creepy hollow 05.5 - scarlett

by morgan, rachel

  “I’m so glad to see that you’ve woken,” one of them said, coming toward her. The other woman hovered near the fireplace. “My name is Malena, and this is Sorena.” She gestured over her shoulder to the second woman, who hovered near the fireplace. “How are you feeling?” Her accent was the same as the younger girl’s, but there was something odd about her voice. Something like a deep, subtle reverberation beneath the feminine tones. As she moved closer, Beth realized what was different about her eyes: her irises were as black as her pupils, and only a little bit of white showed on either side.

  Beth shrunk away from the woman, stuttering, “I-I’m fine.”

  “You’re afraid,” Malena said. “I can see that. We’ll leave you with Tilda for now. Would you like some food? You must be famished.”

  “F-food? What—what’s in it?”

  Malena laughed, revealing sharp, pointed teeth. Pointed teeth? Who were these people? “Never fear, dear girl,” Malena said. “It is not poisoned. We don’t wish to harm you.” She patted Beth’s leg through the blanket with hands that ended in nails as pointed as her teeth. “Eat up, stay warm, and we’ll speak again in the morning.”

  She and Sorena left, and Tilda walked to the fireplace. “Who—what are they?” Beth asked.

  “Witches,” Tilda said simply. “My sisters and I are witches.”

  “Witches?” Beth struggled to remember what she’d heard of witches as a child. They existed and the sirens didn’t like them—no one liked them, really—but that was about all she could come up with. “You’re all witches?” she said tentatively. “But you …”

  “I don’t look like them?” Tilda said, looking over her shoulder with a small smile. “I haven’t been through the Change yet. My time is still coming.”

  “So … you’re not actually a witch?”

  “I am born to be one. Witch magic runs through my veins.” She waved at the pot hanging above the flames. It rose up and floated down onto the stones beside the fireplace. “But no, I am not truly a witch until I’ve been through the Change.” She walked across the room and fetched a bowl from a cupboard.

  “Where are we?” Beth asked.

  “In the Dark North inside a volcano.”

  Beth wondered if she’d heard correctly. “A—a volcano?”

  “Don’t worry, we have magic keeping us safe. You should eat something,” Tilda added, removing the lid from the pot. “You must be starving after being out in the cold for so long.”

  “I’m …” Beth had been about to say she wasn’t hungry, but the smell that reached her as Tilda ladled stew into a bowl was mouthwatering. Something that smelled so good couldn’t be poisonous, could it? Besides, if these witches wanted her dead, they could have left her out on the mountainside. She took the bowl from Tilda—being careful not to touch her—and ate the tiniest of mouthfuls. It was heavenly, filling her with delicious warmth.

  “How did you end up out there in the cold?” Tilda asked, sitting on the edge of the couch and pulling her feet up.

  “I don’t actually know,” Beth said between mouthfuls. “I don’t know if it was the ring or someone else’s magic.” Before she knew it, she was spilling her entire story. Her date with Jack, her power awakening, returning to the sirens, accidentally hurting Delphine and realizing she could never turn this power off. When she realized how much she’d said, she looked down at her empty bowl in suspicion. She certainly hadn’t planned to tell Tilda everything. Had there been some sort of truth potion in the stew? Some spell that loosened her tongue?

  “I’m so sorry about all of that,” Tilda said gently. “It must be so scary to have a power you can’t control. I can help you if you want. I mean, if you’re not in a rush to leave.” She said it so simply, as if there were no question that she could help Beth. Rather the question was whether Beth wanted help.

  “You—Did you say you can help me? With this ability I don’t know how to turn off?”

  “Yes.”

  If that were true, then of course Beth wanted help. She needed help. And considering that she had nowhere to go, she was certainly in no rush to leave. But she wasn’t naive enough to think that Tilda would offer this help simply from the goodness of her heart. “What do you want in return?” she asked.

  Tilda frowned. “You think I have a hidden motive?” Then she smiled and looked down at her hands. “Well, I suppose I do. I’m curious, you see. Your power sounds so interesting.”

  A warning sounded at the back of Beth’s mind. “My power is dangerous.”

  “All power is dangerous, Scarlett,” Tilda said, “if used with dangerous intent. But you shouldn’t be afraid of it. It’s part of who you are, and it’s beautiful, just as you are. You should embrace it. Master it, instead of letting it master you.”

  Embrace it … master it … It was an enticing thought, especially since the one thing Beth wanted above all else was to return to her normal life. Not to Dad, necessarily. She’d happily say goodbye to him if she could find within herself the kind of self-assurance this girl Tilda seemed to possess. But she wanted desperately to return to Jack and Zoe. To live a normal life with them, never fearing that her magic might hurt either of them. “I do want to master this power,” she said hesitantly. “I’m just not sure if …” Not sure if I can trust you, is what she wanted to say, but it sounded rude and unfounded, especially when these women had rescued her from an icy death.

  “The other thing,” Tilda added, “is that it can be so boring here at times. My sisters are quite a bit older than I am, and it’s just not the same as having a friend nearby.” She smiled. “So you see. I am not entirely selfless.”

  Beth bit her lip, not wanting to be fooled by anyone but not ready to let go of the idea that a normal life could once again be hers. “Do you really think you can help me?”

  “Of course. It will take a bit of time, but I have no doubt my sisters and I can help.”

  Beth nodded slowly. “Okay.”

  “So you’ll stay?” Tilda clasped her hands together.

  “I’ll stay.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Come on,” Tilda called back to Beth. “If we hurry, we’ll be able to see the sunrise.”

  Beth hastened after the fair-haired girl with the brightly lit glass ball in her hand as she led the way along twisting, rough-hewn tunnels. She had spent the night beside the kitchen fire, warm and comfortable until Tilda had woken her and told her to dress quickly. A pile of winter clothes waited for her on the kitchen table: thick pants, gloves, a jacket, and fur-lined boots. Beside the glowing embers of the fire, Beth had felt overdressed, but now, in the stone tunnels, the thick clothing did little to hide the growing chill as she and Tilda headed for the frozen land outside.

  They turned a corner in the tunnel, and the stone walls came abruptly to an end. Instead, they were surrounded now by pale blue ice. Tilda stopped, lifted the glass ball above her head, and allowed it to brighten further. They were no longer in a tunnel, but in a vast cave with a flat, gleaming floor of ice and a ceiling and walls that curved and bent as though water had been flowing overhead at the exact moment the cave had been frozen into being.

  Awestruck, Beth found herself unable to speak. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Tilda said, moving forward once more. “During the day when the sun is up, light shines through the ice from outside. It’s even more beautiful then.” Beth took a tentative step forward onto the ice, and Tilda added, “Don’t worry, you shouldn’t slip. The soles of those boots are enchanted.”

  The soles may have been enchanted, but that didn’t stop Beth from experiencing several wobbling, uncertain moments as she tried to keep up with Tilda. She passed pillars of ice and formations that looked like slides, as though streams had wound their way through the air before becoming solid ice. On the far side of the cave, by the opening they were aiming for, the light became more purple than blue. As they neared it, Tilda lowered her glass ball and squeezed it until it shrunk to the size of a marble. She pushed it into one o
f her pockets as Beth stepped up to the opening and looked out.

  A flat expanse of snow-dusted ice stretched before her, surrounded on all sides by snowy slopes rising into jagged mountain peaks. Streaks of purple and orange colored the sky, bathing the entire world in peachy pink light. “We’re bordered completely by mountains, but there, through that gap—” Tilda pointed at the space between two mountain peaks “—you’ll see the sun rising.”

  It was so beautiful, Beth barely noticed she was shivering. “Stunning,” she whispered.

  “Come on.” Tilda reached for Beth’s hand. “Let’s run to the other side so you can look back and see the glaciers.”

  Beth paused, looking at Tilda’s hand and remembering the last person she’d touched: her mother. She pictured Evaline’s horrified face as energy had been forcibly sucked from her body, filling Beth with a rush, a high, an undeniable—

  “It’s frozen solid, I promise,” Tilda said, misreading Beth’s hesitation. “We can run and jump and dance and it won’t break.”

  I’m wearing gloves, she reminded herself. I won’t hurt her. She swallowed and took Tilda’s hand—and nothing happened.

  Tilda tugged Beth forward onto the ice. Beth stumbled a few steps before slipping onto her hands and knees, laughing at the same time. “Didn’t you say these boots are enchanted?”

  “Well, they do require at least a little bit of coordination on your part,” Tilda said with a chuckle. “Shall we slide instead?” She pulled Beth to her feet, turned around to face the cave they’d just left, blew across her raised palm, and—

  A gust of air whooshed away from them, pushing them toward the other side of the frozen lake. Beth squealed, throwing her free hand out to balance herself as she and Tilda slid backward. As they came to a slow halt, Beth lost her balance once more and landed on her backside. Her groan of pain was mixed with laughter. “You can definitely tell I’m only half siren,” she said through her giggles. “I can’t imagine my mother ever falling.”

  “I’m sure you’ll become more graceful,” Tilda said as she helped Beth up again. “You’re still growing into your new powers.”

  Beth dusted snow off her gloves and looked across to the other side of the lake where the cave entrance was. The small, dark opening was dwarfed by gargantuan pieces of ice above and around it, seemingly stuck together. “Are those glaciers?” she asked.

  “Yes. We were inside a glacier cave just now.”

  “But isn’t that dangerous? Glaciers move and break, don’t they?”

  “Not here. We enchanted them to stay this way.”

  Beth breathed out a sigh of wonder. “That must have taken a lot of magic.”

  “It did. Many powerful enchantments bound together over time. Malena did most of the hard work.”

  Beth looked around as she ran her hands up and down her arms in an attempt to stop shivering. “Do other witches live around here?”

  “Not close enough that you’d run into any them out here, but yes. The Dark North is full of witches. We aren’t particularly welcome in the rest of the world.” At Beth’s questioning gaze she added, “Our magic is … different. Other fae are afraid of it.”

  “Oh.” Her words reminded Beth how much she had to learn of this world. “Do you see the other witches often?”

  “Not that much,” Tilda said with a shrug. “We aren’t part of a coven, so we mainly stick to ourselves. It’s just the three of us and my nephew, Thoren. Malena’s son.” She cast a glance at Beth’s shivering form and shook her head in amusement. “Let’s get back inside before you shake so much you fall over again. We can have breakfast and then start figuring out your magic.”

  Back inside the cozy kitchen, Malena’s porridge warmed Beth all the way down to her toes. She sat quietly at one end of the bench, her gloves still on in case she accidentally touched someone. She listened to the easy chatter of the three women. They spoke mainly in English, probably for her benefit, but occasionally they’d slip into that foreign, lilting tongue full of rounded vowels and rolling R’s.

  Beth had almost finished her breakfast when heavy footfalls sounded in the stone tunnel just outside the kitchen door. She looked over her shoulder in alarm. Hadn’t Tilda said it was just the three of them and—

  “Oh, hey. You must be the girl I just moved out of my room for,” said the tall guy who stepped into the kitchen. He met Beth’s gaze through the long strands of blonde hair that fell across his eyes. A hint of a smile pulled at his lips.

  “Um—sorry—what?”

  Tilda jumped up and skipped to his side, saying, “Scarlett this is Thoren.”

  Beth repeated the name in her mind, wondering why she recognized it. “Oh. You’re—the nephew?” For some reason, she’d been imagining a child, but Thoren looked as old as Tilda.

  “Yes, this is my little nephew,” Tilda said, reaching up to pat Thoren’s broad shoulder.

  Thoren chuckled. “And this is my old aunt.” He looped an arm around Tilda’s shoulders. “So old that she’d barely been in this world two years when I was born.”

  Beth tucked her hair behind her ears self-consciously. “Did you, um, say something about moving out of your room for me?”

  “Yes. All done,” Thoren said as he moved to the table and sat opposite Beth.

  “Oh, no, you don’t have to do that. I’m happy on the couch in here.”

  “It’s no problem,” he said. “There’s a storeroom my mother’s been trying to get me to clean out for ages. She thinks I’ll finally get it done now that the room is to become my bedroom.”

  A storeroom? Mortified, Beth rushed on. “No, please, I feel terrible making you leave your own bedroom. And I probably won’t be here for—”

  “It’s been decided, Scarlett,” Malena said with a smile that revealed her pointed teeth. She clicked her nails across the wooden table, and the rest of Beth’s words died on her tongue. It wasn’t worth arguing with a woman who could rip her eyeballs out with one swipe of her hand.

  Her eyes flicked back to Thoren’s for a moment, and he gave her another hesitant smile. “Best not to disagree with my mother,” he whispered. “She likes to get her way.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Holy hat!” Beth exclaimed when she saw the river of molten lava flowing down the wall. She stumbled backward, expecting the molten rock to spew forth at any second and burn her alive.

  “Holy hat?” Tilda repeated with a laugh as Beth backed into her and the bundle of towels she was carrying. “I’ve never heard that one before.”

  “Are you insane?” Beth demanded. “That’s—that’s—”

  “The inside of a volcano?” Tilda supplied.

  “Yes! Like, right here!”

  “The lava stream and most of its heat are contained by magic.” Tilda stepped past Beth and walked into the steamy room. “It’s perfectly safe.”

  Not convinced, Beth hovered in the doorway. “Is it still safe when a person with no control over her magic is in the room?”

  “Yes. The spells are stronger than you can imagine. And even if you were somehow more powerful, the spells themselves don’t reside in this room, so you have no way of accidentally affecting them.”

  “I see.” Beth took a few hesitant steps into the room. Three pools of different sizes bubbled up from beneath the stone floor, sending wisps of steam curling into the air. She loosened her scarf. “At least it’s warm in here.”

  “I thought you’d appreciate the warmth.” Tilda walked to the stone bench, moved a basket of bottles and soaps onto the floor, and spread the towels out before sitting down. “That’s why I brought you here. The kitchen’s warm too, but Sorena’s busy in there today, and Malena doesn’t like to share her workshop.” She patted the empty space beside her and said, “Tell me about your magic.”

  Beth sat. “I know nothing. Let’s start with that.”

  “Nothing at all? I’m talking about regular magic, not the magic that sucks the life out of people.”

  “I kn
ow,” Beth said. “So am I. This magic appeared only a few days ago, remember? And after almost killing my boyfriend, I haven’t exactly been keen to experiment with anything else magical. When I first got to the sirens, I was radiating magic everywhere. Odd things kept happening around me. But by yesterday afternoon, before the party, that had stopped. I don’t know how, though.”

  Tilda let out a slow breath. “I see. This could take some time then. You’ll need to master the basics of control before we can go anywhere near your … unique ability.”

  Beth hung her head. “I’m sorry. I know I’m wasting your time. You probably have far more important things to do.”

  “Not really. I’ve been preparing for the Change, but in between my training, I help Malena and Sorena with their products. It’s really not the most exciting way to pass the time.”

  “Products?” Beth asked.

  “They make potions and salves and herb mixes and that sort of thing. Thoren does the deliveries every week to the stores that stock our wares, and I’m the one who gets left with boring tasks like labeling jars and counting the number of unicorn hearts we have left.”

  Beth waited for Tilda to start laughing, to say that she was merely joking, but of course she wasn’t. Unicorns were real, she had to remind herself, and as foreign as it sounded, there were probably plenty of potions that called for unicorn heart. “Uh, that sounds very interesting,” she said, hurrying to fill the silence. “Does Thoren have to travel far?” Picturing the vast snow-covered landscape outside, she imagined that the nearest form of civilization must be hundreds of miles away.

  “All over the world, I think.”

  “Oh. So … I assume you have magical travel methods like the sirens then?”

  “Yes, of course. We wouldn’t live all the way out here if we didn’t have easy access to the rest of the world. We use candles. I’ll show you sometime.”