by Dani Swanson
"Do they have igneous rocks around here? Could we extract it from that and then make our own? Heat it with some silver and be on our way." Xander turned on his side to face his friend. "I bet we would have to make a whole lot of it."
"Would you hold still?" Izzie pushed his head back to a laying position so she could continue to read. "Do you know how much of that stuff you would need to make it rain over the entire Woods? And from what I'm reading, that potion isn't supposed to make people go to sleep. It's supposed to kill them."
"But everyone is asleep." Pan was now up from his nap and focused on the conversation as he joined Nathan on the floor.
"I think The Mother did it." Izzie's statement was cool as she continued to read her book.
"What?" Reyna lifted her head from her pillow and was now headed over to join the conversation. "Why would The Mother do that to all of the Winding Woods....except for you...and us?"
"Well, I'm not sure why for me, but I know why for your guys. You don't drink water. You're a shadow. I lived with a boggle for fifteen years and never saw him take a drink of water, let alone anything. She knew you wouldn't be affected by the poison. The underground river runs straight to the tree. The leaves on the top of her were turning black. I think The Mother is dying, and she put everyone to sleep to save the magic or save them from needing the water. "
Izzie lifted her head from the book to see that everyone was now awake, and all the eyes were on her, watching her in awe. She could feel her face grow hot as she met each of their gazes. "Well, it's all that I can think of." If we get the poison to stop being filtered into the lake, remove the stuff in there, and then allow the clean water to flow, The Mother wouldn't be sick, and would stay awake. I bet it would break the curse."
"Why did she take so long, though? What does Phantasma want with you?" Xander sat up and gave Izzie an overly concerned look.
"I don't know." her voice was small, and she didn't sound sure of herself any longer.
"I can tell you the answer to that. According to the books I've read on witches, you don't get your full power until you reach the age of twenty-one. Taking power from a five-year-old wouldn't have been what Phantasma would have wanted, right?" Robin went over to the bookshelf in the great room and pulled out a book of creatures that looked a lot like the book from Ms. Johnson's English class. "See?"
Robin held open the book to the chapter on witches and handed it to Izzie. She tuned everyone out as she read about her magic and the different covens that once ruled the land where the Winding Woods is. "Are all these covens gone?" She paused her reading long enough to wait for an answer.
"No, they're all still here, just not as powerful as they once were. Their magic was disbursed by The Mother to be more evenly divided throughout the land." Zallen was the one to answer her.
"Do any of you know my mother? Or where she lives? I need to go there."
The room was quiet for a few moments before Robin spoke. "I'll take you there. But you're not going to be able to get in."
"Why is that?"
"Your mom put a forcefield around the house; you somehow got out of it, though. We tried to go in and look for clues on where you would have gone to before we knew Zyon had you. We all got shocked and severely burned." Pan rolled back his sleeve and showed the black patch on his arm from where he tried to go to the house. "We all have them." All the shadows were nodding as they listened to him, rolling their sleeves back to show their own black scars.
"Nonetheless, I can take you there so you can see it for yourself." Robin's voice was chipper as he wanted to help Izzie.
"I'm ready when you are!" She started to get up when Xander grabbed her hand.
"What are we going to do about Phantasma? We keep talking about stopping the poison, but there is no plan on how to stop her. Do you think she's going to be cool with just allowing us to mess with her lake?"
With a loud sigh, Izzie sat back on the couch and sat in the silence of the room, just as the rest of them were doing. She was sitting there trying to figure out what to do.
Izzie took a deep breath and was up on her feet. "I think I need to figure out what I can do. I have no idea what it means to be a witch or how to control my powers that I have. That is what I need to figure out before I figure out how to stop her. The only people that I could think about helping me with that are my biological parents. So, I would like to take that step first before figuring out what to do about Phantasma. Is that fair? What's one more day of her floating around and collecting flowers to dry. Or torturing Zyon because he deserves all the visits; he can possibly get from her. Seriously. I just want to see where I came from. Maybe I will remember something. Anything. Or maybe I'll find the antidote, potion book, thing, that they were talking about. I feel that I sound super self-centered right now, but I didn't ask to be tossed into any of this, but that's all I want to do right now. Is that cool?"
She had tears streaming down her face as she realized she had no idea what to do, but everyone was looking to her for an answer. Xander stood up with her and took her face into his hands, and gently wiped her tears away with his thumbs. "Let's go, Robin." That is all he said before leading Izzie to the door by her hand with Nathan in tow.
"Uh, yeah. Here I come. It won't be a long trip." Robin got up and hurried to the door.
"We'll see if we can find a way to stop the water from flowing underground for you while you're gone," Zallen called after them.
"You mean for The Mother. This isn't for me." Izzie got out through a sniffle.
Robin didn't lie to them when he said it wouldn't be a long trip. Within twenty minutes, they were at the cabin which was in a clearing of the trees. There was a small garden on the house's side and a small playhouse painted a cherry color with flowers planted in a box outside the window. Just as the shadows had told her, there was a forcefield being held in a bubble around the house.
"See? You can't get in?" Robin said as he tossed a pebble at it. The rock shot off the wall, flying back over Robin’s head into the trees.
"But if I got out, there has to be a way in, right?"
Robin shrugged at her as they circled the entire site.
"How bad does it hurt when you touch it?" She looked at Robin, who was rubbing his black spot on his arm.
"I mean, it burnt his skin off," Nathan said as he tossed a stick at the field and watched it start on fire.
"Stop it; you'll burn all the woods down." She scolded.
"I thought I would find you here." A woman's voice echoed through their heads.
"Did you guys hear that?!" Xander turned in a circle, trying to see where that voice was coming from.
"We need to get out of here. Phantasma is here!" Robin said as he grabbed Izzie's hand and started to pull her to leave.
"No, she's not going to hurt me; she can't take my magic yet. I've got a month until I'm old enough. Stand behind me. She's not going to do anything." She loudly whispered. Izzie pushed the boys out of the way as they were trying to shield her from the floating mass of cloak coming toward them from the tree line. "You need to go. There is nothing for you here."
"But you're here, aren't you? You have exactly what I want." Izzie's face went pale as she remembered the void where Phantasma's face should be, peering through the hood of the cloak. The terror she felt all those years ago started to wave over her as she watched her move closer.
"What do you want? This necklace? Is that what all of this is about?" She lifted the charm from her neck and could feel it growing hot as she tried to remove it. The clasp wouldn't budge.
"It's more than just that silly charm. You're just like your mother and don't see the bigger picture. It's about you, as a whole. That is what I want."
"Sorry, I'm not willing to be a part of whatever you've been doing here." Izzie's stuttered as she tried to talk. She couldn't escape the dread that was flowing over her.
"She's not going with you!" Izzie could feel Xander’s grip on her arm.
"You need to go ba
ck to where you came from, witch!" Nathan moved to the side of his sister.
"We need to leave. NOW!" Robin yelled from behind them. Izzie turned her head and saw that he had turned into a shadow and grew three times in size.
"No, I have to get into that house," Izzie whispered back to him.
"Witch? Oh, I am so much more than a witch, human." Her voice echoed through their heads. Nathan felt a drizzle of blood coming from his left ear.
She removed the hood to reveal her melted blank void of a face and the few hair patches on top of her head. She took a small knife with a blade no longer than her thumb out of a pocket in her cloak. Her laughter echoed in their heads as she took the dagger and ripped it into her face where the smear of red was in place of her mouth. She pulled the knife from right to left, leaving a gaping hole. That's when the force of air sucking them toward her started. They were being knocked off their feet, clenching onto anything they could grab to try to stay their ground. Xander did his best to reach a tree while holding onto Izzie but couldn't keep his grip. Izzie shook her hand free from him.
She could feel the burning in her stomach as she had before when she was scared. She knew that it was going to come spilling out of her. She raised her hands in front of her and pointed them right at Phantasma, and just as it had happened at the door of the shadow's castle, streams of silvery force came pouring out of her fingers, rapidly racing toward Phantasma.
Izzie waited for the suction to stop and for Phantasma to explode in millions of tiny pieces just as the door had. Phantasma's laughter grew louder as she absorbed all the force that Izzie had thrown at her. Phantasma's face became more defined when Izzie looked back at her. The hole that she had cut started to take shape into an actual mouth.
Phantasma looked down at her hands and started to see her fingers' sharpness, looking more like her old self than ever before.
The echoes of her laughter pounded through the human's head. Izzie was crying as she was doing her best to dig her feet into the ground.
"Iz, No!" Xander yelled to her. She looked back at him, and with a solid leap, she jumped directly at the forcefield. It didn't burn. She was able to slide through the thick gelatin textured wall and landed on the soft mossy grass on the other side. The noise from the other side was muffled. She could see her brother and Xander try to follow her, but puffs of smoke appeared as they had burned their skin trying to get through. She reached through the wall, grabbing Nathan's arm. He screamed in protest as the searing pain from his attempt to cross was racing from his shoulder all the way down to his fingers. She pulled hard, and he came crashing to her feet on the house side of the field. She then then grabbed Xander by his foot as he was being dragged to the witch. Nathan wrapped his arms around her waist and helped pull him in. Lastly, she grabbed at the shadow, but her hand passed through.
"Go, Robin!" Izzie yelled. The mass of the shadow's head looked at her and nodded before turning into a billow of smoke and fading into the atmosphere.
They stood there on the house side of the forcefield, watching Phantasma gracefully floating on the other side, looking in at them.
"Can she make it through?" Nathan was trying to catch his breath.
"I think she would have followed us through if she could," Xander said as he walked closer to the wall, watching her.
"Babe, don't mock her. We need her to go away so we can leave again when we're done." She walked over and laced her fingers with his. Let's go inside and see if we can find some answers.
"How did you get us in here?" Nathan said as he walked backward with them, to see Phantasma watching them from the other side of the wall.
"I remembered how Phantasma stole me. I can walk back and forth through the wall. She lured me out there with a kitty." Izzie's voice was cold as she felt embarrassed by how stupid she could have been to allow that to happen.
"Well, you have always had a thing for cats." Nathan tried to ease the tension with a joke. He caught a punch from his sister in the arm.
"Was that the power that you did? That was pretty wicked! Why didn't she react to it?"
Izzie stopped and looked back at Phantasma. "She did react; she absorbed every bit of the energy that I sent to her. That's why she wants me at my full power. She wants to absorb me."
They stood there for a moment, in silence, watching, waiting for her to move.
24: The Magic of Cookbooks
The magic of the sleeping curse held throughout the cabin. Her parents were lying on the floor, next to each other. It looked to be as if they were folding laundry when the curse hit them. Her parents held a quilt between them. The boys helped Izzie lift them into their bed and covered them sweetly with the blanket they were folding. Her mother had the same nose as Izzie, and her hair was as dark as a raven's feather. She got her lighter coloring from her dad. His hair was on the lighter brown side, and his skin had olive tones to it. Izzie was feeling overwhelmed seeing where she came from. She sat in the doorway and just watched them sleep for a long while.
"You look like her. Both of them. You are the perfect blend of both of them." Xander had snuck up behind her, startling her thoughts with his deep voice.
"I wish I knew how to wake them."
"Well, we're not going to figure it out by standing here and watching them sleep." He gently gave her a little nudge to get her to walk out to the other room.
The family very much loved the cabin; the drapes matched the corner's overstuffed chair, and the lace tablecloth felt homey. Izzie felt comfortable there, and she remembered some of the toys she found as she walked through the house. She even found the large orange cat sleeping by the fireplace. She placed him at the foot of her parent's bed. "His name is Fig," Izzie said as she carefully moved the cat.
"Of course, you remember the cat. Wait, wasn't that name of that cat stuffy you carried around all the time as a kid?" Nathan was peering out the window, watching for Phantasma to return.
"Yeah. My mom bought me the cat stuffy to be the same as her kitty. He didn't always like to play with a little four-year-old. That part I do remember. He's magic too. I remember that his fur gets hot like fire." Fig was stretched out on his back, showing off his under belly's white fur as the fire was warming it.
Searching through the house gave Izzie small flashes of her past. When she found her mother's bookshelf in the back room, she had a vision of her sitting on her mom's lap and reading through a potions book. She sat down on the floor and ran her fingers over the books' bindings until she found one that was a leather-bound book with tattered pages. She remembered the dingey smell of the pages as she flipped through it.
"This is my mother's journal, and this is mostly in her handwriting. I remember when she would read something; she found useful in one of these other books, she would jot it down in here."
"Kind of like mom and her cookbook. You remember when we had to go find extra tab pages for her with all the different baked goods she would write in there." Nathan smiled as he sat down next to his sister.
"Yeah, she always said there was something magic about what she had in her cookbook. Do you remember when you knocked over that candle, and all that wax got on her book? I thought I was for sure going to come out of that as an only child." Izzie playfully nudged Nathan with her shoulder as she started to read the tops of each page. "If there is anything that is going to help me, it would be in this book."
She crawled into an overstuffed chair that was missing many buttons from the upholstery and started to read each page. She found one that taught her how to pull her powers from within and push them out of her hands like she was shoving away an invisible person. She held her hand out in front of her and squinted her eyes at her palm as she concentrated. A stream of force came out of her, pushing the chair in at the table across the room.
"Babe, did you just do what I think you did?" Xander's face lit up as a child's full of wonder. "That is AMAZING!"
Izzie blushed as her companions awed at her while she moved things around the hou
se without leaving her seat.
"My mom calls this the "Ether". It says that it's the strongest of all the powers. Dude, my mom, can heal people just by touching them!" Her fingers were running the lines of the book, and her eyes were going wild, trying to absorb every word. "Anyone willing to cut themselves to see if I can help them?"
"What about these wicked burns we got from your mom's forcefield she has going on?" Nathan said as he took the pink fern leaves off his shoulder to show the blackened skin. Izzie put her book down and rub her hands together as she was warming her palms. She held her hands over his injury and waited. Nathan winced in pain as he pulled away from her touch. Nothing happened.
"Well, I guess you didn't inherit that from her," Xander shrugged as he replaced the covering on his burn, seeing that she wasn't going to be able to help. "Does your dad have powers? Maybe he has a spell book we can read too."
"No, my dad was like a knight. He was always practicing with a sword or shooting a bow and arrow. Exceptionally good with his hands, from what I remember. I think there is a rocking horse around here that he made me." Izzie slowly turned on her heels until she spotted it sitting in the corner. Her smile was warm with nostalgia when she spotted it. "Like that. He was awesome at stuff like that when I was a kid."
Izzie returned to her reading. She taught herself how to control the Ether and how to create fire in her hand. Xander and Nathan each had taken a book too but were more focused watching Izzie out of the corner of their eyes.
"Whoa!" Izzie jumped to her feet with excitement. "This could trap her!" She ran over to the table and sat down between the boys with a page opened to a beautiful necklace drawing. The gold chain was woven like vines wrapping around a large green emerald. "It's called a bewitching jewel. My mom wrote here that it could hold a magical being to bind it from harming others."
"All right, and how does it work? Does your mom have one?" Xander got up and started opening the drawers inside the house.
