by J. A. White
The voice she heard in her head was not quite her own.
With this spellbook you can be far more powerful than Rygoth, it said. Why make it hard on yourself? Just speak a few words and you can end this battle in a heartbeat.
Kara realized, in a distant way, that she had opened the grimoire to the first page. Words of startling power inscribed themselves before her eyes.
Think of all the good you can do. End the battle. Keep Taff safe from Querin Fyndrake. And why stop there? You can reverse death! Lucas. Your mother. Both can be returned to you.
You’ve suffered so much. Saved so many. You deserve this.
Just speak the words.
Speak the—
Kara slammed the Vulkera shut.
“No!” she exclaimed. “Your magic is tainted.” Talking out loud fueled her anger, allowed her to think clearly again. “I’ll try to do good, but it won’t last. You’ll change me. That’s what true evil does—it brings darkness into the world through others and I’ve had about enough of that! It’s time someone changes you instead!”
She coiled her wexari powers around the Vulkera, seeking purchase. It’s just another animal, she thought, only it uses spells to hurt its victims instead of claws and fangs. It would have been impossible to connect to an ordinary grimoire in this manner, but the Vulkera was different.
There was a human being trapped in its depths.
Cold emptiness flooded Kara’s heart. It was far worse than when she had touched a single grim near Dolrose Castle. At that point, Kara had barely been scratching at the surface of Evangeline’s despair.
Now she was drowning in it.
She sensed the true girl like an island in the desolation, floating in an abyss of dark thoughts and sadness. I need to build a mind-bridge so I can communicate with her directly, Kara thought, struggling to retain her own identity. What type of memory would build the strongest link? What does she want the most? Warmth? Companionship?
With a sigh of resignation, Kara chose one of her favorite memories. She had avoided using it for other mind-bridges because she treasured it so much, but she needed to act fast and could think of nothing stronger.
Taff is a little over a year old, she thought, using each image as a brick in the mind-bridge. He’s lying in his bed while I play peekaboo with him—just another night, really—when he speaks his first word.
My name.
It’s more “Karu” than “Kara,” but I don’t care. I lift him joyously into the air and kiss his little nose. He sneezes. For that one perfect moment I forget that our mother is dead and the townspeople hate us. There’s just me and Taff and this bubble of love shielding us from the cruelties of the world.
The bridge snapped into place and Kara lost the memory forever. She closed her eyes and crossed into Princess Evangeline’s mind, feeling the terrible loneliness pressing down on her like a physical weight.
Poor child. What did Rygoth do to you?
Kara opened her eyes. She was no longer on the battlefield.
Shelves packed with leather-bound volumes extended to the high ceiling of a triangular room. At the center of this library, a small girl sat in a simple wooden chair. She was wearing a formal black gown with a stiff high collar. Her dark hair was long and straight.
“Princess Evangeline,” Kara said.
The girl nodded, unfazed by the sudden appearance of a stranger in her library. She was younger than Kara had anticipated, perhaps eight or nine, and her feet dangled a few inches off the floor. The thin line of her mouth was set in a perpetual frown.
“Hello, Kara Westfall,” Evangeline said.
“How do you know who I am?”
“I recognize you. From your thoughts. I was sad that you didn’t stay in my Well longer. You caused all sorts of trouble. It was interesting.”
Kara examined the volumes of the library more closely. They looked like grimoires. Girls’ names had been sewn into their spines with black thread. Kara took the nearest one—ANNIE—and flipped from the back until she found words writing themselves before her eyes:
“. . . got another strip yesterday. Started thinking about my husband, trying to remember whether his eyes were blue or green, and my mind wandered when I was supposed to be cutting down a tree for the Spellfire . . .”
Kara closed the book and slid it back onto the shelf.
“When someone has a thought in the Well of Witches, it’s scrawled across the ground,” she said, remembering her own experience with this phenomenon. “But it’s also recorded in these books, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Evangeline said. She lifted a thin volume from the top of the tall pile sitting by her side. “This one’s yours. Do you want to read it?”
Kara shook her head and knelt in front of the girl.
“Is this what you’ve been doing this entire time?” she asked, taking the girl’s hand. “Just sitting here, reading other people’s thoughts?”
Evangeline trembled at her touch.
“I don’t mind,” she said. “They’re my friends.”
“Let me be your friend,” Kara said. “A real friend.”
“No!” Evangeline exclaimed, shaking her head. A single book fell from a top shelf. “You can’t. I’m a monster. I made this place and . . . I hurt people. I deserve to be punished.” She yanked her hand away from Kara’s. “How did you even get here?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Kara said. “The important question is how you got here.”
The girl shook her head wildly.
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
While Kara spoke to Evangeline, she remained cognizant of what was happening back in De’Noran, like a dreamer who’s aware that she’s dreaming. She saw herself kneeling in the dirt of the battlefield as though in prayer, the Vulkera clasped to her chest. A dozen Thickety creatures encircled her, standing guard.
It’s only a matter of time before Rygoth realizes that I have what she wants. I have to hurry.
“If you don’t want to talk about it,” Kara said, “then I’ll tell you what happened—my best guess, at least. Let’s start with Rygoth.” Fear clouded Evangeline’s face, and several more books plummeted from the shelves. “She was supposed to teach you how to control your wexari powers, but instead she stole all your memories of love and happiness, and a terrible darkness took root within you. You became—through no fault of your own—just a shell of a person.”
Evangeline tried to cover her ears, but Kara wouldn’t let her. If her plan was going to work, it was important that the princess accepted the truth.
“And then a man named Sordyr gave you a spellbook,” Kara continued, “and you used it to do terrible things. Awful things. And yet at the end you must have remembered the real you, at least a little bit, because your Last Spell wasn’t evil at all. . . .”
“Of course it was!” Evangeline exclaimed, pushing Kara away. “I created the Well of Witches!”
“Not intentionally,” Kara said. “Your Last Spell was far more innocent than that, wasn’t it? You wished you weren’t lonely anymore. Only the Vulkera was so corrupted by darkness at that point that it twisted the spell all around, creating an entire system of magic that would trap ‘friends’ for you and allow you to read their thoughts.”
An entire bookcase crashed to the floor.
“I don’t want to hear anymore,” Evangeline said, knocking her chair over as she backed away into a corner. “Just leave me and go! I killed people. This is my fault! My punishment. You don’t understand!”
“I do!” Kara exclaimed. “I grew up in a place where everyone despised me. And I took a life, just like you did. The only difference between us is I was able to cling to those who loved me. If I hadn’t known such love, the darkness would have swallowed me whole—as it did you.” Kara took the girl’s hand and this time she didn’t pull away. “What happened wasn’t your fault, Evangeline. But even if you can’t remember it, you need to know that your mother and father loved you deeply.”
&nb
sp; “I know,” she mumbled, and her body fell as lax as a rag doll.
How? Kara wondered, but sensing that it would be a mistake to push the girl, she remained silent and gazed toward the real world. The circle of creatures surrounding her had grown in size, a living shield facing an overwhelming number of opponents. Bolts of pain rattled Kara’s bones as creature after creature fell dead. Bethany read from her grimoire and the entire group was encased in a series of mirrors that reflected the magical attacks.
It wouldn’t hold long.
“After I cast all the spells except the last one,” Evangeline said quietly, “I found my father. He had tried to protect my mother, but she died in his arms. He was almost dead himself. I sat down next to him, expecting to hear how much he hated me, for I had no memory of even a single kind word. But with his dying breath, Father took me in his arms and whispered that he loved me, and I realized that I had made a terrible mistake.”
Tears stoppered for centuries rushed freely from Evangeline’s eyes.
“His words were like a splash of cold water, waking me up, and I could finally think for myself again,” she said. “I wasn’t sure how long it would last, though. I wanted to make sure that I used the last page of the grimoire before I lost myself again and hurt someone else.” Evangeline reached out with her fingertips, as though imagining an open tome spread out before her. “It was more powerful than all the other pages combined. I could sense it.”
“Your Last Spell,” Kara said. “The one that created the Well of Witches.”
Princess Evangeline bowed her head in shame.
“That was never my intent,” she said, shaking her head. “I could sense that the Last Spell would be more powerful than the others, and I thought about trying to bring my parents back, only I was too ashamed to face them after the things that I had done. Plus, I knew that they would come back wrong somehow. The grimoire had grown dark and violent because of the things I did, like a pup trained to hunt and kill and never knowing the touch of a kind master. I knew that I couldn’t trust its magic, and so I decided to cast a spell that—I foolishly presumed—couldn’t possibly harm anyone. I ordered the book to give me some friends, other girls who had mysterious powers and would understand what that was like. That’s all I wanted. But the grimoire twisted even this and made the Well of Witches instead, trapping girls like flies in a spider’s web.” Evangeline stared at Kara with pleading eyes. “I never meant for that to happen! I never meant to turn all grimoires bad. I just wanted some friends.”
“Only girls?” Kara asked.
Evangeline offered the barest hint of a smile.
“I don’t like to play with boys,” she said.
Kara started to laugh, thinking of Taff’s reaction when she told him the reason why grimoire magic was limited to girls, when she felt a stabbing pain in her side. She touched her hip and her hand came away wet. In the battle raging outside, one of Rygoth’s minions must have managed to slip through her defenses. The wound wasn’t deep, but it would be the first of many if she didn’t finish here quickly.
“What’s wrong?” Evangeline asked, noticing Kara’s pained expression.
“I don’t have time to explain,” Kara said. “But there might be a way for you to stop Rygoth from hurting anyone else.”
Evangeline raised her chin, looking very much like a princess.
“Tell me what to do,” she said.
“Your grimoire was a blank slate,” Kara said. “It wasn’t good or evil. But it grew from the soil of your mind, which, thanks to Rygoth, never knew love or compassion. This darkness was like an infection, and it carried over into all the other grimoires. But they’re just the leaves. You and the Vulkera—you’re the roots. If we can undo Rygoth’s damage, I think we can change things.”
“You mean give me back the memories of my mother and father?” Evangeline asked with heart-wrenching hope.
“I’m sorry,” Kara said. “No one can do that. But perhaps I can do the next best thing. I gave you a memory, just before I entered the library. Do you remember?”
“The little boy?” Evangeline asked, her lips twitching in an almost-smile. “He knew my name. It made me . . .”
She struggled for the word.
“Happy?” Kara asked.
Evangeline nodded, the hint of a blush touching her cheeks, as though happiness were something to be ashamed of.
“I’d like to feel that again,” she said.
Kara placed her hands on the girl’s shoulders, wishing there was another way to do this, knowing there was not.
“Then close your eyes,” she said, “and remember what it was like to be loved.”
Lifting the floodgates of her memory, Kara gifted her past unto the girl. Her mother’s nose pressed against a bouquet of wildflowers. The stubble of her father’s beard as it scratched her cheeks. The way Taff gurgled contently when she sang him a lullaby. Kara saw a smile fill Evangeline’s face, the memories flowing into her fast now, a sweeping tide of images. Taff skipping stones. Wind tousling Lucas’s hair. Mother and Father sharing a kiss when they think we’re not looking. Soon Kara was losing more than just happy memories but also the arguments and tragedies and even the moments of tedium, for love was threaded through them all, and only love could change the tide of darkness.
Kara realized, just before she forgot her mother’s face forever, that she had lived a very fortunate life.
“Thank you,” Evangeline said, her face beatific, “for helping me remember what it’s like . . .”
Around them books rained from the shelves until the shelves themselves crashed to the floor and the walls of the library fell away, leaving Kara in a field—
She opened her eyes.
The snowfall had escalated into a blizzard that made seeing more than twenty feet in any direction impossible. Other than the sound of a kite flapping in the white sky, the afternoon was eerily silent. Witches stared strangely at their grimoires as though seeing them for the first time.
The whole battle had come to a standstill.
“What did you do?” Taff asked, helping Kara to her feet.
“I’m not sure,” she replied.
The mind leeches had arrived like sharks to bloody water, and Kara was too weak to send them away. They devoured her past in indiscriminate chunks. Memories. Faces. Snatches of conversation. There was nothing she could do to stop it.
I have to hurry, she thought.
Two girls holding grimoires stepped to Kara’s side. One had dark skin and the other one was older, with frizzy hair. It took Kara a moment to remember their names, and even then she wasn’t quite sure who they were—only that they were her friends.
“Do you feel it?” Bethany asked, raising her grimoire.
Safi nodded as though a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders.
“It isn’t trying to get me to do bad things anymore,” she said. “It’s just a spellbook. I can use it however I want.”
This was beginning to occur to the other witches as well. They now split into two distinct factions, an unspoken truce granting them the time to resolve this unexpected complication. Some witches backed away, their loyalty to darkness a matter of personal choice, but most shrugged free of their black cloaks and slipped uneasily into Kara’s ranks, eager to change sides.
With their numbers now greatly diminished, Rygoth’s forces retreated, stepping around two girls with identical features who stared lifelessly into the falling snow.
Kara’s allies cheered in triumph.
“You did it!” Safi said, throwing her arms around Kara’s neck.
“Not yet,” she replied.
Kara pressed her hands against her temples, struggling to halt the loss of her remaining memories, but it was like stoppering a broken cask. They continued to leave her at an alarming rate. To her right an older woman reeling in a kite paused to give Kara a look of concern.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” Kara said, wondering if she an
d the woman were somehow related. She’s so worried about me! Could she be my mother? No—my mother is dead. At least, I think she is.
Her mind was coming apart at the seams. She had to act fast, before she forgot everything.
“I need to,” Kara said, trying to remember. “I need to . . .”
The gray-haired woman pulled the kite onto her lap and the blinding snowstorm vanished, revealing the figure that had been lurking only a stone’s throw behind them. Witches opened their grimoires and soldiers unsheathed their blades.
“Give me my book,” Rygoth said.
Her gloved hand clutched the arm of a young man trying to look brave, which was difficult to do considering the serpent coiled around his chest.
“Lucas!” Kara exclaimed, recalling his name without hesitation.
Her heart swelled with joy. Lucas was imperiled but gloriously, completely alive.
“I hid this one away, just in case,” Rygoth said. “And here we are. Shall we trade?”
“Don’t do it, Kara,” Lucas said. “Don’t—”
With lightning speed, the serpent opened its mouth and pressed three fangs against Lucas’s neck. He gritted his teeth, beads of sweat rolling down his temples.
“My pet is quite venomous, in case you’re curious,” Rygoth said. “It will be a slow, painful death.”
“You can have it!” Kara exclaimed, holding out the Vulkera. “Just don’t hurt him!”
Slowly, she started walking toward the Spider Queen. Kara’s allies looked at one another in astonishment, unsure what to do.
“Everyone lower your weapons,” Kara announced. “And close your grimoires.”
Reluctantly, they followed her orders.
“You can’t, Kara,” Safi said, blocking her path. “You know what will happen if—”
Kara laid a hand on her arm, and a look passed between them: Trust me. Safi moved out of her way. After walking forward for a few more steps, Kara slipped her fingers between the pages of the grimoire, as though getting ready to open it.
“STOP!” Rygoth shouted. “Put the book down or the boy dies right now!”
Kara laid the Vulkera open on the ground.
“You think I’m a fool?” Rygoth asked. Her eyes, which had always courted madness, had now wedded it completely. “You hope to use its power against me. I will not be tricked again by you, witch.” She smiled wickedly as her eyes settled on Taff. “Send your brother instead.”