Chapter 26 The Top of the Tower
The Top of the Tower
Finally stumbling out into the light, Sage bent double and grasped her knees to find balance, choking down heavy, chest-heaving sobs.
The magic running amok across Port Sylvan must have been at play in guiding her out.
Perhaps it had plans for her; the spell needed her to survive in order for it to complete its story.
Letting her stay in the darkness of the forest and miss whatever nightmares were coming next would have been too kind a mercy for her mistakes.
That couldn’t be her wonderful, kind brother’s fate.
She would not let it be. She had spent her whole life existing on the assumption that she would fix it—all of it—eventually.
It was a bittersweet mentality of strength and a presumption that sometimes drove her half mad, but one that she had to hold on to.
The difference now was that she was without her magic.
Not that it had ever really helped her before, but she couldn’t rely on even the smallest of emergency incantations anymore.
Nothing would be instantaneous. She could not fight fire with fire.
She could only rely on herself and the quick mind which had never failed her. That was a small, strange comfort.
Sage took a series of steadying breaths to try to calm her thumping heart and carelessly swiped at her wet face to gather some composure.
For now, as much as it broke her heart to admit it, there was nothing she could do for Robin, other than see this through and end the spell for him.
But there was still time to save her sister.
While she couldn’t be sure yet of her safety, Sage clung to the one silver lining that at least she had not met her fate within the forest.
Not only did she need to protect Laurel, but a career with Casimir at her side had taught her that two heads were nearly always better than one.
Her colleague was otherwise occupied, but no one could understand better than Laurel the unexpected turns that stories often took.
Her sister could always see things in a different, brighter light.
Laurel lived behind the Port Sylvan theatre, and Sage set out in the direction of her apartment with something that felt like either determination or madness.
Putting one foot in front of the other, even when she felt hopeless, was still some kind of progress.
That was a fact she could hold on to. She kicked off the mud that was still clinging to her boots and shoved her hair carelessly out of her face.
Sage winced as the cold charms on her bracelet brushed with a sting against the scratches on her face from the forest.
She had forgotten to take it off and probably should have included it in the burning with everything else. But even if she had, Sage wasn’t certain that it would have been destroyed.
Within her work, Sage was not so proud that she couldn’t rectify and update her findings, admit that she had made an error along the way.
It was not a sensation that she relished, of course, but it was vital nonetheless, and this time was no different.
By pouring her own magic into the book and banishing it, Lilara’s magic surely should have trailed after it, satiated and trapped back between the pages, too, in order to bring a swift end to all of this.
Yet the spell lingered and continued to grow.
Lilara’s magic remained. And what if it was the chain, rather than the book, that was the vehicle for Lilara’s enchantment?
Sage had been carrying it around with her this whole time—a storyline to follow.
She wished that Casimir were there by her side.
He would either be softening each of these sharp, painful revelations with a ridiculous joke or helping her to uncover the secrets still to come.
Discoveries and developments were considerably less gratifying when they could not be shared with her partner and met with that mesmerized glint in his eye.
Not for the first time in her life, however, Sage found herself alone. The only one keeping everything afloat. The loneliness of that felt almost unbearable.
She knew the existing pattern of the charms by heart: the star, the house, the wings, the leaf, the hearts, the crown, the mirror and the tree.
Perhaps there was no solution. The spell could not be brought to an early stop.
She simply had to see it through to end it all.
Four moons and stars were left to make their transformation.
“Make that three,” she muttered to herself.
The next moon along, no bigger than a pinkie fingernail, was already refashioning as she approached Laurel’s house.
She had to be on the right track, getting closer to the next chapter unfolding.
The silver metal straightened its crescent into a line and swapped its slim, curved shape for one looped end and one angular, boxy shape at the other.
“A key?” Sage tripped as she tried to walk and examine the charm at the same time.
Her first instinct was simply the front door of Laurel’s flat.
She hoped she didn’t have to bash it down; brute force was not her speciality.
She would have to run back home and dig out the spare key she kept in the junk drawer in case of emergencies.
But that all felt far too literal, anyway.
Too real, too easy. Every other clue that the chain held had required much more whimsy to match to its secrets than simply producing a spare key for a locked door.
Glancing back over her shoulder, she considered the ever-changing landscape of Port Sylvan, and the signposts at the Founders’ Fountain not too far in the distance caught her eye. The fourth and final post had finally changed.
“Royal Tower?” she yelled, reading the clue. “What the bloody hell do you want me to do with that?” There were various passers-by, but nobody was listening.
In fact, nobody was taking any notice of her at all. They hadn’t since she’d emerged, sobbing and filthy from the forest.
A sickening realization sunk in as she approached the theatre, passing more and more residents of Port Sylvan at one of the town’s busiest points.
Faces she knew, generations of families she’d grown up alongside.
Everybody, even as she power-walked, frantic and tearful and spluttering, was oblivious to her.
Not one single person stopped her to ask if she was okay, why she had been crying, whether she needed a lift home.
Nobody ushered her to a bench or told her to take a deep breath.
This was not the sweet, supportive community that she knew so well, that had welcomed her back when she had most needed them to.
She could have been a ghost. She waved a hand in front of the faces of two women who strolled past—Adela from the greengrocer’s and Uma from the cobbler’s, locked in a looping conversation about the weather.
They didn’t even flinch, didn’t bat an eyelid, only repeated their same two lines of dialogue over and over as they walked on.
Sage went completely unnoticed. She had been cut off from the town’s residents as they each slipped deeper and deeper into the enchantment. She was entirely alone.
The thing about true rock bottom was that it at least made honesty easier.
There was nothing left to break. Admitting it could no longer split anything open or send her crashing down.
Sage had turned the evidence of Lilara’s intentions over so many times, looking for the version that still allowed her to believe in a hero and that the data had not changed, only her willingness to accept it.
As she had found so often in research, the conclusion to her studies was unexpected and unwelcome, but precise and proven.
If she could not fight her way out of this, then Lilara would get her wish.
A wish that could not possibly be as compassionate as Sage might have first believed.
Sage would have no choice but to leave the town behind, to distance herself from everyone just as the book had warned, or everyone within it would be trapped in the darkest of spellbinds.
After Robin’s fate, this could not be considered benevolent magic.
So she had to make it to the end of the story and close the book, despite the fear that laced her veins, and the little sister whom Sage loved so fiercely had to know how to get there.
A key for a princess implied the existence of a tower.
Laurel’s apartment was nothing like a royal tower; the place was always a terrible mess of old paint water and discarded socks.
What was the closest thing that Port Sylvan had to a royal tower?
She felt like tearing her hair out, floundering on the spot and trying to decide on the most likely location of her sister when her attention was stolen by the tall pointed spire in the distance.
The grand ruby red brickwork that made up the tallest point of the town’s architecture.
“The Lyceum. Of course!”
Historically, the beautiful hall had been built as the original school in Port Sylvan—Sage knew the facts and the dates by heart from her fail-safe tour script.
These days, it was more of a community venue, a space for mums and toddlers, retirement boules clubs, eighteenth birthday parties and absurd town meetings.
But, crucially to Sage’s theory, it boasted an impressive tower covered in star-shaped tracery and pretty, circular windows.
The sort of place that a princess might find herself imprisoned, if she were so inclined.
The thought shot Sage with a bubble of sudden adrenaline.
She was surprised by her instinct towards imagination.
This was the soft Laurel-like thinking that she needed to lose herself to if she was going to win any sort of momentum against the spell’s hold.