by Linsey Hall
Why had my parents lived in such a remote area?
“Cass!” Nix called. “Little help here, please!”
I turned. My friends stood in a group about twenty feet back. Aidan and Connor each held a handle of a massive cooler, and everyone else had a small duffle slung over their shoulders, but otherwise they didn’t have too much to carry.
What did they need help with?
“The barrier?” Del said. “We can’t cross it.”
“Oh!” I must have passed it and not realized. I hurried toward them.
Nix placed her hand on the invisible magical barrier. She looked like a mime.
I held out a hand to Nix, and she grasped it. I tried to pull her through, hoping that my touch would indicate to the protective spell that she was allowed to pass.
“Ow!” Nix yanked her hand from mine and jumped back. “That’s not going to work.”
“I have the penatrist charms,” Aidan said. “We can come through one at a time.”
I nodded and stepped back. Aidan dug into a pocket, then handed a charm over to Connor. They walked through the barrier without incident. Aidan set the cooler on the ground, then took the charm from Connor and handed them over to Nix and Claire. They crossed and Del joined them a moment later.
“Those are some scary charms,” Del said.
“That they are,” Aidan said. “And rare as dragons. Though we did meet a few last week.”
I thought of the tiny dragons I’d met in Switzerland last week. Fire, water, air, and stone. I’d love to see them again.
I turned and headed up the lane, not bothering to ask if everyone was ready to go. My ability to be polite had fled with the arrival of my anxiety over seeing my old home.
When it appeared ahead, a moderately-sized stone house at the edge of the cliff, my heart felt like it contracted. The door was red. Window boxes were barren, but hinted at my family’s love for gardening. I climbed up the three stone steps and touched the smooth red paint, waiting for memories to come.
None did.
When I poked around inside my head, trying to recall any, only the pain came. I winced and removed my hand from the door.
Everyone else was silent, which was damned unusual for our group. I guess they sensed this was kind of a big deal. I hated to be all dramatic about it, though. Moping and being serious would get me nowhere. If I was going to grieve for what I’d lost, it wouldn’t be now.
“I hope you brought some PBR in that cooler,” I said as I turned the doorknob. The words came out more awkwardly than I’d hoped, but they did the trick. They broke the solemnity.
“Better believe it,” Connor said. “Del and Nix said we were coming to help you on some abandoned island, and I knew I had to be prepared.”
“You’re a treasure.”
Connor was a hearth witch, his talents lying in the domestic arts. Though he did have a mean hand with potions and could whip up a deadly spell in an instant. It made him as dangerous as his Fire Mage sister, though in a subtler way.
I stepped into the front hall, which was a simple space with a wooden floor and high ceiling. A painting of cliffs was hung on the far wall, with doors bracketing either side.
We set up shop in the kitchen, a homey room with warm wooden cabinets and an old cast iron stove. Electricity no longer worked, but the rest of the house had been preserved in good condition, most likely by the protective spell. There was little dust, and everything was put away neatly.
Like my parents had just disappeared one day.
Through the faint buzzing in my head, I could hear Connor and Claire unloading the cooler with goodies they’d brought from P & P.
Nix and Del appeared on either side of me and clasped my hands.
“How’re you doing?” Del asked softly.
“All right.” I stared blindly at the black window, my throat tight with unshed tears. “My parents are dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Nix said.
“Me too,” Del said.
“That makes three of us.” I squeezed their hands. Besides Del and Nix, the closest thing I had left to living kin were the dragonets I’d met last week. “But I’ve got you guys and we’re family.”
“You do. Always,” Del said.
“I’m sorry I’ve been totally self-absorbed lately,” I said. “I know I’m lucky to be getting answers about my past. That’s more than…” I trailed off, not knowing how to finish that statement. It sounded awful.
“That’s more than what we’ve got, is what you mean,” Del said.
“Yeah. But I’ll help you find answers if you want them.”
“I do,” Del said. “But I’ve accepted that I won’t get them. Not unless they come to me.”
“Same,” Nix said. “We’ve all looked on and off in the past, but had no luck. Now they’re falling into your lap, and they’re not good.”
“No, they’re not,” I said.
They squeezed my hands.
“I learned how we lost our memories. And how I lost my power.”
“Yeah?” Intrigue colored Del’s voice.
I explained my dream, how Del’s transport power was stronger than we’d realized.
“My mother could do magic like that?” Del asked. “I could do magic like that?”
“Yeah. I guess you forgot how when we blasted all our memories away.”
“Must have been a strong spell for that to happen,” Nix said.
I remembered the blazing light and sound. “Strongest I’ve ever felt. Transporting from a waypoint without a portal is pretty insane, really.”
“Yeah,” Del said. “That’s some badass power. Maybe I do want to learn more.”
I reached for the locket around my neck, taking comfort from the metal. “At the end, when I was afraid you wouldn’t have enough power to get us out of there, I gave up my root power. I pushed it toward you.”
“What?” Del demanded. “You gave it up? What was it?”
“I don’t know what it was. I just thought of it as my power. Not what the gift actually was. But I was terrified of having to stay there. So I pushed it toward you. Then it was gone.” I tried to ignore the fear that it could be gone forever.
“I don’t feel it inside me, though,” Del said. “At least, I don’t think.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Otherwise you would have told me. So if you don’t have it, where did it go?”
“I don’t know,” Del said.
“I don’t think I gave up mine,” Nix said. “But I have no idea.”
“Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out,” Del said. “We’ll get your power back. Then you can go back to raiding tombs and being mortal like the rest of us.”
I thought of the demons trying to drown me in the Pool of Memory. “I’m not that immortal.”
“Immortal enough,” Nix said. “I’d rather you die of old age, happily watching sitcoms with your eighty grandkids.”
I laughed. “I don’t know if that’s in my future, but it sounds traumatizing to the kids. And I was envisioning cats, anyway.”
“Yeah, you have a point.” Del tugged on my hand so that I turned to face the group. “Let’s have a beer.”
“Good idea,” I said. “We’ll eat, get a bit of rest, and get an early start to explore this place at dawn.”
Part of me wanted to do it now, but it was pitch black outside. And honestly, I needed a bit of time to decompress and get my head on straight. Being here threw my whole system out of whack, and my mind felt like it was running a million miles a minute all while standing still.
Aidan handed me a PBR and a ham sandwich, and I took them gratefully.
As I ate and drank in the little kitchen where I’d been raised, the sound of my friends and family filled the empty space in my heart. I still ached for what I’d lost, and still didn’t remember enough, but I was grateful for what I had.
That night, Aidan and I slept in one of the guest bedrooms. I’d made Del go upstairs and explore, finding which rooms had be
en my parents’ and mine so that I didn’t go into them tonight. I couldn’t face it yet, and I didn’t want to cry any more.
Despite my best intentions, I cried myself to sleep anyway. But at least Aidan was there to hold me.
“Right, folks, let’s Sherlock Holmes the hell out of this place,” I said before polishing off the last of my coffee.
As I’d hoped, I’d woken feeling a hell of a lot better. With the dawn light shining through the windows, everything looked a bit more positive. Claire and Connor had made us a quick breakfast of leftover pastries and coffee, and we were ready to start the day.
“So, what do we do?” Claire asked.
“I need to figure out what my root power was. Maybe I can get it back.”
“Both sound good.”
Yeah, at this point, I’d take either. “I know that my locket has something to do with my root power because it protected me when Victor Orriodor tried to steal my root power when I was fifteen. And the locket had a map that led me here. So, let’s look for clues. Any kind of clue.”
At this point, I wasn’t super picky. I just needed info.
“Let’s start in the house, then,” Del said. “Everyone in a different room.”
We stood and everyone slowly filed out the door. When they were all gone, Aidan grabbed my hands and met my gaze.
“You doing okay?” Concern creased his brow.
“Yeah. I am. Really. I just needed a bit of a cry to get rid of the initial shock. Now I’m good to go.”
It wouldn’t be easy to deal with it all, but I could handle it now. I wished I were the sort to immediately tough out the bad stuff, but life’s hardballs sometimes made me curl up in a ball for a little while before I could deal with them. I was a real badass underneath my hard shell, clearly.
“Good.” Aidan kissed my forehead and I smiled. “Let’s get started.”
We searched the house for an hour, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that there was probably nothing here amongst the photos and books that I longed to explore more fully. I’d started to, but tears had blinded me by the third photo I’d looked at. Though they painted a picture of my life here, they didn’t provide information about my root power. And it was just too painful to look at them now. Too painful to be in this house.
I’d come back and do it one day, but not now.
“I’m headed outside,” I said.
Del looked up from where she was sorting through some pretty wooden boxes. “Should we come?”
“Whenever you’re done there.” I wanted some time to myself.
And though I was glad my friends were here, I doubted they’d be the ones to find the clue. I barely understood what we were looking for, so my only hope was that I would recognize it when I saw it.
The sun shone brightly when I walked outside, and I could smell the fresh salt air of the sea. Gray stone slabs dotted the landscape, with grass poking up between the crevices. The land dropped off about fifty yards in front of the house, going straight down into the dark blue sea. There was nothing sticking out of the land—no trees or other houses.
I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath, trying to feel or smell any nearby magic. It was as good a place as any to start. At first, all I smelled was the ocean. But after a moment, I got a whiff of power. Something ancient. I couldn’t have described the smell for a million dollars, but it evoked thoughts of battle and life and death.
I opened my eyes and followed it, scrambling over the strange flat rocks as I headed diagonally away from the house, toward the sea to the south. The land undulated, small hills of rock concealing and revealing the landscape ahead.
When a massive, black stone wall appeared in the distance, I gasped. It was huge, built of millions of stones, and curved back toward the sea. The ancient power radiated from the wall.
I hurried toward it, stumbling on the slabs of rock but unable to take my gaze from the wall. The top was broken and jagged, as if the stones had slowly fallen away in the thousands of years since it had been built. It was still over fifty feet tall, however.
Both ends of the wall terminated at the cliff that plunged into the sea. It must have protected a jutting piece of land, using the sea as its back wall.
As I neared it, the prickle of protection charms skittered across my skin. This place was even more locked down than my family’s home. Anyone who intended me harm wouldn’t be getting through here, I’d bet.
There was no door, so I began to climb, sticking my fingers in the crevices between the rocks. The wall was so ancient that there was no mortar, which made it easier to find a hand hold.
When I neared the top, a rock wobbled beneath my toe. My heart jumped into my chest as I scrambled away, seeking solid footing. By the time I crawled onto the top of the wall, which was at least twenty feet across, my heart pounded and sweat dripped down my sides.
I lay on the top, catching my breath. This stone wall made the ones surrounding castles look like a joke.
When I could breathe again, I clambered across the top of the wall to the other side. The stone beneath my feet was loose—filler rock, I thought it was called.
At the other side, I looked out at the land. As I’d expected, there was an expanse of grass about the size of a football field that plunged into the sea on the other side. Whoever had built this wall thousands of years ago had been hiding from something.
My gaze roved over the grass within, which was scattered with wildflowers instead of the slabs of stone that covered the ground outside of the wall. In the middle of the space was a stone circle. Within, three tall white statues stood in an arc. My heart thundered.
They were important. My now-dormant dragon sense roared within my chest, trying to break past the Nullifier’s magic. It responded to anything of great value, and this place was so important that it was making my dragon sense fight the Nullifier’s power.
I needed to get closer. With shaking hands, I climbed down the wall. The sun beat upon my back as I raced across the grass toward the statues.
Magic thrummed in the air as I neared them, and my skin prickled. Strength filled my limbs as I entered the circle. The boundary stones were white, which was strange. Stone circles in Ireland and the nearby UK were often gray granite or some other kind of boring rock. These were a beautiful, gleaming white.
But it was the statues that caught my eye. They stood in an arc, facing a large, round stone disk set in the middle of the circle. Three women, each in elegant robes. Their features were simple, not easily recognizable as any one person.
I walked up to the nearest one, who was surrounded by stone animals. Deer, rabbits, a badger, and birds. Unable to help myself, I reached out and touched her hands, which were folded in front of her body.
The stone was warm beneath my fingertips, and the strangest feeling shot up my arm. Warmth, strength, life—all flowed through me. The world felt clearer and sharper, and I felt more alive than I ever had. Like the air itself gave me power. My hand seemed to glow where it lay over hers.
Reluctantly, I pulled my hand away and looked at it. The glowing had ceased.
Weird.
I moved on to the next statue. Her face was narrow, cheekbones protruding. The hands that peeked out from her robe were almost bony. I reached out to touch one, but yanked my hand back almost immediately after touching the cold stone. One brief touch had sucked the strength from me. My knees felt weak.
Was the first statue life, and this one death?
I glanced at the last statue, then approached it. She looked like a normal woman. No skeletal hands or animals at her side. Despite her simplicity, I was drawn to her in a way that I hadn’t been with the others.
My hand shook as I reached out to touch her. As soon as I made contact with the stone, I gasped. Magic flowed through me, strong and fierce. It made my skin tingle and my heart soar.
A light appeared at the statue’s side. The glow coalesced into the shape of a woman. I squinted at her. After a moment, the features be
came clearer, the body more solid. Magic flowed from her, a bright light that glittered gold.
She looked a bit like me. But older. Just like the woman from the photos in my house.
My heart leapt. “Mom?”
She smiled. “Cass.”
I reached out to hug her, but my arms passed through her ghostly body. “You aren’t real.”
I knew it, but it was hard not to tear up at the knowledge.
“Not the way that you are, no.”
“What happened to you and Dad?” My throat tightened on the words.
“I am here because we are no longer with you. I had wanted to explain to you in person when you grew up. But that was not possible.”
“Why?”
“I am not here for that. I am here to explain what you are.”
“What I am?”
“Part of the Triumvirate.” She motioned to the three statues. “Triumvirate is from Latin. Three of power. You are one of the three.”
I glanced up at the statue I stood near. “That’s me? And Del and Nix are the others?”
“Yes. You were prophesied. Along with Del and Nix. A balance of life, death, and magic embodied by the three supernaturals who are worthy. Del is in the middle, Nix at the end.”
“Whoa.”
My mother smiled. “Take the portal to the League of FireSouls. They will help you.”
“League of FireSouls?”
She pointed to something behind me and said, “That portal.”
I turned to see that she indicated the circular stone slab set into the ground in front of the statues.
When I spun back to face her, she had faded slightly. The magical aura that had surrounded her was also dissipating. “I love you, Cass. I will always love you.”
“I love you, too.”
By the time I’d finished speaking, she had disappeared. Whatever spell had powered the apparition of my mother, it had run out of juice.
I swallowed hard against the tears that threatened to rise, forcing them down. I didn’t have time for a good cry right now.
“Cass!” Nix’s voice sounded from the distance.
I turned. She stood on top of the wall, waving. Claire joined her a moment later. They must be using the penatrist charms to get through the protections, coming over the wall one at a time.
