Anna and I held hands until we turned the corner and found two of the guards waiting for us where the mouth of the garden should have been.

Bool and his counterpart, Schmidt, stood guard in the center of my mother’s iridescent wall. Two shoulder packs made of a sandy colored canvas sat at their feet. Anna and I’s names were sewn into the packs on the left and the right respectively.

“Shoulder your burden and enter the fold.” Schmidt said in a dramatic voice once we stopped in front of them. Just like they all did, he only looked at Anna when he spoke. Knowing my mother’s reasons for forbidding them from talking to me did nothing to make it any less annoying. If anything, it only made me want to bother them more.

“Do you know what that means?” Anna asked me.

“Not in the slightest. I would ask, but they are too scared to acknowledge me. I would hate to make one of them wet their pants out of fear.” I said, watching both of the men to see if I got a reaction. Bool kept his eyes forward, his face calm and unbothered.

Schmidt, the taller and younger of the two, looked just annoyed enough for me to notice. I had meant it as a joke, but I would remember how it affected him. Any strategy to force the men who had been charged with protecting Erosette from me into an interaction was valuable.

“Shoulder your burden and. . . I can’t do it, Bool. Who talks like that? Let’s just tell them.” Schmidt dropped his cryptic speaking and looked at his partner.

Bool shot him with a murderous glare and a harsh whisper. “This is for Lady Aubrey! You will do as she asked or I will report you to the captain!”

Schmidt sighed, giving a half hearted. “Shoulder your burden and enter the fold.”

“I think we are supposed to take these,” Anna said, picking up the packs and handing me the one with my name. She slipped her arms through the straps and settled the weight onto her shoulders. “Yours is heavier than mine.”

“I’m not carrying this fucking thing if I don’t know what’s in it.” I said. Holding the pack to my chest with one arm, I unbuckled the two buckles that held the top flap down and flipped it open. A band of my mother’s aura, like what she used to hold my hair back, was wrapped tightly around the cinched top of the bag. Pushing the bunched canvas down through the band, trying to wedge my finger underneath my mother’s aura, turning the damn thing over and shaking it, I tried everything I could think of to learn what was in the pack and found no purchase.

“Are we supposed to walk through here?” Anna asked, pointing at the section of iridescent wall between the two guards.

“Shoulder your burden and enter the fold.” Schmidt rolled his eyes and repeated, nodding his head in affirmation.

“Come on. I’m sure you’ll find out soon.” Anna said, stepping between the guards.

I was not happy about it, but I slung the pack over my shoulders anyways. “I want to know now.”

“Knowing your mom, it would probably ruin the story if you did.” Anna said, stepping through the wall of aura. It gave over to her shape as she went. The next instance, as if she were never there, it rejoined with itself and left me alone with the guards.

I followed her lead and took a step in. I don’t know why, but it was strange to me that I felt no sensation on the bare skin of my leg. I had always imagined that Anna had felt something, a tingle maybe, when my own colorless power had been sparkling on her lips.

Just before I took another step and plunged myself fully into the shimmering wall, the guards broke into a hushed argument.

Schmidt whispered to his partner. “She’s a Sorceress, Bool. She isn’t going to fall in love with you because you treat every word she says as law.”

“Do not sully my dedication to my duty!” Bool seethed

“She might,” I said, looking back over my shoulder. “Being given clothes is all it took for me.”

“You’re a little shit, you know that?” Schmidt snapped to me, the annoyance that had been on his face blooming beautifully.

Unless they were ones that I possessed, some questions were better left unanswered. So, I left him that way and followed after Anna. It took no time at all because as soon as I crossed through the wall, I ran straight into her back.

“How did she do this?” She said, her head turned up to the sky.

Where there had been nothing but the nightly cloudless dusk above us a moment before, Heavy clouds hung above us like trapped smoke. Every shade of gray, from ash to near black, coiled and roiled against a perfectly flat bottom.

I stepped forward, my bare feet squelching in the thick mud that covered the ground, and took in what my mother had done. A shadowy fissure split the ground to our left and ran as far back as I could see. Like scraps of paper that had been sent rising on the updraft of a hearth fire after burning away from their pages, uncountable shapes swirled out of the fissure and rose towards the dark cloud cover.

Without answering Anna, I walked forward until one of the shapes came dancing before me. Outlined in a inky black substance, like orange embers would paper, a small visage of a frozen snowscape swirled upwards in front of me. It did not burn away or crumble into ash. With every twist and turn, the inky outline rippled and grew larger, revealing more of the jagged wintery window.

Cold creeped through the thin fabric of my dress as it passed. I crossed my arms over my chest, hooking a thumb under the straps of my pack, trying to brace myself against the sudden chill.

How had she done this? I understood the garden maze she had created on the first night of Amoranora in principle. The rising platform and open ground of the previous night made less sense, but it was nothing compared to what had laid behind the walls of her aura.

An ugly feeling brought tension into my hands as I finally answered Anna. “I can’t even change the color of a pillow. I don’t understand how this is possible.”

“Are we even in the garden anymore?” Anna asked, reaching her hand up to one of the jagged little windows with a look of wonder on her face.

“We have to be. I am not allowed to leave the manor walls, remember?” I said. It wouldn’t have made me feel so weak if we had unknowingly walked through one of the black gates. My mother would never openly defy The Mother’s in that way. The only explanation was that she had used her power to transform the garden into the strange space and it had only taken her an afternoon.

It wasn’t that I was mad at her specifically, but the difference between what she and the sorceresses in the memories could do compared to my own pitiful power left a sour taste in my mouth.

“Are you still going to ask her to go down to the city?” Anna asked me.

Before I could answer her, a shout came from somewhere behind us. We both turned and saw Arthur sprinting towards us from much to far away considering the actual size of the garden.

“Why is he running like that?” Anna asked.

Arthur gained ground quickly with his long strides. Pointing at every one of the little winter windows he passed with a disjointed urgency. “Get down! It’s going to happen again.”

The tall man did not slow down, not even a little, as he reached us and drove us both to the muddy ground.

“What the fuck!” I yelled as my back hit the ground with a wet sounding slap.

“What is your problem? Get off me!” Anna shouted as her back hit my front and forced the breath from me.

Arthur dropped on top of his sister. The combined weight of the siblings pressing me further down into the mud reminded me of Sam’s much more gradual pressure that morning. I was powerless to do anything but be ground down further as Anna tried to fight her brother off of us.

“Shut up! Look!” Arthur grunted with a sharp nod to the sky. He reached down and dug his hands into the wet soil on either side of me.

From beneath the shroud of Anna’s dark hair, I saw that the spreading little winters were not aimlessly sailing into the clouds. They spewed out of the fissure in a fluttering dance, finding their place among one another above us. Faster and faster they came, each window growing larger and larger as they connected.

Howling wind rose from the fissure, drowning out every other sound. My hair and dress were blown upward and whipped violently as it felt like all of us would be lifted off the ground.

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Arthur stared down at me with his jaw clenched and the veins in his neck pressing out against his skin. He was holding us down, resisting the violent wind with nothing but the strength in his body.

Piece by piece, the little winters covered the dark clouds above. Just as Arthur’s grip slipped from the muddy ground, the final section snapped into place and the gray was blanketed completely by pure white.

For a half a moment, the frozen snowscape hung above us.

Then, it fell.

The harsh white curtain crashed to the ground in a violent avalanche. Swelling from its own impact, a silent wave of snow rushed towards us. Fear mixed with the tension that had built in my hands. I extended my right palm and focused my aura, sending a burst of my power through my channel just before the snow collided with us.

Impact. Darkness. A twinge of pain behind my navel. Cold so chilling and complete that I felt like my skin would crack if I moved crawled into my bones. The weight that held me down lessened and light returned as Arthur stood up and broke through the snow that had buried us.

Arthur pulled Anna off of me.

I took a much needed breath and the freezing hair stung my throat.

Both of the siblings grabbed me by an arm and hauled me out of the snow, holding me up until I found my balance. Once I insisted that I could indeed, stand, they let me go.

“You could have hurt her,” Anna said, shoving her brother in the middle of his chest. “But thank you.”

Arthur grinned, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “Lucky it was just snow this time. It rained so hard when I first got here that I almost drowned.”

“Does anybody know what we are supposed to be doing?” Anna asked, turning away from us and looking around the newly frozen space.

I could see their breath as they spoke. My bare feet had already begun to numb and my teeth were beginning to chatter.

The snow to our right began to shift and fall away as the shadowy fissure swallowed what had filled it. New shapes, much smaller than what had greeted Anna and I when we first crossed the threshold, began to rise towards the soft gray sky.

“There,” Anna said. “That looks like fire, right?”

I didn’t look. Shivering all the way, I high stepped through the snow until I could see what new visage the shapes contained. Flashes of jagged purple lightning arced across a black background in violent spread. Just like before, thousands of the little windows flowed up from the fissure and made their way to the sky.

Rain and snow was one thing, being caught in a lightning storm was not something I felt like doing.

“I think we need to leave.” I said to the siblings, feeling like the shapes were forming together much faster than before.

“What’s wrong?” Arthur asked me, adjusting the shoulder pack that was just like Anna and I’s on his shoulders. One of the little windows flashed by his face and his eyes went wide.

“Look, doesn’t that look like a cave?” Anna said. Arthur sprinted past her in the direction she was pointing, puffs of snow being thrown up as he went. “Where are you going?”

I followed Arthur’s lead, pushing Anna into movement as I spoke. “Lightning.”

“Is your mom trying to kill us?” She demanded.

“It’s my fault! She’s probably heart broken that I wasn’t serious about marrying her!” Arthur called back to us.

We ran beside the fissure, falling into the deep tracks Arthur was plowing into the snow in front of us. Under the quickly darkening sky, I was glad to find that Anna’s sight was sharp and true. Save for the flickering orange light that could be seen from within its mouth, the cave that was covered in the same snow it rose out of was well concealed.

The wind began to howl. The soft gray light dimmed to black and I held on to the back of Anna’s pack so I wouldn’t lose her. A final gust nearly knocked me off my feet just as the strange space fell silent once again.

Explosions of sound erupted. Wicked purple lightning impacted the ground around me, sending violent bursts of snow into the air.

Anna and I stumbled into the cave unable to do anything but try to catch our breath as we watched the lightning destroy the ground we had just crossed over.

“Did you ask her already? Is that why she is mad at us?” Anna panted out a joke, her hands on her knees.

“Ask me what? Why would I be mad with you?” My mother answered Anna’s question.

I turned away from the violet violence that flashed outside of our shelter and looked towards my mother. A large black pot hung over a roaring fire. Sat on the rocky ground around it where my mother and Ms. Lao. Arthur laid on his back, his cast off pack being used as a headrest.

“It was a joke,” Anna said, standing fully. She winked at me and then caught sight of Ms. Lao. “Ma? What are you doing out of bed? Did you go through that?”

There was heat in her voice that I knew came from a place of care and not of anger. After everything that had happened earlier that day, I knew I could not continue to let her suffer the way she was. When the time was right, I would use my favor to end it.

My mother waved to the floor around the pot. “I helped her out here and she did not argue with me about it. It was quite pleasant actually. Now, come sit, both of you. I am eager to start.”

The warmth that I could already feel filling the cave was too enticing for me to resist my mother’s command. Anna and I walked over and sat, letting our packs slide to the ground beside us. The fire was indeed warm, but when I went to rub the cold out of my toes with my fingers, there was no mud. I snuck a hand behind my back and brushed it against my dress. My fingers came away clean. There was no melting snow on me or the siblings despite the fact that we had been dusted with it not a handful of moments prior.

No trace of the elements we had all traveled through and against were left to be observed.

My mother, Idensyn Aubrey, had used her glamor create the illusion of it all. She made us see the fissure, the little windows, and the volatile weather. Not only that, but she had made each of us feel everything we had felt.

And I couldn’t even change the color of the pillow.

Fuck.

My mother was only my mother. The Mother’s were on a completely different magnitude.

And they were going to punish me.

Fuck.

“The third night of Amoranora, Dreamtongue’s night, is my favorite.” My mother began, bringing some of my attention out of my thoughts and back to her.

I leaned back onto my hands and Anna did the same, placing hers on top of mine. Glancing at her, she raised an eyebrow at me. With no words at all, I knew she was asking if I was alright. Was my face truly so easy for her to read? I flexed my hand under hers and nodded slightly in response, focusing on the story my mother was beginning to tell.

“For days and nights, The Mother in Red poured her soul into the Split, desperately trying to hold the tear in reality closed. Nearly burning away her soul and leaving herself Hollow, she collapsed and lost consciousness right on the very edge she had held closed for so long.” My mother said, but there was something in her words that was lacking.

“That’s what the big crack was outside, right? A split?” Arthur asked, still laying on the ground.

“Do not interrupt!” Ms. Lao snapped at her son

My mother continued. “When she woke, which came as a surprise to her because she did not think she would ever wake again, she was not dangling off the perilous edge where she had fallen. She was laying next to a big pot inside of a cave, just like we all are. There was a man-”

“Dreammouth!” Arthur blurted.

Ms. Lao reached over and flicked her son on the tip of his nose. “Do not interrupt!”

“There was a man, who introduced himself as Dreamtongue. Dark of skin and lean of body, the man had a speaking voice that could charm a dragon. Rich, articulate, and full of warmth, he explained to The Mother in Red how he had found her not a moment before the Split had swallowed her whole.” My mother’s eyes looked all too heavy. It was strange to see her sitting next to Ms. Lao and looking like the one who needed a rest.

She covered her mouth and stifled a yawn before continuing. “The Red Mother was weak and empty. So much so, that she could not even summon the strength to thank the man who had saved her life. Dreamtongue told her that he was the last of his people and had been alone for quite some time. He assured her that she could rest for as long as she needed. He would nourish her body with the stew from his pot and replenish her soul with the stories from his mind,” My mother took a long breath and stretched her arms above her head. “Dreamtongue was the last of a people known as Murmerers. When he spoke in his musical voice, visions of the tales he told would appear in the air and act out the stories.”

Arthur sat up suddenly, complaining. “Is that what we are doing tonight? We are just going to sit around and tell stories?”

“Arthur!” Ms. Lao snapped again.

“Shut up!” Anna followed her mother’s lead.

Truth be told, I was wondering the same thing. I did not blame him for asking.

With a small smile on her face, undoubtedly amused by the Lao’s, my mother continued. “Dreamtongue told The Mother in Red stories from the furthest reaches of chaos, painting the cave air with his visions and when she grew strong enough to eat, he fed her.”

There was none of her usual enthusiasm, no glimmer in her emerald eyes. From my earliest memories of her laying next to me on my small bed and telling me stories until I fell asleep, she always took care to tell the story. The way she spoke the story of The Mother in Red’s third lover, with no emphasis or adornment, made it very clear what was wrong with her.

My mother was exhausted.

“As her strength returned, both from the food and the sound of the man’s voice, she began to share her own stories. After three days and three nights, the two had formed a bond. One had needed to be cared for and the other had needed someone to care for.”

Anna squeezed my hand as the story ended, bringing the final words and thoughts of her together in my mind.

One had needed to be cared for and the other had needed someone to care for. I repeated in my mind. I think I agreed with my mother. Dreamtongue’s story was my favorite as well.

“So we are just telling stories?” Arthur asked again.

“No, dear. We are all going to cook a big pot of stew and then tell stories.” My mother corrected Arthur, pulling a pack just like mine out from behind herself.

Two realizations struck me.

I had forgotten to come up with a story and I had never cooked a single thing in my entire life.

Fuck.