by Haus, Jean
The witch watches the girl’s internal struggle, feels her own soul shift. A cackle comes out between the ancient words. The girl can try to fight. She will not win. She raises her voice and cuts her own wrists. After setting the knife’s blade in the fire, she lets the blood drip from her skin. Drip into the bowl and mix with the girl’s. She begins the last lines, begins the glorious change. The shift of her own soul.
The pull on my soul is strong as her blood drips before my eyes. I have to go. I want to go. Memories fade and only the need to go behind the glass remains. She plucks the hot, red blade from the fire and raises the knife above her. Three last ancient words come out of her mouth in a hiss before she plunges the knife into her chest. A sizzle sounds and blood sprays across the snow.
Yes, she is coming. At last. I’m going under the glass my soul sings just as a boy appears in the shadows beyond the fire.
Chapter 46~Snow
“Nivi!” he yells but somehow the wind catches my name and twists it into a whisper. I can see him from where I float above the fire. Hear the sigh of my name from below and my soul wavers. He races through the smoke and a reminiscence of longing flares. Shadowy memories piece together. The curve of his smile, tenderness in his dark gaze, and the warmth of his embrace break through—like fuzz on a radio—the ancient words holding me. Jai my soul whispers to me. My body below trembles with consciousness, with the truth of being me.
Yet the lure of the mirror, the lure of her words, and the lure of our mixed blood still pull at my soul. Luckily, he doesn’t go after her rather plucks the mirror from my hands and my soul plunges into me with a gasp. The fire’s now before me instead of under me. I can feel the cold again and the sting of the cuts on my wrists.
The joy of being in my own body is cut short as Mali’s chant ends with an earsplitting wail. Her hands let go of the knife at her chest and she stumbles. Rage lines her wrinkles as she stares at Jai. Her fingers curl like claws toward the bowl. Her lips twist into a snarl and gums snap. “Give it to me.”
Jai steps back and terror runs through me. My fear isn’t for me. Instinctively, more than her explanation, I know that bowl is the source of her power. And she’ll do anything to get it.
Even though a blood covered knife juts from her chest, she leaps at him. Jai blocks her enraged blows, but a swipe still gouges his cheek. She keeps attacking him until he knocks her back with a forearm and she plummets into the snow. I let go of the breath I’d been holding but she’s up in seconds, tearing and scratching the arm holding the mirror. Jai spins away from her. She dives at him. He kicks out and her claws seize his wounded leg. His jaw turns hard.
The fire illuminates their strange pose. The bowl is in his out stretched hand. His body, except for his good leg on the ground, is one long horizontal line with Mali curled around his injury. Her claws dig deeper into his stitches and he screams.
I shudder at the sound.
It echoes through the forest as they drop together in a heap. Snow crunches as they roll toward the fire. Arms, legs, and the bowl move in a tumbling mass until they stop just short of the flames. Mali lands on top. Her gnarled hands wrap around Jai’s neck and she growls in glee. He gasps and bucks but doesn’t break free. The wrinkles in her face tighten along with her fingers around his throat.
“Stop! Let him go!” I yell even though I know my cries are useless. The bindings tear and scrape at my skin as I scream and twist. “No! No! No!” I keep yelling while Jai turns a bluish tinge. I was supposed to die not him.
Then his arm slowly lifts the stone mirror at his side until its in her view. Seeing it, she pauses squeezing the life out of him and stares at the stone.
Knowledge hits me like a hammer and I gasp, “Throw it in the fire!”
His fingers toss it into the flames.
“Nooooo!” she shrieks and jumps into the blaze after it. She bends and digs through burning wood and hot coals. Flames lick her body as she rises within the inferno. Her arm extends and the bowl flies out of the fire.
Sizzling, the volcanic rock melts into the snow.
Holding his throat and gasping, Jai sits up.
We watch her staggering in the fire. Though the flames reach past her height, I’m not sure if the blaze can kill her. Her blade didn’t. She weaves and stumbles, drops on her hands and knees. Flames grow, the wind howls, and thick smoke billows. Her bright silhouette collapses in the center causing the fire to roar then rupture. Sparks shoot through the air like a burst of fireworks and land in the snow with a sizzle. My eyes round at the sight of her exploding in the flames as Jai rushes over, shielding me from the hot embers with his body.
But I can’t look away.
Beyond his shoulder, the fire howls, blares with light that brightens the dark forest for a brilliant, vivid second before fading just as fast.
In the sudden silence, I search the flames for her shape. I can’t see anything and strangely, the scent of burning flesh is absent. Yet, I stare at the blaze unsure if this nightmare is truly over, if reality has finally come.
Jai stands on wobbly legs. “Are you okay?” His dark eyes roam over my face.
I remember Mali’s knife cutting me and thinking the prince didn’t exist. But here he is beaten and beautiful and standing before me. But unlike a fairy tale he saved me with more than a kiss, he almost forfeited his life. Like the idiot I am, I start crying again.
“Oh Nivi,” he says with a sweet sigh and falls to his knees. His hug is almost bruising as his grip digs into my back. I don’t complain. He buries his face in my neck. “I didn’t know if I’d make it in time,” he whispers across my skin.
With his warm breath in my ear and his arms around me, I finally realize we’re going to live. This is real. It isn’t an illusion my body less mind has conjured up. Laughter and more tears spill out of me. He did it. He saved me. “What took you so long?” I ask jokingly.
With his arms still around me, he pulls back a bit. “It was easy to track them in the daylight. At night it became harder. Where is Smith?”
I recall their tussle and the sound of male screams. I motion to the fire with my eyes. Jai turns. For a moment, we both stare at the now low flames blowing with the slight breeze. Half as high, the blaze has ended two lives on this cold night, and neither by our hand. Our gazes lock. There’ll be no mourning for what the fire has taken.
Jai tugs at my bindings. “I think they zigzagged all over with the snowmobiles to stop anyone from following them.”
“I don’t remember.”
He tears off a long piece of duct tape. “Luckily, I found their deserted car.”
I wince more at the blood soaking the side leg of his jeans more than the tear of tape on my arms. “How far are we away from the cabin?” My hands come free with a sharp tingling sensation.
He bends behind me and tugs at the plastic on my ankles. “Six, maybe seven miles,” he says.
While I stand with shaky legs, he yanks at the ropes. Seven miles through snow, covered mountainous terrain is a feat. But with an injured leg? “Are you okay?”
“Me?” He glances up at me. “My leg hurts like hell, but I’m not the one who was almost sacrificed.” He unravels the rope crisscrossing my chest. “You were right. Something was very wrong with your step-mom and her mirrors.” The rope falls on the pile of plastic and duct tape at our feet.
“Yeah, like ancient magic wrong.” I don’t feel like adding I told you so.
Now that I’m free of all my bindings, he drags me into his arms again. We hug for a long time in the flickering shadows. His strength flows into me. It warms my cold skin and calms my frightened soul. Strangely, I feel content in the freezing air next to a burning fire on the side of a mountain where I almost lost my soul.
He breaks the silence with a question. “What did she want?”
I bury my face deeper into his shoulder. “Everything, my soul forever, my body for the next twenty years or so,” I mumble against him. He hugs me tighter, doesn’t question my words.
I’m sure he’s seen enough to believe.
“Hey, the key’s still in the ignition.” His chin bumps my head as he nods in direction of the snowmobiles.
I lean back and wince at the new scratches on his face and neck. “Can you drive it?”
“I think so. It should be similar to a motorcycle.” Tugging off his coat, he says, “Here, take this.”
I shake my head. “You’ll be too cold.”
He points at himself. “I’ve got two of your sweatshirts on and long johns. You just have one.”
I glance at the Powerpuff Girls—he must have found my stash of sweatshirts at the cabin—on his chest before taking the coat with a grin. “That shirt does something for you.”
He grins back with a shake of his head.
Suddenly, the wind picks up and screams through the trees. The force whips at our hair and clothes. We look at each other in confusion then at the whirling fire.
Spinning in a circle, the flames begin to grow.
Jai pushes me toward the vehicle, but I stare at the strange glow while dread pounds through my veins. The swirling blaze builds until it creates a pillar. Flames twist and turn into growing ribbons of fire. Reaching toward the dark sky, they grow higher than the trees and the forest around us becomes brighter than midday.
At the top, a dark shadow spews into the night.
Chapter 47~Snow
Black and translucent like a toxic gas, she spills from the column. Between the cracking flames and the wind, I can’t hear anything else. Jai’s mouth moves in the bright light, but the wind catches his words. His hands push at me. I stare at the pillar. He now tugs me, but I stumble into the snow, fall into the cold. The ice on my cut wrists rouses me more than his grip.
Though impossible, she’s still coming for me. Fear explodes in me. I jump up and run to the pile of rope.
“What are you doing?” Jai yells into my face as I kneel. “Let’s go!”
“Tape! I need tape,” I shout back. “Her soul enters through the cut,” I show him a bloody wrist, “and mine leaves through the other.”
Jai immediately kneels in the snow and helps me search. The wind strengthens as we find two long strips of duct tape. Somehow, we stick them across the gashes on my skin while the wind tries to snatch the tape free from our fingers.
As we stand, the blaze crumbles and shadows grow back across the forest. The black scepter above breaks free with the strongest scream of wind yet as a cloud of evil descends in a loud shriek.
My own shriek of terror mixes with hers as we run to the snowmobile. I can feel her presence as wispy tendrils reach for me, slither ice down my back. We’re almost to the snow machine when the darkness overwhelms me.
Everything goes black as evil touches my skin, fills my nose, and pounds into my chest. Pain explodes across my skull. Air disintegrates. Lungs burn. I reach for Jai, but my body trembles with spasms. My arms twitch and twitch and twitch. The tape flaps against my skin. I can’t get out. I’m frozen inside my own body.
In the darkness, hands find me. A strong grip heaves me forward. My head collides with a chest. Arms reach across me. Then I hear the faint roar of an engine. With a swoosh across the snow, we’re out of the vile shadow. I’m sitting in front of him and the engine now booms in my ears.
“Hang on!” Jai yells.
My fingers dig into the vinyl edge of the seat and I crouch so he can see. Dark without the light of the fire, the outline of evergreens whiz by as we fly down the mountain. Dread courses through me while I manage to follow the movements of Jai’s body. We zip around an evergreen before I look over his shoulder.
Above us, black mist flies through the trees like a dark cape dragging tendrils in the wind.
“Go faster!” I shout.
Jai pushes the throttle.
A huge tree stands in our path. We lean left and miss the trunk by an inch. Next, a hill of snow looms ahead. Jai doesn’t arc around it. Instead, he pushes the throttle in more. We hit the incline and fly through the air. The nose of the machine lifts. Jai taps the break with his other thumb.
“Lift your feet!” he yells while we soar through the air.
The landing jars my spine—I’ll take a million spine jars to be free—and we bump up over the snow.
Behind us, she’s coming. Dark wisps curling downward and stretching for me. We’ll never escape her. As long as she has her power, she’ll follow me to the ends of the earth.
“Double back!” I shout. He shakes his head. “We can’t outrun it. We have to destroy the bowl!”
Finally, I feel the nod of his chin. He slows and whips around a tree. The dark spirit passes us. He hits the throttle hard and we speed back up the mountain.
Over his shoulder, I can see her getting closer. Too close. I may not be able to stop her before I can get to the bowl but without another body…“If she enters my body, you have to kill me.” Jai keeps driving, doesn’t respond. “Promise me!”
We lean left to get around a tree on the right.
“You’ll free my soul from the mirror, save my father, and leave her soul in limbo!” With those words, Jai nods. I lean on him content. Well, as content as someone can be while an eight thousand year old evil is chasing her.
The dim shadows from the fire flicker ahead. “Slow down,” I shout up at him. “Let me jump off. She’ll follow you.” At least, I hope she will. He lifts a thumb off the throttle. “Not too much! Just dump me in a snow bank!”
Near the fire, his thumb lets go of the accelerator. I dive into a snowdrift. He races up the mountain. Evil is right behind him. Ignoring the ice covering me, I scramble toward the glowing coals and search for the spot where the mirror landed. I can’t find it. Snow must have filled the hole.
Smoke fills my nose and my eyes water as I dig. The roar of the snowmobile nears. I glance up. The shadow of evil is now ahead of the machine and coming at me. I now dig frantically. My fingers turn numb. I keep digging until I hit dirt. I move over. A long swath of tape comes off my wet arm. The sound of the machine comes closer as the wrath in the trees descends. I’ve dug a trench, still no mirror. Damn. Damn. Damn. I want to cry and scream, but my fingers keep clawing the ice. The snowmobile stops on the other side of the flames as black soars over the fire.
My nails scratch hardness just as evil wraps her cold fingers around me. I clench my jaw and tear the bowl out with frozen hands. My whole body breaks into spasms that threaten to make me drop the vile vessel. Icy fingers creep along my skin and jab into my skull. Pain blazes. Blackness descends. My wrists throb and a cut opens.
The bowl warms in my hand as the voices inside scream at me. Fight her! Fight her! Fight her! Their cries whip threw me. I search for an anchor inside me. I think of my father who will die for her greed and Jai, who will surely be first on her list of death. Then I remember my mother sacrificed for this witch’s quest for beauty and eternal life. For once, I force myself to bring up my mother’s memory. The reminiscence of her kindness, her light, her smile, and her love for me give me strength until anger, love, and desperation wrestle with the evil enclosing me.
I feel pressure on my wrist. Slimy and threatening, it pushes my skin open. FIGHT HER! The voices in the mirror shout. Picturing my mother, imagining her arms around me, I stumble to the edge of the fire. A lightning strike of pain burns the cut on my wrist as evil slides into me. But amid my mother’s love and with the power of their voices, I raise my throbbing arm and drop the ancient mirror into the coals.
Chapter 48~Snow
I fall to my knees within the cloud of my mother’s memory. Cold crunches under my skin, I don’t feel it. I’m wrapped in my mother’s arms, wrapped in her voice telling me she’ll always love me, wrapped in warmth. For one long beautiful second, it like she’s there with me.
Then the cold seeps in, the heat of the fire scorches my face, and she’s gone.
Before me, the black specter howls and curls into itself while the frozen bowl sizzles in the coals. She stretches and screeches, but
in the shadows of daybreak, she appears gray and fractured. An icy tendril stretches toward me. When she touches me, I feel nothing.
“Nivi!” Jai’s frantic voice comes from across the coals.
I can’t look away. Sparks shoot out of the center of the fire. High-pitched popping sounds fill the air as the bowl begins to melt into the coals. I recall her triumphant look in my dreams and I know my face mirrors hers.
“You’re going to get burned.” Jai’s hands tug my waist and drag me through the snow and up the mountain. I still watch the scene from over my shoulder.
Now faint, the spirit hovers over the coals. Sparks flare into flames. Black shadow stretches then condenses. She twirls like a vortex above the blaze until it rises and wraps around her.
Jai pushes me under a huge evergreen tree. The smell of sulfur fills the windy air. Branches tear across my face. The ground trembles and we fall onto the snowy ground. Lying in the cold, we watch the fire turn more violent. It doesn’t scare me. Victory swells in me as her power destroys her.
Flames mesh with black shadow until the fire is ribboned with the essence of Mali. Sparks and ash burst from the blaze and rain down on the mountainside. Trees groan and bend away from the blaze. The ground shifts again and her scream—a lovely knife to my ears—breaks out of the vortex. With the roar of thunder, the flames raise even higher until a surge of light like lightning stuns my eyeballs and an explosion booms across the mountain. Jai covers me while ash and sparks explode everywhere. Under him, I feel the whoosh of hot air pass over us while the forest sways and creaks above us.
Then silence.
My soul is calm.
She’s gone.
We stand with ears ringing from the blast and slowly stumble down the soot dotted mountain. The explosion left nothing—not even one coal—but a circle of ash-covered snow. A slight wisp of heat rises from the ground, all that’s left of Mali’s evil. The evidence of what happened in the shadows of night is just speckles of black and gray on white.
