by Terah Edun
“You’re welcome,” Mae said. “Like I said, it was long, but once I got past all the muck about why messing around with dark magic was bad, it explained that within Grandmother’s collection there were five texts dedicated to defensive incantations.”
“Incantations such as?” Ember asked.
Mae flicked her an irritated glance at the interruption. “Such as ones built to fight back against physical altercations and weaponized magic.”
“So what?” Richard said.
“So,” Mae said, “our people used to have to fight to secure our holding against foes virulent and corporeal not so long ago. What if this meant that there was something in there that could do battle against a malady that left a body clinging to life?”
“Like the one currently stripping the girls of theirs,” Richard said.
“Yes!” Mae said excitedly. She waited for a moment to see if they would share in her enthusiasm, but the room was dead silent.
“Maeryn Darnes, that is the most foolish thing I’ve ever heard, and trust me, you’ve had some crazy ideas before,” Ember declared.
Mae frowned. “But I might have found something!”
“Might being the operative word,” Ember said.
Mae felt like throwing her hands up in disgust, but she was still carrying that heavy grimoire, so she couldn’t. “At least I’m trying!”
“By messing with dark incantations that you have no idea how to control and endangering the entire holding at the same time?” Ember said.
Mae set her jaw. “No one ever discovers anything by playing it safe.”
“Well, usually those doing the discovering aren’t holed up in their parents’ holding playing with the firesticks that could burn everyone else down along with them.”
There wasn’t much Mae could say in defense of herself. But she didn’t regret making an attempt. She could feel them slipping away. Mae was just the only one willing to push for a way around those deaths. She knew she was on the right track, she just knew it. She just wished her family had the same faith that she did.
With a tired sigh, Ember said, “Don’t you get it, Mae? We all want to help.”
Mae set the grimoire down on the only chair in the room with a slap. “Then why does it feel the girls are being circled by vultures and this family is just going about its business?”
“You really believe that, don’t you?” Richard asked.
Mae startled at his deep voice; she had almost forgotten he was in the room, he was so silent. “Yes, and if I have to break some rules to be the one to actually give a damn…then I’ll do it.”
“Mae, you’ll be the death of us all!” Ember said.
Mae looked at her. “Or the one that wakes you up to the impossibility of the success of doing things the traditional way?”
Richard asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean that we’ve watched relatives and young ones die before this!” Mae said. “These aren’t the first, and they won’t be the last. This malady has attacked our family for generations, and every time we lose another youngling to an illness I wouldn’t wish on an obstinate sheep, we lose a little more of ourselves in the process.”
“You still haven’t given us a rational reason why messing with this forbidden grimoire will ensure you solve this malady,” Richard said.
“Yes, that is exactly my concern as well,” Ember said, glaring at Mae through narrowed eyes.
“Well, if you would give me a chance to just peruse the book in peace, maybe I could solve this infernal illness,” Mae snapped. “But I certainly can’t do it standing here and fighting with the two of you.”
Ember laughed as she scooted back on the bed and wrapped her hands around her knees. She began humming like a mad person, and Mae didn’t interrupt her, because she knew it was one of Ember’s coping techniques. Normally Mae might pat herself on the back for sending her older sibling into her version of shock, but at the moment, she just wanted Ember to understand her point of view.
When Ember spoke again, however, it was quite clear that they were a long way away from that particular fantasy coming to fruition.
“It’s like we talk to you and the words go in one ear and right out the other,” Ember said. “You don’t listen.”
“I am listening,” Mae argued. “I just don’t happen to agree with you.”
“Fine,” Richard said. “But that doesn’t mean you can just forge ahead as if we’re not here and our opinions don’t matter.”
Mae was tempted to shout that their opinions didn’t, in fact, matter, but she held it back by pinning her lips tightly together. It took some effort, considering the two of them had conspired, it seemed, to ruin her entire day.
Ember apparently saw the uncharitable thoughts running through Mae’s head and sat forward with a troubled look on her face.
Before Mae could get out a word in her defense, namely that she hadn’t actually said anything aloud, her sister said, “You know what, Mae? We don’t have to waste our time here trying to convince you. We could just inform the council of elders of your transgressions. You would then be forced to make your plea before them.”
“You’d do that?” Mae said, shocked and a little hurt.
“I would,” Ember said unemotionally as she turned to Richard. “I think he would too.”
A grimace flashed over Richard’s face. “I would too,” he said reluctantly. “For the good of the holding.”
“Even though you know they’ll rush right toward judgment,” Mae said.
“Especially so,” Ember snapped as she got off the bed. “Don’t you get it? This isn’t about you. It’s about the safety and security of this family and holding. We can’t have just anyone running around trying to activate whatever incantations they please.”
“No,” said Mae with ice in her voice. “You don’t get it, sister. It’s not about the collective; it’s about the individuals. The ones that need to be saved.”
Ember waved an irritated hand and turned to face the wall opposite Mae—apparently so she could calm down.
“All right,” Richard said. “Say you convince us this…risk is necessary to save one. How do you know it won’t endanger us all?”
Mae hesitated. She could bluster, but the truth was…she didn’t know.
She just had hope.
“All I know is that if we don’t try, the only ones we can blame at the wake of these innocents will be ourselves.”
He winced at the vision that conjured up, and Mae wasn’t the least bit apologetic that she had done so. He was wavering before her eyes. Maybe even converting to her way of thinking.
Ember, however, was still holding firm.
“Look, I get it—you want to help,” Ember said. “But you can’t go in with a theory. You need facts.”
“Why do you think I’ve been trying to get this grimoire back all morning?”
“Facts that will allow you to open that troublesome grimoire in the first place!” Ember snapped.
“I told you,” Mae said. “I found a list that indicates there’s an incantation in there that we can use.”
“What specific one?”
“I don’t know precisely,” Mae said. “But the list said it can be used to battle cursed maladies—it sounded like it was a cure-all and could be just the one to free the girls.”
“Or it could unleash a plague more virulent than any of our healers could fight,” Ember said.
“They’ve been next to useless so far, so that’s not saying much,” Mae retorted.
“Hey, watch it,” Richard said. “That’s my father you’re talking about. Your cousin too, I might remind you. He’s working his butt off to ease their pain.”
Mae passed a weary hand over her face. She was so tired of arguing that her tongue was slipping more than usual.
“I know. I’m sorry, Richard,” she said. “I just…I want to see the girls improving, not sedated so much that they can’t scream from the pain anymore.”
His ou
trage melted away in front of her somber words. It was true. All that had been achieved so far was palliative care. The healing arts that the holding possessed were not enough to actually counteract the illness that was destroying the girls. And the quacks and random healers who had shown up on their doorstep had never been able to provide more than a day or two of respite, which made them worse than useless in Mae’s eyes.
They got the holding’s hopes up far too many times. Remembering the charlatans waving their hands over her sisters’ pain-filled bodies made her ill.
Richard snapped her out of her reverie. “Just curious,” he said. “How did you plan on releasing the incantation in the first place? You have neither magic nor the means to control something of that power.”
Mae smiled at him. “Well, now that you’re offering…”
“Oh no,” said Ember.
Richard eyed her as if she was crazy. “I wasn’t.”
“I mean, we’re family, Richard,” Mae said with syrupy sweetness. “We do what we have to pitch in.”
Richard groaned. “You’re not letting me out of this, are you?”
“With the way she whittled us both down from clear nos to hearing her out,” Ember said, “do you really think you have a chance of getting clear of her plans?”
“This is not how I planned to spend my evening,” Richard said with a horrified look.
Mae just kept grinning like a maniac at him. She was getting exactly what she wanted after all.
A chance.
“So, say we trust in your…theory,” Ember said. “Can we be absolutely sure nothing will be unleashed that we can’t control?”
“Of course not,” Richard said.
They both turned to look at him.
“Magic doesn’t work like that,” he said as he fished an apple out of his pocket. “You won’t know precisely what you get until you get it to work.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Ember said with a frown.
Mae rolled her eyes. “Well, we’d test out whatever we found before implementing it. Would that be enough for you?”
Ember said dryly, “It sounds like it’ll have to be.”
“Good,” Mae said, and eagerly rubbed her hands together. “Let’s get started, then.” She grabbed the grimoire she’d placed on the chair. “Richard, if you please?”
He looked at her blankly until Mae pointed her chin at the chair and gestured at the midpoint of the room.
“Of course,” he muttered, and moved it as she’d asked.
Mae carefully laid the object they had all been arguing over on the thin slats.
“How long will this take?” Ember asked.
“Not long,” Mae said with a confidence she wasn’t sure she felt.
She, Richard, and Ember then stood over it in a half-circle, each one waiting for the other to begin.
As her stomach flipped and Mae thought about what they were about to do, she had the feeling that whatever happened next would change the course of history for her family forever.
For good…or for ill.
16
Time slipped by as Mae stared at the cover of the grimoire.
She had opened it once before with no issue, but somehow it felt different now. She trailed her fingers over the heavy cover and felt an energy she hadn’t noticed before zinging along the tips of her fingers.
It was a bit unsettling, but she was all in now. There was no turning back.
“Oh, come now,” Ember said. “You spent all that time convincing us this was the one. Well, now is your chance to make that theory true.”
Mae flicked an irritated glance at her sister. “If you’re so excited about it, you do it.”
“Oh no! This is all you,” Ember replied, staring at her sister with a superior gaze.
Truth be told, Mae was a little nervous. This was big. She had spent all that time flicking through its pages on a hunch, but now that she had to prove her theory valid, the stakes of the game were more critical than ever.
Maybe Richard saw that, for all her bluster, Mae was rattled. Or maybe, like Ember, he just wanted to get on with it. Whatever the case, he reached forward and unclipped the fastenings that held the leather cover of the grimoire closed. Mae felt something within her unlock as he did.
Unfazed, Richard flipped open the book, and they stared at the blank vellum of the first page.
“Your move,” he said calmly as no one reached forward.
He’s talking to me, Mae thought as the words finally registered.
Hands only slightly shaking, she began to leaf through the grimoire. It was page after page of careful script and fantastic illustrations of all manner of things. She saw everything, from an incantation on how to ward off evil wraiths to the concoction that would soothe a colicky baby from the moment it was born. Everything but the one page that promised a cure for the wasting sickness
Clicking her teeth, as she knew this would take longer than first surmised, Mae lifted the grimoire and lowered herself to the floor to sit against the pallet bed. Neither Richard nor Ember tried to stop her. In fact, when Mae flicked a glance up to check their movements, Ember had positioned herself cross-legged on the room’s only chair, and Richard had elected to take a seat on the floor, mirroring Mae’s position.
Satisfied that they didn’t intend to interfere and were going to patiently wait her out, she got to work turning more pages and burying herself in decades of collected knowledge, searching for the answer that would unlock her cure.
Talking to herself mostly, Mae muttered, “I know it’s here.”
To her surprise, hours passed, and she got lost in the text.
“It’s night now,” Ember said when Mae blinked and looked up.
“How do you know?” Mae asked, confused. Her lips felt dry, and her mouth was cottony, but that could be anything. It happened enough to Mae when she didn’t take care of herself that it could just be a residual effect from no sleep the night before.
“Because I went to get tea, and the kitchen fires had been banked and everyone else was asleep,” Ember said.
“Tea?” Mae asked, as she looked at Ember’s hands and saw none forthcoming.
Her sister stepped to the side and filled a pot on a stool that hadn’t been there before.
She handed over the tea without comment, and Mae smiled. A smile that turned into a choked laugh when she noticed that Richard had moved, from across from her to a corner, where he was sleeping the hour away.
“I guess it is bedtime,” Mae said.
The grimoire weighed heavily in her lap, but she still hadn’t found what she was looking for. It was getting so frustrating that at different points Mae wondered if she had picked up the wrong book…but at the same time, she knew she hadn’t. Call it intuition; call it faith. But she knew the answer was there.
“Not quite,” Ember said as she squatted in front of Mae.
“Not quite what?” Mae asked, and sipped her tea.
Ember sighed. “Do you really think it’s here? Your cure, I mean.”
Mae blinked at the swift switch in conversation and focused all of her attention on her sister. She had to admit that it hurt. It hurt to be doubted, to hear the disparagement in her sister’s voice, even if she didn’t outright call Mae a fool for believing.
But worse than Ember’s disdain for Mae’s faith was the fact that the look on Ember’s face wasn’t one of concern or even anger…it was pity.
“Yes, I do,” Mae said snippily.
Ember didn’t say anything more. She just moved back to her sitting place from before and watched Mae with that conceited look that said she knew she was right and would be proved so before long.
Raising her tea to her lips, Mae was more determined than ever to get this right now.
She’d prove it to Ember—she’d prove it to them all—that the incantation to cure them was right there before all of their eyes.
Setting the tea down and picking up the grimoire she had discarded briefly in her
lap in a fit of fatigue, Mae began riffling through the same pages she had been searching through since before sunrise. Now that night had fallen, this was officially the second day she’d had the book in her possession, and precisely three nights since it had gone missing.
Mae wondered when someone would sound the alarm about a forbidden artifact disappearing, but she knew that its keeper—her grandmother—was a bit busy keeping Mae’s sisters alive at the moment. Still, when the keeper did realize it was gone, and when she realized Maeryn Darnes—her fifth-eldest grandchild out of seven—was the one who had taken it, there would be hell to pay.
Mae chewed on her lip as she slowly moved through the pages, determined to go deliberately so as to not miss the smallest notation—and this grimoire had a lot of them, scribbles in the margins and drawings in the crease—that could be exactly what she was searching for. The problem was that one page would hold something promising, an antidote to a curse, and the next would be about crop rotations. It didn’t make sense, and she couldn’t help but feel like the grimoire itself was trying to lead her astray. Where offensive magic hadn’t worked before, now it was trying deception and trickery.
If it hadn’t been for her certitude that this was the one, she might have called her pursuit crazy. But it wasn’t just the list, the one she had used to narrow down the most promising suspects—it was the fact that once she had ventured into her grandmother’s private, off-limits library, this grimoire had called to her. It had drawn her like a moth to a flame as she searched for it within the pile of dust-covered texts.
And when she first picked it up, she had been more certain than ever.
The problem lay in what had happened after, though.
The bloody grimoire had tried to burn her hands off.
To be fair, it might have been calling to anyone in her bloodline and been displeased when a child showed up instead. But in Mae’s eyes, books didn’t get to be choosy—she was here when no one else was, so it could suck up any distaste and deal with her.
As Ember got up and went back to her corner, apparently fed up with trying to reason with her, Mae hunkered down to fight with the text. Unfortunately, the text didn’t seem to agree with her, and she was neither powerful enough to force it to behave or skilled enough to decipher the instructions that moved across its pages like wispy shadows, too fast for her eyes to capture and too delicate to hold down. So she was left to page through the massive grimoire as anyone else would—by hand.