by Julie Wright
Chapter Sixteen
Note to Self:
Get better locks on my windows.
Good morning!”
My stomach lurched into my throat as I sat up straight in bed to see Elva. In my room this time. And staring right at me.
I tried to say something, but only an embarrassing squawk came from my throat. I tried again, my hands shaking and numb. “What do you want?”
“Do your powers scare you?” she asked.
“No.” I totally lied. “My grandma’s helping. There isn’t anything to be afraid of.”
Elva grinned. “There’s the Troll Trials. Any witch in her right mind would be terrified.”
“Why?” I glanced at the clock. Just after midnight. Where was Farmor? Why hadn’t she come back?
“Some witches die in the trials.” She looked at her nails as if this information wasn’t very interesting. This was way more than a shadow or echo. She responded to direct questions. Farmor promised to be back before the witching hours. Where was she?
I lifted my chin. What right did this arrogant girl in black knee boots have to come into my room during my witching hours, just so she can scare me about my Troll Trials? “You must have lived through them. If you can, I can.”
Her smile widened, and her dark eyes glittered. “I didn’t survive the trials, dummy. I didn’t have to do them.”
Some witches died? But this girl didn’t have to do them? “Are you Elva?”
She smiled. Her red lips curving up against her pale face. Instead of answering, she hopped off my windowsill and wandered my room, picking up and inspecting everything she came near, as if she was doing an investigation, and my room had been offered up as a crime scene.
I wanted to tell her to quit touching my stuff, but didn’t dare. Power rolled off of her. “Why do you want me to give my power back to the stones?” I asked
Her face darkened, and the violet snail shell in her hand that I’d picked up on the beach at Martha’s Vineyard shattered in her grasp. “Because it’s not yours!” she shouted.
Okay. That was terrifying. “Look, you’d better go. I don’t know what you want with me, but I don’t want you here anymore.”
Her expression calmed, and she even smiled, though the smile didn’t sit right on her face. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to frighten you.” She reached forward as if to touch me but stopped and dropped her hand. “It’s a beautiful cape you wear,” she said slowly, changing the subject.
“My grandma made it.”
“Yes. All Troll Kvinnor wear the protection in my lands.” She took a deep breath. “I am coming to you because you’re stronger than the others—the strongest the bloodlines have seen in years. I’m coming to you because you want to do the right thing. There are many who will try to own you in the coming days. The Troll Kvinnor, the trolls, the Troll King himself. I am offering you a chance to break the binding—to be free and to right the wrong done so long ago by those girls in the forest.”
She had my full attention. “What wrong?”
“They went to the cave of power and stole power that did not belong to them. Those stones held the female thread of power belonging to the trolls. It was never meant for humans. It belonged to the trolls. You can return it to them; give back what your ancestors stole.”
I was confused. I’d seen the history lesson Farmor had shown me. Elva was right. The girls had stumbled upon something that wasn’t meant for them, but . . . Britta—the dark-haired beauty who had signed a scroll in her own blood to end the battle—she was the sort of woman who would have never let the conflict between humans and trolls get to a battle if it was over something that didn’t belong to her. She would have handed it back immediately and apologized. I wasn’t sure how I knew, having only seen a few shadows of her past, but I did know. “I . . . I think I’ll wait. My grandma can tell me what I need to do.”
Elva’s face darkened again as she turned away from me. But her reflection stayed visible in the mirror. Her face flickered for a moment. Her eyes widened and turned red and weepy looking. Her nose grew until it was bulbous and pocked. The moment left as quickly as it came. I opened my mouth to ask what the crap was going on when she turned back to me.
“Like tonight? Shouldn’t your grandmother be training you right now? That’s what the witching hours are for, aren’t they? But where is she? She was summoned by the trolls. They summon her, and she goes. That’s what I mean when I say they will own you if you take the vows. It’s barbaric. And they’re taking your grandmother on purpose. They don’t want you trained. They want you bound. Your grandmother wasn’t even there to help you for your sixteenth birthday.”
“She wanted—”
“Of course she wanted to,” Elva interrupted. “Of course she’s a good grandmother who loves you and wants to be with you to help guide you through one of the most difficult transitions of your life. But she couldn’t. Because she was summoned. A bound Kvinna can’t defy the summon of the trolls.”
Elva circled my bed, pacing from one side to the other. I sat straighter, hoping she didn’t hear the way my heart slammed against my ribs. She leaned close to my ear but didn’t touch me. “Your fear trickles off of you with every drop of sweat sliding between your shoulder blades,” she whispered. “Don’t be afraid. You have a choice right now. You don’t have to be part of the Bonded Three. They made those promises centuries before you were ever born. Why should you be bound based on the words of people lying under gravestones covered in years of dust? You can choose to be your own woman—not owned by trolls.”
Was she serious? Would taking the trials make me a slave to the trolls? Where was Farmor? Was the binding as bad as all that? Would I be a slave if I took the trials and vows?
On the wind, I heard a voice say, “Think about it, Allyson. Bound or free . . . decide, while choices are still yours.”
She was gone.
Chapter Seventeen
Note to self:
Echoes don’t kidnap people.
Farmor still had not returned when I woke up that morning. I didn’t know what to do. Getting back to sleep even after the witching hours was a nightmare because of my midnight visitor. I was exhausted and beyond confused. Farmor told me I would be summoned that night—before the witching hours because the trials had to be over by the time the witching hours began. I didn’t know what that meant exactly.
Elva had said some girls died in the trials. Was she serious? Or was she just messing with me, trying to freak me out for some sick, weird purpose of her own? The one thing she said that really messed me up was that the power needed to be given back because it was stolen. I had a moral issue with keeping stolen goods.
And then the idea of me being bound to the whims of trolls? That sounded pretty awful too. She had some excellent points, and why would she come all the way forward in time to warn me and make this request if it wasn’t important?
By early afternoon, I had pretty much decided to do what Elva had told me. Farmor still hadn’t shown up, and her disappearance at this time when I needed her seemed like more proof that Elva was right. I didn’t want to be a slave to trolls. No amount of getting chores done by magic made up for me losing my own free will.
The good news was that my parents were finally done sleeping. Mom had made breakfast and grudgingly invited Dad to eat since he was already in the house, and she couldn’t think of a way to un-invite him. They were almost actually nice to each other during the meal. Score points for adults actually acting like adults for a change. They discussed the situation with me in hushed whispers and glances my direction. I tried not to pay any attention to them, since I had studying to do.
I listened to the magic book all morning from the moment I woke up. I read it while dressing, while I walked Robison to Heather’s, and while doing dishes. It was while walking home and listening to the chapter on conjuring shadows from the past that it occurred to me that Farmor had meant it when she said there was no way to have seen Elva from the past. Ev
erything my voice in the earbuds lectured about shadows and echoes confirmed that they could not under any circumstances act or be acted upon. They were like pictures in a photo album. I could not any more go back and change the outfit I chose to wear for yearbook pictures—a crime against fashion—than one of these shadows could talk to me about something currently. They were recordings—literal echoes.
It wasn’t Elva. It couldn’t have been.
Unless it was a ghost.
Did I believe in ghosts?
No.
But then . . . a few days ago, I didn’t believe in witches or trolls either.
I hurried to listen to the rest of the book, painfully aware of the darkening sky, and then went back to listen to the shadow chapter again. Then I stood up and whispered a wish. “I wish to see Britta getting the stones in the cave of power.”
My room dimmed until there were only four glowing orbs in the darkness. Britta’s tall, sure form passed me as she made her way to the stone she would touch. I tried to interact with her, to stop her, to offer her a drink, anything. But the book had been right. She wouldn’t interact with me. She was basically a movie.
For all I knew, this Elva pretender was another Troll Kvinna who was afraid I’d be a better witch than she was. I didn’t know how the witching world worked. Maybe she was my direct competition for something—a sort of Lisa Snoddy upgrade. But I knew Farmor. She’d never lead me to do something wrong. “I can’t listen to someone I don’t even know,” I said out loud.
“Typical.” A snide word came from the right, but the speaker remained hidden in darkness.
“I wish the shadow vision would stop,” I said, grateful when the room lighted and the cave with the stones disappeared.
Elva, or the person with Elva’s face, sat on my windowsill again. Behind her, the windows revealed the night sky already. I’d been in the shadow cave a longer time than I’d thought.
“You’re weak. You’re going to be bound and made a slave because you’re like cattle—too dumb to know you’re being led to the slaughter, and too weak to get away even if you did know. Pathetic. But since you won’t see reason, I always have a back-up plan.” She threw something at me. Instinctively I caught it.
It was a scrying glass pendant on a woven cord. As it sat in the palm of my hand, the red surface bubbled until it revealed a face I’d been staring at for years.
Jake Warren.
He was pounding on something and yelling.
“What’s happening to him?” I asked.
She smiled. “Sorry, let me turn up the volume.”
Then I heard him, yelling, shouting as his fists pounded furiously on what looked like a rock wall. “Let me out! Get me out of here!”
She smiled. “You can keep the glass. It’s made out of all natural elements so you’ll even be able to sneak it into the trials. It’ll help you remember why you should listen to me. Just remember, Ally, I tried to do this the nice way. He’ll be waiting for you at the end of the trials. If you don’t release your power before you take the vows, he’ll stop making any noise at all. Good luck. Your boyfriend is depending on you not dying.” The window behind her flew open, and she streamed out like wisps of smoke.
She’d taken Jake.
Chapter Eighteen
Note to self:
Dragon boats are sarcastic, unhelpful, and deserve to sink.
I paced. What could I do except pace? This wasn’t fun anymore. Magic was trouble. I was fine in my life without magic. Getting hanged by the Salem Witches cheerleaders at some mock trial was a breeze compared to all this other craziness.
She’d taken Jake—the guy who was going to kiss me just as soon as I figured out how to stop reminding him of his mom. Whoever that chick was, she was going to be seriously sorry she stole my first kiss.
And how would I explain this when I got him back?
If I got him back.
No. Thinking like that didn’t help. I had to do the trials. The penalty was death. I really, really didn’t want to die tonight. Like the creep running around with Elva’s face said, Jake depended on me staying alive. Okay. Breathe, Ally. Think and breathe. I pulled the cord over my neck and hid the scrying glass pendant under my shirt. She’d said the scrying glass had to be sneaked into the trials, and I believed her. I didn’t dare lose this contact with Jake. It was my only link to finding him later.
“Farmor! I need you!”
I sat on my bed and wrapped myself in my cape holding it around me like an embrace. I almost wished Farmor to me, but the last time I’d done that she nearly took my head off with a tree branch. And I didn’t know how things worked. Could she be summoned away from the Troll King like he summoned her away from me?
My lip quivered. Lame. No crying.
A noise off to the side made me turn my head, and I yelped when I realized someone stood next to me.
Actually, four people stood just to the side of my bed. All of them eyed me as if I planned on running away. Honestly? I wanted to run. There were two women—not much older than me. One had red hair that rolled down the length of her back in waves. The other had blonde hair cropped short like a boy. She was a little shorter than the redhead. Both of them had on capes like mine over their clothes. The blonde’s cape was a pale pink and embroidered with cherry blossoms. Underneath the cape she wore a gown made of huge green leaves. The red head’s cape was a deep green that matched her leafy gown. Her cape was embroidered with a flurrying pattern of leaves in a lighter green color. Apparently witches had a dress code. They looked normal enough and weren’t the reason I wanted to run.
The other two people were two of the ugliest guys I’d seen in a long time. They had huge globular noses, and their faces were cratered and slightly red as though someone had just scrubbed them down with a scouring pad. Their ears stuck out of masses of wild dark hair, and more of that wiry hair stuck out of their ears. When they tried to smile at me, their opened mouths revealed crooked, yellowed teeth. Their ragged pants were made out of an animal skin of some sort, and their shirts were woven out of vine and leather. The shorter one of them had earrings made out of acorns dangling from golden hoops.
“Who are you? Where’s my Farmor?” I asked, feeling a little hysterical over their sudden arrival. These people didn’t knock or anything. They just showed up, unannounced and creeping me out. Did my parents know that my room had become a way station for strangers?
The redhead stepped closer to my bed. “Allyson Katrine Peterson, you are summoned for your vows. Are you prepared?”
Prepared? She wanted to know if I was prepared? I would have laughed at her if she didn’t pretty much scare the wishes out of me. I’d had less than a week to adjust to this whole thing, and most of my adjustment time had been spent trying to fix every stupid thing I’d done since my birthday. I wasn’t prepared for anything.
She waited though. All of them waited as though they expected me to actually answer them, as though this was part of some ceremony, and my prolonged silence was somehow messing things up. So I did the only thing that came to me—I pretended to know what was going on. Jake needed me to get through the trials.
I nodded. “I’m prepared.” I’m terrified, and worried, and Robison was totally right when he said they wasted the cool stuff on the wrong kid!
“And who escorts this girl to her vows?”
The blonde sighed as though the whole ceremony had already bored her. The ugly guys looked around for someone to act as my escort. I hoped they weren’t planning on being my escorts. My mom loved little pithy sayings. Whenever my mom said beauty is only skin deep while my parents were still married, my dad would lean over and whisper to me, “But ugly goes down to the bone.” If he saw these guys, he’d know he was right. They weren’t just ugly as in not attractive, but ugly like—I stopped and really looked at them. Understanding dawned on me. They were ugly like trolls.
Before I could ask any questions about real live trolls entering my bedroom, Farmor materialized out of the moo
nlight shining in through my window. “I come as her escort through the trials, the vows, and the court that will prove her.”
As relieved as I felt to see Farmor, her words offered very little in the way of comfort. What if the trials proved me as something less than she wanted me to be?
Farmor held out her hand to me. I looked from her to the trolls and witches, took a deep breath, and focused on only her. Farmor would never let them hurt me. If I stayed focused on her, I wouldn’t be scared.
When her hand folded around mine, the shorter troll with the acorn earrings said, “It begins again.”
And a sudden rushing feeling of wind flew into my face, blowing my hair back and stinging my eyes. The only word to describe how I felt was unraveled. I felt like I’d been undone, and all the pieces of me were desperately struggling to cling to the wind that carried me away. The wind roared past my ears like rushing water and shattering glass all at the same time.
What happens if some of the pieces can’t hold on? I wondered. What happens if pieces of me get lost somewhere in the cyclone carrying me over oceans and land masses? Was there a way to retrieve lost particles of myself? Would I notice that anything was even missing, or would I forget the piece ever existed and move on, unaware that I was no longer whole?
And in spite of feeling unraveled, all of me worked as it should. My cheeks tingled in the rushing wind. My ears still heard; my eyes still saw. The moon sped along the ocean’s surface underneath me and chased me in the sky above. I wasn’t cold. I wasn’t hot. My cape and hair billowed behind me like miniature jet streams. It lasted forever, yet there had been no time to blink.
And without warning of any kind, we weren’t moving at all. We stood in a grove of trees. My head still reeled as though I’d been spinning in circles the way I had when I was little. It felt like the sky lodged itself in my throat somewhere between Salem and wherever we’d ended up in Sweden. If I’d thought it had been cold at home, it was nothing compared to the way the cold bit into me from all sides now. I tucked myself deeper into the folds of my cape to hold in my own warmth.
