A faint light filtered from the crack between the door and the pavement.

"Does your ladyships see? Something worryfying is comesing to happens in ladyshipse's chamberoom," quavered one of the three minuscule figures partially hidden behind the corner of the corridor.

Clelia took a deep breath. It was time, after all, for her to keep her end of the bargain: she did promise the lutin her protection as a noble fairy in exchange for their service. Plus, she did have an idea of what might be causing the phenomenon. There was something she had been putting off for way too long. She opened the door to her study and, right as she did so, the light seemed to suddenly disappear.

"Halt, you scoundrel," hissed a tiny, haughty voice, "identify yourself and prostrate in fear!"

Horatius was right in the middle of the room, his tiny body coiled in a defensive position. Next to him was the bag with the mysterious spells she had found some days prior, the one she had tasked the little snake to keep guard on.

"It's just me, as usual," she reassured him. "What's happening? I saw a strange light coming from here, and even the lutin are getting nervous. Why is the bag outside the closet?"

The snake flicked his tongue. "Something grabbed it and unceremoniously dropped it there, where you can see it."

"What do you mean 'something'? Didn't you see it? Weren't you supposed to keep guard?"

He uncoiled a little to make his head stand taller. "Do not doubt my amazing powers of perception! If anything so much as drew breath inside this room I would have sensed it. Nothing alive came in here during your absence."

"Still, how did you not see anything?"

"I was resting my weary scales inside of the bag when it happened."

"What about the light I saw? It only disappeared when I opened the door, and you were already out of the bag by then."

"I did see something, but let me share a secret with you. I am, indeed, much mightier than humans, my abilities far exceed them in every field, including perception. I can sense things much better than them indeed. That being the case, my eyesight isn't well suited for things that are too tall compared with me. I only saw… something like a white blanket, with gold streaks. Before I could fully make out its shape, you came in and it disappeared."

The content of the bag was still in perfect order, and there didn't seem to be any sign of any of the weaves inside missing. Clelia sent a small "tide" ripple, trying to check for any echoes that might signal the presence of anything out of place, but the only echoes she received were those made by the presence of Horatius, by the lutin in the corridor, and by the shrine of the Lares beneath her.

Clelia shook her head. It was finally time, wasn't it? She had seriously been putting it off, but now she could no longer ignore it. She had to dedicate some time to examine all those spells; definitely to know what they all did, but possibly to try and deduce their origin too.

"For aeons have I guarded upon these…"

"It's not been aeons, only a few days."

"Far longer than you should have left me alone, in any case. What took so long for you to get back to me and these?"

She awkwardly grinned. "Sorry, I've been… busy?"

Horatius raised a brow. Well, that would have been quite the astounding feat if he had, given that snakes don't have brow muscles to allow that, but nonetheless he did stare back at Clelia in a way that she had no choice but to interpret as raising a brow in diffidence.

"Alright, alright. I have been busy for real, but I could have made time to do this if I wanted to."

"Then, why didn't you?"

Her eyes wandered away from the snake and into the content of the bag. "This bag, these spells… they were without a doubt made by someone from my family. Nobody from my family would have just freely given away a high quality spell, let alone multiple, without some kind of ulterior motive. Not to anyone, and especially not to me."

She knelt next to the bag and started pulling the cloths out one by one. "Having used the illusion I found here, I can tell just how good a spell it was. If I had made it… well, first of all i couldn't have used it on myself, but even if I could it probably wouldn't have lasted as long and…"

"Why wouldn't you have been able to use it on yourself?" Interrupted Horatius.

"That's one of the two fundamental rules of fairy magic," Clelia explained. "A fairy spell cannot be used on the fairy who crafted it, regardless of who actually casts it. I can cast on myself a spell made by another fairy just fine, but a spell crafted by myself cannot be used on me by anyone."

"Intriguing. And what's the second rule?"

Arranging the cloths in ordered piles around her, she responded, "A fairy cannot reverse or undo the spell crafted by another fairy after it has been cast. At best, she can add to it or, to a degree, change it, but never annul it outright."

When she was done pulling all the spells out, about two dozen colourful cloths sat on the ground around her. She began by the two smaller ones, which, fully unfolded, weren't much bigger than a common handkerchief. They had geometric motifs in golden and silvery threads over plain blue and violet respectively. They were similar in complexity to her own light spells, but even by touching them she could feel that the bond between the weave and the magic was so much cleaner and tighter than anything she had ever managed to produce. The magic in them was as vibrant as the beautiful colours of the threads that composed them.

Both the design and the technique of the weave suggested that they were older than she thought. Decades, no, centuries older than she had originally assessed. A sigh of relief escaped her body.

"You seem reassured," hissed Horatius. "Was it something you discovered or just the awareness of my mighty presence at your side that caused it?"

"These," she showed the fabrics with an eager smile, "are old. Really old. No fairy alive today is old enough to have been around when these spells were created."

"So?"

"So they couldn't have been made by one of my sisters, for one. More importantly, it couldn't have been my mother either."

"Despite my magnificent intellect, I fail to see how that is cause for relief."

As she spoke, she examined the next spell in the pile. "I went along with the whole marriage thing specifically because I saw it as a way to get away from them. If any of them had been the one to leave this bag to me, I would have reason for concern, because none of them would do something helpful to me without strings attached."

"Even if these spells weren't made by one of them, couldn't one of them be responsible for letting you have them?"

Was it even wise to answer all these questions? At the end of the day, Horatius was a creation of Madame Guillardine, who, even if she was currently an ally, she still knew very little about.

Still, it seemed to her like he was an independent actor, so she saw no harm in responding. "It's certainly possible, but I don't think it's likely. My sisters wouldn't have anything to do with something this old, they have no respect for antiquity. And my mother is too proud to rely on someone else's spells to carry out one of her schemes."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"So, who do you think could be responsible?"

"If it wasn't my family, the only possible answer would be someone from the servitude, which is to say the only other people with access to the castle aside from my family." Every time she was done with one spell, she carefully folded it and placed it orderly in another pile. "Unlike my family, I had a good relationship with the servitude, so, if any of them is responsible for giving me these, then I'd be more inclined to trust it as a helpful gesture."

She was almost done, only the two biggest of the weaves remained to examine. These were as big as tapestries when fully unfolded, and had magnificent images embroidered in them. They were orders of magnitude more complex than anything she had ever produced, it would probably take months to make even one of them. As her fingertips softly brushed on the silky surface of the first one, the magic within it trembled, almost like a cat purring lazily.

It depicted something resembling a faerie festival, much like the spring festival she had participated to years ago. It had several groups of figures dancing, some were small like lutin, and gnomes, and elves, some were much bigger, like ogres and giants, and in the middle of them all stood two fairies, one dressed in blue and the other in pink. A small man with bird wings knelt before them, his hands joined as if in prayer or begging. It was an extremely complex spell, she wasn't even sure of what it could possibly do. Some of the other spells she had examined were curses, some were boons, several were made for utility and comfort, but that one she wasn't able to evaluate. It felt too big to be real. The cloth it was made from was big, but the spell itself was immense, she was barely able to even picture its scale.

Then, there was the final one. It was prevalently black. There were only three grey zones: two comparatively brighter ones in the upper corners, and one dull oval one in the middle of its base. Inside the latter, a small white figure lay curled up in a ball. It felt like a huge tower loomed over the tiny speck of white, so tall that only its base fit inside the picture, and the two brighter areas in the corners were the grey sky surrounding such tower. On closer inspection, threads of white streaked the blackness, as thin as spiderwebs, but so spaced out that, even with her glasses on, Clelia barely managed to see them. The picture was foreboding, but not nearly as much as the magic trapped inside it. As her fingers ran across it, rather than purring, the energy embedded in it screeched through her bones and into her head. When her hand reached the small white figure, a vibrating silence hit her like the surface of a lake does when diving in.

Like sparse drops of rain frozen in time, thin lines of sparkling grey fell from the grey sky, streaking the blackness around her. An immense tower loomed over her, bathed in shadows. There was no doubt about it, that was the picture depicted on the spell.

When she turned around, she found, curled at her feet, the small lying figure in white. It was a little girl, who quietly sniffled, hiding her face behind her long, messy strawberry blond hair. She was dressed in a white tunic, plain, with no accessories, leaving only arms, head, and feet uncovered.

Clelia sat besides the figure, trying to make herself as unthreatening as possible.

A tiny hand hesitantly grabbed the hem of Clelia's skirt. "So, it's your turn now."

"My turn for what?"

The child's face emerged from the tangled blond mess of her hair. "To visit me."

She had emerald green eyes, reddened by the crying. Clelia gently patted her on the head. "And who are you?"

The child looked up to the tower. "I'm ######, and I am the ##### ###### #####."

Clelia heard the words, but they didn't stick in her mind long enough for her to understand them. "Why am I here?"

"You're here because I've been calling you."

The little girl finally raised herself from her curled up position to kneeling in front of Clelia. "There is so much I'd like to be able to tell you, but I'm afraid you're not ready for most of it. It would be like just now: if I told you, you'd forget as soon as you hear it."

"If I'm not ready, then why did you call me?"

"You know you're pretty with that hat? I mean it." She said with a bitter smile.

Clelia touched her tall hat. She clenched her other fist. "That didn't answer my question."

A small, pale finger began carving a rough picture in the ashen ground. "Every time I called you before, I wasn't even able to reach you. There is something I need you to do, something that will cost you a steep price, and I worry that I have little to offer you in exchange. But it must be done, sooner or later."

"You're not a real child, are you?"

She stopped her carving and sadly shook her head. "I already told you what I am. If a child was the explanation, you would have had no trouble understanding."

"And, whatever it is that I have to do, do I need to do it now?"

The pale apparition shook her head again. "It doesn't change much if you do it now, or a year from now, or even a decade from now. Not for me, at least. I will give you as payment what little I can in advance, even now if you allow me, and you'll do what you must whenever you feel ready, be it now or fifty years from now."

"And what are you offering me?"

In response, the small figure went back to the picture she was carving in the ground. "I sense powerful unresolved feelings within you. I can help you make sense of them, if you want. It might be a painful process, but chances are you'll feel better afterwards."

The picture on the ground was finally starting to make sense. It was a dragonfly resting on a cattail.

Clelia jumped on her feet, looking away. "I'm sorry, I can't help you. You got the wrong fairy for the job. I'm the weakest fairy in the gens Arania, I doubt I can do anything for you."

The little girl sighed. "If that makes you feel better about yourself. Sooner or later, you'll have to come back here. Hopefully, by then you'll be ready to hear what I have to say."

Clelia felt again the weak grip of a small hand grabbing the hem of her skirt. "Before you go, I have to apologise to you. I'm deeply sorry that I had to drag you into this, and I'm even more sorry of the baggage that I'm bringing with me. I hope you, at least, can find a way to break #### #### #### ### ## ####. Be careful when using these spells, lest the ### become stronger and wider."

The darkness around them suddenly caught Clelia like a strong underwater current, carrying her away from that haunted place.

Before waking up, the final words of that sad, little white figure suddenly echoed in her mind. "…find a way to break free from this web of lies… lest the web become stronger and wider."

Clelia gasped awake. With a soft thud, Horatius hit the ground after being flung from the position he was perched on, right on her shoulder.

"These spells are active," Clelia declared.

"Yes, do not worry about me, my mighty scales protected my body from impact," hissed the snake with ill-concealed sarcasm. "And what are you on about?"

"These last two spells," she clarified, panting from how she woke up, "the two really big ones. I'm pretty sure they're not waiting to be cast like all the others, they're already active. They've been for a long while, probably a lot longer than I've been alive. What in the name of our foremothers are they doing in my bag?"

"What makes you say that?"

She looked at her trembling hands. "It's… just an impression I got by touching them. It's like the difference between touching a sleeping dragon and one that is fully conscious. And I don't say dragon idly: these two spells are monstrously powerful, they're on a scale that I've never seen in my life, one that I didn't think was even possible."

"Did you see something while you were gone?"

Confused memories of darkness streaked with thin, sparkling lines, and a sad little girl crowded her mind, causing a strong sense of dread to grow in her chest.

"I think so, but… it was like waking from a nightmare. I remember some images and a general mood, but I wouldn't be able to explain it, or even to coherently remember it all."

Her hand reached for one of the spells she had examined before getting to those last two. It was one she had assessed to be some sort of protective spell, a ward, a seal perhaps. Maybe it would be a good idea to use it, to make sure that those two spells were locked up where nobody could accidentally find them. It would definitely be a good idea, but something among the confused memories of the nightmare told her she should be cautious about using the spells she found in that bag.

That feeling of caution made her look at the protective spell closer. It too, like the big black one, was streaked with thin, spiderweb-like threads, so small and so spread out that it was hard to see them.

Perhaps, it would be a better idea to just shut them all back in the bag and, at the first opportunity, to get rid of all of them. Then again, how would she make sure that, after doing that, they wouldn't fall in the wrong hands? No matter what, they were dangerous, without a shred of a doubt, and it would be wise not to use them, if she could help it. In fact…

She summoned her wand, meaning to take the one curse she still had embedded in it out, but, once she did, she realised that all of those spells were already embedded in it, including, for some unfathomable reason, the last two. She tried pinching them between her fingernails to extirpate them, but, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get them out.

"Ladyships?" Called a worried voice from outside the room door.

"Sorry, I'm a little busy now," she replied, trying her best to affect a calm she didn't have.

"Someones' knocknocking on the doorses, ladyships," the voice insisted.

What now? She dismissed her wand and got on her feet. "Horatius, I have to ask you to keep guard on these… things a little more. I promise I'll be back sooner this time."

Before he could hiss a response, she hurried out.

When she got on the ground floor, she stopped to peek out the window to see who it was. The big white moustache of the butler she had met a few days prior at the market was what she saw. That was odd. Did Rosalba go missing from the farm again?

She opened the door, preparing to politely shoo the man away, when she noticed a streaked grey cat placidly sitting on the butler's hand. On the cat's forehead, its streaked patterns formed an M shape.

A deep voice spoke directly in her head. "Fairy, we need to talk."