by S. W. Clarke
When did I become dumber than my cat? “He said, ‘They’re nearing.’”
She stopped hard, her staff pressed into the cement. When she turned, her violet eyes had narrowed. “That was quick. Quicker than they used to be. A bad sign.”
I stopped, too. “A sign of what?”
“The underworld’s denizens grow stronger as we grow weaker.” She turned toward the railing, surveying the river below. “I guess we’ll have to take the quick route. Fortunately, rivers are points of power. This isn’t a very impressive one, but it’ll do.”
She stepped toward the railing, hiking up the sleeves of her robes.
“Lady, please don’t do what it looks like you’re about to do.” I stepped forward, one hand reaching out to stay her. “I’ve already got months of therapy ahead of me thanks to tonight.”
Loki sighed again. “Oh, you are so quaint for a city girl.”
The headmistress glanced over at me. “What does it look like I’m about to do?”
My eyes darted to the railing, back to her. “Commit suicide,” I said frankly.
“Oh no. No, no, no,” she assured me. “We’re just jumping off the side.”
I would have laughed if she’d even so much as cracked the hint of a smile. But she didn’t. She only proceeded to climb onto the railing and, standing precariously on it, tipped the end of her staff down at the river.
No. Hell no. I was getting off this train. Or bridge, as it were.
I was about to say as much when I heard it again—that tires-over-gravel sound.
I spun as they materialized out of the night. The figures who repelled light, who seethed with darkness.
And not just two this time. A dozen of them.
They rushed onto the bridge. Some ran on all fours, bounding like dogs.
I stood frozen, absolutely stunned. The very sight of them stilled my blood, brought on a strange inability to move properly.
Somehow, in the minutes since I’d last seen these creatures, I’d managed to lapse back into my old frame of mind. The world in which magic wasn’t real. In which cats didn’t talk. In which people didn’t repel light.
Loki scrabbled hard in my arms, scratching me out of my stupor. “Can we please get out of here before I crap myself?”
The raking pain jerked me back to life. I turned back toward the headmistress as, with her angled staff, she shot a blast of white light at the river below.
“Here is your first trial. We don’t accept those lacking in bravery,” she called back to me, her robes and hair whipping around her. “Do you want the power to find your mother and sister? You must first leap, child.”
And then, her eyes never leaving mine, she stepped off the railing and, dropping fast, disappeared from sight.
I rushed to the railing, peering over.
The headmistress was gone. Only the river lay below us, a wide expanse of dark water rushing beneath the bridge.
She had been swept away.
My knees went weak. “Oh my god, Loki. She’s dead.”
I could feel Loki’s heart beating fast in his tiny chest. “Listen, Clem—how about fewer exclamations of wonder and more jumping off bridges? Because if you’ll just take a look behind us, we’re about to be thrown off, anyway.”
I did look behind us. And I wished I hadn’t.
The forces of darkness ran, bounded, and slithered toward me across the full width of the bridge.
What the hell were those things?
And what was that crawling across the ground toward me? The figure wasn’t large and hulking like my kidnappers. This one looked like…a young girl?
As she came to within fifty feet, I couldn’t stop staring at her. Something about her captivated me.
When she finally raised her head, red eyes flared on me. And moreover, I saw something in those eyes. Something I couldn’t place, but that terrified me thoroughly.
And I knew I only had one way out of this. But still I hesitated.
As I did, the woman’s words rang in my mind. Do you want the power to find your mother and sister?
Well, do you, Clem?
And the answer returned instantly: Yes. I want that. I want it more than anything.
And in a whirlwind of logic, I thought if cats could talk and old women could call lightning from the sky, then maybe jumping off bridges didn’t invoke certain death.
So the decision was made.
“Hold on, Loki.” I pressed him up over my shoulder and freed up one hand to climb up onto the railing. It wasn’t as easy as the headmistress had made it look, especially holding a scared cat. His claws were going to leave permanent scars on my chest.
When I’d gotten both feet up, I could hardly feel the railing through the numb soles of my feet. I grabbed a support bar as I stood to full height, the wind now heavier than ever. The headmistress's cloak whipped around me, daring me to fall. And for the second time tonight, I felt completely powerless.
I hated that feeling.
I had two choices: jump into a river or be thrown into it by the forces of evil. My options were abysmal all the way around, and I only had a split-second to find the courage to choose the less abysmal one.
Behind me, the creatures were nearing. They must have been only a few yards away by now.
I lifted one foot, held it out over the river.
Loki’s claws dug deeper into my shoulder, small injections of pain to remind me I was still very much awake. “What are you waiting for?”
Deep down, I had been waiting to wake up. All this time I had been waiting for this not to be real.
But as a screech cut through the night—that was the sound of the girl crawling toward me; I felt sure of it—I knew the ringing in my ears was real as real could be.
Which meant the headmistress had really shot lightning from her staff.
Which meant, in turn, that I was a witch.
The last witch in the world.
And if all of those things were true, then why not jumping off a bridge and landing somewhere else? At least I had the option.
Now I just had to jump before I lost my nerve.
I raised my eyes to the moon. Tonight it was round and full. Here was my goodbye to the world I had known, whatever the other side of this leap would bring.
Goodbye moon. Goodbye apartment. Goodbye college.
Goodbye to Clementine, the normal girl I’d thought I was.
And so, with one arm tight around Loki and a last backward glance at the creatures chasing me, I leapt off the bridge over the Anacostia River.
Chapter Four
I may have leapt off a bridge over water, but I didn’t land in water.
And maybe in retrospect, that would have been less painful.
I hit the ground feet-first, immediately crumpling to my knees. Leaves crunched beneath me, and Loki moved faster than he ever had to get out from my grip before he was squashed under my weight.
Three seconds after I’d jumped, I lay starfished on the ground. My ankles might be sprained; they certainly hurt like hell. I’d have bruises on both knees, but the cloak and my pajama pants had shielded me from the worst of it. And my wrists ached, too, from bracing my fall.
But I hadn’t felt anything crack or snap. That was a positive.
Another positive: I wasn’t dead. Well, unless this was the afterlife.
“Quite a landing,” came the headmistress’s from voice above me. “Want to get yourself killed before you’ve even started, child?”
Definitely not the afterlife.
I groaned. I couldn’t even be bothered to lift my head. A strange mix of euphoria at being alive and pain at hitting the earth so hard swirled through me.
There was also the memory of those red eyes belonging to the child of darkness. They were seared into my vision.
But I wasn’t dead.
“Well”—I heard the headmistress step through the leaves toward me—“you’ve taken the leap, at least. Though not gracefully.”
I
finally raised my head. When I opened my eyes, I was nearly blinded by the sunlight through the canopy.
We were in a forest. Pine trees surrounded me.
But the strangest part of all: it was the middle of the day. Not nighttime.
I blinked hard to focus on her, like a mole rat just come up to the surface. “There’s a more graceful way of doing it?”
Loki snickered.
The headmistress knelt beside me and patted my back. “Oh yes. Oh yes, yes, yes. Now let’s get you up.”
One hand reached out, and I gripped it. I winced at the strain on my tender wrist as she pulled me handily to my feet and brushed leaves out of my curls.
My eyes had begun to adjust, and I spotted Loki seated and staring up at me from a few feet away. From there, I turned a slow circle as my eyes lifted higher and higher to the treetops.
This forest was absolutely ancient. The trees must have been as wide around as small buildings, and tall enough to touch the clouds.
Well, not really. But they certainly seemed to extend forever into the sky.
I lowered my eyes to the headmistress. “Loki, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in DC anymore.”
From behind me, Loki snickered again. “Well observed.”
The headmistress nodded once. “No, you are not.” One hand flicked out. “This isn’t even the same continent. Do you want to guess at where we are, child?”
I breathed in the air; it sailed cool and crisp into my lungs. The forest went on over the headmistress’s shoulder for as far as I could see. It was cold here—just as cold as where we’d come from. But the trees were different. I smelled a unique scent of pine.
Maybe it was another world entirely. I thought of the stories my mom used to tell me as a girl. “The fairy realm,” I offered.
Both the headmistress and Loki busted up in laughter, and I wasn’t sure who to be more offended by.
I folded my arms beneath the cloak and fixed the two of them with an evil eye. “You could just say ‘no.’”
Loki responded first. “Oh, don’t be so uptight.” My cat swiped a dismissive paw through the air. “You’ve always been such a know-it-all. Your naïveté is the most enjoyment I’ve had in years.”
“Years, really?” I leaned down toward him. “What about when I put you on a leash and took you out for walks?”
Loki turned his nose up. “God, I was hoping you wouldn’t remind me of that indignity.”
The headmistress watched our exchange with gleaming eyes. “You’re getting to know your familiar. That’s good. You and he will be together until one of you dies, after all.”
Until one of us died… Well, given the way he was looking at me, he didn’t seem to have a lot of confidence in my ability to outlive him.
I turned to the headmistress. “So we’re not in the fairy realm.”
“We’re in Eastern Europe.” She started through the woods, and Loki and I fell into step behind her. I should say, I hobbled along. Between my bare feet and aching ankles, I wasn’t exactly on the catwalk. “Transylvania, they call it.”
I stared around again, reconsidering the trees. For all my faux-worldliness, I’d never even left the East Coast before. “That’s impossible.”
Loki trotted beside me. “Not so. Headmistress Umbra tapped into a place of power. A river.”
I pointed at the old woman before us and mouthed, Umbra?
Loki nodded. “Maeve Umbra.”
Well, if that wasn’t a headmistress’s name, I didn’t know what was.
“It sounds like your familiar has already informed you.” Headmistress Umbra kept her pace. “But to provide more detail, I used magic to part the veil between that part of the world and this one.”
The veil. It sounded ridiculous, but then, here I was. And I’d thought I had life mostly figured out. Well, at least to the extent of what most adults needed to know to get by. Bills, jobs, relationships. Okay, let’s be honest: I didn’t have any of those things figured out. But I had a better grasp on them than I did places of power and veils and talking cats.
The last part was still really, really wigging me out. I mean, imagine owning a pet for seven years, and finding out after all that time he’s actually been observing you with keen intelligence when you’re… Well, when you’re doing stuff you think a cat wouldn’t be smart enough to understand.
My face heated at the thought of it. All this time, I’d only thought Loki had one of those judgmental cat faces. Now I knew he’d actually been judging me.
And he knew all my secrets.
Man, that cat could make my life miserable if he wanted to.
The headmistress’s words finally processed: she had used magic to part the veil.
I caught up with the headmistress. “If you used magic, what are you? Not a witch, if I’m the last one.”
Her eyebrow rose at that, gaze drifting to me. “Yes, you are the last one. I’m a human, like you. But I’m also imbued with magic, just like you. You would know me best as a wizard.”
I didn’t know much about wizards, but a childhood full of cartoons had taught me a thing or two. One of which was: wizards called lightning bolts down from the sky. The speed with which all of this was becoming believable to me almost made me question my own sanity again. Almost.
“I have magic, too.” I paused, allowing those words to sit in the air—to become my reality. “How? My mother wasn’t a witch.”
“Ah.” Maeve Umbra’s finger went up as we walked. “Or was she?”
My mother, a witch?
Was such a thing even possible?
If she was a witch, I had never suspected. And my father hadn’t even been around—ever. I’d never even met the guy. And my mother never mentioned him, either. She’d never even told me how I was conceived. It was like I’d been immaculately created.
It had always been me, Mom, and my sister. And no magic to speak of, though we did get really into Halloween every year.
That is, until they disappeared.
My eyes narrowed on the headmistress. “My mother has been gone for seven years. How would you know anything about her?”
The briefest cast of darkness passed over Headmistress Umbra’s face. If I hadn’t been watching her closely, I might have thought it was a shadow. But it was definitely a micro-expression.
She regained herself just as quickly. “I did not know your mother. That’s the truth. But witches are matrilineal, and their powers are only passed from mother to daughter. Which means she was a witch, my child.”
“If you didn’t know my mother, then how did you know about me? How did you know to come rescue me?”
“I did not.” The headmistress indicated Loki, trotting with his tail upright on her other side. “He informed me.”
“That’s right.” Loki flicked self-satisfied green eyes on me. “So you kind of owe me forever now.”
“But you were just a stray who showed up at my door seven years ago.”
“After everything that’s happened today, that’s what you think?” Loki’s tail curled at the tip as he looked at me. “No, Clem. Your mother put out a call for me.”
I stopped hard, my chest tightening. “My mother did what?”
Loki stopped with me, though the headmistress kept walking as though she understood the need for privacy in this moment.
The cat circled back around, approached me until he was staring straight up into my eyes. “Witches have the ability to call us familiars to them. When she disappeared, she left a call at the house where you lived as a child.”
My breathing might have stopped, because I inhaled hard when Loki finished speaking. “Where did she go? What happened to her?”
For the first time, Loki looked genuinely sorry. His whiskers twitched. “I don’t know. I only know I was the one to answer the call, and I found you.”
Everything I’d been asking myself my whole childhood about my mother’s disappearance came rushing back. And none of what Loki had just told me answered a single qu
estion.
I still didn’t know what had become of her and my sister. Why they had disappeared in the first place.
The headmistress stopped some ten yards on, half-turned back toward us. “Are you coming, child?”
Was I coming? A good question.
What choice did I have, really? I could stop here in the middle of the Eastern European wilderness, barefoot and without a credit card or a phone. Or I could follow this wizard to her academy.
Deep down, I suspected if I went with her all those questions I’d been asking about my mother and sister were more likely to be answered than if I begged her to part the veil and return me to my home.
Especially knowing who was waiting for me back at home. The forces of darkness and their impossibly red, creepy eyes.
“Fine.” I started forward, my ankles surging with pain. I ignored it. “I’m coming.”
When I came alongside her, she glanced over at me. She’s studying me again, I thought but didn’t say.
What was she looking for?
“If I’m a witch, where are my powers?” I asked. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to force-pull my phone to me with no success.”
The headmistress seemed to relax. “You didn’t truly believe you were capable of ‘force-pulling’ the phone though, did you?”
“Well, sure I did.” I shrugged. “I was open to the idea, at least.”
“You might have thought you were open to the idea, but you were a child of the non-magical world, Clementine. You were not truly open to it.”
“And now I’m no longer of that world,” I said. “But I have no magic to speak of.”
She gestured to Loki. “You can communicate with him, can you not?”
Touché. “But I can’t shoot lightning from my fingertips.”
“Your magic is rare indeed, and for witches, a fickle thing. Very often it doesn’t emerge until a witch truly believes she’s capable of such power—and even then, slowly, in fits and starts.”
“Like I have to have faith in the magic?”
“Precisely. And it won’t respond to false faith—only to a deep and absolute belief in its existence.”
