5. Kiaran #2
“Oh, and Orla? My name is Amelie.” She bowed her head to continue adjusting the already perfect arrangement, then she voiced a concern mostly to herself. “I hope someday someone says my name again.”
And suddenly, I wanted to speak her name endlessly. Just to never see her so sad again.
Amelie.
Amelie asked Orla, otherwise known as Fern, to hold off on dinner when she saw the new library.
While she excused herself to the washroom to bathe after her walk, I took the liberty of replacing some of the boring books Fern picked out with romantic novels.
Girls love romance. I lived in isolation for a long time, but some things never change.
Girls in Avonya swooned at just a wink from me.
So I was sure some of these books would set fire to Amelie’s sad soul.
When she walked into the cozy new sanctuary of books, she soaked it all in.
Breathing in and out a few times, as if she was committing all of her senses in this room to memory.
I hated to admit that Fern had impeccable taste, but she really did.
The library was gorgeous. The laws of magic allowed it to be much bigger on the inside than it appeared from the outside.
Amelie floated over to the desk, running a palm over my hand-picked selection of books. Flipping the front cover open, she scoffed and slammed it shut. She must be going mad. I felt a jab in my side, as if Fern was ribbing me for having poor judgment.
She started touching each book on the middle shelf, running her finger over each spine.
Stopping at a big green one, she tipped the spine out and decided that was the one to start with.
She tucked herself into the nook and flipped to the first page.
I took a seat beside her. She shuddered as if she knew something was invading her space.
When I saw what was better than the books I picked out, I knew she had succumbed to complete and utter madness.
Philosophy of Alchemy.
I hadn’t searched through the collection Fern brought in, but that was my book from home. My teachers were hellbent on us being well-rounded Witches and felt it was of the utmost importance to have a basic understanding of how dangerous alchemy was, but also how useful it was when performed safely.
I had all this magic, yet I couldn’t figure out how to blend elements together without nearly setting the whole place on fire.
Amelie was reading it like it was the greatest work of literature she’d ever consumed, as if she understood every word.
She stayed there for hours, long past Fern’s promptly scheduled meal times.
She called it quits with only a little left in the book and told Fern she would go to bed without dinner, completely unacceptable to our hostess .
Fern had the table set with an absurd amount of food before Amelie could even finish her request.
It’s easy to go mad in isolation and your only company being an overbearing house of magic. I would know. I’d done it for about one hundred and ninety-nine years longer than she has.
The first few years I was here, I spent my time pissed off and sulking.
Constantly racking my brain for a loophole in the magic, any lesson from fundamentals that would’ve been useful in breaking a tethering curse.
Unfortunately, every attempt ended with singed eyebrows or a lightning bolt of energy thrashing down on me.
Surely a message from the High Priestess.
My sentence, though, came with a way out. I decided long ago that it would’ve been better to not know that there was a way home, often wishing I was just exiled and sent to live among the other failures on the outskirts of Avonya.
Home wasn’t far away at all from the Forest, but the realm hid behind enchantments and pools of magic that only the High Priestess could open.
I spent years trying to find something in this cottage to give up, but nothing in here was important to me. Nothing would hurt me to lose. I tried on every Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. Fuck, I tried.
One year, I spent the better part of eight months trying to attach myself to a painting of a little family.
I spoke to the faces in the painting every day, sharing stories about my life back home.
The family in the painting was bigger than mine.
I had a mom, dad, and a little sister. These parents had four children, one girl, two boys, and a baby.
The mother and father were smiling at each other with nothing but love in their eyes.
The children played at the lake’s shore.
The baby was saddled on the little girl’s hip.
It looked ridiculous, this small girl holding such weight upon her small body .
It made sense that losing this family would teach me a lesson for what I had done. I understood at this point that the High Priestess needed me to feel the pain I’d caused.
When the Winter Solstice arrived that year, I placed the painting in the middle of the sacrificial circle.
The oil paints bubbled, letting an acrid smell waft through the cottage.
A puff of smoke swallowed the canvas, and I swore the window above the sink in the kitchen would’ve been the last thing I’d see in this Forest.
That was one hundred fifty years ago, and the only pain I had afterward was the sting in my nose from the burning oil.
I didn’t like to admit to the lonely feelings I often felt here. Spending a lot of time wearing impenetrable armor became useless. The only person here to defend against was myself. But the only person I ever had was myself. No one could fill the empty parts of my heart, so I guarded it.
Like every other boy in my Coven, the girls held our main attention.
Witches were notorious flirts. We are manipulative and talented in the art of romance.
Willing into our lives the things we wanted grounded our entire existence.
We were still honing our magic when we turned of age to potentially find our fated mate, and the only way to expel the power exuding from us was to fuck like the world might evaporate tomorrow.
When you found your counterpart, the one your soul was desperate to find, everything locked into place.
Your magic balanced itself and would no longer search randomly for something to tether to.
Those pulls of connection always ended in the physical form.
I hadn’t worshiped a woman in two centuries, it exhausted me at first, then the desires dwindled away.
Deciding after yet another reminder of how alone and desperate I’d become here, I figured maybe it was time to introduce myself.
I bathed while she strolled around the pond. Twisted my curls around my fingers and shaved my overgrown face down to a clean stubble. I threw on one of the three shirts Fern had given me in all my time here and my denim pants. Then, I waited. Like I’d been doing for two centuries.
Who knew watching a beautiful woman shove two chicken wings into her mouth at once would be the most otherworldly thing I’d ever seen.
I cast myself here in less than a second.
Having centuries of practice, I knew it would be silent.
I thought that would be the right way to go about this meeting of cohabiters, but she hadn’t even noticed me sitting across from her.
My jaw parted in disbelief as I watched her huff down the food Fern had conjured for her.
I took her in. She was completely unabashed at her lack of table manners. Her fingers glistened with grease. There was something about a woman who didn’t care to use a fork that baffled me.
Had she not realized by now that Fern would give her endless amounts of food at any given time?
Clearly not, but I would be patient, not wanting to ruin this moment for myself.
A girl this hungry seemed dangerous, and I didn’t want to be caught in the cross of her being forced to slow down.
She’d obviously been trying to be courteous to Fern by telling her she would skip dinner.
As she sucked the last drops of the grease from the wing with a pop of her lips and a moan, I realized this was putting me in an incredibly unsettling position. Apparently, it didn’t take much these days. I shifted slightly in my seat, trying to make myself more comfortable.
She met my eyes as a squeak from her lost breath hitched in her throat. Not saying anything and seemingly not breathing either, she darted her eyes around the cottage behind me.
“Oh great. Now I’m seeing angels.” She slid her chair back hard, screeching against the floorboards. Pacing behind the table, she pressed her palm to her forehead, as if checking for a fever. “For fuck’s sake, Amelie, you’ve been here for less than a week, and you’ve already gone completely mad!”
She looked back to me, blinking so hard that I couldn’t tell if she was trying to force herself to sleep or if she had something in her eyes.
I looked over my shoulder, she was seeing angels?
Hoping her hallucination would pass and we could continue our official meeting, I waited. She rounded the long oak table and stood beside me, breathing shakily down at me as I stayed seated.
I turned to look at her, fearful now that I was the one in danger. Me. A three hundred year old Witch in danger of a girl who just annihilated her chicken wings.
And I’d wager a bet that was probably the most damage she’d ever done to anything.