I took off my boots and emptied them of all the magic amulets. Then I gathered those into the bowl. They clanked merrily going in. Thank goodness I kept the amulets in my boots, as well.
Then I knelt and closed my eyes and focused on summoning up a good connection to the ether.
I called Elsa, Loreleine, Lily, and everyone. Hopeful, I perked up my ears. I chanted patiently. But none of them answered.
My hands grew weary from the motions.
I used different spells, focusing on different locations. No answer.
I left the amulets in the bowl. I’d taken them out a handful of times already, only to put them back again soon after, because I tried calling every other moment, anyway.
No answer.
Oh, if I’d only had a formal education, a good mentor, a kind soul to help me out learning about all things magic. As it was, the sisters and I had had to figure these things out on our own. Maybe I was missing something.
Walking around, I’d found more windows, and I could see through all of them, thought they all were covered with a veil of blue. I’d established there was a garden on one side of the building and a forest on one. What looked like a castle courtyard was right in front of the dizzying lobby.
The windows were unbreakable. I’d tried everything. I’d even thrown an iron rod straight into one, enhanced by magic. The demon—I assumed—had done a good job trapping me here.
I’d found one brightly lit-up spot in this castle of murky gloom: a giant, white and gold hall that housed a single bed.
But that room gave me the creeps, and I saw no reason to spend time there.
So, I kept returning to my bowl and called up the ether, again and again. I’d keep doing it ‘till my voice went hoarse.
It was baffling. Why wasn’t anyone picking up? Why couldn’t they hear me?
In my desperation, I even considered calling the gargoyle demon, if he at least might hear me, but I wasn’t crazy enough to want to see him.
I had no recognition of days or weeks. Honestly, for the life of me, I couldn’t have said what year it was or how many hours I spent sitting at one spot.
I sprinkled the pinch of ash into the bowl. As it landed on top of all my beautiful amulets, they flashed silver for a passing moment. At least some things worked around here.
A window opened up in the air, hovering in front of me, or rather, not a real window, but a circle holding an image. A looking eye.
Through the looking eye, I watched as hands with long nails stirred steaming, green soup in an iron kettle over open fire.
Almost inaudible words blended in with the bubbling of the soup and the crackling of the fire; this witch was muttering. She was citing a curse, though all wrong, it seemed. As her face peeked under the handcrafted, pointy wool hat, I recognised the face…Duchess Rachel.
But she looked older, now. A handful of years older. And her previously so brilliant red hair fell wispy and limp around her face, unwashed. She wore no paint on her face — no rouge on the cheeks, no powder, that was for sure, from her blueish complexion. If anything, soot and dirt covered her puffy face now. Her lips were red, though, as if she’d been eating beets…or used beet juice as a substitute for better face paint cosmetics? Was she so poor? This perplexed me.
In a jerk, Rachel leaned in and spat into the kettle, startling me.
“You! What are you staring at! Why aren’t you answering me? I can see you’re watching,” she growled as if I’d somehow insulted her. “Can’t you hear me?”
“I can now,” I muttered back, feeling strange talking to her, surrounded by the empty dank, dark room. I still didn’t know where I was.
“What are you gaping at? Don’t you know who I am, you ugly ram or buck or whatever you are? I’m Wretched Rachel — everybody knows about my magic. You don’t call me up without me noticing. Oh, I notice. I see your tricks…And then you don’t acknowledge me, as if I couldn’t see you back? I can. How dare you ignore me? Answer me. You can’t ignore me, scum…” She began humming to herself, and made me think I’d interrupted her while she’d been singing at her pots. But her turning her attention away from me like that, as if she couldn’t keep her thoughts in order, made me think she had lost her mind. She looked like a lunatic.
Could she really be talking to me? Did she see me, as well? I’d made lots of calls through ether, and I’d never been able to see so clearly.
I leaned in and caught my breath, as my face was engulfed by light, but it was only that the sunlight from the real windows cut the air at the spot where I’d leaned in—the actual, small, stained-glass window of the castle, covered by the magic extra veil.
“Ooh, who have we here?” Rachel said in a flashy, musical voice. “Not at all who I was expecting, but oh, my, you will do! Are you not one of the fae sisters…That oldest one? The one who disappeared? You’re her!”
Rachel leaned in, too—towards the soup in the kettle. I imagined she must have seen my image in there.
I didn’t need to peek into kettles, I saw her as if a canvas was stretched from floor to ceiling. Her and some of her surroundings were drawn out like a shivering, sheer painting in the air, not unlike one nails a wall hanging on a wall.
“By the innards of a bear, are you really that witch from the christening of John’s daughter, years ago?”
Years ago?
“Oh, yes, you are, that fae witch who tried to curse my John and ended up binding his daughter to that curse, instead…You look like her, it is you, isn’t it?”
Rachel broke into a hard laughter that didn’t sound like even she found anything to laugh about it. It was as if she just had to laugh, because it’s what sorceresses do…And to put me in my place, I imagined. And make me feel small.
She sniffed, quieting down, scratched her nose, and did a sort of a shake with her shoulders. “Well, you sure crawled under some rock. Nobody could understand how you disappeared like that. The army scoured the earth, the woods, the bottoms of some ponds and lakes, even. Nothing. They pressured townspeople to spill the beans…Not to say tortured, no! John says, we weren’t there, we don’t know what the soldiers did…But you know how these things are. Even so, no-one seemed to know a thing. Oh, you disappeared so perfectly off the face of the Earth, it would have been easy to believe that John himself had ordered you killed and gotten rid of all the evidence! But then we would have known, ourselves, wouldn’t we! Oh, John and I had a laugh over that one! Oh, boy, we sure laughed! But you were gone, good riddance! No fae heart for John, but oh, well!”
“You are a lunatic…”
“And where are you now? I think I see roses and…tile walls?”
“Ah, yes, the tile walls of this building…those were set up by a demon,” I snapped, just to see her cut down on some of that attitude.
Rachel straightened up, pulling back, with an apprehensive face. “What kind of a demon? What business have you with demons, now?”
“I would have nothing to do with him, at all, if I had any say in it myself, but right now my demon friend doesn’t feel like listening. I was in a predicament, and now I am not…What do you mean, years ago?”
“Well, you disappeared right after Aurora’s christening, and the girl is eighteen, now, so it’s been about that much in years. She wasn’t a year old at the time of that godawful christening incident.”
“The girl…? Eighteen?” Princess Aurora was eighteen?
“Or wait, is she more?” Rachel said, absent-mindedly, resting her chin on an out-stretched finger. She looked preoccupied, not mocking. “No. Her birthday is in the summer months, so she must be just about to turn eighteen. Yes.” Rachel looked into the kettle again, or, through the ether. It was disorienting. I was seeing images from two different points of view at once.
“But John doesn’t talk about her much, as you can imagine…Why do you care? She got over that little mishap of yours, that clumsy curse. And then you disappeared. Nobody remembers the whole thing. Nobody thinks back on it anymore, at all
.”
Oh, how she was wrong about that one. If Aurora was just about to turn eighteen, then there wasn’t much time left. The curse was coming to the final stages.
“What season is it right now?” I asked.
“Heavens, you don’t know? What kind of a demon concoction are you trapped in, anyway? It’s spring out here in the world of the normal people. I don’t know what it is where you’re lolling…”
Oh, no. A month or two, then, perhaps? And I’d spent eighteen years here, myself? Eighteen years of my life, at this!
I had to get out and start doing something! But the thing was, I couldn’t get out. That’s why I’d had to start making my ether calls. Maybe, if someone came and found me, someone with magic…
That’s why I’d called the ether air frequencies in the first place, only, never in my wildest dreams had I thought it would be Rachel who would answer. I’d expected my sisters to be the first to pick up.
If Rachel was the only one listening in to the ether frequencies and hearing my message, perhaps there weren’t many people listening right now — or nowadays — and perhaps she was my only hope? But was it wise to let give her clues as to where I was? My brain overloaded from the rushed thoughts scurrying through it. I had to have someone come in and break the walls; it had to be someone with magic; Rachel had magic…Foolproof logic, no?
But I couldn’t invite Rachel here. Rachel would cut out my fae heart.
I brought down my hands, pressing my palms against the flame. Then I held on, grimacing, squeezing my eyes shut abasing the pain, until the burn died.
There. The image dissipated. The room turned dark, again, and silent.
I was alone.
In the mirror, my image awaited, but I’d stood in place for a minute and couldn’t find the guts to open my eyes and look.
Only a moment ago, I’d left the silent room, where Rachel had so greedily reached towards me with her intangible claws. I didn’t feel comfortable in that room, now, despite the rose-framed, sun-lit windows. I’d walked the cold corridors of the castle, worried.
Most of the castle was dark, unfurnished. Only the eerie hall with the bed was fabulous and constantly lit. It had to be how the demon had planned it, for some purpose of his own. For all I knew, perhaps he’d thought I’d enjoy dark and cool, as I was growing horns now, like some demon halfling…
I felt so very alone, something I wasn’t used to, because I’d always loved my safe and peaceful solitude.
The mirror was still there.
I brought my hands to my eyes and felt them, just to be sure. One thing was still sure: I had two perfectly well-seeing eyes.
I opened my eyes.
My next breath took a moment to come through. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. My eyes were opaque, lacking whites, the whole visible parts the color of tar.
But I could see.
Just to make sure, I sought out my worst scratch again, the bad one, or rather, where it should have been—and it still wasn’t there.
The demon had spent great energies on all this. What was I to think of this? For eighteen years I’d rotted here, whisked away from the rest of the world…
My fingers inadvertently traced the corners of my eyes, searching for wrinkles or any mystic telltale signs of time scurrying past faster than natural.
I had half expected to see an old hag, but no, I looked about the same age, only…a different beast. Pale. Tired. As if some illness had been wearing me out.
I’d never looked into mirrors much. I hadn’t wanted to, earlier, when I’d worn my patch, to see my shortcomings, and I didn’t enjoy it now, when I saw this storybook image of myself, not the real me.
But there it was: I looked the same as before, or rather, how I would have looked with both my eyes without injury and without scars. And a little worn.
On second thought, thinking more clearly, perhaps I shouldn’t have expected to have aged much in any case, no matter what, since my fae heritage made me a halfling. That’s the word they used, even if it was only my distant great-grandfather who had been fae. My veins were awash with fae blood. I didn’t age like human folk. I could expect to live to see three centuries or four, even, if lucky.
But what sunk my spirits were the opaque, demonic eyes. I leaned in, closer to the mirror, and stared back at myself. Spirals of dark smoke shadowed my irises, as if I was no longer fae but…demon…
A haunted, sickly witch with demon eyes.
Was this what the demon had hinted at? Darn the cryptic ways of demon bargaining! I should never have trusted that creature. He’d claimed he couldn’t betray his master and make a foul deal. Well, it seemed he’d done a great number of things not allowed, as far as I knew.
I wasn’t dumb. It seemed he was tapping into my fae power so much that it left a void, and before anyone noticed his foul plans, he had to be filling in the gap, in desperation, with his demon magic and the shadows demons were made of?
Yet still refused to take less of my fae energies?
Heavens. The thought hit me. I would likely turn more and more into his kind, a dark creature. A soul of shadows, with an unbeating heart.
I had to get out now.
Chapter 13
I was limping down the stairs to the kitchen, when I came across a stripe of light contouring the stone wall. Wait, wait…Yes, between the crimson velvet wall hangings, a splash of luminescence shone through. It was so faint I wasn’t surprised I’d missed it previously.
Perhaps it was a bright day outside, and behind the walls glared a magnificent, sunny afternoon? To be honest, I’d lost the track of time so badly I mostly couldn’t tell if it was morning or noon. I had occasional impressions it was the night, for instance, so I sometimes imagined it was, and likewise, days felt like days, but I was sure I got it all topsy-turvy much of the time.
I smoothed the lit-up spot with the tips of my fingers, following the stripe. Could there be a crack in the wall? A weak spot? A spot where I could push through?
In my sleep, I’d dreamt of doors opening at the most ludicrous ways in the walls and even in the ceiling. I’d woken up sweaty from pushing at these panels of oak so vehemently. And I’d been looking for a door, for real, of course, awake and with all my faculties and wits and senses, but so far I’d found nothing. If I’d found a way out, I would have been long gone.
But I had an intuitive hunch there had to be a way to get out, and I imagined the demon had merely hid the doors from me. I trusted that with time I’d eventually come upon one.
Clearly, this stripe of light was an error in the otherwise so evenly spread magic veil. I could hardly breathe, as I traced my fingers along it, feeling nothing but freezing granite. The light shone through my fingers, making them blue, not reddish, like I would have expected from a light. There definitely was something unnatural about it. It practically radiated magic. What a curious sight. But as I didn’t understand it, I daren’t simply tear at it like mad, though that’s what my instincts told me to do.
The whole thing emanated ‘edge’ and ‘border’. Everything about it read to me as crossing to…otherness. With pangs of homesickness, I imagined how my real world with my lovely people had to be out there behind this. Did anyone know where I existed in my present state, this strange demon-fae form?
Maybe I looked like what the demon had remembered me like, from our brief encounter, not how I actually was. Or maybe the demon hadn’t cared? ‘She looked something like that, let’s paint her a good eye…?’
Oh, who knew? Demons were so out of my league as far as magic went, and since I’d never been taught magic like I properly should, little did I understand about them.
My fingers sunk into the light like into wet sand at the shore where waves hit. The crack in the wall broke wide and opened up into a gaping hole. Then the sides morphed into lush rose vines, and the panels into thick, green foliage, and now I could see out into the yard. Nothing but a thin blue glass-like panel separated me from it anymore.
> I reached out a hand and touched the rose vines cascading through. Then, exhilarated, I pushed the heavy vines aside, smiling so wide it felt odd on my face, not used to smiling lately, and stepped forward. But I hit my head against a hard wall. Glass?
I refused to understand and believe what was happening. Only as I fell to my knees, my palms sliding against the feel of cold glass, I realized the blue shimmer wasn’t just a shroud of magic. It was a solid wall.
This pretty foliage and cascades of roses were nothing less than magic webs, and the construction was solid as a face of rock.
My forehead hurt where I’d hit it against the glass, or shield, or wall of magic, or whatever one could call this. It shimmered like magic and it coiled into and through the roses; I understood it wasn’t simple magic, it was enormously powerful and demonic.
I slammed both palms against it.
I’d likely never get out.
I was trapped.
Chapter 14
When I came to, I instantly knew the demon had transported me to another place again. I wasn’t sure where I was. I could hardly see a thing, but in a flash, the darkness turned into brilliance and the smell of dank tile and earth to a sweet breeze from a garden. The floor underneath me…It glistened like gold.
My eyes fast accustomed to the light and I found it was sunlight from the windows, but the metal floor reflected it around, magnifying it a million times over. This was a room at a castle, once again, judging by the new from the window in the thick stone wall, as we were so high up. The view gave into a yard, fifty yards below, a yard of geometrically arranged gardens…I recognized it, in fact, and remembered I’d been here once, long ago.
This was the Castle of Tairaland.
The door was open to a corridor. I could see a border right at the door’s threshold. The room was filled with magic, whereas the corridor was not. The room’s magic ambiance seemed a little dark, but there was more to it… Modifications…
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