The Children of Wisdom Trilogy

by Stephanie Erickson

  “Maybe I should get Ryker. He can help you get what you need.” Her voice is soft, almost meek. I wonder if she’s a friend of Michaela’s.

  “No, that’s not necessary,” Horatia bursts in, holding up a hand. “But thank you for the offer,” she adds quickly, trying to cover up her urgency.

  The Reaper scrutinizes the three of us a little longer. I can only hope she doesn’t recognize me. I don’t recognize her, so maybe, just maybe, I have that going for me.

  “You’re Michaela’s friends, aren’t you? The Fates she’s always talking about.”

  None of us responds. I can see Horatia and Galenia shift their weight as I avoid eye contact. I can’t help but notice she used the blanket term of Fates to identify us. She didn’t single me out as a Keeper. Does she know who I am?

  “Are you trying to help her?”

  I peek between my sister Fates for a better look at the Reaper. She’s straddling the line between lowering her guard and calling for reinforcements. There will be no middle ground, no scenario in which she just walks away and lets us do our thing without telling anyone. She’s either going to help us or report us.

  After we spend a few moments suspended in tension, Galenia nods and the Reaper steps forward.

  “I’m Miette,” she says. “I’m a friend of Michaela’s too. How can I help?”

  My sister Fates stand there in slack-jawed amazement. This is no time for inaction, so I take a chance and step out from behind them.

  “Miette,” I say. “Your name sounds familiar. I think I’ve heard her talk about you.” I smile, trying to offer some reassurance to the small Reaper in front of me. “If you really want to help, we could use a guide through the mists,” I say, thinking of my most immediate problem.

  She glances around nervously. “I’m supposed to be working. Helping the new recruits. I was on my way to the training floor now. If I disappear, they will know something is up. Let me go get them started on a task, and then I’ll come meet you outside.”

  She takes off running before any of us can respond, leaving us standing a few yards from the gold door.

  “She seems sweet,” Galenia says, still smiling after the small girl.

  “How long do you think we should wait out there for her? The Reapers who are coming and going are likely to see us lingering in the clouds,” Horatia points out.

  “True. But no one else will take us exactly where we need to go,” I say, feeling like meeting her was a bit serendipitous. It’s bound to work out. Right?

  I have absolutely no idea, but I turn and make my way toward the golden door, bringing my sisters with me. The only thing we can do is act and hope for the best.

  We wait among the clouds for a long time, or at least what feels like a long time. Horatia and Galenia sit on the steps while I pace around a few yards away. We don’t speak. There’s nothing to say at the moment. We don’t speculate about Webber, Michaela, Kismet, or Andrew. We just wait.

  Now that we’re standing still again, I can’t help but worry about Kismet. Are she and Andrew still locked in that prison in hell, waiting for us to return? But I’ve made my decision, and I can’t look back. Michaela’s in an equally dangerous situation, and if we don’t save her, we can’t save Kismet. Besides, I’ve already lost so much; I can’t bear to lose someone else I care about. I can’t lose Michaela. I know it like I know how to spin.

  “Do you think Miette got sidetracked? Maybe we should go without her,” Horatia suggests, clearly getting antsy by the way her knees are bouncing. “Someone’s bound to notice the Fates are all missing. We should get moving before we miss our chance.”

  “How? How are we going to go on? We haven’t seen a single Reaper since we came out here,” I snap.

  “To be fair, I don’t think we’ve really been out here that long. It only seems that way,” Galenia says, ever the peacemaker.

  Just as I’m about to rattle off a perfectly witty rebuttal, Miette comes through the door and stays my tongue.

  Her sober expression stops my pacing dead in its tracks. “You know where she is, don’t you?”

  Horatia says, “No.”

  At the same time, I say, “Yes.”

  Confusion plays on Miette’s face. I can hardly blame her. “I know how to find her,” I offer, hoping it’s enough not to scare her off.

  “And you think she’s on Earth?”

  “I do.”

  “And you planned to get there by going through the mists?”

  “Yup.”

  She holds her arms out to me, as if pleading with me to give her more information, or maybe just better information. “What would you have done if I hadn’t come along? How did you plan to get through them without a Reaper?”

  I shrug. “Luck,” I say, not wanting to vocalize our ridiculous plan to follow a Reaper and hope they got us in the proximity of Mara and Michaela.

  She frowns at me. She’s more serious than Michaela, and I’m not sure how to handle her. If I make her too uncomfortable, she may change her mind about helping us.

  “Has that approach worked well for you in the past?” She raises an eyebrow at me, making me shift in place. I wonder again if she knows who I am.

  I try a disarming joke. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  She chuckles quietly, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Point taken. So, where are we going?”

  Horatia turns to me. “Yes, where are we going?”

  Miette looks at me curiously.

  “I’m not sure, to be honest. I saw it in the weaving room. Is that enough to go on?”

  Miette smiles broadly. “The mists are mysterious. They follow the soul that leads them.” She holds out her arm toward the gathering mist. “Lead on.”

  After we’ve walked through the mists for a time, Miette breaks the silence.

  “You know, Michaela saved me.” I start to wonder if I heard her right, but she picks up her explanation before I can press her. “I nearly aligned myself with the wrong crowd. A mistake that would’ve cost me my job. My life as I know it. She opened my eyes. She didn’t even know me at the time, but she offered me a lifeline to the right choice.” She’s quiet for a moment. “I owe her this.”

  She turns to me and looks me right in the eye, as if I’m in charge of Michaela’s fate. “Bring her back.” It’s not a request—it’s an order.

  I nod firmly, trying to let her know I’m not taking her order lightly.

  She doesn’t say anything more. Either Miette doesn’t want to know our plan or she’s too afraid to ask. That’s a good thing…because we don’t have one. At all. We never progressed past stumbling our way through the mists.

  My mind races as we walk through the white expanse of nothingness. What will we find on the other side? Will Mara be there? Nathair? Webber? Michaela? How will we get her back? Perhaps the how doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that we will get her back. We must.

  And we will put an end to Mara’s reign of terror. A part of me feels very responsible for what she’s done. I spun her, for heaven’s sake. I set this into motion, intentionally or not. Of course, that thought only leads to darker and darker thoughts as the mists billow up around us.

  When the mists finally begin to clear, I slow my pace, not quite ready to face the latest life-or-death challenge.

  Miette turns to face us, and I know she’s about to leave. “If you fail, I’m not sure how you will get back,” she says in a small voice. “I can’t wait for you. My little field trip must go unnoticed.”

  I nod, though the risk we’re taking weighs on me. If we don’t return soon, it will be disastrous. With three Fates stuck on Earth and one unaccounted for, the birth rate will be at an absolute stand still. Galenia’s statement echoes through my mind again. All of this is going to end soon, one way or another.

  “Good luck,” Miette says. Then she looks me in the eye. “I’m counting on you.”

  Ten

  Michaela

  “Shiloh, my sweet baby. I didn’t
realize you had visitors. I’m going to take good care of them for you, okay? Mommy will be right back.”

  Mara’s son looks at her with his broken heart painted all over his face, and it brings tears to my eyes. But she’s not looking at him. She’s looking at his body.

  Surely, she must know what she’s doing to him. She made the rope. She maintains it. She must see him. But she’s ignoring his soul, his essence, looking only at the boy in the bed. She kisses him gently on the forehead, adjusts his covers, and glances at his heart monitor before stepping away.

  And in that one step, she goes from tender mother to ruthless captor in nothing flat. It’s frightening. She lunges forward, like she’s going to take us by the arms or something, but then she simply holds the door open and gestures for us to leave the room. I look at Webber and he shrugs, as if he doesn’t have any other ideas. I suppose it’s the thought that counts, but thoughts aren’t going to save us.

  Nathair is out there waiting for us, and he saves Mara the chore of roughing us up. Grabbing us both by the arm, he jerks us down the hall, tugging us back toward the basement. From over my shoulder, I watch as Mara flashes one last gentle smile at her son’s body and shuts the door behind her.

  “Nathair. Please. Stop this now. You know the consequences of this path.”

  “Quiet.” He gives me a shove to accentuate his point, but it’s half-hearted. He has doubts.

  “You’ve seen what she can do. It’s amazing. But this path will end. And I don’t want you to be on it when it does. Please, help us. Do the right thing here.”

  Mara is waiting impatiently by the basement stairs. “That. Is. Enough,” she seethes. “The right thing is what we’re doing for Shiloh, so you can shut your judgmental little trap right now.” She probably spoke in a whisper so Shiloh wouldn’t hear her, but it only made her sound more menacing. She glares at me, and then nods for Nathair to take us down.

  The only sign the Reaper isn’t thrilled with her orders is his conflicted expression. It doesn’t matter—for now, he’s still helping her. Nathair opens the basement door and shoves Webber down in front of him. I get dragged by the wrist. Webber trips several times on the way down the basement stairs, and I can tell he’s terrified. He hasn’t even seen what this woman can do, but he’s literally falling all over himself out of fear of her, Nathair, or maybe the whole situation. I can’t tell. To be honest, it is overwhelming. I take a deep breath. I will get us out of this. I just hope Webber doesn’t do anything desperate or stupid to make our bad situation worse.

  Nathair rather unceremoniously shoves us into the small room where I was held captive. Then he steps inside so Mara can follow. I can feel her anger crackling in the room, almost like electricity snapping around us. Her nostrils are flared, her eyes are burning, and she’s breathing in short gasps. The demons we encountered in hell scared me less than the sheer force of her rage. And we’re cornered with her in a small, dark space.

  A quick glance at Webber, who’s trying unsuccessfully to hide his terror, tells me I’m completely on my own. Even more so than when I was in the depths of hell.

  The human takes another deliberate step into the room, bringing even more of that electric feeling with her. It makes the hair on my arms stand up.

  “Who do you think you are, going to see him?” she demands. The barbed words are directed at me, as if she somehow knows I sought him out and Webber just stumbled upon us. “Did you think you could take him from me? After everything I’ve worked for? That I would bring you into our home so you could ruin everything?

  “I know you aren’t on board, but Nathair wasn’t at first either.” She shoots him a seductive look. “He only needed a little persuasion. I intended to persuade you too—I just haven’t found your weakness yet. Don’t make me regret sparing you.”

  Her words feel laden with power, and the light in the hallway flickers despite the fact that no one has moved to turn it off. A wicked smile steals across her face.

  “Mara, how did you come to be so powerful?” I ask, ignoring her question and trying to stroke her ego a little. Distraction, that’s what I need. Time. I need time to form a plan.

  “My powers were not so unusual once.” She looks down at one hand and rubs the fingers together, making a visible spark. “My mother and grandmother were both witches. I wasn’t born with these powers—they came to me through knowledge that was passed down from generation to generation.

  So she’s a witch? It’s been years since I last led a self-proclaimed witch through the mists. Even so, I’ve never seen a human produce a spark by rubbing their fingers together. And I’ve never seen anyone vanquish an Archangel period, let alone with a mere touch. I’m in way over my head here, trying desperately to learn to swim.

  But Mara doesn’t respond to my obvious bafflement. She keeps right on talking, and it’s obvious it’s been a while since she’s spoken to anyone other than Nathair and Shiloh. “My mother died when I was a young girl, and she took my father with her. They said it was a car crash, but I knew better. She couldn’t have been killed by something so common. She was a rather unstable soul.” Her shrug implies it meant nothing to her.

  “Who raised you?” I ask, eager to keep her talking.

  “My grandmother.” She sighs and looks off into the distance. “She died years ago. Long before I met my husband. She would have loved showing Shiloh her ‘parlor tricks’ as she called them. Simple magic to wow the children, like pulling a mouse out of her sleeve, or a flower from behind the kid’s ear.

  “Most of what I learned about your world, I learned fairly recently. I traveled all over collecting knowledge from different covens, putting the information together piece by piece. It wasn’t easy, traveling with a sick child. His doctors thought I was dooming him to an early death, but it turns out we didn’t need them. I’ve kept Shiloh alive on my own longer than any of them thought he would last.

  “Then my dear Nathair came along. That little development has certainly made things easier. I had to convince him to help me, of course, but you’ll find I can be very persuasive.” She smiles at him. He smiles back, but their expressions are totally different. Hers is cold and full of victory, and his…his is soft, and there is a bit of a wistfulness in his eyes. Does he love her? Something about the way he’s looking at her makes me wonder. Did she somehow force him to feel that way? She said he needed persuasion. What exactly does that mean? Her words send a cold shiver down my back.

  She keeps talking—it’s almost as if she can’t stop. “Until recently, the true extent of my skill was theoretical. Those two angels confirmed the magnitude of my abilities.”

  She gives me a smug look. “You speak of consequences to Nathair. But what authority does God have against someone who shares his capabilities?” She raises her sparking hand a bit.

  I gasp involuntarily. “If you honestly believe your powers rival God’s, you are already lost.” It’s a devastating truth, not a threat. But she ignores me.

  Shrugging, she shifts gears, veering back into more neutral territory. “I never did teach Shiloh the ways. He wasn’t very old when his father died, and I was devastated. All alone, with no one to help me raise this little boy who looked just like his father. In fact, he looks so much like him, it hurt to look at him at first.”

  My mind is working hard to stay two steps ahead of her, but she’s given me so much information to consider that it’s hard to stay focused.

  “But I love him. I love him with all that I am.” Mara turned her gaze back to me, and it was once again hard, cold, and full of hate. “What right do you have to him, after everything I’ve lost? How can you not understand that I need him?” Her emotions are swinging around so wildly, it’s hard to keep up. “He’s all I have left in this world.” It comes out dripping with sadness, but I don’t trust it. She’s clearly manipulative, and though I don’t doubt her love for the boy, I definitely doubt her sincerity. It’s important to tread lightly.

  “Mara, it’s not that we do
n’t understand. Death is…difficult to accept,” I say carefully.

  Mara scoffs, but I keep talking to her, trying to keep my voice as soft and soothing as possible. “But you’re causing others the same pain you’re trying to avoid. The last thread you cut belonged to a child. A young girl. You stole her from her parents. You haven’t solved your problem…you’ve only diverted it to someone else. Over and over again.” I take a step toward her, though every last inch of my body is crying out for me to run away.

  Her expression tightens. “I needed to take a child close to Shiloh’s age. I thought it might be a more permanent solution.” She tilts her head, studying me as I take another step, hoping I can somehow gain the upper hand if I close the distance between us.

  “Besides, better them than me.” She wears a chilling smile as she says it, and it’s hard to resist the urge to shudder.

  “Is it, Mara? Because that fate wasn’t meant for them. It was meant for Shiloh. You obviously don’t believe your actions won’t be met with retribution, but I urge you to—”

  She cuts me off. “It’s not your place to urge me to do anything. I control his fate now.” Finally, she looks over at Webber. “What do you think of that, Spinner?”

  Webber doesn’t respond, and for that, I’m thankful. How does she know? Must be his gold clothing. The thought gives me an uneasy feeling. What other secrets of my home does this woman know? And how can she use the information against me?

  “I’ve suffered enough losses in my lifetime.”

  “And you plan to keep doing this until you die? Just cutting thread after thread after thread for the next fifty years?”

  “Ah, fifty years? Is that how long I’ll be on this Earth? Good to know,” she answers, ignoring the larger issue.

  All of a sudden, she takes a deep breath and nods to Nathair, who exits the room.

  “Don’t test me again,” she said, staring at us with her burning eyes. “I think you’ll both prove rather useful. It’ll be particularly handy to have a Spinner around. Maybe I won’t have to cut any more threads after all—huh, Reaper? I bet that would make you pretty happy.”