Aconite and Accusations

by Silver Nord

  I thought I heard someone yell ‘Banzai!’, but it was lost to the rushing winds.

  My vision cleared long enough for me to see a bright burst of blue light when a wave of power shot towards the golden gate. The rising tide had come. As I plummeted downwards, I watched the gate disappear when particles that had once existed to form a barrier between the two dimensions popped back into existence.

  Laughter escaped my lips. I had done it. It had always been the only way to stop things, and I had done it.

  “Victory is ours!” a voice said from the air next to me.

  I looked over and discovered Hemlock was falling by my side.

  I gathered him to me, glad for once that he’d done something so incredibly stupid. It was nice to have company in this dark place.

  “You silly cat, why did you come with me?” I asked, pulling him closer, so he could grip onto my clothes.

  “I’m your familiar. I follow you wherever you go,” Hemlock said, touching me with his surprising confession of devotion. “Even to the bathroom,” he added, ruining it again.

  The descent came to a sudden halt when we hit a surprisingly soft piece of ground in amongst many sharp rocks.

  “I’ll just open the gate again,” the mayor growled, reaching up and waving his hands. I moved to undo the rope tying us together, but it was fading in front of my eyes.

  “What?! Why isn’t it working?!” The mayor’s face creased with fury as his gestures grew even more wild.

  “My best guess is that it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. You’re forgetting that you weren’t the one who made the gate open in the first place. It was planned by the gods, and it had to open at this specific time on this specific date. Perhaps the dimensional walls will still be thin between worlds,” I allowed, thinking of the way monsters had come through and been forced back, “but it won’t be the same. There won’t be a gateway, and there won’t be a dark dimension in Wormwood.”

  Of that much, I was certain. Magic had its rules and those rules often relied upon specific things like times and dates. Not being from a magical family, it was likely the mayor had forgotten that. Otherwise, he’d have been a lot more careful about who and what he’d let near that gateway.

  “I’ve still got my power,” he growled, before frowning at his fingers.

  I smiled, watching his magical aura fade away with my witch sight.

  “Wormwood is being evacuated as we speak. My aunts and the coven are taking care of that.”

  “It’s fading too fast for that,” he said, sounding panicked.

  “Hmmm,” I mused as something else occurred to me. “I think your connection to Wormwood’s power has already been broken. In the same way that a gate was needed to permanently bring the monsters into our world, I don’t think your power lasts in this dimension, because we’re no longer connected to Wormwood.”

  My head was spinning as I tried to follow the rules of magic and the rules that had been twisted. I checked myself and noticed that I still had some power, but it was feeble and sputtering like a fading flame. It was no wonder that the monsters I’d faced had turned back after committing their brief acts of violence… they must have felt the same way as I did.

  I didn’t belong here.

  The mayor released a guttural growl. “You may have ruined everything in Wormwood, but I’ll get back there eventually. I’ll just start all over again. In the meantime, I’m going to kill you…”

  There was a hideous screeching sound. Something swooped down from the sky, nearly taking the mayor’s head off.

  He screamed and crouched down, looking up at the vulture-like creature as it circled up above. “Be gone!” he shouted, firing off a thin remnant of his magic. I watched it hit the feathery side of the bird-thing… and disappear.

  “Uh-oh,” Hemlock muttered, saying it best.

  The monster shrieked again. In the distance, I heard its cry answered by something that sounded even larger. “It’s drawing them here,” I said, knowing it wouldn’t be long before we were found and outnumbered.

  “Hazel, open a way back through and we can all leave,” Gareth said, flapping his arms around ineffectively. “Come on… you’ve already said that I won’t have the same power I used to when we go back to town. I’ll be weakened. I’ve had enough of this. I’ll take my punishment,” he said as the bird swooped down again and he was forced to duck. “Just… help me! I don’t deserve to die.”

  I folded my arms as the bird circled above and the answering shrieks came closer. Time was slipping away, and even though the bird wasn’t after me at the moment, I knew that I wouldn’t be a match for the monsters who were coming.

  “He makes a good point. I’d rather we took him back to Wormwood and locked him up than stay here and die out of spite,” Hemlock said.

  “But the last part of the prophecy…” I replied, concerned that there had been no world trembling under a ruler of night. What if bringing the mayor back was what would start it? I hadn’t died either… and I’d quite like to keep it that way.

  “Hazel! I want to go home!” Hemlock said, looking very small and cat-like for a moment. My heart softened.

  “Fine… we’ll fix everything when we’re back,” I said, feeling for the fabric that divided the dimensions, so I could tear a small hole in it.

  Only… it wasn’t there anymore.

  I opened my eyes again.

  It had always been there.

  Ever since I’d accidentally opened my first tear I’d been able to feel it and touch it. And now it was gone. In its place was thin air.

  “I can’t open it!” I said, suddenly feeling helpless and weak. “We’re stuck here,” I said, realising the truth at last. Just like Gareth Starbright, my connection to the other dimension had been broken and the power I’d been given by a devil was all but gone. I didn’t have the juice to get us out of here.

  We’d all taken a one way ticket to hell.

  “What do we do now?” Hemlock asked me.

  “Run!” Gareth screamed, fleeing from the bird as it began another death dive.

  “That’s the first sensible thing I’ve ever heard him say,” Hemlock commented. I grabbed him and we fled towards the nearest outcrop of rocks, crouching there like cowering rats.

  We were trapped in the dark dimension and there was no way back to Wormwood.

  20

  Only By Death

  Days turned into weeks without me noticing as we walked through the barren wasteland.

  After surviving the initial bird attack, and many smaller skirmishes, we’d settled into our routine of walking the grey ground, searching for anything that looked even vaguely like food. I’d watched the mayor’s power gradually wane, and even though Hemlock had suggested abandoning him, I couldn’t bring myself to sentence him to death. Whatever the prophecy had meant about a ruler of night hadn’t happened.

  Gareth Starbright was back to being a normal man with only the faintest spark of magic, and he was just as stuck in this terrible place as I was. Even though I didn’t like him one bit, being in a partnership came with better chances than trying to survive alone.

  In the days that had followed our entry into the dark dimension, we’d looked for traces of other survivors, but had found nothing more than occasional bones. Sometimes they looked human, sometimes they didn’t… but one thing was clear. Nothing thrived for long in this world. Even the hunters were hunted. Our best chance was to live like mice, hiding under rocks and passing unnoticed on our pilgrimage to nowhere in particular.

  Every day I tried to feel for the skin that separated the worlds, but it was no longer there.

  “I miss cheese strings,” Hemlock said for the thousandth time. We were sitting beneath a starless, ominously-glowing, grey sky keeping watch whilst Gareth took his allotted time to sleep. A thin veneer of trust had built up between us, born out of the necessity of survival. Beyond letting him keep watch, safe in the knowledge that he’d wake me to save his own skin, nothing had chan
ged. He hadn’t repented, and I hadn’t forgiven him for everything he’d done to Wormwood and its people.

  “What’s that?” I said when a blue glow appeared a few metres to the right.

  “Should I wake the traitor?” Hemlock said, the fur on his back rising up on end. “He might keep the monster busy long enough for us to escape if we feed him to it.”

  “No… wait…” I said, watching the blueish thing. There was no magic discernible with witch sight in this world. Gareth and I had quickly realised that using even the smallest amount of our remaining magic drew the monsters right to you, but this blue glow reminded me of magic… magic from a world that I had once belonged to. “I don’t think it’s a monster.”

  “I’m far too handsome to be described that way,” a familiar voice said, and the blueish glow became more solid and person-like.

  “Jesse?” I said, hardly able to believe I was seeing someone from earth again. “How are you here?”

  “Why did it take you so long?” Hemlock cut in.

  “No time for show and tell, we don’t have long. I came to get you out of here as soon as I could. You would not believe the amount of trouble this caused in my family,” he said, referring to the pagan deities. The grin on his face was all the evidence I needed that he was tickled pink by everything that had happened. “They’re furious that you stopped the beginning of the end of the world.”

  “Great. Less talk more rescuing,” Hemlock reminded him.

  “Oh, sure…” Jesse said, looking peeved that we hadn’t congratulated him on his great victory. If he’d been stuck in this dimension for what felt like forever, he’d have lost his sense of humour, too. “It’s pretty simple for a god like me to get here. We’re designed to move between spiritual planes and things like that. Have you ever read Norse mythology? It’s all based on a tree with many branches. Fascinating stuff and a really great metaphor for what actually…”

  “Jesse!” I hissed urgently when I heard the sound of great wingbeats in the distance. Something was coming.

  “All right, I’ll get to it,” he said, lifting his hands. “It’s really simple. In order to get back home, one of you has to agree to be killed.”

  There was dead silence.

  “What?!” I said at the same time Hemlock called shotgun that it wasn’t him.

  Jesse shrugged. “We’re in a realm that relies on the rules of the gods. Gods need sacrifices to make things happen. So… which one of you will it be?”

  “I vote we kill you-know-who,” Hemlock said just as I felt a slight breeze against the back of my neck and jumped forwards. There was the sound of someone stumbling. I spun to discover that Gareth was trying not to fall on his face. In his right hand was the large stone he’d just tried to hit me with.

  “You treacherous scumbag!” I said, automatically bringing my feeble magic down into my fists, furious that he’d just tried to murder me.

  “He said he needed a sacrifice,” Gareth told me with a shrug, his eyes bright with hunger. “I want to go home, Hazel. It’s you or the cat.”

  “Definitely not the cat,” Hemlock said.

  “Do you really think Jesse would take you back if you did manage to get rid of me?” I spat, sparks fizzing in my hands.

  “I’d have to, even if I didn’t want to,” Jesse said cheerfully. “It’s the rules. Sacrifice gets us all back home. No sacrifice and we’re stuck here… including me, by the way. There’s no gas left in this tank.”

  “You came here knowing you could get stuck here?” I was suitably impressed. Prior to now, Jesse hadn’t shown any sign of selflessness.

  “Uh… actually, I thought it would be a pretty quick decision,” he said, winking at Hemlock - who winked back and rubbed his paws together. “I didn’t know he was still kicking.” Jesse nodded towards the mayor… who’d just thrown the rock at me.

  I shoved my sparks of magic at it and made it crash to the earth. “Let’s all talk about this like reasonable human being-“ I tried to say, but I never got to finish the sentence.

  “I’m going back home,” the mayor said with a cruel smile before he unleashed his own remaining magic in a cutting slash.

  “Oh, the ultimate irony,” Jesse said, sounding bemused as the mayor’s devil-deal given magic arced across the darkness towards me.

  Darkness? I suddenly thought, remembering the grey, glowing sky.

  The sky above us had turned pitch black.

  Too late, I remembered the distant sound of wingbeats… which now weren’t distant at all. There was something huge flying above us, something way bigger than the first monster the mayor’s magic had drawn down.

  “Oh,” I muttered, realising that the monster had answered our magical call. We’d brought it here.

  The dead silence of the night air ruptured when the monster let out its booming cry. The earth beneath our feet shook from the sheer power of it.

  The world will shake beneath its ruler of night, that no god nor human hand can smite.

  “Oh, come on!” I muttered when I realised that I’d been wrong about the prophecy once again. It hadn’t been averted. It hadn’t even been completed. And lastly, it hadn’t been written about the mayor. The ruler of night was the monster that was now hunting us… and I already knew how it would end, thanks to the handy prophecy.

  “We have to get out of here now!” Jesse shouted, stating the utterly obvious when the monster swooped down towards the scent and sight of magic.

  “No one use magic!” I commanded when a giant beak stabbed down and ate the mayor’s spell before it could hit me. The bird’s fiery eyes turned my way and I scrambled backwards.

  “Someone do the honourable thing and sacrifice themselves!” Hemlock demanded, running back and forth as he tried to figure out where the monster would land.

  The beak opened, revealing a fiery red interior.

  There was a scorching burst of heat I only managed to avoid at the last moment by throwing myself behind some rocks. I smelled burnt hair and knew I hadn’t entirely got out of the way in time.

  “Eaten by a giant, fire-breathing bird. The ultimate humiliation for a cat!” Hemlock complained, forgetting his previous life as a mythical raven. “And all because you’re too selfish to murder someone to get us home,” he said, looking sideways at me as he tried to make me feel guilty.

  “Tragic, isn’t it?” Gareth said, shooting a smug look Jesse’s way. His expression was clear - Jesse was his ticket out of here.

  “Don’t use magic!” I repeated, dodging and feeling very defenceless without my weapons. Inside me, the small kernel of magic whispered that it would be enough to end the mayor. It could get me back home… if I just struck now.

  I refused to use it.

  To my right, the mayor laughed. “He who dares wins,” he said, flinging a small and deadly lance of magic my way.

  It was the last time he’d ever misuse the power he’d been stealing for so long.

  The fiery bird turned in an instant. Its sharp beak opened wide, seizing the shrieking mayor and swallowing him whole.

  “Would you look at that? A willing sacrifice.” Jesse grinned, observing everything with his hands on his hips.

  “Jesse!” I said urgently when the bird-thing had finished its snack.

  Hemlock said it best when he clawed his way up Jesse’s leg.

  “All right! Let’s get out of here. There’s no place like home!” he said with a sardonic smile, seizing my arm and clicking his heels together.

  “You’ve got to be kiddi— Arrgh!” I said when the world went swirly for a moment, before everything seemed to fall back into place.

  “Are we dead?” Hemlock asked whilst I was still blinking the darkness out of my eyes. My vision cleared, but everything appeared to be white.

  Is he right about us being dead? I wondered, looking around at the unrecognisable white landscape.

  “It’s colder than I expected it to be,” Hemlock said. Right on cue, a whole clump of snow hit me in the face
.

  I turned to Jesse - who was standing next to me looking immensely proud of himself. “This isn’t Wormwood… is it?”

  “Ah, well… moving between dimensions is a tricky thing to do. It takes a lot of skill and calculation. Not to mention, you had covered a lot of ground in the time you were over there…’

  “Where in the world are we?!” I demanded, feeling my short fuse burn down to nothing.

  “You are in the world. And for that, I think you owe me a little thank you.” He puffed his chest out.

  “Do you want to push him off this mountain, or are you still being too self-righteous to kill anyone?” Hemlock muttered.

  “I’ll make an exception,” I told him, stepping forwards.

  “Whoa, whoa! No touchy! Come on, I got you out of the dark dimension, didn’t I? One day, we’re going to look back and laugh about this.”

  “Where. Are. We.” I repeated.

  Jesse made a big show of looking around. “Somewhere in the Himalayas, I believe. More specifically, on top of a mountain,” he added completely unnecessarily.

  “Tell him to get us down. My tail is freezing off,” Hemlock said, grabbing it with both paws and trying to blow some warm air on it.

  “Use your godly power to get us down,” I said to Jesse, knowing I didn’t stand a chance on my own.

  “Ah, I would love to. I really would… but I can’t show any favours to mortal people in the mortal realm. Sorry, it’s part of being a deity. Even a humble, lowly one like me.” He put a hand to his chest and looked deeply apologetic. “However, I may have a solution…” He reached inside his leather jacket and pulled out a familiar piece of parchment. “And all I’d need in return is a small favour…”

  “Kick him off the mountain!” Hemlock yelled, as sick of devil deals as I was.

  Jesse read the mood and hastily put the parchment away. “You know what? I’ll leave you some time to think it over,” he said with a glinting smile. “Enjoy the Himalayas!” He snapped his fingers and disappeared into shadows, leaving us alone on the mountain.