From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 92
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
Yanking her hand back, Vita's indulgence had obviously run its course. "They were Colette's."
Katya felt her smile melt from her face to splatter on the floor. "I… didn't know that."
Vita ran her fingers over the back of one and gently twisted the ring. "Aside from the books we shared, they're the only effects of hers that I kept. I don't even remember taking them, to be honest. I remember entering her bedroom after getting home from the asylum, seeing everything as she had left it… after that, it gets… hazy."
"I'm sorry," Katya said.
"Thank you, but there's no need. They do stand out a bit," Vita said, holding her palms out so they could both see the sharp deltas stretched across the backs of her hands. A deep forest green, they still managed to look radiant next to her customary black. "The image I remember most of Colette is her hands. When she was writing—on paper or blackboard—or reading. Showing me how to make my first witchlight; I was always looking at her hands, it seemed. These are my strongest memory of her, physically."
"What made you put them on?"
"I wanted to make sure some part of her got to return to France."
Katya smiled sadly. "I never thought you the sentimental type."
"Then you'll be relieved to hear that's not the only reason. I want the Council to see them. To see what's left of her." Vita's voice was the creak of a river frozen solid beginning to flow again, leaving anyone who fell in to freeze or drown.
Katya frowned. "You've made this personal."
"No, I didn't. It always has been. Summoning us like dogs, threatening us with nebulous consequences if we don't come to heel; acting as though our allegiance should be automatic upon revelation of their existence. They exiled Colette from her home, shunned Millie without even meeting her… I didn't do that."
"You may have a point," Katya admitted, "but we have to rise above that. Personal squabbles or vendettas get us nowhere."
"A noble contention, what makes you so sure?"
"If they're as old as Selene says, they already see us as mewling infants. Making it about ourselves will only reinforce that. Passion, yes, but couched in objectivity."
"They're witches. We're nothing without our feelings."
"Passion is a feeling. 'You hurt my friend, so there' is… petty? Is that the word?"
"I see what you're driving at, Katya, but…" Vita sighed. It was a lonely sound. "Very well. You've proven time and again that you're better at this sort of thing than me. I acquiesce."
Katya felt her smile begin to re-form. "Good. Though I would have preferred to hear 'surrender.'"
"You'll have to work much harder to get that out of me."
"A task for another day," Katya said.
"Indeed. Time, however, takes no prisoners." Vita looked down at her watch. "You know, we really must be going, Elise!" she called. "Millie, would you kindly… disentangle yourself?"
It was done.
Elise, Vickie, they were all gone, and to Millie, the resulting emptiness in the house was crushing. Six Manifests were missing, and it felt like they had been replaced with a dark void. It wasn't just their absence, it was the fact that it felt like they had been replaced with literally nothing. A nothing that felt like something, which shouldn't have been possible. Yet another bit of wrongness to the entire situation.
The love of Millie's life, as well as her best friend. The entirety of her Coven was gone, and it hurt so much worse than she'd thought it was going to. The week Vickie had been in the asylum had been uncomfortable and strange, since it was the first time they had been separated since being brought together, but they were a Coven now. Having both her and Elise gone was already ten times worse, and it had only been an hour.
Ivy and Anastasia were still there, and Millie was reassured by the gentle pressure of their Manifests, but not much. They were her sisters as well, but not her Coven. Even without that word, they were still the two most important people in her life, and for the first time since she'd arrived at the munitions factory, Millie felt alone.
There was no fire in the hearth, no-one playing the piano. No footsteps, no laughter. It made the residence no longer feel like a home, just a building she happened to live in.
Trudging up the stairs, she first entered her own bedroom, but that only made the feeling worse, so she opened the door that connected it to Elise's.
Immediately, she was overwhelmed by the smell.
The tiny glass bottles of Elise's perfume were all well-stoppered, but Millie was so familiar with the fragrances they were shockingly powerful without Elise there. Flowers. Spring. Elise had always smelled like hope. But without her there as the source, it smelled like the exact opposite.
Millie fell onto the bed they had shared for months, the only one she had ever shared with anyone, and ran her fingers over the sheets until they reached Elise's pillow. Snatching it up, Millie clutched it to her chest, holding it tightly to herself.
It was going to be hard, she'd known, but it was far worse than hard—it was already destroying her. She and Elise had never been apart since her arrival in England, and even before they admitted their love for each other, they had been in constant proximity, no more than a few rooms apart for three years.
Unable to stop herself, Millie began to cry. A few tears at first, but quickly devolving into ugly sobs that poured into Elise's pillow, spattering the floral pattern with a dark, splotchy rain.
She let the tears come. Everything within her she bawled out until she could hardly breathe, her nose plugged up to the point she couldn't smell Elise anymore, and she fell over sideways to be in contact with as much of her as possible.
There she lay, for how long she couldn't say, until there was a knock at the door. Unable to move or think, she ignored it.
"Millie?" came Ivy's voice from the other side.
"I'm here," Millie managed. Just enough so Ivy wouldn't worry she was dead.
"May I come in?"
No, Millie wanted to say. She wanted to roll around in Elise's bed, be alone with her, but something made her reconsider. "Go ahead."
The door opened slowly. Ivy stuck her head in far enough to see what condition Millie was in and frowned.
"I'm sorry." Ivy shut the door quietly behind her and sat down on the corner of the bed. "I wish you could have gone."
Everyone knew Millie's thoughts on that by now, so she said nothing.
"The first time is the worst. Especially when you've never been in love before," Ivy said softly. "But she'll be back before you know it, and the reunion will be the sweetest thing you've ever felt."
"I feel like my heart is missing," Millie said. "Like I'm not whole anymore."
Ivy's ancient green eyes were sympathetic. "You aren't."
"She's not dead. She still loves me, and she's coming back. Why does it hurt so much?"
To Millie's horror, Ivy smiled.
"Because you're young. It's natural to fall to pieces the first time. But when she gets back you'll be whole again, and stronger for it. I know you don't want to hear it, but it'll be good for you in the long run."
Millie snorted, an unfortunate reaction with her nose in the condition it was. "It does sound like something an old person would say."
"And they don't come much older than me, so you'd better believe it."
Though Millie could do little more than stare straight ahead, the tears began to ebb. "I suppose you're right."
"You wanna hear me sound old again?"
"Do I have a choice?" Millie said.
"You'll look back on this and laugh. Probably by the time she gets back. In fact, I bet you don't even tell her about this."
Millie looked over at Ivy, who was smiling her lupine smile. There was mischief in her eyes again, and Millie couldn't help but be reassured by it. "How much?"
"I'm right, you take my lessons teaching those hopeless girls out there about witchlights for a week. You confess your big heart out, I scrub the cauldrons myself the week she comes back."
"Really?"
"Really." Ivy's smile broadened in her confidence. "One of us has been already been your age."
Millie suddenly saw the tear stains in the pillow in a different, more objective light, and relaxed her grip, but still held on. "You have an odd bedside manner, you know that?"
"Good thing I don't sit at many bedsides. Come on, get up. We still have to get through the day, only with half the people."
When Millie was finally on her feet again, she followed Ivy outside to The Shed and got to work. If she was going to be counting the days, she needed to at least make sure they went by as fast as possible.
The wind lashed Pretoria's hair, covering her face in a black veil as she stared out at the setting sun.
After days of rest, once she and Niamh had said good-bye to Eva and gotten underway again, movement had decreased the amount of water pouring out of her considerably, now barely more than normal sweat would have on a warm day. Her wounds had healed enough for travel, though her back was still sore and tender, but she could move without bleeding everywhere for the first time since she'd come out of the river.
The clothing she'd been given didn't quite fit, but she was still immensely grateful for it. It was a simple dress that Eva had pulled down out of her attic but not terribly out of fashion, given they were as far from London as you could get and still be in England. Things like fashion trends didn't make it this far north very often, and even when they did, it was years late.
"You're making the right choice," Niamh said over the howling wind of the open box-car they had stowed away on. She hadn't trusted showing their faces on a proper passenger train—one crime to cover another—though Pretoria couldn't say for certain what she was guilty of anymore. "And a brave one."
Not that she'd had much choice. Eva wouldn't have been able to tell her anything about her Manifest, and if Pretoria really had been responsible for Gloria and Ephraim's deaths, directly or indirectly, she had to understand it or risk hurting someone else.
Or herself.
She thought back to how much blood had surged out of her at the moment… it… happened. How dizzy it had made her, how overwhelmed she had been by it. So it had been go to Longstown or be terrified by her own body for the rest of her life.
From the scant newspaper articles her aunt had read to her, Pretoria knew something about who was awaiting her in the South. But now that she was actually on the way, she thought for the first time about what they would think of her.
She was a bumpkin from the middle of nowhere; a poor Northern girl who couldn't even read. Would they think her a simpleton? The magic she'd heard about made these other witches seem like goddesses, why would they even talk to her? A Manifested witch who knew nothing about anything sounded dangerous, and she wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to put her down like a rabid dog. She just wished she knew who to blame for making her rabid in the first place.
Speeding steadily south, she was being torn away from the only life she'd ever known, and as darkness swallowed the green hills and rock-strewn fells to the west, part of her was dying with the light.
Every inch she covered took her farther away from home than she'd ever been, every one of which she would have to make up if she ever wanted to return.
As the miles fell, the harder it was for her to keep track of them. Not only had she never traveled this far, she'd never traveled this fast. Her first time on a train was as a stowaway, and it kept her from thrilling at the experience.
She hadn't earned this. Any of it. It had either been stolen or thrust on her, depending on how she felt at any given minute. A week of uncertainty had turned into days of disbelieving horror which had become minutes of bleak, agonising terror; then seconds and minutes of nothing which only ended in her dragging herself out of the river utterly changed, both mentally and physically.
Flying into a tunnel, the world went utterly black and deafeningly loud.
But as Niamh coughed and gagged on the fumes blown backwards from the locomotive, Pretoria sat as she had before, effortlessly holding her breath until they were out the other side.
When the air of the North filled her lungs once more, she savoured it. Cold, crisp and clean, it was how air had always tasted. Only now, when she knew she was soon going to be breathing air that was foreign and different, did she truly appreciate it. It was invigorating, and she breathed deeply of it. Her chest swelled, and whether it was because of her Manifest or her pride in where she had come from, she didn't give much thought to.
She was a Northern girl headed South. And though there were parts of her she couldn't explain, or even understand fully, they had taken nothing away from what she had been before she was transformed. That she would take with her knowingly and proudly.
No, she didn't know what a Manifest was, and no, she couldn't read. But she was a hard-working, honest witch who had done nothing wrong. Nothing to deserve what had happened to her.
Or had she?
Five people were dead. People she had called friends, neighbours, known her entire life, because there was no-one else to know. She knew their names and their children's names. A few of them had only been alive to try to kill her because she'd saved them from illness years earlier. If she had known that helping them would result in them trying to murder her, would she have ever helped them?
The fact that circumstances were such that she even had to ask that question hurt almost as much as the fact that in the end, it was very possible they had died because of her anyway.
She looked down at her puffy, sickly hands. The hands that had done it because this power within her, this Manifest, had enabled her to. She'd felt the water. The movement, the weight. Felt it move. Surge, faster than normal, as if someone had pushed it.
Someone.
Looking out again, as she had by the river, she raised one hand, only this time toward the bright red sliver of what remained of the sun. When she dropped it, the sun was devoured by the distant hills, the same as the river had devoured the people she had once called friends.
And like the river, when the act was done, there was yellow-orange fire stretching away from her, a ribbon defined by contours of earth.
Only this time, when the fire faded, the river was more than simply cold and dark; it was strewn with stars.
A sudden gust of wind buffeted Pretoria's face, and the veil of her hair was parted.
The stars were bright, but chill and distant.
The same as Longstown.
It had been a long and difficult day wrangling six apprentice witches with only three people, which necessitated tea. As they waited for the water to boil, Millie took advantage of the time to try to impart a lesson on the most difficult student of them all.
"It won't bite," Millie said. "Just… look— I'm fine."
Ivy looked dubious about whether or not that was true, a look that was more akin to deciding whether or not Millie had lost her mind.
"What? Your plants are more dangerous," Millie said.
"My plants are natural."
"No they aren't. You made them that way."
"Beside the point. They come out of the ground, and are made of water and sunlight. This…"
"Is a telephone, not a bomb," Millie said as she picked up the earpiece and put it to her ear without exploding or bursting into flame. Ivy still looked unconvinced.
Returning it, Millie poked the lacquered-wood housing with a long finger, pressing against it until her skin was as white as witchscale. "See? No armour or anything."
"It's electrical."
"So are the lights."
"And I still don't trust those completely, either," Ivy said, casting a look up through the thick fringe that curled over her eyebrows.
Millie sighed. "You've gotten this close to it, what's a few more feet?"
"That's when it gets you. I do know something about electricity."
"Just enough to frighten you, it sounds like." Though when Millie looked at the contraption again, she had to admit it was an odd-looking thing, the twin bells mounted above the mouthpiece making it look like a perpetually-surprised being from another world confused as to how it had ended up trapped in EVE's kitchen.
It was Ivy's turn to sigh, but hers came with a disbelieving shrug. "I don't know why you think this is so important. I've muddled through the last four centuries just fine without it. If I want to talk to someone I'll go see them, or write them a letter. The same way it's always been done."
"What if they want to talk to you? Or need to?" Millie nodded at the telephone as it hung in perfectly nondescript banality on the kitchen wall. "Would've made the Russians a lot less of a surprise, wouldn't it? Oh," Millie clicked her fingers, "I recall someone telling me about what happens when you can't change, and how important modern communication is. Do you know who that was? I remember her chiding Zoya about not keeping up with things like that."
Ivy's seemed suddenly far more trusting of electrical lights as she sought them out in order to avoid looking at Millie.
"I even waited until everyone else was gone to help you. Take it slowly. If it zaps you, witchscale is a very good insulator," Millie said with a broad grin. "I think."
Ivy blanched.
"I'm joking! See?" Millie picked up the receiver and held it against her ear again. Then the operator picked up and she slammed it back down again before she could say anything.
From the stairs came the enthusiastic thumping descent of a teenager learning there was a conversation happening without her.
Anastasia's dark brown hair was pulled up and back by a white bone barrette, revealing the full force of her enthusiasm for what she'd just walked into. "Who was that?" she asked.
"Who was who?" Millie replied.
"On the telephone. I heard you hang up."
"What? Oh, no-one. I was just showing Ivy how it worked," Millie said.
"Again?"
"What do you mean, again?" Ivy said.
"My room is right by the stairs. I can hear you when the door's open."
"Were you eavesdropping on us?" Millie asked.
