Chapter 5 #2
Portstops, glittering silver and gold rings embedded in the streets like manhole covers, were generally how witches got around. I’d say they should come with a warning, but I’d been given one when Leland had offered me the anti-nausea tablet that I’d refused to take from him.
The forest, a moving green blur due to my motion sickness, looked not too different from the way porting had.
Spinning, whirling, twisting, lights changing too fast to know if the colors whooshing by were yellow or green.
If this was how it felt to port short distances, maybe it was a good thing Leland knocked me out before bringing me to Everden. Maybe.
I felt Leland’s glare and snapped back to the situation at hand. “Stop,” I moaned as a new wave of nausea doubled me over. Stop staring at me. Stop being here. Just . . . stop it.
“Why are you throwing up air?” he asked harshly. “Trist told you to eat something.”
I had no energy. My arms were weak from holding myself up. I could barely wipe the drool from my mouth. And yet.
I spun on him. “Because I didn’t feel like eating a raw onion for dinner,” I snapped, omitting that it was all I’d found that was edible. “But, by all means, if you have a brilliant recipe idea for onion, fennel seed, and turmeric, please share.”
In response, Leland tossed a wrapped protein bar at me. I didn’t even try to catch it and let it fall to my feet. The sweatshirt, the transmitter, the anti-nausea tablet I didn’t take — it was enough. I didn’t want anything else of his.
Leland picked up the protein bar, this time politely holding it out to me.
I looked away. “I don’t want it.”
“Take it.”
“Stop giving me things.”
“Start making an effort to take care of yourself,” he said, “and I will.”
“I do take care of myself.”
“Do you? Because if that were true, you never would’ve let me in your house.”
I didn’t appreciate that comment. I knew it had been a mistake. I made a mistake. Dad was home, and I was here.
“Leave me alone, Leland. I don’t need your protein bar.” I turned to face a bush, my vision blurring as colors swirled worse than before.
He nudged the back of my hand with what I assumed was the corner of the wrapper. “I don’t like the blueberry ones,” he said. “You’ll be doing me a favor. Otherwise, it rots in my pocket realm.”
I took it from him, whether in spite of or because I knew he was lying . . . I didn’t know. It was an inconsequential thing to lie about — not liking blueberry. But I took a spiteful bite, and we went on our way down the dirt path through the forest.
I suspected it was the protein bar — not the distraction of walking across uneven ground — that cured my motion sickness immediately.
The sour-sweet taste was still lingering on the back of my tongue, and already I felt more energized, stronger.
When the empty silver foil wrapper crinkled in my hands, Leland made it disappear with a Vanishing spell. It was his spell to waste, I thought.
“Do you know how the Blessing works?” he asked, after we’d made some decent headway, now deep into the forest’s breathtaking dark greens.
It would’ve been a pleasant hike — scenic leaves, the sound of our shoes skirting roots in tandem over a backtrack of rustling — if I wasn’t in Everden with Leland.
“No,” I admitted, mad at myself for never asking Ash how it worked.
He peeled back a branch so I could continue down the dirt path unobstructed. “Want to?”
“Fine.”
“Eight trees,” he explained, “one for each school of magic.”
Eight trees, yet they call this place the Circle of Seven.
A probable dig at Dark Witches, Everden’s outcasts before the torch was passed to Allwitches.
Though, my understanding was limited to the writings of the Echelon Jaxan D’Oron, who, as overseer of the School of Dark Magic, was naturally sympathetic to his jurisdiction.
What I’d gleaned was, light witches don’t like Dark Witches because, back when Dark Witches could still cast Curses, Dark Witches used to be more powerful than them.
And in the last three hundred years, though everyone’s power — light and dark alike — had drastically diluted, only Dark Witches had grown in population, their numbers nearly overtaking all seven schools of light magic combined.
The path downhill descended at a steeper grade, causing me to take quick, short strides and shift my weight forward to stop myself from slipping.
At a tricky curve requiring some scrambling over a cluster of small boulders blocking the entire width of the dirt path, Leland went first, navigating the obstruction with ease.
He landed on the other side, offering his hand to me.
I side-stepped down, leaving his hand hanging there, instead scraping my palm on the tree I used for balance.
“Eight trees?” I reminded him, deliberately ignoring his hands hovering to spot me in case I slid.
He waited for me to make it across before answering, “They form a ring around a clearing, the place where all the magic in the ether is channeled. Priestesses collect magic from the trees in its sap form, then turn it over to the Echelons. It’s given to witches at a ceremony called Selection, which all incoming first years will attend on August 1. ”
I already knew all this but let him keep talking.
“That’s where the Echelons dole out magic. You drink it. You will it to fuse with your blood, then you can spellcast. The official purpose of the Blessing, far as I can tell, is to make sure you drink the right one.”
“Is there an unofficial purpose?”
That, he didn’t answer. “For now,” he continued, “you’ll stand alone in the middle of the clearing and wait for a tree to bow. Each one represents a school, and whichever bows will be the school of magic you’re blessed with. If all seven of the light magic trees do, it means you’re an Aspirant.”
I wrinkled my brows in confusion.
“A Seven?” tried Leland.
I wrinkled them more.
“Aspirants are those who aspire to be an Allwitch, like Trist, the ones who are blessed with all seven light magics. The Echelons only allow them to drink one until they prove themselves. Until then, we say they’re aspiring.”
“So Ash was an Aspirant until she graduated fifth year, then she became an Allwitch,” I said, checking my understanding. I’d read The Allwitch Affliction, but it was an old text. Pages were missing.
“Yes. Only Sevens who complete fifth year get to consume all the light magics, but it’s selective, so most of them never become Allwitches and deteriorate.”
Deteriorate. I did know what that meant.
“What if I don’t like what I get?” I asked. “Is there a choice?”
“Nope,” he said. “Consuming magic you’re not blessed with does nothing but deplete our reserves.
The only opportunity for choice is if you’re a Seven, an Aspirant, and if that’s the case, you’ll declare what you pick in a few weeks at Selection.
The odds are low of getting that. Out of four thousand incoming first years, a hundred are Aspirants. ”
“Four thousand eighteen-year-olds? In all of Everden?” Everden was a big place, a million square miles, if I had to guess. It seemed like there should be more.
“Yup.”
“Has anyone ever gotten all eight?”
“No. Light and dark magic would destroy each other. Only the Goddess can wield all of them.”
We continued hiking, my mind circling back to the Blessing about to take place. What if the Goddess blessed me with a school I didn’t want? Not that I wanted any of them in particular, but if it was mental magic, Helen’s school . . .
I rubbed my temples. Please let it not be that.
To block out the uncomfortable feeling dwelling in my gut, I changed the subject. “Is it customary for you to be here? Do the Echelons always send a student” — he seemed to prefer that label over “regular witch” — “to attend Blessings? Or is this because I’m a half witch?”
He eyed me, debating something in silence as our shoes crunched on in unison. “No. It’s not customary. It’s customary for family to attend when a witch turns eighteen. The results are reported to me at Odessa Hall afterward. But you’re new. So we’re doing it differently.”
“They report results to you?” I had to repeat for clarity. “Not the Echelons?”
Leland sighed in annoyance. I don’t think he wanted to tell me about himself at all. I searched his eyes, trying to figure out what the dull dissatisfaction in them meant.
“You’re going to find out eventually,” he said at last. “I can’t be lied to.
That’s my gift. I hear the truth when people speak, and when I hear something untruthful, the Echelons require me to report it to them.
I’m their Truth-Teller. The Blessing results are reported to me because I can verify them. ”
But that meant . . . I shook my head.
In the Counterparts picture book, the Counterparts had hearts in their eyes, and I did not have hearts in my eyes for Leland.
Everden was a big place. The odds that he was the witch who could make me whole were basically zero.
Though, there was that weird thing that had been happening.
The way I knew every time he was lying or telling the truth . . .
At the look on my face, which he must’ve interpreted as confusion, he added, “I made the mistake of telling Jaxan my gift when I was a kid. I’ve worked for the Council ever since.”
There it was. Jaxan. And Leland’s tone, resigned, not at all reverent the way he should be speaking about the scholars who ruled here.
“So they trust you?” I asked.
“They do,” he said. “I can’t lie, so it’s hard for them not to.”
“You can’t lie? Not at all?” I already knew the answer.
“I can’t lie.” Another lie. “Ever.”
I kept my face neutral, feigning interest in the overgrowth of hemlock and green ivy wildly overtaking the footpath. It was Leland’s business if he wanted to lie about always telling the truth. I said nothing else about it as we approached the clearing.