The Omen of Stones

by Casey L. Bond

  Every time I thought the words, my heart clenched.

  My worst nightmare had finally come to life. The Purists had become bolder and bolder over time because we were too weak to face them head-on. Instead, we decided to turn our heads and ignore their threats because we believed them to be empty. Over the years, we’d even received anonymous letters threatening to kidnap River, but thought them idle nonsense.

  Now our son was paying for our weakness and blatant ignorance of the real threat that stood right before our eyes.

  No spell I’d worked managed to find him. Nothing Arron or Brecan or Mira had done brought us to him. Witches of every House walked in circles for hours, day and night, only taking breaks when necessary, and never all at once. Ethne, Priestess of the House of Fire, guided them, focusing her power with theirs and still, nothing.

  And now we were being blocked by wards. Wards – which should be simple to break, but were more powerful than any I’d seen before. More powerful than those made by the witches of every affinity combined in The Gallows. I scowled at the stones suspended and encircled by brittle grapevine and cursed them for keeping us away, and for being too weak to obliterate them all.

  Tauren’s hand gripped mine. “We will find him,” he vowed.

  “I know,” I rasped.

  I just didn’t know how.

  Omen

  I lay in my bed pretending to sleep until Lindey’s breathing became slow and she began to softly snore. Creeping barefoot across the floor, I left my room. River stood as soon as he heard me stir. We both froze and cringed when the springs on the couch squealed, but Lindey didn’t wake up.

  I waved for him to come to the back door. The front door hadn’t been greased in a while and the hinges squealed, but the back door had. We slipped into the night, the full moon lighting our paths, and moved fast, like shadowy wraiths.

  Through the heart of town would be the quickest way, but it would draw more attention. Some inhabitants had dogs that would bark and wake their owners. Then there were the militia who kept two men patrolling each night. They were supposed to walk the perimeter of the village, but sometimes found their way home to eat and refill their canteens. So we went the long way around, on trails that were deserted except for the stone arches I’d erected every so often along the path.

  Edward Smith was nervous about River’s presence; I wouldn’t put it past him to ask the militia to patrol the area around our home instead of sticking to their perimeter patrol. Once we came to the edge of my wards, I stopped looking for signs that someone had followed us.

  East Village was full of rolling hills, but they stopped abruptly at the point where a crop of three jagged mountains seemed to rise out of nowhere. At the base of the nearest peak, the trees faded from deciduous to evergreen and then stopped altogether. The narrow animal trails that snaked up their craggy faces were paler than the surrounding darker stone. I’d always loved the feel of river rock and shied away from the mountains, but now that I was so close, I felt their strength pulsing through me. I could almost feel them breathe underfoot, as though they were slumbering giants.

  I wanted to wake them.

  See what they could do.

  See what I was capable of.

  “Are you okay?” River asked, snapping me out of the spell I’d cast over myself.

  “Above the tree line, the wards stop,” I croaked.

  “You don’t have to go if you aren’t comfortable, Omen. I can find North Village on my own and return as soon as I can.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not that.”

  “What is it?” he asked gently, clasping my hand in his and brushing his thumb over the back of it.

  I looked up into his honey eyes, even prettier in the moonlight. “It’s…the mountain itself.”

  “The stone,” he guessed, immediately understanding my unease.

  I nodded, lowering my eyes to watch as he brushed his thumb back and forth. Memorizing the feel. Because when we got back and the flood receded, River would have to go back home. I would never see him again. A prince had duties and responsibilities. He wouldn’t have time to worry about a silly girl from The Wilds.

  I barely knew him but somehow felt like I did, that I’d known him my whole life, that I knew him better than I knew myself. And yet, we’d only just met.

  Did all the Fate-Kissed share an instantaneous bond?

  “You should stay here,” he said, quietly releasing my hand. “You’re not even wearing shoes.”

  “I rarely wear shoes, and I’m not staying behind,” I replied firmly, grabbing his hand before it fell away. “I want to go with you.” Tugging on his hand, I pulled him beyond the wards. His steps became labored, but once we were free of my magic, he walked and breathed easier. Did it really have such an effect on him, or was he just reluctant to take me with him?

  We climbed a short distance until River stopped and pulled me close. “I think I can take us up the mountain, but I’m not sure exactly where North Village is. We may have to stop a few times between here and there until I get it right.”

  I nodded, a knot of nervousness forming in my throat.

  “Do you want me to show you how it works first?” he asked, sensing my apprehension.

  “I’d love that.”

  He stepped away and wiggled his fingers in a wave. Then he disappeared, reappearing several feet away.

  My mouth fell open. “How did you do that?” I wasn’t sure what I expected, but I thought when he spirited, he would still be visible. Not disappear entirely.

  Suddenly, he was right in front of me, close enough that his chest brushed mine. “Sorry. I misjudged the distance a smidge.”

  I took a hasty step back, putting distance between us, between me and those sparkling golden eyes.

  “How do you do it?”

  “I promise to teach you on a day when it’s sunny and warm, and a spirit isn’t insisting that I go to the top of a frozen mountain.” River eased toward me, his hands extended. “I have to touch you to bring you with me.”

  That was a problem. Because when he touched me, it felt like he was the sun and I was an eager plant stretching hungry leaves toward it. I wanted nothing but his skin on mine, and for the sun never to set.

  River’s hands gripped my waist tightly. He told me to hold onto him, so I wound my hands around his neck and clasped them, leaning against his chest.

  One moment we were there, just outside of East Village, and the next, we were standing on top of the mountain we’d barely begun to climb.

  The wind was fierce. River had insisted I wear a cloak, but he had none. He shivered as we looked toward the second peak. He held me against him and suddenly we were on that mountainside, looking down into a deep, narrow valley between the tallest two of the three peaks. There, we found the flickering of candlelight.

  North Village was asleep, but I could feel the heady magic radiating from it like an electric current. In a blink, he spirited us to the edge of the village. Where East was spread out with plenty of fields and land between homes, North was huddled together. The buildings, though sparse, were practically on top of one another. Twenty or so, as far as I could tell in the dark.

  There was a strong power here. The mountain itself, the stone of it, roared underfoot, but I sensed another magic that crackled and flared like wood in a hearth.

  “Do you feel that?” I breathed.

  “I do. The wards here are strong, but not as strong as yours,” he admitted.

  A thick fog rolled around us, severing our view of the village.

  “The fog is the ward,” River warned, grabbing my hand tightly. “Don’t let go of me.”

  He spirited us to the village and our feet landed directly on its heart. The fog that greeted us on the outskirts spread and thickened, settling over the village.

  “Someone really doesn’t want us he
re,” I whispered.

  “And someone else does,” River replied, staring over my shoulder.

  “Is she back?”

  River gave a quiet, “She’s standing right behind you.”

  “What is she doing?” I tried but failed to keep the tremble out of my voice. Knowing the spirit was near me made the temperature feel ten times colder than the mountain.

  “She’s waving for me to follow her.”

  “We should,” I blurted, “so we can get home before Lindey wakes. Let’s do what she asks – quickly.”

  River took my hand and we walked carefully through the cold, dense fog and wound our way through the cramped cluster of houses. I felt the wind gusts in my bones. It howled between the buildings, rattling the pines scattered here and there. But it never disturbed the fog.

  He stopped outside a small home in the center of the village and his grip tightened around my hand. A flurry of angry snow began to pelt us, the sharp crystals stinging my face and hands. The wind kicked up. I could barely see through the fog and snow and was terrified to let go of River. If we were separated, we might never find one another in this freak storm.

  River guided us to the door of the home and knocked loudly.

  As the door was jerked open, I sucked in a sharp breath.

  The girl who answered it looked identical to me.

  18

  River

  The girl looked as shocked as I felt. Omen had clutched my hand tightly when the squall started, but she dropped it when the girl answered her door, cupping both hands over her mouth.

  Their hair was the same shade. Their skin the same tone. Their lips bowed in exactly the same way. Their bodies were the same shape and size. The only difference visible were their eyes. The girl from the North Village had eyes that were blue-gray, the color of the steely fog that surrounded us like a warning, or a storm cloud threatening to burst.

  The spirit of the woman hovered behind Omen’s twin.

  A silvery tear fell down her cheek. She reached out for her girls, but before she could reach them, faded away. There was no doubt in my mind now that she was their mother.

  Omen’s twin pulled the door open farther and the fog and snowstorm evaporated, leaving only a cold, clear night in its wake. “I suppose I should invite you in,” she finally said.

  Omen didn’t budge.

  “My name is Sky,” she offered, waiting for one of us to reply.

  I placed a hand at the small of Omen’s back, snapping her out of a daze. She gave Sky our names and slowly stepped inside. In the firelight, I could see that all the color had leached from her face.

  Sky crossed the room and threw another log in the fire. She braced a hand on the mantle, took a deep breath, then turned around and sat on the stone ledge of the fireplace. She watched as Omen and I took a seat on the small sofa.

  The room was thick with unanswered questions and mounting tension.

  The two girls studied one another for several silent moments, broken only by the snapping of wood licked by the fire. Until Sky had enough.

  “Are you going to sit there and stare at me all night, or explain what’s happening?” Sky finally asked. “It’s safe to assume you’re witches. That’s the only way you could’ve broken through my ward.”

  “We are,” Omen answered, an edge to her voice I’d never heard before.

  Sky narrowed her eyes at Omen and nodded. “My mother abandoned me in infancy. Did she raise you?”

  “I was abandoned as well.” Omen’s words were careful. “I was raised by another woman, one who has become like a mother to me.”

  “I was raised by an old widow who hated her life and me for being put into it. Where were you raised? Where are you from?”

  “The answer to both is East Village. Have you always lived in North?” Omen asked.

  Sky nodded. “They found me in the snow. At least our mother took the time to swaddle me so I didn’t freeze to death.”

  With her bitter words, I wasn’t sure Sky’s heart didn’t partially freeze in the snow. It had certainly hardened.

  “I was found beside a river,” Omen told her, her eyes sliding over the walls. “Did our mother leave anything behind for you?”

  “Only the blanket I was wrapped in,” Sky answered with derision. “Did she leave something for you?”

  “A prediction,” Omen replied absently, her mind someplace else. “An unfortunate one, at that.”

  Sky seemed to settle down after that, and the two girls began to talk.

  Their stories were too similar to be coincidental.

  Omen slowly opened up, the tension between the sisters melting gently away. She quietly told Sky about Lindey and how she had basically raised her. Sky was raised by a widow until the age of ten when the woman died, leaving her this very house.

  Leaving her alone.

  Sky asked about me.

  I told Sky who I was, asking her to keep my secret. She agreed to, though I couldn’t help but wonder for how long. I wasn’t sure Sky could be trusted, but her wards weren’t as powerful as Omen’s. I was able to spirit through them, which meant I could spirit Omen and myself home if anything happened.

  “What’s your power?” Sky asked, her eyes scanning over me as if looking for a lie to slip from my lips.

  “Spirit and bone.”

  I told them both about the spirit, revealing that after she’d led me first to Omen and then to Sky, I believed she was their mother. That at first, I’d only wondered if that was the case, but now I knew it to be true. Fate confirmed it with a feeling of rightness deep in my stomach.

  Tears shimmered in Omen’s eyes and I wished I’d told her what I suspected sooner, but I didn’t want to tell her until I was certain. The familial relation was obvious, but there was so much Omen didn’t know about her past, about any relatives she may have. It could’ve been someone else in her family tree. Or so I told myself.

  “What is your magic?” Omen asked her twin.

  “I can read the sky, the weather, stars, every sort of cloud and stream of air that most can’t even see. And I can control it, if needs be. I call it to me and it obeys.”

  Omen swallowed. “Do you feel Fate?”

  Sky finally smiled. “In everything. In the rays of sunshine, in the clouds and wind. In flakes of snow and the sheen of fog. In the rain, and most potently during a violent storm. Fate is loudest then.”

  Sky was Fate-Kissed. Just like her sister.

  Just like me.

  But though the sisters looked the same, Sky was unlike Omen in every other way. She was guarded. Her blue-gray eyes were sharp, skeptical, and wary.

  I wasn’t sure why, or what happened to make her fear strangers, but she did. Even though Omen was clearly a part of her, she was afraid of her. And she was afraid of me.

  As we traded snippets of information, Sky’s eyes continued to rake over Omen appraisingly, as if looking for cracks in her surface. It was only while we were drinking tea and Sky searched Omen again that I realized why she was searching her.

  “Do you think this is a trick of magic?” I asked. “Omen is real, Sky.”

  She scoffed derisively, “And you want me to believe that our dead mother somehow led you both here? I’ve been lied to before. I’ve had magic used against me. I won’t fall for another trick, I’ll promise you that.” She set her cup down with a loud thump. Tea sloshed over the sides and a brown puddle formed on the floor beneath it.

  She leaned in, elbows on her knees. “And what about you?” she challenged with an arched brow. “Why would the Prince of Nautilus ever leave his kingdom? You’d have to be an absolute fool.”

  “What do you know of Nautilus?” I shot back.

  She stood and waved me to the window, throwing back her curtains. Below, far in the distance, my home glittered in the night.

 
“You can only see it when it’s clear,” she noted absently, staring at the shimmering core.

  “I can see these mountains from the palace on a clear night,” I realized. “They looked so far away. I never imagined anyone lived on them.”

  The spirit of their mother reappeared near Omen, placing a hand on her shoulder. Omen shuddered and rubbed her arms, scooting closer to the fire. Their mother moved toward Sky and hovered near her side. Sky’s breath came out in puffs of smoke.

  “It’s suddenly freezing in here,” she observed, reaching for another plank of wood. Sky watched me. “What are you looking at?” She searched the air beside her warily.

  Their mother raised one finger and pointed to Omen. Then she raised two and pointed to Sky. The spirit of their mother then raised three fingers and pointed out of the house. My jaw dropped. “There’s a third?” I asked her.

  She nodded once. She spoke, but her words were so distant, they were hard to make out. She tried again, desperately trying to speak. “Draw energy from me,” I said, standing and walking to her, offering my arm. She clasped onto me and I gasped as her ice-cold fingers seared my skin.

  Omen shrieked.

  I looked over my shoulder to find her covering her mouth.

  “West,” the spirit said before letting go of me.

  Their mother disappeared.

  A tear rolled down Omen’s cheek. I rushed to her, catching her as her knees gave way. “Did you see her?” I asked, my eyes searching hers.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and reopened them, looking all around the room, eyes catching on this and that but never finding her mother. “I saw her. For a fraction of a second. I heard her, too,” she finally answered, tears clogging her throat.

  I looked to Sky, whose haunted expression revealed she had heard and seen their mother as well.

  “You’re shaking,” Omen noted. She grazed her fingers over the spot her mother had taken hold of, warming it.

  My chill wasn’t due to the spirit’s touch or how adamant she was that I help her. It wasn’t even the fact there was a third daughter, a triplet, somewhere out there that she needed me to find and bring her other daughters to.