5. Merry Meet
Merry Meet
Rumor Malefic
Rage propelled my weak body through my grave. Standing on a familiar hill with my hair matted with soil and sweat, my chest heaved. I glanced around the tombstones and down at Willowspire. Taking a step forward, I hesitated and spared a glance at the evil and sprawling castle.
My head twitched, reminding me of the dull, receding pain behind my eyes, and despite my intrusive and irrational thoughts, I trekked down the grass until I reached familiar cobblestone streets.
Without thinking, I pulled the door to Empath’s bakery. Closed. Of course it was. No one wants muffins the day after a monster abducts the town princess on her wedding day.
Something jumped and landed at my feet, startling me.
The shop cat, Soot, looked up at me and tilted his head as if expecting something from me.
Letting out a sigh, I bumped my head against the wooden door, willing my brain to formulate a plan.
I’d promised Prism I’d keep her safe, and I’d failed.
I’d promised Prism I’d save her—and I had no clue where to start.
What could I accomplish, even, with an invisible spider in my head, and a thorny black curse dragging me into a grave anytime it saw fit?
Dirt tracks—and a gray cat—followed behind me on my shuffle through the town.
Everything was closed. No children scampered through the square, no old men swept their stoops, no women did the washing or chatted on benches.
The eerie quiet of hiding, of solemn mourning, that I’d come to experience all too often after tragedy in Willowspire.
Loss stained our streets, it mangled our sacred willow tree, and it hushed any sprout of hope.
A town lost, a people abandoned, left for dead and hunted.
All the while, the Blackthorne Castle barbed into the quartz sky. I wondered if they watched on, sipping wine, or if they ever even passed a glance out their windows. Perhaps our screams of lamentation and the gnashing of beastly teeth only served to irritate them during dinner.
When the fog came and stole the magic users—did they discuss it and speculate as to our dwindling numbers?
Were they awaiting the day the silence never faded and every resident of Willowspire was finally dead?
Maybe then they’d be absolved of their post as headship over us—or maybe they wouldn’t even notice.
Soot meowed as I stomped up the creaking steps of my cabin and held open the door. “Are you coming in or not? Come on.”
Why did cats always wait in doorways like that? Little vampires waiting to be invited in. No candles were lit and no soup waited on the fire—because there was no fire. The love was gone. Prism was the love, the light, the fire.
Striking the flint stone, I coaxed a blaze to warm a cauldron of water.
The cat remained my shadow, and as pathetic as it was, it was nice to not be fully alone.
I should have been coming home alone after a celebration, filled with memories of my sister happy and wed.
Instead, I was left alone with the terror that some creature had its claws on her out in the dark woods.
My spider may have retreated into the dark burrows of my brain, but the remnants of its nest still lay dormant in the residual pounding of my mind.
I should have been charging into the woods looking for my sister, or my own death, whichever found me first. Though the spider had other plans, and no sooner after I collapsed into my bed, did I drift away.
My blurry, sleep-stained eyes eventually peeled open to focus on a water carafe on my nightstand.
The water was cold, though the room was warm, telling me that somehow the fire had stayed lit without my tending.
Not possible, but I wasn’t going to waste my finite, spider fading energy fighting my good fortune.
Cool water soothed my throat, and I ran a hand through my smooth hair.
I hadn’t bathed or even tried to wash off the dirt before sinking into bed.
My returning sight focused on a loaf of banana bread next to the carafe, and despite my witch training, which taught me to never accept unknown food or drink, I greedily took several bites straight from the top of the loaf.
Prism would have been horrified to see me in such a state.
Oh, Prism.
Food and water worked to steady my thoughts.
Empath or Charm must have stopped by to check on me.
A meow, followed by a purr, rumbled in my ear as the fluffy gray cat jumped on the bed and head bumped my elbow.
“Oh, you’re still here, huh? If you’re angling to be a familiar, you might want to pick a different witch, a more functional one, or at least one who can catch you a fish. ”
The cat swished its tail and hopped down, staring right into my eyes as if again asking, “So, what are you going to do?”
“First, I’m going to change out of this suspiciously clean nightgown.
” Rummaging through the chest at the foot of my bed, I pulled out a dark purple dress and changed as the little fur ball turned away to look out the window.
“Next,” I mumbled with another mouthful of banana bread. “I’m going to go kill Birch.”
The gray cat’s head whipped around as if he understood every word.
“Don’t worry, I’ll still make it to the solstice circle on time.
” The solstice, that’s right… what divine timing.
A creak underfoot beckoned me to remove the loose portions of floorboard, revealing the secret beneath my old cottage.
Or, really, it was my grandmother’s secret, and her mother before her.
This house was old, and it looked it. More importantly, it felt old.
Houses were alive; all witches knew that.
Imprinted with the spirits of those who built them, lived within them, and amplified by the careful intention of magic.
The songs sung by witches before me had seeped into the walls of this old cottage.
Their bones were in the crackle of the hearth, and echoes of their spell work still protected my every step.
Sometimes I felt their eyes on me and Prism through the cracked wood beams in the ceiling.
Though somehow, Prism hadn’t been blessed with magic, and I had.
Not that it mattered now that my gifts were only permitted to scrub garments or banish cockroaches from the pantry.
What a disgrace to the Malefic name I was.
How my ancestry likely looked upon me with shame, shaking the bars of the afterlife, screaming for me to do something—anything.
With a deep breath, I descended the hidden stone stairway, into the must and cold of a secret space beneath the earth.
“ Lucis ,” I whispered into the dark. Delight fluttered through me as six tiny lanterns flickered to life.
How many times my mother and grandmother must have said the same tiny spell, on the same damp stones.
An old black cauldron collected dust and cobwebs in the center of the room, and across from it was a stack of books.
Kneeling, I carefully removed my mother’s grimoire.
The red leather faded, the pages still soft white as they carried her swirly script.
My mother was a hedge witch with a book of simple but beautiful spells: How to make ribbons brighter, how to heal mosquito bites with a kiss, a spell for lost items, a chant to mend a leaky roof .
With a soft sigh, I laid her book aside.
I missed her. What would my grimoire contain?
What spells would my daughter, if I had one, wander down these steps to find?
How to suds water, a spell for mending boots, banish ash smoke?
What a disgrace I was indeed. Any of the women who authored one of the grimoires at my feet would have already crafted a spell that sent Prism straight home and those creatures in the forest straight to hell.
But they were gone.
Asunder had made sure of that.
Reaching for my grandmother’s grimoire, I wanted a refresher on a simple vermin poison potion—Birch counted as vermin, right?
Right. Grandmother Malefic taught me protective runes—like the one above my doorframe and the one I put in Prism’s hair.
Though maybe my magic was failing me, because the one I made for Prism didn’t serve me well.
Something caught my attention at the bottom of the stack, and I gently pushed Grandmother Malefic’s grimoire aside.
This grimoire wasn’t of the dull leather and parchment that the Malefic women used.
I knew the pale blue of my great grandmother’s, the red of my mother’s, aqua of my matri’s, and the sage of the women before them…
this grimoire was pitch black and the leather was vibrant and extravagantly bound. This book was not here last solstice.
This was not a Malefic grimoire.
Trepidation thrummed through me, knowing I should take it straight to the coven circle for inspection.
The crone and high priestess would know more than me…
it could be dangerous… very dangerous… and snooping through a grimoire outside of your own family line was a grave mistake for many a curious witch.
These books were often bespelled to scramble the minds of the reader at the least, at the worst…
the risk probably wasn’t worth it. On any other day, with Prism crocheting upstairs and my stew simmering in a pot, I’d have jumped away from the thing as if it were a snake.
However, in that moment, desperation clawed its way forward and begged me to open it. “How did you get here?” I asked the book.
The cat meowed, causing me to startle.
I kept forgetting the animal was still here for some reason.
“This looks like it came from a well-off witch. I’m sure it’s riddled with hexes.
” Tossing it back onto the ground, I pressed my back against the cool stone wall as the candles danced their orange glow across the room.
With my head in my hands, I tapped my foot.
“Though… it could also contain something that could help Prism. Maybe something more than a recipe for vermin poison for her rat-coward-boyfriend.”
Soot perched at my feet, and I stroked his soft fur.
“I’m going to die anyway,” I admitted. “Either because I go into the woods looking for her or from the heartbreak of losing her.” With resolve, I picked up the heavy book and sat it in my lap.
“Might as well die with style—or by some strange curse that turns me into a toad or something, at least that would be interesting.”
With a swift movement, I opened the book and winced, half expecting something to jump out at me. Slowly, I peeked one eye open—I could have sworn Soot was smirking his amusement. “You were hoping you could eat me as a toad, weren’t you?” I joked before inspecting the page.
Empty.
I turned it.
Empty.
I flipped through the entire damn book—empty.
With tense shoulders and bubbling annoyance, I was ready to toss the damned thing into the fireplace, when I flipped through it one more time, a page I must have missed catching my eye.
The scrawl was slanted and compressed, as if the author were in a hurry.
This was not the careful, meticulous script of Malefic women.
No, I’d dare say this wasn’t a woman witch at all.
I’d try not to hold that assumption against this unknown grimoire.
My fingers traced the spell, and my heart leapt into my throat.
My pulse beat in my ears from what I was seeing.
This wasn’t a spell for crop gathering, chicken catching, or coyote evading… this was something so much more.
Trading Destiny, the title read. I should have definitely closed the book and ran it straight over to my crone… but I kept reading instead.
Prick of blood unnoticed unforced
Hair of innocence
They must touch
You must touch them together
And repeat
Hammer becomes the nail
The author then scribbled something that I couldn’t make out and added a note, seemingly to himself.
Works well. For a fortnight or two, at least.
This was the strangest grimoire I’d ever seen. I half wondered if it were just nonsense. The blank pages, the nonsensical non-spell. Some witch’s trick. Or, more likely, a test planted by Empath when she was here checking on me. A test I’d just failed miserably.
Tucking the book under my arm with a defeated huff, I trudged back upstairs and with a flick of my wrist, the sanctum behind me became dark and dreary once more.
A wealth of magic splintered within the wood and inked in the grimoire of my veins—and all I had was a trick-book, a stray cat, and a sister who’d depended on me, who was now gone.
A disgrace.
A failure.
Buried alive in my inadequacies.
A stupid witch.