Willow Nightshade was a young sorceress who lived in the village of Fernhollow, which was in the principality of Aralin. One of Willow’s ancestors was a Rain Fairy, and Willow possessed the ability to conjure thunderstorms.
Fairies were nature spirits, and all descendants of fairies had a natural talent for creating healing herbal potions and infusing them with their own magic. Their magic enhanced the healing properties of the materials they used in their potions.
Willow and her parents owned the Fernhollow Apothecary Shop, and their shop was well known for the herbal remedies they made.
One day, Willow’s parents were working in the shop, and it was Willow’s day off. Her mother, Andaria Nightshade, was working at the cash register, and her father, Garrison Nightshade, was sweeping the floor.
Two young men walked through the door of the shop, and they walked around for several minutes, looking at the potions that lined the shelves. Andaria decided to find out if they were looking for a particular remedy.
She walked down the aisle to where the young men were standing and asked, “Excuse me, may I help you?”
One of the men looked at her and asked, “Do you have medicine for acne?”
“We sure do! Follow me!” Andaria replied, smiling. The men followed her down another aisle. “Here it is!” Andaria took a bottle off the shelf and handed it to him. The label on it said “Bear Blood Acne Remedy.” Judging from the consistency of the red liquid inside the clear bottle, that was precisely what was in there.
The other man choked back vomit at the sight of the disgusting concoction. “I’ll take it,” the man who held the bottle said.
Andaria smiled and said, “Follow me. I’ll ring it up for you.” The two men followed her to the counter in the back of the store. “That will be ten Galdorians and sixty-five Ozerians,” Andaria said.
The man fished around in his pocket, dug out eleven Galdorians, and handed them to Andaria. She turned her back to the men, opened the cash register drawer, and started counting out the change. Garrison looked up from his sweeping and saw one of the men pour something out of a burlap sack onto the floor beside the cash register.
The other man poured a pile of salt on the countertop. Sometimes teenagers poured salt in front of the door of the shop because they thought it was funny to watch Andaria stand and count each and every grain of it. Fairies and their descendants had to count every grain of salt upon seeing a pile of it.
Garrison thought this was rude behavior. After all, these men were adults, not children. Garrison walked up to the men and said, “You two need to clean up this mess.” Andaria looked up from counting the change, and her eyes were suddenly transfixed on the little pile of salt. “Andaria, don’t count the grains!”
She was so transfixed by the pile of salt that she did not hear him. She picked a grain out of it and said, “One.” She picked out another grain. “Two.”
Garrison felt anger welling up in him. Suddenly, one of the men whirled around and flashed a badge that read, “Ethermoorian Police Force.” Garrison’s head began spinning. “You and your wife are under arrest for practicing magic.”
Salt. One of the methods the government uses to catch magical people, Garrison thought. “What do you mean?” he asked, his mind reeling with terror.
The man grinned and said, “We have been watching this shop for a while. We bought a bottle of toenail fungus remover, and no matter how hard we tried to recreate the remedy according to the ingredients listed on the bottle, which were dry leaves, tree bark, cherry juice, and bird feathers, we could not do it. The government has now created a formula that can detect fairy magic. We tested your toenail fungus remover with it, and it tested positive for magic.”
Undercover cops in my shop! Garrison wondered who was working in the government and knew about the consistency of magic. He didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t think Andaria knew what it was either.
He saw the other officer grab Andaria’s arm and pull out a pair of iron handcuffs. She was engrossed in counting the salt grains and did not appear to be aware of what he was doing to her. Garrison grabbed the man and yanked a dagger out of his holster.
An elderly woman ran up behind the officer, held a can over his head, shook it, and doused him in purple powder. He collapsed on the ground, unconscious.
The other officer grabbed the hilt of his sword and prepared to rip it out of his sword belt. The woman reached over the counter and doused him in the powder. He collapsed on the ground behind the counter.
“There. Now you don’t have to be arrested for murder as well. They will be out for a good eight hours,” the woman said to Garrison, smiling.
“Thank you!” he said gratefully to the woman.
She put the cap back on the canister and handed it to him. “Take it. You need it more than I do right now. It’s sleeping powder. The effects last for eight hours, and it would have made the sorceress who created it very happy to know it was protecting a magical person.”
“Twenty-six, twenty-seven,” Andaria mumbled, utterly oblivious to what was happening around her. Garrison walked behind the counter, grabbed her, and yanked her out from behind the counter. She screamed as she was pulled over the salt pile as if being unable to count it was a painful experience for her. “What did you do that for?” she spat at her husband.
The elderly woman took off her cloak and laid it over the salt line so that Andaria wouldn’t see it.
Andaria blinked, slowly coming out of her salt-induced stupor. Garrison leaned his face close to hers. “Andaria, listen to me. These men are police officers who were trying to have you arrested for magic.” He bent over, picked up the guard’s hand that was still holding his badge, and showed it to Andaria. All the blood drained from her face, and it turned ghostly white.
“Oh!” she gasped. She stumbled a few steps backward.
“We have to get out of here!” Garrison said.
“We need to do something with these two men so they don’t wake up in your shop,” the elderly woman reminded Garrison.
Andaria said, “Let’s take them out the back door and put them in the filthy puddle I saw this morning as I was coming in to work.”
Garrison chuckled. He locked the shop’s front door to prevent customers from coming in and seeing the scene. Andaria unlocked the back door, which opened to a small alleyway between their shop and another building. She, Garrison, and the elderly woman lifted one of the men off the ground. “Thank you so much for helping us. What is your name?” Andaria asked.
“My name is Cecilia. My granddaughter, Celestia, was a Sea Sorceress,” the woman said.
“Was?”
“Yes. Celestia’s mother was a mermaid, and her father was a human. Celestia was murdered two weeks ago.” Cecilia’s face turned serious. “You have to be very careful. The police threatened me if I spoke about her death!”
Andaria, Garrison, and Cecilia dragged the body out the back door and laid it in the filthiest puddle in the back alley. It was full of food scraps that had blown out of the trash bin behind the restaurant on the other side of the alleyway.
“What did you mean by saying that the police threatened you?” Andaria asked.
“Let’s get the other body out here, and I’ll tell you.”
They dragged the second body outside and laid it next to the other man. Andaria smiled, thinking about how those officers might react upon waking and finding themselves lying in a puddle full of rotten food. The two women and Garrison walked back inside the shop and shut the door.
Cecilia lowered her voice and said, “The police threatened to have the witnesses who saw the murderers break into my granddaughter’s house arrested if they told anyone about what they really saw!”
She took a deep breath and continued. “A family friend stopped by my granddaughter’s apothecary shop and saw that it was closed, which he thought was odd because it was open every day. He came and told me that the shop was closed and wanted to know if she was okay. We went to her house to check on her, and that’s when I saw her.” A faraway look came over Cecilia’s face.
“Was she the apothecary in Seaside who passed away?” Andaria asked.
A wild expression suddenly came over Cecilia’s face. “Yes! And don’t you believe what they said in the paper about her having a heart attack! When I told the police about how I found my granddaughter’s body, they told me they would arrest me if I said anything to anyone about the expression I saw on her face. Now, when was the last time you heard of threatening the families of heart attack victims?”
“Well, never,” Andaria replied.
“The next day, the story the police made up about Celestia dying from a heart attack was on the front page of the paper. Some people who were walking down her street the night she died went to her next-door neighbors and told them what they’d seen. They said they saw three ghosts float into her house! Her neighbors contacted me, and I met with them and the people who saw the creatures. All of us went to the police and told them what the witnesses had seen, and the police threatened to have all of us arrested if any of us said anything about the ghosts!”
Cecilia leaned in and said, “I think the police made up the heart attack story for the paper to try to keep people from asking questions about her death.”
“How did you find out about our shop?” Andaria asked.
“Don’t you advertise in the Seaside Sunrise?”
“Well, yes, we do.”
“That’s how I found out about your store.”
Garrison saw a customer try to open the shop door.
Cecilia said, “You really must get out of here for the time being. I’m sure there are more officers around.”
Garrison walked to the shop door and flipped the sign around from the side that said “Open” to the other side that said “Closed.” The customer looked upset and walked away. Andaria felt terrible about having to close the family business. It had been in her family for 140 years and had never been closed for more than a week from time to time due to either illness or a family vacation.
“Thank you for all your help,” Garrison said.
“Yes, thank you!” Andaria chimed in.
Cecilia said, “You’re welcome. It’s the least I can do. Oh, and there’s one other thing. There were some other people—they called themselves Knowledge Sorcerers, and they found me about a week ago. They wanted to talk to me about my granddaughter’s death. I was too afraid to tell them much for fear that they were government agents. They told me there was a place where I would be protected called the Pyraxia Library.”
“Really? Where is it?” Andaria asked, interested. After all, they were desperate to be safe from the government.
“It’s in the Celexia Mountain Range.”
“Did they give you directions to it?”
Cecilia pulled a notebook out of her purse and showed them the directions and map that had been given to her. Andaria walked into her office and returned with a piece of paper and a quill pen.
The directions read, Here is the way to the Pyraxia Library and the Pyraxia Vault, which are both located in the Celexia Mountain Range. Look for these two rock formations. Snow covers both of the doorways. To melt the snow away from the door, stick your hand in the snow and say, “Florida.” The snow will melt away, revealing a door. The second magic word to say to open the door is “Please.” Use these words when opening both the door to the vault and the door to the library.
Andaria wrote the directions down on the paper. She copied the map that Celestia had drawn from Seaside to the Celexia Mountain Range, along with the rock formations she was supposed to look for when she arrived there. Then, Andaria folded the paper up and put it in her pocket.
“Would you like to come with us to the library?” Andaria asked.
Garrison turned to Andaria and asked, “Is that where we are going to try to hide? How do you know that those people who claimed they were sorcerers were being honest?”
“Well, where else do we have to go?”
“I wish I could go with you, but I must stay behind and protect my granddaughter’s magical materials from the government,” Cecilia said.
They all walked out the back door. Andaria felt very sad as she shut the door to her shop for what could be the last time.
“Hopefully we will see each other again sometime,” Cecilia said.
“We will be sure to come to Seaside and look for you when we return,” Andaria replied.
Cecilia walked down the alleyway. Andaria and Garrison walked in the opposite direction.
Willow Nightshade was spending her day off work tending her garden, which was where she grew the ingredients she used in her potions. She was a young woman with long, curly brown hair and brown eyes.
Willow heard footsteps, looked up from her plants, and saw her parents walking toward her.
“Willow, we have to leave town immediately. Go pack a change of clothes,” Andaria said.
“Why?” Willow asked.
“The police found out that you and your mother are sorceresses,” Garrison said. Willow felt light-headed, and the world began spinning around her. “They came into the shop and tried to arrest her. We’ll explain the rest to you later.”
Willow hurried upstairs and shoved a dress in a bag. She thought about what items she might miss if the family was unable to return to Fernhollow. Willow opened a drawer and pulled out two ancient books. One was a journal written by her fairy ancestor, a Rain Fairy named Raven Rosenthorn, when she lived in the realm of Kalmovar during the banishment. This journal was about life in Ethermoor and was passed down through her mother’s family from generation to generation so that they wouldn’t forget about their fairy ancestry.
The other book was a journal written by her great-great-grandmother Esther Carlsen after she accidentally stumbled through an inter-dimensional portal from the realm of Kalmovar to Ethermoor. Esther had always carried her ancestor’s journal with her in her purse, and that was how Raven’s journal returned to Ethermoor.
She and her husband had been walking down the street in a city called New York. They rounded a corner and suddenly found themselves standing in a forest in Ethermoor. The journal Esther had written was about her life in a country called the United States of America, which was in the realm of Kalmovar. She wrote it to pass down to future generations so that they would know what life in Kalmovar was like.
Willow also packed a gold-plated and jewel-studded conch shell in her bag.
The way she received the conch shell was the strangest thing that Willow had ever experienced. A dolphin jumped out of the water, holding the shell in its mouth. It then tossed the shell up into the air and swatted it into her boat with its tail. The dolphin disappeared underneath the surface of the water. Willow looked for the dolphin again but did not find it. She took the shell home that day, and it had been sitting on a shelf in her room ever since. Willow felt a sort of odd connection to it, like it was given to her for safekeeping.
Willow shoved it into the bag along with the other items. She pulled her sword belt out of her closet, strapped it around her waist, and walked downstairs and out to the pasture. Her horse, Starfire, galloped up to the gate, excited to see her owner. Starfire was a beautiful horse with a bright white coat.
“Hey, girl, we’re going for a ride,” Willow said. The horse bobbed its head up and down in excitement. Willow opened the gate and walked Starfire out. She saddled her, and the two walked to the front of the house where Garrison and Andaria were already sitting on their horses, waiting for Willow. They trotted away from Willow’s home and headed toward town.
Willow felt a stab of sadness as she watched her house disappear in the distance. She had purchased it when she was twenty with her own money she made from working at the shop.
The family walked through the village toward the city gate. As they passed a coffee shop, Willow suddenly was overcome with the sensation that they were being watched. She looked backward and saw two men looking at them.
Willow lowered her voice and said, “Let’s go faster.”
“We can’t just gallop through a crowd!” Andaria hissed.
As they trotted along, the feeling grew stronger and stronger. Willow glanced backward and saw the same two men looking in a bookshop window. “I think we are being followed,” Willow whispered to her mother.
“Are you sure?” Andaria asked.
Willow looked behind them, and the two men had disappeared. Perhaps in her terror-induced state, she had imagined that the men were following them. After all, the bookshop wasn’t very far from the coffee shop. Maybe they were just two men stopping at the bookshop after drinking coffee.
She tried to shake the feeling that they were being watched, but couldn’t. As Willow, Andaria, and Garrison rode through the village gate, Willow felt tears welling up in her eyes. She knew it might be the last time she would ever see her hometown. As soon as the village was out of sight, Willow heard horses galloping behind them.
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She turned around and saw seven men wearing Ethermoorian Police uniforms galloping after them.
“Run!” Willow screamed. She and her parents took off galloping through the forest. Andaria held her hand up and prepared to throw a lightning bolt at them. Garrison uncapped the can of purple powder and held it in his left hand. He yanked his sword out of his sword belt with his right hand and prepared to swing it at the officers. He swung the can of sleeping dust high into the air, engulfing one of the policemen in the dust.
The man and his horse fell over on the ground, unconscious. Willow saw one of the men gallop up beside her. She held up her sword in her right hand and prepared to strike him. She felt her electricity tingling in her fingertips and raised her left hand to throw a lightning bolt.As she was preparing to throw a bolt, black dust rained down all around her. She suddenly felt so weak that she fell to the ground. Iron dust! she thought. Showering someone in iron dust was another method the government used to try to catch fairies and sorcerers.
She tried to stand up, but she was so weak that she slumped right back down on the ground. She saw her mother topple off her horse, and heard the sounds of swords clashing. “Don’t you hurt them!” she heard her father scream.
“You know what the penalty is for practicing magic!” one of the officers roared.
To Willow’s horror, she heard the sound of a sword tearing through human flesh. She saw her father’s body slump to the ground, and blood gushed forth from the stab wound. “Father!” she said weakly. She heard the horses scream in terror. Willow saw Starfire rear up on her hind legs and kick at some of the attackers with her front hooves.
She felt something sharp pierce her skin, and everything went dark.
Halvor was working in the palace that evening. An owl suddenly flew up to the window and sat on the ledge. A letter was tied to his talon. Halvor was slightly unnerved that Mango Mail service could actually find him in his study. He untied the letter from the owl’s talon. Halvor saw a rat running along the floor of his study. He caught it by the tail and handed it to the owl. The owl took the rat in its beak and flew away. Halvor opened the letter.
It read:
Dear Palace Alchemist,
My name is Maxamillian Sanderson. I am a police officer in the Ethermoorian Police Force. Today we arrested two sorceresses who were practicing magic in the town of Fernhollow. Two magic books and a strange map to a place called the Pyraxia Library were found with one of the prisoners at the time of her arrest.
Sincerely,
Officer Maxamillian Sanderson
Excitement flooded Halvor. He had been searching for a map to the fabled Pyraxia Library for many years, and now, one had been found.
Halvor walked into the police station in the city of Beshear. He held up his palace clearance badge to show the guards standing outside the jail that he was an employee of the king, there on official business.
“Right this way, sir,” one of the guards said. He was aware that a letter had been sent to the palace alchemist about the arrest of sorceresses. A perplexed look came over the guard’s face. He knew that it was at least a week-long journey to the palace on horseback, and the letter had only been sent earlier that evening.
The guard led Halvor into a room. Halvor saw a brown bag sitting on a table. He grinned wildly upon seeing the map lying beside the bag.
“Sir, my name is Maxamillian. I am the one who sent you the letter. We have jailed the suspected sorceress from Fernhollow, along with her daughter,” one of the men in the room said as he shook hands with Halvor.
“Good, good!” Halvor replied.
“These were the things we found with her when we had her arrested,” Maxamillian said, gesturing to the bag and map.
“I will take all these things with me. His Majesty will see to it that they are destroyed.”
He picked up the bag and stuffed the map inside. When he arrived back in his study, he wrote down all the directions to the library and then drew the map for himself to keep, and handed the items and the map over to King Banderon.
Willow slowly opened her eyes and gradually became aware that she was lying on a cold, hard stone floor. A plate of food and a cup of liquid sat on the floor next to her. Willow looked around and saw that she was all alone in a jail cell, and her bag of books and clothes was not with her. Light streamed in through a small window near the ceiling. Her left hand was handcuffed to one of the cell bars.
“Ah, you’re awake!” a man’s voice said.
Willow looked up and saw a guard standing outside the cell, looking at her. “Eat up. You’ve been unconscious since yesterday,” he said.
Willow looked up and down the cell block and noticed that she was the only inmate there. “Where are my parents?” she asked.
“Your mother has been taken in for questioning, and your father, well, he did not cooperate with the law.” A sick smile stretched across the guard’s face. Rage flooded Willow. She jumped off the ground and lunged toward the guard, but she was yanked backward by the handcuffs.
She raised her arm in the air to try to shoot electricity out of her fingertips at the guard, but she discovered that she did not feel any electricity traveling from her brain to her hands.
He roared with laughter. “Oh, you won’t be able to do any magic for a while. You were injected with liquid iron. Don’t worry, it will wear off in a day or so if you are allowed to live that long.”
“Why did you give me food if I’m going to be killed anyway?” Willow asked.
“Because you should at least be comfortable while you await your trial.”
A sense of resolve and determination welled up inside Willow. If I am going to die young, I will die a hero!
“I am not going to be ashamed of who I am or what I did for a living! I created cures for deadly diseases that no fully human doctor could cure, and I saved lives!” Willow spat. She hoped that she could soften the guard’s heart somewhat.
He shrugged his shoulders and said, “It’s not me you have to convince. It’s the jury and the judge. Your mother is being questioned about her crimes as we speak. Now, eat your meal and be ready when the police come to question you.”
The man walked away, leaving Willow alone with the plate of food. She was so hungry that she would eat anything at that moment. She shoved her spoon into the pile of green beans and put it into her mouth. They were cold and slimy, and Willow wondered how long the plate had been sitting there before she woke up. She reminded herself that prisoners were not exactly fed gourmet dinners. Willow cringed as she chewed the cold green beans and the slimy meat that, judging from the taste of it, had already started to rot.
Willow wished desperately that she could turn into a cloud, find her mother, and escape from the prison. She heard a door open and saw her mother being led down the hall by a prison guard. He opened the door to the cell next to Willow’s and locked her inside.
“Come on, your turn,” the guard said as he opened Willow’s cell door.
He put an iron handcuff around Willow’s free hand before unlocking her other hand from the cuff that bound her to the cell bars. He led her down the hallway, and they stopped in front of another door. Another guard opened the door, and the two walked through it.
They entered a tiny dark room that was only lit by a few candelabras hanging on the wall and two oil lamps sitting on a desk. The desk was covered with papers. Drawings of people and clippings from the obituary sections of various newspapers stared up at the ceiling. A handsome young man with black hair and black eyes stood behind the desk. He appeared to be preoccupied with the pieces of paper he held in his hands. The young man looked up and smiled at Willow.
“Ah, Willow! Come, sit down!” he said, pointing at two chairs that sat in front of his desk. Willow hated him for speaking to her so cheerfully when she was about to be sentenced to death. The guard led Willow to one of the chairs, and she sat down. “My name is Riordan, and I will be questioning you about your involvement in the potions business.”
Willow filled with fury.
“Your mother told me your name. You are Willow Nightshade,” the man continued.
“Yes,” Willow replied.
“Do you know why you were arrested?”
“Yes, and I will plead guilty to practicing magic!” Willow said with audible determination in her voice.
“Well, that’s very brave of you to want to plead guilty to a crime punishable by death,” Riordan replied.
Willow heard an air of admiration in his voice, which she thought was very odd.
Riordan took a deep breath. “However, that’s not what I want to talk to you about right now. Do any of these people look familiar to you?” he asked, waving his hand over the desk.
“No, and even if they did, I wouldn’t tell you!” Willow replied defiantly. One of the drawings caught her eye. It was one of a young woman with long black hair. As she looked at it, an image of her gold-plated conch shell flashed in her mind. That seashell was probably now in the hands of people who wished to kill her.
“You don’t know anything about these people or how they died?” Riordan asked.
“No, I’ve never seen any of them before in my life. Aren’t those obituaries there?” Willow replied, pointing to the newspaper clippings. She started to wonder if the man was even going to question her about her profession.
“Yes, they are. I’m asking you about these people because they were magical apothecaries like you. They died under strange circumstances,” Riordan said.
What does any of this have to do with me? Willow thought.
“I don’t know any other magical people besides my mother. How do you know they were sorceresses and sorcerers?” Willow asked.
“We have our ways,” Riordan responded.
“Like the ways that you have for finding out if people like my mother and I are sorceresses?” Willow spat. Her body trembled as rage filled her veins. Riordan’s mouth dropped open as if he realized he had touched a nerve with Willow.
“Just one last question, and then I will let you go back to your cell,” he said. “Have you seen any ghost-like creatures around your town?”
This was certainly not a question Willow had expected to be asked, and she had never seen such a creature. “No, what are you talking about?”
Riordan began organizing the papers on the desk. “Well, it looks like I’m done here,” he said. He behaved as if he didn’t want to answer Willow’s question. The guard unlocked the handcuffs from her chair and led her back to her cell. He locked her wrist to the bars again, locked the cage door, and sat down in a chair across from Willow’s cell.
Andaria leaned close to the bars of her own cell and hissed, “What did he ask you?”
Willow replied, “He asked me if I knew about any unusual deaths of other apothecaries.” She noticed that the guard’s head was bobbing up and down as if he was struggling to stay awake. He looked oddly oblivious to everything they were saying to each other.
“There was one in Seaside just a few weeks ago,” Andaria replied.
The guard lost his battle to stay awake, and he fell asleep. Willow started to look around the cell for something she could use to pry the lock open. “How do you know that?”
Suddenly, the cell block door opened, and Riordan walked inside. Andaria and Willow immediately got quiet. He stopped in front of the guard and shook his shoulder, but the guard did not move. “Hello?” he asked. Still, the guard did not respond. Riordan smiled. “All right, you two are going to be free.”
“What?” Willow gasped, shocked.
“Shhh! No time to explain!” he hissed. He took a small brown bottle out of his pocket and uncorked it. He reached through the bars of Willow’s cell door and dumped the jar’s contents on Willow’s head. She was suddenly covered in a pink power that smelled like strawberries, buttercream cake frosting, blueberries, and cinnamon. She felt herself shrinking, and she shrunk down so small that the cracks in the floor were suddenly as big as little hills. Willow saw Riordan reach into Andaria’s cage and dump the odd powder on her head too.
Willow felt two new appendages grow on her back and she felt herself growing several new legs. What’s happening to me? she wondered. She grew extremely nervous, and the two new appendages began flapping so hard that she lifted right off the ground. Willow saw a large blue butterfly sitting on the floor in the cell where her mother had been sitting just seconds earlier. Willow was struck with the realization that she, too, had been transformed into a butterfly.
“Go! Fly out that window there! It’s the least I can do to help you! The powder will wear off in an hour!” Riordan said, gesturing to the window in Willow’s cell.
Willow tried to thank him, but when she tried to open her mouth, she discovered that she did not even have a mouth, just a proboscis like a butterfly. Willow and Andaria flew out of the window and high above the surrounding city. She recognized it as being the city of Beshear, which was the capital city of the principality of Aralin. The family went there on occasion to sell their potions at festivals.
Willow tried to talk to her mother, but was quickly reminded that she didn’t have a mouth. She discovered that butterflies communicated using their flight patterns. Willow and Andaria looked for the road that led from Beshear to Fernhollow, which they knew was a long two-day walk.
They didn’t make it very far out of the village before the butterfly powder began to wear off. Willow and Andaria landed on the ground and transformed back into their human selves.
“Well, that was . . . an experience,” Willow said.
“They took our bags!” Andaria commented. She stuck her hand in her pocket and discovered that the paper that had the library’s name on it was also gone. “Gosh, I wrote the name of that library on that paper! What was it?”
“What paper and what library?” Willow asked.
“There was a woman who happened to be in the shop when the police arrived. She told me her granddaughter was a Sea Sorceress who was killed by ghost-like creatures.” Andaria’s eyes widened. “Riordan asked me if I had seen any ghost-like creatures around town. He also asked me if I knew about the deaths of other apothecaries, and I connected the two. I didn’t say anything to him because I thought he was an officer like all the rest.”
“What was the woman’s name?”
“Her name was Cecilia. She lived in Seaside, and she told me that her granddaughter was killed by ghost-like creatures a few weeks ago. She also told us about a library that someone told her would be safe to go to. I wrote down the name of it and drew a map to it, but I think the officers took it when they arrested us.”
Willow remembered that her father had told her they would explain the situation that occurred in the shop. “Father said you two would tell me about the confrontation with the police after I got dressed.”
Andaria’s face suddenly became very stern. She put her hand on Willow’s shoulder and said, “Yes, Willow, there is something extremely important that I must tell you. The men who came in the shop told us that the government has invented a formula that can detect magic in our potions.”
“What?” Willow gasped.
“Shhh! You don’t know who’s listening!” Andaria hissed. She looked around just to make sure there was no one else around. “Yes, we must be extra careful now! Let’s try to find our way back to the road to Fernhollow.”
Willow tried to turn into a cloud and fly back, but because some of the iron was still in her body, she could not. They found the road and followed it, but stayed hidden among the trees in case they had to dodge out of sight. That evening, their supper consisted of berries they picked in the forest. They walked until nightfall. Willow and her mother cried themselves to sleep, thinking about her father.
Willow was awakened by the sound of feet walking around them in the middle of the forest. She held her breath, and her heart throbbed in fear. Willow could feel that her magic had started returning to her, and she felt much stronger than she had during the day. She heard a man’s voice say, “Yeah, that guard Vernon fell asleep, and they escaped.”
Police! Willow thought, suddenly wide awake. She felt a strange liquid coating her arm. Oh no! Please don’t let that be blood! Please don’t let that be blood!
It was time for her to get revenge on those who had killed her father. She lay still and looked upward. They were surrounded by men carrying torches. Willow recognized every one of their faces as the men who had arrested them.
She seethed with anger, and much to her relief, she felt her arms tingle with electricity. The iron had worn off. Willow hopped to her feet, startling the policemen. She threw a bolt of lightning out in front of her, striking one of them in the chest. The police were so caught off guard this time that they ran in all directions. Willow filled herself with hot air and floated off the ground. She willed her hands to light up brightly with electricity to light her way.
Willow flew after each of them, and she felt intense delight throwing a lightning bolt at the man who had stabbed her father. Relief flooded her as she watched him slump to the ground in a burning, electrocuted heap. She darted after each of the officers and threw a bolt of lightning at every one of them. “You won’t be telling your king about this!” she hollered into the night.
None of them survived Willow’s vengeance. She filled herself with cold air and floated to the ground. Willow lit up both of her hands and examined each body to make sure that all the people who had destroyed her life were really dead. All the bodies had lightning burns on them, and seeing all their corpses lying lifeless on the ground gave her the sick satisfaction of knowing they had not survived and would never harm another person again.
Willow walked back to where her mother lay. In the light of her hand, she saw they had slit her mother’s throat. Willow collapsed on the ground in a heap, sobbing. She waited until morning, built a funeral pyre, and cremated her mother. She scattered her ashes in a nearby creek.
Willow turned into a cloud and floated back to Fernhollow. She turned back into her human form and walked up to the front door. Then, she realized that her house key was in her bag, which had been stolen by the Ethermoorian Police. She remembered that she had a spare key in Starfire’s stable. Willow walked up to the fence and climbed over it. The gate key had also been in her bag.
As soon as she landed on the other side, she heard a soft whinnying sound. She looked up and saw a white horse trotting through the trees alongside the back of the fence. It was holding her bag around its neck. Willow couldn’t believe her eyes. “Starfire!” she screamed excitedly.
She always knew Starfire was a unique horse. She’d known from the moment she saw Starfire as a little foal when she was six years old that there was something unusual about her.
The man who gave Starfire to her was selling horses for outrageous prices at the village Friday Night Market. Willow remembered the instant connection she’d felt when she’d looked into Starfire’s eyes. When the man saw how well Willow and Starfire connected with each other, he gave her the little foal for free. Willow never saw him again.
She took the bag from Starfire and searched through it. Everything that Willow had packed was still there. She threw her arms around her horse’s neck and said, “Thanks, Starfire!”
She remembered her mother telling her about the visitor to the shop who said her granddaughter was a Sea Sorceress.
I have to go find Cecilia in the morning, Willow thought. It was nearing nightfall, and she was exhausted and ready to sleep in her own bed. Willow opened her bag and saw her keys laying in the bottom of it. She was thrilled to see the conch shell and her ancestors’ books in there just as she had left them. The books were her mother’s most valued possessions, and Willow didn’t know what she would do without them. Andaria had passed them down to Willow on her twenty-first birthday.
Willow rode Starfire around inside the fence until dark. She ate supper by the light of a candle in her kitchen. She wondered if either of her ancestors’ books had anything about a library for sorcerers written in them. Willow opened her fairy ancestor’s journal. She very carefully poured over the fragile old pages but saw nothing written about a library.
Then, two pages that apparently had been stuck together every other time she had read the journal came unstuck. A folded-up piece of paper fell out onto the ground. The pages opened up to a drawing of a castle.
The words on the page read, “This is the castle of Zadelia, the fairy queen. This is where she hid the spell to summon a fairy from Faemoor, the fairy world. Recite it to break the magic banishment spell at a time when it is safe for magic to return to Ethermoor. The spell is carved into an altar in the room where she performed all her magical rituals. When someone recites the spell, there will be an explosion in the air that will be heard throughout the realm of Valfariel. A bright light will shoot across the sky. That is how you know that magic has returned.”
Wait, Queen Zadelia left a spell to bring magic back into the realm? Willow thought, intrigued by the new information she was reading.
Willow opened the piece of paper and discovered that it was a map of the interior of the castle. Sorcerers used to summon fairy helpers to help them with their magic. She wondered if the spell could summon a fairy who could bring her parents back from the Dead Realms. She decided that she would try to find the castle after she found Cecilia.
Willow woke up the next morning after a fitful night’s sleep of sobbing and restlessness. She saddled Starfire and rode away from Fernhollow. When she arrived in Seaside, she asked some of the villagers for directions to the old apothecary shop, and they told her where it was.
She rode Starfire up to the shop window and saw darkness inside. All the shelves were empty, and Willow felt a stab of regret for never knowing the other sorceress existed. Most sorcerers and sorceresses only met by chance because they were scared that organizing as a group could lead to their discovery by the government.
A sign that read, “Shanty Shack Apothecary Shop,” hung above the window. There was a hair salon next door to the former shop. Willow decided to go inside and ask the people who worked there if they knew anything about Cecilia’s whereabouts. She walked inside and saw three women cutting people’s hair. Another woman stood at a counter, reading a book. Willow walked up to her and asked, “Excuse me, but do you know where the grandmother of the woman who owned the Shanty Shack Apothecary lives? Her name is Cecilia.”
The woman looked up from her book and spat, “Who wants to know?” Willow was taken aback by the woman’s reaction. She did not want to let it slip that she was a sorceress. “Well, she gave my mother the name of a library that she wanted her to go to, and my mother has forgotten it.”
The woman put her book down and walked out from behind the desk. She stuck her forefinger in Willow’s face. “Look, with the way government officials and the police have been hovering around here lately, I’m not giving strangers any directions to people’s houses! I’ve never seen you in this town before!”
Willow admired the woman’s resolve to protect her city. Everyone else in the salon suddenly eyed Willow with suspicion. She knew all too well what being watched by the government was like, and decided not to press the matter any further. “Thank you,” Willow said. She turned and walked out of the shop.
She tried asking for directions to Cecilia’s house at other shops, but she got the exact same response. No one wanted to give a stranger directions to someone’s home.
Willow decided to cast a tracking spell to find Cecilia. She walked out to the forest where she hoped no one would see her perform magic. She held her left hand out in front of her. With her right hand, she pinched the pendant of the bracelet that she had put on that morning.
This was the bracelet she always wore on days she thought she might need to cast a tracking spell. It was an ordinary bracelet with a dragonfly pendant that was so small that onlookers would not notice if it were pointing in a specific direction.
She pinched the small dragonfly and said, “Earth and wind, come together to guide this little dragonfly pendant to the residence of Cecilia, the grandmother of the Sea Sorceress who owned the Shanty Shack Apothecary.” Willow tried to be as specific as possible about which Cecilia she wanted to find since she didn’t know Cecilia’s last name. The pendant glowed as it absorbed Willow’s magic.
The little dragonfly jutted forward, tugging on the bracelet. Willow followed the bracelet as it led her through the village streets. She lost count of the number of times she passed Shanty Shack Apothecary, and realized that she was going around in circles. She knew this only meant one thing. Either Cecilia or someone else had cast a spell of protection around Cecilia’s home so that no one could discover her home by using magic. Willow felt a pang of sadness and fear, knowing that if she could not find Cecilia, she would probably never find the way to the rumored safe haven for sorcerers and sorceresses.