by Molly Fitz
That’s when it hit me.
“I never liked you very much,” I continued, using this opportunity to get it all off my chest. “But I didn’t want you to die. And it’s not my fault you did. Yes, they were trying to frame me, but I didn’t choose this magical world. It chose me. Even though I’m very sorry for what happened to you, Harold, it wasn’t my fault.”
Poof! His silhouette turned into a dark cloud of dust and blew away into the abyss.
“I’m done lying to myself!” I screamed into the encroaching darkness. “You may have trapped me in an illusion, but I know my own heart! I know my own mind!”
Officer Dash appeared as a semi-transparent hologram before me. Not the new cat form, but in her familiar cop garb. “You think you can outsmart my illusion?”
“I know I can,” I shouted, wishing I could shake a fist at her.
She laughed softly at first, then more and more breathlessly. Soon Officer Dash was wheezing for breath. “You stupid girl. This isn’t some family-friendly film where the princess just needs to believe in herself to defeat her much more qualified opponent. You’re not a princess. You have no power, and you will not win.”
“Yes, I will!” I shouted back at the hologram, but she only laughed harder.
“Fine. Do things the hard way. See if I care. Eventually you’ll figure out it’s hopeless.” And with that, Officer Dash disappeared, leaving me in absolute darkness.
I staggered forward, unwilling to give up. I’d defeated the first two illusions. I could defeat more. I could escape this place.
And though I wandered for ages, no more lights appeared, and soon I grew tired searching for them…
Was this really how it ended?
24
Even time was an illusion within that mental prison of mind. It ticked on and on leading nowhere. I would lose my mind here, if I hadn’t already. I couldn’t do any good for Merlin from in here, either, which meant soon he would find himself overtaken by the sinister Dash.
I didn’t know why the dark witch had focused her attentions on us, but I knew now that we couldn’t win. She was simply too powerful.
Battered but not yet fully defeated, I closed my eyes and tried to create my own series of mental pictures to break the monotony of the void. My mom’s smile as we applied makeup side by side in that old mirror, Grandma Grace teaching me how to waltz in preparation for my first middle school dance, even Merlin speaking to me for the first time and opening my eyes to a beautiful and dangerous new world.
“Show me the truth,” he said in my memory, then opened his mouth and let out a shimmering huff of magic. The darkness folded in on itself, revealing green grass, blue sky, and bright sun.
No, this wasn’t a memory. It was really happening now.
“I knew that truth serum was worth the extra few minutes it took to prepare,” my cat told me as he brushed his soft fur against my wrists, freeing me from the cuffs.
“What’s going on?” Virginia cried as she awoke from her illusion and staggered toward us.
“Not so fast!” Merlin commanded, then kicked his hind legs into the earth and sent a pair of small cyclones spinning toward Virginia. When they reached her, they braided around her torso, trapping her within the high-speed winds.
I’d never seen such a powerful display of magic from my cat before, and now that I had, I felt very glad he was on my side.
“How did you find me?” I asked, bringing my arms in front of me to ease the ache in my shoulders. Now that I’d escaped the illusion, everything hurt again.
“Easy,” Merlin revealed, kicking up another pair of twisters and dispatching them toward Dash. “I followed our familiar bond. That thing is like a beacon.”
I watched as the black cat deftly dodged the windstorm, darting wildly to the side.
“If you’ll excuse me for a moment, please,” my cat said, shifting onto his hind legs, then slamming back down and pounding the ground before him.
A flurry of sharp icicles shot down from the sky and formed a cage around Dash, much like the one made of flowers and thorns that Luna had crafted to contain Merlin.
“You’ll never defeat me,” Dash hissed as she rammed her body into the icy prison bars.
“Big words for somebody who’s trapped in a cage,” my cat quipped. “Why have you kidnapped my familiar? And what is this other one doing here?”
Dash’s hackles rose. “I don’t owe you—”
“Speak the truth,” Merlin said, breathing out what was left the shimmering potion fog. Whoa, my cat was a witch and a magic-breathing dragon. I’d have to remember to reflect on just how cool that was later. You know, after we got out of this alive.
The black cat strained in an effort to remain quiet, but one by one the words came out. “The… Only… One… Who… Can… Stop… Me… From… Fulfilling… My… Destiny.” She emphasized this with a long and angry hiss.
Merlin traipsed over to the cage and sat just out of Dash’s reach. “Oh, so this is some funny prophecy business? Strange, I thought those were outlawed.”
“Not prophecy. Lineage.”
As Dash choked and gasped for air, Merlin casually tilted his head to the side. “What does lineage have to do with anything?”
“My… Ancest—” Dash gasped and fell on her side, letting out a long pitchy yowl. “My secret dies with the two of you!” she shouted, no longer under his spell.
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” Merlin said as he stalked the perimeter of the ice cage. “Because we don’t feel like dying today. Do we, Gracie?”
I shook my head and mumbled, “No.”
Dash clicked from inside the cage and shifted into a tiny insect, flying easily between the bars. She transformed back into the black cat mid-flight and fell to the earth with an unsettling thud.
“Neat trick,” Merlin said, raising his back and puffing out his tail like a cat on Halloween. “Wait until you see what I can do with a little bit of static electricity.”
The sky darkened, and somewhere in the distance thunder boomed. I hoped the tree would shelter from me from the terrible storm that would soon be coming. Or that my cat at least had enough control to avoid hitting me with it.
“No! Merlin, stop!” a husky female voice shouted. A blur of white rushed onto the scene and thrust herself between the warring witches. Luna!
Virginia’s missing witch had arrived, and I doubted she’d be on our side. Merlin had put up a good fight against Dash, but there was no way he’d be able to win against two more experienced witches.
I silently whispered a prayer for the both of us as I watched helplessly from the shadows of the large tree branches. I hoped I’d already stored enough magic for Merlin to be useful, because I had nothing else to offer in this fight.
25
“I told you to stay away from my property!” Luna shouted at both me and Merlin, sweeping her searing gaze over each of us. “Now release my familiar at once!”
Merlin stared straight ahead with wide eyes, instantly complying with the garden witch’s command.
“No, Merlin. Don’t!” I shouted, trying to snap him out of whatever spell he was under.
“But I have to listen to Luna,” he told me with a blank expression.
Uh-oh, the spell she’d forced me to give to him the other day! It had now come into effect. I remembered how helpless I’d felt as I struggled against the directive to pour the potion into his water dish, as I attempted to warn him the next morning.
I hadn’t been able to stop myself from doing as it commanded, and now it seemed that Merlin couldn’t, either.
Ugh. We were so dead.
Luna ran to Virginia and did a quick check for injuries. “What’s going on?” she demanded of her familiar.
“I don’t know,” the stylish old woman sobbed.
“Lies!” Dash screamed, appearing completely unhinged as her eyes bulged from her head. She glanced straight up into the sky, then did that clicking thing that signaled a coming spell. A mirage
took shape before us.
In the shaky, shimmering image, Virginia sat speaking with Officer Dash as they made the plan to kill off Harold and place the blame on me.
“But what of your witch?” Dash had asked Virginia.
“She can die, too, for all I care,” Virginia seethed in the mirage.
I couldn’t see Luna through the mirage, but I could hear her ask, “You would betray me?”
“She already has,” Dash announced, clicking her tongue to take the image away. Whether she’d shown us an illusion or a memory, I couldn’t say. Either was equally probable—and equally devastating.
Luna swished her tail and let out a keening wail. The massive magnolia tree behind me rose up from the earth.
Virginia tried to run, but the tree used one of its limbs to lift her high into the air and hold her captive.
“Why?” Luna cried, visibly straining from the effort of commanding the gigantic tree.
“You left me no choice,” Virginia bit out. “Magic used to mean something to you, but lately you’ve been such a lovesick fool that you’ve paid no attention to what’s really important. With his new familiar imprisoned, Merlin wouldn’t have been able to practice magic anymore, and you’d have to stop pining for him and shift your focus back to growing our power.”
Luna lowered her eyes, and the tree threw Virginia high into the air, then caught her again with its branches just before she crashed into the ground.
The wretched woman screamed the entire time both up and down.
Luna’s whole body shook and trembled, but she showed no signs of relenting. “There is no our power. It’s mine. It’s always been mine. You were but a servant.”
“I think of you as much more than a servant,” Merlin assured me as we both watched, dumbfounded.
“You don’t deserve the magic you were blessed with,” Virginia shouted down at her witch.
Luna cocked her head to the side, straining under the weight of her magic. “Is that so?” she asked, then nodded back toward the massive hole from which the tree had emerged.
We all watched as the tree walked on its roots and then climbed back into the earth and grew still. Once it had settled in, Luna shook off her fatigue and broke into a run.
Virginia scampered down, and the moment she touched ground, Luna jumped onto her shoulders, claws fully extended.
“Ouch!” Virginia cried, but none of us had any sympathy for her.
“You think me undeserving of my magic?” Luna asked, but didn’t wait for an answer to her question. “Have it your way! I hereby renounce my power and sever the bond between us.”
The ground trembled, and Virginia collapsed to her knees.
Luna jumped clear just before impact.
“What’s happening?” Virginia cried as her image blinked and blurred and a cloud of shimmering green rose up from each of their bodies, creating a heavy fog that was difficult to see through.
“I am no longer a witch, and you are no longer my familiar. The magic is free!” Luna declared.
“Noooooooo!” Virginia cried, chasing after the departing fog and grasping greedily as if she could catch and hold onto the air. I couldn’t see her very clearly through the magical fog. Instead, I watched the air as it shifted and moved around her.
And if I couldn’t see, I doubted Virginia could, either.
Little by little, the fog condensed into itself, forming a thick, undulating wave.
Virginia remained fixated on the chase, swept away in the wave, so focused on her desperate grasp for power that she didn’t consider where the expelled magic was now heading.
I watched in shocked horror as she slammed into the well that had served as Luna’s cauldron and flipped over the edge, unable to catch herself before disappearing into the dark hole with the rest of the wave—returning to its source of power.
A moment later the magic had gone, and a loud crunch rose into the air.
“Well, she’s dead,” Merlin said beside me with not a trace of regret.
That was when I started to cry, useless non-magic entity that I was. Even though Virginia had tried to frame me for murder and send me to jail, she’d still been a living, breathing person.
Now she wasn’t doing either of those things.
And with Luna and Dash still here and ready to fight, I could very well be next.
26
Luna let out a keening wail and ran to the well after her lost familiar.
“I didn’t mean to kill her, only to stop her!” she cried. “Her brush with power had driven her mad. I should have been more careful before taking her on. This is all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said, remembering my conversation with the fake Harold in Dash’s illusion. Even though I’d played a part in his death, it hadn’t been my fault.
The same was true for Luna now. Virginia had made her own choices. She’d betrayed her witch. She’d chased blindly after the fleeing magic, which resulted in her fatal tumble down the well.
Funny how I’d considered Luna an enemy when she was just as hurt by today’s events as both me and Merlin. I actually ached for her now as I regarded the lanky white cat, whose formerly green eyes had already begun to fade to a pale almost sickly blue.
That reminded me—she’d given up her magic. She couldn’t hurt us now. She couldn’t hurt us ever again.
“Where’s the other one?” Merlin shouted from beside me, already kicking up his back feet in case he had to summon a twister and resume the fight.
I glanced to Merlin and then to the larger garden. Luna sat sobbing at the well, but the far more deadly Dash was nowhere to be seen.
“No! She got away,” I ground out. It seemed our true nemesis had used the distraction of the magical fog to slip away undetected. Which made me wonder, had that thick cover come from the severed bond or had Dash cast the illusion herself?
“A coward!” Merlin spit at the ground, then curled his lip in disgust.
“No, she was anything but.” I shook my head, wishing my cat’s assertion was true but knowing better than to hope. “Both plans A and B failed, so she retreated. She’ll be back with a new plan and even harder for us to defeat the next time.”
“Merlin, I’m so sorry,” Luna mewed from her place on the lip of the old stone well.
When it became clear that she wouldn’t leave her vigil there, Merlin and I stalked over to join her.
Luna fixed her gaze on Merlin, her eyes dull and sorrowful. “My familiar tried to destroy you. I thought I was helping when I cut our magical ties, but I just created an excuse for the other one to sneak away.”
While I felt bad for Luna over Virginia’s death, I still couldn’t let her off the hook completely. She’d had a part in this, too.
“You mixed a potion,” I accused, finally able to utter the words I’d failed to speak so many times.
Now that Luna’s magic was gone, it seemed the spells she’d previously cast no longer worked, either. “You forced me to give it to Merlin and made it so that I couldn’t warn him.”
Luna’s eyes grew wide as Merlin reared up and arched his back. “Luna! Is this true?” he demanded.
The white cat hung her head in silent shame.
“It’s true!” I cried, wringing my hands. “She kidnapped me and used hair from both of us to mix the potion. I wanted to tell you, Merlin. I tried so hard.”
“Gracie, it’s okay. I understand why you couldn’t resist the spell. You’re still very new, but we’ll work on building your defenses so that others have a harder time casting on you in the future. It will be okay.” Merlin sounded almost fatherly in that moment. He may have been disappointed in how things had gone down, but it didn’t make him love me any less.
The others were right. Our bond was strong. Not just magically, but emotionally, too.
Merlin’s tender tone vanished when he turned to address the other cat. “Why, Luna? You said you had no part in the plot to imprison my familiar before our bond could fully actualize,
and yet you did this?”
She let out a shuddering sigh.
“Speak!” Merlin barked, a strange sound coming from a cat, indeed.
Luna gasped and hopped down from the edge of the well and pressed her side against it. She looked to Merlin, then cast her gaze aside as if she’d been burned.
“Speak!” Merlin yelled even louder.
The lanky white cat turned her pale eyes to me. “I didn’t want to hurt either of you. It was a…” She continued speaking, but her words became so soft and mumbled that I couldn’t make them out.
“A what?” I prompted, leaning closer in an effort to better hear.
“A love spell. A potion to make Merlin fall back in love with me!” Luna’s voice grew louder and stronger with each word.
I turned to look at Merlin, and he stood with eyes wide and unblinking, his mouth hanging slightly open.
“I love you, Merlin,” she continued, stepping forward and coming to stand less than an inch from her flabbergasted ex. “I always have. I tried so hard to hate you once we took our familiars. I knew the laws of our society. And yet… Forgetting you was the one spell I couldn’t cast.”
She paused as they locked gazes, then took a small tentative step forward.
“Now I’ve given up my magic in the hope that we can be together. I will protect you all my days with or without magic to aid me. I will love you forever and always, no matter what. Will you love me, too?”
I held my breath as we both waited for Merlin’s response… Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect next.
27
The battle-worn Maine Coon took one step back, then another.
Luna had just poured her heart out to him, and yet he seemed to be in search of an escape route. I loved my cat, yet a part of me vowed I would kill him if he really was planning on breaking her heart a second time.
Yes, Luna had kidnapped me, but now that I knew why, it was actually kind of sweet. Add in the fact she had given up her magic on the slight chance he’d reciprocate her love, and these cats were the stuff of classic love stories. Provided Luna’s affection wasn’t unrequited.