One of the more notable things about my familiar was that when he did anything, he did it with terrifying fierceness.
When he hunted a bird, all that would be left of the poor creature was sparse feathers and smeared blood. When he was compelled to ask his questions, he would pursue them to no end, only ceasing once they had been answered. I had seen him literally burst from his own flesh to defend me.
That savage dedication extended to his sleep.
When I woke, I carefully untangled myself from Anna so I wouldn’t disturb her, but Galahad’s night had left her so exhausted that she did not stir. She slept soundly through me climbing onto the footboard and grabbing Sam by the blue scruff of his neck.
It took both my arms to lift him up and throw him over my shoulder where he hung limply like a towel, his own sleep uninterrupted by my disturbance. I grabbed the leatherbound journal and pen that Anna used to track my training, stepped over the greasy chicken rag, and slipped out of my room silently.
The rest of the manor was still thankfully asleep as I crept down the stairs and made for the garden. I passed Arthur’s door and after too long spent sleeping on a pile of wadded up blankets without a mattress myself, I hoped my mother had come back with an appropriately sized bed. Knocked out the way his sister was in my bed upstairs, that is what the tall man deserved.
I made it outside before the sun could begin to brighten the third day of Amoranora.
The garden was not there.
A iridescent wall of what could only be my mother’s aura shimmered where the hedges and mouth of the garden should have been. So high up I could not see its end, I thought of my training the night before. My limit had been half of a pillows width and it had brought me to my knees to do that. I turned my back on the display of my mother’s power and set myself to the first challenge of my day.
If my familiar had still been the little blue kitten that he had been a few months before, moving his limp body off of my shoulder and into my hands would have been no trouble at all.
He wasn’t and I was still weak from my training.
I dropped him.
Sam smacked into the stone walkway head first and crumpled into a confusing mess of blue legs and tail.
I held my breath.
My familiar continued to snore like he was still curled into himself atop the canopy of my bed.
“I think I like you best when you are asleep.” I said, the horrible vision of what would have happened to me if he had woken up bringing me a newfound appreciation of his silent slumber.
Only because it was all too easy to think of him as a normal cat when he was asleep, I felt a little guilty, but I did not dwell on it. If he could survive his skeleton being broken into individual bones and scattered about, a little bump on the ground was nothing for me to fret over. The only thing left for me to do was to try and figure out how to get him onto the roof. I couldn’t carry him, I had just learned that.
I would be lucky if I could get myself up.
Technically an underwitch or not, I did not use my aura to move my familiar to where I needed him to go. I picked him up, bunched his limp body onto my hands, and threw him above me as hard as I could.
He didn’t make it.
“Oh no!” I said, rushing forward and trying to catch him before he crashed to the ground again.
Sam’s deep blue eyes snapped open just before he collided with me. The claws of his forepaws dug into the skin over my collarbones with no impact.
Pressure and weight, more than my familiar’s body should have been able to produce, gradually forced me down until my knees buckled and I fell to the ground. Further, the force pressed me until I was flat on my back.
Sam scowled down at me, evil in his deep blue eyes. “Petulant child. Coward. You wish to be rid of me badly enough to try and assassinate me in my sleep?”
The reverberations of his low voice shook through my chest. I opened my mouth to speak, but did not have enough air to form a word. I shook my head from side to side and tried to push my punishing familiar off of me.
Sam’s inexplicable pressure released enough that I could gasp out a “No.”
“You do not wish to be rid of me. You only wished to harm me.” Sam growled.
The pressure continued to release and I was able to take a short and shallow breath. “Couldn’t wake you,” I took another breath. “Throw you on the roof.”
“Explain.” Sam demanded.
I gave up trying to force him off me and accepting that he would remove himself at the time of his choosing. I spoke at the pace the receding pressure allowed. “Needed your help,” Inhale. “Alone,” Bigger Inhale. “I thought you’d like it because of how high it is.”
The pressure vanished completely and Sam pawed off of me. “I understand.”
Once I caught my breath, I crawled up to my feet and rubbed my spots on my chest that stung and bled. “I could have explained that much quicker if you had not tried to crush me.”
No answer. My familiar was nowhere to be seen. “Sam?”
From above, I heard his deep voice call down to me. “You are still on the ground.”
Sam stated it with no emotion in his voice, no tone or emphasis, but for fucks sake it sounded so condescending. Focusing my aura felt like stretching a painfully sore muscle, but I forced enough out of myself to let me pull myself onto the roof.
“You are weak.” Sam said simply.
“You really know how to make a girl feel special,” I sighed. I could not put a name to how it made me feel watching him walk straight up to the wall and bound up it without so much as a running start, but it annoyed me enough that I continued to climb despite my exhaustion. “I pushed myself too far last night. I was surprised we did not wake you. But then you slept through me dragging you out here and dropping you.”
“Sleep is not the same for me as it is for you. If it is before I am fully rested, there is little that could wake me.”
“Don’t you have a room now,” I grunted, finally pulling myself up to the roof above my room. “Can’t your eternal slumbering be done there?”
“No.” Sam answered.
“Why not?” I threw the leather bound journal down at my feet, the sky beginning to brighten from black to dark blue.
“I do not know. It is as it was the day I went into the woods with you and the tall mortal. Much like what possesses me when you return from The Well. It is not that I feel that I need to be somewhere. I must be in that place, I am powerless to resist it.” Sam answered me, a single of his blue hairs blowing off his back and down to the city below by the morning breeze.
“That doesn’t make me feel any better. Is there going to be a monster crawling out of my closet or some cross-dressed sorcerer hiding under my bed?”
“I do not know.” Sam answered.
I sighed. “I know you don’t, but it would be nice if you did.”
Sam sat in front of me, forcing me to look into his eyes. “I am stronger than I was then. As is my duty, I will protect you.”
I looked away from him and down at Erosette. For a moment and barely that, I thought I heard care in his voice that felt much more human than the tone he took during his usual arcane duties. Not knowing how to respond to him, I didn’t. “Do you still remember the names I have been giving you?”
“Do not insult me. They will remain in my mind until it fades from existence.” Sam said.
“Give me the first of them, from the day you changed your question.
Without pause, My familiar did as I asked. His low voice sounded strange speaking in my cadence. “Nami, Ola, uhm. Oster. No,”
“Hold on,” I interrupted him, furiously scrawling the names on the last page of paper in the journal. Nami. Ola. “Onward.”
Sam continued from where I had stopped him. “Aster! And, uhm, . . . Constance! Fuck, there were more. I don’t remember.”
Aster. Constance. I added to the list and ran back through them, trying to trick my mind into remembering the rest of the Mothers that had been in the bedroom brawl. “Nami, Ola, Aster, Constance, and. . .”
Sam finished what I was saying. “Fuck, there were more. I don’t remember.”
“Shhh.” I hushed him harshly. Nami, Ola, Aster, Constance, and. . .
Who was the and? I closed my eyes, running any detail I could remember from the memory through my mind. Ola and Aster had been together. Nami had not taken that well and attacked them. It had devolved from there. Constance, with her dark brown hair and chestnut skin, had come in to try and stop the fighting. Someone had hit her. The first Mother whose name I could not remember had entered the fray at that. I remembered her pouty red lips, her sleek black hair, the anger in her eyes, but I could not remember her fucking name.
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Sam placed one of his paws on the list. “Continue with what you know instead of clawing at the edges of what you do not.”
“Fine,” I wrote angry red onto the list underneath Constance. The last Mother from Ola’s memory, the one who had appeared after the lights had gone out, had seemed younger than I was. I knew that meant nearly nothing considering an average sorceress's extended life span and ability to change her appearance on a whim, there was no end to what one of The Mothers could do, but the night gown and overgrown hair had not rang true to what I imagined they would be like. I wrote gray girl underneath angry red and took my familiar’s advice. “The names from yesterday after my mother left.”
Sam repeated my words in his voice. “Zara Al Gareem. I was with a sorceress named Bess. I think both of them were Mothers.”
They were still fresh enough in my mind that I did not truly need Sam to tell them to me, but I needed to be thorough. The list I was making were the names of the nine terrifyingly powerful sorceress that were going to come for me, one by one, and punish me for what I had done in the manner they saw fit.
What had I done? The thought came and went from my mind before I could focus on the question.
Sam spoke each name when I finished adding the two newest entries. “Nami, Ola, Aster, Constance, angry red, gray girl, Zara Al Gareem, Bess.”
“That’s only eight,” I had counted on my fingers as he rumbled the names. “It is ‘The Circle of the Nine Mothers’, not ‘The Incomplete Circle of the Eight Mothers.”
“Your list is incomplete,” Sam answered, removing his paw from the page and turning to look over the brightening city. “I enjoy this view, my lady. Thank you.”
It had been months since my familiar had called me that, but I was too focused to give him shit for it. Had I heard or seen the missing name or Mother and just not known it? I brushed my hair back with my fingers, knowing I would not be satisfied until the list was complete. “Who is the ninth?”
“Autumn?” I heard my name being called from somewhere below.
Sam and I both moved to look over the edge. My mother waved up at us, wearing nothing but short white shorts and a tight long sleeve shirt that fit her like a second skin. “Good morning daughter! Well met Samsara. I went to the well house but did not find you there!”
I knew I had a bad habit of accidentally exposing myself to nearly everyone I met at one point or another, but my face burned with embarrassment when I saw what my mother was wearing. Even from the top of the manor, there was nothing but shades of pink left to the imagination. Every curve and crease of my mothers shape was on full display in the tight white clothes. I yelled at her. “What are you wearing!”
My mother looked down at herself before smiling back up at me. “Not very much I suppose! I should be careful to not let the guards see me or they will all be in need of my healing!”
“Mother!” I snapped, desperately searching the ground to make sure no one else had heard her.
“Come down and speak with me. I do not wish to wake the rest of the house by yelling back and forth.” She called me down.
Nami, Ola, Aster, Constance, angry red, gray girl, Zara Al Gareem, Bess. I took one last look at the list and closed the journal before making my way back down from the roof. Climbing back down was always easier. Even being as weak as I was, I only skinned one of my knees on the rough stones on the way down. A minute or six later, I met my mother where she stood in front of her towering wall of aura.
“Don’t look so embarrassed, little Delpha! No one has or will lay their eyes on me in this state of undress with the exception of you and Samsara.” My mother said, evidently noticing how hard I was trying to not look at her in the light of the new day.
I shuddered to think about what other curves and creases would be revealed under full sunlight.
“Why are you wearing that? What about your dresses? I like your dresses.” I muttered.
“The preparations for tonight's celebration require much from me. Tights such as these allow me to move without restriction.” She said, gesturing to herself.
Unrestricted movement or not, her eyes looked heavy and tired. I asked her about it. “Did you sleep last night?”
“Not enough. I will admit that I have learned just how out of shape I have become as of late,” She sighed through a sleepy smile. “But I will rest soon. The fourth night of Amoranora will be observed without the need for my power.”
“What is tonight?” I asked, wondering if I would fill out like my mother as I aged. I didn’t know if I wanted to. It seemed like a life that would be lived with a sore back, but Bool fancied her and Arthur had said that he found her attractive in much less direct words.
I couldn’t help but wonder what I would look like in tights like hers.
“I cannot tell you,my little Delpha, it would ruin the story when I tell it. That is why I wanted to speak with you, however. You may wear whatever you like, but you must not come to the garden empty handed.” She said, a mischievous grin turning up the corner of her mouth.
“Is there any garden left?” I asked, peeking behind her at the iridescent wall of aura.
Would It take me one hundred years to work my aura into something of that scale?
“In a certain manner of speaking, yes. You must come tonight with a story to tell. Any that you find compelling will do, but I ask you it not be Delpha and the Dragon. We all have heard it before.”
A story? Had some wayward soul told The Mother in Red a bedtime story so engrossing that she had fallen in love with him? There was no end to the stories I could tell, if I could remember them. I had an ethereal structure within my mind that was full to the brim with every manner of tale. “Am I the only one who is going to tell a story?”
My mother shook her head before planting a kiss on the top of my head and walking through the iridescent aura behind her. “You will have to wait and see. I must return to my work if I hope to finish in time.”
I didn’t care what I saw as long as my mother was covered the next time I saw her. Not a moment after she had disappeared into the garden that may or may not have still been there, My familiar spoke from beside me. “Come. I must hunt soon.”
At that, I followed him to the well house and brought my mind back to my work. Sam took up his spot on the bench and I lowered myself into the pool after undressing. “You said there was little that would wake you before it was your time, whatever that means, what is the little?”
“You have learned this lesson before. There is little I will not do if you ask it of me directly.” Sam answered as if I should have already known that.
“Of course.” I sighed, tipping my weight back and floating to the top of the pool. I may have moments where I missed the boarding house and how my life had been there, but damn if the warm water didn’t feel like comfort incarnate on my weak body.
Nami, Ola, Aster, Constance, angry red, gray girl, Zara Al Gareem. I began repeating the list in my mind. If I could keep them there while I slipped into The Well, I would be able to search out The Mother’s memories specifically.
Nami, Ola, Aster, Constance, angry red, gray girl. I closed my eyes. Something kept me from accepting that angry red had been The Red Mother in her shining armor and atop her rose fire lion. The two just wouldn’t merge in my mind.
Nami, Ola, Aster, Constance.
Nami. . .Ola. . . Aster. . .
I felt myself slip inwards as my mind entered The Well.
No circular room of strange black material, no finding myself standing in the near infinite library, no searching, only my hand resting gently atop a book bound in a purple so dark it was nearly black. It sat on a shelf whose height was even with my hips and if I did not know that I had been in the pool just a moment before, it would have felt like my hand had wandered over it as I was walking past.
A name appeared in my mind. Aster.
“It fucking worked!” I cheered. I snatched the book off the shelf with a smile on my face, almost not believing that something I had done had gone the way I intended it to. Just in case something had given me a little help and because I thought that expressing gratitude to the thing that lived at the bottom of the ethereal structure in my mind could only be a good thing, I called out into the seemingly endless library. “If that was you, you have my thanks!”
Too pleased with how I had found myself, I opened the purple book without bothering to go take a seat around the not real fireplace and felt myself be pulled into the memories of Mother Aster.
The door to my father’s study slammed open and he limped into the room. Half a dozen crossbow bolts jutted out of his back. Through the fingers of his hand that he held pressed against his stomach, blood splattered to the floor as he grunted. “We have been betrayed! They have breached the inner gates.”
Onward still, his face drained of color and gray like a corpse, he stumbled forward towards the back of the room where Ari stood. The smell of smoke from the ongoing siege blew into the room behind him and mixed with the iron scent of my father’s blood.
Mousecrop ran into the room a moment after, the hem of his long purple cloak soaked through with the blood my father must have shed on his mad dash to the study. He gave me a solemn but hurried nod when our eyes met. “Princess Aster.”
“Come here boy, come here!” My father shouted and pulled my brother by the arm into the middle of the room.
Ari did what he always did, looked sleepily around the room and stayed silent. He had been that way since he was a boy. If it required more from him than eating or relieving himself did, it was beyond his small limits.
“Father, you cannot do this. How can he be king when he cannot so much as bathe himself,” I pleaded, all too aware of the violent sounds of battle echoing ever closer through the castle. I loved Ari. Sometimes it felt like he was the only soul in all of chaos that understood me, but he was unfit for Selahmeire’s throne regardless of his blood. It was an ugly truth, but a truth nonetheless. “Pass the crown to me, father. I beg you.”
“Quiet! He will be King because he has you. He will be protected because of your talents. He will rule until the end of his long life and pass the crown to his son the way I am now and the way my father did before me. This is your duty, my daughter, in the name of The Night Queen. Swear to me on your power that you will ensure this.” My father wheezed. He lowered himself to his knee before my brother, the movement sending a pained scream from his throat and gush of blood onto the floor.
“I. . .” I began, my words falling short.
“Swear it!” My father snapped at me.
“Upon my name as Princess Aster of Hollowshade,” I felt my aura leaking through the bottom of my grieves, dark and heavy. “I will be my brother’s keeper.”
“Do it, Mousecrop. I will not live a moment longer.”
Mousecrop, my father’s most trusted advisor and one who I had spent long hours with during my time of grieving after my mother had passed, placed his fingers gently on the amethyst crown atop King Auger’s head.
“Under the eternal eyes of The Night Queen, I crown thee, King Ari of Hollowshade.” Mousecrop said, hands shaking as he transferred the circlet of jagged purple stone from my father to my brother.
As if it was all that kept him clinging to life, my father sagged to his left and fell onto the floor, a king no more.
King Ari did as he always did. He looked from me to Mousecrop and back again before stepping back into the corner my father had dragged him out of.
I felt more than I could handle, but with my aura casting a dark purple light over my father’s corpse and the sound of the final set of walls being pounded down by the soldiers that would leave us all as corpses, I could not let them rule me. “Mousecrop, quickly. There is a passage below the desk.”
Mousecrop reached into his purple cloak and revealed a crossbow that was already cocked with a bolt.
“You don’t mean to stand and fight? Even with my aura, there are simply too many of them.” I said, shocked by the man’s sudden courage.
Only a fool would have mistaken cowardice for courage the way I did.
Without a word, Mousecrop shot the crossbow and made me a fool.
The bolt pierced through King Ari’s head and pinned him against the bookcase like a hung coat.
The amethyst crown that had not been on my brother’s head long enough to settle into his thin hair fell to the ground and bounced somewhere out of sight.
Mousecrop dropped the crossbow to the floor next to my father’s body and a weary sigh came out of the man. “It is done. Oh, Princess Aster, it is done.”