Love Me Madly

by Lidiya Foxglove

  There was one old truck parked here now, and smoke puffing out of a chimney, in the one house that was still maintained.

  I looked at the gun. These bullets came from Father Joshua, and I knew he was a bad man. I knew I was being used by the council. This was how they would shut me up.

  But this might be the only way I could ever avenge my sister.

  I was the one who saw her body first, mangled by a werewolf’s teeth. I had no chance to heal her. She was gone. I was the one who had to tell my mother over the telephone. Then I flew home. Airplanes made witches sick, but I was already as sick as I was going to get. I ran to the tiny bathroom to throw up during takeoff as the plane rattled with turbulence. I was shaking and panicked. The flight lasted forever. I just kept seeing her body flash across my mind. We looked so alike people thought we were twins. But she was the natural leader, the life of the party. Everyone loved her.

  Werewolves didn’t deserve to exist. Even the good ones. They should be cleansed so they could never turn. This bullet wouldn’t kill, if I didn’t aim for a fatal spot. It would just take their magic away. The man would be human again. Merciful, really.

  He must be squatting here, in this ancient village of witches. I was sure it had never been a place for werewolves. Violating our sacred ground.

  He had probably already heard my car approach. If he saw me, would he remember the face of the girl he killed?

  Probably not. It was a turf battle. In wolf form, he probably smelled her more than he saw her.

  I wondered if we smelled the same.

  My hand gripped the gun, but I kept it hidden under a short cloak, the hood tugged over my face.

  It was so very quiet out here in the woods. Even the usual forest sounds seemed farther away than they should be, everything under an eerie cloud of memory. The lighting was so dim it seemed like the sun was going down but it was only noon. Dry leaves crackled and crunched under my feet despite every effort to be quiet. The forest floor was blanketed thick with them. I wondered if the wolf was napping.

  Now I was at the house. Inside the small gate, I walked by the gardens where rosemary grew abundantly from clay pots and thyme spread like grass. The curtains were tied back. I saw a movement.

  The door opened.

  I was face to face with him.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  I was in the back, at that fight. Werewolves were trying to seize territory from a small, aging family of wizards. Elania and I were both there to help them, but I was so young that they kept me in the back to heal the wounded. I barely saw his face when I ran into the fray, screaming. At that point, we had won the battle and the werewolves were in retreat. They slipped into the night. My sister was the only casualty.

  Before, I only saw him in wolf form. But in human form, his hair was still grayish like his pelt, the cut of his nose rather pointed, and his eyes had a golden sheen around the hazel.

  “What do you want?” He sounded nervous.

  “You killed my sister. Elania. You killed her.”

  I knew I couldn’t hesitate. This was the location I was given. This was the man. There was no reason to hesitate, anyway. I wasn’t a murderer. I was just taking his magic away so he could never hurt anyone again.

  My hands moved out from behind the cloak. He saw the gun. He moved to shut the door.

  I aimed at his legs and pulled the trigger. First shot—missed.

  “Stop! Who are you?” he asked.

  “Paola Garcia! From the witches’ council! We’ve met before.” I screamed it out, panic flooding me as I knew in another moment he might turn into a wolf and those jaws would come for me. I fired again and this time I aimed not for his leg, but his body. The bullet struck. He screamed as his body slumped to the ground.

  He was spasming. He didn’t seem to hear me. He vomited up something soupy as he twitched and now he seemed to be choking.

  He killed my sister. He deserved to choke on his own vomit.

  I should just go.

  But it was a horrible sight and I didn’t go. I didn’t want to be as cruel as my sister’s killer. Elania always helped people in need. That was why she was there defending those little old witches to begin with. I stepped into the house and crouched, trying to help him so he didn’t choke. He coughed and grabbed a blanket off a chair, dragging it down to wipe his mouth and chest.

  “Please…,” he said. “You already took my baby. I don’t want any trouble.”

  “Your baby?” I wondered what he was talking about.

  The cottage had all the markers of a witches’ home. A pot slowly cooking on the fireplace. Herbs drying. An altar set out for focusing simple spells. A bird in a generously sized cage. The house was decorated with intricate scrimshaw and paintings of whales, indicating that the whale was the totem of this house. Which was a very odd thing to see in the house of a werewolf. They were already half-animal, and creatures of the woods. They wouldn’t have the symbols of a sea creature.

  Did a witch live here with him? I mean, it was possible. I saw the tools of a Sinistral witch. Maybe he had a lover. But there was something off here.

  I realized I didn’t see any signs of his presence. This space was so very feminine. There was just one ladies’ coat hanging on the coat rack. Just one mug left over from breakfast tea.

  Now I didn’t know what I was dealing with.

  As I started to think this through, the woman transformed. Or maybe it was just that the illusion broke.

  It wasn’t the wolfish man anymore. It was a woman, homespun skirts puddling around her, her hair a lovely shade of red.

  Now I screamed.

  “Hey—“ I was confused. What had I shot? The wolf? Or a woman? Why would she put up an illusion? “Who are you?” Or had someone else created the illusion? “Can you hear me? Why did you look like a man? Is this your true form?”

  “Are you from the Order?” the woman gasped.

  “No. The council.”

  “I’ve heard they’re nearly…one and the same…these days…”

  As she was gasping out the words, struggling to maintain consciousness, a man materialized in the center of the room.

  He was a priest of the Order, wearing long robes marked with religious symbols, the Hand of God most prominent. This was not Father Joshua, but a priest who worked at the Haven. I had met him a few times. He helped magical folk who had both Ethereal and Sinistral traits to ‘step into the light of order’. He had a presence that was unnervingly serene, as if nothing would provoke his temper—but nothing would make him laugh either.

  “Father Bogdan?” I said, confused but feeling a deep sense of dread and regret. “What are you doing here?”

  “The woman is fine,” he said. “She was never going to be on our side. At least she is harmless now.” He opened the bird cage. “Come out, familiar.”

  “He’s not—he’s not my familiar!” the woman said. “He’s just a bird.”

  Father Bogdan’s wand whipped out and blasted the bird, killing it instantly with a blast of lightning.

  “No!” the woman cried, trying to get to her feet. She seemed too dizzy. Her shoulder was red with blood.

  “Madame Garcia,” he said. “Help me search the place. We can’t leave her with anything she can use. Take anything that looks like a spell.” He tossed me a burlap bag.

  “Who is this woman?” I asked.

  “She is a Sinistral witch—ah!” Father Bogdan let out a high-pitched cry. The witch had a knife concealed in her skirts. She had managed to whip it out and throw it at him. It punched through his robes and then it flew back into her hand, dripping with blood.

  “You think I’ve just been sitting out here growing old and feeble?” the woman said. “You took my baby and I have never forgotten.”

  Father Bogdan tried to blast her. Something deflected the blast. Even she looked surprised.

  “That bullet should have taken your magic,” he said.

  The woman managed to get to her feet and s
he reeled toward the door. She was shaking off the nausea and dizziness now, running out the door.

  Father Bogdan had his hand over his stomach as blood flowed over his hand. “Chase her, Madame Garcia.”

  “You need healing,” I said.

  I didn’t want to chase her.

  But I didn’t want to get on his bad side either. I used concern as an excuse, putting my hand over his and concentrating a moment to stop the bleeding.

  “That wasn’t the wolf, was it?” I asked, trying to keep calm. “Please tell me what’s going on.”

  “I can tell you’re never going to stop making trouble,” he said. That sounded vaguely like a threat.

  “I’m not making trouble,” I said. “I’m just trying to understand.”

  “I think you already understand,” he said.

  “No, not really.”

  “The Order and your councils are one and the same now,” he said. “The councils on their own have been very poor leaders, you must surely admit. You’ve been weak and lost ground to Sinistral and Wyrd. But we’re helping you now, and you’ll get it back. We have the tools to wage a true war. These bullets are a tool, and in this case, so were you. I wanted to ease your mind and show you that you had killed your sister’s murderer.”

  “But it wasn’t my sister’s murderer at all! It was some witch that you wanted me to harm and I don’t even know her!”

  “You weren’t supposed to know that. If you had just left him, your mind would be at peace, knowing you struck him down.”

  “I am a good witch,” I said. “And so was Elania. I couldn’t leave him there to die like that. Everyone on the council is supposed to be a woman of honor and mercy. Even if I’m the only one to uphold it, I will.”

  “Times have changed too much,” he said. “I commend you for your honor, but we are fighting for our lives. Magic is dying.”

  “We have always been fighting,” I said. “Times haven’t changed one bit. I know my history. Wars never really end. That is simply no excuse for abandoning our principles.”

  Father Bogdan was looking at me like I was in his way.

  “Oh goddess,” I breathed.

  Sometimes you just know.

  I had miscalculated everything. I had worked hard, especially since Elania died, to live up to the kind of woman my sister was. I had made my way to the council. I had tried to help those poor people trapped in the village of the Order. I had devoted my life to the ideals of Etherium. Not just maintaining order, but also justice and fairness.

  “Thank you for the healing, Madame Garcia,” he said. “You were a good witch, for gentle times. You should be very proud of yourself. You will be remembered and honored with full burial rites of a fallen soldier.”

  I wondered who would tell my mother I was dead.

  I wondered how long it would take before she knew.

  Sometimes

  you

  just

  know—

  Chapter Twelve

  Alissa

  Silvus drove all day without hardly stopping. We drove into the night, into a profoundly dark forest. The only light in any direction came from our headlights and a tiny bit of moonlight through the trees. But not much.

  I was scared. It was just like the night I ran away from home, into the dark forest, without knowing what would happen. I hated that I couldn’t see.

  “I know it’s scary,” Jie said. “But our night vision is excellent. And a wizard will have a much harder time. So this is an advantage for us.”

  “There is hardly a road anymore,” Silvus said, sounding a little less thrilled. “I feel magic in the air, but…I certainly hope I didn’t miss a turn.”

  “There is something ahead,” Rayner said, and in another moment, I could see it too. The old fencing was formed from big logs crossed together. Weeds and vines were twining around the fence, which was collapsed in places. Homes loomed in the shadows, barely visible to me until the car lights hit them.

  My skin was crawling all over.

  Silvus parked a little ways back and got out, wand at the ready. It glowed at a command from him. “Magic is very strong here,” he said. “This is a witch village.”

  “Anyone here?” Rayner asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “You two stay with Alissa,” Rayner said.

  Silvus cut the car engine. Silence swallowed us. Now his wand was the only light to catch my eye. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw that the village had seven houses, all gathered close within the fencing. Plants were starting to reclaim the houses. I saw the gaping dark hole of a collapsed roof. The houses were all made of logs with wooden shingles.

  “This is a really old settlement,” Jie whispered.

  “I don’t care for places like this,” Thom said. “These woods make me claustrophobic.”

  Silvus came back a moment later. “Something happened here recently,” he said. “The imprint is strong—and unsettling. It’s just like Mariah said. But—Alissa, I think you should come. If this is your mother’s house, you might help us pick up something.”

  My mother’s house.

  I’d been thinking about my mother the whole way. My real mother. It was hard to wrap my head around that. I kept seeing her with the face of the woman I thought was my mother all my life. At first, I resisted the idea. I hated thinking that my family didn’t share any blood with me. Blood ties weren’t nothing. Some spells used them.

  But as the hours of thinking went by along with the miles of highway, I started thinking about the way I would want a mother to be. I would want her to know magic. I would want her to know how to defend herself and me. I would want her to be strong. I would want her to kill Father Joshua when she found out just how wrong things were, instead of succumbing to his tricks while I was being forced into marrying him…

  Jie took my hand to lead me through the darkness. Brambles kept snagging my clothes. The sky peering through the dark trees was so clear I could see countless stars. The trees had lost their leaves, which helped some moonlight get through, but a fair amount of evergreens still gave it all a sense of impenetrable mystery.

  The houses were clearly very old. They were so small, with tiny windows and huge chimneys. They came from a time when witches didn’t need any connection to the human world at all. There was barely a road here, and no sign of any phone lines or off-grid electricity. I imagined one witch, living here all alone, with the stacks of firewood and the herbs growing wild.

  A light streaked through the shadows toward one of the houses.

  “What was that!?” I exclaimed.

  “It went over there,” Silvus said.

  We picked our way to the largest house that was set apart from the others, and small gravestones poked up like jagged teeth.

  “So…this is actually the meeting house,” Silvus said, pointing at the building. “In a village this small they would use it for worship, ritual, and gatherings of every kind. I’m sensing something…not good.”

  Rayner put an arm around me as Jie, holding my hand, drew closer.

  “I don’t smell blood,” Thom said.

  Silvus walked the cemetery, to one corner. He felt the ground. “Freshly dug,” he said.

  “Oh…no…” I could barely breathe.

  Were we too late? Had someone killed my mother and buried her?

  The tiny dancing light came to a floating pause over some freshly stirred dirt. Silvus’ head jerked up, and he swiped back his black hair to get a good look at the light and then the fresh grave.

  The light made a little indignant whistle. It swirled off away from Silvus and pointed us somewhere else.

  The light had led us to an old shovel, sitting inside the doors of the meeting house. Rayner got it out and shrugged. “Well…I guess we know what we need to do. You two should take Alissa back to the car.”

  “No!” I said. “Rayner—I’m staying. If that’s my mother, I want to see her.”

  “I don’t want you to see anything you can’t u
nsee,” Rayner said. “We’ve seen a lot of wounds and death, but…”

  “I don’t want to go to the car,” I said. “This is important.”

  The light danced over to me and rubbed against my shoulder. It didn’t feel like anything. It made a low, musical call.

  “What the heck do you suppose this thing is?” Thom asked. “Some kinda ghost light? It seems to like Alissa.”

  Rayner picked up the shovel and drove it into the ground with his shoe, pitching a heavy load of dirt aside as he grimaced. This was a tough job. No matter how much he’d seen in the past, I knew he didn’t want to see this. But he worked at it steadily, rolling up his sleeves, his shirt straining against his back muscles. I wondered how many things like this he’d done for me, or because of me, in the course of his entire life.

  Silvus reached a hand toward the light, which was dancing around my head, making a musical sound. It soothed me and it seemed to recognize me and beyond that, I was confused.

  “Hullo, fellow,” Silvus said in a low, soothing voice. “Can you come to my hand?”

  The light whistled back more warily. As it danced around my hair I almost thought I felt ticklish.

  “Alissa, you don’t have a familiar?” Silvus asked.

  “No. I never have, as far as I know.”

  “It makes me think of a familiar, the way it seems to want to stick close to you. Rayner, Lisbeth didn’t have a familiar either?”

  “She sort of did,” Rayner said. “But she wasn’t a practicing witch. And her clan had a weird sort of shared familiar.”

  “Right. They were a totem clan, like some of the Scandinavian and Russian wizards.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Most witches have a single familiar,” Silvus said. “That is true through most of the world. But for whatever reason, witches in some countries had a different set up. Instead of having one bird or rabbit or what have you, the clan shares one familiar: always a larger and more powerful animal. Their human form is more rarely seen but might appear for any member of the clan.”

  “That’s right,” Rayner said. “You were from Clan Walvis. Your entire family had a whale familiar.”