Hazel and Holly

by Sara C. Snider

  “Eyes of the gods?” Holly said. “Is that why you were so nervous when one appeared on the road? Do you think the gods are watching us?”

  “The gods are always watching; we just do not always notice it.”

  “So what does it mean that we saw one? If it didn’t mean there was something dead on the road?”

  Norman looked her right in the eyes with an intensity that unsettled her. “It means that, for good or ill, something is about to change.”

  Creepy necromancers and their creepy omens. Holly turned back around and kept her gaze straight ahead.

  Night had long since broken into day. They stopped from time to time to drink from a stream whenever they found one and to rest the horses. They didn’t have any food though, and the pain in Holly’s stomach grew sharper as the day wore on. She let Chester roam free during those moments, hoping he’d be able to find food for himself. Hawthorn complained frequently, of course. But both Holly and Hemlock refused to stop longer than necessary. They needed to find Hazel. After they did, then they could eat.

  Day faded into night. The once-distant mountains now loomed closer—so close that Holly imagined she could feel the cold air rolling off their high peaks. The gibbous moon rose low in the sky, golden and swollen as if filled with honey. Stars sparked into the night above them, and in the surrounding field, stars bloomed in the grass like ghost-lit lanterns.

  “Where are we?” Holly said, though she spoke so quietly she doubted anyone heard her. Nobody answered.

  Had Hazel gone this way? Had she also seen this field that mistook itself for the night sky? Holly hoped so—not only because she hoped to find her sister—but because she hoped Hazel had gotten to see such beauty and wonder. Everyone should be able to see this.

  A rider approached on the road ahead. An orb of blue flame followed him, illuminating his black robes and black horse far better than a plain lantern ever could. Hemlock and Hawthorn slowed the horses, and the rider stopped before them.

  Silver embroidery adorned his sleeves and the hem of his robe. In the light of his orb, the thread almost looked alive, like snakes writhing in black soil.

  The man pushed back the hood of his robe to show a young and handsome face. Yet his black robe declared him to be a necromancer. That didn’t sit right with Holly—necromancers had no business being handsome.

  He bowed from atop his horse. “I bid you good evening and hope you have had fair travels upon the road.”

  Holly didn’t know how to react. His politeness unsettled her.

  Silence lingered among the party until Hawthorn said, “If you don’t account for us being boxed up, left for dead on a broken-down wagon, having to keep company with a truculent necromancer, and freezing atop a smelly horse while slowly starving to death, then our travels have been most pleasant, thank you for asking.”

  “I am sorry you’ve had troubles. It’s why I’m here. I’ve come to escort you to safety and warmth, where you can avail yourself to as much food and rest as will please you.”

  “You’re about fifteen hours late, by my reckoning, but better than never.”

  Hemlock said, “It’s awfully convenient, your coming by with promises of food and safety, just as we need it. How did you know we were here?”

  “It wasn’t convenience. We share a common acquaintance, and it is by his request that I am here.”

  “Common acquaintance?” Holly said. “Who?”

  “Your father, Ash.”

  Everyone turned silent.

  “How…,” Holly began, but her throat caught and she had to swallow. “How did he know we were here? Is Hazel with him?”

  The young man smiled—kindly, not condescending as Holly would have preferred so she could have a reason to dislike him. “Your father is a great man. It would be best if he explained such things as I would not be able to do it proper justice. Please, the night grows colder as you’ve undoubtedly noticed. There will be mulled wine at home, and if we hurry, we might be able to get some while it’s still hot.”

  “Home? Where’s home?”

  He smiled again and nodded towards the mountain, then turned his horse and started down the road at an easy pace.

  Holly stared at the mountain shrouded in shadows. It didn’t look at all homey. But then that was probably too much to ask for in a necromancer lair. “Well, I guess we’re visiting the necromancers’ home.”

  “As long as it’s warm,” Hawthorn muttered.

  Once they caught up to the necromancer, they increased their pace. There was too much jostling and noise from the horses to have any real conversation, but Holly had managed to ask for his name and he had given it—Verrin.

  The night wore on as they galloped down the road. Holly’s muscles stiffened in the cold and turned achy from the horse. After a while, she no longer cared that they were headed towards a creepy black mountain. Well, not as much anyway.

  Strangely, the closer they got to the mountain, the less scary it became. Lights shone in small square windows—warm lights from countless candles or fires in hearths. At least in some. Other openings emitted blue lights like the ones they had seen in the Shrine. Great pillars emerged from the mountain face, carved from the stone itself. They were rough, more utilitarian than decorative, but even those helped the formidable structure seem slightly less intimidating. Outside, paths of stairs switched back and forth up the mountain, illuminated by lanterns that cast a ghostly blue-green light.

  Verrin stopped at a columned portal and dismounted from his horse. Holly and the others did the same while Hawthorn helped Norman down. Verrin noticed the necromancer’s bound hands but said nothing about it. He led them down a dirt path overgrown with tall grass, lighting the way with his glowing orb.

  They came to a black door set within the base of the mountain. Verrin pushed it open and stepped inside. Holly and the others followed.

  The air within was thick and musty, smelling of earth and decaying leaves. The cramped room—little more than a cave—had solid stone walls and a ceiling so low that Holly could stand on her tiptoes and brush the cold rock with her fingertips. Boxes littered the bare earthen floor, all filled with soil, sawdust, and straw, within which different varieties of mushrooms grew.

  Verrin extinguished his orb. But there was another light nearby—a lantern of golden, living flame that flickered near the feet of a man who knelt next to one of the boxes. He cut a mushroom with a small paring knife and placed his harvest in a nearby basket. Then he stood, stretched his back, and turned around.

  Holly’s breath caught. It was the same man she had seen in her vision when she drank Odd’s potion. The man that looked an awful lot like Hazel. “Father?”

  He smiled. “You remember. You don’t know how much that pleases me.”

  Holly didn’t remember him, she only guessed who he was by his strong resemblance to Hazel. But she remained quiet, not knowing what to do.

  “Is Hazel here?” Hemlock said.

  Ash’s smile faded as he shifted his gaze to Hemlock. The two stared at each other a long while.

  Holly glanced between them. “You two know each other, don’t you?”

  “More like a passing acquaintance, really,” Hemlock said.

  “You’re Lupinus’s boys, aren’t you?” Ash said. “How is your father? I always found him a more reasonable man than most.”

  “Dead,” Hemlock said.

  Ash gave no reaction. “Pity.”

  “You didn’t answer his question,” Holly said. “Is Hazel here?”

  “Are you familiar with cultivating mushrooms?” He waved a hand towards one of the boxes.

  “They grow in filth,” Hawthorn said. “Frightful things.”

  “True,” Ash said. “Filth and darkness. But that is one of the things to be respected of mushrooms. People always go on about the sun and the life it brings to the world, but they rarely speak of the things that grow despite the sun’s absence. Mushrooms are like sparks in the void, life out of lifelessness. That comman
ds respect.”

  “I’m very fond of mushrooms,” Holly said. “They’re especially good on toast. But we need to talk about Hazel now. Is she here? Have you seen her?”

  Ash walked over to a box filled with a mound of soil dotted with delicate mushrooms with stalks so long and thin that Holly wondered how they were able to hold up the papery, umbrella-like caps.

  “Such wondrous things, mushrooms,” Ash said. “With limitless possibilities. They provide everything from humble sustenance, like you said, to the most treacherous poisons. And there are more varieties than we can count.” He turned towards Holly. “Did you know that mushrooms take well to magic?”

  He looked at her in a way that suggested he expected an answer. She shook her head.

  He returned his attention to the soil. “Some say that because mushrooms thrive in the dark, they belong to the realm of the Shapeless One, and that, due to this, they are especially receptive to magic. While the former could be debated among scholars, of the latter there is no doubt. Mushrooms thrive under careful ministrations tempered by magic, which can lead to new and fantastic varieties never before seen upon this earth. It’s quite magnificent, don’t you think?”

  Holly didn’t think it sounded magnificent—not if he was using necromancy to create new, freaky mushrooms that wouldn’t at all taste good on toast. “Hazel,” she said, trying to put a firmness in her voice but didn’t quite succeed.

  He kept his gaze on the mushrooms. “Your sister’s a clever girl with great potential. But she is fragile. She has not yet found her way. And until she has, I’m afraid any distractions will likely prove harmful. I’m very sorry.”

  “Sorry? About what?”

  Verrin extinguished the lamp and plunged them into darkness. From the boxes of earth, mushrooms glowed pale and blue like moonlight on ice.

  Holly tensed, and behind her, Hemlock gasped. She tried to summon a flame, but before she could, a glittering blue dust fluttered through the darkness like wind-borne pollen. It floated around her head, tickling her nose and smelling oddly like sandalwood and fish. Holly sneezed, and then she knew no more.

  Hazel awoke on a cold stone floor with a pounding headache. She pushed herself upright and looked around, surprised to see she was still in her father’s workshop. She must have fainted, probably from all the smoke. Had something gone wrong with her spell?

  No, the spell had worked. There had been a bright light close to Ash’s chest. That had meant something.

  She got to her feet and started across the room, but it was like shadows had solidified around her, clinging like tar that made her movements heavy and strained. When she stopped, the shadows receded, but as soon as she tried to walk again, the shadows returned like night-tempered chains. Her father had done this. He had trapped her here.

  Why? Of course he’d been displeased with her poking around where she didn’t belong, but then why leave her there? Why not throw her out? Lock her in her room? Both seemed like more reasonable actions to take against a trespasser than leaving her exactly where she wasn’t supposed to be.

  Hazel conjured a beam of prismatic light and combined it with a sharp gust of air, but the shadows remained. Unsurprising, she supposed. She took a moment to think, then worked a corrupted version of a Weaving Unraveling spell and tried to pull the shadows apart. But the shadows remained, as strong as ever. She tried corrupting the prismatic light and gust of wind, but that didn’t work either. Hazel tightened her jaw as she pushed down her frustration. Should she try summoning a familiar again? She didn’t know how that would help, but she was running out of ideas.

  Before she had a chance to try, the door opened and her father stepped inside. Hazel eyed his chest, but the light that had been there before was gone.

  Ash stood before her, his expression unreadable. He didn’t look angry, but he didn’t look pleased either.

  “I don’t really blame you,” he said after a while. “I grew up in the Grove, just as you did. My mind was also filled with the ignorance and lies that pervade the region. I don’t blame you for wanting to… undo what I’ve done. I don’t blame you for not understanding. But I would be lying if I said your actions haven’t wounded me. I had hoped…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Perhaps I’ve been foolish in thinking it would be easier. That once you saw what I could offer, you would want my help.”

  “Help with what? Necromancy?”

  “Realizing your true potential.”

  “I don’t need your help. Not with that.”

  “We are so alike, Hazel. I was just as you are when I was your age. Gifted with certain talents, then crippled with the uncertainty that followed. What I struggled to find was that there is more in life than what the people in the Grove can offer. You don’t have to struggle as I did. I can help you.”

  Hazel took a deep breath as she tried to keep calm. “I told you, I don’t need your help.”

  Ash smiled and shook his head. “Even now, the similarities between us are striking. You are willful and stubborn, just like me. You refuse to compromise, just like me. You show an unflagging determination to reach a goal you have set for yourself—doing whatever it takes to succeed in it, for good or ill.” He exhaled a short laugh and smiled again. “Just like me.”

  “I am nothing like you!”

  His expression sobered, and he clasped his hands together and tilted his head as he regarded her. “Yes. Perhaps my own willfulness has prevented me from seeing that you are, in many ways, also like your mother. You, like her, are much too quick to dismiss that which you don’t understand. You put too much faith in the lies you have been raised with.”

  “What lies?”

  “The lie that necromancy is a separate form of magic, one to be ignored and never discussed. That those who practice it are somehow… tainted. That is what you think, isn’t it?”

  Hazel said nothing.

  Ash nodded as if she had answered. “What the people in the Grove don’t understand is that necromancy is the only magic. Every other discipline, Wyr, Hearth, Weaving, and Wild, are all aspects of the same thing. Pieces of the same pie. The Lords of the Sun and Trees and the Ladies of the Sky and Sea are all aspects of the same being—the Shapeless One, the Keeper of Stars and Souls. Refusing to accept this is as absurd as refusing to accept that the sun is bright and the night dark.”

  “It sounds to me rather that someone thinks he’s more important than he really is and extends that importance to his magical discipline of choice.”

  “This isn’t about me, Hazel.”

  “Oh, I think it is. Because you keep ignoring what I want, choosing instead to believe whatever suits you best.”

  He remained quiet a moment. “You know, I sometimes wonder how I might have reacted if a mentor had come to me and offered to teach me of necromancy and all that I struggled to learn in my life. I wonder if I would have accepted such an offer. I’ve never much cared for accepting help from others. I’ve never liked the sense of obligation it gives me, the sense that I owed them something. You, perhaps, know what I mean?”

  Hazel knew exactly what he meant, but she remained silent.

  “But when I look back now,” he continued, “I can see how much my life would have benefited from such a mentor. Much of what I’ve learned of necromancy, I learned on my own. I used to hold a sense of pride in that—not everyone could say the same. But now I wonder if that pride was misplaced. I can’t help but wonder if I’d had some help, how much more I might have accomplished in my life, of what I might have accomplished for my family. Perhaps, if I’d learned more, I could have saved your mother from ever perishing in the first place.”

  Hazel tensed. She felt as if they had trod upon unsteady ground, and she needed to choose her words carefully. “People die. It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s just the way life is. You need to let her go.”

  “The way life is,” Ash said, his voice dangerously flat. “You say that as if it’s something we must accept. Life is
malleable, as are the laws that dictate it. I refuse to bend to life’s fickle whims. As should you.”

  “It’s not fickle, it’s just the way it is. Why can’t you accept that?”

  “And why can’t you accept that life is what we make of it? We can manipulate souls and spirits, Hazel. The very essence of life! With enough time and practice, we could make life bend to our whims!”

  “You’ve lost your mind. Do you hear yourself? Do you know what you sound like?”

  “I hadn’t wanted to do it like this. I had thought that with enough time, you would come to understand the world as I do, that you would see it as I do, because, given who you are, how could you see it any other way?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  His expression saddened. “You are right, in a way, about life. There is one aspect of it that is not malleable, that cannot be manipulated or changed or reversed. I’ve tried. But it inevitably binds us all, and eventually we all return to it.”

  Hazel’s breathing turned heavy and ragged. Despite everything Ash had done to her and her mother, Hazel had never been frightened of him. Until now. “Father, what are you talking about?”

  He fixed his gaze on her in a way that made Hazel wonder if he had ever truly seen her prior to that moment. It was like he saw straight to her heart—straight to her soul—and the tenderness he held in his gaze for her at that moment made her want to weep.

  “I’m talking about love, daughter. It is life’s greatest strength and greatest weakness. It hinders us as much as it bolsters us. But love’s fire burns incredibly hot. Perhaps, within such a fire, a temperament for the greatest witch of our time might be forged.”

  Before she could say anything else, Ash returned to the door, opened it, and Hemlock and Verrin stepped inside.

  Hazel cried out and clapped a hand over her mouth. Her outburst surprised her, as did the warmth and joy that filled her heart to look at Hemlock. He wasn’t supposed to be there, and yet now that he was, she was grateful beyond words.

  Hemlock remained quiet as his gaze met hers. He didn’t look angry or disappointed, as she had expected. Instead, he looked tired, relieved, but also strangely enlivened. His eyes held a spark in them she hadn’t noticed before, and it made her heart quicken to have such a gaze fall upon her.