When temperatures began to drop, the popularity of the tavern grew. Kaitlyn struggled to manage her time as more people began sleeping in the area she kept warm. She began allowing some people to pay to sleep inside the main room, pushing the tables to a side in the evening and moving them back in the morning.

Vegetables became a quality trade item, and Fapallo’s hunting mandatory for them to feed the growing numbers of people. Master Garthis brought her more rabbits, and Cilvic spent most of his day in the gardens tending plants. He called on Kaitlyn regularly to help manage the plants.

It was during one of these gardening sessions she unlocked an important piece of her magical skill. She no longer kept her flame spell up all time, but sometimes brought it up as a mental exercise to see how fast she could weave it and unweave. She was doing this while gardening when she realized she was staring at the flame and seeing the threads.

She sat up on her knees and stared as she mentally wove the flame spell together, watching the threads form, solidify and ignite with flame. She took it apart until the flame disappeared. She wove it different shapes and grinned as she created a whip of fire in the air, and then a fence, and finally a dome.

She unraveled the flame and turned to the house. Now that she could see the weaves of magic, she began in the kitchen, then the main room, and finally the cellar and identified several points where the magic tied to her. She was about to do more examination when Javorora poked her head in the cellar and said, “Umm, Kaitlyn? Are you ok?”

“Yes,” she said absently.

“Are you sure? You haven’t made bread yet,” Javorora had a little pout. “It’s almost lunch and the folks up here say they haven’t seen you all morning.”

“I was… I found something,” Kaitlyn said, lifting the thread of magic with her hand. Now that she could see it, she found several threads which she had never been able to feel blindly.

Javorora said something else, but Kaitlyn didn’t hear, and for the moment she didn’t care about the tavern, the patrons, or even her friend. She was on to something important. She found a knot in the cellar near where she had placed the still. She couldn’t feel it, but now she could see it.

Circling it like a cat circling a mouse, she didn’t touch it for the moment. Some of the threads were black, some blue, and several were transparent. The transparent ones were the most difficult because the only way she could really follow them was how they interacted with the others. They weren’t invisible, but they were clear. Now that she knew they were there and interacting with the other magic threads, she was determined to figure them out.

Master Garthis arrived and found her floating in the center of the tavern room, Javorora, Fapallo and Cilvic trying to manage patrons. At Fapallo and Javorora’s insistence, the brownie had been convinced to call the master wizard. He stared at Kaitlyn and asked, “How long has she been there?”

“Since just after lunch,” Fapallo told him. “Is she… she won’t respond to us?”

Master Garthis unfocused his eyes and stared at the mass of magic around her. It wasn’t a ball of yarn, it was a small mountain and she was in the center, pulling threads towards herself. He quickly opened his eyes and said, “Get everyone out. The tavern is closed until further notice. Javorora, go home. Stay in your tree until I send you word it’s safe. Cilvic please return to the manor house with Fapallo and Linnmel.”

“What’s happening?” Cilvic asked, “is the house hurting her? I will use my magic….”

“Don’t!” the master snapped, “any other magic might hurt her. She is doing something and I don’t dare interrupt her. There is too much magic here for any of you to stay, I would be worried it might hurt you. Tell those outside they will need to stay away until warnings are removed.”

“What warnings?” Javorora looked at her friend in worry.

Stolen novel; please report.

“I will go and set warnings,” Master Garthis said and shooed everyone outside.

Once outside the bounds of the house, Master Garthis began crafting his warning spells, alerting from literally every side, including above in the air, that this house was in a state of magical quarantine.

Cilvic was the one who stomped over and said, “Now explain what is happening to my chosen human and home.”

Master Garthis looked and said, “I don’t know for sure. She is pulling all the threads in the house to her. I have seen mages casting spells where the magic builds around them like that and then… sometimes they explode. I have no idea if that will happen here because she isn’t building the magic, but I also don’t know what she might uncover and… I can’t protect all of you.”

“Can you protect her?” Fapallo demanded.

“I don’t know,” Master Garthis said honestly. “I will do my utmost, but she is dealing with magic neither of us entirely understand. She has already found several spells in this house we couldn’t identify and in languages which resist translation.”

“Can you help her?” Javorora asked meekly.

Master Garthis looked at the house and the dryad knew he was trying to decide. He finally said, “I don’t know. I am going to try. She is… something truly unique and if the world lost her now when she’s just coming into her own I would… never forgive myself if I didn’t try. Fapallo, please go with Cilvic and Linnmel. Javorora, go home and wait. I will do everything I can. Even if it isn’t much.”

Inside the house Kaitlyn had found a vein of spells woven together like a rope. She pulled on them and they resisted her. She narrowed her eyes and looked more intently at the rope. It resisted because it was larger around that her own body, many of the threads those translucent strands of power.

She stood and began following the giant root of magic. Around her the house seemed to rippled and shift, turning again into the palace she had seen before. Rooms larger than her childhood home were filled with strands of magic. She waded into one of these, following the massive spell rope. Some of the spells began to unravel when she touched them. She looked at them, now the she could easily see them.

Several of the spells were spells of coercion. When she read their descriptions to bind words and dreams to sap the strength and…. potential from the victims she was disgusted. Taking them apart however sometimes meant seeing what the spells had wrought. Kaitlyn saw the witch as a younger creature, still a mature woman past child-bearing years, but younger than the shriveled creature who had left this house in this forest to wither and die.

The witch was beautiful. A massive woman both in height and girth, she stood nearly twice Kaitlyn’s height with hair as red as a sunset. The woman wore a robe of grey and gold brocade with some kind of blue fur trim at her wrists, ankles and neck. On her head was an amazing, huge, glossy blue fur, fluffy hat. In her nose was a giant sapphire with a gold chain which hung from her nose and connected to a massive gold hoop in her left ear. Each hand had rings of gold with gems of almost every color. In front of the witch were figures without faces or concrete forms. Kaitlyn could sense these were people who had come to this witch.

Kaitlyn couldn’t get details of these people, their impressions on the house were vague at best and the figures merged and wavered whenever Kaitlyn tried to look at them. Vast amounts of threads split from the house’s giant rope to these people, frayed edges abounding among them. She began to carefully remove those strings, cutting some and simply pulling the rotting spell edges from the house’s rope.

The room began to fade, slowly shifting from a throne room until it was a long wooden room. The witch changed as well, loosing the grandeur of the robe, hat, and gems, except for one ring which held an emerald. This ring sat on the long table in front of the red-haired woman who faced an ancient crone with white hair and gnarled hands. Kaitlyn tried to step towards the image, but ran into a weave of translucent threads of magic.

This is my house wench. Made from my bones and the blood of my veins.

Then I know how to control it mother. Your blood, my blood, your bones and my bones.

The giant rope was rooted out of this tapestry, and Kaitlyn knew she didn’t know enough to understand what it meant. If she destroyed it, would the house collapse? If she kept it, could she learn to control the house?

She ran her hands over the translucent threads, trying to find a beginning. She didn’t feel it at first, but slowly pain began to build in her joints. She became slowly aware and wondered what had changed. What had caused the house to fail in its magical protections against her curse?

The slice on her hand shocked her, and she drew back in surprise. Pricks along her back made her stop and she saw she was enclosed with more prickled threads. While she had been snipping off old and unused spell threads, somehow she had been encased in translucent and dangerous threads.

She turned in a slow circle, using her magical sight and her magical senses to find she was well and truly trapped. She couldn’t see the witches any more, but she could see that emerald ring on the table. Just on the other side of the tapestry. A tapestry which cut when she touched it.