Starfell: Willow Moss & the Lost Day

by Dominique Valente

“Now he claims me,” said Silas, gritting his teeth. “Wol help me. But it is too late for that, Father, much, much too late, I’m afraid. Perhaps if you’d thought, just once, to let go of your reputation, to accept me as your son and heir . . . perhaps things would have worked out differently. But you are weak, and that is something that we can no longer afford to have in a leader.”

  Willow frowned. The High Master was Silas’s father?

  The High Master blinked. “I—I, Silas, I thought you understood—a man in my position, I couldn’t just come out publicly and say you were my son. . . .”

  Silas shook his head. “No, Father, you chose to keep it a secret because you were ashamed of who my mother was.”

  “I—I was afraid of what anyone would do if they found out . . . how it would seem. You must understand. . . . It wasn’t because I didn’t care about you!”

  “Yes, how would it seem if they all discovered that the High Master had fallen in love with a witch and had a child with magic running through his veins?”

  Willow and Essential gasped. A Brother of Wol, the son of a witch?

  The High Master’s cheeks turned purple. He bounced on the balls of his feet and tried waving his hands as if he could scrub away Silas’s words, but one of the guards held him back.

  “Silas, stop this—please.”

  Silas looked from the High Master to Willow and Essential. “The High Master, of course, was the only one who knew the truth . . . about who I am. But he kept it a secret for years—even from me.”

  The High Master stuttered. “S-Silas . . . I did it for your own good. To protect you.”

  “No,” said Silas, his eyes cold. “You did it for your own protection, in case anyone found out that my mother, Molsa, was the sister of the infamous witch Moreg Vaine—”

  “Moreg?” cried Willow.

  Inside the carpetbag there was a small, audible gasp.

  Silas nodded. “Yes. Moreg, my ‘loving’ aunt, brought me here after her sister died and left me here with him,” he said, pointing at the High Master. “My father, though he never told anyone, of course,” he scoffed.

  The High Master blinked. “Silas, you must understand I was worried about what people would do to you if they knew—”

  “Oh. I understand . . . more than you know. Remember, you raised me to believe that people like me were tainted, impure. I came to you in the beginning when my magic arrived . . . when I was worried, afraid. But hopeful too—perhaps this meant something else. I was a Brother of Wol, after all. Surely then magic couldn’t really be evil? And what did you tell me, when I needed you the most?”

  The High Master grew pale, his mouth opening and closing.

  “You told me you were disgusted, that I should rid myself of my unnaturalness. . . . And you made me pray every day for Wol to take it away. . . . Oh, how I cursed you when I found out the truth about who I really am—where I’d come from.”

  “I wanted to help you, that’s all. I—”

  “Help? No, you wanted to punish me for what you’d done. Never once did it occur to you to tell me that my mother was a witch or to find a way to really help me. But . . . I learned to rely on myself, and in the end, Father, you were the blind one,” Silas spat. “So blind. And under your very roof, too. Did you never wonder about any of it—how we were able to acquire these, for instance?” he said, brandishing a pair of manacles that glowed blue in his hands.

  “They were gifts . . . from Wol, hidden in the . . . dungeons, for centuries . . . ,” said the High Master, though he was sounding less sure of himself now.

  Silas looked amused. “Wrong again. I made these. You believe too much in the lies we were told. Which is what keeps us weak. Shying away from the truth always does. But I know the truth now, why the war began all those years ago. It was not to rid the world of magic because it was evil, but to take it back,” he breathed. “Back to where it belongs—with us.” His smile was great and horrible, and seeing it made Willow shiver.

  “No,” gasped the High Master. “That’s a lie—we were never supposed to use the magic, never. Only to protect others from it.”

  Silas looked at him, then allowed himself a small smile. “That’s what you said the first time too. You are nothing if not consistent.”

  “The first time? What are you talking about?”

  Willow’s brain was whirring as pieces of the puzzle floated around, snapping into place. “That’s why you cast the spell—it was to take away the memory, wasn’t it? The memory of the day you first tried to seize power?”

  Silas turned to her. “Yes—very clever. That first attempt all went horribly wrong, and I was thwarted. But by taking the day away, I got to have another chance . . . and this time I knew I would get it right.”

  He whirled to face the High Master. “You see, Father, we’ve actually had this discussion before . . . though I wasn’t as prepared as I am now. So it went a bit differently. It was me in chains that day, once you’d found me with the spells. . . .”

  Silas clicked his fingers, and a Brother stepped forward to snap the manacles onto the High Master’s wrists.

  “Silas, no!”

  “I’d been so careful, or so I thought. . . . I had made sure that no one in Wolkana knew about the rebellion I was planning. Only the Brothers I trusted with my life. And I was right. No one here did know. I hadn’t factored in a witch a thousand miles away, who would foresee it . . . or how she was afraid of what it would mean—that with these spells, I could become as powerful as the last magicians of Starfell . . . so she tried to warn you by sending a raven. At first you didn’t believe her . . . but then you found me with the box, and you locked up your own son. . . .” His eyes were dark with hatred at the memory. “You are no father of mine. Take him,” he instructed, and the High Master was dragged away screaming.

  20

  Enough to Make a Kobold Explode

  “MOREG,” BREATHED WILLOW when Brother Silas turned to face her. “She was the witch who saw what you were planning, wasn’t she?”

  Silas cocked his head to the side and seemed to almost smile. “You are a clever witch.”

  Willow shared a look with Essential. Perhaps there was a way they could still escape and find Moreg. She knew it was important to keep him talking, at least.

  “But how did you get the spell to take away the day—if he’d locked you up?”

  “My father didn’t have the heart to take me to the dungeons, not his only child. So he locked me in my room under guard. But that guard was a Brother who was faithful to me and my cause. I persuaded him to help me escape, and I retrieved the spells so that I could have a second chance. But first I had to get rid of the memory of my first attempt and lure Moreg here so that she couldn’t thwart me a second time. And I have—and this time I will do it right. Whatever it takes.”

  There was a noise from the floor. Sometimes was finally coming to. He sat up, his face as white as a sheet. “What have you done?” he asked Silas.

  “What was necessary. My father wasn’t the only one who had to be stopped. . . .”

  Just then two Brothers came inside the cell carrying Moreg Vaine. Her body was still, her eyes closed.

  “NO!” shouted Willow, racing toward her. One of the Brothers seized her by her middle.

  “She’s dead?” gasped Willow, feeling her stomach twist in fear and remorse.

  “No—alas,” said Silas. “Though I did try my best. She’s managed to put herself into some kind of protective sleep . . . though death is what she deserves.”

  “Why? Just because she told your father what you were planning? How you had taken the spells?” asked Essential.

  He shook his head. “It is more than that. She was the one who brought me here to Wolkana in the first place. Even when she knew that I would have magical ability. How could I not—being the child of her sister? Yet she left me here anyway, knowing, perhaps better than anyone, how the Brothers and my father feel about people with magic—and how he would raise me to be
lieve that everything about me was wrong. For that alone she deserves to suffer, but most of all for getting in my way again—and trying to thwart my plans.

  “I hoped that when I cast the spell and stole last Tuesday, no one, including the great Moreg Vaine, would remember the day and its events. I knew, though, for Moreg it would be a temporary thing. Even if the spell caused her to forget the past, even if it changed the fabric of time, it couldn’t stop her from eventually seeing the future and working out what I had done—not with her magical abilities. . . .”

  Willow blinked in sudden realization. Of course. Moreg, who seemed somehow able to do anything . . . “She’s a seer.” It made sense. The way Moreg seemed to plan ahead and know things—like how she would be captured, and how Willow would find an unusual garden in Nolin Sometimes’s old childhood home, or that she would need to find Essential Jones. . . . Willow thought back to how occasionally the witch’s eyes had gone hazy, almost the way Nolin Sometimes’s eyes did. . . .

  She thought too of how the witch had scoffed at the sorts of people who called themselves fortune tellers and got information from the dead . . . like maybe she knew how it really worked.

  “The only real seer in Starfell, I’d guess.” Silas smirked begrudgingly. “That’s why I needed something clever, something to fool a witch. The spell I chose was perfect; it hid the events of last Tuesday, so my father wouldn’t remember my plans or see them coming. But I knew that I was on borrowed time, as the spell would mess with the future—a future the great Moreg Vaine would question. I knew it would most likely bring her here as a result—she wouldn’t trust sending a raven to warn my father a second time, but this time I would be ready for her. It was all rather brilliant, I thought. Felling two birds with one stone.

  “I didn’t know about you, though—I hadn’t factored on a little girl who finds—what is it? Lost things? I suppose she thought you might help her to find the missing day. Perhaps she even believed that you would be able to save her? But, alas, that is not a chance I’m willing to take, you see. I can’t let you live knowing any of this.” He took a bottle from his robes, one that shimmered with a strange dark liquid. He uncorked it, and there was a smell of burned toast and rubber.

  Willow’s eyes widened. Was that what she feared it was? If so, it was highly illegal. Granny had said that only those with pure evil in their souls could make it. From within the hairy carpetbag there was a very faint “Oh no.”

  “I see you know this, child—it’s the potion of death. I’ve saved it just for you. And now that I know it only works as a potion throw, the results will be instant. Don’t worry—there should be enough for all of you.”

  He snapped his fingers and the rest of the Brothers came forward to seize Willow, Sometimes, and Essential.

  “No!” cried Essential, who raised her hands to freeze him, but it didn’t work. She kept on raising her hands. Nothing happened.

  Willow swallowed.

  “It’s almost sweet how you believe that your magic would work on me—as if I hadn’t ensured against that by using a protective spell the minute I allowed Moreg Vaine to step through these doors. Well”—Silas stroked the box of spells—“I must admit that I have enjoyed our time together—it felt good to finally tell the truth; it does release something inside. But enough of this. It is time to say goodbye now. . . .”

  Willow opened up the carpetbag as surreptitiously as she could, her hand searching as he spoke. . . . Ybaer had said she’d know when the time was right, and Willow did. From inside the carpetbag she grabbed hold of the stealth sprig and instantly disappeared.

  “What on Great Starfell?” cried Silas.

  Willow, realizing that he couldn’t see her, made her way slowly and carefully toward him. She grabbed the potion bottle out of his hands and flung it into the depths of her carpetbag.

  “Seize her!” cried Silas, and one of the guards ran forward.

  Essential raised her hands and froze the guard. Fortunately for them, whatever spell Silas had used to protect himself against magic, he obviously hadn’t shared it with his fellow Brothers.

  “We’ve got maybe a second. Do something!” shouted Essential as the frozen Brothers stared at them with murder in their eyes.

  Willow’s eyes fell on the shaggy carpetbag. She stared at the greenish-orange kobold and thought hard. They said if you insulted a kobold enough . . . they would explode.

  “Oswin, I have to tell you something before we die. I know that your father was a cat, and your mother wasn’t really a kobold,” she lied.

  “WOT?!”

  He turned a bright pumpkin color, his tail electrified in fury. His huge orb-like eyes blazed white-hot heat.

  Willow spoke fast, choosing words that would upset him most. “A common tabby, wasn’t she? And it was really just your grandmother who was a kobold . . . so you’re not really, technically, even a monster.”

  “I AM THE MONSTER FROM UNDER THE BED!” he roared.

  “NO, you’re just a cat!”

  “CAN A CAT DO THIS?” he bellowed, just as the Brothers unfroze and raced toward them. Willow threw the bag straight at them. “Duck!” she told Essential and Sometimes.

  There was a giant explosion. Willow’s hairy carpetbag burst apart with a bang, with Oswin glowing in the center like a fireball. The roof caved in, and the Brothers went flying backward.

  There was an angry shout from Brother Silas. “Get them—get that girl!”

  Abruptly a loud roar rent the air, and the floor began to shake. Something large, heavy, and ferocious had landed on the already disintegrating roof. Bits of tile and plaster rained upon them from above. Amid the falling debris, Willow saw a dragon.

  “Feathering!” she cried.

  The dragon eyed them and said very calmly in his deep, rumbly, windy voice, “Afternoon. . . . We had a feeling that you might be needing us?”

  From behind his great wings she could see a slightly nervous-looking troll give a bashful sort of smile. Calamity. The troll was holding the hag stone and said, “Turns out Wolkana wasn’t that far away; we saw it with this, and it helped us enter. Whatever magic protects this place doesn’t work on hag stones!”

  “Brilliant!” cried Willow.

  A roof tile had clipped Silas on the head, and blood was pouring down his face. Despite this he lunged for Willow. “Ignore them! Get the girl,” he commanded.

  The remaining Brothers hesitated, so Silas went to Moreg Vaine’s still body and took a knife from his cloak. He stared intently at Willow and said, “Surrender or she dies here and now.”

  Willow thought hard. In years to come she would still wonder at what she’d done, but she did the only thing she could. She closed her eyes, raised her hands to the sky, and summoned the Lost Spell.

  And magic, the magic of Starfell, sat up for a moment, as if it had been listening with one ear till then. And it drew closer to the small girl with hope in her chest, who was trying to fix things, and it decided to take a chance. And, to Willow’s utter surprise, the spell flew out of the golden box and landed in her outstretched hand with a purplish glow.

  “You leave me no choice,” said Brother Silas, stabbing Moreg beneath the ribs.

  Willow watched as Moreg’s blood pooled on her dusky robes and onto the ground, the color draining from her face, all life trickling out of her.

  “NO!” she shouted, racing toward the witch.

  The pain from her wound woke Moreg up at last, but not for long—she was fading fast. Moreg gasped for breath. “Do it, girl. Remember, practical makes perfect.”

  Willow’s lips trembled. “B-but I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can, you know you can,” hissed the witch. “Recite the counterspell.”

  Willow’s eyes filled with tears as she watched Moreg’s body start to shudder. Time was running out.

  Willow took one last look at Moreg’s body, tears coursing down her face, and then she read the counterspell on the scroll aloud as quickly as she could.

  Wh
at was taken now restore

  Put back what was lost before

  Return the day to its rightful space

  Time before time and past in place

  A blast of silvery light knocked her off her feet, the scroll crumbled to dust in her hand, and suddenly everyone around her was spinning inside a reeling tornado.

  She whirled passed Silas, his face dark and incredulous. Past Feathering, and Essential, Calamity, Oswin, and Nolin Sometimes, and then suddenly it all went black, as black as night.

  21

  Yesterday Again

  SHE WAS IN her cottage garden. There was a familiar crowd of people snaking along the low wall outside.

  Willow blinked. What had happened? Why was she here? Where was Moreg? Nolin Sometimes? Feathering? Essential Jones?

  In her confusion she heard skinny Ethel Mustard whine a strangely familiar whine. “I heard witches weren’t supposed to ask for money in the first place. . . . They’re not supposed to profit from their gifts,” she said.

  Willow’s mouth fell open. Hadn’t this already happened? Her brain felt like a puddle of mush as she tried to make sense of what was happening. Through the fog she heard Juniper round on Ethel. “Who told you that?”

  Then slowly, painfully, and all at once, the truth hit her like a knife in her belly. She doubled over, gasping for breath, hot tears sliding down her face, as all the memories of the day that had been taken away came flooding back.

  It was what she’d been fighting all along. What she’d known deep in her heart had to be true.

  When she looked up, eyes glistening, she saw that everyone was wearing black, and, as if from a void, she heard Flora Bunton’s reprimand. “This isn’t the time to be bringing up such a thing. . . . We’re here to show our support for the girls on this sad day as they say goodbye.”

  Willow closed her eyes and her chin wobbled as she remembered it all . . . the day that Silas had taken away from her, from all of them.

  The day had started off like any other Tuesday. She got up, poked Oswin to stop his snores from under the bed, and then she got dressed in her pond-green dress, the one that bubbled in crooked lines at the hem because it had been sewn by Granny Flossy’s unsteady hands.