In that slow, languid moment, time seemed to dilate and I could pick up every detail. The way the wind nipped at my skin. The dark of the night, the smell of a winter forest. How the bluish-flecks in Charlotte Valentine’s eyes mirrored those of her familiar. I noticed how Hwari’s presence seemed to shrink, as if she’d been struck. Wol’s raised heckles died down, lying flat again his back.
“Have I struck a nerve?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I spat, but it came out too defensive. “My mom died,” I said, saying the words that I always tried to avoid saying. I always said she was missing.
So why did I just snap and say that she was dead?
She ignored me and kept talking. “There is a curse among the Shins. A law.” For the first time since this conversation began, something like sympathy touched her expression. “One heir per generation. Yet, your mother and father broke that rule.”
“I… what?”
Charlotte shook her head. She reached on top of her head and took the fascinator into her hands. Unfolding it, she revealed a thin needle-like blade. With it, she pricked her hand. She dripped the blood into the snow, drawling a circle. “You are alone in this. You may lay birthright claim to the Shin inheritance all you want, child. But in the end, the very people who were were supposed to pass it on to you left enough room in the dealings for others to intervene.” She gave me another pitying glance. “And that is the real reason your father is not here. Because they need you to fail.”
I swallowed. My throat felt dry. I tried to fit in the pieces of the puzzle that was my mom being alive. But I couldn’t. I kept focusing on the reasons why my dad couldn’t be here. “He went to call in favors. He’s supposed to…”
“And where is that help now? More than enough time has passed for favors to have exchanged hands.”
“Don’t listen to her, Practitioner,” Wol hissed.
I couldn’t breath. The implication shattered the dozens of retort I’d been preparing.
“Did he ever show you an ounce of care? Did he do anything about the torment you experienced at school? Why did he not teach you the ways of a practitioner, if you are meant to be the heir?”
“The letter, they wrote it to me. The familiars, my mom, the toe. I—” The words froze in my chest.
“All prepared before your sister was born.”
I rocked back like I’d been hit.
Charlotte flicked the blood from the fascinator into the middle of the circle. The working came to life. A simple one. It was brief. The same fascinator appeared in Miriam’s mirror, except the blade was rusted with blood. A reflection. Miriam’s mirror floated over to me.
“Every path you walk has been full of help incomplete. Because your parents changed their minds about who the heir should be,” Charlotte shook her head. “That is the reason why Miru, despite being the great divinator she is… left you with nearly nothing. Just crumbs. Crumbs that your parents would have taken away if they could.”
This whole time, I’d been trying to find who the bad guy was. What the ultimate goal of this trial was, why everything seemed so stacked against me, just to get what’s mine. Why it felt like nothing was going my way and I faced resistance at every turn. The invisible hand behind the curtain that seemed determined to make everything so rushed so that I never got my feet under me.
My parents.
They’d never finished the preparation for me to inherit. Or they did, and they decided to change their minds. The dealings with the Fae. Maybe that’s why they passed it over. My mind put all the clues together. They had been sealed, so that they couldn’t practice. That meant they couldn’t directly control the practice anymore. Which meant they had to rely on other means. If they really did change their minds… then their best bet was to orchestrate events so that—
“Jain! Focus!” Wol screamed.
The wind died down, and Miriam’s muffled shrieking laughter was the only thing I could hear.
Charlotte looked away. “As a mother myself… I’m sorry, child.”
With that, Miriam began to fly over with the stiletto in her hand. Her skin immediately turned the color of a drowned corpse, all pale and grayish-blue, but the stiletto was sharp enough to gleam, and I knew it was sharp enough to cut with the barest of pushes. Wol leapt in her way, but she slapped him away with barely a glance.
My mind had blocked out everything except my thoughts. Hearing. Smell. Only the absolutely necessary sense of sight remained. And I just stood there, watching as the girl got to me and then pressed the tip of the blade into my stomach.
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Charlotte had to be lying. All words chosen to affect my emotions. Of course, an Enchantress wouldn’t need magic to manipulate people’s emotions. Words were just as good. Maybe better. Or maybe it was magic, and she was so good that I couldn’t even tell.
Atleast, that’s what I kept telling myself.
I looked down at the place where Miriam had stabbed me: right in the spot where Hidebehind had covered with the mulch. It hurt. But not as deep as it would have been without the mulch. I got hurt a lot in the last few days, and experience told me it wasn’t that bad because the creature had wanted to see me suffer and suffer slowly. She’d never meant to kill me in the first blow. She wanted to hurt me little by little. Death by a thousand paper cuts.
Miriam looked up at me, smiling at first, but that expression faded into confusion at the lack of my own.
I could’ve capitalized on the moment. But I had nothing. Too drained. Too weak. Too alone.
Hwari splashed out of the ground and whipped her tailfins, splattering ink all over the mirror’s surface.
“What the fuck!” Miriam screeched, trying to wash away the ink, but her hands were trapped in the mirror world. She gave up, reaching out with her arms for Hwari, who swam out of her reach, but only just.
An ear-splitting hiss came from near my feet. Looking down, I saw Wol batting at the ice around with his little paws with fury that only a feline could muster up. He batted them so hard that a few of his claws caught on the ice and tore. Blood—too light and pink to be real—poured down on the snow around us. There were some countermeasures built into the ice boots. Thin shells of frost began to form over my skin underneath my clothing.
“W-Wol,” I said, shivering a little. “Your paws. T-That’s enough..”
Wol pretended not to hear me, his entire focus fixed on the crusts of ice.
“Wol,” I said again. “Stop it.”
He kept pounding his bloody little paws on the ice. But it was futile. That wasn’t regular ice. It was a working. Physics could only take us so far when it came to the paranormal. The rules were different here, neither one nor the other.
“W-wol, it’s useless. Get my bag instead, and—”
The glass-like ice around my feet shattered.
“Jain!” Wol spat. “Move!”
I stared down at the ice. Then at Wol. Then at Hwari.
Drained or not, I moved my body.
I would give it everything I had. Try everything I could.
My senses returned, and my blood began to pump. I immediately reached behind me, flicking open my knife and pointing it at Charlotte. “E-Eldr—”
“Stillness,” Charlotte muttered.
Glowing green strings came at me from a dozen different angles, entangling themselves around my wrist, arms, and legs. They had no beginning; they appeared out of thin air. But once wrapped around my limbs, they solidified like metal rods, keeping me from finishing the rest of my movements.
Charlotte had her staff out. A proper practitioner’s staff made of wood. I couldn’t tell what kind of wood, but it was inscribed with glowing runes up and down the whole thing.
I reached out towards Underthebed. “Underthebed, come o-out.”
Once more, the teddy bear’s stomach transformed into maws. The eyes in them blinked angrily towards Charlotte, and the sudden wave of drowsiness pointed towards her was so intense that I rocked on my heels.
The experienced Valentine brought out a small twig and broke it in half, releasing the stored energy within.
The scent of fresh leaves and strong mint washed over the entire area. But it wasn’t just scent. It was the feeling of everything that one would associate with a fresh morning—the taste of hot coffee scorching your tongue, a blaring alarm clock, sizzling bacon, the bus ride to school. The illusion of a morning routine.
The two opposing energies met in the middle, a strange combination of wanting to go to bed and already being awake. But Underthebed was not a creature meant to be used in a faceoff. Because the fact is, the moment you realize someone’s trying to put you to sleep, the effect is half-gone already. Belateldly, I realized the three brothers were all similar in this aspect. Tagalong, Hidebehind, Underthebed; they all relied on the person being unaware.
Underthebed’s glowering angry eyes grew weaker until they blinked out, hiding inside the teddy bear that I’d used to bind him.
Miriam wiped the ink off her side of the mirror, and Hwari’s ink dripped off. “You made it all dirty! You ruined it! You ruined it!” and the young girl inside hung half her body outside in a freakish maneuver of inhumane flexibility, arms reaching towards me. “I’m going to skin your tongue and make you lick it spotless.”
Wol got in front of me and hissed towards her. Hwari circled my neck, exuding calm.
“She must be lying, Jain,” Wol said.
I swallowed. “I know. Classic enchantress manipulation tactics.” Again, I didn’t really buy it.
“The boy is becoming rather tiresome,” Charlotte said dryly.
I glared at her, too tired for a riposte. “Hwari, d-draw a circle around us.”
Charlotte raised her staff and pointed towards me, chanting, “Blāwan.”
The snow around my feet rose up in a flurry of flakes, recreating the downfall of a blizzard, except it was localized around me. The spell created a fresh layer of snow, covering Hwari’s haphazard attempt at a circle. Wol and Hwari disappeared too, buried underneath the snow. Not only that, they created tiny mounds so that any circle drawn over them would be uneven. Less powerful.
“Lift him,” Charlotte said calmly. “And keep him quiet.”
Miriam flew over behind me, her hands gathering up invisible strings as one might a microphone cable. I felt the strings wrapped around me gather into one place and hoist me up into the air. One loose strand formed a noose around my neck and began to dig into the soft flesh under my chin, cutting off any sound from escaping.
“Hang him,” Charlotte commanded.
Miriam’s fingers moved in a series of gestures, similar to cat’s cradle. The strings around my legs and arms loosened. Before I could figure out what was going on, they wrapped around my throat, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe.
I hung with my legs flailing.
My hands struggled against the strings, trying to get beneath them. But they were too tight. They weren’t just cutting off the air required to speak, but slowly cutting off blood too. My eyes felt heavy, like they were about to pop. My tongue started pressing itself to the roof of my mouth, trying to roll out.
You know how people say your life flashes by when you’re about to die? It’s not exactly correct. At the very least, it wasn’t like that for me. It’s less of a series of animated frames flashing through your mind, and more of an intense, concentrated thought process where you do all the thinking that you should’ve done before. Regrets. Understandings. Forgiveness. Last good vibes for the family.
For me… it was a realization.
Everyone has secrets, and everyone is ashamed of something.
I mean, what kid doesn’t have secrets? Everyone has a skeleton in the closet or two. Live long enough, and you start needing two closets. Depending on the type of life you lead, maybe three. Middle schoolers who steal sodas from the halal cart, hig schoolers stealing cafeteria milk cartons, company executives driving like maniacs and flipping people off… No one wants their dirty laundry out in the air.
Look, the point is, everyone has something that they’re ashamed of.
And me? What was I ashamed of?
…I’m ashamed of the fact that I’m a nobody.