The sorceress strode into the stuffy drawing room where Father and I had been placed, the long tail of her wheat colored cloak dragging trails of white cherry blossoms onto the floor behind her. Without removing her hood, she furrowed her brow and clasped her hands behind her back. “Show me.”
The firmness in her voice, the way it snapped through the small room, had me halfway off the lounge before I could decide I wanted to listen to her. I dropped back down and crossed my arms. “Where is Cai?”
“I am here.” Cai answered, appearing from behind the sorceress like the woman’s shadow had become animate.
When she had arrived at our door in the little village that surrounded the loreium and delivered the summons for me to my father, she had looked just the same as she did then. From the tight wrappings around her head that left only her eyes unconcealed, down to her cloth shoes, every part of her was covered in pristine white fabric that fit her small frame snugly. In the two days we had traveled with her, through bogs and over rain slicked roads, not once had her white clothes become dirty.
The sorceress ignored Cai’s sudden appearance and repeated her command. “Show me. We have little time.”
“Twila, do as she asks. All is well.” Father said from where he sat beside me on the lounge. He patted my knee with one of his hands and took a drink with the other, both were shaking and he grimaced from his drink. “You have nothing to hide in this place,” He looked up at the sorceresses. “Correct?”
The sorceress did not respond. From within the shadows of her hood, I could see that her eyes were focused solely on me.
Cai answered for her. “Correct.”
I pulled my long socks off and left them on the floor, taking my place in the center of the drawing room. Despite being in a place that I had only arrived at an hour before, the hardwood floor felt familiar under my feet. If I closed my eyes, the nervousness that jittered in my legs and the feeling of everyone in the room waiting for me to perform felt just the same as when I had been a girl and Father’s colleagues from the loreium had gathered around to hear me sing. “What shall I do?”
“It does not matter.” The sorceress said, an impatient insistence implicit in her voice.
Cai gave me the answer I had asked for. “Something small. There is no need to put yourself through the high and glow.”
“Something small.” I nodded to Cai in agreement. Had it truly only been two days before that the sound of her raspy voice had made me shudder? Much had changed in that little time because I found myself comforted by her presence. I leaned my weight onto my right foot and raised the left, flexing my toes into the hardwood. With two small bounces, I brought my raised foot down in a stomp and shook my aura out of me.
A vortex of my lavender energy spiraled out from where I had stomped, spinning out from my foot and lifting the littered blossoms off the floor.
“The other.” The sorceress commanded not a moment after my aura had spun out and turned to dust at the baseboards of the drawing room.
Father cleared his throat and encouraged me. “Show her, Twila. This is why they have brought us here.”
The opposite of what I had just done, I shifted my weight to my left foot and raised my right. Bouncing small twice, I stomped again, sending a ripple of honey colored energy washing out from my foot in a slow ring. When it dissipated against the baseboard just as my first display had, I exhaled and relaxed. Since the first time I had discovered my soul had two colors and not a week before Cai had showed up with the summons, Father and I had practiced being able to alternate between my two auras in secret. Performing it at will in an uncomfortable and unknown situation had left me feeling proud and happy.
The sorceress took her eyes off of me for the first time and looked at Father. “Her mother?”
“The Sorceress Tanja,” Father answered, stuffing his shaking hands into the folds of his robes and pulling out a tiny vial filled with burnt orange dust. “This is all I have left of her. She passed not a year after Twila was born.”
Other than what Father had told me about her and the little vial filled with the remnants of her aura, I knew nothing of her. She had died before I was old enough to remember her. “What does my mother have to do with anything?”
The sorceress ignored me and continued speaking to Father. “Your own lineage, how far back can you trace it?”
Father took another drink that again twisted his face with displeasure. “My grandparents. Ephraimenoch Plaas and Silvian Plaas. Grandfather was one of the founders of the loreium in Don Vivin. Grandmother ran the household and raised my father and his sisters.”
“None of them had or were sensitive to aura?” The sorceress questioned further.
“Is this truly relevant, Father? Could you not have answered these questions at home?” I chimed in.
“Be patient, Twila,” Father scolded me, then turned back to the sorceress. “On my memory, I swear. None of them.”
The sorceress nodded to him and then turned to Cai, who was standing in the corner behind her and drawing shapes in my lavender and honey dust with the tip of her shoe. “Keep them here, I must consult The Wellkeepers.”
Cai agreed without looking up from her drawing. “I will.”
The sorceress strode out of the room without word or acknowledgment, trails of the white blossoms and my dust being pulled behind her.
“Father, what does this mean? Who are the Wellkeepers?” I went to the lounge and sat back down beside him, pulling my socks back on.
After another drink and another grimace, Father answered, patting my knee again. “I do not know, my daughter. But listen well, whatever follows the sorceresses return, know that I am so proud of who you are and what you will be.”
“Why are you saying these things? What will happen next?” I demanded, leaning back onto the arm of the lounge so I could see him fully. Though his hands still shook, there was a tight lipped smile peeking out from behind his dark beard. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out before he dropped his head and refilled his glass.
“Father?” I said, I had never seen him act the way he was.
Cai spoke from her post in the corner, still drawing with her foot. “Your father wishes to comfort you and to express his love for you, but the fear he feels is proving too difficult for him to disguise.”
Of all things I expected to come from Father, a laugh was not one of them. “I could not have said it better myself. Tanja could read me just the same.”
“But, why are you scared? What have we done wrong? They summoned us and we came without protest. She asked me to show her my power and I did, without protest. We have done nothing but offer them respect.” I pleaded, trying to get Father to meet my eyes.
Again, Cai spoke. “Having a Twinsoul such as yours is nearly unheard of,” Cai said, finally looking up from my dust. “I have met only one other, though there are rumors of more.”
Twinsoul. My lavender and honey, the purple and yellow color of my soul, had a name. It was rare, I had gathered that much from having been summoned by The Circle of the Nine Mothers and brought to the deepest level of Zenithcidel, but that was not enough explanation for me to understand why it suddenly felt like everyone but Cai was pretending I no longer existed.
The sorceress burst back into the drawing room without bothering to look at me. She focused her eyes on Father and spoke. “How many others know about her?”
I answered for myself, unable to keep myself from sounding rude. “Hundreds. I have a life. I have friends. What is the reason for bringing us here?”
“She means your Twinsoul, Twila,” Father said, looking up from his drink and at the sorceress. “The Sorceress Bshara, she is a friend that lives near the loreium in Don Viven and I suspect she is the one who alerted Zenithcidel of my daughter's abilities. I am a scholar not a sorcerer. When Twila was a girl and started showing her aura, I went to Bshara for guidance. It seemed natural to go to her when I found that my daughter’s soul bore two colors.”
“You are certain that no one else knows?” The sorceress continued.
“On my memory, I am certain.” Father answered.
Too much was being said too quickly. I stood up, leaving Father sitting on the lounge alone and held my hands up. “Wait!”
“Cai, you will return to Don Viven immediately. The Sorceress Bshara must be brought to Zenithcidel,” The sorceress said, turning back to Father in the same breath. “The Wellkeepers have investigated your lineage and have found that your grandmother’s mother was a sorceress of the second circle, by the name of Frill.”
“Enough!” I shouted, stomping my feet one after the other. Colliding pulses of both my auras crashed into one another and washed back across the hardwood in lavender and honey waves.
Father stood and placed a still hand on my shoulder. The shaking had left him and he spoke calmly, as if nothing strange or confusing was occurring. “Calm yourself. Nothing is to be gained by further outbursts,” He squeezed his hand and smiled through his dark beard. “Where does that leave me?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“With an unfortunate choice that you must make despite its difficulty,” The sorceress began, “Starting from the moment you learned of her second color, we may remove the memories you have of your daughter. Cai will escort you back to Don Viven. Your life will remain intact, but you will live the rest of your days thinking that your daughter became a sorceress of Zenithcidel and that her life has grown to full to hold room for you.”
“Excuse me?” I shouted, whipping my eyes from Father to the sorceress and back again.
“The other option?” Father asked, holding onto my shoulder like it was the only thing keeping him upright.
The sorceress lowered her hood, sadness evident in her eyes. “We will put you to rest.”
The feeling of Father’s grip on my shoulder vanished. Cai and the sorceress fell away from my sight. My vision blurred and I felt myself fall away from the stuffy drawing room. The hardwood, still littered with the white blossoms and glittering remnants of my aura, did not meet me.
Darkness surrounded me.
In that void, I heard a voice. “What is your name?”
Sometimes, In the first moments after I left The Well and returned to my body, I would come back to myself thinking that I was still in the old boarding house. The infallible consistency with which Sam asked his questions, the warm water lapping against the edges of my skin that were not submerged, and the brief feeling of freedom that I enjoyed at the false thought painted a moment that would only last as long as I could remain still. If I moved my hands or my legs drifted down, they would not meet the tight walls of the bathtub that had been in my little bathroom and reality would force me to accept where I was.
It had been anything but easy and I was almost certain that my time in Erosette had surpassed how long I had been on the mortal plane, but being able to set out into the dark woods without wearing shoes, staying awake until I couldn’t, and sleeping until I decided to wake up had left a mark in my mind that my thoughts ran over all too often.
“Autumn Aubrey.” I answered my familiar, my ears alternating between the roaring nothing sound of being underwater and the shallow echoing of the well house.
“Who is Autumn Aubrey?” Sam continued, his low voice static and emotionless as it always was.
I gave him the answer he required.
“Who was Autumn Aubrey?” Sam asked his final question, his new question, for only the second time.
I let my feet drift down and touch the smooth marble underneath me. Standing up and sending the salty water I brought with me raining back down into the pool, I told him. “Twila. Her aura. . . She had two different colors. Have you ever heard of that?”
A sharp yarl resonated from my familiar and the sound of sudden movement echoed off the stone walls. I opened my eyes and snapped them to Sam.
My familiar writhed across the stone floor beyond the pool, a confusing mess of blue fur and pained noises. In the low light, I saw him throw himself onto his back and rake his paws over his ears and eyes repeatedly, a subterranean growl reverberating out of him.
A voice that should not have been in the well house spoke. “What has happened to him?”
I looked towards the pink marble door and saw my mother hurrying over to my familiar.
She knelt beside him and placed her hand, cloaked in iridescent light, on the blue cat’s flank. “Samsara?”
As soon as my mother made contact with Sam, my familiar let out a savage hiss that sounded like stones being ground together and he whipped himself away from her. He smacked into the back right corner of the room and continued dragging his paws over his head.
“Autumn,” My mother turned to me. “What should I do?”
I kept my eyes on Sam, nearly certain I knew what had happened. “I don’t know. I usually just wait for it to pass, but it has never been this bad before.”
“What are we waiting to pass? I never received a familiar, I am woefully uneducated when it comes to them.”
“If I saw something that makes him think about who he was before he was Sam, it hurts him.”
“Oh,” My Mother sighed in understanding. “What did you say to him?”
“I. . .” I trailed off. Do not tell her. The thought came and went from my mind faster than I could realize it had happened. Even if my mother did not know about the trimetal walls that The Mothers had placed inside The Well to restrict my access to the memories, I could not risk her learning that I had removed them. She loved me and despite the shame and trouble I had brought her through my decisions, she had been nothing but understanding. Still, I could not shake the feeling that if she learned of my freedom that it would only be a matter of time before The Mothers knew as well.
Sam’s thunderous rumbling tapered off and my familiar stood, shaking his head in bursts and focused his deep blue eyes at me. “Lady Aubrey is here to speak with you.”
“Thank you. I do not think I would have realized that if not for you.” I said, walking over to the edge of the pool. I crossed my arms on the stone floor and let my weight drift down until my head was resting on top of them.
“Autumn. Do not be rude. Samsara has just experienced great pain.” My mother scolded me.
“That never stops him,” I muttered and pushed my soaked hair back so it would no longer drip over my face. I couldn’t help but be a little annoyed at the painful boundaries within my familiar’s mind. Sam could have been a scholar like the father in the memory had been and the knowledge he had collected in his first life could do nothing but stay useless. “Are you alright?”
“I am. Do not speak of it again in my presence again.” Sam answered.
Maybe I should not be so annoyed. He had just given me the perfect excuse to not tell my mother about the memory.
A new thought came to my mind and I took the quiet that followed Sam’s words as an opportunity to pursue it. “What is the color of your soul?”
My mother stood and turned her back to me, reaching down and pulling something off the stone bench behind her. “I am surprised you have never asked me this. Though, there were never many reasons for me to use my power before,” She looked down at me, holding a small box in her hands. “I do not have a color.”
“Oh,” I said. None of the possible answers I had expected to come from her, had. “But you are a Sorceress?”
“Of the third circle,” My mother agreed. She handed me the small box. Potatoes, hunks of meat, roasted vegetables, and the end round of one of the loaves of bread from the feast the night before greeted me. “Eat. You need to keep your strength.”
I lifted myself higher out of the warm water of the pool and pushed a little of each thing into my mouth all at once. Between chews, I forced out questions. “I know that, but what does that mean? How many circles are there?”
“Nine, The Mothers included,” My mother answered me and then sighed. “I was right to not bother with utensils.”
“How do you get into the ninth circle?” I asked, taking in another mouthful. There was no reality where I was allowed to do anything more than what my days currently consisted of, but it interested me nonetheless.
“It is easy for me to forget how little you have been allowed to know. The ninth circle is the circle of The Nine Mothers. Once a Maiden, like yourself, finds her color or awakens it through one of the academy’s, she becomes an underwitch and can begin earning the right to be named into the first circle.
I am an underwich. Underwitch Autumn Aubrey. I thought to myself, suppressing a smile. I had found my color. Anna and I’s efforts to refind it had been utterly unsuccessful, but the aura that had leaked out of the Mothers seal had definitely been a bright shade of red. Finishing off the leftover feast food and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I continued. “If your soul has no color, you could have never been an underwitch. If underwitchs are named to the first circle, then how are you in the third?”
“My path was much different than most. The Mothers being the sole exception, nothing in this world is absolute and though my soul is colorless, they took kindness with me. The same they have with you.” My mother said, taking the empty box from me.
Knowing that The Mother in Brown could arrive at any moment and drag me away to an unknowable punishment did not feel very kind.
My mother gestured to a neatly folded stack of red fabric that sat on the bench beside the pool. “Tonight is Galahad’s night. I will save the story until I am with all of you, but I have brought what you will wear to the festivities. When you are done here today, dress in them and then come to the mouth of the garden.”
“Is that why you brought my lunch here?” I asked, looking at the clothes. In the low light, I could not tell much about them, but the way the light reflected off the red surface told me they were unfortunately silky.
“Many preparations are still to be made if things are to be ready in time,” My mother said with a smile. She made her way to the pink marble door and pulled it open. “Before I go, I have a question I must ask of you.”
A pang of nerves started at the base of my neck and shot through my arms and legs. Something I had said had given my mother a question that would lead me into a mad spiral of compromising answers. I knew enough to know the difference between keeping things from her and lying to her directly would be enough to force me to tell her it all. If she asked about The Well, what I had said to Sam to make him twist into a contortion, or why I was so interested in the circles, I would tell her.
“Answer me honestly, Autumn. Have you noticed the change in Arthur since we have arrived here? The dear boy hardly sleeps and has put on nearly ten pounds of muscle since the move.” My mother asked, saying something that I had not expected for the second time since I had returned from the memory.
He had gotten bigger. That truth had asserted itself when I had fallen off the roof and into the tall man’s arms. I answered simply, scared to say more than was necessary. “I have.”
“I sent word to Sorceress Ulet and inquired about the sorcerer she drove off to try and understand what he did to Arthur, but I have not heard back as of yet.” my mother continued, her words setting my heart to a pounding rhythm.
The sorcerer hadn’t done anything to Arthur. That had just been what Samsara had told my mother and threatened the Lao’s into agreeing with. Anna understood how important it was to live as if that was the truth. I still needed to find Arthur and remind him of the importance, but the third Lao is who truly troubled me. Ms. Lao and my mother had become fast friends. If anyone was going to slip and tell how the events of that night had truly transpired, it would be Ms. Lao.
I pivoted the conversation. “Is she well, Ms. Lao?”
“It is as I told you last night. She is dying and I do not see her changing her mind on accepting help,” My mother gave me a sad smile that did not meet her eyes. “In part, that is why we are celebrating Amoranora the way we are. Anna and Arthur have been through much these past months. I can not allow them to sit idly and watch her go,” Before she left me in the well house and stepped into the sunlight peeking through the cracked door, she added. “Treat them well, little Delpha, as they have treated you. Watching your own mother waste away is a pain I hope you never feel.”
She left me then and I found myself sinking back into the pool, feeling much heavier than I had a moment before. Dropping until the warm water rose to my shoulders, I tipped myself back and floated to the surface.
“You are returning to The Well,” Sam stated. “Be brief. Sleep is coming for me again.”
“Why have you been sleeping in my room?” I called to him, closing my eyes and slowing my breathing.
A small hiss came from him. “I can not know.”
“Shame,” I said, feeling myself relaxing. “I thought it was because you missed me.
If he said anything, the roaring nothing sound of the water filling my ears drowned it out as I felt myself slip into The Well.