Inherent Fate

by Geanna Culbertson

  Liza glanced at the whiteboard behind her. For the first time since she began her story I saw sadness and regret in her expression. She looked at her own writing and seemed to forget we were there for a moment. Eventually she sighed and sat down on the armrest of her chair.

  “Lena listens to the explanations of her younger sister and is dismayed. And then she tells the younger sister why.”

  Liza shot me a quick glance. It was fast and subtle, but I didn’t miss the guilt in it.

  “There is secret sickness in Book that only people in higher-up positions like the Godmothers, ambassadors, and kingdom rulers know about. It is a rare mutation—a disorder of the mind and body called Pure Magic Disease. And for those afflicted, the normal rules of magic do not apply.

  “As the younger sister already knows, magic in our realm is easily removed and transferred between people and objects. What she doesn’t know is that in unique cases magic can bond with a person differently. Instead of it being something that the holder carries and can shed like a coat, it fuses to them and weaves into their DNA. When this happens, two things result. The magic will manifest in the form of a single, incredibly potent ability that does not need a wand to work. And the magic will slowly but surely corrupt the person hosting it.

  “The power of Pure Magic is too strong for humans to keep in check for very long, you see. As time goes by it amplifies the host’s anger, aggression, and malice. In turn, no matter how strong the initial will or purity of the host, the power eventually drives them to darkness.

  “The younger sister learns that this illness is responsible for creating many of our realm’s witches and warlocks. It is another hidden truth that the higher-ups in Book have tried to keep in the shadows. Many of these evil, powerful people locked up in Alderon were once Fairy Godmothers and Fairy Godfathers. They contracted Pure Magic Disease when they were imbued with their powers and their hearts and minds turned dark as a result of the affliction.”

  Liza slid fully back into her chair. “At that point, the younger sister wonders why her older sister is telling her this. And then the older sister reveals that the strongest sign of Pure Magic Disease is the ability to see the future through dreams. Somehow, the nature of Pure Magic allows those carrying it to connect to other powerful fields of magic.”

  I felt the eyes of my friends fall on me, but I couldn’t meet their collective gaze.

  “The strongest, most complex type of magic in Book is the grand In and Out Spell covering the entire realm,” Liza continued. “Sufferers of Pure Magic Disease are able to bond with it and see all that it sees—every significant event that will ever come to pass beneath it.

  “Terrified, the younger sister allows herself to be taken to the magic transfer chamber with the hope that maybe her gift of foresight is just a fluke. Maybe her magic can be removed and she does not have the sickness. But her hope is in vain. When the Stiltdegarth—the standard creature used for magic removal—is attached to the younger sister, it fails to drain her magic completely. It sucks out the set of Fairy Godmother powers she’d been officially imbued with years earlier, but it cannot extract the magic from her body entirely. And when the process is over and the Stiltdegarth has burned out, the younger sister is still left with a single power, which is fused to her blood like the older sister dreaded. It is confirmed. The young sister has Pure Magic Disease.”

  It felt like I’d been struck by lightning. The familiarity of my own situation with everything Liza had described made me want to throw up. But her story was not over. I remained still as a statue as she continued her tale.

  “The higher-ups in the Godmother Agency think that it is only a matter of time before the younger sister succumbs to the disease and will need to be banished to Alderon like the others who’ve come before her. But the older sister insists that they don’t exile her until the darkness has effectively taken over and permanently changed her. The realm’s higher-ups agree to wait. Unfortunately for them, the wait proves much longer than anticipated.

  “Weeks, months, and years go by without the younger sister turning—causing the higher-ups to become anxious. The girl should have succumbed to the disease’s dark side effects, but she remains herself. In fact, the only thing that has changed is her tolerance for being kept in Fairy Godmother Headquarters like a prisoner under house arrest. Which is why, having discovered that her Pure Magic manifested in the power of teleportation, the younger sister tries to escape again and again. Alas, her attempts always end in vain. No matter how fast or far she can travel . . .”

  Liza suddenly raised her hands. They flashed gold like her eyes and she was enveloped in the same aura of light that she’d first appeared in. When the flash vanished, so did she. Then another flash occurred on the opposite side of the room and she materialized again. Liza repeated the trick three more times—disappearing and reappearing in different parts of the room to make her point.

  When she teleported back into her chair I saw a slight look of satisfaction in her eyes. She was proud of what she could do. Despite the seriousness of her story, I could see she enjoyed showing off her magic.

  I kind of understood. I had never felt as powerful as when I’d unleashed the full force of my magic in Nadia’s palace. It felt good to be able to do something extraordinary.

  “Anyways,” Liza said, as she pushed a curl of hair out of her face. “Despite her ability to teleport, the younger sister can never elude her older sister’s team of Special Forces Fairy Godmothers for long. She is always inevitably caught.

  “The realm’s leaders reason that something has to be done about this. The afflicted girl—” Liza pointed her thumbs at herself, “has to be controlled in some way. But how? Cue the big idea . . .”

  Liza got up from her seat again and picked a purple whiteboard marker out of the basket. She strode over to an area of whiteboard with some space on it and wrote in capital letters:

  THE AUTHOR.

  “In the two years since finding out about the younger sister’s powers,” Liza said, facing us, “the Godmothers have been able to secure an unprecedented number of happily ever afters for citizens across the realm—using the girl’s visions to anticipate, prepare, and steer important people toward their designated fates.

  “The spike in performance is also due to the fact that the Godmothers no longer look after everyone. Since the younger sister’s visions are connected to the In and Out Spell around the realm, the Godmothers now only consider the people she dreams about—and royal children, of course, given their future leadership roles—to be valuable.

  “This system makes the Godmothers’ lives much easier. Fewer Godkids equals better results. It is a quality over quantity adjustment. Before, the Godmothers used to spend their lives running around trying to create happily ever afters everywhere—never knowing which people they invested in were worth the time, effort, and magic. But no longer.

  “Given this, the older sister, who is now Godmother Supreme, proposes the following notion: why not make writing the future stories the younger sister’s full-time work? This would streamline the realm’s regulatory systems permanently. Going forward, the Godmothers could officially only focus on looking after those people in the realm whom the younger sister foresees as important.

  “Brilliant. Inspired. Revolutionary. At least that’s what all the higher-ups think of the idea. The only problem with the plan is the younger sister herself. She must be hidden and the details of her identity kept a secret. Otherwise people might try to seek her out and influence what has or has not been written about them.”

  Liza crossed her arms. “The younger sister obviously refuses to agree to being locked away forever. And she thinks her powers of teleportation would counteract any normal type of enchantment used to secure her.

  “So the Godmother Supreme comes up with a plan. If no normal type of enchantment can keep the younger sister safe from herself or others, what about something even more potent that has proven successful at preventing even Pure M
agic witches from crossing borders for generations? An In and Out Spell.

  “What if they simply block off a portion of the realm and isolate the younger sister? She would not be able to teleport through it, and since the enchantment is not designed to keep objects from crossing its lines, she can still teleport her future stories to the outside world for the Godmothers and the rest of the realm to use.

  “All of the higher-ups agree to the plan, and in the blink of an eye it is enacted. Everything changes. The younger sister is locked away to serve as an alienated, eternal soothsayer. A new In and Out Spell goes up. And with a few perception filter enchantments, a lot of memory-wipe magic, and an influx of purposefully generated urban legend, Book’s modern way of life is born. The people the younger sister dreams about are ‘chosen’ as protagonists and everyone else is deemed common.

  “Behind the scenes a Fairy Godmother is assigned to each protagonist at some point. But these days the Godmothers just get the name of a protagonist, not the details of the visions like they did in the beginning. The Godmother Supreme worried that if the Godmothers of today knew about the way her younger sister’s visions worked then they would learn the truth. And the more people who knew about the younger sister, the greater chance there’d be of that truth spreading to the rest of the realm.”

  Liza capped her marker. “Well, that’s everything. The end, as it were,” she said as she sat back down. Then she bit her lip.

  “Oh wait—just to add a little epilogue to this tale—a few years after this prison sentence begins, both sisters are enchanted with powerful anti-aging spells so the younger sister can continue her work for all eternity while the Godmother Supreme keeps an eye on her and keeps her in line. As an extra bonus the younger sister’s anti-aging spell is also tied to the In and Out Spell around the Indexlands. The very force field designed to keep her prisoner is what keeps her alive, thus providing extra incentive to not go looking for a way out.”

  Liza exhaled deeply and stretched, clearly wiped from such a long narrative. “Well, that’s the story,” she sighed, “of how my dreams became ‘Protagonist Books,’ I became ‘The Author,’ and everyone in the realm came to live in a world where they are kept in the dark about the true origins of both. I’m sure you have questions.”

  The room fell silent. There were so many questions swirling around my head it was hard to decide where to start. It was like being under attack by a cyclone of crows and having to defend yourself with a bow and arrow—how do you know which bird to take a shot at first?

  “But . . . the Author and her books have been around forever,” SJ thought aloud. “No one remembers a time before them. I know you mentioned that the Godmothers utilized perception filters and memory-wipe magic to create your myth, but what does that mean in terms of your age? How long have you been here?”

  Liza shrugged. “About a century and a half.”

  We all went bug-eyed.

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Liza replied somewhat wistfully.

  “It sounds like a century and a half,” Blue repeated. “If you’ve been trapped here all this time, how are you not, like, lonely-hermit crazy? You seem perfectly fine.”

  “I wouldn’t describe my situation as ‘fine,’” Liza said, a look of irritation crossing her face. She took a deep breath and re-centered. “I have simply made peace with it. I was defiant and angry for the first decade. Then that turned into depression over the second and third decades. But that’s the thing about realizing you’re going to live forever; you eventually get that you might as well live to the best of your ability. So I do my work for the realm—keeping busy figuring out dreams, putting together timelines, and slowly but surely piecing together the stories for each of my protagonist books. Then in my downtime I entertain myself. I love to paint; I’ve mastered twelve different instruments; I’m excellent at crafting; I can speak sixteen languages, knit, sew, cook, bake, build weapons out of just about anything I find in the forest, and thanks to so much working out I am probably in better physical shape than many heroes at Lord Channing’s.” She shot a glance at Jason. “What can you bench, like 205?”

  Jason stuttered, caught off guard. Liza waved her hand dismissively before he could answer and turned back to Blue.

  “And to answer your question about why I’m not ‘lonely-hermit crazy,’ Lena keeps in contact with me and I get some regular visitors. My sister has a team of extremely loyal Godmothers in her agency who are aware of my situation. They are the ones who helped Lena cast the In and Out Spell around my land in the first place, so they are actually the only ones who can pass through it. Well, until the five of you anyways. Those Godmothers are also under the same anti-aging spell as Lena, so they can dedicate themselves to the cause eternally.”

  “Are those the Scribes?” Jason asked.

  “Good guess, but no,” Liza replied. “Lena doesn’t like to trust any one person with too much power, so she keeps her loyal followers in separate categories. The realm ambassadors that once knew about my situation are long dead. The ones today don’t know the truth. And since they work directly with the Scribes on the protagonist book selection process, Lena has chosen to keep the Scribes in the dark about me as well. For all they know, I’m just a mysterious prophet who controls our realm.

  “The five Godmothers that Lena has trusted with my secret are normal Godmothers. They pay me visits to deliver food and fresh supplies because, while I can teleport myself and teleport objects to other places, I can’t teleport anything to me. I guess I’m glad for this flaw. The regular deliveries allow me a little human contact. Talking with those Godmothers—well, three Godmothers and two Godfathers—is a way to catch up on news of the outside world. It also keeps me grounded and not crazy.” Liza shook her head, as if reflecting on her century-old relationships. “I’ve grown fond of a couple of them, but the others are just tolerable. Though I suppose I can’t be too picky about the company I keep considering the five of you are the only other people I’ve seen since being put in here.”

  “Why the Forbidden Forest?” Daniel asked abruptly. “You said you can teleport objects out of here. Why do you send your protagonist books there?”

  “My prison’s In and Out Spell is so strong that—powerful as I am—I even have trouble teleporting objects through. That’s why I can’t just randomly send out a note for help. I can only teleport things to where there is an extremely high concentration of magic, like the Forbidden Forest. In addition to the magical creatures there, the Forbidden Forest has a lot of magical surges due to the holes leading to the Wonderlands.” Liza paused. She turned to me. “You’ve met Harry the White Rabbit, right? I had a dream about the two of you that should’ve already come to pass. Did he tell you about the holes in the spell?”

  I nodded.

  “Right, well, since my Pure Magic allows me to connect with other forms of magic, those holes act like lightning rods for me to hone in on. So that’s where it is easiest for me to send the books, and where it’s easiest to send random stuff to keep my magic sharp. Like I said, the strength and clarity of my dreams is tied to how much magic I output. Teleporting stuff out of here takes a lot more power, so I do that when I feel like giving my visions an extra boost.”

  I thought about the field where I’d discovered the Scribes’ protagonist book library in the Forbidden Forest. It had been littered with random junk—quills, baskets, artwork, candles. Now I knew why.

  “I won’t be sending anything else to the Forbidden Forest though,” Liza said. “I recently sensed a disturbance in the magic field there. Afterwards, Lena ordered me to start teleporting my books to another place where Wonderland holes constantly appear, the Dolohaunty Mountains. I’m not supposed to use the Forbidden Forest as my drop zone anymore.”

  “Oh, uh, sorry,” I said, rubbing my arm sheepishly. “I think that reason was me. I sort of found the Scribes’ protagonist book library.”

  “Really? Well done!”

  “Um, thank you?”
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br />   “Hey, Liza,” Jason interjected. “What about our prologue pangs? The seizure pains that supposedly correspond with the intensity of our fates, and those spiral marks we receive right after we get our prophecies. If you’re stuck in here, how does that work?”

  “Those aren’t my doing,” Liza replied. “The spiral marks were my sister’s idea. She felt they added a little drama to the situation and made the Author seem intimidating and powerful. That’s why the marks don’t appear at the exact same time as the pangs. There is a slight, few minute delay. The pangs occur when I have visions of your prophecies. I write them down and immediately tell Lena. Then she uses her magic to make the marks appear. That spiral mark is the same insignia that she and her followers—the Scribes, the other elite Godmothers, and the ambassadors—use to notate their allegiance to the same beliefs about upholding order and control.”

  I nodded again. I had seen the spiral mark in the Capitol Building library, the Scribes’ protagonist book library, and on Lenore’s ring. I’d already realized the same thing.

  “And the pangs?” Daniel asked curiously.

  “That I can’t completely explain,” Liza replied. “My best guess is that those pangs you protagonists experience when I receive your prophecies have something to do with the intrusiveness of the phenomenon. Maybe using my magic to glimpse into your futures so invasively causes you to physically react to it. I don’t know. Lena may not like things she can’t control, but as the pangs only add reverence to the mystique of the Author, she just kind of goes with it.”

  “Hold on,” Blue raised her hands. “Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.”