Chapter 31 The Echo #2
Sage nodded self-consciously, reverence making her feel like a starstruck little girl.
“What are you? A ghost?” Sage couldn’t help but enquire as to the logistics of her arrival.
It was a fascinating development. Lilara was there before her and yet couldn’t be said to be real at all.
A complex interplay of light and shadow or early form of astral projection?
Although surely impossible for a witch long dead to perform any sort of remote presence—
“Does it matter?” Lilara laughed brightly. “I suppose, to your enquiring mind, it will. You might call me an…echo.”
“An echo,” Sage repeated in wonder. Some sort of lingering memory embodiment, then—spellwork residue left behind with her magic when the banishment occurred.
Yes, that felt right. Lilara looked to be in her late twenties, like Sage, around the age that she was known to have left Port Sylvan.
An imprint left on this plane, only visible once her magic had been freed from the book.
Now probably wasn’t the time to consider the papers she might write about such a discovery, but still.
“I’ve waited such a long time for you to meet me here, at this very moment.
The old and new witch of Port Sylvan,” Lilara said, still smiling.
“Together.” But the glint in her dark brown eyes was unsteady.
Her gaze darted over Sage’s face somewhat erratically, as though she were hunting for a sign of something, expecting something and not yet finding it.
It was disconcerting enough to pop the bubble of exhilaration. Before her was the one responsible for all the terrible things that had happened to her loved ones of late, to her lovely home. Sage gave a physical shiver. She had so many unresolved questions—a feeling that never sat well.
“You have questions for me,” Lilara said knowingly, her composure returning.
“Of course I do!” Sage barked a sceptical laugh.
“So many of them I hardly know where to start. Lilara, why have you done this? To me, to this town? Even the answers I think I can settle on still haven’t felt whole.
It’s like there are secrets between the lines, words in the margins, footnotes that I have yet to find.
” Sage was rambling, thoughts pouring out of her in an undignified fashion, but she couldn’t hold herself back.
“I don’t understand why we’re here, why you’re here.
Or why you’d bring the town to its knees like this. ”
Lilara laughed again. If it were anyone else but her hero, Sage would have found the laughter patronizing and rather annoying.
“I’ve always been protecting you, Sage,” Lilara chimed, as though it were obvious.
“The very least I could do. I would have thought you would be quick to see it. From my heartbreak came at least one beautiful, essential vow—that I would never be so selfish as to let the next witch of Port Sylvan feel the pain that I did, at the hands of our cursed magic. You understand that now, I’m sure.
” She gently twirled a ringlet at Sage’s ear.
Sage flinched away as subtly as she could. Only Casimir was allowed to do that.
“We have more pressing matters to attend to. Please, my friends, my siblings, this whole town is…” Sage stopped.
“Oh. You are…displeased?” Lilara’s smile remained, but the edges of it twitched, the very slightest fraction, but enough for Sage to notice. She seemed disappointed, confused.
How could she not expect Sage to question this conclusion, though? Sage suspected that she should probably say that she appreciated the kindness, that it was the right thing for Lilara to take control of her destiny in such a considerate and thoughtful way.
But it was not in her nature to be demure for diplomacy’s sake.
“Well, quite. To say the least. You’ve got this all wrong.
Your pain wasn’t caused by your magic, Lilara.
I know it might feel that way, that you wanted something separate to blame for the outcome of your bravery.
But your pain was simply at the hands of a cruel, disappointing man.
” Tact had never been her speciality, but Sage still made more effort than she normally would to ensure she at least sounded kind.
“There was nothing wrong with your magic. It was him and his judgement, his quick reactions, his closed-mindedness…”
Lilara’s face twisted. Sage wondered whether she’d imagined the fracture in her calm.
“You’re naive, still,” the spirit rushed to say, linking a blurred arm through Sage’s and encouraging her to walk with her through the gallery, back towards the doors that led out onto the town.
“And I forgive you for that. It is hard to find oneself at the precipice of such a lesson. The despair that comes with it…That something so dark is within you, I understand why it may take time to—”
Sage shook her head, stalling back. Her mouth had gone dry. “Your magic wasn’t at fault, Lilara. I promise you. How can you not see that?”
“How can you not see that it was?” Lilara said, the composure in her voice wilting like the crimson flowers creeping through the doors.
Her grip around Sage’s arm tightened. “I am most sorry to be the one to share it, but no one can ever love a witch. I had to make you see that before you were lost to the grief that I was. The sooner you could realize it for yourself…”
Sage untangled herself from Lilara’s arm. Images of Casimir and Maggie and Robin and Laurel flashed across her mind. “That is not true. It defies logic. I am loved. Perhaps it’s undeserved, but I have been loved and I am loved still. And so were you.”
A sinister confusion lowered Lilara’s brow. That maniacal glint caught the light again. Sage’s stomach clenched.
“Did my spell not show you all that would wait for you if you did not heed my warnings?” Lilara’s pleasant voice was chillingly controlled.
“It certainly showed me how magic can cause incomparable chaos if left to its own devices, ignored and uncared for.”
Lilara’s restrained smile flickered again. “Precisely. And did it not show you how magic, even in its purest and most celebrated form, is a slippery slope of temptation and time? It can never be safe—not for our kind, not for you.”
If there was something that Sage could not stand, it was someone insisting that they were right when she knew otherwise.
Nothing lit a fire inside her faster. Yet she took a deep breath and spoke as firmly but as kindly as she could.
Something in the air felt dangerous. She had to be smart about this.
“For a moment, I agreed with you, I’ll admit.
I thought it couldn’t fit together.” Sage sighed.
“But it can, Lilara. It does fit together.”
Lilara lost all pretence now. Anger was evident on her face, her jaw set firm. “But you banished your magic,” she spat. “My spell worked; I saved you.”
“Quite. I did, but I think I made an error. It has been known to happen, once or twice,” Sage said begrudgingly.
“Because it hasn’t saved anyone, has it?
It hasn’t stopped the spell or changed anything.
You let it all roll on, regardless.” She took a few steps back, further away from Lilara, relieved at the growing distance between them.
There was an unsettling chill radiating from the old witch, biting at Sage’s cheeks like first snow.
“So, it stands to reason that it wasn’t my magic at fault.
It never was. And the thing is, Lilara, I could let magic go, turn my back on it forever and see myself less full of life but undeniably safer.
That has never been wrong of me to want.
There’s a lot to be said for a life like that when everything before has been difficult. ”
“You must,” Lilara whispered.
Sage gave Lilara a pleading look. But there was no softening in Lilara’s glare to meet her in the middle, only a quick, molten anger rising in her eyes and a smile that was turning into a sneer.
Sage rushed on. “Your spell did work. Not in the way that you intended, I’ll wager, but often they’re the best and most satisfying outcomes in learning.
I was never going to be one to embrace chaos.
” Sage shook her head at the ridiculous prospect.
“But you showed me that so much good can come from it. If only I had allowed myself to let magic have a say a long time ago. If I had leaned into lightness sometimes and the unpredictability of life. Noticed flowers in long grass and rainbows in puddles…”
She felt her cheeks flush.
“Oh no, I sound like Laurel.” Sage swallowed and threw a hand to her head to steady herself.
“Regardless, I know which one of those sounds like a fundamentally richer, more magical life. And shouldn’t that be what we’re all striving for, no matter the bad decisions and terrible blunders we’ve made along the way?
Surely everyone is deserving of that, even witches. Especially witches. It’s in our blood!”
Meeting Lilara’s curse had been the final proof—she could never protect anything in this life with guaranteed safety.
And she had been so young, just a girl, her witchery unbridled and wild.
Yes, she had made a terrible, tragic mistake.
But it was exactly that: a mistake. And rather than being the cause of such cruelty, magic would have, could have, should have always been the antidote—if only she had permitted it to be.
“There has to be magic in all of this,” Sage said. “There simply has to be.”
She had denied herself so much joy. It was time to forgive herself.
Lilara’s face contorted and she laughed again. This time it was higher, colder, a little unkind. “You are mistaken,” she hissed, but Sage shook her head.
“To lose your goodness and your joy and your lightness with love…That will take everything from you,” Sage said firmly, imploring Lilara to see her way of thinking. “You found that out for yourself. I was nearly there; I almost joined you. But I don’t want that.”