White Witch, Black Magic

Torrents of rain pour down on us. I’m soaked to the skin within seconds. Avaysia is crying for real now, terrified. Frankly, I don’t blame her. I’m scared out of my wits as well. Bella and the boys seem calm enough, but I can see worry written on their faces.

I remember the last time there was a thunderstorm like this. About a year ago, during the rainy season, there had been a thunderstorm so powerful it blew over two houses and countless trees.

On the night the storm started, Hattie had slid across the bed we share and snuggled up to me. I had held her, scared of the storm myself. We hadn’t been like that long before Will joined us.

“Scared?” I asked Will.

“No,” he lied. “I’m just making sure you aren’t.”

“Hattie and I are just fine, thank you very much.”

I knew for a fact that Will hated thunderstorms, so I guessed he wouldn’t leave. He didn’t. In fact, Tom showed up minutes later.

“I was checking to see if you girls were okay,” he said. “And I was worried about Will. I know how he hates thunderstorms.”

“Do not!” Will protested.

“You do too!”

“Boys!” Hattie and I said in unison, me in a calming manner, her as though their behavior irked her.

“What are you four doing?” Mama questioned, coming into the room.

“Keeping the girls safe,” Will said, at the same time I said, “Getting pestered by your sons.”

Mama looked at Will and Tom and smiled. “It’s okay to not like thunderstorms,” she said. “You can admit it.”

“But I’m not scared!” Tom lied.

Lightening flashed across the sky. Tom’s squeal was indistinguishable from Hattie’s. Will and I laughed, until the boom of thunder made us both jump three feet into the air.

“Emma!”

Jake’s voice shakes me out of my reverie. I glance around. I’m not in my house; I’m out in an actual storm, being battered by wind and rain.

“Can you make us some sort of shelter?” Jake shouts. “Something that won’t blow away?”

“I can try!” I call back.

I focus on the sodden ground around me, forcing it to rise up in a mound, like an up-turned bowl. Dirt soars into the air, covering Neverard, Winter, Bella, Avaysia, Wren, Jake, and me.

The howling of the wind is muffled, the rain no longer able to touch us. We huddle together, horses included. The dirt structure holds up surprisingly well. The only time I have to alter it is when Bella says, “We’re going to suffocate. There’ll be too much carbon dioxide. You have to put holes in it.”

I have no idea what carbon dioxide is, but it certainly sound scary. I force the dirt to carve little holes near the bottom of the walls to appease her. Other than that, we sit in silence, listening to the rain pounding the dirt.

Avaysia falls asleep with her head in Wren’s lap. Bella pulls a bedraggled book from her pocket. It’s obviously well loved; the binding is falling apart. It’s mostly dry, so she settles down to read by the light of my witches’ lights.

I amuse myself by creating little balls of light, then extinguishing them. This causes the light in our shelter to rise and fall a bit, reminding me of the flickering of a candle. Jake just sits against the wall and watches me.

“What?” I finally ask him.

“Nothing. Just…curious. How do you do that?”

“This?” I ask, cupping my hands and creating another witches’ light.

“Yes. Is it hard?”

“No. Actually, it’s the first thing I learned how to do.”

“Who taught you?”

“No one. I’m sort of…making it up as I go. Why?”

Jake shrugs. “Isn’t that sort of dangerous? Experimenting with magic you don’t know how to control?”

“Probably.”

“That makes me feel so much better.”

“Well, I’ll never learn to control it if I don’t practice, right?”

“You also won’t learn to control it if you blow us all up,” Jake teases.

“Oh, ha ha. Well, if you don’t like it, you can go sit out in the rain and get battered about by the wind.”

That shuts him up.

“What were you thinking about?” Jake asks a moment later.

“What—just now?”

“No, out in the storm. This glazed look came over your eyes…what were you remembering?”

“A storm. A different one, years ago. Back at my house, my sister and I shared a room. When the storm started, she got scared. I was a bit nervous, too. Then my brothers came to join us…”

l l l

Lightening flashed, and Hattie shrieked. Tom did to, sounding just like Hattie. Will and I laughed until thunder boomed and we jumped.

“Who’s laughing now?” Tom asked in a patronizing sort of way.

Mama shook her head. “What sort of kids am I raising? All of them are terrified of a bit of rain.”

“It’s not the rain that scares me,” Tom objected. “It’s only that the lightening is so bright and fast. Imagine how horrible it would be if it hit you…” He shuddered.

Hattie buried her face in the blankets. “I’m scared,” came her muffled voice.

“I just don’t like loud noises,” I said as Mama pulled Hattie into her lap.

“Which is amusing, considering how much of a ruckus you four make on a daily basis,” Mama teased.

“That’s different,” I replied.

“Really? You and your brothers sword-fighting sounds a lot like thunder to me. Well, maybe if you guys admit to being scared, you can come join Hattie and me in the living room, by the hearth.”

Hattie and Mama exited the room together. I knew that Mama was going to light a fire and give Hattie some warm milk, just as she’d done for Will, Tom, and me when we were her age.

Sighing, I stood up. “Out of my room, please,” I said.

“Why?” Will asked.

“Because you have your own and I’m not going to be here much longer.”

I grabbed my blankets off the bed and headed down the stairs. Hattie and Mama were sitting by a fire, just as I knew they would be. I was about to enter the room when Mama stopped me.

“Do you have something you’d like to admit?” she asked.

“Thunder scares me. I don’t like big storms like this, Mama. They make me nervous.”

Mama opened her arms to me. “Come here child,” she said.

I snuggled up to her, making a nest for the three of us out of my blankets. We hunkered down, warm and content. Hattie was just drifting off to sleep when Will and Tom showed up.

“Boys, what do you have to say?” Mama asked them.

“We, um, might, um…” Will started.

“Be a bit scared of thunderstorms,” Tom concluded.

“Can we come in now?” Will demanded.

“Of course. I just wanted to teach you all that it’s okay to be afraid, and it’s okay to admit to being scared. What’s important is that you overcome your fears. After all, life isn’t a contest. You shouldn’t view it that way.”

“Unless I’m standing near you with a sword in my hands. Then you should either stand a fight like a man, or run like a coward,” I added.

“Emma Vivaskari Rose! Not helping.”

“Sorry, Mama.”

“So, as I was saying, fear isn’t something to be ashamed of.”

“Okay, Mama,” Will, Tom, and I said.

That’s when Papa walks in. “What’s this?” he asked. “A party, and I wasn’t invited?”

“Of course you’re invited, dear,” Mama said. “I just didn’t know if you’d want to come.”

“Well, I do,” Papa said. He plopped down next to me and kissed the top of my head.

We spent the night like that, piled on the floor in a little nest of bodies and blankets. By morning, the storm had blown itself out. Repairs had to be made—there were smashed windows to be mended, trees to be cleared away, and a few houses to be rebuilt.

Some of my friends from the village spent a couple of nights in my house while their house was rebuilt. Being boys, they slept in Will and Tom’s room, but their older sister stayed in my room. She was friendly, and nearly old enough to leave home a start a life for herself.

During the days after the storm, I’d learned how to build a house from the ground up. Papa taught me how to install windows, lay bricks for a fireplace, and even let me climb on the roof to help shingle the place.

It hadn’t taken long for life to go back to normal. The only difference was that I now knew how to make Will or Tom stop teasing me. All I had to do was bring up the storm, and they’d shut up mid-sentence.

l l l

“That’s a sweet story,” Bella says.

She’d put down her book to listen to me recount the tale.

“Thanks. Your turn.”

“To do what?”

“Tell us a story. Something to do with a thunderstorm.”

“I live in New York City. We don’t have thunderstorms.”

“Why not?”

“Well, we do. But there are so many tall buildings that it’s sort of…diluted.”

“What about the storm that brought you here?” Wren asks.

“You already know that story. I could tell you about the storm at time I went to Cape Cod with my family. That wasn’t really a thunderstorm, though.”

“Then what was it?” Jake says.

“A hurricane.”

“A what?”

“A big storm that comes from the sea.”

“Oh.”

“Where I come from, the hurricanes are named. This one was called Irene.”

“Why would you want to name a hurry-can? They sound awful,” I say.

“It’s her-ih-cane,” Bella says slowly and clearly. “We name them because we can watch them build over the sea.”

“Why would you sit there and watch the storm come towards you? I’d be running for shelter,” I say.

“We use video cameras and satellites…never mind.”

“What are vee-day-oo ca-mare-ee-oos?”

“Video cameras,” Bella replies. “We use them to make movies.”

“Moov-les? The moving pictures that talk?”

“Yes.”

Jake and Wren are staring at her. Avaysia stirs in her sleep, mutters something, and tries to roll over. Since she’s using Wren’s lap as a pillow, this doesn’t work so well. Her head falls off his knee and smacks into the ground.

“Ouch!” she cries, sitting up. “That hurt!” She glares at me accusingly and rubs her head.

“Don’t look at me,” I say. “I didn’t do anything!”

“You rolled over and smacked into the ground,” Wren tells her.

“I thought royalty were supposed to be graceful,” Jake says. “Isn’t that why we say, ‘your Grace’? Maybe we should call you ‘your Clumsiness’.”

“Or ‘your Awkwardness’,” I suggest.

“Be nice,” Wren scolds.

“Okay, my turn to pick somebody!” Bella says, distracting us. “Avaysia, tell us about the scariest storm you can remember.”

“I don’t want to,” Avaysia says sulkily.

“Aww, come on Vay! We were just teasing you,” Jake pleads.

“No.”

“How about a different game?” Bella suggests.

“Like what?” I ask.

“How about Truth Or Dare? Back home, it’s, like, the iconic sleepover game. A classic, really.”

“What is it?” Wren says.

“I’ll pick someone, say Emma, and ask her ‘truth or dare?’ Then she’ll pick one, and I’ll come up with something to go with her choice. If she picks truth, I come up with a question she has to answer without lying, see? If she says dare, I can make her do something—anything—I want. After Emma completes it, she asks someone else truth or dare. Think you get it?”

We all nod.

“I want to start!” Avaysia declares. “Wren, truth or dare?”

“Um…truth?”

“Have you ever kissed a girl?” Wren’s face is suddenly redder than a tomato. His eyes are glued to the floor. He doesn’t answer until Avaysia prompts him. “Well?”

“Yes.”

“What was her name?” Vay demands.

“Oh, no, that isn’t how it works,” Bella cuts in. “You asked your question and he answered it. Now it’s Wren’s turn to pick someone.”

“Alright…let’s see…Emma. Truth or dare?”

“Dare,” I say.

Wren thinks for a minute, looking stumped. “Uh, how about you give us some sort of magic show?”

“That’s no fun, Avaysia says. She leans forwards and whispers something in Wren’s ear. He shrugs and shakes his head. She says something else. Whatever it is makes him grin.

“Wait. I change my mind. Emma, kiss Jake.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Did you come up with that, or did Avaysia?”

“A little of both,” Wren admits.

“Is that allowed?” I ask Bella.

She shrugs. “Yeah. You have to do it.”

“Playing the little matchmaker, are we?” I ask Vay. She smirks at me. I know she wants some sort of long, drawn out episode, so I do just the opposite. I lean sideways, brush my lips against Jake’s cheek, and withdraw so fast even I almost miss it.

“What kind of a kiss was that?” Avaysia shrieks.

“A very short one,” I say. “My turn. Avaysia, truth or dare?”

She huffs and folds her arms, considering. “Truth.”

I grin. This is exactly what I hoped for. I’ve been dying to ask her a question. When she, Wren, and I were entering the Sylvian woods, her mother whispered something to her, and now I can find out what it was.

“What did Queen Dana say to you before we started our journey?”

Avaysia’s eyes turn cold. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, and I’m a three-headed purple dragon.”

“Well, that would explain the anger issues and your ugliness,” Avaysia snaps back.

“Be nice, girls,” Jake warns.

Wren joins in, but he’s on my side for once. “Avaysia, I do remember Queen Dana whispering something to you before we left. What was it?”

“If you know, you have to answer. That’s the way the game works,” Bella tells her.

“Then I don’t want to play anymore.”

“You can quit only after you answer the question. And you have to tell the truth.”

Avaysia heaves a very dramatic sigh. “Fine. My mother told me to keep the necklace safe.”

“What necklace?” I ask immediately.

Avaysia smiles nastily. “I’m not required to tell you that, now am I?” According to Bella’s rules, she isn’t. “Okay, my turn again.” Now that she gets to dish out the torments, all thoughts of quitting are gone. “Jacob, truth or dare?”

“Dare.”

For a moment, I’m sure she’s going to make him do something really awful. Her eyes flit towards me, like she’s considering involving me in her scheme. But then she says, “Stand on your head for a full minute.”

“Can I do a handstand instead? Headstands always give me a headache.”

Avaysia nods. “I suppose.”

Jake stands, puts his hands on the ground, and kicks into a handstand. He balances there, perfectly at ease. Even I can’t stay still like that; I have to walk. Jake must have spent a lot of time practicing.

After a minute, he comes back down. Jake dusts off his hands and sits. “My turn, right?”

“Yep,” Bella replies.

“Avaysia, truth or dare?”

“Dare,” she says, determined not to let us wheedle more information out of her.

“I dare you to pick truth the next time someone asks you,” he says.

“I want to quit,” Avaysia whines, angry at having been outsmarted.

“You have to carry out the dare before you can,” Bella reminds her. “Then you can drop out.”

Avaysia fumes for a minute. “Emma, truth or dare?” she finally asks.

I can tell she wants me to pick dare, and she’ll probably make it something really weird or gross, in revenge for Jake being too clever for her. “Truth,” I say.

“Have you ever kissed someone or been kissed?”

“Uh, yeah. I just kissed Jake, remember?”

“That doesn’t count.”

“Oh?”

“I meant on the lips. And family doesn’t count, either.”

“Well, in that case...” I pause.

Vay leans towards me, eager for the answer. Does she really like this kind of stuff? It seems petty and shallow to me, but if she wants a show, I’ll give one. I start ticking off fingers, pretending to count up the number of boys I’ve kissed. Her eyes are getting wider and wider with each finger.

“Let’s see…so that’d be exactly…zero.”

“What?! You’ve never kissed anyone?”

“No. I was too busy learning useful skills to be bothered about that sort of thing. I never got why it’s such a big deal.” I smirk at her surprise and displeasure. “Not the answer you wanted, Vay?”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Truth or dare, Vay?”

“You know that I have to say truth. So truth. Now, I quit.”

“Nope. You have to answer my question first. Then, and only then, will you be allowed to stop. Right, Bella?”

“Correct.”

I smile at Avaysia. “So, I want you to tell all of us everything to do with the necklace and answer all of our questions.”

Avaysia turns to Bella. “Can she do that?”

I can tell from the look on Bella’s face that this is a gray area in the rules of her silly game. But she wants to know as much as I do, so she nods.

“And you have to tell the truth,” she reminds Vay.

Avaysia grinds her teeth together. “Fine. What do you want to know about it specifically?”

“First of all, what is so special about the necklace?”

“It protects the wearer. It’s supposed to protect against magic and weapons, or something like that. Obviously, it doesn’t work so well, because I turned into a rabbit.”

“Only after you drank the water,” I point out. “Nothing happened when you fell into it.”

“So?”

“So maybe the necklace must have only able to protect you from outside forces, not the water acting upon you from the inside.”

“Who made you the expert?”

“I’m the only witch here, so far as I know.”

“Hold up,” says Jake. “When did she turn into a rabbit?”

“We drank some magic water by mistake. We all turned into bunnies,” Wren replies. “Well, not Bella. This was right before she showed up.”

“It’s a long story,” I add.

“We’ve got all night,” Jake says. “And this sounds like something I really must hear.”

“Remember how, right before that, when you two were fighting,” Wren begins, steam rolling over Jake. “Emma kept hitting Avaysia, but none of the blows seemed to cause her pain?”

“Yes, it felt like punching a pillow.”

“I don’t recall what it felt like. I just know it didn’t hurt, even though I expected it to.”

“So your necklace really does work.”

“I want to see it,” Jake says. “I’d also have liked to have seen you three as bunnies.

I lightly punch his arm as Avaysia shakes her head. “Sorry, but this isn’t show and tell,” she says snippily.

“Come on, Vay!”

She is adamant though, and can’t be swayed, even when Jake makes the cutest face with big, round, puppy-dog eyes. But when Wren looks at her under his long eyelashes and says, “Please, Princess?” in a whisper, she relents.

“Oh, all right,” she says, reaching down the front of her dress. She pulls out a thick silver chain. From it hangs a blue gem. Shifting closer to Avaysia, I see that the stone is cut like a teardrop and sparkles hundreds of different colors beneath the pale blue. It flashes in the dim light and throws rainbow all around the mud-hut.

“It’s beautiful,” Bella breathes.

“Stunning,” I whisper.

“Absolutely gorgeous,” Wren puts in.

“But why tell you to keep it safe if you were wearing it for your protection?” Jake asks.

“It was given to me. I don’t know by who—”

“Whom,” Bella interrupts.

“What?” Avaysia asks.

“It should be ’by whom’ not ‘by who’.”

“Uh…okay,” she says slowly. “Anyways, the night of my fourteenth birthday, it appeared around my neck while I slept. I’ve worn it ever since. The magic won’t work for anyone else. We’ve tried. I gave it to my father, but it was just a pretty necklace for him. The same held true for my mother.

“Somehow word got to Flumen. King Louis wrote my father requesting—well, demanding, really—that I wed his son and heir, Prince Alexander. He thinks that this will transfer the necklace’s power to Alex. He might even try to take it from his son for himself.”

“Will it work?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

“So we’re being sent through these woods to deliver you and a necklace to some far off kingdom on a hunch?” Jake asks.

“You weren’t sent through these woods,” I remind him. “You ended up joining us. Vay’s parents have no idea you’re with us.”

“Well, yeah,” Jake says sheepishly. “But you know what I’m saying.”

“Why didn’t your father just tell King Louis no?”

“And risk war with him? Besides, my mother would never have allowed that.”

“What’s your mother got to do with going to war? Isn’t that the king’s decision?”

“Ultimately, yes. But my mother has a big part in ruling Regnum. That means she helps decided when our kingdom goes to war. Besides, I probably would have ended up marrying Alex anyways. I might have been able to stay single until I’m seventeen, rather than sixteen, though.”

“Why do you call him Alex?” I ask. “Have you met before?”

“Once,” Avaysia replies, almost bitterly.

“Why is your mother so against a war?” Wren says.

“Because it’s horrible,” Bella says at the same time Jake cries, “Because it’s brutal and bloody and pointless.”

“Those reasons are both part of my mother’s decision, but there is a bigger factor. You see, Queen Margaret is my mother’s sister.”

I stare at her. “But then Prince Alexander…he’s your…your….”

She nods. “Yes,” she says bleakly. “Alexander is my cousin.