Chapter 11
Spirit Malefic
I watched my daughters playing in a nearby stream.
They splashed each other, laughing as they balanced on stones and moved playfully from rock to rock.
Pushing thoughts of the shadow from my mind, I tried to focus my energy on the here and now, not the threat of horrors to come.
Little Rumor threw stones into the stream, watching them ripple the water as they plopped in.
Meanwhile, Prism had moved on to trying to befriend an iridescent blue salamander who was sunning itself on a warm rock.
While Rumor pretended to be hurling explosive spells at her enemies, Prism made a bed of leaves for her newfound critter friend.
My girls couldn’t have been more different, and I loved them immensely for their distinct personalities.
It made me feel that maybe Alchemy and I were doing a good job with them.
If they felt free enough to be themselves, that was a good parenting sign, right?
They were each products of our love… and a bit of magic, our girls. Of course, it was a bit more complicated for two female witches to fall pregnant, but we managed it twice.
No part of me regretted conceiving them.
Finding out I was pregnant, each time, was the happiest moment of my life apart from meeting my wife.
Yet always in the back of my mind, I remembered that great magic doesn’t come without a great price.
It haunted me. Worry plagued my dreams, and anxiety pricked the hairs on the back of my neck each time one of them wandered out of view.
Like they could be snatched up by a wither at any moment.
Alchemy told me not to fret so much. Said it was natural to worry about your children’s wellbeing, and my concern was innate to parenthood and not a sign from beyond or stirring of magical warning within me.
I was inclined to believe her.
Until the visions started.
Until the nightmares found me.
Until the shadows came.
Sometimes I could ignore them. I couldn’t use magic, but I could make runes.
I could call upon the witchcraft of my ancestral cottage to protect us and guard and guide the girls.
Moonwater in their baths didn’t break Asunder’s rules.
Sage on the windowsills. Stick runes in their braids and above the doorways never set off Asunder’s wards.
As a hedge witch, I had an advantage. My magic closely resembled what was deemed acceptable use of witchery.
So… I pushed my magical luck. I urged spells a tiny bit farther than would be common for any other witch in Willowspire to do.
We could encourage crops to grow, for example, but I persuaded them to stay in season year round.
Prism once asked for a giant pumpkin… and I crafted a spell to make hundreds appear every year on the first of October.
My magical cottage was bewitched with hundreds of years of Malefic magic.
It routinely helped us find lost things…
so I encouraged it to also bring Rumor what she needed in the moment.
My eldest daughter habitually sought her wooden dagger when a quiet book would do, for instance.
Yes, I’d been quite naughty, but I’d gone undetected. Or at least, so I thought.
Footsteps sounded behind me, followed by the saltwater taste of my sea witch’s magic. Alchemy was my ocean. Larger than life, powerful, and all-consuming. I turned to greet her and gasped. Blood trickled down her eyebrow. “Alchemy!” I said, startled, hurrying up and over to her side.
She smeared the blood across her cheek with her palm before inspecting her hand. “I guess the pinebear clipped me. I’m fine, darling, I didn’t even notice.”
“Were you hunting alone again?”
Alchemy lifted a guilty shoulder.
“Why don’t you go with the Vipers? They extended an open invitation and there’s safety in numbers. After what happened with Fable… you know folks are calling her Fable the Forgotten now. Horrid nickname. I worry about the things greater than pinebears and fearcats in the woods.”
“I think I’d rather hike the hunting trails alongside withers than in the company of Vipers.”
Alchemy tilted her face so I could assess the gash above her brow.
“You’re lucky its spur didn’t jab straight through your eye.
” I let out a sigh, using my sleeve to dry the blood.
“And why would you say that? The Viper boys are the girls’ friends, and I’ve gotten along fine with their mother, Ophidia.
I’ll admit they’re all a bit… intense… but their farm supplies nearly half of Willowspire’s needs. They’re useful, industrious people.”
Alchemy shrugged a shoulder again. “Don’t care. Don’t like them.” She squinted past me. “It appears one of our daughters is attempting to craft her own bow and arrow, while the other is singing a lullaby to a lizard. I’ll let you take a wild guess on which is which.”
They must have noticed Alchemy then, because giggles and cheers erupted at her presence. My wife ran to greet our babies, and I laughed at their fanfare. Alchemy swooped both girls into her strong arms, kissing each cheek, left, right, left, right, until the girls were a giggling mess.
“You know what I want after a long day of hunting?” Alchemy said, carrying the children up the bank to meet me. “Your mom’s lemon cake.”
The girls ignited in agreement, their eyes wide as they nodded, looking at me with pleading gazes.
A small chuckle left my throat. “Alright, alright. You all need to get cleaned up first. That includes you.” I bopped Alchemy’s nose.
“Let’s head home, and I’ll tend to that cut while your treat bakes. ”
“Kiss?” My wife puckered her lips. With a half smile, I obliged, feeling our little girls’ hands in my hair as I leaned in and gave her a peck.
“Lemon cake! Lemon cake! Lemon cake!” They all began chanting as Alchemy sat them both down, and they began frolicking towards the house.
My delight slowly faded. As sure as my family growing small in the distance, the feeling within me emerged again.
A cold wind chilled my spine, and I felt compelled to look over my shoulder.
When I turned, horror choked through my being.
A shadowed outline stood in the center of the stream.
Rumor’s makeshift stick bow on a rock to one side, Prism’s leaf bed for lizards on a rock to the other.
The shadow tilted its head, reaching down and picking up the bow.
It inspected it, and the image was terrible.
Darkness itself was prodding at my children’s toys.
It made a motion, pointing the bow at me and pretending to release an arrow. I swallowed my fear and stepped forward. This shadow being had haunted my dreams for weeks. It had hidden from me in my garden and lurked around corners. This was as bold and brazen as it had ever been.
This wasn’t good.
This really wasn’t good.
Remembering myself, my family name, and the line of powerful witches in my blood, I straightened at the stream’s edge and looked plain into the void. “I cast you out. Be gone from here and never return. In the power of the Malefic name, I cast you out.”
The being dropped the bow, its limbs too long for its slender frame. Ignoring me, its attention shifted to Prism’s leaf pile. It knelt and gathered the leaves into its palm before righting itself and extending them outward for me to see.
“I said, be gone,” I repeated through gritted teeth, forcing myself to sound surer and braver than I felt.
The being’s eerie, disembodied voice echoed against the river’s quiet rushing. “The Malefic name owes a debt.” My shoulders jolted then as the small bundle of leaves in its hands erupted into blue fire. “You will give… or we will take.”
“You won’t take her… you won’t take either of them.”
“We will have both. One in realm and one in darkness… but your debt will be paid. It must be paid.”
“No.” I shook my head. “You can’t have them. I will stop at nothing to protect them.”
“You have six days,” the being echoed, its shadowy form fading. “Six days.”
“No, no, no,” I said as it dissipated into nothing once more. It was nowhere, everywhere, light and dark, gone but watching. “No!” I yelled, kicking a rock into the stream. Hot tears gathered behind my eyes.
How would I tell Alchemy?
What would she say?
What if we couldn’t keep our children safe?
Anguish tore through me as hot tears of dread and regret fell from my eyes.
I dried my face, thinking up a lie to explain my red, puffy eyes as I walked home.
Twilight, of course the shadow came at twilight when the veil was at its thinnest. When day met night, the sun met the moon.
It’s when Alchemy and I would speak through the whirlpool in her beloved sea, so very long ago.
Those nights were so special. I’d look forward to them every day. Hurrying through my tasks as if rushing would bring dusk quicker.
It was a mistake that connected us. It was a solstice night, and I was an inexperienced hedge witch with a makeshift scrying stone in my garden.
Instead of attending the coven circle, I’d decided to be alone with my magic that solstice.
With Asunder’s harsh rules, the lack of aid or guidance from the Blackthorne Lords, and the all too frequent stealing of witches by blue fog…
I was looking for comfort. Hope. Anything to hold on to.
Something inside me begged to reach into the ether—to call into the void and see if anything would speak back. It was reckless, and in hindsight, I never should have attempted something so dangerous. Anything could have seen me, found me. A daimon, an archdemon, something worse entirely.
Thankfully, only soft waves and the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen greeted me through the shallow water on my scrying stone.
One conversation should have been enough.
Seeing Night Gale’s waves and Alchemy’s wet curls, knowing she existed somewhere out there, it was the hope I wanted; she was the hope I needed.
But I couldn’t stop there. Not sure if it would go beyond Asunder’s laws or not, each night I crept out to my garden, to the scrying stone, and called upon my sea witch.
We’d talk for hours. Laughing and telling stories of our homes.
Alchemy would tell me about the beaches and the seaside town of Night Gale.
She’d tell me stories of sirens, sea creatures, and boats from afar.
Asunder’s law reached Night Gale, too, and her ocean magic was limited, but all the same, she’d swim out to our spot in the tides each evening.
Maybe it was a glitch in the enchantments, but no fog came, so we continued getting to know each other from a distance. With mountains and an ocean between us, we fell in love. We fell in love hard and fast and without reason or sense.
She proposed through the shallow water of the scrying stone and I said yes.
Then Alchemy began her journey to Willowspire.
I worried every night that we couldn’t speak.
I worried something would happen to her.
I worried she wouldn’t like me or find me attractive when she arrived.
What if she didn’t enjoy being with a hedge witch?
Wouldn’t she have been happier with a fellow sea witch?
I felt horrible at tearing her away from the ocean she loved.
Yet, I selfishly knew I couldn’t live without her, too.
And I couldn’t journey to Night Gale. Even if my coven released me and allowed it, I wouldn’t know the first thing about journeying alone like that.
Alchemy could, though. She was so brave, so sure of herself.
Alchemy could hunt, fish, slay huge beasts, and journey on foot for days at a time.
She survived off fish jerky and foraged goods.
Camping each night, learning a land foreign to her—all for me.
A witch she’d never yet touched in person.
When she arrived, sweaty and trudging through the forest, her magic called to mine long before the trail ended.
I tasted her saltwater kiss in my mouth before our lips even touched.
And when I ran to her and threw myself into her arms, I knew we were fated.
I’d found the hope I’d so longed for on that solstice night.
Until… well, until what happened next.
Those memories played through my mind as I made my way back home. Alchemy ran out to me in a frenzy, Rumor running behind her, crying.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, alarmed. My wife never looked so frazzled.
She’d just faced a pinebear without flinching.
What could have her in such a state of panic?
She grabbed my shoulders as Rumor wrapped herself around my waist, crying into my dress.
“What’s happened?” I repeated, fearing the worst. Remembering the shadow man, his threats, his promise.
Alchemy answered. “We can’t find Prism.”