happen to you. All your other choices are far, far worse. If I don't claim you, someone else will. Some witches feed off death; we've talked about that. Others feed off terror; they aren't much more pleasant. The nature of a witch isn't set at birth, Moira. It is set by inclination. Think about the type of person who feeds off terror and suffering."
Arianna's expression grew darker while she was talking. Her brow furrowed, and her eyes darted back and forth. She took a breath, held it for a moment, then released it, looking straight at me. "These are facts, Moira, and they will not change. Given these facts, what type of relationship do you want with me?"
I studied her, but I was the one to look away first. "I don't know."
"Did you like how I treated you a few minutes ago?"
"No."
"Is that how you want to live the next hundred years?"
"Hundred?" I asked.
"Two hundred? Five hundred."
"Five hundred?"
"The witch who trained me was six-hundred and forty-one when I first came to her attention," Arianna
said. "She looked about your age."
"And as your familiar-"
"You will age no faster than I do."
"Why do witches in the movies always look like crones?"
"Because that's how Hollywood thinks someone more than sixty-years-old should look," she replied. "Let's stay on topic. Is that how you want to spend the next decades, or centuries. I consider it abuse. Don't you?"
"I don't want that," I told her. "But I don't want to be your slave, either. Maybe if I anger you enough, you'll kill me."
"No, Moira, I won't. A death witch might. Death is automatic for them. I have no magic that can kill automatically. I could order you to commit suicide, but I can't stop your heart with a glance or anything like that. And violence is not my nature. Hurting you emotionally is my nature, and that is how I lash out. I do not want to be like that. Please, do not drive me to be that person."
I looked at the floor. "All I can think about is how much I don't want this. How wrong it is that you are forcing this on me." I looked up, and there were tears in my eyes. "I can't stop thinking about how hopeless I feel, completely, utterly hopeless. It's crushing me, Arianna. And it is your fault. Are you proud?"
"I am very sad I can't make you understand, Moira."
"I understand, Arianna," I said. "I understand that you are going to enslave me for a very, very long time. I understand that if it weren't you, it would be someone even worse than you."
"Can't you think of it as a partnership?" she asked quietly.
"Not while I'm the one wearing the obedience spell."
She sighed. "I don't know how to make this easier for you. And don't start about letting you go. That's not going to happen. If you have other suggestions, I will listen."
I looked into her eyes. "Burn my mind out."
It was her turn to look away.
"You can do it, can't you?" I said. "You can burn my mind out so there is nothing left. Make me some kind of zombie."
"I don't know," she said. "It's not like what I did with Neal. I'm not even sure I can make you like he is right now. I tapped into his desires, and men are easy to lead around with good sex."
"Will he go back to normal when you release him, or will you turn him into Caroline's plaything like he is currently yours?"
"He'll be normal, although very devoted." She looked up. "I can strengthen the love spell. I'll do it if you ask. If you continue to act like this, I'll probably do it anyway. But..." she looked away, collecting her thoughts. "You're right. What I am doing to you is evil. I am trying to be the least amount of evil I can."
I sighed. "You're trying to treat me well?"
"Yes, Moira. I am."
"Then cast a love spell on yourself. Make yourself love me at least as much as you've made me love you. If you do that, I'll try to make the best of the situation."
"Oh god," she said. "Oh Moira, I tried. It didn't work."
"You tried? Honestly?"
"Yes. The spell just slid off. Maybe it's possible, but if so, I don't know how. If I am going to love you, it's going to happen the old fashioned way. I will tell you, I am fond of you. I care about you. I find you deeply attractive."
"But not love."
"I have not loved anyone for a very long time, Moira. I don't know if I would recognize it if it ever happened to me. I am so sorry."
I studied her. "Are you acting?"
"No. Or else I could fake a spell and tell you I was in love. I have forced you to be honest with me, and I am being honest with you in return."
I paced around the room then turned back to her. "What would it take to convince you to let me go?"
"That won't happen."
"To let me die?"
"No."
"Stalemate then."
We both looked away. She looked out the window, and I looked at the floor. We stood like that for some time, then she said, "What if..."
"What if, what?"
"One hundred years," she said. "If you ask me in one hundred years, I will either free you or allow you to kill yourself."
"That's a ridiculous amount of time. One year. I will try for one year to make the best of this."
"That's not enough for you to understand how good this can be," she said. "Twenty."
"Twenty seems like a lifetime to me."
"You will still look like you do now," she said. "It would be like a pause in your life. Twenty is barely enough. I can't remotely show you everything I want to show you in twenty years. It would take a hundred. So. Twenty. Wait. Twenty-five."
"Hey!"
"You need to see what could happen if I free you," she said. "I can't possibly release you until you understand the reality of being someone else's familiar, and how unlikely it is someone else won't catch you."
"Twenty to allow me to suicide."
We looked each other in the eye.
"I hate this conversation," she said.
"I hate the idea of spending eternity as your slave," I fired back.
"All right," she said. "Do your best to make the best of it. Promise."
"I'll try."
"If you struggle with that, I will tighten the love spell. That's not negotiable."
I sighed. "All right."
"And I won't release you because you are temporarily angry over some spat or some hiccup in our situation."
"I understand," I said. I paused. "I guess I wouldn't want you to, if I were thinking clearly."
I held out my hand, and we shook on the agreement.
"Now. This ritual is important. The reason I wanted you to look nice was because years from now-"
"Or centuries-"
She smiled. "Yes. Or centuries from now, we both may look back on this day and wish to remember it in the best possible light. It may be that only one of us will. But we only get to do this once. I am going to go wait outside. I want you to prepare. You absolutely may not prepare in a fashion designed to anger me."
"I wouldn't do that again," I told her.
"You may otherwise prepare however you want. Please be outside in no more than twenty minutes."
"All right, Arianna."
She stepped up to me. She reached for me, then stopped. Part of me wanted her to touch me. And part of me, a bigger part, still wanted to rebel. I took a half step towards her, meaning I stepped into her touch.
She smiled and caressed my cheek. I looked down. I felt like I was surrendering willingly.
Her hand moved to the back of my neck, and she pulled me closer, kissing me on the forehead. Then she stepped past me, closing the bedroom door on the way out.
I stood there for a minute, thinking about everything. Then I stripped out of my clothes. I thought about going to her in jeans, a small amount of continued rebellion.
I pulled a robe on and followed her outside. She was standing on the deck, looking out over the grass. She heard me exit and turned around.
"Seriously?"
"No. I-"
I looked away.
"What is it?"
"Are you really trying to be kind?"
"Yes, Moira, I am."
I looked her up and down. She was wearing jeans and a shirt. "Why do you want me to dress nicely if you aren't?"
"You know, that is a very fair question. Do you have others?"
"You're really two hundred and sixty years old?"
"Two hundred and sixty-one. My birthday is in November."
"So, that makes you kind of old."
She laughed. "Yes, I guess you could say that."
"Dementia doesn't seem to have set in."
"No, thank god," she said.
"Is it true with age comes wisdom?"
She looked away for a moment, closing her expression before facing me. "I have spent many of those two hundred and sixty years living a very indulgent lifestyle. Whatever wisdom I have acquired has been done so through no active cooperation on my part. But I do not believe one can arrive at my age without acquiring a reasonable amount of wisdom."
"So, it may
be true that I am smarter than you are, but you know far more than I do, and you are far wiser than I am."
"Those are all likely to be true," she agreed.
"Then perhaps you would care to advise me how we should both dress."
She laughed. "Perhaps simply. Shall we examine our options?"
Together we returned to the bedroom. She went through my clothes first. In the end, we each wore our simplest summer dresses.
"Now for shoes," she said.
"Barefoot."
"Yes," she said. "I believe that is appropriate."
"If you like, I will allow you to do whatever you like to my hair. Otherwise I am going to brush it out once more and leave it like this." My hair was shoulder length and straight.
"I would like to braid it, if you would allow me," she said. "And perhaps you will braid mine."
I sat in a chair, and she did a Dutch braid. I wasn't really a braids kind of woman. I wasn't a dress kind of woman very often, either. But I let her do what she wanted.
I wasn't as good at braiding as she was. She had to help me. I got done and frowned. "Arianna, I think either you need to do this yourself or wear it straight."
"It's fine," she said.
"It's not. I've just never really done this before."
"Here, make it simpler." She had me brush it out and then I did a simple braid down the back. "There," she said when I was done. "Thank you."
She did her own makeup, very lightly, then she did mine. I didn't normally wear much makeup, either, and I couldn't have made myself look as feminine as she did.
We finished and stepped outside together. "Arianna, please let me go."
"No. Will you accept the ritual willingly, or do I need to order you?"
I turned away, full of pain. I knew if I could accept what was happening, it would be easier. I knew she could order me. But accepting it willingly felt like surrender.
She didn't rush me; she waited for my answer.
"You're trying to be kind," I said again.
"Yes, as much as I am able."
I turned back to face her. "Everything you have done has been selfish and evil."
Pain flittered across her face. "I will admit that this is a deeply unfair situation for you. I will admit that I have been selfish. I cannot answer whether it is evil. And I honestly believe you are better off with me having found you than any other alternative I find likely."
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