The girl taking a step. Then another. Raising her hand, the ring still glowing brightly. Touching his forehead with a single finger.
The world twisted and contorted around him, fading to black.
***
The shadows were long and dark along the glacier’s bleak ice, the mountains stabbing the white with dark daggers cast by the rising sun. Not a sound echoed across the mountains, not a bird or mouse. The only thing to be heard was the tired scraping of decaying boots on snow.
The Shadow Woman shook her cloak, knocking broken sparkles of snow back to the ground. The once fine fabric was torn and rotted, her rough handling only serving to make the tatters worse. She ran a hand over her face.
She was awake. She should be dead.
But that meant the girl was awake, too.
Seven
Buried Memory
REALITY WARPED AND shifted around Owen. Images of memories, all cloaked in misty sepia, formed and dissolved around him. The mummy girl taking her first steps. A party. A group of children in a rough classroom. A group of hunters returning to a village. Sitting in a meeting of clan leaders. They came and went so quickly that Owen could barely follow.
The movement slowed, dropping back to real time. Owen swayed on his feet, dizzy from the speed of the shifting. The girl, now a young adult, sat at a jeweler’s table, her head on her hand. She tapped her fingers against the worn wood, sparks of magic dancing across the ring with every tap. The jeweler stood near another table, her back to the girl. A burly young man stood in front of the doorway, arms crossed over his barrel chest.
“You could paint,” the jeweler tossed over her shoulder. “Or sculpt.”
The girl sat up straighter and sighed. “I don’t want to paint or sculpt, Nana. I want to be outside. It’s beautiful out!”
“It’s freezing out. This is the most snow we’ve had in years! You’d be lost in one shake of a mammoth’s trunk.”
“Shouldn’t I be permitted to do what I want on the day of my birth?”
Nana hesitated, obviously pained. “Normally, yes. But this isn’t like your other birthdays.”
“But why?”
Nana sighed. “It isn’t safe today.”
“Like it’s safer any other day with that witch out there,” the girl muttered under her breath.
Nana dried her hands on the cloth tucked in her belt and turned back toward the table, pushing a stretched hide and bowl of paint toward her. “Just try, hmm?”
The girl sighed and dipped a ragged brush in the paint while Nana passed the guard to exit the home. As soon as she was out of sight, the girl threw the brush down on the table. Red paint splattered across the wood like drops of blood. The ring, loose on her finger, slid to the table with a clatter, shattering the stillness. She scrambled to grab it, but everything shifted.
The air grew thick, tinged with bloody red. The girl’s eyes grew dull and unfocused, and she rose from the table, the ring loose on her last knuckle, her crooked finger barely holding onto it. The guard straightened at the door, sensing something was amiss.
She wandered toward the door, her limbs loose, her gaze vacant. The red wrapped itself around her like a cloak, like a snake.
As she approached the door, the guard stepped in front of her. He reached one hand toward her as if to stop her, and a single tendril of ruby jumped toward him, climbing up his arm to wrap around his neck. The tendril slowly tightened, and the guard’s hands scraped and pulled at the magic. His fingers just passed through the red. It continued to tighten, straining the skin on his neck. The guard finally slumped to the floor, and the magic released him.
The girl stepped over his unconscious body and out into the blowing snow.
Owen cast a glance at the guard, wondering if he should help, if he even could help, then followed the girl out into the storm.
The snow was falling in large flakes, settling heavily on anything exposed.
Except him.
The snow passed right through him, the deep drifts underfoot failing to capture him as it captured the villagers plowing between homes. The world was blurred through the snowfall’s veil, everything nearby painted in hushed gray tones, everything distant obliterated completely. Instinctively, Owen held up his arm to shield his eyes from the snow while he searched for the girl, finally spotting her a hundred feet ahead of him in the storm. Unhindered, he flew over the ground, catching up with her in only a few seconds.
The red magic fluttered and flitted around her entranced body. Her movements were slow, as if she was walking at the bottom of a lake, yet there was purpose in every step.
He followed her to the edge of the village, past the last of the homes, toward the base of the mountains. Somehow, he knew where they were going.
The muted light of day gradually grew dimmer as they approached the glacier. The falling snow turned into a haze of red with the poison of the magic, and the girl’s form became little more than a shadow.
The girl’s steps slowed, and another figure loomed out of the snow. Even in the muted light, Owen could see the evil painted on the woman’s face. Who was she?
But her name drifted to him like part of the girl’s memory, as if it was his own. The Shadow Woman. She crooked a finger toward the girl, weaving her red threads of magic around her, pulling her in like a fish caught on a line.
The girl stopped in front of the Shadow Woman, and the Shadow Woman’s voice rang out through the blowing wind. “You thought you could hide from me, escape your fate! Mark my words, Talia the Younger, this is your final day!”
The mountain echoed with those words, and Owen felt himself shaking. He wanted to blame the cold, but he could feel nothing in this half-existence of memory.
The ground trembled beneath them. The red coalesced in the Shadow Woman’s hand, forming a rough coat. Somehow Owen knew that this was the coat that had disintegrated around the girl...around Talia. But what did the coat have to do with anything?
The Shadow Woman shoved the coat forward toward Talia. “With this coat I seal your fate. Take it now. It will be your burial shroud!”
Mindlessly, the girl took the coat, draping it around her shoulders. She swayed unsteadily on her feet as the flax in the threads touched her skin. Owen could almost hear the whisper in his ear. The magic was woven into the coat with bright red threads, stinging Talia’s skin like a thousand nettles. Her eyelids drooped, her gaze waxy.
“Now go! The ice calls to you!” The Shadow Woman let out a disturbing laugh, and Talia turned toward the glacier.
With slow, plodding steps, she disappeared into the snow.
***
Talia could feel her memories flowing through her fingers into the mind of the boy. As they left her, she felt them all over again. She shivered in fear at the Shadow Woman, she shivered with cold in the snow. Her eyes drooped as she felt the slumber of winter closing in on her, the magic in the flax slowing her senses. A ringing started in her ears, fading into nothing as her memory ended.
***
The Shadow Woman tilted her head, birdlike, as she listened to the wind whispering over the deathly still of the glacier. She held her decaying cloak closer to her, keeping it from flapping in the wind and blocking out anything she might hear. She shouldn’t be here. The only explanation was that the girl had lived.
She glanced at the black ring on her finger. She had bound her life force to the girl, trusting that it would wake her if something went wrong with the spell.
Obviously it had. And it was probably Nana’s doing. That old hag never could resist ruining her spells.
She listened to the night air again, shaking off thoughts of Nana.
Silence. Somewhere, she knew the princess was out there, awake. And if she was awake, it was only a matter of time until the others were. Nana was too smart for anything less.
She reached into a fraying pouch tied to the sash at her waist, the threads barely containing its contents. She felt her heart pounding, fear gripping her, until her fin
gers closed on the powdery remains of the seeds.
The Shadow Woman pulled the flax from the pouch, holding it secure in her hand. She breathed an almost silent incantation, poison-red magic drifting from her lips toward the flax. The whispers carried a life of their own, filling the silence as if a thousand people whispered together. The volume of her voice grew with every word until she was nearly shouting into the bleakness of the mountains.
And just as quickly as they had started, the words stopped. As the chant died in distant echoes on the mountain faces, the last of the magic soaked into the dissolving flax seeds.
The Shadow Woman turned away from the wind and opened her hand, releasing the powder, her lips twisting in a grotesque grin.
Eight
The Shadow Woman Comes
OWEN SNAPPED BACK to the present. It took him a moment to focus on the world again, but as soon as he did, Talia filled his vision. Her words were now clear, in plain English. Maybe some remnant of the magic?
“You...you...” he sputtered.
Talia simply blinked big brown eyes at him, her stare coming back into focus after the haze of the memories.
Owen took a breath and collected himself. “You should be dead.”
Talia looked offended. “Is that a threat?”
Owen’s eyes grew wide, and he held up his hands. “No, no! It’s just...the Shadow Woman.”
“Would someone like to tell me what just happened?” Dr. Karington was staring between the two of them, her expression etched with concern and suspicion. She crossed her arms in front of her. “Who is the Shadow Woman?”
Nine
Reunion
SOMETHING TICKLED TALIA’S nose. That tickle quickly turned to a raw burning, and she scraped fingers against her throat, eyes wide in fright. Her breathing was growing ragged, and she started gasping for breath.
Owen stepped toward her, reaching out until his fingers brushed her ring. The ring flashed brilliant green as if awakened by his touch, and the smooth tendrils of emerald light spread to engulf Talia. Her body seemed to absorb it, and then she coughed. Small particles of phosphorescent red floated from her mouth, dispersing in the early morning light.
Dr. Karington seemed to be having a similar problem. She coughed violently, barely able to catch a breath around whatever foul matter was spread through the air.
Talia’s eyes grew wide as the flax dust faded. “The Shadow Woman,” she said quietly. When the last of the particles faded, she looked around frantically. “She’s here, she’s awake!” Her voice gradually rose, hysteria creeping in around the edges. “She’s here!”
“Who is the Shadow Woman?” Dr. Karington gasped in the middle of her fit.
“Me.” Dark gray clouds skittered across the bright blue sky, dimming the clear light of the sun. A storm was blowing in.
And she was there. The Shadow Woman.
Talia stared at the woman, her eyes wide and unresponsive. How did she get there? Even if it hadn’t been who knew how many centuries, she should be asleep, shouldn’t she? At least, that was the backup plan Nana had cast into the ring. If Talia was to be forced into a death trap, the ring would put her, and everyone else in the village, to sleep. At least until rescue arrived.
And if rescue never arrived, well...rescue had to arrive eventually. Right?
But the Shadow Woman’s appearance changed everything. Somewhere in her years of black casting and hatred of the clan chieftains, she had learned how to combat Nana.
Not a good sign.
Talia took in the woman’s tattered robes, the black frostbite on her nose and fingers. Talia had no such damage. Dark magic had a heavy cost. She could almost remember when the woman had been a part of her family, a friend to them. But the Shadow Woman had never come near her family during her lifetime, so it had to be nothing more than a false memory drawn from her parents when they mourned their lost sister.
Talia shook herself back to the present. Remembering her village was not going to help her now. She stepped in front of Owen, her voice only barely shaking. “What do you want? Why are you here?”
The Shadow Woman smiled, a gruesome grimace of yellow-black teeth and malice. She said nothing.
Keeping her eyes on the Shadow Woman, Talia rubbed the ring on her finger. It likely did not have enough magic remaining to protect her a second time, not after her long sleep in the snow. And all these people, the ones who found her, revived her...the Shadow Woman wouldn’t care if they got in the way.
And she knew, even without the words from the Shadow Woman’s mouth, that the only reason for the woman to be here was to end the current chieftain line. Though Talia’s father lamented that his sister abandoned them when she was not chosen by their parents to rule, the Shadow Woman never wanted to make amends. She wanted revenge. In her eyes, there was no forgiveness, no going back to one big family, especially after they hadn’t invited her to Talia’s birth party. She didn’t care if they’d not even known she was still alive. It was the final offense in a line of offenses, and the Shadow Woman would end them all for it.
Talia was to die.
She stepped back, away from the sickness, away from the death that surrounded the Shadow Woman like a swarm of black flies. The woman was slowly reaching into the pouch at her waist, grasping for something.
A movement caught Talia’s attention, and she turned her head toward Dr. Karington. The older woman’s eyes flashed with otherworldly light.
And then she knew. The coughing fit. The Shadow Woman had sent her spell ahead of her, infecting Dr. Karington.
Talia could feel her heart pounding as she turned back toward the witch. The witch was grasping something in her hand, something Talia could only assume would awaken her command of the doctor.
She turned and grabbed Owen’s hand. “Run,” she whispered desperately, her voice strained and thin. Then, louder to the rest of the students still standing in confusion, “Run!”
She pulled Owen along behind her, searching for the direction of her lost kingdom.
Ten
Magic Rekindled
OWEN FOLLOWED BLINDLY, tugged along by the mummy girl. He didn’t know where they were going, but after what he had seen in Talia’s memories, he was sure staying would be a worse option by far.
Talia was pulling him headlong toward the glacier, the deep snow and ice beckoning brightly in the watery sky. The snow could start at any moment, and Owen didn’t want to be on the ice when it did. Even in the spring, snowfall in the mountains was treacherous, and spring was still a dream. Talia’s hadn’t been the only body ever found at Sleeping Princess.
They crossed onto the glacier proper, the snow crunching beneath their feet, their hurried steps slipping across the ice with every passing moment.
“Talia, where are we going?” Owen asked when she paused. She was darting nervous looks around the glacier, likely looking for landmarks that had probably weathered away over time.
“It has to be around here somewhere,” she replied, almost to herself, her words stripped thin by the howling wind. Without warning, she took off running again, still towing her confused companion.
The first flakes started falling when Talia yanked him into an almost hidden cave in the side of one of the smaller mountains. The weak daylight filtered through the crack of a doorway into a long, dark tunnel, fading quickly as the tunnel twisted deeper into the mountain.
***
Talia blinked. She was so used to torches protecting the traveler’s steps here that the darkness took on a life of its own. She imagined monsters and Shadow Women at every bend in the shadows, every gap in the stone of the mountain’s belly.
Which way, which way...
They needed light, but it would be risky for Talia to summon a flame without a stabilizer. Evil as it had been, that coat would have worked wonders right about now.
Wait. The coat!
She spun to face Owen. “Owen, do you have any pieces of that coat you found me wearing? Any at all, even a fragmen
t?”
“I...what? Why?” Owen stuttered.
“I need a piece of it! Just a small one...anything!”
Owen rummaged around in his coat pockets for several moments before withdrawing the small plastic vial containing threads from the coat. “I was going to send it to a lab back at the school for testing.”
Talia snatched it from his hand. “This is more important. I can tell you all about that coat later.”
She twisted off the cap and grasped the decaying threads between two fingers, withdrawing them carefully so they didn’t disintegrate before she could use them. She left half the threads in the vial, just in case they would need them later.
Talia cradled the tiny bits of flax in one cupped hand, holding the other to protect the small threads against the wisps of wind roaring into the cave from the squall outside. Her lips moved silently, her mouth forming words long since lost to the waking world.
“Life, feed fire,” she finally muttered to the flax, the only audible words.
Owen watched with carefully guarded eyes. What was she doing?
Suddenly a stream of something colder than the wind, stronger than the storm, whirled around them, carrying a flurry of fluffy white snow in its wake. A small orange flame burst to life in Talia’s hand, its light reaching for the shadows, ripping them away in a manner that should not have been possible for such a small flame.
Owen stepped back, his eyes wide, one hand flat against his chest as if shielding himself from the magic coursing through the cave. But hands make poor shields against even the faintest of magic.
Talia reached toward him with her free hand, her other hand still supporting the flame. He jerked back, not thinking. He wasn’t sure if he imagined the hurt in her eyes, but it was gone almost before it could register.
***
Talia pulled her hand back and turned toward the interior of the mountain, allowing the dancing shadows from the fire to hide her expression. “This way, then.”
Talia took in the entrance to both tunnels before them, selecting the one marked with the symbol of her people, the crest of a sleeping bear. She could see the dried out husks of the torches that once guided her people home.
Seasons of Magic Volume 1 Page 14
