“There.” Squirl chittered into my ear, camouflaged underneath my chestnut hair.

“Where?” I whispered back, searching the forest floor for where “there” could be without slowing down. The destructive sound of my pursuer wrecking her way through the trees and underbrush behind me grew louder.

Four little claws wrapped around my chin and I let my tiny familiar turn my head towards a massive tree. “Here.”

Behind a thick tangle of thorns and brambles, a dark hollow sat nestled between the thick roots of the tree that looked just wide enough for me to slip through. I dropped to my hands and knees and pushed myself backwards through the prickling blind, thankful I had chosen to wear pants.

A strand of my hair caught on a thorn and tugged against my scalp. I leaned forward to untangle it, but two little hands reached up and did the job for me.

“Quiet,” Squirl insisted as the heels of my boots pressed against the back of the hollow. The thorns and brambles sprung back the moment I tucked my head out of the light and into the dark space.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. I tried to slow my breathing, to not let my exhaustion overtake my need to stay silent, but listening to my familiar was more difficult than it seemed.

“Sweat.” Squirl chittered.

“What?” I whispered back.

Sharp and jolting, the sound of a fallen limb cracking under a sudden weight came from much to close and I flinched.

A single drop of sweat rolled down my nose, dripped off its tip, and pattered onto the dry leaves underneath me.

“Down.” Squirl’s small weight left my shoulder and tugged me towards the ground by my collar. I flattened against the forest floor, the top half of me spilling out and landing on the underbrush with hundreds of little pricks of pain spreading across my upper body. The soil and roots underneath me shifted as the trunk of the tree was torn from its base in a tearing roar.

I looked up, shielding Squirl and my head from the rain of splinters and wood dust, just in time to see the tree thrown back through the air like a twig being cleared from a foot trail.

A savage laugh followed the distant impact of the torn tree crashing through the limbs of the forest and I pushed myself away from my pursuer.

“I’ve got you now, Bea.” Jesnah loomed over me, her dark brown aura bristling around her wrists like the bear fur on her collar.

“Dirt.” Squirl chittered, tapping my right arm.

I closed my fist and threw a palm full of the ripped up soil at Jesnah. She smacked it back down before it could pepper her face and it exploded into a dusty cloud between us.

Squirl scampered over the back of my neck and pulled my hair to the right. “Roll.”

I listened, rolling to the right over the exposed roots of the destroyed tree just as Jesnah’s hand pierced the cloud of dust and stabbed through the ground where my head had been a moment before.

“Stand.” Said Squirl.

I jumped to my feet as fast as I could on the uneven ground without losing my balance.

“Duck.” Said Squirl.

I ducked.

Two violent swipes from Jesnah tore through the air, leaving claw marks made of her dark brown aura glowing above me.

“Draw. Channel. Jump.” Said Squirl in quick succession.

“You have. . .” I began, trying to follow my familiar's foresight, but the shock at Squirl saying more than one command was too much for me to process. I drew my aura, but before I could bring it to my channel or shape a working, pressure closed around my left wrist and I was pulled up off the ground like a plucked carrot.

The dust settled as Jesnah raised me up until we were eye to eye. She wore a savage smile and as the aura around her wrists crumpled off her tan skin, she chuckled. “Seeing the future or not, I told you that the little squirrel wouldn’t be enough.”

She lowered me to the ground and let me go, pulling her furry hood off her head and running her hands through her hair. I reached into my own hair, where Squirl preferred to stay, and scratched my familiar on top of its little head. “Not yet, but if we keep this up, you won’t be able to find me. It gave me three words, there at the end. If I hadn't panicked, you wouldn’t have caught me.”

Jesnah lifted my hair and looked at my familiar. “I’ll take that bet. You ready to go again?”

I was, but before I could tell her, the feeling of scratching my familiar’s little head faded. Jesnah and her wild smile seemed to grow further and further away from me as the forest fell away from my sight.

I fell.

With a violent flinch, like I had been nodding my way into an accidental nap and my head had lost its balance, I left Bea’s memory and came back to myself still in The Well.

Flames that only existed within my mind burned inside the fireplace that was set into the curved wall in front of me. An uncountable amount of books, each containing the memories of a different sorceress, sat on the shelves behind the high backed chair I sat in. A near infinite number of semicircle rooms that were identical to the one I had come back to myself in, except the memories they contained, rose above and sank below me by way of trimetal ladders.

“Why am I still here?” I called out. Once I had learned that there was something at the bottom of ethereal structure in my mind, it had become difficult to resist trying to communicate with it.

Unsurprisingly, I received no answer.

A book lay across my lap. It was not the one I had pulled off the shelf and sat down with. Bea’s book binding had been a light brown, the same color as the soil in the forest from her memory had been. The book that rested on my legs was sea green and when I passed my hand over its blank cover, a name appeared in my mind.

Zara Al Gareem.

“Was this you,” I called out again, truly not expecting an answer. “This would all be much less confusing if you talked with me again.”

Even more unsurprisingly than the first time, I received no answer.

“I don’t bite,” I muttered, lifting the book onto its spine. “That’s not true,” I said, remembering that I had bitten somewhere before. The memory of how it had felt to sink my teeth into the sorcerer’s throat made me shiver and I resettled myself in the large chair, pushing that rabbit hole of thoughts away. “I did bite someone. Maybe you know that though, since you were there. But, I had a very good reason!”

No answer.

I sighed and let Zara’s book fall open, placing my hand on the empty pages that showed themselves to me.

I would spend the rest of my life in a self imposed nightmare of willingly walking into crowds of strangers and talking to each one as I passed if it meant I would never have to see another Gatekeeper.

As soon as Bess and I stepped through the black gate and into the forest of ancient trees, four Gatekeepers slithered out from behind the surrounding trees. Enshrouded in heavy cloaks made of scraps of tattered black fabric, they moved fluidly towards the gate with the sound of shaking chains.

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They were necessary, not even The Mother’s could do what they did with the strange dark material and traveling through chaos without the gates would be a near impossibility.

Not willing to turn my back to them, I walked backwards beside Bess, watching them swarm the portal like flies to a beached whale carcass “Don’t they just make your skin crawl?”

“Hush now, Ladies shouldn’t speak that way. Everyone makes your skin crawl.” Bess said. The back of her sandals kicking up fallen needles that were still green and just as long as her legs were, she walked forward, oblivious to the unsettling presence of the strangers behind us.

Were they even people? No one I had thought to ask had given me a straight answer. “You don’t make my skin crawl.”

“If you don’t pick any fights while we’re here, I can think of a few ways I can,” Bess flirted back. She raised an arm and waved big, calling out in her constantly cheery voice. “Hello!”

“Hello!” A voice boomed back from somewhere in front of her and somewhere behind me.

Still walking backwards and much more importantly, keeping my eyes on the Gatekeepers, I followed the sound of my partner's sandals clopping against the soles of her feet as she walked. They finished with the gate and slithered into a tight knit circle, starting in with their nonsense whistling. They would remain that way until we returned, so I finally turned around and took up beside Bess properly.

The Maire of Wellindale and what looked like every other citizen of the city that held any kind of sway, down to an overly friendly blacksmith, met us at the cliffside. Any blacksmith that interacted with people in grander gestures and longer sentences than silent nods and wordless grunts was either an imposter or no good at their craft. The Maire favored his left leg just enough for me to know that if things became hostile, I could take him out if I targeted his right. The rest of the citizens of Wellindale that had gathered on the cliff overlooking their descendant city seemed to be just that, townsfolk that had come to meet the Sorceresses that had been sent to help them with the needs that proved to be out of their reach. The talkative blacksmith, if he was a blacksmith, would be the biggest threat.

None of them turned out to be threats at all. Bess’s earnest demeanor and more than likely her good looks had kept the crowd's disappointment from turning into anything more serious and suited to my set of skills.

While she acted as the diplomat, I peered down over the cliff side to see where we had been sent.

The mountain we stood on stretched out and around, forming a loose circle that dropped hundreds of feet down to a tightly packed city that was cut in sections by a grid of water ways. Two rivers, one to my left and the other in front of me, spilled over the mountain tops in the distance and fell down to the city below.

“Seven hours.” I heard Bess repeat, none of her pleasant demeanor diminished by the furrowing faces of the crowd around her.

“We have been requesting aid for five months, and all The Mothers can spare is seven hours?” The Maire grumbled over the chorus of complaints coming from the crowd of citizens behind him.

Bess looked up to the sky and smiled. “It’s closer to six and half now, so we should all make the most of it.”

You’re lucky it’s not seven minutes. I snapped at the maire in my mind, but I kept it inside. Things tended to go much smoother when I let my partner do the talking. On our first outing together, I couldn’t bring myself to call them missions yet, I had been a stiff breeze away from running through an entire company of Enclave spearmen. Bess had walked over and had them all apologizing to me one after another like they had genuinely felt sorry for trampling my lunch.

I had not been in anything more than an argument since then. Granted, that had kept me out of trouble, but I wasn’t good for the more nuanced needs that were expected of me like my partner was.

“That sounds like a good job for you doesn’t it, Zara?” Bess smiled back at me without turning her back on the maire and his crowd. Her long braid, the light in her golden eyes, her wide brimmed straw hat and sandals, she could have been caught in a seastorm and still been the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

“What’s that?” I asked in return, not realizing I had lost track of the conversation.

“Something has blocked their waterfall, off to the east.” Bess pointed.

“Away from people and not in the city?” I asked.

“Yes.” Bess nodded.

“That does sound like my kind of work.” I answered, tipping my sensible and practical cap at my partner

“You jest, surely? I’ve sent dozens of Wellindale’s finest men to clear that river and let our water wheels turn again. The three who returned have been petrified! Too stricken with fear to speak! She’s little more than a girl.” The Maire blurted.

“We will see if you are still saying that in six and a quarter hours. Right, Zara?” Bess waved him off and hurried the crowd of people onto a lift that had risen to the cliff by way of two groups of men far down below us. She stepped on and I watched as they began to be lowered down. “I’ll go see to their wounded and meet you over there when I’m done.”

“Right. Six and a quarter.” I answered her and watched her go for longer than I should have. Eventually I found the strength to turn myself away and began my trek around the rim overlooking Wellindale to find what was blocking the river.

Later, approximately one and three quarter hours after we had stepped through the black gate, I found what had left the city’s water wheels unturned. A towering wall of fallen tree trunks, packed tight with mud and branches, reduced the river to a trickle that disappeared into the muddy ground before it could make it ten yards. A single one of the hundreds of timbers that formed the dam stood wider than I could wrap my arms around. I was disappointed, they weren’t quite big enough to scare me into silence like I had expected.

I spun my aura into life within me and pulled it from my middle, shaping a sphere of seagreen and sticking into the tacky mud between two of the timbers. “My kind of work.”

Whistling as I went, two and a half hours into the seven we had been allotted, I heard the clopping of Bess’s sandals coming up the riverbed behind me. She whistled with me, carrying the same simple tune that had sprung out of me when I had started working.

“I know I say this every time, but I love your color,” Bess said when she came up behind me. “It’s like the water in Calanizzina, right?”

“Only in the summer.” I said, happy that she had remembered. I placed my last sphere at the top of the dam and slid down the long timber to the muddy ground. Bess looked up at my work, having picked up a basket from somewhere during hers. From her feet, all the way up to the hem of her sundress, she was splattered with mud and looked all the happier for it.

“It’s a shame Constance isn’t here. She is the best at stuff like this.” She said, licking her thumb and wiping at my cheek.

“We don’t need Constance.” I said, taking her by her hand and leading her out of the riverbed. Pulling her along behind me, I hoped she hadn’t seen the anger in my eyes when she had said what she said. I knew she hadn’t meant anything by it and I had a habit of making something out of nothing, but it was a sore spot that I had not managed to heal.

“Slow down, I only meant that she is good with wood. It’s kind of her thing.” Bess said as I brought us up a small hill that overlooked the dam. We reached the top and I let her go, gesturing for her to sit. A small lake of stopped river water flooded the forest of massive trees behind the dam. I lowered myself onto my heels and pressed my hands together in front of my navel.

“Zara.” Bess said, placing a hand on my back.

“I’ve got it,” I insisted, pulling a small sphere of my aura out of my middle and harnessing it within my hands. Keeping my mind focused on the feeling of my partner's touch, I pulled against the tension of the small sphere, my hands shaking from the resistance. Light, the color of the moon shimmering over the green waters of Calanizzina, emanated from between my hands. The dozens of spheres I had stuck to the damn shone with the same brilliance. “See?”

“It’s so pretty!” Bess cheered.

I clapped my hands over the sphere between them and the dam broke in bursts of my seagreen destruction. Shattering timbers, a rain of displaced mud, and the remnants of my aura were thrown into a wave as the lake of water found its natural path and rushed towards the cliffside that was just out of sight.

Falling back onto my ass beside Bess, I looked up to the sky, a tired smile on my face. “None of them could do that.”

“I’m glad you know that,” She said, placing the basket between us. “And if what you taught me is right, we’ve still got four hours to sit here and eat the lunch I brought us.”

She rubbed my back with her hand and I kept my face turned to the sun. Somewhere in that warm little moment, I felt myself slip gently away from the hilltop. The sound of the rushing river quieted before dying down completely.

I fell away from Bess and into nothing.

The next moment, I opened my eyes to the eternal dusk of the well house.

Sam followed my awakening with his first question. “What is your name?”

I answered and the warm feeling I had left Zara with felt so nice, I answered his second without complaint.

“Who was Autumn Aubrey?” Sam asked his final question.

“Zara Al Gareem. I was with a sorceress named Bess. I think both of them were Mothers.” I told my familiar. When there was a free moment, away from prying eyes or open ears, I would test Sam’s memory of my memories. If Zara and Bess had been what I thought they were, and the names I had left in Sam’s care were still there, I would be close to knowing the full set.

“Night has fallen. The others await you in the garden.” Sam said, scratching at the pink marble door for me to let him out.

“Where are you in such a hurry to go?” I asked, standing up in the pool and stretching my arms above my head.

“I must sleep. It will not be delayed any longer.” My familiar answered, swapping paws.

I pushed myself out of the water and dripped over to the door, opening it for the blue cat at my feet. “Stay out of my room.”

Sam slipped out of the well house and padded towards the manor with a low and resounding. “No.”