Willow was physically better by the end of the day. Her eardrums had been regrown, her concussion healed, and the doctor who’d been called in to do the procedure paid off to overlook her… stranger attributes. When Leopold took her home she should’ve been fine. She should’ve felt fine. She should’ve been alright.

She wasn’t. Willow couldn’t stop crying. Leopold held her close as he slowly directed her toward the house on Grave street. When they entered, the energy in the place immediately changed. Benny started crying—he was obviously scared at why Willow was such a wreck—and Margaret took him into another room to calm him down. Bryan sat at the table with Leopold and Willow as Leopold told him what happened.

“Dead,” Bryan repeated, and looked Willow over. His eyes stopped at her pendant and he pointed.

“Any chance that’s the reason we still have our Willow with us?”

“No,” Willow managed to choke out. “It’s not… it doesn’t work like that. I never really understood… Now I’ll never know.”

Leopold held her closer as a fresh wave of sobs wracked her body. Bryan smoothed his fingers over his forehead.

“I saw the plume from the wall. I never thought… I didn’t even think Willow would’ve been there. It was right on the edge of campus, by the inner wall.”

“That’s where he took her to train,” Leopold said. “I think he always knew something like this might happen.”

Carl stared, fear making his eyes wide, as he pointed into the nullification rings. He shouted at her to release the essence, to cast the spell. She pointed into the rings…

Willow couldn’t breathe. She clawed at her overcoat, still gritty with stone dust, and tore at the fastenings. Her tongue was too big for her mouth, her eyes were bugging out. She had to get air.

“Get her coat,” Bryan said, and moved around the table until he was eye to eye with her. Leopold worked the fastenings, sometimes pushing Willow’s hands aside as he unclipped each. Bryan took her face and stared into her eyes.

“You’re not there anymore,” Bryan said, and leaned his forehead against hers. “You’re here. You’re right here.”

“Can’t…” Willow gasped, and Leopold finally got her overcoat off. Willow began tearing at her blouse.

“Air…”

“You can breathe,” Bryan said, holding her face steady in front of his own. “Breathe now, Willow. Breathe with me. In… Out…”

“Move your essence with your breath,” Carl said. “In… Out…”

Willow shrieked and tried to push Bryan away. Her arms and hands spasmed as, for the first time in weeks, her psychokinetic spells tried to reassert control over her limbs. She cried out in pain and Leopold grabbed her arms.

“Her muscles are like worms,” Leopold grunted as she struggled against him.

“Lay her out on the table,” Bryan said. “She’s going to hurt herself.”

Willow screamed as she was picked effortlessly from the bench and stretched across the cluttered tabletop. Plates clattered and mugs overturned, but Leopold held her arms and Bryan held her legs. She tried kicking and turning, but the pain in her limbs kept her from putting her all into it. The wooden-beamed ceiling waved back and forth in her vision, and as the seconds passed something about the dark wood soothed her.

It wasn’t the light stone of the Arcanum. It wasn’t the vaulted ceiling of the training room.

Willow’s breaths drew shallower and she stopped struggling. She whimpered now, her legs severely bruised and her arms twitching with her momentary loss of control. The ceiling blurred and her eyes filled with tears again.

Gods, would she ever stop crying.

And that’s when she really let it out. The shock, the pain, not just physical but emotional. The knowledge that she’d been the one to kill Carl, that it was all her fault. She sobbed on her back on the tabletop. Leopold moved over and cradled the top of her head with his hand. Bryan let go of her legs and just sat at the far end of the table. She cried for what felt like hours, too exhausted to move.

At some point she must’ve fallen asleep because she woke up in her room to the view of a loose constellation of magelights against the ceiling. She didn’t want to look at them—she turned over, gingerly moving her wracked limbs, and tried to sleep.

If only Carl would stop haunting her dreams.

🜛

The next morning she slowly got up, feeling like she’d been hit by an oxcart, and used a broom from the kitchen to knock the magelights down from the ceiling. There was a wrapped plate on the table for her—she’d slept through breakfast—but she didn’t touch it. She swept the magelights out through the front door and cast them into the sky where they slowly floated away on invisible currents.

Using her cane, she hobbled alone through the twisting streets of Durum toward the shining top of the hill. She didn’t know where Leopold was and she couldn’t think about him. Not right now. What did he think of her?

It only took a few minutes at the admissions office to take care of business, but she was surprised that when she left, she didn’t feel any better. Still the lump of rock in her stomach wouldn’t lighten. She felt queasy with hunger and made her way all the way back down to the house by the wall.

She was eating her cold leftovers when Leopold walked in. He sat down beside her and they didn’t say a word as she finished up her plate.

“I looked everywhere for you,” he whispered, and she could sense a quivering rage beneath his voice. Worry for her, wasted.

“I was at the Arcanum,” she said.

“I thought you’d found out about… the funeral.”

Willow’s breath hitched. “He was buried? Already?”

“He didn’t have any family in the city,” Leopold said. “There was nobody to hold vigil over him.”

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

“I would’ve done it,” Willow said, but she knew that it was a lie. She was in no state to hold vigil over the body of her professor.

“What were you doing at the Arcanum,” he asked. Willow smiled mirthlessly and felt the swell of despair rise up to her throat. Saying it would make it true.

“I withdrew,” she said, and ignored Leopold’s open-mouthed look of shock.

“You…,” he said, uncomprehending. “You withdrew? From his class?”

He knew what she meant, he just didn’t want to believe it.

“From the Arcanum,” Willow said.

“But… but why? Why would you do that? You fought so hard to get in, to stay in! You almost died on the caravan—”

“I wish I had,” Willow whispered to her empty plate. “If I had then Carl would still be alive.”

“And you’d be dead,” Leopold said. “Maybe I’m prejudiced, but I’d take you over him any day.”

“You must be,” Willow said. “Look at me. I’m worthless. I was never anything more than a sick girl who wanted to run away from home.”

Leopold grabbed her arm, shook it, and it didn’t hurt like it would have weeks ago.

“What about this,” he said. “What about everything you’ve learned. About yourself? About what you can do?”

“What I can do,” Willow spat. “What can I do?”

“You’re incredible. You’ve done things—”

“I killed Carl,” Willow screamed. Her clay plate broke and Leopold’s eyes went to it. Her hands hadn’t been anywhere near it. Willow looked too.

“Look at this,” she said, and held up the two pieces, fitting them together. “Look at me. I can only destroy.”

“That’s not true,” Leopold pleaded. “Carl forced you into it. You didn’t want to be a battle mage, you want to build. Remember? You want to build walls and houses. You told me. You could build a house all by yourself with your power. You could raise a city wall.”

“No,” Willow said, and separated the halves of the plate. “I’m too dangerous. I brought this on myself.”

“No you didn’t. Carl—”

“I was the reason for the deathworm attack,” Willow interrupted. “He told me. The worm probably thought I was a magical creature. That’s why it attacked the caravan that night. Because of me.”

“Because of you we were all saved,” Leopold said. Willow felt sick.

“I want you to leave,” she said, tears blurring her vision. “Please just leave.”

Leopold spent a long time watching her, then got up quietly and walked to the door. A stray thought caused Willow to cry out.

“Wait! That spell I gave you, give it back. It’s dangerous.”

Leopold opened the door and looked out.

“They’re still floating up there, you know,” he said. “Geoff’s going to be pissed.”

“You’re not carrying it on you, are you,” Willow asked. She felt so stupid, why did she ever give him something like that.

“You gave it to me,” he said. “It’s mine.” He shut the door, and then she was truly alone.

🜛

Willow went to the forestry guild located two streets over from the gate into the city later that day. She asked for a job, then begged for one. The man directing the hauling of stripped logs onto long carts sighed heavily and looked her over. She knew what he saw: her wasted body, even her arms were much thinner than they should be.

He walked into the guild hall and emerged with an ax slung over his shoulder and pointed at a three foot section of log. He told her that if she could split the log in ten strikes, she could have a job. It had the feeling of an impossible task, especially for her.

Willow hefted the ax in her hands. It was heavy, the iron head weighed almost as much as the wooden handle. Her hands could grip it, but her arms could barely support its weight. What was she doing?

Willow closed her eyes and breathed.

“In…,” Carl said.

Her eyes snapped open. No, she wouldn’t let him come back. Not here.

The large man watched her, waiting not impatiently. He seemed to sense that she was running, and whatever kindness was in his heart made him stay for the certain result of the task.

She couldn’t go back home, not now. Her parents would take her—of course they would—but they shouldn’t. She was a murderer. And she was dangerous. If she’d attracted a deathworm before, what else might come after her now? Would her village be in danger?

The haft of the ax was smooth from years of use, polished by hands rougher and stronger than hers. She ran her thumb along the wood and felt it, through her skin, but in another way as well. Slightly familiar, it was the way she’d used to feel the world through her hands.

Essence induction.

She let the feeling spread… and she knew the ax. Inch by inch she became it, spreading down to the bulbous foot of the handle up to the head where the wood was split. She sensed another foreign slice of wood embedded at the tip, and felt the pressure that the split was putting on the ax-head. Her awareness spread to the iron, along the edge. She felt gouges from a file running across the face of the blade.

“You need to be strong to do this sort of work,” the man said as Willow really felt the ax for the first time. “Maybe the sewing houses would be a better fit—”

In a single, fluid motion Willow appeared to raise the ax above her head and bring it crashing down into the segment of log, splitting it through and ringing the ax-head against the paving stone of the street. The man stood aghast, staring at what he thought he’d seen.

But that’s not what happened. Willow raised the ax itself, her arms going along for the ride. She brought it down like an extension of her body, like an extra joint, and it passed through the log like it was made of spun candy.

As she retrieved the ax she bent the edge of the blade back from where she’d rolled it on the stone and handed it back to the burly man. It was like losing a limb to release the ax, but she did it anyway.

If she couldn’t be normal, she could at least act the part.

He drew up a contract and signed her with the guild as an apprentice, a shocked look on his face all the while. He’d be her master, as his own apprentice had recently passed to journeyman. She suspected he just didn’t believe what he’d seen and didn’t want his mistake to be discovered by another when she couldn’t recreate her stunt out in the field.

Her first trip out past the walls was the next morning, and she didn’t get any advanced pay to put together an outfit for the trip. But she had a year’s tuition of gold still to her name, and enough time before sunset to find a place to stay.

She retrieved her cane from the drainpipe she’d hidden it behind and began stalking toward the worker housing her new master had mentioned.

🜛

Willow didn’t have much to move from the house on Grave street, but she stayed until Bryan got home that night to tell them both she was leaving. They took it well, better than she was expecting, and didn’t try to convince her out of it. Bryan asked her master’s name and she gave it, although she wondered why. He nodded in approval.

“He’ll treat you right,” Bryan said, but there was a little bit of threat in the statement, although not toward her. Margaret came around the table and embraced her.

“We love you Willow,” she said. “Nothing else matters. You’ll always be family to us.”

Nothing else matters. It was the worst thing she could have said, because it was a lie. She only thought that because she didn’t know the woman she was embracing was a murderer. She didn’t know what Willow really was, what she’d always been deep down and had allowed herself to be molded into.

But if it was such a lie, then why was she crying?

Benny didn’t understand, and he bawled at the frission in the room. Margaret took him away and left Bryan and Willow to say their goodbyes.

“You know where we are,” Bryan said. “If you need anything—”

“Thanks,” Willow said, and smiled. “It feels like I’m going away, but I’ll just be five streets over.”

He smiled. “I’ve grown used to you, I guess. Will Leopold be staying with you?”

Willow’s mood soured and she looked at her feet. “I don’t think so. I don’t think he can… stand the sight of me.”

Bryan gripped her upper arm and she looked into his face.

“That’s not true. And the sooner you realize that, the better you’ll feel.”

She nodded, even though he didn’t know what he was talking about. It seemed like such a waste to argue with him on the eve of her departure. He hugged her gently and she tried to wrap her arms around his broad back, but failed.

When she left the house, she could see only a single one of the pale magelights still hovering nearby over the roofs.