A Spell for Mettle and Moxie
Everyone is frightened sometimes. This charm will help you to marshal your boldness and take heart.
No matter how dire a situation seems, you can face it, though a magical boost may help.
Heroes do not emerge fully fashioned with a sword in hand.
Instead, they battle fear and worry at every turn, and yet, despite knowing all the terrible things that could happen if they do this difficult thing, they still choose to take that path. That is courage.
You have spent your whole life fearing to take up space, afraid you’d be sent away from the only home you’ve ever known.
I’ve done my best to assuage those fears, but I’m aware that you still carry deep wounds.
For you, my dearest daughter, I hold fast to the hope that you’ll one day believe what I’ve always understood: You’re a treasure.
This one is best cast at midday, and be firm in your convictions. You’ll need:
Agate, carnelian, and jade
Basil and lemon balm
A silver censer
Burn the herbs in the censer with the spark of your magic.
Clutch the agate, carnelian, and jade in your left hand.
And speak aloud what you fear. Breathe in the smoke and out again.
Push it forward, until it dissipates. Once it clears, your fears will be dispelled as well, and you’ll feel stronger, ready to confront any situation.
This applies to emotional strength, primarily, but if you cast the working fiercely enough, there may be some physical impact.
You may not realize how potent you’ve become, but then you’re so careful that I can’t imagine you harming anyone with careless wrath.
In fact, as a wee one, you took great pains to help all the little creatures.
You and Tara hatched a clutch of abandoned lizard eggs in the stable loft and didn’t tell me.
The two of you took such good care of them that nobody knew.
Until they grew up, had babies of their own, and the palace was eventually overrun with lizards.
I smile when I think of swarms of lizards. And you.
Thea
In this dream, I’m very small.
This is the first house I lived in, a large and luxurious manor that felt too big, too empty.
The pattern of the stone mosaic on the floor is symmetrical, slate gray—or is it blue?
—smoothed to a preternatural shine, while the walls are washed a cool white.
I walk through various rooms: a bedroom that nobody sleeps in with midnight velvet hangings, a library crammed with books, and a parlor overlooking an exquisite garden full of night-blooming flowers so rare that if they exist anywhere else, I’ve never seen them.
When I lived here before, I wandered around alone for what felt like a long time, crying, until the cook took pity on me and let me sit in the corner of the kitchen.
Like always, I was looking for Rain and Fen and not finding them.
They should have engaged someone to look after me, but I have never factored into their considerations.
I exist and they feed me. That is the extent of our interactions.
Their indifference is breathtakingly cruel.
Today, they’re in residence. The staff is buzzing about it, and it’s like we’ve been visited by the gods when they’re present.
I creep up to the library door. These are my “parents,” though I’ve only seen them a few times.
They’re gone a lot, and they seldom speak to me—or even glance at me—but I’m always looking at them.
Their wondrous beauty makes me ache; I can never compete with the child they lost, the one they never stopped trying to find. The one I can’t replace.
I hear them talking, but I can’t hear everything, and they don’t even notice when I slip into the room and curl up in a corner. I wrap my arms around my knees, trying to make myself smaller, always smaller. If only I could disappear and stop being the wrong child, the wrong person. Unwanted.
“What are we supposed to do with her?” Rain asks.
Fen shrugs. “I don’t know. I feel sorry for her, pitiful little thing.”
Rain says, “Can’t we leave her with Mudge? He seems to like her.”
“Shouldn’t we formalize the arrangement?” Fen asks.
I love Mudge. He takes me out into the wildlands, and I don’t feel sad there.
There’s no one to tell me that I don’t belong.
I would prefer to stay with him if I was offered the choice.
Not that I will be. Rain and Fen don’t seem to think of me as a person, not even a small one. That means my wishes are irrelevant.
I fight the urge to cry. Loneliness is a weight on my chest, tightening, tightening, tightening, until I can’t breathe. Light flashes, white-hot intensity.
Rain and Fen are gone. Shadows deepen, slithering toward me like shades of dead things that want to swallow me whole.
Into that silence comes a little scratch-scratch-scratch at the back of my mind, and at first I try to resist, imagining it’s some awful intrusion. But then it starts to feel familiar.
I know this person, don’t I?
“Let them in.” That feels like an instruction from someone else, but I sense no malice in the directive.
So I lower my guard. When the shadows recede, I’m no longer alone. No longer small. My mind matches my body, and the rapidly shifting circumstances make this feel like a dream, but he’s here. How is he here?
I breathe his name, overwhelmed with joy warring with astonishment: “Kerboros. You came for me.”
“There is no distance I would not cross to find you.” His tone contains no levity, only devotion, and of such a singular nature, I marvel that I seem to possess it.
He takes my hands. There is a chill to his touch, but it’s echoed in mine, and the points of contact on our skin warm swiftly until heat blooms between us. That warmth suffuses me, sweeping through my body until my nerves are singing. I want him so much that my body aches, and my toes curl.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I say then.
“This is all a dream. You have to wake up. And return to me.”
My eyes snap open. Kerboros hovers nearby, but we are not touching.
He reached me in the depths of my despair, trapped in the past, in the pain.
And he dispelled it. Now I can recall the scene where Rain and Fen discussed what to do with me, as if I was a stray kitten they’d found, without pain threatening to double me over.
I throw myself into his arms, a creature of impulse to my core, and he catches me close, caressing up and down my back. I have never felt like a treasure, though my dad often calls me one. But the way Kerboros touches me, the gentleness of his hands, makes me feel like a wonder.
“How can we help them?” I ask, stepping back. I could have lingered in his embrace, but not with the others counting on us.
“You’re close to Taragon. Perhaps you can reach her.”
I nod. “Tell me how you did it, then.”
“I focused on you, the essence of you, and magic did the rest.”
“Magic.” I speak the word like a curse.
Will it always be my downfall? But I must try.
I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to Tara.
I talked her into joining this mad endeavor; I can’t allow her father’s suspicion of me to become an accurate estimation of my character, of the danger I pose to those around me, those who trust me.
“Keep watch?” I ask.
Kerboros assents immediately, and I close my eyes.
First, I simply remember Tara, what she means to me.
When we first met, I hadn’t been long in Mudge’s custody.
He would never admit it, but I suspect Da came to some arrangement with the Toadpearl family so I would have some company.
He must’ve been worried about me, friendless waif that I was.
I remember the essence of her, everything we did together, and then, with all the fervor I can muster, even though I’m exhausted by what we’ve already endured, I spark up my magic.
At first, there’s nothing. Silence and void.
Then, a faint pull on what feels like a thread tying me to her; I follow it—such a nebulous strand—and a narrowing sensation fills my mind, as if I’m passing through an impossible tunnel.
I’m with her. Standing in the tavern kitchen, though not as clean as it was when we visited recently.
Everything is dingy, dishes piled high, and Tara is little too.
What we witness as we grow leaves a lasting mark, it seems. Raised voices go back and forth, an argument gaining in sound and fury.
I don’t see Tara’s parents, but they must be in the common room.
“We don’t even have enough to pay the grocer!” Tara’s mother shouts.
“I’m doing my best! We just need to get past this rough patch and—”
“You always say that! We need a miracle, not more of your nonsense. I’ve made a deal with a hobgoblin in Winter. He’ll pay good coin if Tara helps him for a few seasons.”
“You sold our daughter?!”
“Not sold. Rented. She’ll be treated well and fed delicious food while learning about another culture. What could be better?”
“Woman, I swear—”
“Tara!” I touch her lightly on the shoulder. I put aside the pinprick of pain about being right; Da did buy me a friend.
Well. He rented me one. But that means what we have now is real. She could have turned her back on me, especially after I hurt Tempest. The fact that she didn’t means everything to me. It doesn’t matter why we’re friends now, only that we are.
“Thea?” She blinks at me like one awakening from a long slumber.
“Focus on my voice. None of this is real. I need you to resist. And to follow me out. Take my hand if you trust me.”
For a moment I’m afraid—I’m so afraid—that she won’t. But just as she trusted me in the real world, she takes one step, then another, and soon her fingers wrap around mine. She doesn’t doubt me.
“I don’t understand,” she says in a small voice. “This isn’t the Toad in the Hole. At least, it hasn’t been like this for a long time. And you’re so tall.”
“You can be too. It’s a dream, and you control what happens.”
Frowning, she seems to concentrate, and her form slowly shifts. “Oh, I see.”
Still holding on to her, I stretch my magic to its limit.
I didn’t think about getting back, but when I picture Kerboros pacing, waiting for me, I feel the tug on the other end.
He’s the thread that allows me to pull her out.
His strength, his resolve. I don’t dare to put other labels on it, not when I’m promised to someone else.
Outrage sweeps through me, fresh and piping hot. Damn Zeph anyway.
My eyes snap open. Tara gasps, stumbling forward, but I catch her and give her a huge hug. “Steady. We made it.”
Tara touches her forehead to mine. Because of you. Because you love me.
Tears fill my eyes. We haven’t mind-sung to each other since we were children.
It’s confirmation of an old and intimate bond.
Doing this without surety of your welcome in someone else’s head is not only unwise, it’s also the height of discourteous imposition.
I wouldn’t have done this without an invitation.
But she’s right. I do love her.
I do, I reply.
I love you too, Tara says silently.
The others are fearfully still, but just then, Rosa swears, turning the air blue with her affront. “When I get my hands on the stinkweed that dared to ensnare me, I will cram their nose up their butt!”
Tara laughs, easing out of my hold. We break the mental connection because it’s rude to do that when others are present, especially wild fae like Rosa who can tell they’re being excluded from the conversation.
Kerboros might not have realized what was happening between me and Tara since he’s high fae, but I don’t want him to feel shut out either.
He’s more observant than people realize.
“Welcome back,” I offer.
Tara smiles at Rosa. “You’re the only one who got out on their own.”
The pixie preens visibly. “I have a stubborn streak.”
“We still need to rouse Zeph and Govannon,” Kerboros says.
I summarize how Kerboros roused me and the way I did the same for Tara. Then Rosa says, “Understood. I’ll get Zeph.”
She’s incredibly efficient. No more than a handful of heartbeats—and I’ve no idea what the pixie says to Zeph in the dream realm—but they awaken in a foul mood.
They pace, ignoring the rest of us, seeming unsettled by whatever they experienced.
If the trial remained consistent, it was a traumatic event from when they were young.
I don’t welcome them back or try to comfort them.
I would like a proper apology, fewer of these I did the wrong thing for the right reasons excuses.
Whatever their motives, they fooled me, sabotaged our travel multiple times, and treated me like an accessory to a plan they haven’t troubled themself to share.
In fact, just before this magical entrapment, they claimed they didn’t have a plan to exit the In-Between per se.
“How can we save Govannon?” Tara asks. “None of us have strong ties to him.”
Kerboros answers, “I’ll try. I’m the one who brought him back to the group, for whatever that’s worth.”
“I believe in you,” I tell him in a bracing tone.
“I’m glad to hear it, Thea.” People don’t use my name a lot, so it gives me a start, hearing it in such a velvety tone. The unusual softness makes it seem like an endearment.
“Wait,” I surprise myself by saying.
Kerboros offers me an inquiring look, and I don’t look at the others as I cross to him. There’s no point in pretending he isn’t precious to me, and I don’t want to regret letting this moment pass. Rising on tiptoes, I kiss his cheek. “For luck.”
His smile is so beautiful that it breaks my heart for all the moments I haven’t seen it.
He gathers himself, and then he’s ensorcelled again with the fate of our party resting squarely on his shoulders.