Chapter 2 Emory
EMORY NEVER BELIEVED IN FAIRY tales until she found herself living in one.
Amberyl House could have been pulled out of a storybook.
Every time Emory thought she’d seen the entirety of the witches’ sprawling estate, she discovered some new curio to puzzle over.
Sculpted marble busts and vases adorned with strange beasts and collections of gemstones the likes of which she had never seen before.
Lifelike statues of armored knights and fair maidens that made her wonder at the hands that had carved them.
Glass jars filled with peculiar-shaped mushrooms and even odder-looking bones, all of which Emory was forbidden to touch because of whatever mystical properties they held.
There was the sunlit room on the first floor where dried herbs and plants and flowers hung in carefully tied bunches from the rafters on the ceiling, left there to dry until they were ready to be crushed up with mortar and pestle and used for purposes unknown.
There was the lilac-painted room on the second floor that felt colder than even the cellar, empty save for a massive clump of amethyst atop a marble altar, and the outside gardens full of fountains and parterres and shady nooks hidden among the hedges.
Even the massive library next to the herbarium was a marvel, containing titles in languages Emory didn’t know, in alphabets she’d never seen.
Other titles were written in her own tongue.
Some of them she vaguely recognized, certain she’d read them before.
She wasn’t a big enough bookworm to tell if the author names were the same as those half-remembered stories.
If Baz were here, he would know. She had perused a few of the books to keep herself busy, but whatever sense of déjà vu she’d had vanished as she read, the stories wholly unfamiliar to her.
It was difficult to grasp what was real and what was not. Was she trapped in a dream? Was this the Deep, masquerading as a lush land full of green things and the kind of rich, earthy smells that filled your lungs and made you feel alive, all to detract from the fact that you were actually dead?
You’re alive, and this is the Wychwood, Emory reminded herself, for that was what the witches who had found her and Romie called it, and this was what she must believe.
Even if the idea of being in one of the worlds Cornus Clover had written in his book made her want to laugh, or cry, or both all at once.
She felt trapped in this endless loop of questioning her very reality. And Amberyl House, despite its beauty and the generosity of their hosts, was very much starting to feel like a prison.
Romie joked about them being like maidens locked away in a tower by some evil witch, awaiting their prince.
Except no prince was coming to save them, and the witches who’d taken them in weren’t exactly evil—though they would not allow them to leave, either.
Emory and Romie could wander the sprawling sunlit grounds of the estate but never go beyond its limits.
Never into the woods that grew at the edge of the gardens, dark and old and mysterious.
They had tried it once, meaning to return to the spot where they’d been found half-drowned in a ravine. But whatever magic lived here barred their way, a thicket of impenetrable vines growing across the garden gate that would have taken them into the woods proper.
“There are things happening in the woods that cannot be interfered with,” Mrs. Amberyl had told them when they’d brought it up. “Magic that could easily be disrupted by a stranger’s presence. Until the ascension, I’m afraid you’ll have to stay here at the house.”
The ascension, Mrs. Amberyl had explained, was a ritual sacred to the witches, though she wouldn’t divulge the specifics of what it entailed.
“It is a very private affair,” she’d said in that stern way of hers that left no room for debate.
“But afterward, I assure you, you will be able to leave if you wish to.”
“We just want to go home,” Emory had said.
Except none of them knew how they might do so.
Neither Emory nor Romie had any memory of how they got here.
The last thing Emory remembered was pushing open the marble door in the sleepscape.
One second, she was reaching for the knotted vines that formed the doorknob, and the next, she was lying in the mud, looking up at Mrs. Amberyl and her daughter Aspen.
In a daze, they’d searched their surroundings for any trace of a door.
Remembering the water sloshing at her feet in the sleepscape, Emory had been convinced the waterfall might be their way back home.
That perhaps the water flowing down the star-lined path of the sleepscape had spilled into this world, along with them.
But whatever door they’d come through was gone, leaving them without a clue as to how they might return home.
They were stuck here, in the verdant world of the Wychwood, in the company of witches who seemed entirely unfazed by their appearance or by the fact that they claimed to be from another world.
It was as though they’d been expecting them.
Just as the witch in Clover’s story knew to expect the scholar.
And here Emory and Romie were. Not one scholar, but two. Far from the shores they’d known.
The Wychwood may not be the worst place to be stranded in, but they were still determined to find a way out—and make sense of how and why they were here in the first place.
“You’re being too obvious,” Romie whispered as they flitted through the grand, echoing halls.
“Me? You’re the one whose book is upside down.”
With a swear, Romie righted the book in her hand. “Well, yours is in another language entirely.”
“It has illustrations.”
Romie rolled her eyes, but it was an affectionate sort of gesture. The normalcy of it made Emory smile.
They were trying to look inconspicuous as they poked around various rooms, pretending to read their books. Voices drifted toward them from the kitchens. Romie waggled her brows at Emory and strode off toward them, all but abandoning her cover.
“Wait—”
They peeked into the sunlit kitchens, where such divine food was made that a suspicious part of Emory wondered if the witches were trying to fatten them up for some grotesque reason, or poison them with some untraceable ingredient.
She really had no reason to believe any of this, though—they’d been eating the witches’ food for eight days now without any ill effect.
Witches were clanging about as they cooked up a storm, laughing and speaking excitedly in a dialect that was similar enough to their own that Emory could more or less understand. Their common tongue made her wonder at how their two worlds came to share it.
Emory and Romie listened for something that might help them make sense of their situation. Unfortunately for them, the only thing the witches seemed interested in was petty gossip.
Romie groaned, whispering, “Can’t they just talk about the ascension? Surely that’s what all this food is for.”
At this rate, they would never find out what this oh-so-secret ascension entailed. Mrs. Amberyl had told them they could join the celebrations that would take place in the gardens after the ascension, but not the ascension itself.
Her meaning had been clear: Emory and Romie were strangers—outsiders to their witchy practices, foreigners from distant lands—and though they’d been invited into the witches’ home, they would not be invited into their world proper.
Everyone in these parts was referred to as a witch, though Emory couldn’t tell what exactly defined them as witches.
They all had an inner eye, Mrs. Amberyl had explained, a sixth sense that manifested differently in every witch in varying degrees of power—much in the same way lunar magic flowed differently in the blood of Emory’s people.
But Emory had yet to see a witch using their inner eye.
They led what appeared to be mundane lives, those who worked within these walls tending to the needs of Amberyl House and its residents, doing the cleaning and cooking and groundskeeping.
Whatever magic they did, they did in secret. Away from Emory’s and Romie’s prying eyes.
And tonight would be no different.
“What are you doing down here?”
Emory and Romie drew back from where they’d been peering into the kitchens. Behind them, Aspen Amberyl, the daughter of the witch who’d taken them in, stared at them with her arms crossed.
“We were just—”
“I need more tincture,” Romie lied smoothly, holding up her still-healing hands.
In fact, it wasn’t a lie at all—Romie was running low on the tincture the witches had prepared for her.
Emory’s own healing magic did little to nothing when it came to the horrid burns Romie had gotten in the sleepscape while clutching a white-hot burning star in her hands to fend off the umbrae.
But whatever herbs the witches had crushed up together to make this tincture seemed to be helping, even if slowly.
Aspen studied them with narrowed eyes, her expression so like her mother’s it was almost laughable.
Where Mrs. Amberyl was the epitome of severity, Aspen was a poor model of it, a student trying to imitate a master when she was so clearly made for something else.
A daughter used to following rules but yearning to break them.
“Tinctures are made in the herbarium,” Aspen said, “not the kitchens. What are you really here for?”
Emory’s gaze slid to Romie.
“All right, you caught us,” Romie admitted with a crooked smile. She jerked her chin toward the busy kitchens. “We were curious about the preparations for tonight. Trying to see if we can piece together what exactly a witch ascension entails, since none of you want to tell us.”
Aspen pursed her lips. “That’s because our ritual is—”
“Sacred, we know.” Romie rolled her eyes. “But if we could see it…”
“It isn’t allowed.”