Powerless #3
As if the abrupt change in setting wasn’t jarring enough, the look of pure glee on the banshee’s face certainly was.
“The blood?” I remembered emotional pain, but not physical…or bleeding.
The banshee nodded toward my hands in my lap. I looked down and found a sharp short knife in one hand and the palm of the other bleeding. I had no memory of how it happened. I flung the knife onto the table and squeezed my cut hand.
“You see, pain leaves imprints on the heart. The heart pumps blood. The blood carries echoes of the pain. Even the echoes have power, to those who know how to use them.”
Creepy.
“What did you do?” I asked, jumping up from the chair and knocking it over, backing away from the banshee.
“You begged for death. You begged me to bleed you out and end your life. Do you not remember? I only handed you the knife. You did the cutting yourself. As I said you would.”
It knew what I’d seen in that shadow abyss, but the way it smiled told me I had given up more than I realized. The pure happiness emanating from it made me wonder how powerful my truth and memory were, and what this mysterious elixir was for.
It retrieved the knife from the table, several drops of my blood glistening on the blade, and threw the whole thing into the cauldron, which hissed and sputtered.
“But it wasn’t real. And it wasn’t a memory. It couldn’t have been.”
“What you saw may not have been a true memory, but it revealed very real things from your memory that I found…interesting. The memory may not be what happened nearly twenty years ago, but at its core, it’s what shaped you.”
“I don’t understand. What’s interesting about a false memory?”
“Careful, child. I agreed to two questions. Even though you have already asked several, I will allow two more. Do not try my patience. Ask your desired questions and be gone.”
I inhaled, taking my time to think back over the questions I wanted to ask.
“First question…” I took a deep breath. “Where can I find my mother?” It was the root of this entire journey, and I knew that, if I could find her, see her, talk to her, it would begin to heal the broken pieces of me.
And now more than ever, I needed to know the idea that she loved me wasn’t a false hope, that what I saw in my vision wasn’t how she had felt about me.
The banshee stared at me for a long moment with its empty eye sockets. They were so unsettling.
“Ashenholt’s capital, Dolvenar,” it said, short and calculated.
The answer both excited me and scared me.
The thought of going to Dolvenar was terrifying as a mortal human, but then again, my mother was there, and that was enough to stave off the fear for now.
And I finally knew definitively, for the first time in my life that she was still out there.
If the banshee was to be believed, anyway. I had nothing else to go on.
My second and final question had been more challenging to choose. There were so many answers I wanted, but the ones I needed had to take priority—like the ones that would help me protect Nella.
I glanced at her then, seeing the unease in her questioning eyes. Right… Nella couldn’t understand the banshee.
“How can I heal this wound and get my vision back?” I motioned toward the left side of my face. “It feels…like there’s still magic inside it, preventing it from healing.” I waited for its answer with bated breath.
“The lightning will fade in time, and the scars will form. The vision, however, is lost.”
My stomach dropped. The banshee either spoke the truth and my mother was alive, but I had permanently lost half my vision, or it was lying, and maybe my mother was dead, but my vision wasn’t lost. Neither potential was desirable, but the former was preferable, so I decided I believed the ancient being.
“You may yet still see, though,” it finished.
“What does that mean?” I asked, a bubble of hope forming in my chest.
“I have already given you more than you asked for and more than I was willing to give. My protective spell on the other’s ears will lift, and I will scream loud enough to make her very brain explode if you are still sitting at my table by the time the elixir turns blue.”
Just then, the elixir over the fire began to stir and change from red to purple. I did not need to be told again.
I grabbed Nella by the hand and pulled her to her feet and to the front door as fast as I could before shoving her over the threshold and following, looking back at the elixir as it turned from purple to an electric blue.
“You never told me what the elixir is for.” My curiosity got the best of me. After all, I’d bled and endured mental torture for it—I deserved to know what it did.
“It’s made of truth and memories. There is great power in those, and they can provide protection against some dark magic. I daresay you’ll need this protection one day, and you’ll be glad for what you endured.”
Before I could ask more questions, it just smiled at me, then slammed the door in my face.
I prayed I would never find myself in a situation where I needed protection from dark magic, and I momentarily wondered if it knew things about the future.