Museum of Magic, page 24
Her lips curved into a malicious smile.
In a blink, the orddu witch moved from the grave mound to inches from Emmi’s face. The air felt ice cold, but the coppery scent of blood drifted to Emmi’s nose.
“Little witch, you see,” the rune-covered orddu whispered, the last word fading into a silent hiss.
Emmi swallowed, her body shaking. She blinked.
The witch was gone.
A tingle went up Emmi’s spine. She saw the Cat Sìth watching her, its black body still except for its tail twitching, as if it waited to pounce.
Emmi turned her gaze to the cauldron. The hunchbacked witch stirred and stirred, and with each rotation of the spoon, a different orddu peeled away, ghost-like, into the Shadowlands. Emmi caught glimmers of the other orddus, each one with a different task. One dipped her hand into a dark spot on the earth, her fingers coming away red with blood. She flicked the scarlet drops into the mist, and Emmi saw the pale outlines of red caps staggering through the fog, disappearing. Another orddu witch sat under a black tree, branches twisting impossibly, with a black dog in her lap.
“Warn them,” she whispered, and the dog disappeared. A second more, and she did, too.
Emmi couldn’t stop trembling. It wasn’t the cold, although the air was growing more and more frigid. Seeing the different orddu witches slipping through the shadows, each one with a different task, each one sliding back into rotation to stir and stir the cauldron before her, gave Emmi a greater idea of what it meant to be an orddu. It wasn’t just a title; it was a shared position, a membership into a unity, each task performed in perfect rhythm, following the rhythm of the cauldron stirring.
When Emmi looked back to the witch with the spoon, she saw the hunchbacked woman watching her. Her eyes glittered with thought. “You see us,” she said, her voice crackling, as if it had been a very, very, very long time since she had spoken so much. “You see what we do.”
Emmi nodded, not trusting her own voice to not betray the horror rising in her throat. She could almost—almost—understand the complicated dance. Each ghostly shadow of the witches knew the steps, perfectly in sync as they kept the dead in their graves, wove weapons from the dark, poured potions on the ground, plucked black fruits from burned husks of trees.
“If you see the need, fulfill the need.” The witch at the cauldron narrowed her eyes at Emmi.
There was an invitation in her tone. Emmi’s gaze shifted to the spoon in the witch’s hands. She held the wooden stick gently, and as Emmi watched, her fingers flexed, opening.
Offering to let Emmi stir.
The shadows curled and spun, round and round.
“What happens if you stop stirring?” Emmi asked. Her voice felt far away, distant. A whisper on the wind, already gone before she could reach for it.
“Look,” the orddu witch said, releasing the spoon’s handle. “See.”
The wooden stick stood straight in center of the cauldron, not tipping to one side or another. But even as Emmi’s eyes peered into the bubbling liquid, the steam stopped. The world stopped. And, Emmi realized with dawning horror, she had stopped. There were a million cacophonous sounds thundering inside a living body—a heart beating, two lungs breathing, the rustle of hair, the slip of air between teeth—all of life was noisy, deafening in a way that defied itself—and it was all gone from her.
She could not flick her eyes away. She could not shift her thoughts. She could only exist in the moment, and the moment was dead.
Only one thing moved, and that was the Cat Sìth, its tail still twitching impatiently, its black form somehow uncaring that everything around it was unnaturally unmoving.
“It’s time, girl,” the orddu witch said, her voice breaking the spell as her hand grabbed the spoon. She stirred the cauldron.
And time began again.
“This is orddu magic,” the witch said. Her body was old, her back hunched, her eyes cloudy, but her voice sounded young and clear. Not innocent, but youthful. There was a difference “We see all. A witness to the world, to every version of the world. But to see all, to be all, means to see nothing. Be nothing.”
The orddu spun the spoon faster, cranking it round and round through the bubbly steam, faster and faster.
“We exist outside of time, but we are a part of time.”
And Emmi understood—at least as much as she was capable of understanding—that what moved within the cauldron was time itself.
From the steam rose an image. Emmi recognized it immediately: Puck, just as she’d seen him in the steam before. But this time another image rose above him.
“Grandfather!” Emmi gasped, longing rising in her chest. It had been so long since she’d seen him, and this faded image wasn’t enough, but it was more real than her memory.
“See everything,” the orddu witch whispered.
Emmi forced herself to look at the entire tableau rising through the ghost-like steam over the cauldron. There was Puck and Grandfather, but while Grandfather beamed down at Emmi, a blithe smile on his wrinkled face, Puck stared at Grandfather.
Horror twisted his face, pure revulsion choking his throat as his eyes widened with disgust.
“See nothing,” the orddu witch whispered.
The image disappeared.
What did that mean? Puck looking at her grandfather with such obvious distaste? What had Grandfather ever done to him to make him stare like that?
“I have to go back,” Emmi said. She needed answers, not riddles and ghosts.
“If you see the need, fulfill the need,” the orddu witch said in the same tone of voice she’d said the same words before, almost as if they were recorded, pitch-perfect matches. But then she added, “If you see the path, take the path.”
Emmi spun around, mists swirling. There were grave mounds and ghostly shadows and creatures that lurked in the dark and stark standing stones and the jagged ridge tops on the horizon.
But there was no path.
With an impatient Mrow!, the Cat Sìth leapt forward, landing on the rim of the cauldron. Inside the black vessel was time itself, stirred forward with rhythmic precision by all the orddu witches of the Shadowland, but the Cat Sìth swatted at it as if it the burbling surface was a toy.
The Cat Sìth looked at Emmi and sat, perched on the edge of the cauldron. The tip of its tail twitched.
The Cat Sìth was clearly waiting.
Emmi drew closer reluctantly. She didn’t like the way that it had felt when the spoon stopped, when time itself had stopped. But as she stood on her tiptoes, staring down into the steam, she saw—
Puck.
In the dark cave.
Searching for her.
She was looking at the present.
And she didn’t hesitate to climb into the cauldron, to slide through time, to go back.
To him.
The Magician
focusing your will, creativity, skill, and magic
It felt as if Emmi had been pulled into two different pieces, the different dimensions tugging her soul apart, and, like a snapping rubber band, she slammed back home into her own body, the motion so staggeringly powerful that she bent over, sucking in air with an audible gasp.
“Emmi!” Puck rushed over, wrapping his arms around her so forcefully that she staggered back, her legs hitting the wishing well. Puck clung to her, pulling her tightly against him. She could hear the hammering of his heart, chaotic and loud. His grip loosened as she sagged against him, and he ran his hands up and down her arms, as if she were chilled. Then his fingers seized against her shoulders, pulling her back a little so he could look down at her.
“I was so worried about you,” he said, his whispered voice cracking.
She could feel his warm breath cutting through the chilly air in the cave. It was dark, but not so dark that she couldn’t see the strain in his eyes, the red-rimmed gaze that told her that even now, he wasn’t sure she was really here.
“I went…somewhere else.”
Puck nodded tightly. “But you’re back now. Safe.” He leaned closer. All she had to do was tip up on her toes, and they would kiss. All she had to do was tilt her chin. All she had to do was claim his lips with hers.
But his last word lingered between. Safe. Was she safe?
“I was in the Shadowlands,” Emmi said, unsure of how she knew, inherently, that was the right word for the place.
“What?” The spell was broken. Puck took a step back, his mouth agape as he stared at her. “You went there and…just came back?”
“Should I not have come back?” Emmi asked.
“No! No—I’m glad you did!” Puck ran a shaking hand through his tousled hair. “I just didn’t think…they don’t often let anyone go.”
“Who?” Emmi asked, wondering how much Puck knew of the orddu witches, of the Shadowlands.
He didn’t answer, though. He kept shaking his head, as if he hadn’t heard her question and was still muddling through his shock. Puck leaned against the rough, curving stone wall opposite the wishing well. “That’s a dangerous place, Emmi, full of dangerous creatures.”
Emmi hadn’t felt...well, she hadn’t felt safe in the Shadowlands, but she also hadn’t necessarily felt in danger, or at least not immediate danger. The orddu witches had spoken with her, and while their words had been riddles, they hadn’t been threats. And the Cat Sìth had actually helped Emmi, far more than it had when it’d been at Holyrood. “What kinds of creatures?” Emmi asked. She wished she could have seen deeper into the dark.
“Red caps, banshees, trolls and goblins.” He paused. “Boggarts. Boggarts are made in the Shadowlands.” He shuddered. “If it’s a fae that deals with blood or revenge or rage, that’s the type that goes there. It’s a horrible place.”
Emmi watched Puck’s face. It had grown distant, almost morose. “You’ve been there,” she said, realizing the truth of it as she spoke the words aloud.
Puck cringed as if she’s punched him.
Emmi took a step closer to him. She didn’t want to cause him harm, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was significant in some way. “You’ve been to the Shadowlands,” she pressed. And then another question rose within her. If he had been there, did that mean he was a fae that dealt who blood, revenge, and rage?
He guessed the question she didn’t voice. “I have been many things over my life. The reason why fae are not named is because a name makes something permanent. I’ve been light; I’ve been dark. But once I was named, I became nothing more than Puck.”
Puck spat the words out as if they were bitter on his tongue. But Emmi took another step closer to him. Puck looked away, almost as if he were ashamed of how Emmi didn’t flinch at his words, but she put her hand to his cheek and drew his gaze back to her. “To humans,” she said gently, making sure he heard her, “it’s different. Your name does not define you. You have the freedom to be whoever you want to be.”
Puck’s face twisted, but he didn’t look away. “You’re wrong, Emmi Castor,” he said finally. “You just don’t want to admit it.”
She shook her head, unwilling to give up an inch of this argument. “Change is always hard, whether it’s changing your name or your nature. But it’s also always possible.” She leaned up on her toes and pecked him on the cheek. “I promise,” she whispered in his ear.
When she pulled away from him, she could see the hope in his eyes. Still, he added, “Fae are inherently shapeshifters. Whether they appear to be a light in the dark and are actually lures to danger, or whether they appear to be beautiful and are actually monsters, you have to remember that fae—all fae—are tricksters and shapeshifters. We can be anything until we are caged in by a name.”
“You forget that humans are the same way,” Emmi said. “You don’t think a monster can’t wear a human face? I thought you knew better than that.”
Puck let out a breath that broke into a snort of a laugh at Emmi’s sardonic words, his shoulders relaxing. “So, what did you see in the Shadowlands?”
“You.”
Puck’s eyes widened.
“As a vision,” Emmi said. “Have you ever met my grandfather before?”
Puck shook his head.
“I saw you and him, and you were mad. At him.”
Puck’s brows creased in confusion. Emmi knew he wasn’t feigning the reaction—this was sincere. He had never met Grandfather before.
But Emmi also knew that the orddu witches had given her a vision of a possible future, and there must be conflict of some sort coming.
“If the orddu witches were showing visions and letting you strut around the Shadowlands—”
“I didn’t strut!” Emmi protested.
“—have you considered that maybe…maybe you are an orddu witch?”
Emmi bit her lip. That thought had crossed her mind, although she wasn’t sure what to think about it. On the one hand, if she were an orddu, she could trade herself for Grandfather’s freedom. Maybe that was why Puck was angry at Grandfather—Emmi didn’t think Puck would like it if Emmi just swapped places with him.
But it wasn’t a possibility she had ruled out. She wanted to find another solution, but if she could free Grandfather from the fae as easily as just changing places, perhaps…
“Well, I’m not there now,” she said. “Frankly, I’m half sick of shadows.”
She led Puck out of the cave, but not without looking at him for a reaction. Puck had known Shakespeare, but if he recognized the Tennyson quote, he didn’t show it.
“We do still need a stone to replace the one you sent to the shadows,” Puck said, looking around in the bright sunlight. “Do you see anything in the calcifying well? That would make sense. The well makes thing turn to stone; look for a stone there.”
Emmi felt a headache coming on. When had the sun gotten so bright? But even when she shifted to her magical sight, she didn’t see anything in the petrifying well.
Puck pointed to another cave. “We could try there.”
“What’s that?” Emmi lowered her eyelids a little and shaded her face with her hand.
“That’s where Mother Shipton lived,” Puck said. “Nice little cave system here, a cave to cast spells, a well to turn things into stone, and another cozy little cave to live in. What more could a witch want?”
“Electricity?” Emmi asked, already heading to the other cave. “Air conditioning?” It was getting hotter out here; Emmi had grown used to the coolness in the cave and the shadows. She mounted the steps two at a time to get to the other cave.
It was better lit than the cave with the wishing well, but there were still shadows stretching from the artifical lights. In one corner stood a stone statue of Mother Shipton, the face blurred with age and the body of the statue bent over like an old woman. But even as Emmi tried to focus on the statue, she was distracted by the shadows.
There were more shadows than there should be in the dark.
They swirled and shifted, as if there were creatures in the cave that moved unseen. Emmi watched one shadow leap up and rest on a ledge in the cave. It had a distinct cat-like shape, and it appeared to be watching her.
“Hello,” Emmi whispered, smiling at the shadow.
“What?” Puck asked. He was looking at the state of Mother Shipton, peering up at the weatherworn face as if it would answer him.
Emmi ignored Puck’s question. “You know,” she said, stepping closer to him, “I started this whole thing assuming that every witch that burned at the stake or was hung by the executioner was just an innocent woman who was too vocal or too different or simply too in the way. And maybe that’s true, but only because the real witches didn’t burn.”
As the words left her mouth, Emmi felt saddened by them. Real people had died throughout history, victims of prejudice and hatred and bigotry and fear, and only the powerful lived—whether that power be nobility, wealth, or literal magic. Had Mother Shipton been an actual, real witch? She’d claimed she was, using the label as a source of power. And she had not burned for it, despite the way she accepted the name of “witch.”
Perhaps Puck was right. Perhaps there was power in a name.
But only in the name you accept. It wasn’t that other people calling Mother Shipton a witch had given her any type of safety; for most women, that label spelled death. It was only when Mother Shipton took a name for herself that she claimed and reveled in that she’d became a force to be reckoned with.
Emmi’s eyes drifted from Mother Shipton’s statue down to the long shadow playing at her feet. The shadow was deep and dark and although it was clearly extending from the statue, it did not form the same shape. The shadow’s back didn’t curve; its head didn’t bow. It was the shadow of a proud woman, hands gripped in fists at her side, chin tilted up in defiance.
And in the center of the shadow glowed a golden heart.
Emmi knelt down, ignoring Puck’s question as her knees hit the cold floor of the cave. When Emmi scooped her hand toward the heart of the shadow witch, her fingers did not hit stone. They dipped into the dark, slipping inside, the sensation just as it had felt when Emmi had dropped the other stone into the wishing well in the other cave. Her hand felt cold, but not uncomfortably so, as her fingers touched the rough edge of a stone.
When Emmi withdrew her hand from the shadow, a new stone heart rested in her palm, the faint gold glow of magic still clinging to it.
Two of Cups, Transposed
dissatisfaction, envy, miscommunication, and arguments
Emmi blinked, her eyes refocusing on the familiar hearth room as she stepped out of the ash sigil portal Puck had made. She took a deep breath, relishing the scent of home, so different from the mineral water and damp earth smell at Mother Shipton’s cave.
“Here, kitty,” Puck said, the portal closing behind him. He squatted down on the carpet, holding his fingers out toward Sabrina.
Sabrina, however, merely twitched her tail. Her green eyes were focused on Emmi.
“Hi, Sabrina,” Emmi said. She was grateful that Grandfather had invested in an automatic feeder and litter cleaner, the gadgets she had once thought pointless now giving her a little peace of mind that her cat was safe even when Emmi disappeared into other realms for who knew how long.
