Chapter 17 Emory #2
Just like the scholar on the shores from Clover’s story, who’d gone through worlds and convinced a witch and a warrior and a guardian to follow him to the sea of ash, where all their fates were sealed.
Stranger, scholar—that was who Emory was. And perhaps the thing that awoke in the sleepscape, that was trying to seep out of it by possessing Bryony, was the great beast in the sea of ash, looking for retribution.
“I have done so much to keep my daughters from harm, yet fate found them anyway,” Mrs. Amberyl said.
“One’s mind is lost to the astral plane; the other might be the only one who can save our dying woods, even the universe at large.
I’ve seen it in my scrying how this blight is spreading across worlds, and it terrifies me.
” Her eyes slid to Emory. “I have felt you prodding at the edges of my mind. This is what I didn’t want you to see.
But I’ll share it with you now, if you wish. ”
Emory was hesitant to reach for her magic so soon after what happened. She caught Romie’s eye, hoping for some encouragement, but was met only with distrust.
Wary of her own power, of the ghosts that would follow, Emory reached for the Memorist magic, convincing herself it was safe to do when not standing on a ley line.
She sighed as the pressure in her veins disappeared.
Thankfully, Mrs. Amberyl’s mind was laid bare to her, and as soon as she brushed against it, images flashed between them:
An angry sea flooding a familiar coastline. A rotting forest. A barren earth growing cold and dark beneath a too-dim sun. A sky full of impossible storms. A world reduced to ash, where a small glimmer of hope still burned, like a torch against the coming dark.
Emory let go of the magic just as Mrs. Amberyl’s wards went back up around her mind, casting her out.
Her heart beat rapidly. Darkness pressed in, though not in the form of ghosts this time—just their accusatory voices whispering in her ears, an eerie tidal wave of sound that sought to pull her under.
Emory faltered back, clasped her hands over her ears.
Not real not real not real.
“Em.” Romie’s familiar voice breaking through the din. She looked at Emory with consternation. “What did you see?”
Emory didn’t know which was worse: Mrs. Amberyl’s bleak vision or the ghostly voices in her ears.
She had the sudden thought that maybe it was all related.
That the darkness called forth by her magic might be connected to whatever blight was sweeping through the worlds.
With a shuddering breath, she said, “The answer to fixing all of it lies at the center of all things. With us going to the sea of ash.”
Just as Romie had always believed.
“You kept this from me,” Aspen said to her mother, voice trembling with barely contained anger.
“I have been hearing the call of these other worlds ever since I ascended, and you made me feel like what I was seeing was blasphemous. When all along, you were hiding this truth from me.” Aspen wiped away angry tears. “Do you have so little faith in me?”
“Aspen—”
“You would have gotten rid of Emory and Romie and let our world rot away to nothing instead of trusting that I might be able to fix it.”
“This has nothing to do with trust. I was only trying to protect you.”
Aspen scoffed. “And look where that got us. If you’d told me the truth the minute Emory and Romie arrived, the three of us could have left the Wychwood before this sickness got to Bryony. I could have saved her.”
The brokenness in Aspen’s voice seemed to change something in Mrs. Amberyl’s demeanor, finally cracking that hard exterior.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I thought I was doing what was best.”
“You were wrong.”
Emory’s heart ached with empathy for Mrs. Amberyl.
The High Matriarch had only wanted to save her daughters, even if it meant risking her own people, her whole world.
She would have rather seen the Wychwood reduced to nothing than sacrifice either of her daughters.
Two lives over an entire world—over multiple worlds, if her vision was any indication.
It felt selfishly cruel, in a way, but Emory saw it for what it was: a mother protecting her children however she saw fit. A part of her wished she would have known such fierce protection instead of a mother who’d cared so little about her that she hadn’t wanted her at all.
Aspen looked between Emory and Romie, chin lifted in determination. “I’ll go with you to find this door and all the ones after.”
“Aspen—”
“No, Mother. You don’t get a say in this. You’ve made a mess of things; now it’s up to me to fix it.” Aspen sat beside her sister, tenderly brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “Maybe in restoring the woods, we can restore Bryony’s essence to her body.”
Romie looked at Emory expectantly. “Well? We need you, Em. You’re a key piece in this. The scholar on the shores. We can’t go through these worlds without you.”
Everything in Emory wanted to say no, to just find the door and book it back home and leave her terrifying ghosts behind and the witches to deal with their own problems. But Mrs. Amberyl’s vision haunted her.
That all-too-familiar coastline ravaged by floods, as though the tides were all out of sorts, their link to the moon severed and skewed and wrong.
If this sickness was spreading across worlds, then perhaps they wouldn’t even have a home to go back to.
Unless they helped save it.
And perhaps, in the process, the ghosts that plagued her would finally leave her alone.