It was tricky coming in and tricky going out of Otherworld—designed that you can only get into another world by one of two ways: if you already know where it was or if you somehow stumbled onto it.
It wasn’t easy to stumble upon it.
Once she got to the river, she would cross a bridge and go into the woods. Thereby she would have to take fifteen steps to the front, twenty walking backwards, and then turn three times, and then she was already on Earthside—she would just continue walking. Getting in was even more complicated and nonsensical.
But as she walked through the fog and up towards the bridge to cross the river, she heard splashing noises, like someone was struggling.
An old man’s voice, shaky, panicked and weak, called through the dense morning air. “Help me! Somebody!”
Her neck snapped towards the direction of the noise, but she could barely see a shadow. She didn’t hesitate to run back off the bridge and up the riverbank toward the sound, where she saw an old man struggling on the surface of the water, looking like he was drowning. “Help!” the old man cried.
She looked up and down the riverbank, but didn’t see a soul, so she took a deep breath and tugged her shoes off before running into the frigid water. “Hold on!” she called back. “I’m coming!”
Normally, she hesitated even getting too far into a backyard pool because of the temperature of the water. The cold felt like it was a shock to her whole system, but she still paddled out to the man with strong strokes that she learned when she had been subjected to swimming lessons as a child.
The man grabbed hold of her as soon as she paddled close to him and she felt him pulling her down beneath the surface.
It was a struggle just to get a breath of air. Finally, when she put her arm around the man’s waist, trying to calm him, he grabbed her arms with hands that felt like hooks. Her head breached the surface and she made eye contact. “Don’t struggle,” the old man said. “It’s been a long while since I had some fresh meat…” He smiled at her with sharp, pointed teeth, and then her body was pushed back down below the surface, her eyes wide, her heart racing.
Ashcroft was right—that was the clearest thought rushing through her head. I never listen. Now, I’m going to die.
* * *
Moriarty yawned and stretched his shoulders as he walked down the front steps early in the morning, looking through his coat for a cigarette. Charlotte’s vanilla-and-cinnamon scent was in the air. That’s right… She was here. Oy vey!
He felt his bottom lip again, although his immortality had already healed the swelling, and then he grumbled and replaced his finger with a rolled cigarette before continuing a search for a match, which he lit by running it over the brick wall next to him and then waved his hand until it went out after the cigarette began to burn. His eyes glanced towards the ground in front of his feet.
Footprints. Fresh footprints from ugly ballerina shoes.
He spit out his cigarette and ran in the direction of the prints that trailed out through the gardens. The heavy dew wetted the ground like mud, making them painstakingly obvious.
He couldn’t help but grumble in his head, blaming Ashcroft, who apparently didn’t lock her in her room the night before. Didn’t that man know that he had to chain her to the wall or something? She couldn’t be trusted to stay anywhere for a second when she wasn’t held somewhere against her wishes!
And now she was walking through the Otherworld… Alone and unprotected.
“Charlotte!” he called out at the edge of the garden, still following footsteps. “Charlotte!”
She must have been far ahead of him, because there was no answer. And indeed, he followed the footsteps to the bridge. He was about to go over and chase her to the entrance of Earthside, but then he saw a second trail of footprints—these looked longer like she had been running back off the bridge and up the riverbank.
He felt his heart jump up into his throat even before he listened closely enough to hear splashing coming from up the river. He sprinted through the lifting fog, and watched as a pale old-man-like creature pushed something with willowy arms into the water, trying to drown it.
“Charlotte!” Moriarty cried, pulling a blade from his pocket and charging into the water.
The old man hissed at him as he approached and Moriarty hissed back, approaching quickly and slashing against him.
Moriarty suddenly felt a sharp slice push through his chest—he had been clawed. But he didn’t waste a moment on the sensation. He tore fiercely at the man’s throat, and sliced it.
And then the man turned into a black fish, floating on the top of the water, quickly making Moriarty aware that he just fought against a water demon. Moriarty grabbed onto Charlotte and dragged her back to shore, his body aching with the sharpness of the cut.
Charlotte’s face was white, but she still had a heartbeat when he checked. He tilted her head back, pinched her nose, and breathed into her mouth. The first couple of tries, it didn’t work, and then suddenly, as if waking out of a spell, her chest filled with air, her eyes opened, and she turned her head to the side, choking up the water with hacking coughs.
Moriarty pushed backwards on his arms, staring at her with both shock and relief.
It took a minute or so before she was able to turn and look at him with recollection. “Moriarty! What happened?” She pushed herself up on her elbows, still heaving breath and shivering. She blinked her eyes heavily, as if she was having trouble seeing, and then looked at him. She flinched backwards with surprise. “You’re bleeding!”
“No shit, Sherlock,” he replied with a grimace. He tried to push himself back up onto his feet, but stumbled.
She wearily climbed to her own and pushed her hand underneath Moriarty’s arm to steady him. “I’ll help you back…”
“No, don’t touch me,” Moriarty replied, trying to push her away.
“Let me help,” she begged with chattering teeth, planting her feet firmly until he finally leaned against her. He groaned as they both, wet and freezing, journeyed back towards Ashcroft’s tower. She bit her lip, trying to still the chattering of her jaw. “Th-Thank you,” she finally said, timidly.
“Never leave the property alone,” he told her tersely growling, and then coughed deeply. He wiped his hand at his mouth, but Charlotte had seen that he had just wiped away blood, because her eyebrow worried pathetically.
“I’m so sorry,” she told him shallowly, as if she wished she could say something more profound.
He tried not to lean on her too heavily, but he did more and more as they approached the tower. He felt so weak; he was bleeding so much. Still—Ashcroft had pulled him out of worse.
It had just been one very crappy morning.
“Ashcroft!” she cried as loud as she could as soon as they were in the gardens, within hearing distance of the tower. “Ashcroft! Hurry! Ashcroft!” Her voice seemed strained, which certainly it was—he was leaning so much into her that she was shuddering under his bodyweight.
Finally, Ashcroft rushed out of the tower, still dressed in the clothes he went to sleep in, flew wide the heavy oak front door, a dark look of concern on his face. “Jesus!” he exclaimed, looking over the scene. Moriarty knew how pathetic they surely looked—him bleeding, her tired, weary and pale. Both of them were soaked to the bone.
Ashcroft pulled Charlotte out from under Moriarty and propelled her a few feet towards the door as he supported Moriarty’s weight, gently helping him inside. “My word! What happened?”
Moriarty opened his mouth and began to speak, but every word felt like a pained agony. “Water demon… Tricked…. Charlotte…. Near… Ambrose Bridge….”
Charlotte walked backwards into the tower ahead of Ashcroft’s step until he brushed by her. “Is he gonna be okay?” she asked with a childlike concern.
“Charlotte—go to your chambers!” Ashcroft barked at her; the stone surroundings made his loud, angry tone seem that much angrier, that much more firm.
“But can
I help?” she asked quietly, hopefully. Moriarty felt nearly bad for her.
Ashcroft turned his head and gave her a look so frightening that she took a step backwards.
“I’m so sorry!” she choked out, her face twisting as if to keep back tears, and then she ran up towards her room. Moriarty stifled a sigh as Ashcroft moved him into the sitting room and dropped him gently onto a divan, then disappeared out of the room, appearing a moment later with a box of tools.
“I am truly sorry about this, Moriarty,” Ashcroft grumbled, opening up Moriarty’s shirt to take a good look at the deep gouge. He winced and shook his head, mostly at himself, his face twisted with guilt and disgust. “I was such a blasted fool. I thought that after last night she would not rush to disobey me.”
Moriarty watched as Ashcroft pulled out a magic sort of foam and spread it over the wound. It stung like holy hell. Moriarty hissed in response, his whole body winced and writhed.
“Urgh!” was all he could say, his voice gurgled.
“The demon sliced into you well. You must have pissed him off,” Ashcroft said, but tensed his jaw as he opened Moriarty’s mouth and shot something even worse down his throat—some sort of fiery liquid, that felt like acid in his lungs.
“Son of a bitch!” Moriarty exclaimed, and was startled to find his voice had come back. His breathing was clear; he was no longer gasping.
After that, he lost track of what Ashcroft was doing. Maybe giving him stitches; he wasn’t sure. All he was sure of was how much pain he was in.
“One of these days I will not be able to bring you back. Your kind only has 9 lives, do they not?” He grinned. “And what are you on? Fifty?”
Moriarty shot him a dirty look. “I’m not stipulated by that law,” he reminded, tight-lipped. He thought that Ashcroft had tired of making cat-jokes a century ago, not just put them away to be brought out later.
Although he’d heard this one before—he’d heard them all. The really stupid part being that he never WAS a cat. He was a Huxian—an immortal species of fox—which weren’t cat like in any way except for maybe the pointy ears… claws… fur… tails… whiskers… But anyway, he spent most of his time as a human for the last seven hundred years.
“Obviously,” Ashcroft agreed, carefully beginning to clean his wound and bandage him up. “This will take three days to heal, Moriarty,” he warned. “Do try to take it easy.” He looked towards Moriarty’s face, and then back down at the wound and cleared his throat. “I… I want to thank you for saving Charlotte—for being so quick on the mark. I am certainly surprised you chose not to wake me and not even trouble with her.”
“I didn’t want to waste any time,” Moriarty said aloofly. “Besides, I thought she’d be just past the garden. I could still practically smell her scent in the air. I certainly didn’t think she’d been seconds away from being a water demon’s next meal! She’s as dumb as a brick, don’t you see it?”
“Common sense is not so common, as it turns out,” Ashcroft replied dryly. “She’s young. Of course she’s stupid. We were stupid at her age, too.” After a moment he added, “I went out to slay dragons and nearly got slain myself in the process, if I recall. Looking back, I am astounded that I reached my immortality. And you…”
Moriarty couldn’t help but grin at the ancient memory of him in his late teens. His species was mischievous by nature—watching chaos was endlessly enjoyable to him and his brothers... Only a couple of his several brothers even made it to thirty. “Touché.” But he arched one of his dark eyebrows and added, “But I must ask if there’s ever anything Charlotte can do that would make you believe her an idiot? Or are you simply clinging to the blind hope that she is not?”
“Well, I don’t see how she could be an idiot,” Ashcroft replied. “I certainly have not seen a true idiot come out of her faction yet—laziness, certainly, but not stupidity. I have seen a great deal of talent come from the Byndians. Merlin was a genius.”
“I thought Merlin was a madman.” Merlin, although strangely revered by humans, tried to take over his faction and began a war that nearly brought his race to a speedy extinction.
Ashcroft shrugged his shoulders. “There’s a thin line between madness and genius…”
“Well, I wouldn’t call Charlotte ‘mad’. I’d call her simple,” Moriarty clarified.
He could hear Ashcroft growl at him, and Moriarty tilted his head to the side. “I think she’s been making you mad.”
“Unfortunately, I think you’re right. Mad in every way.” Ashcroft pushed himself up onto his feet. “I had better go handle her.”
“Go easy on her,” Moriarty sighed. “Really, I don’t think she can help herself. And she nearly drowned to death. She’d stopped breathing by the time I came along…” He watched Ashcroft’s posture freeze rigidly as he absorbed that information. “She’s probably scared half-blind now that she’s seen the tip of the iceberg as to what’s out there.”
“She’s not getting off light, by any means,” Ashcroft assured decisively. “After I warm her backside—again, I might add— I’m putting a cuff on her. I don’t know if I can rest at all again without doing so.”
Moriarty hadn’t known what he was talking about at first. It had been a long time since he’d heard of anyone placing a conjurer on house arrest. Slowly, he was able to dredge up the old term. There was a type of dragon crystal that did place wizards defenseless to leave an area—it was a charm that had done far more harm for Ashcroft’s race than any good. Moriarty was surprised to hear he had any in the tower.
“That will make her miserable,” Moriarty reminded cautiously. “Not that I’m against locking her in her room at night, but if she thinks that she’s a prisoner now, she defiantly will when she’s wearing a cuff…”
“Why would I care? I’m not the one who escaped within ten hours after being punished,” Ashcroft replied defensively.
“You care because you like her,” Moriarty replied simply.
Ashcroft’s face reddened slightly. “I do not,” he denied.
“You do, too,” Moriarty said, rolling his eyes and folding his arms behind his neck as he laid back. “Just admit it. You want to keep her here for your own sake just as much as for hers… If not more.” His grinned curiously. “If I may ask… When was the last time that you—”
“You may not ask,” Ashcroft replied with a bark.
“That long, eh? Look, put the cuff on her, go to Earthside, go get a leg over on a single female at a bar somewhere and come back to being something that resembles the wizard I’ve known for the last seven hundred years. Not… not whatever you are now.” He waved his hand in the air dismissively.
“I do not need to get a leg over anyone,” Ashcroft said, crossing his arms through the air. “My relationship with Charlotte is purely professional. Maybe even fatherly. Nurturing, not…” he continued to try to rationalize his feelings towards Charlotte, mostly all lies, as he left the room and wandered out of Moriarty’s earshot.
Moriarty shook his head with a knowing grin and then realized that he didn’t have his morning cigarette yet. With excited fingers, he looked into his vest pocket and put his fingers around one of his rolled cigarettes. He pulled it from his pocket and saw that it was soaking wet, limp, bloody, and completely unappetizing.
“That girl’s going to be the death of us all,” Moriarty grumbled, and put the trash back into his pocket.
Chapter Three
Ashcroft had to remember that he was upset with Charlotte before he stepped into her room. After all, she did go against Rule Number One…. And there was a reason why it was Rule Number One. It was the most important and, as it turned out, the second she went against it she almost died and his best friend and most competent servant nearly bled to death from saving her.
In truth, he was horrified when he saw them come through the gardens. Moriarty had become cocky—he obviously thought Ashcroft could save him from anything, which just wasn’t true. Ashcroft wasn’t a healer. He was an Arc
hivist—nothing came easily for him. Everything he knew and could do well was only accomplished by relentless study and by the sweat of his brow.
Still, Ashcroft knew better than anybody that he didn’t know everything. Archivists did not create their own spells, after all. One of these days Moriarty was going to come in with something he didn’t know how to fix, and he would not have the power to improvise.
And Charlotte—Lord, Charlotte!—hadn’t even come into her immortality yet. She was too young. She was just as easy to kill as any human, and he feared when looking at her that she was weak and small even by human standards. A demon would have made easy work out of her.
She had to be smarter. She had to stay safe… She had to make better decisions!
Didn’t she realize her value was immeasurable?
Finally, taking a deep breath, he entered the room. There were a couple of female servants in the room with her, one who was finishing buttoning the back of her dress. “You should have knocked!” Naomi, the head housekeeper, chided him. “You could have walked in on her with naught but her skin!”
He was ashamed of himself that when he filled with immediate regret, it wasn’t because he’d forgotten his manners. His regret was because he’d been so close at seeing Charlotte naked and had missed the opportunity.
Charlotte turned around from the mirror and looked at him, and Ashcroft inwardly groaned about how Moriarty was right. He did like her. How could he not with the way she looked at him now? Wide-eyed, her head hung nervously, her toes pigeoned…
And she finally looked like an enchantress. No men’s trousers like she normally wore and no scandalously short skirt…. No, the dress that the servants had found for her hung to the middle of her calf, ruffling out from the tiny waist and the low-cut breast. The dress looked just as complicated as anything he’d ever seen, which wasn’t too good of a style for a spanking. She also wore black shoes and leggings, and her colors were browns and golden colors of the fall leaves outside. Her long hair was auburn again now, and was braided elaborately down the side of her face, covering one of her ears and falling to her waist.
Otherworldly Discipline: A Witch's Lesson Page 4
