Hazel and Holly

by Sara C. Snider

  She rubbed her head, biting her trembling lip to keep the tears away. She wouldn’t cry. Whatever was happening—she refused to cry.

  Hazel marched down the stone-encased hallway like she knew what she was about. Of course she had no idea, but she was too angry to care. Ash was here somewhere, and she’d find him sooner or later. Oh yes.

  She passed through a smooth black door into a kind of atrium. The stone ceiling opened to the sunlit sky, while leafy shrubs and plants grew along the stony walls and in pots on the floor. A juniper tree in the middle of the room took up most of the space, filling the room with a clean, pleasant smell.

  A man in a black robe trimmed the branches with a pair of shears and collected the little blue berries into a bowl.

  Hazel marched up to him, and the man started. “Where’s Ash?” she said.

  “I… Well…,” he said, scratching his head. “The dining chamber? Maybe.”

  “Take me there.”

  The man’s mouth hung open as he stared at Hazel and the tree, then at the shears in his hand as if he couldn’t account for all of these things demanding his time.

  To help him out, Hazel took the shears and bowl from him and set them on the floor. “The dining chamber.” In an attempt to be pleasant, she added, “Please.”

  “I… of course.” He shuffled out of the room. Hazel followed.

  They wound through more corridors lit by the flickering blue flames that the necromancers were so fond of. Every now and again gaps and crevices would appear in the walls to let in streams of sunlight that bathed Hazel in brief moments of blessed warmth. They passed black-robed necromancers in the halls, who did nothing to hinder them but would often stop and watch as they passed.

  Eventually they came to a door. Hazel’s guide stepped through it, and she followed him into a vast hall with a vaulted ceiling that disappeared into darkness. Polished black wooden tables and benches furnished the room, along with great iron braziers that bore blazing fires. Lines of men and women in hooded black robes sat at the tables, which were laden with bowls of fruit, baskets of bread, platters of meat, wedges of cheese, and crocks of honey and butter. Despite her sour mood, Hazel’s mouth began to water at the sight of it all.

  Her guide scurried away and disappeared among the other necromancers. She scanned the tables in search of her father, but everyone looked the same in their hooded black robes.

  Hazel went up to a table and took a plate as if she had every right to be there. She took bread and cheese, and meat from a platter of glazed ham. She scanned the table as she did so, meeting the eyes of necromancers she did not recognize. Some of them spared her a brief glance before returning to their food. Others glanced off towards a corner of the great hall before quickly looking away again or returning to converse with a neighbor.

  With her plate in hand, Hazel made her way to the far end of the chamber where the necromancers had looked and found Ash and Verrin sitting at a table.

  Her father smiled. “Well done, daughter. Though you would have found me much more easily had you employed a familiar rather than conscripting poor Timmens into the job.”

  “He’s a nervous fellow,” Verrin said.

  Ash nodded. “Gets more nervous by the year. I think he’s harboring regrets in not pursuing botany instead.”

  “Do not give me advice on magic,” Hazel said. “I am not your apprentice, and you are not my mentor.”

  Ash slathered some butter onto a warm roll. “Of course you are, and of course I am. Why else would you be here? Necromancy is in your blood, Hazel. Just as it’s in mine. It won’t do to deny it. Here, try this roll. They’re especially delicious today.” He held out the buttered bread to her.

  Hazel tightened her jaw and ignored his offering. “What have you done with Holly?”

  Ash took a bite of the roll instead. “Holly? Why would you think I’ve done anything with her?”

  “Don’t act stupid. I saw her. She’s trapped somewhere. You had a hand in it. I know you did.”

  A slow smile stretched across Ash’s face. “You saw her? Well now. How did you manage that?”

  Hazel glared at him. “You know how.”

  “Oh yes. I know very well how. I just want to make sure you know. You’re a clever girl, Hazel, but this stubbornness of yours in refusing to accept the obvious does you no credit.”

  “Is that why you locked me in my room? To make me accept the obvious?”

  “Of course. And it worked. You got out. You saw your sister. Just imagine what you could do with the proper knowledge and training.”

  She didn’t want any of those things, but Ash refused to listen. “Where’s Holly?”

  Ash took another bite of the roll. “I’m sure if you apply yourself, you’ll be able to figure it out.”

  Hazel slammed her plate on the table, and the sound echoed through the chamber. The room quieted, and everyone turned to look at her. “This isn’t a game,” she said, her voice low.

  “Of course it isn’t.”

  “Where is she?”

  “You’re wasting your time asking the wrong questions. I don’t know where she is. What you should be asking is how to find her.”

  Hazel blinked several times. Despite his assurances, he was playing at something, and Hazel didn’t want to get caught up in it. But she didn’t know what else to do. Swallowing, she asked, “How do we find her?”

  “Are you asking for my help?”

  A long moment of silence passed.

  “Yes.”

  Ash smiled and Hazel felt as if her heart would shrivel. “We’d better get started then.”

  Hazel followed Ash through the long stone corridors, her mind racing as she tried to figure out what was coming next. That she had asked her father for help shouldn’t have meant much of anything at all. But his smile had been entirely too smug, and the hush that had hung in the dining chamber too ominous.

  What, exactly, had she done?

  They passed through lengths of monotonous corridors, down flights of narrow stone stairs, and through countless nightwood doors. They descended until the gaps in the stone that showed glimpses of sunlight stopped and they were left with only the sconces of cold, flickering blue flames for light and the bone-chilling damp for comfort.

  “Where are we going?” Hazel asked. She had hoped they would leave the mountain, but that possibility lessened with each downward step.

  “You will see,” Ash said.

  Down and down they went. The sconces became fewer and far between. When they ended, Ash spoke a spell that made the lichen clinging to the stone walls glow. The light, though dim, was sterile and harsh—a dead kind of light in which nothing could grow. It turned Ash’s skin pallid and the hollows of his eyes to shadows. Hazel must have looked as ghastly. The skin of her hands had turned pale and translucent, marbled with black veins like ink-stained webs.

  They came to a narrow corridor with roughly hewn walls as if carved with a spoon. Then to a door—smooth and black just like all the others. They passed through it into an unlit chamber.

  The air remained damp and cold, but it had turned fresher somehow, smelling like copper and salt and mulching leaves. The glowing lichen did not follow them here, so when Ash closed the door behind them, he and Hazel stood in complete darkness.

  “You must create a light, Hazel,” he said.

  “Why me?”

  “Because this is your journey.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  But all Ash said was, “A light. Please.”

  Hazel took a deep breath and summoned a little glowing moth, but the light it emitted was feeble and strained. She held out her hand, and the moth fluttered to it, illuminating her fingers but nothing else.

  “That is not the correct light,” Ash said. “You know it is not.”

  Hazel supposed she did know. She let the moth linger on her fingers a moment. Then, closing her eyes, she uttered a different spell—one she had taught herself in the darkened depths of a ba
sement not unlike this chamber.

  A circle of blue flames flared alight before her, trembling in the shadows as if buffeted by a breeze. The flames flared outwards to illuminate a cavern with walls as roughly hewn as the passageway beyond the door. Nearby, a pool of water lay like a disc of blackened ice. All else remained shrouded in shadows.

  Hazel edged her way over to the pool. The water remained still—no waves or ripples to indicate it was fluid. Perhaps it had frozen. She took care as she navigated across the stone floor, not wanting to slip on any patches of ice that might be lurking underfoot.

  When she reached the water, she leaned over it, but it did not give her reflection. She tapped the tip of her foot against its surface and nearly lost her balance when the water gave way and its glassy surface broke into a languid ripple. After she removed her foot, the water stilled and regained its perfect placidity.

  “What is this place?” Hazel asked.

  “This place has no real name. People come here for different reasons and accomplish different things.”

  “People,” Hazel said in a flat voice. “You mean necromancers.”

  “That is a distinction you draw, Hazel, not I.”

  “Why are we here?”

  Ash fell silent a moment. “I suppose that will be for you to decide. I view this place as both a promise as well as its fulfillment. But what that promise is, and what it will fulfill, depends on the person in question. It depends on you, my daughter. I cannot say much more than that.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  He tilted his head. “A measure of both, I suppose. This place defies description. Yet even if I could describe what you might expect within the pool, I don’t think I would.”

  “Why?”

  He smiled. “Where is the fun in that?”

  Hazel scowled at him. “We’re here to find Holly, not have fun.”

  “And you can use this place to find her, if that is what you desire. But the potential—both within you and within this chamber—is much, much greater than that. I hope you will not waste this opportunity. The times one is allowed to use this space is… limited.”

  “Limited? Why?”

  “Because the power—the magic—that infuses this place has decreed it so. Most are only allowed one visit here—their first. After that, it is sometimes possible to use this chamber in times of great need, but that is not always the case. We do not truly understand it ourselves. But it is accurate to say that you will more than likely never get this opportunity again.” He moved away into the shadows.

  Hazel remained by the pool as her father’s words floated in her mind. She didn’t know what he expected of her—what he thought would happen here. She didn’t even know what she expected of herself.

  Hazel took a deep breath to clear her mind. None of that mattered. Whatever Ash expected or wanted to happen here didn’t matter. She needed to help Holly and find out what had happened to Hemlock and Hawthorn.

  She focused on the water—its smooth, glass-like surface reminded her of a mirror, especially since the water refused to give her reflection as Ash’s mirrors had. She could probably use it like a mirror and view Holly through it, but Ash’s words of wasted opportunity rang in her ears. Was she thinking too simply? She didn’t need to see Holly, she needed to help her.

  Hazel turned around and searched for her father in the shadows, but she couldn’t see him. Was he still there or had he left?

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she called, but no reply came. Not even an echo. Her confusion dissolved into annoyance. She turned back towards the water and tapped her foot on the surface again, watching with a strange satisfaction at the way the water rippled from her foot. Its slow, easy movement had a look of thick cream rather than water.

  She knelt down and put her fingers into the pool. The water was cool but not as frigid as she had expected. But it felt like water should and didn’t cling to her fingers like a thick cream would. Small, gentle rings radiated from her fingertips, carrying across the entirety of the vast pool like wind over a grassy field.

  In the wake of the ripple, a blue light appeared. Hazel looked up and there, in the dense shadows that served as a ceiling, floated one of the blue flames she had summoned. Yet in the water the reflection of the light gave off its own illumination. She could make out a silhouette of a tree and a rock, but then the water stilled and the reflection faded.

  A few moments passed as she stared at the pool, thinking. Then she brought over all the lights she had summoned to join the single one above the water. They drifted on the air like cottonwood seeds, wayward and lazy.

  She put her fingers in the pool and flicked the water. As the liquid rippled, the lights appeared in the water’s reflection, illuminating a shadowed forest. Silhouettes of darkened trees plunged deeper into the shadowed depths of the water, reaching towards a sable sky with sapphire flames for stars.

  As the water stilled, the scene faded. She flicked the water again, and the dark forest returned in sharp clarity. A curious thought entered her mind. This wasn’t a reflection—this was real. At that moment, the world within the water looked more real to Hazel than the world in which she currently found herself. It filled her heart with an aching longing, soothed only by stepping into the water and allowing the cool liquid to lap at her ankles, her thighs, her waist, until finally it eclipsed her head.

  Her booted feet scraped along the stony bottom of the pool. The shadowed forest stretched down around her from a watery sky, though they remained translucent. Impermanent, like coiling mist. Then her body became weightless as the floor fell out from under her, and the trees melted into the shadows of the pool. All became black; Hazel lost all sense of direction. Before she had time to orient herself or to panic, her head broke the water’s surface, and she took in a deep, steadying breath.

  A night sky loomed overhead, dotted with pale blue stars that floated lazily through the sky like candles on water. Tall pine trees surrounded a dark lake in which she found herself. The air smelled new, like rain before dawn.

  Hazel swam to shore, her heart pounding as she worked against the heavy weight of her sodden dress with its ample skirts. She pulled herself atop a rock and lay there with her eyes closed as she caught her breath. The weight of her soaked dress pressed on her as if made out of iron. She needed to dry it, yet she couldn’t bring herself to move.

  A breeze brushed against Hazel’s cheek, so warm that for a moment she believed a fire burned nearby. She opened her eyes. There was no fire, but her dress had dried.

  She bolted upright as alarm mingled with curiosity. But as she ran a hand over her dry skirts, the sense faded. Everything was as it should be. She got to her feet and headed into the forest.

  The stars followed her, bobbing and weaving around each other as if pulled along on invisible strings. When she stopped, the stars wavered and descended from the sky to float around her. One broke away from the others and led her out of the trees to a wide-open field washed in moonlight. A single road cleft the field in two, winding through it like a dried-up river.

  Alongside the road stood Holly. She looked older, more severe. A wreath of ivy leaves crowned her brow, but when clouds passed over the moon, the wreath disappeared.

  “Holly,” Hazel said as she took her sister’s hand and pressed it. “What’s happened to you? Are you in trouble?”

  Holly’s gaze drifted down to her hand that Hazel held, but she said nothing.

  Hazel pulled down one of the starlike orbs from the sky and sent it near Holly’s head. The moon, clouds, and nearby trees vanished as walls of wood surrounded the sisters and enclosed them in a cramped space no larger than a broom closet.

  A flame flared alight in Holly’s cupped hands, and she glanced up and looked Hazel right in the eyes.

  Hazel’s heart floundered as her palms turned sweaty. No one had ever looked at her the way her sister did now. It was as if Holly looked into a part of her that Hazel had never known existed. All her str
engths and weaknesses, her frailties and fears, the dreams she had dreamt in a lifetime of nights that had long since been forgotten. She felt as if Holly saw all of it, and Hazel couldn’t bear the inadequacy of her own being before her sister’s shrewd eyes.

  Hazel stepped back and bumped into the wall. She pushed the darkness and the walls away from her, bringing back the star-studded sky and shadowed forest. In the moonlight, a wreath of oak and mistletoe crowned Holly’s brow, even as she began to fade like morning mist. Hazel started to reach out to her but pulled back. Holly shouldn’t be there. Neither of them should. And so, when Holly faded from the lonely, winding road, Hazel turned and headed back to the lake.

  Holly tried to keep her breathing even and calm as she lay in the enclosed box. She wouldn’t panic. If she panicked, she might suffocate, and Holly would rather that didn’t happen. She clenched her eyes shut, bracing herself against the jostling to keep her head from getting any more lumps. Breathe in, breathe out. Nice and even, nice and slow.

  Her thoughts turned to Hazel. Would she ever see her sister again? A lump formed in her throat that, in the close air, threatened to choke her. Holly tried to put the thoughts out of her mind, but panic and frustration flared up in her again. The air was too stifling and close. She needed to get out. Right now. She was about to kick at the box again for everything she was worth when a warm touch brushed against her hand.

  She froze. Had she imagined it? She didn’t think she had—it had been distinct enough to kill her outbreak of panic. But surely she must have imagined it. There was nobody here.

  Was there?

  The hair on Holly’s neck stood on end. She couldn’t explain it, but she suddenly felt like she was no longer alone. She summoned another flame in her cupped hands, relaxing with relief when the light showed that no one was there.

  And yet…

  The feeling stubbornly persisted. Holly’s heart quickened, and her palms began to sweat. What was happening? Was she losing her mind? It was certainly starting to feel that way.