“Mother,” I said. My voice quavered. “It was supposed to be a harmless game. Kelly said she’d heard that witches cast good luck spells for friends getting married. Wouldn’t it be fun to try to cast spells in the backyard? I know you’d always forbidden me to play the witch game, but that was when I was a child. I understand now why you made me afraid of witches, make me think they were awful. It was to protect me. To keep me from actually doing real magic. So even last year, when I was twenty years old, I got scared thinking about playing that game. But I told myself I wasn’t a child anymore and witches couldn’t hurt me.” A shameful half-sob, half-laugh burst from my lips. “I even told myself I would never tell you what we did. Because a part of me was still like a little child, I guess. I don’t know.”
“Oh, Dem.” Mother caught up both my hands in hers and squeezed. Her eyes filled with remorse. “I know I did wrong things when you were growing up. But that witch game scared me. I couldn’t let you play it. I had no idea what might happen. I’m sorry I made you afraid of witches. Hate them. I know this is hard, but please tell me what happened. I can guess, but you need to tell me and know I won’t be angry at you. Or disappointed. Okay?” She gave my hands another squeeze.
My heart sat like a shriveled ball in my chest. How stupid to be scared to confess. Everyone here knew I was a witch. Othala curse it, I knew I was a witch. Why was this memory so hard to share?
“We went out into the backyard. Kelly made a pretty speech about good luck raining down on Amanda and Curt for all their wedded lives. Of course it didn’t rain. She and Amanda laughed. I tried, but I still felt guilty somehow. Then it was my turn. Since Kelly had played a sea witch, I thought I’d be an earth witch.” Another tortured laugh tore through my throat.
“It’s okay,” Mother said softly.
I gathered up all my courage. “I shouted something like ‘let the earth tremble with joy and wish Amanda and Curt good luck forever.’” I knuckled the skin between my eyes before forcing myself to look my mother straight in the eye. “And it did. The earth shook. Only a little. Enough to scare Amanda and Kelly half to death, even though nothing fell over or anything.
“I told them it was all a big coincidence. Galveteen has tremors. We learned that together in earth science class. We’re not really an island in the conventional sense since we’re not anchored to the sea floor, and we depend on magic to keep us from drifting. Only sometimes we do drift, even when it isn’t time for the Reutterance, until the spell hauls us back. That makes the ground shake. I tried to tell them that was all that happened. They said they believed me. We all wanted to believe that. But after, they never wanted to go out with me anymore or invite me over. They must have told everyone. Pretty soon nobody was really talking to me anymore.”
I licked my lips and opened my eyes so I could look at my mother. “Why do you think I started sewing so much? I didn’t have any friends anymore. I had to do something. Then Father complained there were so many pillow slips around he was getting claustrophobic, so I brought some of them to Mrs. Johnson. And she started talking about me working for her, and maybe taking over her stall when she retired, and I thought if I lived on my own, maybe I’d meet new friends.” I bowed my head, sick to my stomach. “Maybe even a boyfriend.”
“We all want to be loved, Dem, and valued for who we are,” Mother said, her eyes faraway as if she were recalling some lost love. She glanced over to the men, who’d both listened avidly to every word I’d uttered. “Isn’t that right, John?” Mother asked, her words weighted with a strange subtext I couldn’t follow.
Clark’s cheeks reddened. “Mrs. Adams, we really should begin her training. I wish we had more time for this conversation, but we don’t.”
Mother’s head came up, and her blazing eyes scared me.
“Captain Clark,” she snarled, putting strange emphasis on his title. “You were present when our Lord Regent announced he’d had my marriage annulled. You certainly must recall I no longer have the right to call myself Mrs. Adams. If you can’t bring yourself to address me by my name, Helena, then do me a favor and call me earth witch. And thank you so much for reminding me of my duty. Whatever would we do without a member of Regiment Thirteen here to oversee everything?”
Captain Clark’s expression blanked. He snapped to attention as if he were on guard. “I’m sorry if I offended you. Helena.” Something flickered in his green eyes, but I couldn’t identify it. Shock, no doubt. My mother was taking out her anger at the Lord Regent on him, and it wasn’t fair.
Captain Clark was the nicest guard in the entire Regiment, only how was Mother to know that? I resolved to tell her as much later when she was calmer.
I thought it was a tribute of respect to call her Mrs. Adams. A way to show her he didn’t believe in the Lord Regent’s high-handed decision to annul the marriage.
Eyes still ablaze, Mother stalked down the beach. I followed her, unsure of what to do. She stopped a few feet away and turned to face me, but looked over at my shoulder at Logan and Captain Clark, who still lingered by what was left of the stone staircase.
“You both will need to move away if you want those stairs repaired.” Mother’s lips thinned in determination – a look I knew well from my childhood. She grimaced and pulled pins from her hair, letting it down so she could wring the excess water from it. She resembled an avenging fury – some sort of beautiful goddess, and I was frightened of her for a moment. Her anger reminded me of myself, and bad things happened lately when I was angry. What could an earth witch who knew what she was doing accomplish using her fury as fuel?
Captain Clark scrambled away quickly. Logan watched him move and grinned. He straightened up from the rubble and ambled in our direction.
Mother stopped trying to squeeze water out of her sodden hair and took a deep breath. The frightening turbulence in her eyes faded. A small part of me relaxed. Her inexplicable anger made focusing difficult for me.
“You, sea witch,” Mother called in the voice she used when she was exasperated with me, and yet oddly proud as well. “Can you make it stop raining so I can see what the hell I’m doing?”
“With pleasure, earth witch.” Logan stared at her a moment, as if measuring her mood, before he gave her an exaggerated salute. “It may take me a moment because those clouds really want to rain. Reutterance. Everything’s a major struggle during these times, isn’t it?”
“Less chatter, more magic.” Mother made a cranking motion with her hand, and Logan laughed. I couldn’t help smiling a little myself, despite my clammy palms and the anxiety-ridden energy playing havoc with my nerves.
Logan paced in a tight circle, his hands clasped behind his back, his head lifted to the sky. He blinked away rain as he surveyed the dark clouds brooding overhead.
He tilted his head so he could wink at me. “Here goes nothing.”
“Show-off,” Mother muttered under her breath, but I could tell by her half smile she was charmed. She caught me staring at her and rolled her eyes. “Sea witches are such braggarts.”
“It would seem that way to humble, self-effacing earth witches,” Logan called as he narrowed his eyes at the sky. “Always hiding in the background.”
“It’s called getting shit done,” Mother called back. “Meanwhile we’re drowning here!”
“You’ve got a mouth on you for an earth witch.” Logan gave her an approving look that made my heart seize jealously. “I seriously admire that. Your daughter could take a page from your book.”
“Don’t let her timidity fool you,” Mother said. “Once she gets her feet under her and her confidence up, she’ll bury you, sea witch, have no doubts.”
“Oh, I don’t.” Logan moved his focused gaze from the sky to me, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe his eyes were so blue. “She’s already half killed me without even trying.”
Mother chuckled, and I wanted to simultaneously sink beneath the sand and levitate twenty feet off the ground. Was Logan flirting with me? In front of everyone? Othala
, I wished I knew how to respond without making an utter fool of myself. I remained horribly silent, which only made Logan’s grin widen.
He returned his attention to the sky, and his lips moved but I heard no words. The rain slackened to a slow drizzle.
After a few moments Logan shrugged and turned to Mother. “The best I can do.”
“It’s more than any other sea witch on Galveteen could accomplish.”
“Glad to be of service. Now I get to see you work.” Logan collapsed gracefully to the cold, wet sand and sat, cross-legged, facing the staircase rubble.
Mother dusted her hands. “It won’t compare to yours, but I’ll do my best.” She turned to me. “Dem, I want you to stand behind me and wrap your arms around me so you can feel how my body responds to magic. I want you to focus on my breathing and match yours to mine. Watch the stones, picture them reforming into stairs, let them speak to you, so you can ask them to reform.”
“Ask?” Confused, I blinked at her. “Shouldn’t we command?”
“Never,” Mother said so harshly, I sucked in my breath. “The stones and earth are not your slaves or your children or your subordinates in any way. They are your equals. Your friends. And make no mistake, they’ll ignore you if you irritate them. If they love you, they’ll do anything they can for you. And because you’re an earth witch, and you have earth magic inside you, they’re drawn to you. They want to please to you.”
“You talk about them as if they have logic and emotions.” I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
“You will once you recognize your own magic and see how it connects.” Mother sounded much more confident than I could allow myself to be.
“So when they tell me I am the most powerful earth witch on Galveteen – why is that? Because the earth and stones love me more than any of the rest of the earth witches?”
“Exactly,” Mother said. “Love you and are drawn to you. And without direction, they do things they think will please you. Like destroying their shapes, or falling down despite all the protection spells on them.”
“The palms killed themselves for me?” I took a horrified step back. “I didn’t want them to die.”
Mother smiled, but there was no condescension in her expression. “You didn’t kill them. Their physical shells go away, but their energy is reabsorbed. Everything around you is trapped energy. Channeled energy that always returns to the wellspring source. The magic inside us is that same energy. It’s what makes us different than the non-magical. And we can direct and shape this energy if we’re strong enough. Okay? You ready to try to convince the stones to return to stair shape?”
Not really because I needed time to absorb her words and work them into sense for myself, but what else could I do but nod?
I moved behind her and wrapped my arms around her. She leaned into me with absolute trust. Her unique scent of sunflowers and summer days comforted me and smoothed away some of my anxiety.
“When two witches want to do something difficult, they often combine their magic, and this is the position they assume – with the more powerful witch in the back,” Mother told me.
“Maybe you should be in back then,” I whispered.
“No. You bear the mark of Othala. There is no more powerful earth witch alive today.”
“Have many sea-cursed earth witches come from our family?” I asked.
“This kind of power isn’t through the bloodline. Nobody knows who will be marked next. As far as I know, you’re the first witch in our family to ever be marked. Do you think I would have brought you up as non-magical if I knew your destiny?”
I sighed. “No.”
“Now concentrate. The sea witch can only keep the rain off us for a short while. As he said, the clouds want to rain.” Mother drew in a deep, measured breath and held it. A moment later I realized she waited for me to do the same, which I did. When she released the breath slowly, I followed suit.
We breathed in and out, long breaths at first, gradually shortening until we were nearly panting and I felt foolish, but at some point I stopped following her lead, and we breathed in unison as if I knew what she was thinking. Short or long – I knew what she was going to do.
Mother’s body gradually heated against mine until her bare arms nearly burned my palms. I wanted to move them, but I didn’t dare. Especially when the pile of crushed and broken stones rumbled and shook dislodging the smaller pieces so they rolled to the bottom of the pile.
For all her body’s heat, Mother didn’t sweat. Her skin was hot and dry against mine. She began to tremble, and I had to hold her up or she would have fallen.
I stared hard at the stones, willing them to shape into stairs.
Go back to what you were. Go back. Make yourself into stairs.
I felt nothing inside. My skin didn’t heat up. No connections were made that I could feel or recognize. Just me begging inside my head for those stones to make themselves into stairs and nothing of the sort happening.
The stones jiggled and chattered against each other, but stayed in the same pile. My mother was doing all the work. I had zero effect no matter how hard I tried because I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to be doing.
“This is useless!” I shouted, throwing up my arms and whirling away from the sight of my utter failure. Mother called out my name, and I heard her body thud against the wet sand.
“Helena!” Captain Clark shouted in alarm. I’d forgotten he was there.
“I’m all right.” Mother croaked.
I turned back to see her sprawled on the sand. Both Logan and Captain Clark knelt beside her. Logan threw me what I could only interpret as a disgusted look before helping Mother to sit up.
Captain Clark ran to the frothing sea and wet his handkerchief. He brought it back and placed the cool cloth against Mother’s forehead.
“You’re burning up,” he fretted.
“It will pass. It’s part of being an earth witch.” Mother leaned against Logan, who had an arm around her shoulders.
“You gave it everything you’ve got, didn’t you?” Logan sounded as if he was about to launch into a lecture, and sure enough his next words were, “You can’t burn yourself out, Helena. It’ll take you hours, maybe even overnight, to recharge. We need you to show Demetria how it’s done. You need to take your time.”
“Time!” Mother cried. “We haven’t got time! And this is all my fault. I deserve to suffer for being such a selfish, blind, idiot. I should have brought her back to Seawall South a long time ago, only I didn’t want to hurt Michael. Or face my family after years away.” Mother pounded a weak fist into the sand. “Othala curse my pride!”
My eyes burned with tears, but I refused to cry. I wanted to sink into a ball of shame and curl up and die, but I simply stood there like a fool.
“You had no idea I’d be sea cursed,” I said stiffly. “You were doing your best for me. I know that. I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment. It’s just I don’t know what I’m doing.
“Sea cursed,” Logan snarled. “Stop calling yourself that. That’s what non-magicals call us. We’re marked, Demetria. Marked by Othala. It’s a gift, not a curse. Maybe that’s your problem. You keep thinking this is all a nightmare that has to be endured. Maybe if you opened up to the experience, something might click.”
“It’s easy for you to be sanctimonious, isn’t it? Sea witch!” I spat. “You’ve known what you were and how to connect with your magic since you learned how to talk. I know we haven’t got much time, but give me some anyway! I’ve had twenty-four hours to come to terms with being a witch. You’re how old? Twenty-four, twenty-five?”
“Twenty-four,” he said.
“See! You’ve had twenty-four years to figure out how to be a witch. I’m trying. I’m not fighting it. I’m trying, but nothing’s happening! Not a damn thing! Do you know how daunting that is? How humiliating? I can knock shit down, but I can’t put it back together again. That is so stupid! So freaking unfair!” I stomped my foot hard on th
e sand, and the beach dipped and swayed beneath us, knocking Captain Clark over.
Mother flattened herself on the ground, and Logan covered her protectively with his body as the beach quivered and swayed. I, alone, stood upright, as the ground shifted and rolled around me.
Beside us, the ocean gave a great roar, and I looked in horror at the huge, menacing wave that curled forty feet above our heads, ready to smash down upon us.
“No!” I shrieked. I was about to kill us all and doom Galveteen forever. “Logan!”
He lifted his head and saw the wave. Sheer terror suffused his face.
“Run!” Captain Clark screamed, trying desperately to get to his feet but the ground wouldn’t let him.
“Stop!” I shrieked at the wildly gyrating beach. I held up both hands as if I could block the wave, which was reaching the peak of its crest, curling beneath itself as it gathered itself to crash to shore.
Something hot and feral blazed within me – an energy that threatened to engulf and burn me up in a crazy conflagration. Incredibly, the earth stopped shaking.
Logan’s body went rigid, his teeth bared in a snarl as he focused. The wave froze for an inconceivable moment that defied logic. With a mighty hiss, the ocean flattened, smooth as glass, sucking down the wave as if it had never existed.
Captain Clark’s mouth moved frantically, but no sound escaped. His eyes, round and dazed, seemed likely to burst out of their sockets. He stared at the sea as if it had turned into something monstrous he’d never seen before in his life.
Mother let out a choked sob and buried her face in her arms. Logan rolled over onto his back and stared blankly at the sky. Sweat slicked his skin and trickled down the sides of his face. His chest heaved as if he couldn’t draw a proper breath.
I stood rooted to the ground, so hot I thought my blood might be boiling inside my veins. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t move.
“Muh-mother!” A panicked shriek burst from my lips as wispy smoke curled around my head, obscuring my sight. “I think I’m on fire.”
Sea Cursed: An Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector 13 (The Othala Witch Collection) Page 8