I hadn’t heard music since I had run away.
It had been rare enough back home, I hadn’t gotten out much, but rare is practically abundant when it is being compared to nothing.
Somewhere in the nothing time between late night and early morning, it had become all too easy for me to blur the line between the two, I scrawled in a notebook I had swiped from a drawer in the kitchen downstairs. My hair still damp from the bath, I made an attempt at recording the most recent memory.
Vimelrian, I wrote. Maiden, colorless, manipulation.
Yes, after great effort, the Maiden Vimelrian had managed to perform the monumental task of pushing a stone a hand's length across a table with her aura.
How exciting.
Since I had begun taking notes, I’d filled close to eleven pages with nearly identical entries. The names changed, what the person whose eyes I was seeing through were doing varied, but every single memory I had jotted down ,was some variation of the same story. Teacher and student, student has to charm or glamor or manipulate with their colorless aura, student passes or fails. All the same, every time.
How exciting.
I yawned and it stretched through my body, bringing me to my feet. The old wooden floor was cold, like everything else in my ragged little room.
“One more.” I sighed, thinking I could go to The Well one more time before I got some sleep when I heard it.
A handful of disjointed notes, barely loud enough to hear, caught my ear. It had not been music but it had been the pieces of it. The same notes that had come before echoed again, sounding tighter and cleaner, almost a melody. Then it repeated, ringing out flawlessly until a sour note, much louder than the others, destroyed what was being crafted and the night fell into sudden silence.
An owl hooted from somewhere in the woods behind the boarding house.
I peeked over the mattress and out of the window, only wanting to lay my eyes on whoever was making the music. I doubted it was the only other tenant in the house, a bespectacled old woman who walked with a cane or Ms. Lao, who I had never seen awake after sunset. Which only left Anna, who the mere thought of still made the sting of embarrassment rise in my cheeks. If it wasn’t a mortal playing music in the backyard, It could have been a trick to gain my attention and lure me outside. It could have been a trick to get me to peek through the window so they would know I was inside. This is how you get caught, Autumn. This is how you get found. Be smart. I thought, knowing I should cast my interest aside and pretend like I had never heard it.
The notes came again, resonating off one another to make something that sounded light and cheerful before the same sour note in the same spot in the melody brought it to an ugly and violent end.
“Ahh.” I growled, frustrated. I couldn’t help it any longer. I pushed the mattress away from the window just enough so I could see down into the yard.
There was little light with the night sky being overcast as it was, but sitting at the base of a large oak, illuminated by the orange glow of a big green lantern, a man was bent over the body of a guitar. His hands were moving but I could no longer hear what he was playing, which was truly tragic. The tragedy was that I wanted to hear what he was playing but I knew it would be very unwise for me to pursue that desire.
I forced myself to sit back down on the bed.
What if the sour notes were just the warming fingers of a master musician warming up to debut his most impressive composition? I couldn’t sit idly by and miss such an opportunity could I?
I couldn’t.
So as quick as I could, I was on my way out the door.
“Where are you going?” Sam’s hypnotic baritone thundered.
I answered his question with the sound of the door shutting behind me.
Down I went, skipping the steps that I had learned to avoid during my late night pillaging of the kitchen.If I stepped on them they would creak and announce my descent to the rest of the old house. I slipped out the front door silently and snuck around the side of the house. I crept through the darkness pooling along the edge of the house, the dew dampened grass cold on my bare feet. I turned the corner and ran face first into the man with the guitar.
The strings and my face did not make music, instead, an ugly chord of open strings and my startled cry broke out. The momentary spike of fear made my aura flare and press against the Seal that kept me from manifesting my power.
“Oh shit, I’m sorry! Are you alright? I didn’t know anybody was out here.” The man said, continuing to apologize through my silence.
If it hadn't been for the Seal I would have used my aura against someone I was near certain was a mortal and only a mortal. Once I made my body understand it did not need to defend itself, my reflexively drawn power slipped away and I immediately felt the loss. I caught myself with one outstretched arm on the wall of the house as the wave of weariness washed over me. “Are you injured?”
Surely he wouldn’t notice my weakness. I had played it off as being laid back, casual. We’d laugh it off and part ways. Simple.
“Oh man, Your nose is bleeding.” He said not a second later.
The warm tickle filling my nose confirmed what he said. I wiped my nose on the back of my hand, leaving two streaks of blood painted across my skin. “I’m fine.”
“You’re Dani right? My sister told me about you.” He stepped closer, his lantern illuminating enough of his face that I could see the resemblance to Anna in his dark hair and eyes. He stood nearly head and shoulders taller than me and wore a friendly smile.
“Arthur! Who are you talking to?” Someone yelled from the back door around the corner.
“Hold on just a second,” he said to me, then he turned and raised his own voice. “I’m talking to Dani from upstairs. Go to bed Ma!”
“You go to bed! Both of you!” Ms. Lao snapped back and the sound of the back door slamming shut made me flinch.
I hadn’t known Ms. Lao was a mother until I’d met Anna but knowing she had two children, albeit who both seemed to be older than me if I had to guess, made me feel doubly worse for charming my way out of not paying her for room and board.
“Sorry about that,” Arthur apologized. He hesitated before asking. “Can I see it?”
“See what?” I said, confused. I wiped my bloody nose with my other hand.
“The tattoo? Anna said she had never seen one like it.”
Heat bloomed across my face. Not because he was a stranger asking me to reveal part of myself to him, maybe that had something to do with it, but because Anna had told him about the seal and he had brought it up to me. She would tell others and he would tell others and even if it stopped there, the amount of people that knew something tangible about me would be more than one. How long would it take for the Mother’s or something worse to hear? How long would it take for someone or something that knew the right things to over hear and find the information curious?
“I, uh, have to go.” I said, walking past Arthur and straight towards the wood line that circled the old house. I would sneak back up to my room once he had gone.
“Hey, wait! I wasn’t trying to be weird!” He called after me.
I didn’t answer, knowing that made my behavior seem all the more strange. It wouldn’t matter for long. I’d sneak back up to my room and be gone before anyone else in the house woke up. What choice did I have?
“You aren’t even wearing shoes!” Arthur called one last time before I crossed the wood line and took refuge within the darkness amongst the shadowed pines.
Arthur had been right, I wasn’t wearing shoes. My bare feet being cut, scraped, and bruised by every thorn, twig, and branch I stepped on reminded me of that fact. I didn’t have shoes. I had never needed them before I had escaped from Zenithcidel. I had left with nothing but the robes on my back. The reaction Ms. Lao had given me when I had shown up at her door had been scrutinizing enough that I had stowed them in the small closet of my room and stolen the sweatshirt that fit me like a dress and shorts that I was wearing then from the laundry downstairs.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Though I had only been there a month, I had found a feeling of comfort and familiarity in the old boarding house. Sure, I had to sneak around and steal food and endure the occasional interaction with one of the other residents, but I was free. Settling down had made me not be as careful as I should be. So, maybe the immediate danger of leaving would be worth it if I could be mindful enough to be less careless wherever I ended up next.
I don’t know how deep or for how long I walked, but my feet had taken a beating and I sat down on the trunk of a long fallen tree. The night had been overcast the entire time I had been outside, but moonlight found its way through the trees and brightened the woods around me.
Then, I felt it again. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I was suddenly reminded that I had walked very deep into the unfamiliar woods.
I was being watched.
It was a feeling, almost a seventh sense, that was the sudden instinct that you were not alone. The moonlight brightened behind me, and my shadow was cast across the woods, a twisted visage of what I actually was.
How is the moon behind me? I thought, spinning around on the fallen trunk to find out.
An owl made of ghostly blue light faced away from me on a low hanging branch. It flared out its massive wings and a flurry of motes made of its haunting light swirled out in the darkness. “Hooo!”
A spirit, here?
“Two strangers in my wood this night, night, night.” The owl spirit spoke in a clear voice that rang in my ears. Without turning its body, it spun its head around slowly until it focused its shining eyes on me. “With the first, first, first?”
“No. I am alone.” I answered flatly. I had never met a spirit before but I had lived through memories of those that had. They were temperamental and I knew better than to provoke it.
“The other. Looking, looking, looking.” The spirit almost sang, punctuating its words with three clicks of its beak. Click. Click. Click.
“Looking for what?” I asked, raising my palm and letting one of the pale blue motes drift down onto it like I was catching a snowflake. It didn’t melt. Instead, it slowly dimmed and dulled until my palm was empty again.
“Hoo!” The spirit hooted.
“Looking for who?” I tried.
Without moving its glowing eyes from me, it spun its body around to realign with its head. “Boy’s back. Looking, looking, looking,” Three more clicks of its beak. Click. Click. Click. “Hoo! Me? You? Looking, looking, looking.”
“The other stranger is looking for you and me?”
“Closer. Looking, looking, looking.” It said. Click. Click. Click. Then, without a parting word, it flared its wings and took flight, leaving a swathe of pale blue motes floating towards the ground. Just like the one I had caught, they dimmed and disappeared after a moment and I was left in the dark.
I didn’t call after it, in my experience which was truly the experience of sorceresses I had never met, I had already learned everything the spirit was willing to spare.
Someone else was in the woods and they were looking.
Click. Click. Click.
I was not alone in the woods.
“Time I get back.” I said to myself and started walking.
My walking quickly turned to running.
All had been quiet in the house when I tiptoed back up to my room sometime before dawn. The light had been on in the hall when I reached the second story landing, but being that I had intentionally never met the old woman, I didn’t know if that was strange or not. I unlocked the door and stepped inside, carrying a large loaf of bread I had swiped from the kitchen on my way up.
Sam sat atop the mound of blankets I used as a bed, peering down at my open notebook. “I did not expect, based on our limited time together, for you to take it upon yourself to record notations of your experiences in The Well.” The little skeleton said in his hypnotically low baritone.
“What did you think I was writing?” I locked the door and then ripped off a chunk of the bread and shoved it in my mouth. It was airy and had a bit of a sour aftertaste. Only after I had swallowed it and followed it with nearly half the loaf did was the loss I had taken from my aura earlier replenished.
“I did not think about it at all.” Sam answered, still reading.
Should I tell him about the spirit?
I decided that there was no use. All I would get in return would have been at best, a monotone condemnation about the danger I had placed myself in because I was an impulsive child that needed to go home to Zenithcidel with its covens and schools and the uncountable other things I wouldn’t be allowed to do. The thought alone of being locked back in the three little rooms felt like torture unto itself.
I dipped into the bathroom and turned the hot water all the way on. Being able to focus enough to slip into The Well was hard enough to do somewhere I was relatively comfortable. It would be days or weeks before I would even be able to think about trying based on how long it had taken me before.
Sam stopped his studying and slunk into the bathroom before climbing his way to what had become his post atop the light fixture. Not long after he had found me, I had locked him out of the bathroom. When I had come back to myself, he had been on the lights and had refused to explain to me how he had gotten inside.
I undressed, closed the door behind me, and stuffed a towel under the door in the hopes that if I was gone too long, it would retain some of the heat. “Ah. Ah. Ah.” I gasped as I lowered myself into the steaming hot water, inch by inch. The cuts and scrapes on my feet broke into new pain once they were submerged but getting in with it any cooler would leave me near frozen when I came back. I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing.
Sometimes it would take hours for me to feel myself fall and others it would take me no time at all. That early morning, in what I was sure would be my last visit for the foreseeable future, the water was still stinging my feet when I sank into The Well.
In a room that’s only entrance lay hidden within my own mind, three walls of gold, silver, and bronze threads wove into an infinitely repeating pattern gleamed around me. Then, light came, brightening into a door of empty light that I had seen so many times I had lost count. Running my hands along the metallic walls, I stepped through it.
The sorceress placed yet another red stone on the dusty ground between us.
“Are you still willing?” She asked.
When she had taken me from the mines and told me what she wanted me to do, it had come with the assurance that she would delay her leaving for as long as i was willing to try.
That had been hours ago.
The sun was setting behind the red rocks and a graveyard of shattered stones, memorializing my countless failures, had piled on the ground around us over that time. I looked over my shoulder. From the looks of it, the whole town had gathered at the outskirts to see what the strange woman wanted with their little outcast.
For once, I didn’t blame them. I’d never seen anything like her either.
“Ignore them Trea. They have never helped you. They will not begin now.” The sorceress said. Her hair fell to just above her jaw in perfect blonde curls and she did not have the half starved look of everyone that lived within the broken crown.
From the moment I had first seen her, I wanted nothing more than to be her.
“I am willing.” I answered, doing as she said and turning my eyes from the townsfolk.
She smiled. “Good. Remember, slow and controlled. Do not force it.”
I nodded that I understood, trying to hide the happiness I felt at her smile, and focused on the latest red stone. No bigger than a coin and no different than any of the other stones just like it that were in abundance, It was good that it was only the size of a coin and not the value. My debt was large enough already.
I let my aura burn within me, focusing the heat around the stone. With nothing but my will, I pushed it out of the dust and held it at eye level.
“Now, empty your mind and let go.” The sorceress said.
She had said it before, every handful of minutes from the time we had sat down when the sun had been directly over us. Everytime before, I could not let it go. I’d broken the stone every single time.
A breaker, that’s what I was. That’s the reason they had thrown me in the mines. That's why they had come to watch. They were waiting for me to prove them right.
“Empty your mind, Trea. Nothing matters but the stone. You can do it.” The sorceress assured me.
I wanted to prove her right more than I wanted to prove the townsfolk wrong. I wanted to trade my thread bare rags for a dress like hers. I wanted her to take my from the broken crown like she’d promised she would if I could prove I was in control of my gift.
I exhaled, slowly releasing my aura like the air in my lungs.
Just as the stone began to fall back to the dusty ground, someone from the crowd sneezed.
It shattered.
Slivers of stone and red dust shot out in all directions, peppering my face and the sorceress’s with my failure.
“Damnit!” I yelled, slamming my fist into the dusty ground as hard as I could.
The sorceress waited for my outburst to end before asking me calmly. “Are you still willing?”
Her beautiful face blurred and my vision went dark. Gone was the stone, the crowd, the broken crown. There was nothing but darkness until a yellow light filled my eyes.
I was back in the bathroom. I sat up, pulling myself up by my ankles and came face to face with Sam.
“What is your name?” He asked.
“Autumn Aubrey.” Why wasn’t there any water in the tub?
“Who is Autumn Aubrey?”
“I am a maiden of Zenithcidel. Daughter of Idensyn Aubrey. Thief and possessor of The Well. Debtor to The Circle of the Nine Mothers.” Warm mist drifted down from the ceiling and every surface of the bathroom was slick with water.
Finally, he asked. “What were you doing?”
“Viewing memories from The Well so it may be extracted from me and returned to the Mothers,” I wiped the moisture off my face. My feet ached and although I had eaten not long before, I was nearly shaking with hunger. “Why are you over here, creep?”
Sam’s yellow eyes flared. “Even if you were not a scrawny welp caught in the death throes of youth, I am incapable of feeling what you accuse me of.”
“Why is everything wet?” I asked, not knowing if I should feel bad for my familiar or insulted by his words.
“You struck the water. I found that unusual.”
The longer I looked at Sam, the more I came to realize something had changed about him.
“Did you grow a whisker?”