Perhaps it was hopeless after all.
Blood welled up in the shallow cut, bright ruby red in the fading light of the sun. Chuki had already come and gone that day, so there was no risk she would be discovered this time, and she let the disappointment weigh on her like a basket full of rocks piled on top of her.
She glanced at the inscription behind her again, refreshing herself on the weaving Inge’s texts described. Then, she refocused her attention on the cut, imagining her flesh weaving itself back together like strands of wool on a loom. The magic coursed through her thumb, growing warm like the injury itself had seared her, and then she held her breath, weaving magic like a needle with thread.
And the wound began to close.
She dropped the magic as the last bit of the cut healed before her eyes, and collapsed to the floor, tears wetting the dust and her heart fluttering like the butterflies in her stomach. She’d done it.
Chuki was wrong about her.
After a few minutes, a grin still splitting her face, she stood up. If she could perform the healing spell, small as it had been, why couldn’t she do the same with the shapechanging spell?
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, imagining all the ways she had succeeded the day before, how she had formed the claw, then an entire paw. She repeated the incantation quietly, hope making her chest tight.
The warmth of magic spread throughout her body, expanding and contracting with her breathing as she pushed the limits of her ability.
And then she felt her limbs stretching, muscles pulling, body shifting.
She opened her eyes.
The room was sharper than she had ever seen it, every shadow smaller even in the fading light of day. Sounds seemed louder, the calls down in the jungle as loud as if they were in the room with her, the whisper of a mouse in the corner by an old grain bag. She could feel her ears rotating on her head, following each new sound across her prison. Her tail twitched behind her, and feline lips lifted in a strange sort of grin.
She turned in circles, trying to see as much of herself as possible. The sleek fur and dark spots, the clicking claws on the floor, the long, slick tail.
She did it. She was a jaguar.
She danced on the pads of her feet, laughing to herself. Except instead of a laugh, it came out as an odd, stilted purr.
She turned in circles, racing around the small room to test her new body out. Then she returned to the middle of the room, shifting back to herself, long hair and all.
And then back again.
Every time she shifted the change became easier and easier, quicker as her body and magic grew used to the spell.
Then she tried something else, a bird. A bright blue bird like those she had seen near the garden back in the village. After only a few tries, long azure feathers swept the floor behind her.
Late into the night, she continued trying different forms, eventually able to morph into any animal she had ever seen, though always an animal with particularly long feathers or fur, mirroring the change she had wrought on her hair.
She could finally become a bird and fly away, free to start a life with Sumaq. To have a life of her own choosing.
She morphed back into herself, dancing lightly along on her toes to the window. Sumaq wouldn’t be by until tomorrow, but she was too excited to sleep.
By now, the sun was completely gone, leaving a bright silver moon to light the jungle. She pulled a stone stool up under the window, then climbed up to lean on the edge and watch the stars. The warm evening wind brushed her hair for her, caressing her cheeks, and the insects sang a song of peace.
Instead of sleeping, she dreamt of the life she was so close to attaining, a life of freedom to follow her own dreams, a life with her best friend by her side.
***
Sumaq arrived as usual the next day, and Quri couldn’t keep the smile from her face.
“Hold onto the window,” she said as soon as he was at her level.
“What?” he said. “Why?”
“Just do it!”
He carefully shifted his grip from her sleek hair to the stone of the window, uncertainty written across his face as clearly as the spell glyphs on the walls.
Quri took a step back, toward the center of the room. Her long hair whispered across the floor behind her. She closed her eyes, muttered the incantation, and changed into a great jaguar. Her bright coat gleamed in the fading sunlight, the spots dazzling in the shadows.
Then she changed again, this time into a field mouse. But instead of the tiny, helpless mouse Chuki had made her, she made herself as large as a sloth. She never wanted to be Chuki’s mouse again; she would choose what she was, on her own terms.
And then she changed one more time, into a bright blue bird, her feathers the same brilliant azure as her eyes.
Finally, a smile on her face, she shifted back into herself and offered Sumaq her long strands of hair. He laughed with mirth as he re-secured himself to the tomb wall, his eyes shining with excitement that mirrored hers and the same love she felt swelling inside her, filling her lighter than air until she thought she could dance on the clouds.
And they immediately began planning Quri’s escape.
They were so caught up in their joy, in this newfound magic, that neither of them heard Kochik’s warning whistle.
Thirteen
QURI SAW IT first: the dark silhouette of a great bird flying toward the tomb window. Her smile faded, and her eyes grew wide in horror.
Chuki was back. And Sumaq held onto the window as obvious as a black spider against the gold wall of the tomb.
Chuki swooped through the window, clipping Sumaq’s face with her wings. He fumbled, nearly losing his grip, but managed to right himself before plunging to the ground and, possibly, a bloody death.
Chuki was morphing back into herself before she even touched the ground. Her human feet took a few extra steps forward with the momentum of her landing, and then she whirled to face the couple. Her face was a twisted mask of rage, and her incoherent yells sent spittle flying toward them.
Eventually, her words began to make sense. “How dare you! After all I’ve done for you, all I sacrificed to protect you! And you come back to me and throw it all in my face!”
She turned on Sumaq. “And you! You worm, you slug, you spineless whelp! You dare try to steal away my apprentice? To sneak around behind my back and plot against me?”
The old woman reached down and grabbed up the small knife from the bowl, the one she had given Quri for cutting her hair. Quri pulled at her arm, trying to pull Chuki away from Sumaq as the shaman advanced on him with rage in her eyes.
Chuki threw an arm back, catching Quri across the cheek. Her skin immediately reddened, sure to bruise, and Quri wiped blood from her mouth. The pain in her mouth told her she’d bitten her lip, hard, but that was nothing compared to the terror that had taken over her body. Her heart beat a drum so fast she couldn’t differentiate one beat from the next. Her mind whirled with possibilities, all horrific, that made her head swim. Her limbs felt weak and useless. Tears pricked at her eyes, but she couldn’t give up, couldn’t give in.
She wasn’t a mouse.
Quri shoved herself to her feet, running up behind Chuki as she advanced on Sumaq. Without Quri’s help, Sumaq couldn’t be lowered safely to the ground; he would simply fall.
She grabbed Chuki’s arm again, and this time Chuki whirled to face her. Murder gleamed red in her eyes, and she grabbed Quri’s wrist.
“Get your hands off me!” Chuki shrieked.
Quri felt the spit hit her in the face, a baptism of hate she had never felt so hotly. Chuki reached behind Quri’s head and grabbed her long raven hair, gathering it roughly into her fist.
Then, with one swipe, she cut it to Quri’s jaw.
The hair fell to the ground in lifeless piles, and Chuki slashed at her apprentice with the knife. It caught her across the stomach, slicing cleanly through the hide dress and biting into her skin with an intens
e flare of heat and pain. Warm blood seeped up through the cut, and Quri pressed her hand against it, gasping, fearing how badly she’d been hurt.
Chuki turned back to Sumaq, who clung desperately to the edge of the tomb, unable to help and unable to flee.
Quri threw herself at Chuki’s back, but Chuki simply backhanded her across the face again. Magic burst from the strike with the same breath of green powder, and Quri was shifting, changing, back into the mouse, back into a nothing. She watched in horror, in terror, as Chuki reached the window. As she raised her hand. As she plunged the knife down, down, into Sumaq’s arm, raised to protect himself from the strike. Again, into the hand clinging to the window.
And then he was gone, falling, falling.
Quri squeaked in terror, trying to remember the spell that would change her back. She could do nothing as the mouse. She paged through her mental spellbook until, finally, she remembered. She commanded her body to change, to shift, and then she was back, standing on her own two feet with the pride of a cloud cat.
Chuki glared at her with more anger and hatred than she had ever given Quri before. “Where did you learn to do that?” she demanded.
Quri threw her shoulders back, even though the motion sent waves of burning pain through her stomach. “I taught myself.”
Chuki growled and lunged at her, knife still bared, the blade bright with Sumaq’s blood, with Quri’s blood. “It will be the last thing you ever learn!”
Quri stepped back into a defensive crouch and lifted her hands toward Chuki. She didn’t have much time. She began muttering the incantation, the words growing louder as Chuki ran toward her, until she was screaming the magic words into the ether. A bolt of bright blue streaked toward Chuki’s advancing form, and then Chuki was the mouse. The spell was different from Chuki’s, but just as effective. Maybe even moreso. The knife clattered to the floor harmlessly.
Quri wasted no time, shifting herself into the great blue bird and grasping Chuki in her talons. She glided out the window, up, up on the air currents, circling the dark form on the ground that was Sumaq. She dove toward him, pulling her wings close to her body to increase her speed as Chuki squeaked and screamed in her talons, biting at her ineffectively with tiny teeth. She dropped Chuki as she hop-landed next to Sumaq, then shifted back to herself, kneeling quickly next to his still, bleeding form. Beside her, Chuki shook off her own spell, donning her old skin again.
She tried to remember Chuki’s healing spells, Inge’s healing spells, any that could help him now, and began muttering incantation after incantation. It was a risk, but without it, he would surely die. Tears gathered in her eyes and fell, raining down on him as if from a stormy sky. She imagined the weaving, felt her magic reaching into him.
A bright white glow started at her fingertips, then traveled across his body, seeking out the worst of the injuries, mending bones and repairing torn muscles and skin.
And then she sat back, watching as he continued to lie unmoving.
She sobbed, and Chuki laughed behind her. “You really thought you were smart enough, good enough, to save him? I told you that you weren’t ready!” She cackled, a cacophonous sound that echoed off the cliff and the tomb walls.
Quri’s tears flowed in earnest now, watching as Sumaq’s chest failed to rise and fall, as his body, no longer broken, failed to so much as twitch. She slumped forward over him, crying into his tunic.
And then, his chest rose. He took a breath. And another.
Quri sat back, blinking away her tears as she watched the life flood back into his body. And then his eyes opened. He turned his head, finding her with his beautiful chocolate eyes.
She sobbed again, this time with joy and relief, and fell forward into an embrace.
“Don’t think you can get away with it, mouse,” Chuki spat.
Quri turned her head toward Chuki in time to see her raise one withered old finger. She pushed away from Sumaq, from her love, and stood to face her mistress.
“Like you have for years?” Quri spat back. “When you beat me and berated me and made me feel as dust? To what end, Mistress?”
Green sparked around Chuki’s finger, and Quri prepared the shielding spell. It had such great power that she doubted Chuki would expect this magic of her inferior apprentice.
Chuki released the beam, and Quri threw her arm up, pushing the shield around her in a bubble and then forward between them. A wall of blue-white light rose from the ground, deflecting the green static away to fizzle out harmlessly in the sky above.
Chuki watched the attack die, then turned wide eyes on Quri. “Where did you learn that? What else can you do?”
Quri dropped her hands to her sides, but she kept her muscles tensed, ready to move at a moment’s notice. “I learned from Inge. And I can do a great many things.”
“Inge? You don’t mean that shaman from a hundred years ago, do you?”
Quri nodded.
“Perhaps I underestimated you,” Chuki said, rubbing her chin and looking up at the tomb thoughtfully.
“You meant the tomb to be my prison, but it wasn’t. It gave me wings, it taught me things I never would have learned from you, and it brought me Sumaq.” She gestured to the ground behind her where Sumaq was sitting up, leaning heavily on one elbow. His skin was pale, and dark shadows circled his eyes. But while he looked weak, he was blessedly, thankfully, miraculously alive.
Chuki returned her hateful glare to Quri. “What is it you want from me?”
“I want you to let me go.”
The shaman blinked, silent for several long moments. Finally, she said, “Let you go? But you’re my apprentice!”
Quri shook her head. “Ever since I was a girl, you treated me less like an apprentice and more like a servant. And just now you tried to kill me! This is my life, Chuki, and I want it back!”
Her mistress’s face grew stormy. “I invested too much in you, girl. Never have I seen such entitlement! Such arrogance!”
Quri stepped forward, raising her hands. Magic sparkled and fizzed across her fingers. “Make one move to stop me, and you’ll regret it.”
Chuki’s eyes darted over the magic lacing Quri’s fingers. “What, will you hit me with a shapechanging spell?” She laughed. “Girl, I would be out of it and have a knife in your belly before you even finished speaking!”
“Not this one.”
She cackled again. “And why do you think that?”
“Inge crafted this spell. It cannot be unwoven by the recipient, only the caster.”
Rage filled Chuki, and she puffed her chest out, raising her arms. The sky darkened, and lightning crackled around her. “How dare you threaten me!”
Quri winced. She’d been hoping Chuki would simply leave, let her go with Sumaq. But a part of her knew it would never come to that. She closed her eyes and lowered her head, shoving her hands out toward Chuki and releasing the spell.
Chuki’s snarls of fury died down with the storm clouds and lightning, replaced by the squawk of a bird.
She had done it. A gleaming black bird, almost identical to the one Chuki crafted for herself, had taken the shaman’s place. The bird hopped from foot to foot on the ground, thrusting its wings forward as if trying to escape or retaliate. It ran at Quri, and she tossed it to the ground with one hand, holding it down until it stopped struggling.
She glared at the bird’s black eyes. “You will never try that again. You will leave, and you will not return unless you are ready to be punished further for your actions. Should I find it in my heart to forgive you, perhaps you won’t be a bird for eternity.”
The spell would only last for a month, but Chuki wouldn’t know that.
She released the bird, and it hopped back to its feet. With one more fierce glare at Quri, it took flight, disappearing into the distance.
She was free.
Quri turned and knelt next to Sumaq, who looked up at her with eyes filled with more love, more awe, than she had ever seen.
“You rescued
me,” he said. He brushed her chin lightly with his fingers.
She smiled and placed a hand on his cheek. “Let’s get you home, my love.”
“Will you stay? Come to my home?”
She brushed his forehead with a kiss, her lips as gentle as the brush of a butterfly’s wings. “Anywhere, as long as it’s with you.”
Pumpkin Spice Pie-Jinks
Inspired by Hansel & Gretel
One
Apple Bourbon Energy
I WOKE TO a tiny fist thwacking me on the forehead.
I blinked my eyes open, the world a hazy fuzz around me, and focused on the grizzled, gray face of my resident hob, Thea, mere inches from my nose. If we stood side-by-side, she’d only reach halfway to my knee, but her personality was as big as a giant’s.
She jumped back into the haze as I sat up and reached for my glasses, then hopped down to the nightstand. I only became aware of the blaring of my alarm when she punched the snooze with her tiny, goblin-like hand.
“What’s going on?” I said, shoving the blush-pink plastic frames onto my face. I blinked blearily, my vision still blurred with sleep.
“You didn’t wake up,” she grumped. “Again. I work all night, you know.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” I said through a yawn.
It was our agreement, just like a thousand hob-human contracts before ours. She cleaned my house and helped me keep the books. While I slept. At night. And in return, I gave her lodging, meals, and special pies just for her, every day I had a customer.
Honestly, without her help, the business would have sunk already. And I’d only been open for one month.
Thea nodded once, a firm gesture she used often, then hopped onto the floor and waddled to her small, cotton-candy-colored gingerbread house in the corner of my bedroom. That was the other part of our agreement: a private place to sleep. And since I was a baker, she requested a gingerbread house. She said it reminded her of home, of the sprites that used to live among the Fae in the Autumn Court. They had a huge affinity for sweets and would create and pass them out at every opportunity.
Seasons of Magic Volume 1 Page 6