by Bob Dattolo
Water wrapped them, flowing around them in long, thin tendrils that created beautiful patterns without their prompting. I love when they do that.
Mom spoke first, “Anwyn Iola Pembroke.” Her voice was backed by her power, and the room shook slightly around us, “You stand before us on the cusp of womanhood. Your cycle has started, signifying that you are ready for a major step in the life of a mage.”
My father’s voice rose next as his power swelled in the room, “The inducement ceremony takes place when a child becomes ready for the transformation from near-human to mage. The ceremony does not need to happen now, it can be postponed, but it will happen anyway when you turn 18.”
Mom took over again, “We’ve discussed the options with you. The academy waits when you’re 18. Three years of schooling. Three years of trials. You need everything we can teach you before then to survive the experience. So we are here to ask you, are you ready for the inducement ceremony?”
We walked through this before, but I’m still feeling this shiver of fear inside of me.
“You have no reason to fear, Anwyn. This is a normal part of life. You heard them, this isn’t even needed; you will go through it with or without them when you turn 18.”
Not now, voice!
“I am ready.”
My father’s voice again, “Then ask us what you will.”
It took a second to get my voice to work correctly, “I ask for you to perform the inducement ceremony on me.”
Dad winked, voice dipping to a normal whisper, “Good job, Pumpkin!”
Mom’s voice stayed at the same level, but I can see the humor and love in her eyes, “You have reached womanhood and you have asked of your own free will. We will perform the inducement ceremony. When this is done, you will gain access to the start of your power. Your body will begin to change. You will move from near-human to mage.”
Dad’s arms flared wide, “Anwyn Iola Pembroke? Prepare for your inducement!”
Power roared out of them, and I swear my hair should be streaming back from me like it is for them. Their jet-black hair looks like they’re in a wind tunnel, and the blue streaks of their affinity are alight with their roaring magic.
“Can you feel it?”
Stop it, voice!
“Can you feel it?!”
Ugh, Yes, I can feel it! I can feel their magic, now please stop talking!
The voice started to say something else, but my parents’ magic chose that moment to spike into me like an out-of-control truck. I thought my cramps were bad, but this?
I couldn’t scream, the pain froze my chest as the magic tore through me. It’s like inviting a thousand razorblades into me to live and have fun, and their fun is slicing me to pieces. Millions of pieces. And then doing it again.
More power built. Then more. My parents were saying something, but I’m pretty sure it’s tied to the ceremony itself. Not that I can figure out what it is.
Then, without warning, the pain stops, and my parents step closer as I sway on my feet. Their power is still out, but now I’m starting to feel something building inside of me.
“Now can you feel it? You’re feeling your magic for the first time.”
My chest heaves as I manage my first breath since the magic first hit me, and I look at my parents. I saw them coming closer but didn’t look directly at them until now.
Why do they look…
My father’s massive fist takes me down, and I feel my jaw shatter as he starts yelling. I don’t remember falling, but I’m on the floor as my mother looms over me, coming down with a stomp that sends lances of agony through my shoulder as I hear the bones break inside of me.
That’s when the screaming starts from the pain, which only gets worse as her power rolls out again and wraps me in what I swear is barbed wire. It squeezes and tightens, pulling my arms and legs in tight before continuing to constrict.
Then my father’s back, and my blood runs cold at seeing what’s in his hands.
My scream cuts off at the sight, and Mom grimaces at him, “I have her.”
Dad nods and glares down at me, “It’s the only way.”
“Do it. She’s no daughter of ours.”
“Mommy?” My jaw hurts beyond anything I’ve ever felt before to try to talk. “Daddy?” The words are mushy, but I know they can understand them when they jerk away from me.
Mom spits, hitting my face, “You’re not my daughter. Anwyn Iola Pembroke never existed.”
Dad crouches, holding the feared black metal pieces. “Where once we had a daughter, we now have nothing. No one. Anwyn Iola Pembroke no longer exists and has never existed. You are now stricken. Removed from our family. Removed from our life. Your name is no longer yours.” His power built around his words. “As you are stricken, so too are your memories. You will have no recollection of being here. Of us. Of who you are. You are nothing. Worse than nothing. You are stricken. His magic rose more as he held up the first black piece and the huge blood-stained mallet.
“No, Daddy, no! Please!”
His muscles tightened, “I am not your father. You are nothing to me.”
“Daddy! Mommy, please let me go! Please!”
The mortmagi is turned over, and I know I just peed and pooped. The spikes and screws around the outer edge of the inch-thick black metal are terrifying. The pieces look like eyepatches, just without the string. The spikes and screws run around the outer edge. The center of the piece is a razor-sharp blade that comes out in a plus shape. It’s about an inch and a half long.
They don’t just look like eye patches. They are eye patches.
Permanent ones.
“Please, Daddy! Please, don’t do this! I’ll be good! I’ll be good!”
More power filled the room around us, “From this moment forward, you are stricken.”
No matter how I struggled, I couldn’t break the magic holding me. I couldn’t move my head. I could only scream and beg and look around for someone to save me.
As the blade came closer to my eye.
Someone has to save me, right? This is a joke? Or…something? They hurt me, but maybe this is a test? I know that people die in the academy all the time, so this is…tough love? It has to be, right? My parents love me, they wouldn’t do this, would they? Destroy my magic? Remove me from the family?
Throw me out as…as a stricken?
My wishes and prayers faltered as the blade…
Screams. Bloody screams. The pain of the broken bones was nothing compared to this.
The blade pierced my eye, and I felt my new magic shutter and start to retreat. Our eyes are the gateway to our magic, and losing our eyes means we lose our magic. Forever.
I can’t help moving my eye even though it’s tearing apart more and more, but I see my father holding up the mallet.
“Please, Daddy!” Blood sprayed up from my mouth.
It didn’t stop him.
The mallet came down, and the spikes and screws bit into the bone around my eye. Then the magic of the mortmagi kicked in, and the screws began to turn, pulling it in tighter, shoving the blade into my eye farther and farther. My father hit the metal again and again, helping it along and causing more and more pain.
“Please, Mommy!”
She stood above us, staring down with this look of hatred on her face. “Anwyn doesn’t exist. You were a failure. We have no place for a stricken in our lives.”
Then the other mortmagi came in as my pleading started up again.
Hit after hit as my magic disappeared from the tearing knives in my eyes as the metal pulled into my face, digging into the meat, and sending lances of pure agony through my entire body.
“Anwyn…you…be here…not alone…”
The voice was trying to talk, but it’s broken up. Fading. I don’t know what it’s saying to me, but I know it’s trying to tell me something.
My parents’ voices spoke as one, “Our daughter no more and never have been. You have been stricken.”
Then mag
ic assaulted me, making me scream more as I felt it tear through my brain. I can feel things disappearing. The image of my room faded right as I was thinking about it, leaving a blank of…of something. What was it?
Wait, Mommy and Daddy have to help, right? “Mommy? Daddy? Please help me! Please!”
The image of my father’s face wavered and disappeared, “Da…Mommy! Please don’t do this! Don’t, I can’t see Daddy anymore, I don’t know what he looks like, please don’t do this!”
Then she began to dissolve. Face lost to the destruction of the magic in me.
“Please help me! Please don’t do this!” I know there are people doing this, but I can’t picture them. I even know they’re my parents…but I don’t know who they are.
No response. Just more pain.
“Please, please don’t do this! I’m Anwyn Iola Pembroke! Please don’t take that from me! I’m Anwyn! I’m me! Please, God, why are you doing this? I’m Anwyn! I’m…I’m…”
The name I’d been using is gone.
It’s gone.
Something spiked into my side, and a female voice spoke, is that my mother? I don’t know. I don’t know what she sounds like. Nothing. “You’re stricken.”
Chapter 3
The rough hand grabbed me by the hair again and dragged me out of the trunk and tossed me across the cement. My screams echoed back to me as my broken bones ground together. The two cruel voices that have been with me since this nightmare started laughed at me as I gasped out, “Why?” I can taste the blood as it seeps from my mouth, but they don’t seem to care.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t to be hit by more magic that got me screaming even more. That carried on and on and on…until it stopped without warning. The last thing I heard from them was, “…stricken trash…” before car doors closed again and they drove off.
Were they my parents?
God, I can’t even guess. Then again, the pain in my body is nearly overwhelming. My jaw is a white-hot spot of pain. My shoulder and arm feel like they’ve been torn off…except that would hurt less.
My face?
It’s…it’s indescribable.
And yet the physical pain isn’t all of it. It isn’t everything.
The mental is worse.
How? Why?
Because I know, I absolutely know, that I was someone at one point. I’m nine. I know that. I had my period this morning. I was supposed to have my inducement ceremony with my parents. But so much of the rest of that is gone. Who they were? Gone. Who I was? Gone. Where we lived? Gone. What magic they had? Gone.
I know my age. I know what I look like…or what I looked like. I know I was supposed to get magic, but something happened. And I don’t remember any of that last part. It’s just that I know that it happened because I remember what happened to me.
Mortmagi…I have them in my face. In my eyes. It’s a nightmare come to life and living in my face. Everything left to me that I remember is a shallow framework of what my life had been. I had a home. I had parents. Friends. Family. A room. A bed. Clothes.
I had a name.
Now…it’s gone.
Mortmagi are used on people that are stricken. Removed from a family. Wiped out from ever having existed…while making them go on.
Something I did caused this. Caused them to do this to me. I even remember what they looked like. The mortagi. The vicious spikes and screws. The blades. The idea of using them on someone…and yet they were used on me.
By people that I think were my parents.
My entire life has been stripped away, up to and including my own memories of it. I know that these are permanent. They can’t be removed without killing the person. Even if they are, through some miracle, my eyes are destroyed. I can’t help trying to move them, but they’re not eyes any longer. The blades in me have destroyed them. Like popped grapes.
Taking with them my sight.
Taking with them my magic.
Everything I remember seeing? Those things not tied to my family and who I was? I’ll never see them again.
My magic? I know I felt something at some point. I don’t remember what it was. Yet it’s gone.
I’ll never feel that again.
There’s an old saying that eyes are the window to the soul? For mages and dragons, eyes are the windows to our power. They should reflect the power within. Changing color based on what kind of power we have.
They have.
I’ll never have it again.
Just like I’ll never find my family again. My parents. I know they can do tests to find out who my people are. Or were. But even with that, the courts won’t back me up. The police won’t help. I’m barely even human…I’m stricken.
Something twists in me, and a faint sound reaches my ears. No, my brain, “…not alone…here…”
I have a voice in my head? Maybe that’s why I had this done to me? Am I crazy? I don’t remember having anything like tha…
Wait. I think I did. I don’t remember specifics, but I think I did have a voice in my head. Maybe that’s what happened? Maybe my parents found out that I’m crazy and that’s why they decided to remove me entirely?
Nine years old…thrown away.
My shattered arm flops as I move a little, and I cry out. Or try to. With these things in my face, I can’t cry and have the tears work normally. It’s making me sniffle like crazy, which is making the pain in my jaw and face even worse.
And yet I can somewhat smell through the blood and tears stuffing my nose. I smell rot. Garbage. That plus the echoes make me think I’m in an alley of some sort. I can hear the sound of cars and trucks not too far away. Something that I don’t think I’ve ever really heard like this before. So many of them. So close.
I’m alone in the city in an alley? So…I’m gonna die here. I was left to die here.
I want to die here.
I feel so…empty. In my head, I’m empty. Where I used to have stuff, what made me me, it’s now gone. Scattered pieces of memories that barely connect together. I should be thankful that I can still talk and that I think I remember school. I just can’t force myself to do it.
Everything else is just gone.
It would have been far kinder for those two people to back the car over me. It would have hurt for a minute, then this would have been over. No more fear. No more terror. No more gaping memories. No more agony. No more horror at remembering the mortmagi being driven into my eyes. Into my skull. No more not knowing what’s going to happen to me. How I’m going to die here in an alley surrounded by trash.
A soft sound nearby would have made me gasp, except the quick breaths of panic are already in place. I can feel my bleeding getting worse. From my mouth. Nose. I’m not even sure where else. I know I feel it from other places, but I don’t remember being hurt like that.
Except I can’t say it didn’t happen, either.
Another soft noise, then light padding as something or someone moved closer. I so wasn’t expecting the voice. An older, gentle woman’s voice, “What have we here? A lost little stricken. I see they took their anger out on you first. As if what they did with those cursed things wouldn’t have been enough.”
She came closer, and something touched my forehead, “Are you still alive? Are you awake?”
More blood pooled from my mouth as I managed a soft, “For now.”
She grunted, “You’re a strong one.” She touched my shoulder, arm, jaw, then ribs and my legs in a few spots. “They were so angry.” She circled me, touching me in the same spots again. “Yes…I think you can live. If you want to.”
“Nowhere to go…”
She chuckled at my feeble response. “No. You’re stricken. You have nowhere to go. Then again, neither do I. Tell me, what’s your name? Did they leave you that much?”
Nothing. Nothing. More nothing. Finally, something floated up out of the blankness in my head. “Maddie.”
“Hmm, Maddie. Is that really your name?”
“Don
’t know.” More blood.
“Well, either way. Maddie Stricken? I’m Jean. Now, this is going to hurt, but I need to get you home.”
“Wanna die.”
The tsked me, “Don’t give in, Maddie. You have more to live for than you think. They took from you, but you’re still alive. You can accomplish great things.” She must have seen my expression, “Yes, even as a stricken. You can. You just need to work at it. Now, as I said, this is going to hurt. I’ll get you home. I’ll nurse you back to health. Then…then we’ll start school. I’ll teach you. You won’t be dying here in this filthy alley.”
Then, true to her word, she moved me. Picking me up far easier than I would have imagined. Not that I remember most of it. I think she managed to stand up straight before I passed out. It was a nightmare until that happened.
I remember waking up, though. That started her taking care of me. Helping me use a bed pan. Setting my bones. Helping me eat. Change clothes. All the while, she surrounded me with calm strength, serenity, and teaching.
Needless to say, I didn’t die in that alley.
Chapter 4
Jerking up at the noise, I managed to ram the mortmagi in my right eye into the bottom of my bed, sending a ragged spike of pain through me. The curse that tried to break free froze before it did.
Much to Jean’s delight. “Good catch, Maddie. Very good. I’m sorry for surprising you. Lunch is ready. Are you finished down there?”
One more adjustment, and I slid out, making sure I didn’t ram the hated black metal into anything. I’ve done it too many times in the past four years, that’s for sure. I don’t want to do it again. “Yeah. It’s done.”
“What was it this time?”
“Another loose fitting. I tightened all of them. I can go around and hit the others after we eat.”
“Thank you, Maddie. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I don’t have any mechanical ability. Lord knows how you do, what with…” she stopped talking, and I could feel her embarrassment.
