by L. J. Longo
“Only partly.” He stood behind her now, on the other side of an open arch in shadows. “Your mother is not kind like you.”
“Has she hurt you?” Emaula followed the sound of his voice into the parlor. She did not see him.
“Not in any way that matters.” The breeze that carried his voice smelled like her mother’s baking.
The sideboard filled with her favorite kinds of cakes and cookies made her long for the sweet, buttery foods her mother always fed her. In the South, she’d never been able to quite capture the same texture and sweetness. Too dry, too much spice in the air.
How she’d missed Mother’s cakes. Hardly thinking, Emaula wandered closer to the table. She reached for a slice and only stopped because a hot breeze fluttered the window. Something else was frying, spicy and strange.
Theplas.
Seeing through her mother’s trap, Emaula stuffed her hands into her pockets. That was the first rule of the ordeal. There was a path, and she couldn’t stray from it. Not to harvest flowers or enjoy sweet cakes. She had to walk the path. But it was a path her mother had created purposefully to deceive her. “Porter, are you guiding me?”
Something tapped on glass from the next hallway.
When she peeked her head out into the mirrored hallway, Porter filled every mirror, moving away as soon as she let her gaze linger too long. She had to choose the right or the left.
There the shadow of his broad shoulders, there the briefest dazzle of his smile, there his gentle flour-covered hands.
Emaula was aware of her mother’s tricks, and she knew a thing or two about the mirrors. She ignored the reflections, even when they showed her the image of Porter standing with a little girl with his curling hair and her bright blue eyes. All she wanted to do was look and imagine.
But she had to act. Right or left?
The flour-covered fingers pointed to the left, and Emaula took a step in that direction to follow the hint, though … it seemed too obvious.
Something rustled to the right. A playing card tucked into a mirror. The Blue Crown.
Emaula hurried to the right.
The mirror frames would tell her which was real. It was the little details that Mother didn’t have the patience for. The florets were scribbled and half-formed until…
That one was real. That one led to one of Mother’s secret places.
Emaula reached behind it, feeling something small and awful creep over her hand, but she turned the switch, just the same and pressed the mirror. It swung open like a door on its own.
No, Porter stood on the other side, opening the door for her.
“I’ll try to help you when I can. But you don’t need me. Did Yenna send you?”
“Yes.” Emaula told him nothing more. She couldn’t be certain it was him or that her mother wasn’t listening. Just like the witches in his past, she wasn’t sure she could trust him.
No, she was different than his other witches. She and Porter were different. She would not leave him here. She knew the way through this passage. It led to the library.
Mother was angry that she knew the way so well, and Emaula trembled. She’d never dared to go the secret way into the library before. This tunnel that felt like another witch. Mother’s other daughter. One that had not escaped.
One that had nothing to lose and had given up in her ordeal. Just as Emaula had given up her previous ordeals.
The voice of that other witch, a dead sister, whispered, “Find your mountain.”
Emaula moved another panel and then stepped into the library. She’d spent hours here as a child, so easy to stray into a good book. So, tempting to give up this silly quest and relax into learning. Why ever leave the safety of a tower when she could live in all these lovely books?
Because Porter was not in the library. The rich flavors of curry, the silken heat of the jungle, the song of the monsoon was not in this tower.
Emaula walked to the shelf with the world atlas.
“She’s got me bottled up.” Porter’s voice called down from above as if he were shelved with the forbidden book. He didn’t sound worried. “You’ll know where.”
“Porter.” Emaula knocked over books about baking and cooking, books on jewelry, books on spells, books with stories. She stepped on her favorites to climb to the highest shelf. “Be more specific with your words.”
“Not with words. Listen, her world isn’t as good as mine. Right?”
The climbing exhausted Emaula as if she’d been climbing for hours. She’d soiled her white frock with dust. Her pretty braids would be loose. Mother wouldn’t love her if she looked wild, if she looked unclean, if she looked like the little whore Mother always knew she wanted to be.
Still, she kept climbing. “Porter, it looks more solid than it used to.”
“You’re filling in her details. Fill in ours instead. She doesn’t know us, right?”
If she did, even Mother wouldn’t dare try to come between them. “Right.”
Emaula tipped the shelf, seeing it wasn’t made of proper solid oak, but the flimsiest of dreams. It crumbled under her weight, and the atlas on top plummeted past her.
Emaula leaped off the shifting shelf and seized the atlas.
Time slowed.
The library shifted sideways. The pages of her favorite books rained around her, as sharp and cold as the monsoon rain. Emaula ignored the pretty hand-colored pictures and the densely written spell-books. She carefully opened the atlas and found a map of the southern mountains.
Her mountain wasn’t there.
Mother and her damned censoring.
“Time, stop!” Emaula demanded.
And Time obeyed.
The books and the shelf froze, in motion. The pages crinkled lightly, and the wood groaned, suspended unwilling in time. Emaula reached into her pocket and pulled out a pen.
She sketched in her own mountain. She knew exactly where it was, and nothing Mother could whisper in her heart would make her doubt it.
As she drew with a child’s attention to detail exaggerating what mattered the most, Emaula became aware of two shadows in the library. Her mother, lonely and longing for her. And a wolf she barely knew.
“I know him well, Mother,” Emaula whispered. “And I will know him better.”
Her mountain included the tunnels through its heart, the cellar, the inn, complete with all the little chairs and tables and an open door to a kitchen stocked full of wine and potatoes with a cupboard of spices she barely understood.
She positioned the book beneath her feet.
“All right, Time, you may resume.”
She sank into her sketch, plunging into a dry white world, sharply delineated by her own ragged pen lines. She thought of Porter and walking with him in the jungle, the lush colors, the fresh night air, the rush of the water under the bridge she had built to help a small, bespectacled wolf who hated and feared her.
“You did it!” Porter called from across the water. “Just like I said, darling. The details of our world, right?”
Emaula rejoiced because this was her jungle. The high heat. Her stiff white frock replaced with her flowing red robes. But her man was across the river, just out of reach. “How do I get to your side, Porter?”
“It’s this way, darling.” He pointed away from the waterfall, toward the neat stone bridge. “Come on. Hurry, before she catches on to us. This way. Definitely this way.”
Emaula nodded obediently and turned toward the stone bridge. Then lifted her robe so she would not trip on it, or wet the hem, or rip—
She paused.
“Darling, don’t hesitate. That’s the worst thing you can do in a place like this. You must pick the path and stick to it.” Porter stood between her and the bridge, but he seemed much farther away. The bridge was too neat. The vines weaved too delicately through the too square stone. The arch was too symmetrical to belong in their jungle.
“Emaula, darling, a witch can’t hesitate! Hurry up! We’ve almost done it.”
/> Porter was talking too much.
She stepped away from him. Ran in the other direction toward the waterfall. Porter’s waterfall, from the world with the café and the orchards. He’d always wanted to go there, to take her behind the rushing water into the cave he’d made for himself.
Emaula ran into the darkness, behind the rushing water.
“Porter?” Her voice echoed for ages. A long, twisted tunnel. The caves through the heart of the mountain. “Are you here?”
He chuckled quietly, and her scarf brushed her knee. “Did I say you didn’t need me? You know the way through the mountain.”
Emaula nodded. “Up.”
She climbed for years in that darkness. Sometimes Porter would be beside her, silent, strong, and calming. Sometimes Mother would scold her for being so careless as to travel into the basement without any light, or ask her to go back down and fetch the sack of nightshade on her way out from the root cellar, or beg her to come home and not leave the only person who truly loved her alone.
Emaula ignored them both. She didn’t need either of them to tell her she was on the right path. Not even when she saw the sunlight, twinkling at the mouth of the cave.
As she neared, she realized her eyes were so adjusted to the darkness that she was not seeing the sunlight, but the moon.
It hung in the sky like a white pearl with splotches of soot. And all around was sand. An ocean of sand. It moved under her bare feet like seeds and sparkled in the moonlight like diamonds.
When the breeze caught her hair, she smelled kebabs.
Porter’s oasis was before her.
And there he was, Porter grilling calmly at the water’s edge. Her mother sat beside him, snarling with rage.
“You found me.” He grinned at her and offered her one of the kebabs. “You won.”
Emaula walked directly past him and into the water.
He looked shocked that she’d passed him. “Wait, Emaula!”
Bottled up, he’d said.
Emaula shrugged out of her robe, unconcerned with modesty. Then dove into the clear water. Even in the moonlight, she could see the wine jug, tightly sealed, stored under the water to keep cool and safe. Just where Porter would leave it.
Chapter Seven
Emaula’s mother kept up her end of the bargain. She’d created a proper path for the ordeal, full of trials and temptations, strange and familiar, a tangled knot, but one Emaula had untangled.
When his lover held the wine bottle in her hands, Porter knew she’d beaten her mother. No matter what happened to him, Emaula had finished her trial; she’d broken her mother’s curse. She’d be free now.
“Told you she could,” Porter said.
The old bitch snarled. “That’s not going to help you. We’re both in that jug. Once she opens it, I’ll be free of your miserable little desert, and I’m taking you with me.”
Porter shrugged. He’d suspected she’d want to keep him. They usually did when you beat them. He didn’t relish the prospect, but it wasn’t the first time. Might not even be the last time. But Emaula was free. And that was all that mattered to him.
“I’ll be damned if I let you go,” the old woman promised to herself. “Bring you to my tower. Bind you to a new body. Then I’ll make you suffer.”
The cap on his world loosened, as Emaula broke through the seal of the jug. Maybe Emaula would take him with her instead. Maybe she would keep her promise. No other bird in a cage had, and it was unfair to expect her to … but Emaula had always been special.
“Either way, it’s worth it,” Porter remarked.
The larger cosmos broke into Porter’s little oasis with the force of a sandstorm. The old witch laughed and flew into the chaos on the gossamer strands of her webs. In control of herself once more and with the power to weather this storm. Porter remained still as stone as a weight greater than anything he’d ever felt in his real room pressed down on him. Maybe it was the sand. Maybe it was tiny pieces of her web. Either way, the world was too heavy. He’d lose his hold on life and reality if he moved.
Emaula navigated through the rips and swells of sand, her lips tight with concern, her eyes darting. Looking for her mother. She hardly noticed the storm. Porter had never seen such a graceful force, and he stood perfectly content to simply watch her.
“Porter!” She rushed down, reaching toward him.
“Oh.” She was looking for him.
He smiled and tried to wave, but found in this rattling cosmos he didn’t have the strength anymore. Too heavy, too rooted.
Emaula caught him in a fierce hug. Crushing him a bit like a rock against a blade of grass. “I found you!”
He stroked her hair and kissed her neck. He’d miss her. More than he’d missed any of the others. He’d reach for her in dreams, and maybe if he were lucky, she’d answer the door. “You have to run, or your mother will catch you.”
“The hell she will.” Emaula laughed. “Look at her cowering over there.”
Porter turned and saw the spider wrapped in shadow, trying to hide from her force of her daughter’s shine.
“How could that foolish old woman hurt anyone?” Emaula turned away from her, so confident in her own power that she refused to treat her mother as an enemy. The only thing that could break the old crone more than being killed was being inconsequential.
“Now, come on, Porter,” Emaula took his hand. “This isn’t a good place for you. But I see the way back to Yenna. It’s just a little farther.”
He staggered as she tugged him. She could move so effortlessly, and he could barely find his own feet. She’d tear him in half if she tugged too hard.
Porter never felt this ache before when the others left him behind. Maybe this hurt would last forever. Maybe this time would destroy him. “You go on.”
Emaula’s smile faded. “You mean, you want me to leave you behind?”
No. He did not. But Yenna’s door was impossibly far. He took a difficult step forward. He lost his balance and landed on one knee. He wasn’t able to rise, but he was able to smile.
“Yeah. Just for now. Get free of her and then come get me. I’m not worried.”
They never came back. They never took you with them. They never really loved you.
“Porter, I don’t break my promises.” Emaula knelt with him. She touched his cheek and lifted his head, “Especially not the ones I make to the man I love.”
Emaula kissed him.
Such warm, wonderful kisses.
Something prickled around his neck. Porter glanced down and saw dozens of little threads and keys. The weight of all those other witches. He’d never noticed them before.
Emaula plucked the thread and wound it into a ball in her hands. The keys came effortlessly, plucked out of his skin in one connected vine. It didn’t hurt as she unearthed them and balled them into a thick length of twine and metal. He’d never realized he bore so much weight until she lifted it.
The final key and twine wrapped around his throat, and he remembered when The Munawn placed it there in real life. All the others were connected to her gift.
Emaula carefully lifted it over his head.
Porter felt The Munawn unlock the door to his room. She wanted to know who dared disturb her hidden treasure. Porter felt a bone-deep terror of that witch and remembered the shadowy figure on the first day of the monsoon. He wondered how he had ever mistaken the spider’s shallow imitation. His creator towered in his memory as the most powerful and wicked of women and now her sheer presence made him shudder.
The door creaked open, and she peeked through, as neat and delicate as lightning.
Nothing compared to the radiance of Emaula.
Emaula tossed the ball of twine and keys, and it rolled toward The Munawn’s open door. Then she offered her hand to Porter.
The Munawn watched as the ball of twine rolled past her foot, only vaguely annoyed. She fixed Porter with her steely glare and pointed to the ground before her. A command to come. She’d hold him out of spit
e and viciousness.
But Porter didn’t have to obey every command. He took Emaula’s hand.
She held him tight and squeezed it. “Let’s go, Porter.”
They walked hand in hand towards Yenna’s red door to leave behind this too real place. As Porter opened the door in his mind, he wondered hopefully if it would be the last one.
Chapter Eight
Emaula woke to see the sky red with the setting sun. The wolves howled with joy below, excited over something foolish no doubt. Maybe they were playing cards. Emaula tried to sit up to join the game but was too utterly exhausted to move.
Her magic whispered for her to stay down and relax, and Emaula realized there was a gentle orange glow around her hands. What was the magic doing? Emaula reached out to it to chastise and control, but the magic spoke back, reassuring her everything was safe and as it should be. It was a gentler voice than her magic had ever used. It sounded like it was on her side, more like Jasprite than her mother. More like Porter.
“Porter!”
Emaula jolted up and threw the red cloak off her shoulders. The cloak rustled, and she saw that it was no longer red. Her ordeal had turned it white. Emaula touched the mantle, a proper witch’s cloak.
The noise below got louder. Moving from the cellar to the kitchen, then the den. Emaula could sense Porter below. Could imagine his friends mobbing around him. She couldn’t distinguish the words or who was speaking, but the general gist was that he was back. Emaula had saved him. He was never allowed to go away again.
Emaula smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was safe and as it should be.
The magic ebbed out of her hand with a soft, chuckling “told you so”.
Emaula was about to stand, to dress, to rejoin her new family downstairs, but she heard the noise of the big man bounding up the stairs, clumsily bumping into the wall as he unsteadily rushed. Their friends tried to stop him.
“Leave her alone, Porter,” Jasprite commanded.
“Yenna said she must not be disturbed until moon-fall,” Half-Ear warned.