by Ponce, Jen
“It is a time of great joy,” the goddess finally said, a tiny slash of annoyance between her eyebrows when I choked to keep my amusement contained. “Again, this is a debt I cannot hope to pay. Come to me, Devany, when next you need help and the next.”
I nodded, the last of the funnies running out of my body. I took a breath and let it out, settling myself. “What about Ty?”
“My son? He will stay with me for now and we will discover each other. He will need time to adjust to his soul. It will be painful and he will need his mother’s love.” A light of insanity sparked in her eyes and I felt a stirring of unease. Tytan was a pain in my ass but I liked the guy. Sorta. I didn’t want his crazy mother killing him, but there was no way in hell she’d let me leave with him now, so I crossed my fingers and hoped he would be okay when I left.
“Thank you,” I said, holding up my Spider Stone.
She nodded regally and Krosh, Nex, and I left her to her reunion.
***
We arrived back at camp to a standoff. The Wydlings were back to back in a tight circle, faced off against a larger number of black-robed witches.
I thumped down a protection bubble over all of us, the bubble flaring with my panic and anger.
“Tell your mate to let us out,” one of the men growled, his eyes a leonine yellow as he fought to hold off the change—or perhaps he was embracing it, I didn’t know him well enough to be able to differentiate.
I also didn’t listen to the dude, looking at Kroshtuka for affirmation before I did a damn thing. That’s when I saw her, her face pale under her black hood, her hated face. The woman who’d killed Tom in front of my kids. It was my turn to snarl.
“I will have her keep it up, Rainor,” Krosh said, noticing my reaction and putting himself a step in front of me, blocking the woman from my view. “Who is she?”
I swallowed hard. “She killed my husband.”
“You killed mine,” the woman said in her implacable voice. “It was give for get and our quarrel is now ended, according to the old laws. And I am not here to start a war with you, or continue one,” she said, slight amusement in her voice as I lurched around Krosh to glare.
“They outnumber us, Devany. Will you please keep the bubble up to protect our people?”
His voice was low and reasonable. I found myself nodding before I realized I was doing it. Damn it.
“Speak your words and then begone, witch,” Krosh said to the woman.
She lowered her hood and took a step forward, separating herself from the other black robes and effectively drawing all eyes to her. “Wild rumors are flying,” she said, her bone-white hands clasped over her now flat belly. “The Omphalos has been repaired. The magic is no longer seeping away and you are the one responsible.”
News did travel fast here. Whether it was considered good news or not, I couldn’t tell from her expression. I said nothing, not wanting to give her confirmation either way. Let her sweat. If ghouls perspired, that was.
She didn’t seem annoyed by my silence. Instead, her hands went to the knotted string at her neck and unlaced it. She dropped the robe, revealing a stark grey shift. This she parted in the front to show a ghastly, raw wound on her chest. I wanted to feel jubilant that she’d been hurt but empathy crept in and I winced.
“It burned away our marks. All of them. The marks of all those who were castrated and blocked from the power of the Omphalos. We have access once more, access the witches cannot sever. We may never be friends, you and I,” she said, as she did up the front of her gown once more, “but the Theleoni will not be your enemies from here on out. Our days of killing your kind are over.” She stooped and lifted her robe from the ground, swirling the material around her shoulders as she turned away.
“We will always be enemies,” I called, remembered horror sharpening my words, making them sound raw and wounded.
She did not turn around, only disappeared into the shadows with her black-robed friends. From the darkness I heard, “As you wish.”
I dropped the bubble as soon as they were gone and a sharp, high yelp of sound behind me announced that Rainor had given into the change. My muscles shook and I paced away from them all to try to find calm again. I let her go, I thought. She’d had Tom killed in cold-blooded murder in front of my kids and I let her go.
Devany, Jasper started and I cut him off.
‘No. I don’t want to hear how nice I was, or restrained. I froze and she walked away and I betrayed my kids. Betrayed Tom. So just shut up, Jasper.’
It took a long while to focus my thoughts on something other than my inaction and I stomped back to Krosh and the gang. Rainor was a gigantic lion, his orange mane quite magnificent. He would stay behind, according to Kroshtuka, who studied my face carefully as I returned. After I sat and stayed silent, he addressed the group. “There will be eight of us to confront the Skriven and he will be dangerous. We will do what we can to pull our prey from the Basin, rather than try to fight in the broken places.” He passed the stones around and explained what they were, his words bringing awe to the others’ faces. “You must not speak. We will use hand signs or mind-speak. The rock needs to stay in your mouth, on your tongue, or the broken magic will take you.”
They agreed and the stones were secreted away into pouches on their persons. I tucked my stone into my pocket. “How far away is it?”
Krosh unrolled a map and pointed out Banishwinds on it. Seeing the Wilds on a map was rather a revelation to me. I’d never formulated a picture of it in my head but according to the carefully drawn lines on the parchment, the Wilds was an egg-shaped swatch of land almost entirely surrounded by witch lands. Only in the south, where the land met ocean, did the Wilds touch anything other than the strictly regulated magical world of the witches. “Where’s Tempest Peaks?”
He touched a spot on the bottom right of the Wilds and I squinted at it. Across a squiggly sea, I saw a landmass that dropped off the bottom of the page labeled The Wastes. Between the Wastes and Tempest Peaks laid Ketwer Island. Now I knew. Banishwinds was on the edge of the egg, around eleven o’clock. Kroshtuka drew his finger down the left side, counter-clockwise to a place labeled Flingway. I blinked.
“That’s where my dad and mom met,” I said.
“Your parents?”
I stared at him, stupefied. “Oh my god. I never told you. Yeah. I found out my father is a witch and my mother a Wydling woman. They met in Flingway.”
He smiled. “You’re half Wydling? I wonder who your mother’s people are. But it wasn’t Flingway, Devany. It was long since destroyed by a world-walker and has not been rebuilt. She laid it to waste. The land won’t produce crops or sustain livestock, and those who attempt to dwell there, sicken and die.”
I licked my lips, wondering if I should try to explain my strange origins now, or wait. I decided to wait. There were more important things to worry about. “I don’t know who my mother’s people were, but perhaps someday I’ll find out.” I leaned over the map. “We’re going there, huh, where it’s dangerous?”
“It is close to the Basin right now.”
Right now. Right. Because the Wilds was a shifty place and liked to move as much as the stairs at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books. “All right. So we hook there and head into the Wilds. Will you know when we get close to the broken magic?”
“You will know. It’s not something you’ll soon forget.” His solemn voice planted the first seeds of fear in my belly. “As soon as we see the broken magic, we will hold the Spider Stones in our mouths. We won’t remove them until we are back over the border on witch lands.” This was said to the entire group and we each nodded. “Our quarry will be like a maddened beast, I fear. He will be dangerous. No unnecessary risks. No unneeded workings.” He looked at me. “Have you thought of how we might capture him?”
“Yes,” I said instantly, thinking of the webbing Neutria had used to block the doors at the Witch’s Council. ‘Neutria, would you be able to take down a Skriven with your web, or
would the web be too delicate?’
Of course it will take down Skriven. Fool.
Okay, so she still hadn’t forgiven me for my joke. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,’ I said. ‘It was just a funny word choice.’
She didn’t answer, but I didn’t hear her hiss at me either, which I took for a win.
I straightened and Kroshtuka rolled up the map and handed it to one of our party who stowed it in her pack. “Are we ready to go?”
They nodded but before we left, Kroshtuka clasped me by the forearm and did the same to the Wydling near him. Soon we were in a circle, arm to hand, and I felt the tingle of magic wash through us. Kroshtuka then raised his voice and began to sing. The words were foreign to me but they wrapped us all in something powerful and familial. Bonds jumped between us, bonds that hadn’t really been there—at least not between them and I—before.
The ritual done, eight of us stepped through my hook to Flingway, my mind holding the tiny dot of the map tightly as we left.
***
Flingway was a ruin, though it didn’t look particularly dangerous. Collapsed buildings peeped up out of tall red and gold grasses that brushed at the stonework with shushing noises. The roads were broken up by overgrown weeds and trees. Rubble strewn about the place made it look like the aftermath of a giant’s temper tantrum.
As we got closer, though, the awfulness of the place started to sharpen. There were craters amidst the ruined homes, craters that were filled with a hateful black liquid that bubbled and spat like superheated tar. Closer still and I saw that what I’d thought were the stumps of trees were actually the petrified bodies of witches. Some of them had features that were recognizable, while others looked to have been melted, their cheeks, their eyes, sliding down over their skulls to fetch up against the collars of their clothing.
Ravana had done this. If Inna’s tale were true, if her tale had even been about my mom and dad—and I thought it had—then this was the result of Ravana returning to find out that her plans had been foiled.
We were now walking along the outer edge of town, Kroshtuka shaking his head to keep his people from wandering too close. My shoe hit something solid and I cursed as I almost fell, catching myself against the remains of the outer wall. Looking down, I saw that I’d kicked a head, the expression on the person’s face that of utter horror. I averted my gaze and pushed away from the wall, wanting to put as much space between me and it as I could.
The gates to the city were broken. It looked like termites had set to work on the wood; the doors were more sawdust than solid. Just inside the entrance was an old woman frozen in time. She wore a black robe and her skin was tainted the palest shade of green. She held an apple in her hand and a chill of excitement mixed with wonder passed through me. Was this the evil witch from Snow White? It sure looked like it. I stepped closer, intending to get a better look, but someone caught my arm.
“It wants you to go in there,” Kroshtuka said.
I blinked, letting him pull back from the place. “Wants me to?”
“It’s alive and it’s malevolent. Can you feel it?”
I stood still, waiting for weirdness to wash over me. There was nothing. “No.”
“See the witch?” He pointed at the evil queen in old lady form.
I nodded.
“He is holding a knife to a little girl’s neck. If I go in there, I can save her.”
“Wait. You see a man and a little girl?” I squinted but the sight of the witch didn’t vary or waver one bit. There also wasn’t anyone around the witch, either.
“It gives you a lure, plucks it from your mind.” He guided me away from the gates and walked with me up a rise a few hundred feet from the entrance. We turned and looked over the ghost town. “What do you see?”
“Broken houses. Weeds. Nothing much.”
We walked back down to the gates. “Now what?”
“The witch. Only she’s female for me and ... Oh.” Looking through the gate I saw that it was full night, even though I was standing in the sun. “Oh.” Inside, the witch beckoned with her smile and her apple. Beyond her, there were buildings in the gloom, one that glinted with what looked like candy. “Shit.”
“It is like a siren, calling to those who cannot or will not resist its allure.”
This time the witch’s smile turned bloody and the apple, black. Strange how I still wanted to go in, to watch the story unfold as I’d imagined it in my head a thousand times as a child. “And I suppose it’s like a roach motel. Once you go in, you never come out?”
“Oh, plenty come and go. The catch is to take your sane mind with you when you leave. Come. We still have a long way to travel.”
We crossed the border between Flingway and the Wilds, the poles that had once held the barrier stones broken, knocked over, or missing completely, their holes like empty eye sockets staring vacantly at us as we passed.
The magic here was different; it jangled against my nerves and made me want to turn back before it was too late. Too late for what, I didn’t know. If I had to stay there long I’d go mad. “This is the Basin?”
“No.” He glanced down at me, his mouth set in a grim line. “We are at least ten miles away. The broken magic has spread.”
Geez. Ten miles of this grating awfulness. “Maybe we should change and go by animal.”
“Can your spider self hold the Spider Stone in her mouth?”
No. Damn it. “Stop being right all the time,” I muttered, then squeezed his hand to tell him I was just giving him a hard time. “This is horrible. Is there a way to fix it?”
“It would take a lot of power.”
“I have that in spades.”
He returned my squeeze. “Goddess level power.”
“Oh.” I thought of Tytan and his mother. How was he? I hadn’t even told him goodbye, though I didn’t think he’d been in any state to hear my words. Would the goddess try to fix the Wilds if I asked her? She’d said she owed me, after all. Or was she too far gone to do anything but rage on her hill? Now that Tytan had been returned to her, perhaps she could start to heal.
We alternated between jogging and walking, with Neutria lending me her strength and endurance when needed.
You always need it, she thought at me.
‘Are you being snarky?’
Does it mean killing fangs and deadly venom?
I considered. ‘Yeah, sort of.’
This pleased her and I had the feeling I was now completely forgiven for my earlier fart joke. Which was good, because things might get crazy and I didn’t want to have to beg her to help me in the middle of a firefight.
“Tell me what you know about your mother,” Kroshtuka said.
“I didn’t know she was a Wydling. She’s passed on now. It was Dad who told me everything. And he did meet her in Flingway. Ravana wanted me and so Tytan hid my parents from her. They hid in time, then went to Earth to stay away from magic, from the politics, and to hide from Ravana. I don’t know if Mom’s name was different. I guess she changed it but I just don’t know.” What had the name been in Dad’s book? “Iwò. That’s what Dad called her in his book, anyway.”
“Hmm. Iwò means raven. There was a bird clan who lived near Flingway before it was destroyed. I’ll put the word around and see if anyone would like to come to Odd Silver to speak to you. They would be able to give you guidance in your family traditions.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t thought that far ahead, honestly. How weird would it to be to have a long-lost family with all manner of traditions and customs I knew nothing about. “That would be amazing, honestly.” My grandparents would no longer be alive, of course, but perhaps I’d have very distant cousins, if I were lucky. “Bird clan, huh? How does the magic determine what animal you’ll be?”
“It’s not one thing alone that makes the choice. We have to have a Dream and follow it out into the Wilds. We must be open and willing to say who we really are. That can be difficult at the best of times. What coward wants to say they
are a mouse? What shy person wants to say they are a lion? Sometimes it’s an obvious choice. Sometimes the seeker must wait. And of course, anyone can choose not to seek their animal, though fighting against the magic is difficult and often leads people to hurt themselves. Many of us seek out others who are similar. Like the Wolf Clan you met a while ago.”
I nodded, remembering. Thought of the Meat Clan. “There are all different animals in Odd Silver.”
“Yes. We are a mixed group. They come to me when they have troubles shifting. I can hold them in their human forms until they are able to do it themselves.”
“You’re the anchor,” I said, finally understanding what that meant.
“Yes.”
The land, once hilly, now flattened out, going from scrub to a grey hardpan that had baked-in ripples, as if it had once been at the bottom of a great ocean, long dry. In the distance, brightly colored lights cavorted, leaping from a black chasm that looked terrible enough to be the exact place we shouldn’t go. “That’s where we’re headed, isn’t it?”
He squinted. “Can you see it?”
“Yes, can’t you?”
He shook his head, then studied me, concern evident in his features. “Perhaps it is not safe for you here. The magic shouldn’t be visible yet.”
I shrugged. “Things never behave the way they are supposed to around me. It’s a thing. Remember, I’m an Originator. I have access to a ton of magic. Maybe it gives me super magic vision or something.”
“It worries me. Let’s use the stones now, just in case. No more talking.” He put the Spider Stone into his mouth and a shimmery wave of power washed over him. It wasn’t a protection bubble. This had a dull matte finish and draped like a shroud over him. It darkened him, set him in shadows.
