Witch's Brew - Spellspinners 1 (Spellspinners of Melas County) (21 page)

Chance rubbed his face with both of his hands.

“What?”

“Screams. Coming from down there. It was Hunter.”

“What kinds of screams?”

Logan braced himself for the answer. He could tell by Chance’s haunted face he didn’t want to say it, never mind relive it again.

“My friend said they tortured him, Logan. That he sounded like an animal caught in a trap.”

Logan shook his head. A sliver of sun peeked through the forest, making the dust in the air appear effervescent. He watched the dirt float slowly down. Watched Chance empty the rest of the dirt from his clamped hands then rub his hands together wiping his hands clean of it.

“What rank was Hunter?” Logan asked finally. Something like “How sad” or “Man, that sucks” might be a more appropriate response. But in this moment Logan had more practical questions to ask before Chance got tired of the conversation.

“Cerulean. Why?”

“Huh,” Logan said thoughtfully.

“Huh? That’s your reaction to DUNGEON TORTURE? Two words, bro: cautionary tale! Besides…”

Logan cut him off. “What happened to the girl?”

Chance shrugged, but he looked like he knew and just didn’t want to talk about it. “Don’t know for sure. Doubt her outcome was good.”

“What happened to Hunter? After.”

“Apparently the headmaster claimed he was sent abroad to study, but rumor was he was banished to the island that used to be a leper colony. They use it now for wayward Spellspinners. And by 'wayward’ they of course mean those of us who lose in the Gleaning.”

“I guess if you have to be banished, Hawaii’s not such a bad spot,” Logan remarked.

“I never said Hawaii. Were you even listening to me? If he’s there he’s imprisoned for treason. In a leper colony. That doesn’t exactly spell
Mele Kalikimaka
to me.”

“That means Merry Christmas.”

“Whatever. Listen dude, when you get to thinking about this witch, flash your mind on that dungeon and ask yourself, is this where I’d like to spend my time instead of hanging with my buddy Chance?”

Logan slowly squatted down to the earth, scratching his back against the euca tree. “You make a valid point.”

“So drop this thing, okay?”

Spreading his legs out in front of him Logan closed his eyes, listening to the rustling leaves.

When he opened his eyes, Chance was staring at him with a horrified expression. “Dude. You are so gone. Look at your face!”

“I can’t see my face. What does it look like?” he tried to joke.

Chance bounced to his feet and pointed at him. “She bewitched you!”

Logan wasn’t impressed. “Please. I’m a Cerulean. I’m a
warlock
. I’m beyond that kind of vulnerability…besides she was sleeping. Not spellspinning.”

Chance started pacing. “How do you know? Maybe their leader found out where you’d be and she staged the whole thing?”

“You’re paranoid. And, you know—Jacob may be a lot of things, but he wouldn’t condone torture against his own kind. I’m sure your friend wasn’t spinning a tale, but rumors have a way of getting exaggerated over time. Plus that was a long time ago, right?”

“Rumor? No. He told me flat out when I started getting recruiting letters from Jacob wanting me to come here. He was serious. And paranoid?” Chance tilted his head back and laughed out loud, a deep, almost growling ironic laugh. “They are WITCHES. Our enemies, remember?”

Logan frowned, then bounced back to his feet. He had to get Chance off his back if he was going to get away with seeing her again. “You’re right. I’ll wait till after the Gleaning, dude,” he said. “We all have enough on our minds without adding a witch into the mix.”

“That’s more like it. Come on, let’s get in a good spar and call it a day.”

“You got it,” Logan said, but he still couldn’t shake the image of the blond-haired girl lying on the rock, the feeling that radiated deep into his bones when he’d touched her skin. Then there was the mystery of the amulet that hung around her neck, flashing at him, as if begging him to find out more.

Lily

“So how
did
you do that?” Orchid asked suddenly.

“What?”

“The out of control fire ball, dummy! The avalanche-inducing one? Or don’t you remember?”

“Oh yeah, that avalanche.”

“So, what did Camellia say to you after?”

Camellia wanted to know how I’d done it, too.

I suspected my huge surplus in power was because of sniffing the euca leaves, but I still wasn’t ready to confess that.

“Who the…?” Orchid demanded.

“Who? What?” I sucked in a breath.

She pointed to a surfer getting out of his car and heading toward the water. “Da-ang, his ink is all kinds of sizzle. I wonder if he’s one of
them
.”

“A warlock?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No way. They would never come out in public like that. But if you honestly think he is one, don’t even look.”

“It’s not like their eyes will turn us to stone, Lil.”

“That you know of…” Just the thought of fraternizing with one of them made my skin crawl.

“Yeah, you’re right. He’s way too hot to be a warlock. There’s just…something about his ink that made me wonder.”

“We have no idea what their ink looks like. Which is really starting to bug me, actually. Why won’t the elders tell us more about them? Seems like it would really be helpful to at least know what to expect.”

My best friend sat stiff-backed on her board, staring straight ahead.

“What?” I asked.

“I heard something last night.”

“What?”

Orchid’s board rose and fell in silence.

“Are you going tell me?”

“Swear you’ll keep it between us? You can’t tell Iris. You have to swear.”

“Okay. I swear.”

“I couldn’t sleep last night, so I went down to the kitchen for a snack, and I overheard Camellia talking to someone in her office. It was in Gaelic, and it was hard to hear, something like
I’m ball
?

I wracked my brain for the translation.

“Something about us…I think. She was saying something about our magic, and then said—”

“Was it
i mbaol
?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

I swallowed. “That means endangered?”

“Ohmygoddesses.”

“I know.”

We were both silent for a moment. Then finally I ventured to ask, “Maybe this is connected somehow to our magic going haywire?”

“That’s what I was thinking too.”

“Okay. Don’t say anything for now. I’m going to look into this
i mbaol
concept more. Keep an ear out in case Camellia says more, and I’ll do the same with Iris.”

“Got it.”

“And O?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for telling me.”

“You’re my best friend, Lil. That’s first over the rest.”

“Forever,” I said.

“Forever,” she said back.

After school I headed straight for the Melas Public Library.

Maybe it was just an offhand comment, but what Orchid had said about our being an “endangered species” had freaked me out for some reason.

“Good afternoon, Lily,” Mrs. Glumberg said, as soon as I stepped through the automatic doors.

“Hi. How are you?” I asked.

“My gout is better! Thanks for the tip about the cherries,” she said.

“Anytime. So glad to hear it.”

“So what are you looking for today?”

“Can I have the key to the fifth floor?” I asked quietly.

“Hmm, that’s for students normally.”

“I promise, I’ll be like, five minutes. Max,” I reached into my bag and pulled out a glass bottle of special cherry elixir I whipped up for her in case she needed some extra encouragement to hand over the key, and set it on the counter. “Oh, here. We made this especially for you.”

“How very sweet!” She glanced around to make sure no one was watching, before she pulled her private set of keys out of her purse, and used one to open a drawer behind the counter.

The golden key flashed in my palm.

“Thanks a lot,” I said, closing my fingers around it before she noticed its magical response.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for,” she said, innocently.

She and Iris were old friends, and I wasn’t sure how much she knew about the Fifth Floor. So I just said, “Thanks, me too.”

The elevator only went to the fourth floor. I got off there and took a hidden flight of stairs to a locked door that said ARCHIVED BOOKS: NO PATRONS ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT WITHOUT SPECIAL PERMISSION. When I slipped the golden key into the lock, the doorknob magically twisted and opened for me.

The fifth floor was a large, dusty archive that patrons were only allowed to use with permission from Mrs. Glumberg.

To public knowledge, the archive’s many antique books were protected for their fragility and uniqueness—some were the only copies still in print. What the public didn’t know was that the Melas witches always had a representative on the library’s board, so we’d always have access to the precious collection we kept in here, glamoured, so only we could read it.

Our books were mixed in with human books. When I ran my fingers down their leather spines, their true titles appeared. With a pounding heart, I read:

DARK PROPHECY: ON THE ENDANGERMENT OF SPELLSPINNERS

If the Hundred Year Curse—placed on the witches and the warlocks by the Seven Sisters in the year of 1912—is not broken within a full century, modern Spellspinners will face the deireadh na n-amanna.

I pulled out my phone and typed the phrase into the translator:

Deireadh na N-Amanna
: Irish: Gaelic.

End of Times.

End of Times?

Automatically, the enchanted book turned the page:

As their magic begins to fade from existence, modern Spellspinners will be left with only basic human bodies, impotent of the vast Powers granted through practicing magic.

My back scratched against the hard bindings as I slid to the floor. Heavy in my lap, the book flipped to a new page:

Hundred Year Curse

In the year of 1911, After centuries of living in peace, the stable family unions of male & female witches found themselves in deep-seeded philosophical conflict: Male/female opinions split between an eagerness to live amongst humans (female) and lust for power to rule over them (male). * Wives accused their male counterparts of succumbing to the temptations of dark magic. (Why else would they want to rule over less powerful beings?) Husbands accused wives of not tapping their potential. (Why waste healing energies on human children when they could be increasing their own powers?) After individual families fell, Coven communities succumbed to aggression. When the warring covens couldn’t come to terms, violence ensued. The Seven Sisters were forced to intervene and create a new order.

*ABRIDGED council ruling, translated from oracle on the isle of the Seven Sisters

Ord nua

Ruling that her spellspinners were unequipped to control the great surge of energy that came from binding the dark and light powers coursing between them, the spellspinners left the sisters with no choice but to sever their union, ordering female Witches to continue to live among humans, but practice their light magic (i.e. healing, breathing) in secret. Male witches were branded with a new name: Warlock*, and, as such, they were banished from witch communities and the human world, and stricken from harming or ruling over human or witch kind. They could practice their dark magic (i.e. levitation, mind reading) in secret.

*Warlock

Origin:

before 900; Middle English
warloghe, -lach,
Old English
waerloga
oathbreaker, devil, equivalent to
waer
covenant +
-loga
betrayer (derivative of
leogan
to lie)

The Congression

To maintain the new order, the Seven Sisters created a fair council of Spellspinners to govern over the witches and warlocks in the form of the Congression, a body comprised of seven wise spinners (three warlocks and four witches, alternating quarterly to four warlocks and three witches for balance) all of whom were approved by the sisters.

The Gleaning

Stripping the spellspinners of half their energy proved problematic, and both female and male complained to congression of failing magic beyond the powers stricken from them. Because the fe/male Spellspinners were not allowed to interact, they created a process called “The Gleaning” where fe/male spellspinners would exchange dark and light energy through a magically governed battle, to ensure their powers remain balanced. At the first gleaning, in June 1912, on the isle of the sisters, a tragedy occurred. a warlock murdered the opposing witch he was meant to glean light magic from, and in retaliation, a warlock was murdered by a witch. The Congression intervened, and the Seven Sisters cursed the spellspinning community as a whole, banishing them from the sacred isle to America. Further, they cursed the warlock community with premature aging as punishment for their greed; Likewise, witches, for retaliating without permission, inherited the curse of never falling in love. They could marry only humans, and would never again know the passionate joy of loving their magical equal.

Warlocks would only marry humans, and only give birth to male progeny, Sons of Darkness, while witches would spawn only Daughters of Light.

To punish the community further, the sisters gifted their female counterparts with eternal youth and indescribable beauty, forcing the warlocks to desire what they could never have, while witches would be forced to watch their magical equals deteriorate before their eyes, without ever knowing their love.

Modern Spellspinners continue to perform the same ritual as their ancestors every summer, fall, winter and spring solstice in an effort to preserve their powers (witches) and slow down their rapid aging (warlocks). The witches and warlocks were granted a hundred year window to amend past mistakes and break the curse, or abort their powers forevermore.