From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 106
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
"She's… severe. Like her hair. She's not mean or nothin'… jus'… I dunno. I don' think she's good fer teachin'. But she sure is powerful. I got knocked on the head real good at the Circus, but I know I saw her holdin' up Juno in thin air with magic."
"You were here for that?" In all the rhetoric about that day, Pretoria had never given thought to anyone who had been present who wasn't a witch. Of course there would have been witnesses; the ones Ivy had said owed their lives to the open use of witchcraft.
"Tha' I was. Hired a few weeks before," Edith said with pride.
As she recounted the story of the Flying Circus, it was quite a bit different from the one Aunt Agatha had told Pretoria. It wasn't scary or foolish, the way Edith told it. Every word rang with awe and respect, like she couldn't believe not only that it had happened, but that she had been here to see it. The way the panicked crowd had all stopped at once to stare up at the spectacle of a skinless airship hanging in thin air, to watching every scattered fire around the airfield go out at once. The aftermath of how all of Longstown had rallied around its witches in support instead of tearing them apart out of fear.
EVE was almost like a mascot for the town now. They were proud of their witches, as they were of themselves and the Longs.
The revelation of magic's existence had shocked people around the world, but only here in Longstown was it seen as a right. Of course that second hangar was a training ground for witches, of course they were the strongest witches in the world; the ladies of Longstown could do anything.
At the outing of its one local witch, the people around Pretoria had tried to murder her.
At the outing of nine, the people around EVE had immediately developed a palpable, unshakable pride in them. Everything they needed to know about magic they learned the day EVE had saved their lives—it was everyone else who had to catch up.
"Look here," Edith said, and turned her shoulder to show Pretoria the patch that was sewn into her coveralls.
On it were two large letters in white, followed by a crescent moon. Crossing in front of the moon was the solid black silhouette of what was clearly supposed to be a witch, riding a broomstick.
"A secret joke. No' official or nothin', but we all wear 'em," Edith said with an enormous smile. Her smile faded. "It's what keeps me tryin'. They believe in me. I don' wanna disappoint 'em."
"Even Miss Ravenwood?" Pretoria asked.
"'Specially her. She almost killed herself fer us. And afterward, you didn't see wha'…" Edith looked away. "Not supposed to talk 'bout tha'. But she and Miss Yekaterina are very strong. An' Miss Brown, too. Mistress Niamh…" Edith whistled, as impressed as Pretoria had been. "They use it for us."
"Witches?"
"LAC, Longstown, even gettin' the vote now, too. All 'o us." Edith looked down, scraping a bit of gunk out from under an extremely short fingernail. "I don' know if I can be a goo' witch, but I'm a goo' mechanic, and you'd have ta kill me ta get me ta leave 'em."
It was a ringing endorsement, for sure. But it was so different from everything Pretoria'd been told, it refused to solidify in her mind as true. "But weren't people angry? Scared?"
"Scared? Maybe a' first. I was," Edith shrugged. "But they's ours. And they're us. Them protesters, them cowards what write letters to the papers and especially them cluckin' hens who should know better can all get stuffed. If they wanna complain, they can come talk ta Mistress Niamh and Miss Brown. They'll set 'em straight. Just like those blokes at the rally."
Pretoria regarded Edith. Her short, tousled hair that would have been scandalous at any other time or place; her labourer's hands, lined, calloused and scarred; her accent, so unlike any Pretoria had ever heard. But her eyes were bright and shining; she was so proud of where she was and who she worked for. That she was working at all; a young, unmarried woman making her own money in a job that so few women could do, yet still so humble. For her working-class appearance and demeanour, she was a thoroughly modern woman; yet another thing Pretoria had had no exposure to until coming here. And there were hundreds more like her, who took it as a given that they should be here, and fought fiercely to protect it and each other.
And now Pretoria.
It was going to be up to her to prove herself worthy of them.
In cool air barely touched by sunlight, Octavia led Victoria on a twisting, meandering labyrinth of tunnels and stairs, coming back to the surface occasionally only to plunge once again into darkness, with only their witchlights to light the way.
She was not at all keen on the fact she was having to trust Octavia implicitly, but thus far she had been deadly serious about her responsibility, showing none of the traits that had earned her the mistrust Victoria had developed.
After climbing a final set of stairs, they emerged from a stone doorway set in what Victoria thought to be a steep hillside, but when she turned around, was actually an earthen barrow. One of a dozen or so that she could see, part of a rolling, undulating field of brilliant green with no real landmarks in any direction that she cast her gaze.
Octavia led Victoria to a different mound several down from the one they had emerged from. It was exactly the same as the others, but from the outside with the door closed, it brought to her mind a bunker.
"Here," Octavia said finally, gesturing to a wooden door that had been bleached grey by untold years of sun and rain. "I won't be going in with you. This meeting is for you and you alone. I will return to fetch Yekaterina."
"What should I do if I finish before you return?" Victoria asked. There was literally nothing here other than identical mounds of earth, and she had no idea where she was.
Octavia smiled a smile that seemed pleased Victoria didn't know something. Her answer did nothing to change that impression. "You won't."
"Very well." Victoria straightened both herself and her clothing, adjusting her necktie, sleeves and buttons until they were just so. Her fingers fell lastly on the rings of Colette's gauntlets.
Octavia pushed open the door.
When it closed again, it took the light with it, and Victoria was standing in pitch blackness. With no visual cues, the space felt small. The air was close, and she had the distinct feeling that there wasn't much of it between her and the ceiling, even at her slight stature.
"Hello?" she said tentatively. "My name is Victoria R-"
"We know who you are, Raven of the wood. Step forward."
It was an ancient rasp that broke apart and sealed back together—one voice, two, three, then one again. Dissonant but clear, each word enunciated with an accent that sounded out of time, rather than place.
From only a few yards ahead, three dim, wavering witchlights began to glow a sullen, tired yellow, flickering like fire, but not. Weak as they were, they barely illuminated who had made them, and Victoria had trouble making out any detail in the dark and the murk that the light revealed.
The air grew thicker; heavy like fog but lacking any sort of colour, as though it was denser somehow, scattering light the way cloud did without being visible itself.
Ignoring that impossibility as best she could, Victoria felt for their Manifests, but found nothing. There were suggestions of silver hair and wrinkles, hunched backs and claw-like fingers grasping their witchlights in upturned palms like brandy glasses.
"Are you the Crones?" Victoria asked.
"If that is the name you know us by," said one voice. "We have many others, but if you found this place, then we are who you seek."
"I didn't seek you out, I was told to see you."
"And you came."
"At your behest. I came as a courtesy, a show of good faith," Victoria said.
"You have questions," one of the Crones said. "Many, many questions."
"Yes," Victoria replied. "Who are you?"
"Always the first," the middle voice said. "We are the repository. The eldest. The last to know the original three."
"The original three? As in Morgan, Nimue and Avalon? Preposterous. They were mythical," Victoria said.
"So was what you do every day, until it wasn't. 1,500 years from now, you will be a myth as well. As is the fate of us all. Do you not wonder what story your myth will tell of you, Raven of the wood?"
"Why do you call me that?" Victoria, driven by her curiosity, stepped closer to the witchlights.
"It is what you are. Your strength is great, such as we have never felt before. But within you is a darkness that likewise we have never felt before in a Manifested witch. They are creatures of light, of hope and second chances. Survivors."
Victoria stepped closer. Eyes in the flickering light looked down on her from a slightly raised dais. Eyes that were white as fog. She shuddered, but soldiered on.
"I survived, as well. My Manifest saved me."
"From whom?"
"Myself," Victoria admitted. She knew there was no way they didn't already know, thus there was no point in hiding it. The admission cost her all the same.
"Yes. You, Raven of the wood, Manifested in darkness. Your path may yet lead you into the light, but there will forever be darkness within you."
"I know that. I force myself to deal with it every day of my life."
"We speak not of your self-loathing. Darkness, in you, Raven of the wood, is temptation. Your power is great, and so will be your desire to use it. You know why you cannot."
"It would kill me," Victoria said, absently stroking the inside of her left arm.
"Yes. You are mortal, as all of us are. But in your short life you have seen much, been aggrieved, and you may feel the need to right wrongs to which you have no right."
"What do you mean?"
"Before you Manifested, you dreamed of laying waste everything east of here, did you not? Of murdering thousands in the name of what happened to your family. Those who made you an orphan and a twin with no other half were going to suffer at your hand. These were your dreams, yes?"
Victoria couldn't hold the old crone's eyes. Rheumy and blind as they were, they saw too much. "Yes."
"And now you have that power. Or you will soon. In Bavaria's weakened state, Britannia's witches could do as they would. Take the train east, Raven of the wood, and slaughter thousands. Today. Have your revenge."
"I will not," Victoria said.
"And why not? Because it would kill you? You, who were so eager to throw her own life away for nothing, won't do it now when it would have the direst of consequences? From whence comes this sudden sense of self-preservation?"
"How little you think of me to assume that my reasoning. You think I would murder innocent women and children over a fantasy? It would change nothing."
"Fantasy? You are capable—"
"No, I am not! Those darkest thoughts came from a woman in pain. A woman who had lost everything and no longer cared about anything else. In the middle of a war, both sides slaughtered each other without rhyme or reason; mine would have been only to add a new and more horrific way of doing it. But those thoughts were a fantasy because they never had a chance of becoming true. I was angry, yes, and though I have my monstrous qualities, I am not a monster. I can barely live with the attempted murder of myself, I could not live with successfully doing it to thousands of strangers."
"You think the darkness within you feels the same way?"
"I am the master of this body, and this power. To yield either would to be to put that gun to my head again, and that I will not do. 'The darkness' within me is me. I am my darkness, and the light. It has taken a great deal for me to accept that. There is no separate 'dark thing' within me; only me."
Movement for the first time, as one of the other crones turned to speak to her directly. "That is correct. The vengeful part of you killed herself, letting the real you live. Did you ever wonder why you Manifested after the war was already over?"
"I thought it a cruel twist of fate."
"It was the only way it could ever be. Why do you think it has never happened before? Why there aren't armies of us ruling the world with magic? Those who desire power are the least worthy of it, would you not agree?"
"I would."
"And you, Raven of the wood, did not acquire your power until you'd given up your desire for it. The good, decent Victoria Manifested saving herself from the vengeance-driven Victoria."
"You make it sound as though I have two personalities."
"Nothing so dramatic, though there must have certainly been diverging aspects within you, strong enough to almost be considered distinct identities."
This was not going at all how Victoria had envisioned. This wasn't about facts and reason anymore, it was metaphysical conjecture. But every word spoken to her since she'd plunged into the darkness was a lance across her heart, a truth she knew deep within her but couldn't admit to. She feared there were more truths coming, and so she kept silent. If she didn't voice them, then perhaps the Crones would grant her the mercy of doing the same.
They didn't.
"So yes, you are correct, Raven of the wood. You are your darkness. A black thing that flits between shadows."
"Shadows are defined by light," Victoria interjected, trying to stave off what she felt hurtling towards her.
"Yes. And you are fortunate to be surrounded by very bright lights. But they only serve to deepen your shadows, do they not?"
Victoria didn't answer.
"Raven of the wood, are you confident you can keep your power in check? That you will live out the years that are typical of us?"
"I am learning more of how my Manifest affects my body. I am judicious in my use of magic, and do not exert myself beyond the minimum."
To this well-reasoned, honest answer, the response was laughter. The cracking of dried wood, the crumbling of dry leaves to dust sighed out from the three ancient forms arrayed before Victoria.
"News of Versailles precedes you, even here. You think your power makes you strong?"
Victoria's blue eyes hardened in the cold that enshrouded her. She didn't know if she was being challenged or mocked, but she would accept neither. The Crones' age gave them wisdom, but it didn't make them prophetic. Just as Selene and Ivy's habit of sounding so derived from their having seen and experienced so much, so it must be true of these three. At twice Selene's age, they would be very wise indeed, but Victoria wouldn't stand for this treatment any longer.
In the asylum, at the Circus, at Versailles. She had nothing left to prove.
"Of course it does," she spat.
"No, Raven of the wood. Your power does not make you strong. Circumstances will dictate you use it eventually."
"Not on that scale. If EVE is successful—"
"It's the only reason you have it."
"There is no such thing as fate!" Victoria barked. Sharp, severe. "The future is unwritten, and there are trillions—realistically countless possible permutations as to how the next five minutes will play out, let alone a far-distant 'some day.' I appreciate that you are using your wisdom, experience and no little theatrics in trying to scare me into behaving myself, but I am my own person, and my choices will determine my future. You cannot see it, and I will be damned before I let you dictate it to me."
"Indeed. We speak not of prophesy. Merely probability."
Victoria looked between them, caught off-guard. "A change of tack to appeal to my nature?"
"To stand by and let tragedy occur when you have the power to stop it would be monstrous. To not be tempted by your power to change the outcome of events would be inhuman. Do you think you can live hundreds of years without encountering either of these circumstances? That you will do nothing, good or ill, with a power such as yours in all that time? Unlikely. You are special, yes, but human. With all of a human's strengths and weaknesses. One of them will summon that power within you, and it will kill you."
"Either in the light, or the dark, your power will be called upon, and you will answer. It is the nature of a Manifested witch."
"And what of the others? Will they be getting the same speech?" Victoria asked, her hands shaking.
"The others are not you. You are re-writing the laws of the natural world. You are taking the very fundament of the universe and twisting it through the mind and will of a fragile young woman. You are intelligent, yes, but small. The forces you wield are very large, and as old as time. To pretend you understand them fully is hubris, pure and simple."
"That's why I study. I learn. Always."
"Yes. And that is admirable. But the universe is very large. It may not care that you poke and prod it so. But it might."
"You're speaking of unintended consequences?"
"Yes. But it matters not."
"Why?"
"You won't live long enough for it to matter."
Until that moment, Victoria had never quite understood the phrase 'as if someone walked over my grave.'
She did now, and she was suddenly very cold.
"But there is a way to avoid that fate," the centre Crone said, the tone of one offering a stranger an apple, one Victoria suspected was poisoned. "Give up your Manifest. Live out the remaining decades of your life with the peace of mind that you may do anything you wish with no fear of it bringing you harm."
"You mean sever me from my magic?" Victoria said in horror. "Strip me?"
"It would spare you your fate," the Crone said. "The fate you so strongly protest does not exist, would not, in fact, exist, were you to abandon the means by which it will claim you."
"I would rather die," Victoria said.
"You will anyway."
"You think me so selfish? That I would just give up my gift like that? That I would sell so cheaply that which cost me so dearly?" Victoria looked between the wizened faces and shook her head. "I truly do not know you. I cannot fathom how you see me, or the world, if you think that an offer I would entertain for a single second. If this is the point we've reached, then we have nothing more to say to one another. Good day," Victoria said, and turned to leave.
"If you so wish. But know one thing…"
