Inherent Fate

by Geanna Culbertson

  The visions churned. Bronze animals ran this way and that against a shimmering black backdrop. A giant bronze serpent with huge fangs shot toward me. Daniel and I stood in a forest surrounded by fireflies. A glass Pegasus figurine flew around the exterior of Lady Agnue’s. A red beaver floated across an empty white void.

  Then I saw someone who’d only recently begun to pierce my dreamscape. I’d first heard the woman’s voice in a dream I had in the Forbidden Forest. It had flooded my head several times since then, and I’d seen her full form in a dream I’d experienced on Earth.

  The woman was standing across from me now. She looked to be in her mid-thirties and had light brown skin and dark curly hair. She was already halfway gone by the time I started to make out what she was saying.

  “Crisa, you have to remember,” she whispered faintly. “He is the key. He will give you the answer. Just remember the—”

  The vision fled. The void consumed me until I was deposited into a new scene.

  Jason, Daniel, Blue, and SJ sat at a long wooden table. Bookshelves were all around them; they seemed to be in a library. Blue looked a bit sunburned; her dark blonde hair was longer than usual, reaching down past her shoulders. SJ seemed tired, and her glistening black hair was in an elegant bun instead of its normal braid.

  Jason and Daniel, meanwhile, looked about the same, except for the worried, reluctant look in Jason’s bright blue eyes as he glanced toward Daniel.

  Even in this state of dreaming, seeing them together and without me made me wonder if that was a future I would need to get used to. Daniel and I may have been on temporarily good terms, but after everything I’d done to distance myself from the others, the odds that they would forgive me were low.

  That hurt. I couldn’t imagine a world without them and I didn’t want to. I’d known Jason and SJ since I was ten. We met the day I started at Lady Agnue’s and had bonded instantly. Blue joined our crew when I was twelve, and in the four years since our introduction she’d become just as important to me.

  The simple truth was that my friends not only added to my life, they added to my character. They made me a better person. SJ—always the perfect princess and unwaveringly kind—was the voice of logic and reason that helped me think things through. Blue—feisty and unyieldingly brave—reminded me to fight harder, listen to my instinct, and follow my heart. And Jason—selfless and unceasingly loyal—inspired me to do the right thing and think of others and the bigger picture.

  I cared for the three of them deeply. SJ and Blue were also my roommates at Lady Agnue’s. They were the people in the world I was closest to, the people I would do anything for.

  “How do you know she’s not already dead?” Blue asked with darkness in her eyes.

  My other friends seemed startled by her question.

  “What?” she said. “We have to account for all the possibilities here, especially if Daniel is thinking about doing something so crazy.”

  “She’s not dead,” Daniel asserted ardently. He turned to SJ. “You said you saw her. That the potion you invented was working.”

  SJ nodded. “But I do not know what portion of the future it is reflecting. The dream occurred two days ago in Camelot. With the realm-to-realm time differences, we have no way of telling what that equates to.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Jason said, turning to Blue. “And we don’t have to consider all the possibilities. Just one. We’re going to find her.”

  Daniel turned to SJ again. “Show it to us.”

  “Daniel . . .” she started carefully, her gray eyes big with empathy and sadness. “It would be better if I just told you what he saw. Seeing it firsthand for yourself would just—”

  “SJ,” he said firmly. “Show it to us.”

  Suddenly the image cracked and a loud static filled my ears. The pain coursing through me was so intense it felt like the world might shatter. My dream was ripped apart like it was being clawed to shreds by a vengeful cat. Then everything—the pain, the noise, the visions—stopped.

  When I blinked my eyes open, I saw pure white. The pain on my forehead was gone and I realized I was no longer trapped inside Lenore’s ice. Still, something cold was pressing up against my face and the front of my body—something soft and powdery.

  Like snow . . .

  It is snow!

  Aware that my limbs were no longer restrained, I sat up to discover I was in a large embankment of pristine white powder. It was everywhere—hills of it rolled into the distance, piles covered the pine trees that encircled the clearing, and a light, steady stream of the stuff fell from the sky.

  What in the . . .

  I rose to my feet and looked around the winter wonderland with awe and confusion. How was I here? Where was here? And what happened to the—

  The Stiltdegarth!

  I reached for my forehead with panic, but I discovered the malevolent, miniature animal had vanished. Just like Lenore and Cederick and everything else.

  I began to search for a way out. I had not taken twenty steps forward when I collided with an unseen barrier. I stared ahead, confused. The snowy scene was laid out in front of me with the aforementioned pine trees about fifty paces ahead.

  But I had hit something.

  Hesitantly I reached out my hand. Sure enough, I felt a barrier, some kind of smooth, hard wall. The moment I made contact, the area in front of me began to shimmer. Once the disruption settled I saw a reflection of myself.

  It’s a mirror! I realized. But then why hadn’t I seen my reflection before?

  I withdrew my hand. The reflection vanished.

  Hmm, weird.

  I placed my palm on the barrier again to test the effect. The moment my fingertips touched it, my image reappeared, but only for as long as my skin kept contact.

  Changing tactics, I kept my right hand against the massive looking glass as I moved alongside it—hoping this would allow me to find its endpoint. Alas, it seemed to stretch infinitely to my left and right.

  I turned around and tried to find a way out through the forest on the other side of the clearing. This plan failed too. After I walked for a minute in the other direction I rammed into a second invisible wall, which also revealed itself to be a grand mirror.

  How does that even make sense? I wondered as I stared at my reflection. If both sides are mirrors and there’s nothing in between them except me and the snow, then how can there be trees in the reflections?

  All of a sudden I noticed something else in the looking glass. For a second my eyes spotted the shadowy silhouette of an animal behind one of the trees.

  I whirled around, but saw nothing there. That’s when I heard laughter. High pitched and distant, gleeful but disconcerting—it echoed through the terrain.

  I turned toward the mirror again, but the small, dark figure had vanished. The snow began to fall faster and I started to make my way back to the other side of the strange, cold enclosure. After a dozen steps . . .

  Oomph!

  I rammed into the first mirror again.

  Wait, that can’t be. The distance between the two mirrors used to be much farther.

  The snow fell harder. As the last of my boot prints was buried, the laughter came again, sending goose bumps up my skin.

  I squinted through the thick powder and saw the enigmatic, dark figure once more. It was peeking out from behind one of the pines. It began darting in and out of the shadows, moving too speedily for me to get a decent look at it.

  The snowfall continued to thicken; the laughter continued to heighten.

  Suddenly a silhouette zoomed out from behind one of the snow dunes before disappearing behind a second, closer mound. Fear began to escalate inside me. I bolted away from the mirror but only made it a few feet before crashing into the other looking glass.

  I tumbled backward from the impact. Rubbing my forehead, I sat up in the snow and found myself glaring at a seated version of myself in the reflection. Despite not touching the mirror, my image was no longer vanishing. As
a result I was able to get a good look at the fallen girl in the cobalt dress before me.

  She looked as freaked out as I felt, perhaps more so. But her expression fell when she noticed what was behind her. The whirr of black darted from one hill of snow to the next as it drew nearer while still retaining its cover.

  I scrambled to my feet and felt my shoulders press up against the first mirror. I turned on my heels and took four steps back before touching the second.

  The mirrors were moving closer together. And that thing out there was getting closer too, whatever it was.

  The snow was coming down so hard now that I could barely see anything in the reflection. The ongoing laughter reached a volume such that it dulled my senses, rattling inside my head and preventing me from fully focusing on the approaching threat.

  I leaned against one mirror, my eyes trained on the mound of snow that the figure had just dashed behind.

  “Come on, where are you?” I whispered.

  The laughter stopped, the silence deafening in its wake. My hands tensed on the glass behind me. And then—

  Awgh!

  Something licked the back of my neck.

  I whirled around and found nothing there, not even my own reflection. I put my hands to the mirror anxiously, but my image did not return even then. She was gone.

  I didn’t have time to worry. In the next instant my attention was drawn by the sound of a vicious shriek. I spun around to see the black creature that had been stalking me jump out of the opposite mirror—becoming three-dimensional and very, very real.

  It was the Stiltdegarth, of that I was certain, though now it was much larger. The creature was roughly the size of a human adolescent with two long black legs, two thin, rubbery arms, and an elongated torso that extended into a head with a bristled top like a broom.

  It screeched from a mouth filled with hundreds of dagger-like teeth.

  Without hesitation, it dove at me. One arm wrapped around my neck and ensnared me in a chokehold, pressing me so hard against the mirror that I felt like I might break through it. The second arm plunged into my chest.

  I screamed.

  The Stiltdegarth’s eyes glowed yellow as I felt its grip tighten around what must’ve been my heart. I thought the organ might stop beating altogether as bright bolts of energy like mutant lighting strikes began to shoot out of the creature’s eyes and mouth.

  The crackling power surges encircled the Stiltdegarth’s arms and then streamed into me like a toxin. I heard myself scream again as they seared my body inside out, draining me of everything.

  I was going to lose. This thing was going to strip me of my magic and there was nothing I could do about it, nothing at all.

  No, my last remaining bit of consciousness whispered with conviction.

  No.

  I squinted through the snow and the light and the pain and looked the monstrous thing straight in its fanged face, raising both my arms.

  “No!” I yelled.

  I clamped my hands around each of the creature’s arms and concentrated all my strength on expelling it from my body.

  Gritting my teeth, I squeezed the arms of the Stiltdegarth harder and harder as thoughts of my friends, Emma, Natalie, and everyone and everything that had come to be important to me flooded my head. After a few seconds a bright, golden glow flowed out of my body. As it rushed out, the Stiltdegarth’s lightning began to spin in the opposite direction, purging itself from my body and working its way back toward the monster.

  Along with the golden energy I was emitting, the lightning poured mercilessly into the Stiltdegarth. The creature screeched and slammed me firmly against the mirror with another jolt.

  My head hit the glass with a thud, but that only toughened my resolve. I fought back even harder. The surges of energy leaving my body and entering the Stiltdegarth’s increased, as did the creature’s piercing screams. Its eyes were starting to burn red, its teeth vibrated, and with every passing second I felt my strength returning. It was time to end this.

  “LET—” I squeezed my grip so powerfully on the creature’s arms that they started to fold. “ME—” I dug one of my boots into the snow and boosted the other off the mirror for support. “GO!” I pushed the creature away from me with such force that I shot backwards and crashed through the mirror.

  The shards shattered around me like fragile rain. Once again everything went black, but for once I was glad. I lay there in the nothingness—happy to be free of both that place and that thing. A minute later I was drawn back to reality by the voices of Cederick and Lenore.

  “I think it’s dead, Godmother Supreme. And it doesn’t look like it absorbed any power from her.”

  “What? Let me see!” Lenore snapped. “How is that even possible? We haven’t had one die on us since—”

  “Ugh . . .” I groaned as I opened my eyes, the room spinning.

  I blinked at the floor, slowly trying to focus. I hadn’t felt like this since I’d gotten my prologue prophecy. It was like half of me was still unconscious and the other half had just been thrown into the ocean and slapped around by hormonal seals.

  I looked around and saw that I was in Lenore’s office again. Shattered shards of ice glittered on the carpet like an explosion of frozen confetti. The block Lenore had encased me in had been destroyed.

  Across the office Lenore and Cederick stared at me. A trickle of smoke rose from something on the floor. It was the Stiltdegarth. Not the giant one from that wintery death world, but the original itty-bitty one Lenore had placed on my forehead. Only now it wasn’t moving. It was just lying on the carpet, much grayer than it had been before and sizzling like a tiny, burnt piece of meat.

  I propped myself on my forearms. The crystal pattern on my sleeves pulsed faintly but steadily due to the slowing of my heartbeat.

  “How did you do that?” Lenore asked cuttingly. “How did you keep the Stiltdegarth from draining your powers?”

  I didn’t respond. My head hung limply as the pounding in my skull slowed.

  Frustrated, Lenore grabbed my face in her cold, smooth hand and forced me to look at her. Her pink fingernails were sharp against my cheek . . . just as sharp as I remembered.

  I’d seen glimpses of this moment in a dream. Knowing that I’d caught up with another one of my visions only made me more nauseous.

  “Answer me, Crisanta,” Lenore said furiously, gripping me tighter.

  “Ugh, my head,” I muttered, swatting her arms weakly.

  Lenore released my face. She abruptly regained her composure as if an understanding had taken hold. “Your head,” she mused. She crouched down to look me in the eye.

  “Crisanta, sweetheart,” she said, her voice returning to its normal, slick tone. “Tell me, have you been having any strange dreams lately? Any realistic dreams, shall we say?”

  The peculiar question snapped me out of my stupor. I didn’t see what my dreams had to do with this, but Debbie had warned me about this very scenario. I heeded my Fairy Godmother’s advice and feigned ignorance. After all, if this wicked woman was willing to feed me to a nightmarish, magic-sucking creature, there was no telling what more she would do if she learned anything else about me.

  “What kind of question is that?” I huffed, putting on my best facade and swallowing down my feelings of weakness to look Lenore in the eye. “You just froze me in a block of ice and stuck a magic-sucker on my face, and you’re asking me about my sleeping habits? The answer is no, Lenore. I sleep just fine. Though after this visit I doubt I’ll be able to say the same.”

  Lenore straightened. She waved her wand once, which caused all the pieces of ice on the floor to vanish. I watched her pace steadily in front of me—thinking, calculating.

  “Godmother Supreme?” Cederick said. “Uh, what do you want us to do with her, ma’am?”

  “Well I don’t know, Cederick,” Lenore snapped. “Without the dreams it’s not as though we can treat her like the others. If the Stiltdegarth didn’t work, then the only other way t
o remove her power is by the magic hunter method: killing her and absorbing her magic.”

  “But you can’t kill me,” I interjected. Lenore and Cederick’s heads turned in my direction. I confidently rose to my feet, my strength returning. “At least not with your magic,” I continued. “It won’t let you. You said so yourself. So unless you plan on challenging me like a normal person—which you’ll have a lot less luck with, I assure you—I get to walk out of here with my magic and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Lenore looked like she wanted to fry me where I stood.

  “I could take your wand,” she replied. “I know you have it tucked away in there.” She gestured at my dress.

  “That’s a deal breaker,” I responded firmly.

  It was true I didn’t really have any ground to stand on, much less the authority to make demands in this situation. But I spoke steadfastly nonetheless. I gave Lenore my best, most defiant dagger-eyed stare, clenched my fists, and stood with utter confidence.

  “You want me to keep silent, Lenore? Fine. But I draw the line there. You can’t have my wand or any other piece of me.”

  Silence hung in the air. The moment was so tense that I thought the scene might shatter like the ice I’d been encased in. But then—thankfully—Lenore nodded. “All right, Crisanta . . . I’ll let you go. For today, that is.”

  I can’t believe that worked.

  And Blue says I have a lousy poker face.

  I headed for the door—content to leave the stalemate with my magic and at least some of my dignity.

  “Crisanta,” Lenore added as I reached for the handle.

  Spoke too soon.

  I paused and took a breath, but didn’t pivot around. “What, Lenore?”

  She paused at first, which made me nervous. But Lenore did not fire any more magic or monsters at me. Instead, what she did extend was one final statement, or rather a promise.