Chapter 15 Let Your Mind Be the Magic
Let Your Mind Be the Magic
We take compliments, one of the spiders says, and I smile.
“This is one of the most beautiful dresses I’ve ever seen,” I say, looking down at myself. Glistening fabric blinks back at me. “It’s… impossibly beautiful.”
My voice breaks. I feel a tear sliding down my cheek.
Because this is the first time I’ve ever worn an intricate design my mother didn’t create.
And it feels bittersweet. I almost feel guilty, loving something so much that wasn’t crafted by her own careful, talented hands, and now…
now I know for certain that she stitched her love into my clothing, because I no longer feel it, as glistening and opulent as this fabric is.
I don’t feel… her.
That’s why she looks so familiar! One of the spiders says, and I go still. I look up, tears frozen on my cheeks.
A scowl. You’re just now realizing it? She is the exact copy of her mother!
My throat tightens. I barely get the words out. “You—you met my mother?”
Met her? One of them says, outraged. We trained her, good girl!
My knees buckle. I settle onto the forest floor, the glowing dress ballooning around me. No… that’s impossible. How would she have even gotten here? Did my mother and Robin use the necklaces to portal, just like me?
I have so many questions. My throat is so full of emotion I can hardly get the words out.
Finally, I manage to say, “Please. Tell me everything.”
We don’t have to. We can show you.
And they begin spinning around the forest again, this time right over my head. Through the darkness, using their silvery silk, they make constellations that move, shapes that tell a story, and I see her—
My mother.
I see her as a girl around my age, wearing the same necklace I have on, marching into the clearing and demanding to speak to the spiders. She wants to be trained by them.
They tell her they don’t speak to humans. Not anymore. And they certainly don’t train them.
But my mother doesn’t give up. She simply lifts her chin and, in her clear, strong voice, says, “Fine. By the end of the day, you will ask to work with me.”
And then she stands in the center of that clearing, takes a deep breath… and her necklace glows pink.
Magic used to work here, I think, watching. And my mother… she was able to use it.
The pieces come together. This necklace must have been her accessory from the Fates to help her design. That’s why it contains magic.
But why would Robin have one, too? She wasn’t a Designer; she doesn’t talk about her past, but that much I know. So why—
Then my mom begins to create, and I lose track of anything other than observing her in awe.
The leaves move in a rush around her, whirling and dancing, and she directs them with tiny flicks of her elegant fingers as though she’s conducting an orchestra, as if she’s painting a masterpiece with leaves as her colors and herself as her canvas, and she begins to create a gown made up of the forest itself.
She weaves branches into a bodice, she knits flowers into swaths of silky-soft fabric, she turns the leaves into a train that sweeps all the way through the clearing, the pink light from the necklace casting her in an almost otherworldly glow.
By the time her magic clears, the spiders are all hanging from their strings, watching. They look like ornaments, suspended in awe.
Then—
Your form is sloppy, one of them finally hisses.
My mother just smiles. “Good,” she says. “Teach me.”
I let out a choked laugh at her impishness, her refusal to be cowed by the spider’s critique. My mother—she was everything I thought she was. Confident. Bold. A little reckless.
When I was pronounced Fateless, I thought how disappointed my mother would be.
Now… seeing this… I know my mother would have done exactly what I’m doing now. She wouldn’t have accepted her Fateless Fate. She would have marched straight to Dreamland and demanded what she wanted.
Your mother was wondrous, the spiders say before disappearing into the trees again.
The darkness fades, just a little. It’s already afternoon. Almost time for the masquerade.
That’s when I realize I might have a dress… but I don’t have a mask.
Evalyn finally comes out into the clearing, sniffling.
“I recognized you immediately, you know. You really do look just like her. I just… I didn’t know how to say it.”
My breath stalls in my lungs.
My mother—
“The room you slept in—that was her room,” she says sadly. “She lived there while she trained with the spiders.”
The clothes that fit me perfectly, as if made specifically for my form—
“Everything in that wardrobe is hers. She made it all, even the quilt.”
My eyes burn, thinking about how safe and warm and comfortable it felt to be wrapped up in it. Now that I know my mother made it, it’s as though her arms were around me. As if she was singing me to sleep with that lullaby…
“Come on, then,” Evalyn says quickly, looking up at the sky, dotting her eyes with a handkerchief. “You don’t have much time to find a creature.”
I blink. “What?”
She just looks at me. “Well, you need to arrive on an enchanted creature to be let in.”
“You said anyone who’s dressed up can go!”
She purses her lips. “Did I? Must have slipped my mind…”
Frustration curls around my bones, but—fine.
“Well, how do I get an enchanted creature”—whatever that even means—“to go with me?”
“You must be chosen of course.”
“Chosen?”
She nods gravely. “They’re very picky, too.”
Of course.
Just when I think I’ve scaled the last challenge… a new one takes its place. But I can do this.
Because my mother wouldn’t have backed down at this additional challenge. No, she would have faced it head-on, just as she faced those spiders.
Just as I did.
I’ve made it through two worlds already. I will make it through this last one, too.
“Where do I go to be chosen?”
“All you have to do is walk the path to the castle. The creatures are waiting just beyond the trees, watching. If they find you worthy… they will join you and give you a mask.” She glances at me. “If you don’t find a match by the time you reach the castle gates… you don’t get in.”
That doesn’t sound too hard. “So I just… walk?”
“Well, usually, you demonstrate a skill. Something to make you seem worthy of a magical creature such as them.” She looks me over. “Do you have any specific talents?”
I wince. “Does studying count?”
She gives me a look. “Really? There’s nothing you’ve practiced, no craft you’ve honed, no discipline you’ve learned?”
Well…
“I used to paint,” I admit. For some reason, I feel small even saying the words out loud. Useless. I wasn’t very good at it. If I was, the role would have been given to me by the Fates.
But Evalyn’s face brightens. “Great! That’s your ticket in, then.”
I doubt my rusty painting skills are going to impress an enchanted creature—I may have tapped into that creativity in Anyland for a few moments, but using my imagination and actually painting it onto a canvas are two completely different things.
And that reminds me… “I don’t have paint. Or a canvas.”
“Of course you do,” Evalyn insists.
A second later, a pair of long silk gloves falls from above, from the spiders. The fabric is glowing slightly silver, just like their webs.
“Here,” Evalyn says, catching the gloves, then handing them to me.
“Magic now is confined to the creatures. The spiders have given you this to help execute your vision.” She motions for me to go on then…
and I slip them on. My fingertips begin to glow with starlight.
“Let the world be your palette. Let your mind be the magic.”
Let my mind be the magic.
I think again about the creativity and imagination of Anyland. Of creating anything.
Evalyn pulls a timepiece from her pocket and startles. “I have to get back to the shop, but there’s the way to Ever Manor.” She points to a road leading from the clearing, glowing through the incoming evening, speckled with glitter. “Remember. The creatures are watching.”
I give Evalyn a hug goodbye and thank her: for introducing me to the spiders, for sharing a piece of my mother with me, for all the kindness she’s shown me over the last day.
Then, with a deep breath, I start down the path.