In the end, it really was too easy. At Portland she caught another train on a regional line. This was trickier because she had to stow away, but she managed to make it to the small-town Jacques had directed her to. “Town” was generous. “Village” was more accurate. From the rural train station, she walked to the post office where the postman gladly offered her a ride with the next morning’s post to her dear aunt’s house.

“Poor thing, running ahead of the war?”

She agreed to the ride but offered no comments on the war. After all, what could she say?

After a two-hour ride, the postman dropped her off at the end of a long dirt lane, a lone bag in hand. She couldn’t stomach taking everything Oliver had purchased for her.

At the door of a little white, two-story house she stopped, hand raised. For the last week her mind had been a whir, a constant mindless buzzing like radio static. And suddenly, it cleared.

She knocked, a strange almost out of body feeling propelling her on. An older woman with more gray in her hair than black answered the door.

Estella was here, on the porch, with Eloise (or was it Esther?) and she was there, at the airport telling them goodbye. May we meet in another time.

Had they known something then? Or was their choice of words mere coincidence?

Behind the graying black-haired woman appeared another aging lady, this time blond hair streaked with white.

They were speaking, Estelle knew they were speaking, and maybe even to here, but she was too gone, too deep in the past, in the future, that the present got lost.

The two women were old. Old now, old then. She assumed they belonged to her grandparents’ generation. Had assumed they died between then and now, now and then.

But they were old. Old like aged whiskey kept in wine barrels.

Estella thought she was grasping at straws coming to their door. Instead, she was staring in the face generations of learned and experienced knowledge.

“Well, girl?” One of the two hundred or so year old women bit out. She still wasn’t certain who was who. She may have missed that part.

“Who are you?” Asked the other.

The airport disappeared, the little girl grew again into a young woman, and she was finally present, standing on their front porch.

“Estella,” she said.

“Alright, Estella. What do you want?”

“Help.” It would be beneficial to explain further, but now she wasn’t sure what to say. Her problems felts too unwieldy, too large to explain on a doorstep. She tried to say more, opened and closed her mouth, worked her throat, felt words on her tongue. But nothing came.

The old women’s faces relaxed, their gazes met. They gray-black one nodded and the white blond turned down the hall and walked away.

“Come inside, girl. Have some biscuits and a spot of tea.”

The kitchen was a multi-colored cluttered, clearly frequented and used by the two women now sat across from her on matching chipped pale-yellow chairs. She still didn’t know what to say or how to begin but surely something had to be aid and she still wasn’t certain who was who so she really couldn’t stop herself from blurting out: “who’s Esther and who’se Eloise?”

Like at the door, they exchanged words with a glance, a communication so silent Estella tried to remember their relationship from when she was a girl. They were always spoken of as a pair, one always leading to another. Just like her grandparents. Had she been told that they were friends? Lovers? She couldn’t remember, they simply always were to her.

The two sets of eyes turned back to her.

“I’m Esther,” the gray-haired one said.

“And I am Eloise,” the platinum haired one said.

“How did you come by our names?” asked Esther?

Estella reached for a lie, a story that made sense but the deception she fed Oliver was like acid in her stomach, roiling its contents.

She bit her bottom lip before jumping headfirst. “You were friends of my grandparents, Timoteo and Marguerite de Luca.”

“We don’t know any couple by that name.”

“Or any individual.”

“Not yet, but you will,” and then the words came easier and easier until the flowed so swiftly that Estella marveled that she hadn’t been able to form them at all an hour ago.

At the end of her story, she worried the inside of her cheek between her teeth. “Can you help me?” And the two women now understood what she meant: Can you help me get my magic back? Help me get home? House me, feed me, teach me so I may help myself? Can you can you can you…

“Aye girl, we can help. ‘Tis a witch’s duty, after all.”

“But we’re no miracle workers. We can only take you to a point.”

“And then the rest is on you --- you and the gods.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

____

That first day they insisted she rest from her travels, but the next day was a very different process. “You need to restore yourself,” they said, “before starting any study. Otherwise, you truly will run out of wick.”

It started with the gathering of materials: regenerative plants and talismans and the like. Estella followed them everywhere, watching what they gathered but forbidden to take part in the labor. She was required to fast, only breaking it for a little bread and wine “To welcome Christ,” they explained. She smiled and nodded, though her religious sentiments leaned more in favor of Jacques and Theodora than Matthieu’s. It was a confusing mix of traditions and ideas. Magic and religion didn’t truly connect except in the perception of the beholder, and herbs were also not much help except for their actual medicinal qualities. The talismans were more accurate to earlier modes of witchcraft, but again, all their practicality was in the eye of the beholder.

Magic was more about the power we give something than the power the said object actually held.

They took her to a claw footed bathtub and stripped her bare, anointed her in oil, then ritualistically bathed her. There must have been something in the air, some heavy mixture of scents that filled her senses and clogged her head.

The hands on her multiplied. Was only Esther and Eloise there with her? She tried to see, to check but faces always moved, hands skidded out of sight.

The warm water of the bath enveloped her, lulled her into an ease and compliance. How much time had passed? Time… time… time…

“Still lost I see,” rasped a voice behind her.

Estella’s eyes flew open. Before her was a forest thick with foliage and fog.

“Well, girl, turn around. I’m not that hard to look at.” She waited the span of three breathes before complying. The woods were familiar, had run through them countless times.

And she knew that voice.

The woman was exactly as terrible to look at as the last time. All mummified skin stretched over bone, deep set eye sockets atop hollow cheeks. A smile not meant to be mocking but couldn’t help to be so spread across the priestess’s gruesome features.

“There you are,” the old woman crooned.

The temple stood just behind them, so close that one step would put her under the protection of its roof. The friezes were pristine, but the images meant nothing to her. They could have been everyday objects, or ritualistic imagery for all she knew. Archaeology wasn’t her strong suit.

“What am I doing here?” She asked.

Bone shined through taut skin when the priestess shrugged her shoulders. “Resting. Can’t have you powerless when they claim you.”

“Claim me?” She remembered what the priestess told her last time: Not your time. But it was her time now, this is what she was trying to avoid.

A slow, awful smile cracked the woman’s lips. “Haven’t sorted it all out yet have you? Let me help: you are my replacement. The gods granted me retirement so long as I provide the incumbent.” Her nose --- or what had been her nose --- twisted up, “If only my hunters could find you. Where did you go child?”

Fear encompassed her. Before Estella had forced it down, swallowed it back in the face of an uncertain situation. But now… but not it finally gripped her in competition with the hold the priestess had on her arm.

In terms of fight or flight, she was choosing flight. Rearing back, she kicked and clawed at the undead creature. Her hand brushed the metal brooch --- and fumbled out the pin knife.

Lunging, she plunged it into the priestess’ shoulder. A shriek pierced the clearing.

She was gasping for breath, panting heavily and still gripping the pin knife when Estella bolted upright in the bathtub in Esther and Eloise’s home. The candles sizzled like oil had been added to their wicks, and the bath began to steam like a sauna.

“Ah, there it is.” Eloise sighed behind her.

Hysterical giggles built up in her chest, joy and terror combined to make horribled uncontrollable laughter take over the room. The candles oscillated between lit and blown out, the water had reached uncomfortable temps, and the incense turned sour.

Esther and Eloise grabbed Estella and hauled her body out of the tub. Her naked form spilled over the floor, water sloshing around her. She couldn’t feel the cold tiles beneath her or the hot water or smell the incense. She was still laughing. Maybe the old women were talking to her, maybe they offered her comfort, maybe they left alone on the floor.

She didn’t know. She was laughing too hard.

____

The cleansing ritual had worked. Her magic was now a touch unpredictable – it will do that you know – but it was certainly there when Estella woke up the next morning. At the breakfast table, Esther carefully guarded her coffee mug after Estella sat down and created a gust of wind from the action so strong it blew off the plates.

“It’s alright dear, young magic can be so temperamental,’ Eloise soothed.

Estella knew that, of course, but she bit her tongue. Not that she had much chance to speak with the alacrity with which Esther and Eloise threw themselves into her problem.

Like Oliver, the troubles of her life were highly interesting to people not suffering them. Esther jumped on her book list and got the work. Apparently, she knew a guy who knew a guy at the University of Massachusetts who could get them the materials.

Witchcraft really was about who you know.

Until then, Estella followed Eloise around practicing household magic. “The best way to get your motor skills back,” the older woman declared. Esther was often in the background of these lessons, prepared to defend whatever Estella was about the damage.

“We worked hard on this house; you don’t just get to come in and destroy it.”

“I was educated within Saint-Tourre, by the family nonetheless.” She curtly reminded the old woman. Of course, it didn’t help that she shattered a glass soon after that statement. Esther laughed as Eloise gently coached her into putting the broken glass back together.

Two and a half weeks passed in this manner until the first books arrived. Two were basic histories on witchcraft, one was on ancient Roman magic, and the fourth was on the Celts. A final two were literary depictions of time travel. Estella hoped that if nothing else, she would at least be entertained. The little village they lived in wasn’t Chicago and their home wasn’t filled with many pursuits that didn’t fit their needs. If her hosts weren’t working, they were listening to the evening radio shows for news on Europe. Not the most exciting life for a young, introverted women like herself.

Now Estella spent her mornings crowded around the kitchen table, taking notes and throwing thoughts at her hosts who were happy to discuss the history of magic and cultural representations of time. They were not so pleased to do so when the physics books arrived. More than once she eyed them backing out of the room, or simply disappearing.

In the afternoons and evenings, she worked in the house and around their small property doing, fixing, and helping where they asked. She was happy to labor for her room and board, plus there was the added benefit of being kept so busy she barely had time to think about Oliver.

Barely.

She thought about him, of course, and how she left him --- twice --- but she consigned him to that painful hole in her chest where her family lived. No matter, she wouldn’t see him again until she returned home. No sense in wallowing over it.

But at night, when her head touched the pillow, she did think about it. The tug towards Oliver was different than that of Matthieu, Theodora, and Jacques. The desire for her family was that of a nourished seed seeking water and soil to embed its roots. For Oliver though… for Oliver it was like leaves turning towards the sun after a heavy rain.

She had been right to worry in Chicago about his attentions to her, his attraction. She had a whole month on him though in their connection, hopefully he’ll forget her, hopefully the ties that bind hadn’t bound him yet.

He must forget her; she shouldn’t exist here. Memories played behind her eyelids of his time at Saint-Tourre. He will forget her.

That didn’t make remembering him any easier.