by Lisa Daniels
Her eyes flickered downward, and he reminded her to look at him again. She cleared her throat nervously, her legs moving from side to side like a restless dog. “He… I didn’t want to be sent back to the Undercity. Not with how… useless I am. I’d be a burden, earning no money. Doing nothing. Being stupid...” Tears pricked her eyelids. The words in her seemed to be some monstrous force, stuck in her throat, so that she needed to hack them out. “Whatever happened to me, I deserved it. He’d… make me see. How selfish I was.”
Perran closed his eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “Sweetling, that’s what brainwashing does. He stamps on you and strips away every last part of you, until there’s nothing left but a vessel that leaps to do his every bidding. So when he’s not around, you feel empty, lonely—like you’ve lost all meaning to your life, and you’re too frightened to change it.”
Images of his sister swam to mind. How he’d tried so hard to get her out of there, but she broke down in front of him, sobbing hysterically, even as she tried to hide the bruises on her neck. Saying she loved him. She deserved this. She just needed to be a better person for him. A better wife.
If only you came with me. If only you’d listened.
But they never did listen, did they? They nodded and said yes, and agreed with you in the moment, but as soon as your back was turned, they went slinking back to their little cesspits of misery.
When Kelsey said nothing, but stood there dumbly with a blank expression, Perran added, “You know he was a bad man, right? Don’t you?”
After a glacial, awkward pause, she said, “He did some good things.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that he’s a bad man.” He reached out to hold her by the shoulders, wondering if she’d flinch away from him. When she didn’t, he attempted a smile. “You understand that, don’t you? The good things he did were just a way to stop you from running when he did the bad things. They were blackmail. He wanted you to believe that if you just behaved well, then you would see more good things.”
Her blank expression persisted, but he felt the sharp intake of breath and something shudder inside her. Tears spat out of her like a broken dam, and her face contorted into graceless crying. Startled, he brought the sobbing, snotty woman against his chest, suddenly stiff. He didn’t offer a good, warm hug, but he settled for gently patting her on her head, trying to decide if he was embarrassed by the emotion, or pleased to see her bawling it out. He continued patting her on the head, before freezing in his comforting motion. Lightning crackled in front of him. Small, static blue and yellow flashes, under a clear and cloudless sky. Every hair on his body stood up on end, tingling with unseen static. This wasn’t exactly a normal, everyday thing, and the harder Kelsey blubbed, the stronger the crackles became.
“Um,” he said intelligently, but she ignored him, continuing to wail as if everything she’d ever known had been burned to the ground. Maybe he partially related to that feeling, but he didn’t lose family when Serpent Isle fell. Just his home. And then his sister, Emilie.
“I’m so stupid!” she choked, digging her hands into him so hard that if he wasn’t wearing a thick fur jacket, she might have drawn blood with those nails of hers. “I’m so sky-cursing stupid!”
Some of the lightning zapped him, and his arms jerked reflexively from the pain. “Kelsey,” he said urgently, now trying to peel her off him. “You’re shocking me.”
“I—huh?” She blinked in teary confusion, just in time to see the flickering cloud of lightning around them. “What’s happening?”
“You,” he said, now holding the underside of her elbows. “I think… you’re the one causing this.”
He stopped her from backing away in surprise, given that it might just tip her over the edge, and he wasn’t entirely sure if Luan would be paying enough attention to haul Kelsey back on board. “I’m a witch,” she said, and her expression went from surprise to horror. “It’s true. I’m—he called me one...”
“It’s a very good thing to be a witch in the Six Isles, trust me on this, love,” he growled. “Keeps the world going around. Makes ships move, people live. So whatever he’s been saying to you—forget it all right now. Own your witchiness. Skies know I’d like to be one myself.” He stroked her once under the chin, before seizing his handkerchief out of his inside coat pocket for her to wipe away the snot and tears. He was pleased to see she wasn’t trying to look away from him now, or hunch into herself. Good start. Maybe she’d be an easier target to retrain than he thought.
Something his sister could be proud of.
“You know,” she whispered, mouth and nose hidden behind the handkerchief, as the last of the lightning vanished, “I used to get a lot of static shocks. Especially when I was emotional. I’d wake up with odd burn marks in my mattress. I used to get in trouble for that… I thought I was cursed.” She took a great sniff. “Guess I am.”
“It’s only a curse if you’re stupid.” He began to push her towards Luan, hoping he’d manage to get some whole, comprehensive sentences out of the tattooed witch. They shuttered themselves in Luan’s alcove, a small, arched seating area sheltered from the outside on three sides, and Luan looked up from the picture she was scribbling. The short-haired, tattooed witch, with duplicate inked sets of three severe black claws coming from her eyes and down her cheeks, gave a great sniff.
“Luan, how nice to see you. Listen, this is Kelsey. Formerly a slave of Lord Feylen, now shortly to be under my employment. She’s just discovered she’s a witch.”
“And?”
Well, this was promising. “I was wondering if you can help her out. I don’t think she knows a lot about the witch stuff. You were a lottery winner from the Undercity, right?” he asked Kelsey, who nodded mutely, eyes nearly popping out of her head at the ominous sight of Luan. “Yes, they teach them to be afraid of witches down there.”
Luan’s mouth curved into a sardonic smile. “They should be.” She sniffed at Kelsey. “Storm witch. I can smell the static from here. Not bad… could make a killing with that kind of power. Literally.”
At this point, Perran could tell that Kelsey was on the verge of exploding with all the information shunted her way. Transformation from abused servant to all-powerful storm witch didn’t happen in a day. But he also didn’t plan to ease her into it gently. It was more of a shove into the deep end, and see if she started swimming or drowning. “Great! I’ll leave you two together and bring you some food. Luan’s a good air witch, Kelsey. She usually helps in apprehending criminals alongside sailing the sky ship. She’s also just fantastic at extracting a confession from them. Her specialty is sucking the oxygen out of someone’s lungs. Does wonders in getting them to talk.” He winked at Kelsey, who gaped at him with eyes that begged, please don’t leave me alone with someone like that, and he promised to be back shortly to get them food. Kelsey, of course, so used to obeying instructions, would stay here, since he’d insinuated it. And she probably didn’t want to upset her new master.
Perhaps he was cruel, but he felt a sudden, wild urge to burst out laughing as he walked away from them.
Sink or swim, little one, he thought with a smirk. Sink or cursing swim.
Chapter Three – Kelsey
“Oh, come now,” Luan said in a low, sultry voice. “I won’t take the air out of your lungs yet. You’ve not done anything wrong.” She wore one of those cruel, teasing smiles, the same kind Kelsey was used to seeing on Charlotte and the other servants. People who took sheer pleasure in watching someone else sweat.
She felt herself shrinking further and further into herself, wishing she could disappear. First, being taken from Master Feylen’s house, separated from the other servants. Next, that police officer talking to her, telling her all those things… then that storm inside her, so overwhelming, like she’d never cried in her life…
And then finding out about her cursed powers. I’m a witch, like he said. I’m a witch. That knowledge sent a cold shiver inside her, compounded with fear since she sat next t
o a witch who quite clearly wasn’t opposed to the whole torture and killing aspect of her powers.
“It’s rare to see a storm witch so old and untrained like you,” Luan continued, running a tongue over her bottom lip. “You must be, what, twenty or such? They usually get discovered really young.”
“Twenty-one,” Kelsey murmured, edging backwards on the seat, as if a few more inches of distance might somehow protect her from an air witch’s grisly wrath.
“You must have been practically sleepwalking through your life, then,” Luan said. She gave Kelsey a disdainful, contemptuous glance, which automatically made Kelsey want to shrink even more. “Having all that power and not using it is just asking for bad treatment.”
Kelsey said nothing to this, only closing her eyes and blocking out the air witch, so she didn’t have to look at her strange face any longer. In the meanwhile, her whole body felt as if the strings had been cut. Everything she’d worked for had vanished. Her poor parents, so delighted, so elated at Kelsey winning the lottery. Waving her goodbye. She was happy then. Full of joy, full of hope for the future. So happy to be able to provide for her family, and maybe one day move them up to the sky with her.
She had… forgotten how that happiness felt. And she did feel every bit as empty as Perran Rus described. Nothing driving her other than the constant need to try and please someone else.
Someone who couldn’t be pleased.
Would it really get any better with new people? Or would they just be more of the same, with an air witch who sucked life out of someone’s lungs, and a man who could transform into a dragon?
“You got family back in the Undercity?” Luan asked then, cutting through the swirl of thoughts. Her tone was less harsh than before, less cruel. “People who you want to visit?”
“My parents.” Kelsey opened her eyes to examine the woman, who looked oddly sinister in the dimmer lighting of the alcove. Luan didn’t smile. Kelsey wondered if the air witch even could. “They think everything is perfect, however.”
“You lied to them?”
“I didn’t want them to know the truth. They’re getting a lot of money from me working up here. I don’t want them to feel like it’s… dirty money or something.”
“You really are stupid,” Luan said. “But the nice kind of stupid, I suppose.”
That sounded like both an insult and a compliment at the same time. “I’m… scared of being sent back to the Undercity.” Or getting a new master that costs me everything I have to please them.
“Only way you’re going back to the Undercity is if your island falls out the sky. Though at this rate, we might be losing a few. Can’t turn your back for a moment until the Creeping Rot makes an appearance somewhere. Even with that fancy cure they’ve engineered and all.”
“I’m sorry. What?”
Luan stared at her, unimpressed. “What d’you know about the Creeping Rot?”
Kelsey gave a helpless shrug in return. “I don’t know what that is.”
“What about the Six Isles and how it runs? What about the different types of witches that exist up here?”
Again, the shrug came, and Kelsey’s cheeks reddened in shame for her lack of knowledge.
“Damnation,” Luan said. “You need some learning. Take it your wonderful lord didn’t see fit to attend to your education?”
“My parents gave me one,” Kelsey said, trying to show she wasn’t completely ignorant. “I can do counting, reading, and other such things.”
“Not good enough. Okay.” The air witch firmly grasped Kelsey by the hand, dragging her away from the alcove. “You go and find Lord Perran. Tell him I said you know bird crap about anything, and you need tutoring. He’ll hit you up with someone.”
“But he told me to… stay...”
“Oh, if he gets angry, just tell him I told you to go. Don’t worry. Now, go. I have a ship to move and I’m not that great at multitasking.” Luan slid back onto her seat and resumed with her drawing, contradicting her previous statement.
Heart rate almost tripling, Kelsey made her way below deck, but not before she gave a last glance at the scenery around her. Fluffy, white cirrus clouds and a few gray, anvil-shaped ones, hinting at a storm.
She did know things. About how clouds formed, why snow fell, and the importance of good hygiene. But true… she didn’t know much about how life truly worked on the Six Isles.
And, they told her she was a witch. Not as an insult, but as a fact. A real, true witch, and no one up here would execute her for it.
She probably couldn’t tell her parents she was one, though. It’d break their hearts.
* * *
The journey to Kelsey’s new world went smoothly, as far as riding through a small storm went. When she’d approached Master Rus again, she’d been surprised at how calm he’d been. No anger for her deserting her station, no annoyance at her for explaining what Luan had said. No, he’d just been… calm. She still found her flinching in the wake of a potential threat, though. On her first night in Master Rus’ house, she had a nightmare, one that involved his smiling, affable features twisting into monstrous hatred, flames breathing out of his serpentine mouth, and a distorted voice that sounded more like Master Feylen’s, telling her she’d never run away, never be allowed to betray him.
She’d wanted to talk more to Master Rus, to get a better sense of him, but he left her almost instantly, needing to tend to police matters. His personal servants, of whom there were about four, smiled and showed her about the place, to the two bathrooms, the small kitchen and pantry, the dining room, the study room, and the three bedrooms, two of them being dormitories.
Smaller than Master Feylen’s home. More humble. The servants slept within two rooms on the upper floor, each with three bunk beds, speaking of a time when more servants populated the place. Kelsey was given a bunk all to herself. All the servants were women, which made Kelsey wonder if there was something else about the place she didn’t know.
No one seemed abused, or bitter, or cruel, however. They just were.
In addition to a new bed and new servants who treated her with interest and respect, Master Rus had left her in the attendance of two tutors. They turned up by the early afternoon, and hammered into her a mix of Isles knowledge and therapy.
They didn’t have therapy back in the Undercity. No one wanted to admit there was anything wrong with themselves. But the therapy here was deeply uncomfortable, always trying to force her to look through windows she didn’t want to look through. Telling her that everything she thought of was actually wrong, because she had allowed someone else to dictate her life.
When Perran Rus came back from work, he dropped in to talk to Kelsey about her progress—every day, for the next month. She’d gone from hard-working, hand-calloused servant who could never do anything right to someone who instead spent her days studying and being told to practice “positive” thinking. So, instead of thinking she was worthless, she needed to remind herself every day why she was blessed.
It was… strange, to say the least. And so, so hard at first. Every time someone looked at her with anger or impatience, she kept wanting to run away, or to have apologies streaming out of her mouth. She didn’t want people to hate her. Didn’t want to be confronted. Didn’t want to have to deal with the emotional battering ram every single day.
But she still kept going, out of that desperation to please someone else.
She didn’t exactly think she’d learned much more than she already did, but there came a day when she woke up and stared at the ceiling of her top bunk, a smile coating her face.
Ella and Ruby would be preparing her a hot chocolate for the morning, as they’d done for a solid three weeks. They always took care to leave the room quietly, so she didn’t wake up. She heard them leave anyway, but this was the first time she’d been able to sleep through their getting up and departing to the kitchens. Somehow, that felt enormous.
Like she trusted them enough not to do anything to her.
Right. I have to… do the positive thing. Her mind drifted over five positive moments in her life. Waking up of her own accord. Learning a Six Isles game which involved trying to navigate a board without being eaten by a dragon. Perran Rus smiling at her. Perran Rus buying her an expensive dress so that it’d be easier for her to remind herself that she wasn’t ugly or worthless. And remembering that Lord Feylen was in jail for six years.
Perfect. She took a moment after getting out of bed to wash and dress herself, marveling that she could actually spend time on this, and decided to wear the new dress in her collection. It was a pale yellow, and modestly covered up her front, the hem reaching past her knees and the sleeves going down to just above her elbows. The extra lining inside it provided some warmth, and she pulled on some white underpants which hugged her legs for additional warmth. Her posture was still bad, so she faced the bathroom mirror, trying to tuck her shoulders back, straighten her spine, and not look as if she were about to scurry away.
What a difference a month made. The shadows under her eyes weren’t so pronounced, and the permanent frown that used to wrap itself around her lips had faded in favor of a neutral expression, one twitch away from a genuine smile. Like her whole face had gained a lift. She enjoyed staring at herself in the mirror just to have the image of before compared to the image of today.
Perhaps something had changed.
Smiling came easier to her lips. She smiled at her own reflection before heading off to the kitchen, where Ruby shoved a hot chocolate in her direction. “You’re sure looking cheerful today,” Ruby said. Ella was holding a baby boy in her arms. He wore a pink dress and his hair was growing out. Pink was considered a masculine color, a muted version of red.
