Because You Love To Hate Me

by Ameriie

  The wind was icy and merciless. Sigrid inched nearer to Thomas, aglow as ever with warmth. His eyes, clear and sharp as glass, darted across the water as the boat sliced through the sound. The fisherman killed the engine and the trawler glided toward a dilapidated dock. Sigrid leaped from the boat’s deck to the dock, grasping Thomas’s hand in terror. Luckily, the dock held, though its wooden slats were soft under her tread.

  “Best be careful, miss. Fog’s rolling in,” the mariner said, his Orkney accent nearly unintelligible. “Don’t seem right, a young woman traveling the islands alone.”

  Sigrid narrowed her eyes in confusion. Within moments the trawler receded into the mist.

  “Crazy old dodger,” Thomas muttered, shouldering his pack.

  Eynhallow was tiny and flat, tipped like a dish in a sink. The tall end, buttressed by craggy cliffs, rolled down to a shallow shoreline on the other side. The edges of the island were hidden by a creeping mist. Like many places empty of people, Eynhallow brimmed with all manner of the inhuman. Sigrid felt a lingering dread, and the buzz of unfamiliar magic just under the skin.

  The island’s undulating green was littered with moss-covered boulders and anonymous cairns. The whipping wind sent a chill right to the bone. It was not hard to believe, navigating the pockmarked landscape, that this was about as close as one could get to the edge of the world.

  Thomas set off north and slightly west, across the heart of the island, directly through the monastery remains where Alice Gray and her two fellows had been found. He moved among the ruins with an odd ease, as though returning to a place he once knew. The rubble was crawling with latent hexes. The wind seemed to whistle around the crumbling ruins—or was it a whisper?

  Sigrid crouched in the grass near Alice’s final resting place. What force could possibly have made someone so smart and accomplished willingly lie down to die? Sigrid shut her eyes and tried to call forth any residual magic, anything Alice might have left behind. There was something . . . a wisp of feeling. Sigrid opened herself to it, allowing her heart to be touched by what remained of Alice’s soul.

  Fear.

  Fathomless, unhinged fear. And, tangled in the dread and anger, a warning:

  DON’T TRUST THE CHOICE.

  Sigrid recoiled, pulling her wool coat tight around herself.

  Thomas led them to the shore. Their footsteps in the short, wiry grass made no sound and left no mark. The fog bank had farther advanced, and there was nothing now to differentiate the steel-grey ocean from its ruff of murk. They stood at the water’s edge, squinting.

  Sigrid tried not to think of the other explorers, found on the sand, grasping. The image of their half-rotted bodies crept over her sight in that now-familiar way. In the cold, surrounded by such powerful and foreign energy, she lacked the will to fight off Thomas’s visions. Sigrid saw what he saw: the gruesome spectacle of death. Just beyond the bodies, one of the rowboats was beached, nodding in the lapping waves.

  “Thomas,” Sigrid warned. As quickly as the vision crept in, it washed away. But Sigrid blinked, once, twice, and still the boat remained.

  Thomas grasped it by the bow. He’d conjured the boat whole cloth from his own mind.

  “Are you ready?” he asked, planting one foot inside the vessel. He reached a hand out to her.

  Alice’s warning echoed in Sigrid’s mind. But she and Thomas had come this far. There was no turning back.

  Sigrid took Thomas’s hand and crawled into the boat, gasping as it teetered in the shallows. They shoved off from shore, and within minutes Eynhallow disappeared.

  Sigrid held fast to the iron stake. With her other hand, she worried the carnelian stone hanging around her neck, which seemed to pulse and warm as Thomas rowed.

  “What’s it saying?” Thomas asked. “Are we on the right track?”

  Sigrid shut her eyes and held the stone tight in her palm. She called forth the memory of Alice’s ghost and its desperate cry. As the stone throbbed, Alice’s warning grew louder, stronger, and more urgent.

  “We’re getting closer,” Sigrid said. “Keep rowing.”

  The mist around them, dark as pitch when they left the shore, began to warm and brighten. It was a contrast to the growing burden of Alice’s screams, pressing in on Sigrid’s mind.

  “Closer,” she said, breathing shallow. “Very close.”

  Not a minute later, the boat scraped rocky land. Thomas leaped over the bow and dragged it farther ashore. Steep cliffs loomed over the shore. They walked cautiously, looking for any path, any sign of life.

  “Don’t lose grip of the stake,” Thomas called over his shoulder.

  Sigrid held it to her chest with a white-knuckle grip. If she let go, Hether Blether could disappear entirely. The stone in Sigrid’s hand began to throb with heat. “The sorcerer. He’s near,” she whispered.

  A sharp crackling was the only warning before rocks rained down on them. Thomas grabbed Sigrid and shoved her against the cliff, flattening them both. When the storm of debris slowed, they saw a shape atop the crag, a darker shadow in dark fog.

  Sigrid examined the cliff side. She tucked the iron stake into her bra. Its rough edges cut the gentle skin of her chest. Using slim footholds and crevasses in the cliff’s sheer sides, she climbed closer to the top, until finally her aching fingers grasped a flat edge with grass and stubborn-rooted plants. Sigrid looked up and saw Thomas peering over the side.

  “How did you—”

  Before Sigrid could finish her question she felt her toe slipping. “Help,” she gasped.

  Thomas just stared.

  Sigrid’s grip on the shrubs and barbed plants started to give way, shallow roots peeling back from the crag. With a final desperate heave, Sigrid dragged her elbows over the top. Using the last of her strength, she hauled one leg, then another, over the edge.

  On her knees, she took gasping breaths. From the corner of her eye, she saw the filthy toes of Thomas’s trainers. “You rutting bastard,” she rasped, lifting her head.

  But past Thomas, through the dawn-like glow of mist pressing in on them, a dusky shape moved . . .

  Walking. Toward them.

  Thomas turned. Sigrid stood. The figure moved through a halo of golden light. It took the shape of a broad-chested man wearing an elegantly draped tunic with a wide braided belt, and a heavy cloak lined with fur.

  “It’s you,” Sigrid breathed.

  He had olive skin and a mass of dark curls. His trimmed beard held two prongs of grey. He seemed to hold light, to exude an aura of calm.

  “I don’t know your name,” she said.

  The man shook his head. “You’ve brought much with you.” He waved a hand and the earth beside him cratered, forming a pit of loamy dirt. With a snap of his fingers, a fire appeared there, absent kindling to stoke the flame. It burned green and sulfurous. “It must all be sacrificed to get what you seek.”

  Sigrid shook her head. “How do you know what I’m after?” she asked.

  The man held his arms wide. “You seek everything,” he said simply. “Like all the rest. But first you must choose.”

  “Choose?”

  The man shifted his dark eyes to Thomas. “The others. Or yourself.”

  Sigrid shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Only one of you can continue. If you seek to know all, to apprentice the heavens, to shape the universe—you must make a decision.”

  Sigrid looked down and gasped. The iron stake was in her hand, biting the thin skin of her fingers.

  Thomas stepped back. He stared at her with an eerie calm, the look that had returned fire for so many all-night arguments. The same expression that had gawked, unfeeling, at her as she teetered on the edge of the cliff.

  “This was the choice you gave Alice Gray,” Sigrid said, meeting the sorcerer’s black eyes.

  He raised an eyebrow. “After a fashion.”

  In the end, the expedition had been asked to sacrifice one another so one among them could gain everything. A
nd they’d all said no. Alice had said no.

  Extraordinary, Thomas had called them. Brilliant.

  Selfless. Stupid. Brave.

  Thomas had no weapons, but his hands twitched at his sides, itching to gesture magic into being. Sigrid’s vision began to darken. He was calling magic to him, and pulling her into his sight—he never did learn to control it.

  “What happened to saving the world?” Sigrid whispered.

  “One of us would,” Thomas said, shaking his head. “And one of us can die trying. A legend. Just like Alice.”

  The blackness overwhelmed her vision. Then Sigrid saw herself through Thomas’s eyes, staring back with a look that could cut diamond. Her white-blond hair, loose from its braid, whipped around her head in the chaotic ocean wind. She stood just a few yards from the cliff’s edge, legs spread wide, arms tight at her sides: a warrior’s stance. Her grip on the stake was so tight, blood seeped between her fingers.

  Thomas was waiting for Sigrid to follow in Alice Gray’s footsteps. To take the selfless path—to be brave. When Thomas said Sigrid could have it all, he meant until it cost him something. He wanted her to sacrifice herself, leaving Thomas to save magic and take all the glory.

  But Thomas had said it himself: if Alice had been half as powerful as they were, things would have been different. Don’t trust the choice. In her final moments, Alice had been filled with terror and regret for her sacrifice.

  All Sigrid felt was calm.

  Sigrid watched herself advance on Thomas, arm raised. She witnessed the cold glaze in her own eyes as her hand arced down, burying the iron stake in his stomach. Sigrid grabbed Thomas and shoved him back, pushing the stake farther into his soft belly, dragging him to the cliff’s edge. Her hand was warm with his gushing blood. His body twitched, fighting the lightning-fast march to death.

  “I didn’t come here to save magic,” she said, her ice-blue eyes calm and clear. “I came here to prove that I could.”

  And when she blinked—release. Thomas’s head rolled up to the honeyed sky as his body fell backward to the shore.

  In the next blink, Sigrid returned to herself, looking over the cliff’s edge into nothingness. There was no sound of body meeting rock. The fog was too thick to see where Thomas found his final rest. All was silent besides the persistent waves and the steady clunk-clunk of the dingy battering the rocky shore.

  She turned back to the man, breathing hard, hair in her eyes.

  “Is it resolved?” His dark stare was relentless.

  Sigrid began to walk toward him when pain exploded in her belly. She passed a hand over her stomach. It came away wet with blood. In her shock, a partially chewed khat leaf fell from her mouth.

  Sigrid blinked and saw the bright arc of sky. She blinked and saw her hand coated in gore. She shut her eyes, mind spinning.

  “Is it resolved?” the man repeated. “Have you chosen?”

  Daring to open her eyes, Sigrid saw one thing clearly: the magical flame dancing at the sorcerer’s feet. It cast no shadow, nor emitted any heat. It was nothing more than a trick—a figment of something real, created to give meaning to something abstract, subconscious. And on it would flicker, until the sorcerer had no more need of it.

  Thomas’s body had made no sound, as insubstantial in death as it had been in life. Just a figment of Sigrid’s whim.

  She drew up, the pain in her stomach melting away. The iron stake still lay in the crabgrass, but Sigrid splayed her fingers: no blood or markings remained. She stretched her neck and took a breath, feeling full, buoyed, whole.

  “It is done.”

  “Good,” the man said. He turned, beckoning her to follow. “Then we can begin.”

  SOPHIA LEE’S VILLAIN CHALLENGE TO SARAH ENNI:

  A Dark Sorcerer’s Motives for Seeking Immortality or Omnipotence

  WILL THE REAL VILLAIN PLEASE STAND UP?

  BY SOPHIA LEE

  I don’t like villains.

  Not because they’re evil or because they’re universally unpopular, but because they’re weak—and I don’t mean weak in terms of physical strength or magical power, but that they’re weak in their characterization. So I asked Sarah to create something—or someone—different.

  MY VILLAIN GOALS FOR SARAH:

  1)A villain so compelling, I would question rooting for the protagonist

  2)A villain with comprehensive backstory

  3)A villain with incredible power and a desire to use it

  4)A villain whose moral code was debatable

  5)A villain who would make me reconsider what it means to be a villain

  And so Sarah created Sigrid. Sigrid was a character that left me feeling both satisfied and conflicted.

  HOW SIGRID DOES “VILLAIN” RIGHT:

  1)She wanted to know the limits of her strength

  2)She was focused and determined

  3)She didn’t want to waste her potential

  4)She discouraged complacence

  5)She was talented and powerful

  WAYS SIGRID SETS OFF ALL THE WRONG ALARMS:

  1)Her interests were only for herself, not for the greater good

  2)She was tempted by (and succumbed to her thirst for) power

  3)She believed she murdered her best friend

  4)And felt no remorse about it

  5)And considered no other options

  Sigrid’s character resonated with me so much that I wondered what it revealed about my own character. (Yikes.) Although I could see telltale signs of evil in Sigrid’s actions, I could also easily see myself making similar decisions. It made me realize how much the line between hero and villain could be blurred.

  I’ve always been the protagonist of my own story, but it’s interesting to think I could be a villain in somebody else’s. Somebody out there has tried to attain or achieve something, and I have stood in their way. To an extent, we’re each an encapsulation of both protagonist and antagonist, hero and villain. Sarah highlights the flexibility of these roles with Sigrid alone.

  Sigrid was ambitious, yes, and the immensity of her power was virtually inarguable. But she was also intelligent and relatable and, most importantly, comprehensible in her motivation. She stood in a grey field of ambiguity, and upon finishing the story, I discovered with welcome surprise that I wasn’t entirely convinced that Sigrid was our villain.

  I easily adopted the perception that she was solely a determined girl whose only crime—if even that—was that she wanted to see just how far she could push herself. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I do it every day at school. Of course, she also mercilessly murdered someone who turned out to be unreal, and I, for one, don’t do that at school. At least, not every day. But even though Sigrid was cold and ruthless, she also felt reasonable to a degree that leaves me wondering. Who is the real villain in this story?

  Not only did Sarah leave me with questions about the ethical boundaries that restrict our fictional characters’ categorizations of good and evil, but she also left me pondering the fictional setting of her story—a world that deals with magic in a unique and refreshing way.

  THINGS I STILL WANTED TO KNOW AFTER FINISHING:

  1)Who is the Harry Potter to Sigrid’s Voldemort? Whose antagonist is she?

  2)What will she do with her power?

  3)What will magical politics be like afterward?

  4)Can she decide who’s allowed to use the magic reservoir?

  5)What did Thomas represent?

  Perhaps the answers to all my questions don’t really matter. What I read was enough to make me genuinely think about what makes a villain, and that’s what I wanted from the beginning.

  THE SEA WITCH

  BY MARISSA MEYER

  The razor-sharp barnacles clawed at my fingertips as I strained to wrench them free of the rotting wood. I cursed them repeatedly as I worked, not having known the depths of my hatred for barnacles until this moment. Vicious, stubborn little parasites. Vile, thankless cadgers.

  It wasn’t
long before I was also cursing my own feeble muscles and long, ink-black hair that wouldn’t stop swimming in front of my face and obscuring my vision. Another barnacle sliced into my palm and I let out a scream of frustration. Grabbing the whale-bone knife from my sack, I lifted the blade over my shoulder with every intention of hacking the nasty creatures to pieces, but I resisted the temptation long enough for the fury to pass. My heart was still thumping, but reason began to return. I needed the barnacles intact or this wouldn’t work. I needed them whole.

  I drew in a mouthful of salt water, swished it angrily around my cheeks, then forced it out through my teeth. My tail flicked against the side of the long-drowned ship, making a hollow drumming sound that matched my pulse. Eyeing the barnacles, I resolved that I would not be deterred. They were the last ingredient I needed, and I would have them, no matter if they left my fingertips shredded and scarred. After all, what was this temporary pain to a lifetime of bliss?

  Shoving my drifting hair out of my face, I returned to my work, digging the point of the dagger around the barnacles’ edges. I leveraged it against the wood, prying and grunting. The wood began to crumble and I grasped the edge of a waterlogged plank and pulled hard, bracing my tail against the ship’s side. It creaked and groaned and finally released, just as a particularly cruel barnacle sliced through the pad of my thumb. I yanked my hand away with a snarl. Blood blossomed like pearls on my skin before dispersing in the dark water.

  “That’s it,” I growled, stabbing at the traitorous barnacle. With a pop, it dislodged and sank down toward the ocean floor. It wasn’t as satisfying a death as I would have hoped, but no matter. I had what I’d come for.

  Opening the sack that bobbed on my shoulder, I stashed the splintered plank of barnacle-infested wood inside. Twenty live barnacles, the spell demanded. I had twice that, but I wanted to be sure I had plenty, in case something went wrong and I had to start over. I’d never tried such a complicated spell before, nor had I ever so badly wanted one to work. Needed one to work.