From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 64
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
And they were creations. Very few of the plants in Ivy's care bore any relation to their equivalents outside anymore, all having been altered in one way or another by her Manifest. Millie still wasn't quite sure how it fit within the rules of using magic on living things, but since the plants existed and Ivy hadn't burst into flames or been dragged to Hell, Millie had to assume there was a loophole somewhere she didn't know about.
Though the walls were made of glass, Millie knocked at the door anyway, feeling it was only polite.
Ivy looked up long enough to wave her in, and Millie was greeted with a wave of warm, humid air that smelled of earth and growing things. As Ivy didn't have many flowers left, it was a rather pungent combination of herbs both familiar and alien that filled Millie's senses, strong enough to taste.
Blinking away the smell, she snatched up a small bronze watering can from under a table with her witchscale and filled it from the taps built into the corner.
"Still remember how to use that?" Ivy asked, a pair of tweezers in one hand and the smallest pair of scissors Millie had ever seen in the other. Ivy was methodically pruning away undesired new growth from a kind of armoured vine, festooned with so many nasty-looking thorns that Millie would have expected to find it in a book on obscure Medieval weapons.
Scrunched in one eye was Ivy's black-and-gold jeweller's loupe, making her look like a pirate whose ship had stopped too quickly.
"Aye, you taught me well," Millie said. "Where should I start?"
Ivy pointed without looking up. "The luculentus cutis."
"The what?"
"The broad-leafed one with the prismatic fruit. Look like little beetles. Then work towards me."
"Got it." As Millie began, she was hit by a pang of nostalgia, something she never would have thought she would feel about ADAM. "I'm sorry I haven't been here to help very often since we moved."
"If I recall, this would be the first time."
Millie wanted to blame the heat of the greenhouse for the flush of her cheeks, but that wasn't in keeping with her recent pattern of honesty.
"'S all right," Ivy said, though she could have been talking about the vine she moved on from. "How are things with the Russians? Are you getting on yet?"
"There's been… progress." It was still hard to believe they knew about her and Elise. It didn't feel real, like she was sleepwalking through a dream. But if she started gushing about that to Ivy now, Millie would never stop. "Vickie and Yekaterina aren't going to kill each other anymore," she said instead.
She moved to the next plant, which looked like a fat, oversized Brussel sprout. That it unfurled itself when Millie came near it shouldn't have surprised her. The red-and-orange interior did, making it look like the gaping maw of a volcano awaiting a sacrifice.
"Water in the centre of that one," Ivy said. "Like filling a cup. I'll feed him later."
It was like filling a cup, Millie found, only one that swallowed what you put into it, disappearing somewhere she would probably have nightmares about falling into later. She wanted to look at Ivy to ask her question, but was afraid when she turned back there'd be a finger missing. Her witchscale popped out without her telling it to. "Feed it what?"
"Blood."
Millie took a step back. "You're kidding."
"He likes sheep's blood the most. Grew four inches in a day when I switched to that."
"I suppose it told you," Millie said, only half kidding.
"Of course he did. You think I dump blood on all my plants just to see what happens?" Ivy asked without a trace of sarcasm.
"I don't… not believe it." It came out as a question.
Ivy laughed. "Smart girl. So Victoria's made a friend, has she? Good."
"So has Hekabe," Millie said before she could stop herself.
That drew Ivy's undivided attention. "Oh?"
"Alexandra."
"They did seem to take a shine to each other rather quickly," Ivy said, returning her attention to her work. "She even taught herself to climb the stairs to go see her."
"Alexandra was talking to her, I overheard it the other night. In English. Like Hekabe could understand her."
"Hekabe understands more than you think she does," Ivy said, an odd note of melancholy in her voice. "I talk to her all the time."
It wasn't long ago that Millie would have laughed at that. But after Niamh had told her that Ivy's oddness was her mind's way of coping with the torture she had suffered centuries earlier, it only filled Millie with a deep well of sadness.
"I hope she does," Millie said. "It sounded like Alexandra badly needed someone to talk to."
"She never speaks. I can understand why."
Millie looked over at Ivy, hunched over a tomato plant with purple leaves. The white stripes on black, the wild mane of jet-black hair. The faraway, smoky look her eyes took on sometimes when she sounded so much like she was looking into the future. It made Millie curious what it would have been like to have known Ivy before she had suffered the horrors she had. Selene and Niamh had known that Ivy, as had Zoya, apparently, but only Niamh had ever mentioned that there had ever been a 'that Ivy' in the first place.
It made Millie hesitant to bring up what she'd heard. How would Ivy react to hearing about such trauma? But Millie had to remind herself that all Manifests were a result of trauma, that they were surrounded by it.
"It was very dark, what Alexandra had to say. I feel like we should do something about it, but she doesn't know I know. She needs help, Ivy. Our help."
Since they had Manifested, the younger witches had all dropped the habit of calling the older ones 'Mistress,' but Ivy had lived a long, hard life, and learned many hard lessons, which meant that when it came to wisdom, she and the other older witches were still very much mistresses of that particular domain.
"She hasn't asked for it," Ivy said. "We shouldn't assume she wants it."
"It was basically a confession. I could hear the pain in her, and it hurt. She's traumatised, been brought halfway around the world and forced to speak a language that isn't hers. Doesn't talking to Hekabe mean she needs someone to talk to? I feel horrible knowing that she only feels comfortable talking to a dog. Whatever our differences, she's a witch. Doesn't that make her our sister? Don't we have an obligation to ease her suffering?" The words all came out in a rush, the cork that Millie had stuffed into her feelings bursting from her like a cannonball. "Witches have suffered too much to let one of us carry on with pain like that lodged in her heart."
Ivy said nothing, but had stopped working, and both eyes were now firmly fixed on Millie.
"I feel useless," Millie said. "Vickie and that Russian spend all their time together now. She's taking all the pain from her that I should be doing."
"Is this about Alexandra or Victoria?" Ivy asked.
"Can't it be both? They both need help. Vickie's getting it and Alexandra's not. I can help one of them, at least, can't I? At least try to make her better."
"That sounds like Elise talking."
"That I'm starting to sound like the woman I love doesn't surprise you, does it?" Millie asked.
Suddenly, Ivy was upon her. Millie hadn't even noticed her move, she was just there, and Millie was being squeezed hard enough to drive the breath from her.
"You've grown so much," Ivy said. "I'm proud of you."
When Ivy pulled away, her eyes were as clear as Millie had ever seen them. Deep wells ringed with emerald sank into her very soul, and Millie could see all the way in, to the Ivy that was. To Millie's surprise, she wasn't that different. Ivy's capacity to love and laugh hadn't been diminished at all; Millie could feel the former radiating from within those depths, and it was genuine and unadulterated. Whatever else Ivy may have lost, that, at least, hadn't been taken away from her.
"Have you talked to the other Russians about this?" Ivy asked.
"They've been together as long as they have, and she's still like this. If they were going to help, they would have already. If she can be helped."
Ivy considered this. "All right. If you feel you need to tell me, do so, and we'll go from there."
Millie hesitated a moment before plunging into the story. Ivy listened as Millie told her what she'd heard.
"You were right to want to ease her suffering," Ivy said when Millie was done.
"Was I wrong to listen?"
"You sympathised with her. When someone is bearing their heart, it's difficult not to."
"But?"
"You shared her secret."
"I don't know what else to do! Shouldn't she know that we're here to support her, at least? That we've all been through tragedy? Look what happened to Vickie when she thought she was alone."
"We're all still strangers to her. Sometimes a stranger is who you need, other times 's who you fear. I think she's still in the 'fear' part when it comes to us. I hope she'll come around in time, but for now she should be able to proceed at her own pace. If she gets worse, then perhaps we could reach out to her a little more aggressively than we have. She trusts Hekabe, at least. That's something."
Millie nodded. "And Hekabe trusts us."
"Yes. It's where we'll have to start. I'll talk to Selene, and we can keep a closer eye on her, at least."
"Thank you."
Ivy smiled, her long upper canines catching her lower lip. "You should come by more often. I enjoy our talks."
"Me too."
The Ivy that was retreated back into the Ivy that is, and her eyes returned to what everyone who had met her in the last two centuries would consider normal. "Now get back to work."
"So, now you must tell me about the fireballs," Victoria said, pacing in circles with a witchlight sliding up and down her arm.
"I suppose I do still owe you that. In what way?" Katya asked, her own witchlight perched on the back of her wrist like a corsage. "There isn't much to tell. Can you explain your… physics magic?"
"No, I mean how you control it apart from yourself. I have been trying to find a way to detach witchlights since I made my first one, but haven't been able to work out how. Your fire is separate from you, yet you maintain control over it. If you can do that, then it must be possible to do it with witchlight."
"Interesting. Is there a reason you're obviously so passionate about this?" Katya asked, a glint in her eye.
"Because I can't figure it out. I don't like not knowing things."
A globe of fire raised from Katya's hand, hovering for a moment before leaping away from them. It carved a few shapes into the hide of the dark before zipping back to add a third set of shadows to those cast by their witchlights. A sudden thought made her look at Victoria in confusion. "Wait, you move things with your mind all the time. How do you do that?"
"They were never a part of me. They are discrete objects that I can focus on. They have definition. The difference between steel and air, for example, is obvious. Move one and not the other. But witchlight, for whatever reason, I can't detach. Trying to send it away is like trying to fling my fingers off. I can't find where I end and it begins; it's all one magical soup."
"I object to the notion I am made of magical soup."
"Duly noted. But your fire is an ingredient in your soup."
Katya made a face and shrugged. "That's how I move it. It's part of me. I can't separate it from me any more than I can my arm. And like my arm, it does what I tell it to." The little fireball lifted away from them again, spiralling up several feet before corkscrewing back down, where it hovered unstably, looking for all the world like it was doing a little jig.
"Wait, do that again," Victoria said.
"What, this?" Katya repeated the same action, this time a little slower so Victoria could follow it. The intensity of her concentration meant she had clearly picked up on something.
"Are you— yes, there's… Oh! There! Of course!" Victoria threw her hands over her head. "How could I be so stupid? It was right there in front of me!"
"What are you talking about?"
"Lightning!"
"Lightning?"
"Lightning! Of course! So daft, how did I not put it together?" Victoria's hands slid down to grasp the sides of her head like she was trying to keep her realisation from bursting out of her ears. "It's a continuous chain of electrons. It's like… a rope, or a tether between the clouds and the ground, or between clouds."
"I don't understand."
"I was trying to separate it from me, and that was the problem!" Victoria's smile was infectious, and Katya shared it, even if she didn't entirely know why.
A new witchlight the size of a cricket ball bloomed in Victoria's palm, and she stared at it to the point she went cross-eyed.
Katya gasped as it began to float, levitating an inch above Victoria's hand.
"Aha! I have you figured now!" Victoria exclaimed.
The white ball of light zoomed away from her like she'd thrown it, only in a perfectly straight line rather than an arc. As if it were attached to a cord, it suddenly stopped and shot back the way it had come, coming to rest exactly where it had started.
"That's amazing! What did you do?"
"I attached a tether. Keeping it connected to me, but making it discrete, while giving it more freedom of movement. Then I willed it to move, the same way I would if it were moving up my arm."
The witchlight began to climb, moving up to eye level with Katya, and floated nearer. "Feel it," Victoria said. "Can you sense the tether?"
"I can!" Barely, but Katya could. Like a single strand of spider silk, it was weak side-to-side, but she could feel the strength of it and knew that no amount of pulling could snap it.
"Just like your fireballs," Victoria said proudly.
"I didn't even notice I was doing it!"
"Because it's your Manifest. It's innate." Victoria moved her hand around the witchlight, over and around it, even as it sat perfectly still in mid-air. "It's a very odd sensation, no wonder you had difficulty explaining it." She smiled, white light reflecting perfectly in her white teeth. "There's still so much to learn," she said absently. "Now you try."
Katya screwed up her features, the most pressure she'd felt making a witchlight since the first one. The light came easily enough, but the intensity in Victoria's gaze was distracting. "Could you look a little less… obsessed?"
"Oh, sorry." She blinked once.
Katya could only smile. A tether? But there was no gap to span. The light was her as much as her fire was, as much as her fingers were. How did one attach a tether to something that wasn't separate? It was like trying to attach a tree limb to the trunk it was still growing out of.
Sweat formed on her brow and her witchlight wobbled in her hand, deforming from a perfect sphere into a sphere that had been smacked with something heavy.
"Imagine a string, and attach it from your hand to the witchlight. Sort of sideways, not from the bottom. Did you ever have a dog?"
"When I was young."
"Then picture the lead, and attach it to the witchlight's… collar, I suppose."
Victoria's face reflected her non-satisfaction with her metaphor, but it had helped immensely; Katya could see it! In her minds eye, she stopped trying to go from the bottom of the witchlight, instead allowing the thread to reach out from her finger, the same way she would have with Laika for her morning walk. Except unlike a dog lead, the thread grew longer and moved by itself. So weak and fragile yet, it followed the instability in the air thrown off by the heat of her skin.
When it was close enough, it plunged into the side of her witchlight and burrowed in, holding fast and quickly growing to the silk-like tension that she'd felt in Victoria's.
But Victoria was barely breathing, as though she was afraid of blowing away Katya's accomplishment. "Now, just like the fire, tell it to move."
Vibrating like it was about to explode, the witchlight suddenly fired off into the darkness, making it halfway across The Shed before Katya could stop it. "Nichyose!"
"Fantastic! Perhaps a little less will, this time," Victoria said.
Katya reigned in her errant witchlight, encouraging it to come back to her by gently tugging on the tether with a physical 'come here' motion. "Fire is much… heavier, if that makes any sense. I guess witchlights don't need quite the same amount of push."
As Katya's light obeyed and came slowly drifting back, Victoria's raced out to meet it. "Try to catch mine," she said before it became a white streak, leaping over a hundred feet into the air.
Katya's followed with no problem. "I have a lot more experience than you at this," she said with a smile. "Perhaps I should lead?"
"Be my guest," Victoria said, inclining her head, shifting the colour of hers to blue.
Katya smiled and shifted hers to red before flinging it out into the dark. Swooping and diving, arcing and ricocheting off of the floor and then the ceiling high above, blue chased after red like a pair of excited puppies running around a fenced yard.
The longer the chase went on, the larger the dares and boasts. Exclamations and praise, they were little girls playing in the schoolyard again, only now with magic. As their lights zipped around in the darkness, Katya was reminded that gifts such as theirs could also just be fun, something that both of them had needed more than they knew.
In the flashing red and blue light, Katya looked over at Victoria's face and saw that for the first time, it bore none of what lie below the surface. Free from pain, and exalting in the learning of something new, she didn't look like an orphan or a twin who'd lost her other half. She didn't look guilty of anything other than finally allowing herself to experience joy.
She looked like a witch.
Millie pulled her coat more tightly closed, but nothing seemed to help. Her scarf, gloves, hat, and boots were, combined, only mostly effective at keeping the wind out.
Her patrol had brought her to the emptiest side of the airfield, where there was no windbreak. The only thing around was the perimeter fence, and that was only effective at keeping dogs and people out. The wind sliced right through and found its way to what felt like Millie's core, no matter what she did.
Beside her, Inga wasn't even wearing gloves. "Warm today," the newest member of LAC's security section said.
