Small Town Witch

by Kristen S. Walker

  Lindsey lifted her chin and folded her arms. “You begged me to take you back as a friend, even though it was awkward for both of us. Are you saying that I can’t date anyone besides you?”

  I had to struggle to keep my voice down so no one else could hear us; I could see that we were getting some curious looks. “I’m not trying to be jealous of your boyfriends, just honest. I know that it was awkward. We tried, but it’s not working. I’m sorry.”

  Lindsey rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry that I wasted my time trying to get our friendship back. I guess it just wasn’t possible given our history.” She turned and walked away.

  At lunch, I checked my cell phone and found out that I had a new voice mail from Mom. I ducked out into the hallway so I could listen to it alone. This was it. I braced myself against a wall and pressed play.

  Sure enough, she sounded upset. “Rosa, this is your mother.” Her voice shook. “I need you to call me as soon as you get a chance. Please don’t be alarmed, I just want to talk to you.”

  I dropped the phone on the floor, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. My heart was racing. I knew that if I called her, if I talked to her, she’d find a way to get control of me again. I had to get away, to somewhere safe where my mother couldn’t touch me, to find someone who could help me figure it all out and fix it.

  If only I had some kind of spell that would let me erase everything that had happened over the past month or take me back in time so I could do it differently—but that was impossible. Even magic couldn’t change reality. What I’d done was irreversible.

  Then I thought about Mantis. He’d always been the one who’d pointed me in the right direction when I was dealing with this. He’d made the charm that protected me from my mother’s spell—and when I’d been visiting him in the Faerie Realm before, my mother hadn’t been able to track me. She couldn’t touch me there.

  But running off into Faerie without a guide was reckless. I could get lost or trapped there; the stories said some people returned a hundred years later and found everything changed. I should go to Ashleigh or Glen for help—

  No. I curled my fingers into fists and opened my eyes again. If I went to them for help, they’d just stall me by trying to talk me out of it, or tell the Court early to protect me, and I couldn’t afford to wait. I had to leave now, while my mother was still waiting for me to call her back, before she started to suspect too much or cast another spell.

  I picked up the phone off the floor and started walking out of the school. I was rushing along a hallway without really paying attention to anything when I ran straight into Zil, making her drop an armload of books.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. I knelt down on the floor next to her and tried to help her gather the books back up again.

  “It’s okay,” she said. Then she caught sight of my face as I handed her a book. “Are you okay, Rosa?”

  I turned away from her and stood up. “I’m fine. I just have to go get something from my car.” I hurried outside into the parking lot before she could say anything else.

  Outside, rain poured down on the parking lot, the first real rain of the fall. I put up the hood of my jacket as I walked to the car. I opened up the trunk and pulled out my broom. I hoped that Akasha wouldn’t be stranded at the school for too long before someone else came to pick her up, because I wouldn’t be around to give her a ride home today. I put my cell phone in my school bag and locked that in the trunk—I didn’t want to take it with me so no one could track me with it.

  I went up the mountain to Doe’s Rest, flying low over the trees so that they couldn’t see me coming. Despite my coat, I was soaked through by the time I landed in the garden, hopefully out of sight of anyone in the castle’s buildings, and went to the rowan grove. I tried to remember every detail of what Ashleigh had done before we’d crossed over. All of the ribbons and charms were still stuffed in the bottom of my bag. I tied the white ribbons around my neck, wrists, and ankles. I didn’t have a spell to call myself back at a specific time—but I didn’t know when it would be safe. I’d have to rely on Mantis’s knowledge of keeping track of time in the mortal realm, and hope that he could bring me back if I couldn’t find my own way.

  When I was ready, I looked at the ring of the trees. Well, it hadn’t been so bad last time, after all. It would be harder without Glen and Ashleigh’s help, but I thought I had enough magic of my own to manage. It would also be harder to pierce the Veil because it wasn’t a particular between-time like sunset or a full moon. It was just past noon and still raining. Last time, I hadn’t even noticed a difference when we crossed over the Veil. What exactly would be hard? Would I just be stuck here?

  But I had to try. I took a deep breath, called on every bit of magic that I could conjure, and stepped into the Grove.

  My stomach wrenched sideways as the world turned gray and upside-down. I blinked, trying to make my eyes focus on my surroundings, but everything kept changing. I felt as if I were falling—no, something pushed against me, pushing me back the way I’d come. Mist swirled around me, cold and wet and swirled by a freezing wind that roared in my ears and cut me to the bone. I tried to push forward and stumbled to my knees; sharp rocks cut and bruised the skin of my legs through my thin tights, but when I put my hands out to steady myself, they sank into thick mud. I started crying, hot tears leaving trails of wet warmth down my frozen cheeks, wishing for it to stop—

  “Please, let me through!” I shouted into that terrifying vortex, without thinking I’d hear an answer.

  “You must turn back,” said a voice that was deep, yet unmistakably female, a throaty rumble that seemed to reverberate around me as if the very mountain had spoken.

  I turned my head from side to side, trying to see who’d spoken. “I can’t go back! Who’s there?”

  The wind stopped pushing me back, and I could feel solid ground beneath my feet again, although I still couldn’t tell where I was. Then the mist seemed to glow with the pale golden hues of dawn. They parted before me to reveal a terrifying figure—a head, larger than me, with thick curved teeth the size of my arm, huge slitted green eyes like a cat’s, and sharp golden scales—a dragon’s head, bent low to examine me, so close that I felt the heat of her breath scalding my skin. In my peripheral vision, I could see the huge form disappearing back into the mist, impossibly large. I flinched but stood my ground.

  “I am Kaorinix, the guardian of this path,” said the dragon in a whisper that still roared in my ears. “You are too weak to travel here alone. If you do not turn back, you may lose your way and wander forever here.”

  Glen had told me that there was a guardian to protect the castle, but I had no idea that it was a dragon. I still couldn’t let her stop me. I folded my arms. “I have to go through. I’m going to my friend’s house. I know where it is—I won’t get lost.”

  Kaorinix swept her wings forward with a dry rustle, and there was a great rushing of wind as the mist swirled around us wildly. I pressed my hands over my ears at the noise. “Now is not a safe time to travel,” she said—loud enough that I could still hear her clearly over the roar of the wind. “Turn back, or you risk losing your mind forever.”

  “I don’t have a choice!”

  The wind stopped—I could hear the rustle again as she folded her wings onto her back—and she pulled her head back from me a little. Now I had to crane my neck to look up at her, but her breath was no longer searing my skin, and I could breathe a little easier without having to look directly into those teeth. “Why are you here?” she asked.

  I tried to explain about my mother—how she’d placed an enchantment on my entire family, how I’d broken some of her spells behind her back but now she’d found them, why I couldn’t break the final spell on my own, how Mantis had helped me before. The entire situation struck me as bizarre: telling a dragon about my family problems.

  Kaorinix listened patiently to my story. Her face didn’t seem to change, but then I wasn’t sure what kinds of facial expressions a dragon
could make. When I’d finished, she said, “I think you are afraid. You want to run away from your problems and ask someone else to help you. Why didn’t you ask your friends in your own world?”

  I grimaced. “Well, I tried to, but what they said was wrong.”

  “What did they say?” Her voice was pointed.

  “That we should leave my mother.”

  “So you asked them for advice, and you didn’t like it, so you are looking for a better answer from someone else. I think that you did not really want to hear the answer.” The dragon turned her head to stare at me out of her huge right eye.

  I clenched my hands into fists. “I can’t destroy my family!”

  “The other way is to submit to your mother’s control and stop fighting her.”

  “That’s not a choice!”

  The dragon responded as calmly as ever, “Then you must leave her.”

  I shook my head. What did a dragon know about human families? “She’s my mother. We all love her, and she loves us. She’s done so much for all of us. We can’t just walk out on her.”

  “She is using you,” Kaorinix said. “All you can do is give in to her will or leave. You cannot make her change her ways.”

  Tears stung my eyes. “That’s not fair!”

  “It’s the reality.” Kaorinix turned her head again so that she faced me straight on. “It is not fair. It is the situation created by your mother’s actions. She has made her choice, and now this is what is open to you.”

  I thought about my sister and my father, and wondered how they would react if I told them we had to leave. “I can’t make this choice for my whole family. I don’t know if they would want to leave.”

  “It is your responsibility. If you break the spell their lives will change. If you let it stand, then things may continue as they are, with your family still trapped. But you have already chosen to break some of the spells. How do you know that things are not already changing?”

  I was silent, unsure how to respond. I thought about how quiet and tense my parents had been the night before. Were they fighting? Was my mother’s hold over Dad and Akasha weakening as well? But was that enough?

  Kaorinix made a deep rumbling noise in her chest, almost like a growl. “You are still hesitating. If you did not know what you wanted, you should not have come here. Now it is too late to turn back.”

  Those words made panic rise in my throat. “It’s too late? But—”

  “Three times I told you to turn back, and three times you refused. Now, you will wander and become lost.”

  I looked around, squinting my eyes to peer through the mist, but it was glowing with the dragon’s light and I couldn’t see anything else. “How am I supposed to know where to go? I can’t see anything.”

  “I warned you.” The dragon raised her head and took a step back. “If you would pass, do it.”

  Then there was a great rush of air and heat. I smelled it as I saw it spread around me—fire, hotter than anything I’d ever felt before. I threw my hands up to protect my face. I tried to turn away, but it surrounded me. The air filled with smoke that made me cough and stung my eyes, and the light blinded me with its shifting colors.

  I tried to yell above the roar of the flames, to tell her to put out the fire so that I could pass, but my throat was dry, and my voice cracked so that I couldn’t hear it.

  There was no time to think, no time to cast a spell or do anything, even if I’d known a spell to save me. I couldn’t see which way too go, because the flames blocked everything, and they were getting closer to me.

  One direction looked just the same as any other. I closed my eyes, held my breath, and tried to jump forward as far as I could, hoping to pass over the worst of the flames.

  When I opened my eyes, I was lying on my back. I felt cold all over. I put my hands down to push myself up and felt damp grass. I blinked and looked around. Twilight filled the forest glade; when I looked up at the sky, I could see neither sun nor moon, no clue about whether it was morning or evening.

  It took a moment for my mind to clear and for me to remember where I was. I didn’t recognize the trees and plants around me, so I must have been in the Faerie Realm. Somehow, I’d made it. I looked down at myself to make sure I’d made it all in one piece; my school uniform was intact, showing no signs of scorch marks or even smoke, and my hands were fine—in fact, I felt no pain anywhere. I stood up, a little shaky and stiff, as if I’d been lying there for a while—had I blacked out?—but once I stretched my muscles, I felt fine.

  I looked around again to find my way, and I saw several paths stretching away through the trees. There were no landmarks I recognized, nothing to tell me which was the right way to go. Should I just choose a direction at random and start heading down it? That sounded like a good way to get lost.

  But before I left the clearing, I heard another sound of movement in the trees. When I turned my head to look, I saw another path that I hadn’t noticed before, and a tall figure running down it. “Rosa!” he called, waving.

  I couldn’t believe my luck. “Mantis?” I started moving toward him. Yes—it was him!

  “Oh, thank the Lady, it’s you!” Mantis ran up and threw his arms around me in a bear hug that lifted me up off the ground.

  The force of his hug knocked the breath out of me for a moment. I gasped and pulled back. “Is it Mantis still?”

  “I don’t care what you call me, I’m just glad that you’re here.” Mantis set me down gently and looked me over. “Are you alright? We have been looking everywhere for you! Where have you been?”

  I blinked. How should I explain what had happened to me? “I—I just got in, finally. Who’s looking for me? How did you know that I was here?”

  He ran his hand through his hair nervously. “Everyone—your friends, your family, the police. We were all so scared when you just disappeared in the middle of the day. You didn’t take anything with you, so the police thought that you’d been kidnapped or ran into some other sort of trouble. But when Glen and Ashleigh found your broom by the Grove, they thought that you could have tried to come here, so they came and asked me if I’d seen you. I knew if you were in the Faerie Realm, you were probably lost and couldn’t find the way, so I’ve been out looking for you all night—”

  “What?” My voice cracked. “All night? It couldn’t have been more than an hour.”

  Mantis shook his head. “Rosa, there’s been no trace of you in your world or this one for over twenty-four hours in your time. I have to take you back—you’ve been gone for so long.”

  I didn’t realize that I was swaying until he put his hand on my shoulder to steady me. “I missed another day of school? My parents are going to ground me for a whole year this time. But I don’t feel hungry or anything, and I haven’t had anything to eat or drink—”

  “It’s good that you haven’t eaten anything,” Mantis said quietly. “Time runs differently here, but I don’t think you’ve been here the whole time. There was no way open between our worlds on the day that you disappeared. Glen and Ashleigh came the same way hours later and saw no sign of you, and I’ve searched every path I know between here and Doe’s Rest since then. I was afraid that you were lost forever. Do you have no memory of where you were?”

  I looked behind me, as if I could see some sign; there was nothing but forest. “There was a fire,” I said carefully. “And—a dragon. Kaorinix?”

  His eyes widened. “The guardian? She shouldn’t have let you pass.”

  “She didn’t. She told me to turn back, and then she tried to set me on fire.”

  Mantis shook his head. “I think you were confused somewhere. We’ll have to figure it out later. We’re wasting time here talking, and I promised I would take you back as soon as I found you. I’ll find the way back. Just stay close to me.”

  He took me by the arm and led me back along the way that he’d come. It was strange, because I thought we were walking away from the Grove, but a minute later he just stepped around a
tree, and the next thing I knew, we were stepping out of the Grove into the gardens of Doe’s Rest Castle.

  I looked up at the sky—it looked like early afternoon, but I couldn’t be sure. “Do you know what time it is?” I asked Mantis, still clutching his arm. “Will Glen and Ashleigh be here, or are they at school, or are they at home—”

  Mantis stared at the castle for a long moment. He must have seen something that I couldn’t, because he nodded. “They’re here. We can go in and talk to them.”

  We went inside by a side entrance to the main building. One of the servants found us first, and took us up to Ashleigh’s private rooms in the west wing of the castle. A few minutes later, Ashleigh and Glen, still dressed in their school uniforms, rushed in.

  “You’re alive!” Ashleigh cried. Both of my friends threw their arms around me. “Oh, Rosa, where have you been? I was so scared!”

  “I don’t have time to get into it all right now,” I said. “Do you still have my broom? I have to stop my mother before she can do anything else.”

  “But you can’t just go flying off again right away,” Glen said. “You just came back to our world. You need to sit down, eat something, and tell us what happened.”

  A servant was already coming into the room, carrying a tray of sandwiches and a pitcher of water. Mantis pushed up a chair behind me, and though I tried to protest, sat me down in it. “I think she’s been a little confused by what happened,” he told the others over my head. “She mentioned Kaorinix.”

  Glen nodded. “The guardian.”

  “She warned me to turn back,” I started to explain, but Ashleigh put a glass of water into my hand and a plate with a sandwich on my lap. The sight of it made me suddenly realize that I was very hungry—and thirsty. I started to drink the water.

  “She can talk after she’s had something,” Ashleigh said.

  The glass was empty too quickly, but the servant was already handing me another one full of water. I drained that one, too, and picked up the sandwich. I barely tasted anything as I wolfed it down.