She and her husband had been walking down the street in a city called New York. They rounded a corner and suddenly found themselves standing in a forest in Ethermoor. The journal Esther had written was about her life in a country called the United States of America, which was in the realm of Kalmovar. She wrote it to pass down to future generations so that they would know what life in Kalmovar was like.
Willow also packed a gold-plated and jewel-studded conch shell in her bag.
The way she received the conch shell was the strangest thing that Willow had ever experienced. A dolphin jumped out of the water, holding the shell in its mouth. It then tossed the shell up into the air and swatted it into her boat with its tail. The dolphin disappeared underneath the surface of the water. Willow looked for the dolphin again but did not find it. She took the shell home that day, and it had been sitting on a shelf in her room ever since. Willow felt a sort of odd connection to it, like it was given to her for safekeeping.
Willow shoved it into the bag along with the other items. She pulled her sword belt out of her closet, strapped it around her waist, and walked downstairs and out to the pasture. Her horse, Starfire, galloped up to the gate, excited to see her owner. Starfire was a beautiful horse with a bright white coat.
“Hey, girl, we’re going for a ride,” Willow said. The horse bobbed its head up and down in excitement. Willow opened the gate and walked Starfire out. She saddled her, and the two walked to the front of the house where Garrison and Andaria were already sitting on their horses, waiting for Willow. They trotted away from Willow’s home and headed toward town.
Willow felt a stab of sadness as she watched her house disappear in the distance. She had purchased it when she was twenty with her own money she made from working at the shop.
The family walked through the village toward the city gate. As they passed a coffee shop, Willow suddenly was overcome with the sensation that they were being watched. She looked backward and saw two men looking at them.
Willow lowered her voice and said, “Let’s go faster.”
“We can’t just gallop through a crowd!” Andaria hissed.
As they trotted along, the feeling grew stronger and stronger. Willow glanced backward and saw the same two men looking in a bookshop window. “I think we are being followed,” Willow whispered to her mother.
“Are you sure?” Andaria asked.
Willow looked behind them, and the two men had disappeared. Perhaps in her terror-induced state, she had imagined that the men were following them. After all, the bookshop wasn’t very far from the coffee shop. Maybe they were just two men stopping at the bookshop after drinking coffee.
She tried to shake the feeling that they were being watched, but couldn’t. As Willow, Andaria, and Garrison rode through the village gate, Willow felt tears welling up in her eyes. She knew it might be the last time she would ever see her hometown. As soon as the village was out of sight, Willow heard horses galloping behind them.
She turned around and saw seven men wearing Ethermoorian Police uniforms galloping after them.
“Run!” Willow screamed. She and her parents took off galloping through the forest. Andaria held her hand up and prepared to throw a lightning bolt at them. Garrison uncapped the can of purple powder and held it in his left hand. He yanked his sword out of his sword belt with his right hand and prepared to swing it at the officers. He swung the can of sleeping dust high into the air, engulfing one of the policemen in the dust.
The man and his horse fell over on the ground, unconscious. Willow saw one of the men gallop up beside her. She held up her sword in her right hand and prepared to strike him. She felt her electricity tingling in her fingertips and raised her left hand to throw a lightning bolt.As she was preparing to throw a bolt, black dust rained down all around her. She suddenly felt so weak that she fell to the ground. Iron dust! she thought. Showering someone in iron dust was another method the government used to try to catch fairies and sorcerers.
She tried to stand up, but she was so weak that she slumped right back down on the ground. She saw her mother topple off her horse, and heard the sounds of swords clashing. “Don’t you hurt them!” she heard her father scream.
“You know what the penalty is for practicing magic!” one of the officers roared.
To Willow’s horror, she heard the sound of a sword tearing through human flesh. She saw her father’s body slump to the ground, and blood gushed forth from the stab wound. “Father!” she said weakly. She heard the horses scream in terror. Willow saw Starfire rear up on her hind legs and kick at some of the attackers with her front hooves.
She felt something sharp pierce her skin, and everything went dark.
Halvor was working in the palace that evening. An owl suddenly flew up to the window and sat on the ledge. A letter was tied to his talon. Halvor was slightly unnerved that Mango Mail service could actually find him in his study. He untied the letter from the owl’s talon. Halvor saw a rat running along the floor of his study. He caught it by the tail and handed it to the owl. The owl took the rat in its beak and flew away. Halvor opened the letter.
It read:
Dear Palace Alchemist,
My name is Maxamillian Sanderson. I am a police officer in the Ethermoorian Police Force. Today we arrested two sorceresses who were practicing magic in the town of Fernhollow. Two magic books and a strange map to a place called the Pyraxia Library were found with one of the prisoners at the time of her arrest.
Sincerely,
Officer Maxamillian Sanderson
Excitement flooded Halvor. He had been searching for a map to the fabled Pyraxia Library for many years, and now, one had been found.
Halvor walked into the police station in the city of Beshear. He held up his palace clearance badge to show the guards standing outside the jail that he was an employee of the king, there on official business.
“Right this way, sir,” one of the guards said. He was aware that a letter had been sent to the palace alchemist about the arrest of sorceresses. A perplexed look came over the guard’s face. He knew that it was at least a week-long journey to the palace on horseback, and the letter had only been sent earlier that evening.
The guard led Halvor into a room. Halvor saw a brown bag sitting on a table. He grinned wildly upon seeing the map lying beside the bag.
“Sir, my name is Maxamillian. I am the one who sent you the letter. We have jailed the suspected sorceress from Fernhollow, along with her daughter,” one of the men in the room said as he shook hands with Halvor.
“Good, good!” Halvor replied.
“These were the things we found with her when we had her arrested,” Maxamillian said, gesturing to the bag and map.
“I will take all these things with me. His Majesty will see to it that they are destroyed.”
He picked up the bag and stuffed the map inside. When he arrived back in his study, he wrote down all the directions to the library and then drew the map for himself to keep, and handed the items and the map over to King Banderon.
Willow slowly opened her eyes and gradually became aware that she was lying on a cold, hard stone floor. A plate of food and a cup of liquid sat on the floor next to her. Willow looked around and saw that she was all alone in a jail cell, and her bag of books and clothes was not with her. Light streamed in through a small window near the ceiling. Her left hand was handcuffed to one of the cell bars.
“Ah, you’re awake!” a man’s voice said.
Willow looked up and saw a guard standing outside the cell, looking at her. “Eat up. You’ve been unconscious since yesterday,” he said.
Willow looked up and down the cell block and noticed that she was the only inmate there. “Where are my parents?” she asked.
“Your mother has been taken in for questioning, and your father, well, he did not cooperate with the law.” A sick smile stretched across the guard’s face. Rage flooded Willow. She jumped off the ground and lunged toward the guard, but she was yanked backward by the ha
ndcuffs.
She raised her arm in the air to try to shoot electricity out of her fingertips at the guard, but she discovered that she did not feel any electricity traveling from her brain to her hands.
He roared with laughter. “Oh, you won’t be able to do any magic for a while. You were injected with liquid iron. Don’t worry, it will wear off in a day or so if you are allowed to live that long.”
“Why did you give me food if I’m going to be killed anyway?” Willow asked.
“Because you should at least be comfortable while you await your trial.”
A sense of resolve and determination welled up inside Willow. If I am going to die young, I will die a hero!
“I am not going to be ashamed of who I am or what I did for a living! I created cures for deadly diseases that no fully human doctor could cure, and I saved lives!” Willow spat. She hoped that she could soften the guard’s heart somewhat.
He shrugged his shoulders and said, “It’s not me you have to convince. It’s the jury and the judge. Your mother is being questioned about her crimes as we speak. Now, eat your meal and be ready when the police come to question you.”
The man walked away, leaving Willow alone with the plate of food. She was so hungry that she would eat anything at that moment. She shoved her spoon into the pile of green beans and put it into her mouth. They were cold and slimy, and Willow wondered how long the plate had been sitting there before she woke up. She reminded herself that prisoners were not exactly fed gourmet dinners. Willow cringed as she chewed the cold green beans and the slimy meat that, judging from the taste of it, had already started to rot.
Willow wished desperately that she could turn into a cloud, find her mother, and escape from the prison. She heard a door open and saw her mother being led down the hall by a prison guard. He opened the door to the cell next to Willow’s and locked her inside.
“Come on, your turn,” the guard said as he opened Willow’s cell door.
He put an iron handcuff around Willow’s free hand before unlocking her other hand from the cuff that bound her to the cell bars. He led her down the hallway, and they stopped in front of another door. Another guard opened the door, and the two walked through it.
They entered a tiny dark room that was only lit by a few candelabras hanging on the wall and two oil lamps sitting on a desk. The desk was covered with papers. Drawings of people and clippings from the obituary sections of various newspapers stared up at the ceiling. A handsome young man with black hair and black eyes stood behind the desk. He appeared to be preoccupied with the pieces of paper he held in his hands. The young man looked up and smiled at Willow.
“Ah, Willow! Come, sit down!” he said, pointing at two chairs that sat in front of his desk. Willow hated him for speaking to her so cheerfully when she was about to be sentenced to death. The guard led Willow to one of the chairs, and she sat down. “My name is Riordan, and I will be questioning you about your involvement in the potions business.”
Willow filled with fury.
“Your mother told me your name. You are Willow Nightshade,” the man continued.
“Yes,” Willow replied.
“Do you know why you were arrested?”
“Yes, and I will plead guilty to practicing magic!” Willow said with audible determination in her voice.
“Well, that’s very brave of you to want to plead guilty to a crime punishable by death,” Riordan replied.
Willow heard an air of admiration in his voice, which she thought was very odd.
Riordan took a deep breath. “However, that’s not what I want to talk to you about right now. Do any of these people look familiar to you?” he asked, waving his hand over the desk.
“No, and even if they did, I wouldn’t tell you!” Willow replied defiantly. One of the drawings caught her eye. It was one of a young woman with long black hair. As she looked at it, an image of her gold-plated conch shell flashed in her mind. That seashell was probably now in the hands of people who wished to kill her.
“You don’t know anything about these people or how they died?” Riordan asked.
“No, I’ve never seen any of them before in my life. Aren’t those obituaries there?” Willow replied, pointing to the newspaper clippings. She started to wonder if the man was even going to question her about her profession.
“Yes, they are. I’m asking you about these people because they were magical apothecaries like you. They died under strange circumstances,” Riordan said.
What does any of this have to do with me? Willow thought.
“I don’t know any other magical people besides my mother. How do you know they were sorceresses and sorcerers?” Willow asked.
“We have our ways,” Riordan responded.
“Like the ways that you have for finding out if people like my mother and I are sorceresses?” Willow spat. Her body trembled as rage filled her veins. Riordan’s mouth dropped open as if he realized he had touched a nerve with Willow.
“Just one last question, and then I will let you go back to your cell,” he said. “Have you seen any ghost-like creatures around your town?”
This was certainly not a question Willow had expected to be asked, and she had never seen such a creature. “No, what are you talking about?”
Riordan began organizing the papers on the desk. “Well, it looks like I’m done here,” he said. He behaved as if he didn’t want to answer Willow’s question. The guard unlocked the handcuffs from her chair and led her back to her cell. He locked her wrist to the bars again, locked the cage door, and sat down in a chair across from Willow’s cell.
Andaria leaned close to the bars of her own cell and hissed, “What did he ask you?”
Willow replied, “He asked me if I knew about any unusual deaths of other apothecaries.” She noticed that the guard’s head was bobbing up and down as if he was struggling to stay awake. He looked oddly oblivious to everything they were saying to each other.
“There was one in Seaside just a few weeks ago,” Andaria replied.
The guard lost his battle to stay awake, and he fell asleep. Willow started to look around the cell for something she could use to pry the lock open. “How do you know that?”
Suddenly, the cell block door opened, and Riordan walked inside. Andaria and Willow immediately got quiet. He stopped in front of the guard and shook his shoulder, but the guard did not move. “Hello?” he asked. Still, the guard did not respond. Riordan smiled. “All right, you two are going to be free.”
“What?” Willow gasped, shocked.
“Shhh! No time to explain!” he hissed. He took a small brown bottle out of his pocket and uncorked it. He reached through the bars of Willow’s cell door and dumped the jar’s contents on Willow’s head. She was suddenly covered in a pink power that smelled like strawberries, buttercream cake frosting, blueberries, and cinnamon. She felt herself shrinking, and she shrunk down so small that the cracks in the floor were suddenly as big as little hills. Willow saw Riordan reach into Andaria’s cage and dump the odd powder on her head too.
Willow felt two new appendages grow on her back and she felt herself growing several new legs. What’s happening to me? she wondered. She grew extremely nervous, and the two new appendages began flapping so hard that she lifted right off the ground. Willow saw a large blue butterfly sitting on the floor in the cell where her mother had been sitting just seconds earlier. Willow was struck with the realization that she, too, had been transformed into a butterfly.
“Go! Fly out that window there! It’s the least I can do to help you! The powder will wear off in an hour!” Riordan said, gesturing to the window in Willow’s cell.
Willow tried to thank him, but when she tried to open her mouth, she discovered that she did not even have a mouth, just a proboscis like a butterfly. Willow and Andaria flew out of the window and high above the surrounding city. She recognized it as being the city of Beshear, which was the capital city of the principality of Aralin. The family went there on occasion to sel
l their potions at festivals.
Willow tried to talk to her mother, but was quickly reminded that she didn’t have a mouth. She discovered that butterflies communicated using their flight patterns. Willow and Andaria looked for the road that led from Beshear to Fernhollow, which they knew was a long two-day walk.
They didn’t make it very far out of the village before the butterfly powder began to wear off. Willow and Andaria landed on the ground and transformed back into their human selves.
“Well, that was . . . an experience,” Willow said.
“They took our bags!” Andaria commented. She stuck her hand in her pocket and discovered that the paper that had the library’s name on it was also gone. “Gosh, I wrote the name of that library on that paper! What was it?”
“What paper and what library?” Willow asked.
“There was a woman who happened to be in the shop when the police arrived. She told me her granddaughter was a Sea Sorceress who was killed by ghost-like creatures.” Andaria’s eyes widened. “Riordan asked me if I had seen any ghost-like creatures around town. He also asked me if I knew about the deaths of other apothecaries, and I connected the two. I didn’t say anything to him because I thought he was an officer like all the rest.”
“What was the woman’s name?”
“Her name was Cecilia. She lived in Seaside, and she told me that her granddaughter was killed by ghost-like creatures a few weeks ago. She also told us about a library that someone told her would be safe to go to. I wrote down the name of it and drew a map to it, but I think the officers took it when they arrested us.”
Willow remembered that her father had told her they would explain the situation that occurred in the shop. “Father said you two would tell me about the confrontation with the police after I got dressed.”
Andaria’s face suddenly became very stern. She put her hand on Willow’s shoulder and said, “Yes, Willow, there is something extremely important that I must tell you. The men who came in the shop told us that the government has invented a formula that can detect magic in our potions.”
The Night Sorceresses Page 4
