by J L Collins
He gave me a grim nod, gently placing his hand on my shoulder. “Thank you, lass. I feel much better knowing they’re in your hands.”
And with that, he hobbled toward the door, slower than normal, but twice as determined. The door closed behind him with a gust, and he was gone.
“Now would probably be a good time to go ahead and break out the whisky,” Tristan said, walking up to me as I turned back around.
I glanced at the glass half-full in his hand. “Looks like you’ve already done us the favor.”
He shrugged, swilling it around before taking a long slug of it. “Someone has to be the first.”
“Is it really appropriate to get blasted while all hell is breaking loose around us. I mean, really, Tris?” I said, giving Brennrie a sympathetic look as she walked up behind him.
“We might as well. Who knows if I’ll have another chance?” he said, letting out a humorless bark of a laugh. “So sláinte to us, big sis.”
I bristled. “And what the heck does that even mean?”
Brennrie put her hand on his chest and took the drink from his hand. “Please don’t say that, love. You don’t mean it.”
“Don’t I? Look, the fact is that without magic keeping all those Dark Market bosses and minions behind bars, some of them—if not all of them—are bound to get out. And who’s to say they won’t come gunning straight for me if they get the chance? The way I see it, I might as well get my last drink in while I can—” He tried to snatch the glass from Brennrie but she held it in her palm, where several shiny tendrils of some kind of plant sprouted from her hand and grew up and over the glass, covered in tiny red spines that kept Tristan from successful reaching it.
I gasped. “Your magic!”
She nodded solemnly. “It appears it is just Witches that are having trouble accessing their powers. I am able to use mine. In fact, I was up with your uncle in his study and used my telescopic vision to see into town as far as I could. He is right in that Witches have flooded the roads, anxious. I’m actually on my way out now.”
“Wait, wait, wait. You’re leaving? Now?” I asked, my heart racing on her behalf. “It’s too dangerous!”
“I’m not going into town. I’m going to journey into Arcadia. Someone needs to alert the Royal Palace as to what’s going on here. The Queen may already know, but just in case, I want to make sure. Do not worry for me, Gwen. I will keep off the roads and stick to my shortcuts. It will take me far less time than your uncle.”
I bit my lip, unsure of what to say. Instead, I took her hand in mine and tried to work up a smile. It faltered, but I did my best as she met my gaze. “Thank you. Really. We need all the help we can get.”
I turned to my brother as soon as she left, glaring at him. “And you! Get ahold of yourself and stop acting like some kind of nihilistic jerk!”
He fixed me with a defiant stare. “I’m just being real, Gwen. Hell, Uncle Gardner just got done telling us that they caught those two bastards from the Dark Market finally— Shinto and Mordred.”
I took a step back. “What?”
“Yep. The Shadow Hands just finished apprehending them. They were on their way to a pair of cells according to Uncle Gardner. Without magic working right, where do you think two powerful beings like a Djinn and a Vampire are right now?” He took my silence for an answer, nodding along. “Exactly. Not in custody, that’s for sure. They’re probably miles away by now. And that’s just those two.”
But my silence wasn’t me agreeing with him… I was more wondering about something else entirely. “What about her? Delaney? Did they find her?”
He blinked. “Delaney Drakar? No, he never mentioned her…”
Something tickled at the back of my brain, and I glanced behind Tristan to see what Fi was doing. She had her arm around Lyra, listening closely to whatever she was saying and nodding sympathetically. My heart clenched at the sight of her. All this time she’d been the one to be on the outside looking in, and now that everyone else was in her shoes, all she cared about was making sure they were all okay…
“Keep an eye out on Fi, okay? There’s something I need to go check in the library.”
13
To The Root Of It All
“Just think, Gwen. Think.” I rubbed my hands together for the millionth time, shivering as the cold settled into the empty study. Uncle Gardner must not have had his fire going when he was in here earlier because not a single ember in the fireplace was left glowing. The loss of magic seemed to suck every bit of warmth from the place.
I paced back and forth alongside his massive desk, my breath coming out in small white puffs. I wasn’t sure exactly what I expected to do or even find up here—all I knew was that I needed a quiet place to think.
This was usually the time when Erie would come in, knowing I was spiraling, and make some kind of sense out of everything running through my mind.
But she was busy worrying about the animals and creatures at the Menagerie, doing her part there. And I could only imagine how torn she was, with her family here and her life, there. Especially after what happened with those poor Sylphs… I knew it was more of a weird freak accident than anything else, but she took their deaths very personally. I mean, maybe I would in her shoes too, since they seemed to have been on the mend and then suddenly they were gone. And Sylphs were known for being highly resilient Fairies, so it should’ve been a pretty simple fix to help heal them.
I frowned, pausing in front of Uncle Gardner’s desk for a moment, my hands splayed on top of it. “The tree was struck by lightning. But they weren’t burnt or anything… at least that’s what I think she said,” I mumbled to myself, following an odd thought that was quickly being pulled through my mind like a thread through the eye of a needle. “But they still died. If it wasn’t the lightning that did it, what did?”
Had Erie even thought about that? Maybe she was so caught up in her feelings over their deaths that she didn’t really give the weirdness a chance to sink in. Did someone ever take a good look at the tree they lived in? It was just odd. And it was odd that my mind was going off on different tangents like this—I knew I was grabbing for straws here, trying to make something make sense in my head even if it didn’t help me any.
And it wasn’t like the weird timing of those poor creatures’ deaths or this crazy magic evaporation of sorts were the only odd things going on around here lately. As far as I knew, the Shadow Hands still hadn’t made heads or tails of whether Tiberius the Dwarf had been intentionally killed, or if he was a victim of some kind of accident. It wasn’t like I had very much time to puzzle that one out… not to mention Uncle Gardner was specifically keeping me away from getting involved with it, amongst other things.
Other things being the takedown of the Dark Market. And the takedown of Delaney Drakar.
“Ugh. This is getting me nowhere,” I groaned to myself, slapping my hand down on the desktop. All the peace and quiet in the world didn’t feel like it would help. I was just too all over the place.
It felt a little like I was slipping down a snowy ice bank, trying to make sense of things, but unable to find help. Sort of like that hill Fiona-Leigh and I had climbed up…
I grabbed a piece of blank paper and one of Uncle Gardner’s quills, scratching the scene in my head down to the best of my capabilities. The snowy bank, the hill that stretched above it, and the road between the top of the hill and the thick of Amaranth Forest.
“He slid down. But why didn’t he get up?” I mumbled, tapping the nib of the quill against the paper. “Was he running? Why would he be running from that direction?”
The way Tiberius’ body had been splayed inside of the fence line suggested that in fact, he wasn’t coming from the Glowmines where he worked. He was coming from the direction of the forest.
“This just keeps getting weirder and weirder. I wish I could get a good look at where I found him, myself…”
But there was no way I was going to go back on my word to Uncle Gardner. I glanc
ed at the portrait that hung up on the wall behind his desk, of him and Aunt Ginevra and my three cousins when they were children. He was right. Inside was safer, because outside was pure chaos.
Wait.
“…I hear things, being so tightly knit with our community here. Chaos around here really makes for interesting conversation in Spell Haven…”
I blinked.
“No. This is you reaching again, Gwendolyn. You need to stop it. This isn’t healthy…” I muttered, ready to just call it quits for the day and resign myself to fireplace duty.
But… the look on Delaney’s face still stuck out like a sore thumb to me. I’d never seen someone so full of themselves, so downright smarmy. Like she had one-upped everyone somehow.
My eye twitched just thinking about it. And maybe I was just biased and really, really didn’t like her. Not after what her boyfriend did. And not after she got away with so many wrongdoings against other innocents in the past.
But one of the things that had garnered me the old nickname in the academy—Spell Maven—was my uncanny intuition. All of us Witches had it to some degree, I supposed. But every time I actually paid attention to mine, it sorta paid off.
Maybe it was time to actually listen again.
The fire was still blazing, with nearly everyone camped out in front of it on various couches and chairs, including the large rug on the floor, by the time Erie had crept back inside the house.
No one stirred but me.
“Erie?” I called out to her quietly before grabbing one of the small candelabras from the wall. “Is everything okay?”
She shushed me but I could just barely make out her hand gesturing for me to follow her.
We ended up whispering to one another in the kitchen.
“Everything is okay. Mina and I were able to gather up the sick and she volunteered to take them back to her place. Houghlin walked home to check on the cats.. They were all okay. He’s there right now. I came here because I knew Mom would freak if I didn’t. Can you let her know I was here?”
I frowned. “It’s freezing out there, Erie. You need to get some rest. You can go in the morning, right?”
She rubbed her hands together, shrugging. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess you’re right. No sense in going back out in it now.”
Nodding, I pulled her closer to the pantry and further away from the door into the sitting room. “Hey. I wanted to ask you something. You told me that those Sylphs’ tree was struck by lightning, right?”
She was clearly confused by the question. “Yeah?”
“But they didn’t show any signs of any burns or injuries from it?”
“No. It was kind of weird, but—”
I nodded, cutting her off. “Right. And where did you say this tree was? Did you see it yourself.?”
“Mina did. She’s the one that found them when
she was out collecting some whitewater flowers for our supplies. We use it for a cleansing astringent. I didn’t get a chance to see the tree though.”
I sighed. That would’ve been helpful. “Okay. That’s all I wanted to know.”
Erie leaned against the pantry door, fixing a concerned look on her face. “Uh. Okay. I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why you’re asking about some random tree?”
“I… just wanted to know. I thought it was weird, too, that’s all.” Luckily I wasn’t talking to Aunt Bedelia about this.
Erie was smart though, and she shook her head. “Sure. Well. I’m going to go get some sleep then. And I suggest you do the same.”
I pretended to salute her. “Yes ma’am. After you.”
I figured it was a better idea to wait until everyone was up before dipping out in the morning, anyway. Surely Uncle Gardner would be back by then.
I yanked at the tiny map that was tucked inside of the compass, nearly ripping it in two as I pulled it all the way out. Man, without magic, even the smallest things ceased to work right.
Luckily, thanks to cooperation from the Fae who happened to control the weather throughout Danann, the temperatures had warmed back up to what could be considered light jacket weather. Snow was quickly melting across Spell Haven, the last bits of it still sat in little piles underneath the canopy of the trees in Amaranth Forest.
It had been a hike to get here, a paranoid one at that. I kept feeling like someone was watching me every now and then, but I knew it was just because people would stare as I walked past them. Everyone was in such a daze that those who were outside their homes seemed skeptical of pretty much everyone around them. Talk about mass hysteria.
I broke past the tree line, trying to recall exactly where Fiona-Leigh and I had come out of the forest that day we were taking pictures.
“If the stupid holoscope was working I could just use that to retrace my steps,” I grumbled, shaking my head. Even the pictures I took would’ve been better than nothing. At least if we were back home in Midnight Pitch, I’d be able to flip through the photos and get a snapshot of where we were.
And then it hit me. The whitewater! Fi had wanted to take some shots of it, and we started out by a small patch of it somewhere right inside the trees. I glanced at the compass, making sure to keep an eye out on the tree line to my right as I walked carefully through the woods in search for the little white and green plants.
It only took a few minutes to find the right spot—a small patch of the flowers standing out starkly against the tiniest melting patch of snow.
“There you are,” I whispered to them. An animal scurried off behind me as I turned to crouch down low. “Let’s see if we can find some more of you further in. Erie did say that Mina was looking for whitewater for the Menagerie when she found the Sylphs.”
I got lucky. Sparsely scattered further in, were more shoots of whitewater. Plenty of it had been obviously picked over, which was a good thing for me. I followed the zig-zagging path deeper into the woods, still attempting to keep an eye on where was parallel to the road. The woods here were colder, and my breath fogged up slightly in front of me.
I pulled my jacket tighter around myself, fighting against the eerie chill that kept twisting up my spine. There were plenty of animals in these woods—I should know.
But not very many animals were big enough to crack a branch that loudly behind me.
Without a moment’s hesitation, I spun around low and used my foot to swipe the legs out from underneath them, knowing full well this wasn’t a something following me, but a someone.
She shrieked, falling on her back in the sodden cold leaves on the forest floor.
“Fi!? What the heck are you doing here?” I yelled, quickly bending down to check every inch of her, an insane spike of the worst kind of guilt driving right through my gut. “Oh my god, are you crazy? I could’ve hurt you!”
She smacked my hands away and pulled herself up to sit, glaring at me. “Well, I wasn’t exactly expecting you to go all Jackie Chan on me, Mom!”
“Who?”
“Ugh! What are you even doing out here anyway? Creeping around the woods while everyone else is back home?”
I stuck my hand out again, helping to pull her up anyway. “I asked first. And look who’s talking! I’m not creeping around the woods, I was looking for something.”
“Looking for what?” she asked, dusting herself off.
I rolled my eyes, unable to help myself. The last thing I needed was her involved with this mess. “A tree.”
“That’s why you were asking Erie about the tree last night. I thought it was weird…”
I groaned. “Seriously, Fi. You’re just as bad as Oisín with the eavesdropping.”
She folded her arms across her chest, jutting her chin out. “I am not! I wasn’t trying to on purpose—you two weren’t exactly being quiet.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, sighing as I pulled the compass back out. “I’ll just come back out here later. You need to get back to the manor house.”
But she stood in place, pursing her lips at me. “I’m no
t going anywhere. You’re trying to find that tree, right? I can help you. Then you can do whatever it is you need to do and then we can go back.”
“Fiona-Leigh Brady, this is not up for discussion! Now let’s go…”
“Mom!”
“I’m serious!”
“No—look!”
I followed where she was pointing. Some hundred yards ahead, was a small clearing of trees with the exception of the huge oak situated in the middle of it, its thick, gnarled branches reaching out in every direction. If there were ever such a thing as an evil-looking tree—this was it. But it wasn’t just the shape of the tree that made it uncomfortable to look at.
It was the hazy green mist hovering and glowing around it.
“What the…” I said, my voice trailing off.
Fiona-Leigh clambered after me as I walked closer to get a better look. “That looks like the stuff that was in the sky yesterday!”
I nodded. “Magic. Or a magical energy signature. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Why is it all the way here in the middle of the forest, though?” she said, her voice low as if not to disturb the tree.
She stiffened behind me, her breath coming out in a whoosh. All at once, she was upended, lifted into the air by what appeared to be the dirt-clogged roots of the tree.
“Mama!”
“Get off of her!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, lunging forward to grab onto her, only to get dragged back myself as another root as big around as my forearm, yanked me away by my waist. I banged and kicked furiously at it, but it was no use, the thing wouldn’t budge and I was being pulled closer to the tree which seemed to emit a strange humming noise from inside of it.
“Mama! Look out!” Fi screamed. She was tossed a few feet to the ground but couldn’t scramble away quickly enough to outrun a new set of roots working hard to form a sort of cage around her.
My back hit the wide oak tree hard, knocking the air from my lungs, my vision going fuzzy as I watched more roots set to work on a cage for me as well. Dirt streaked Fi’s face several feet away from me as she struggled to find a way through the twisting, tangled roots to reach a hand out to me.
