2 Jyo 1558

It was blacker than the night itself. A colossal gape threatening to suck her in.

She tripped over broken wood sticking out of the ash, and her hair fell in front of her thin face. Ash covered her clothed knees. Shit. It was getting too long—her hair; she’d have to take a knife to it soon. She liked to keep it shoulder length, easier to maintain. But she’d let it grow past her shoulders this time. She moved the hairs away from her face. It looks so black. Her hair was normally tan, but out here, everything was black. Even her pale fingers, long and spindly, looked black out here.

She was so distracted.

The mountain was going to swallow her whole. Its craggy jaws loomed closer.

“Hey.”

She paid no mind to the soft voice behind her. She sat on her knees out here in the dead of night, surrounded by fragmented slabs of wood and stone, staring into the vast mouth of Lilith.

Remnants of a hundred-year-old ruins.

A town buried in ash.

“What are you doing?” the voice spoke again. It was male.

When the girl blinked, the mountain moved. A living, breathing monster.

She moaned.

“Are you okay?” The voice echoed in her head.

She shivered, panting and digging her fingers into the snow.

No, this wasn’t snow….it was a cemetery.

“Yeah. I think you’ve had enough.”

That annoying voice. It was kind, but so annoying. Now it was touching her shoulder.

“Get up.”

“Wait,” she whispered, too dizzy to move.

“I told you it was going to be too much.”

A different voice chimed in, also male. “She inhaled so much of the mist, brother.”

“Yep,” another one grunted. This voice was so deep. “And she had vida afterward. Saw her swallow two of the petals. I doubt she’ll be walking straight all night.” He laughed, and it was a mean, deep laugh.

She wanted to forget everything. Forget her shitty life. She opened her arms for Lilith to eat her whole and bury her in the ash, too.

The men behind her laughed crudely. She paid them no mind. What would they do to her? She giggled. Who cared what they did.

“Stay back,” the first voice—the kind one—was saying. “Don’t be stupid now. Stay away from her. Step back I said.” He grabbed her shoulders and stood her up on wobbly feet. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”

“Hey, girl!” one of them shouted. “Don’t come around these parts again if you can’t handle it. Next time, you won’t be so lucky.”

She could smell the leers coming out of their rancid breaths. Thugs, the shitheads.

She sighed out a laugh, lolling her head back.

“Stop,” the kind voice next to her ordered, holding her up as they went on.

Maybe she was in over her head, but tonight, she’d forgotten everything she wanted to forget: hunger, fear, foolishness. She’d remember it all again tomorrow. But she was happy to forget now. She could always come back when she wanted to forget again.

“Wait,” she said hoarsely, to a companion she didn’t know and could barely see. “Wait. Here. It’s here.”

“What is?”

She got back down on her knees.

“What are you doing?” he asked, irritated.

Some time ago, diggers came into the ruins, ones who liked to study the place and write about it in books. They managed to find pieces of an ancient grand fountain statue deep in the ash. The base and most of its body was still intact. The diggers left it on the surface with the remaining parts gathered around like a shrine. Smashed as it was, it was easy to tell the statue was of Reena. Its fractured face smiled down on her.

She clasped her palms together and closed her eyes.

“Pray with me,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Pray with me.”

“No.”

She sat still.

“Why?” she asked, breathless.

“I don’t believe in that shit.”

She smiled anyway. “Okay.”

She prayed to the angel, for herself, for her people, and for a family she never had.

She prayed to someday meet the witch beyond the woods.

Rowan, for the life of him, could not remember why he’d walked away from the forest that one night. Two weeks had gone by already and he was still obsessing over it. What had happened? And what made him so angry to just turn around and come back home?

He recalled coming inside and having his frustration replaced with sudden exhaustion. He’d gone up to his room and was greeted by a head cold the next morning. He would have believed his random trip into the woods had been a dream, but his muddy shoes claimed otherwise, something his mother had shouted at him for while he’d been trying to rest.

Then he saw Zara pass him in the hall. She had smiled and whispered “hello” before stepping back into her own room, looking many times healthier. She didn’t have her cane with her. With good reason, he supposed. She hadn’t limped once.

It didn’t make sense. She acted like nothing happened, like she wasn’t frolicking around the forest just the other night. Rowan wanted to know why she’d gone and who she met there. That was the entire reason for following her outside…but then he had to turn back because of….what? Was he that stressed over some fog and some trees and some noisy moose?

Normally, he want to confront her about it. But every time he looked at her, that…feeling would return. It wasn’t as strong or the same as he’d felt it in the forest, but his gut was telling him to stay away; she wasn’t safe. The thing she was with in the forest was even worse. Whatever it was.

That backed him off. Since then, he’d been confused and scared. He was finding it difficult to believe that he was obsessing over this more than that fucking death ritual. He bore the scars of that day across his back, assaulted from sharp stone pebbles. He and his father had barely made it out alive. Zahir was scraped badly by the time the quake ended. But they were grateful to not have had anything more heavy fall on their heads. Some of the townsfolk hadn’t been so lucky.

It was smart letting the others ahead of them, as long as they could stay on the inner trail. The echoing screams of those people falling over the edge will likely haunt Rowan for the rest of his life.

The quake had been so short, but it had somehow caused much of the loose rocks above to rain down like sand. This was no doubt the work of magic. It was probably Yohid. He had threatened them all, warned them what would happen if they hurt him. And then that witch doctor killed him anyway.

Rowan wished he could erase that hellish image from his mind. It made him think of what could have been his own death. Zara had almost fucked them all. She was lucky, extremely lucky, that blonde wine girl from Ruvini’s had come to her rescue. He hadn’t even known they were that close, but there she stood in front of Uqzar—a man who probably had his own throne set for him in the heavens….and he happened to be her fucking uncle.

You were so lucky. We got so fucking lucky, Rowan thought, his anger rising. We would have been dead if not for that connection right there. Zara…what were you thinking?!

“You okay?”

“Huh?” Rowan startled, looking up at Shia. He was sitting on one of the parlor’s cushioned benches at his friend’s house. Shia had just come in from the kitchen with a tray of fried snacks.

“You’re kind of…crying,” Shia told him, setting the tray down on a small table in front of them.

Rowan rapidly wiped his eyes dry with his hands. “Yeah, yeah I’m fine,” he replied dismissively.

Shia took a seat next to him. “Is everything okay at home? I mean, I didn’t ask earlier since we were talking about your dad and the memorial tomorrow, but I wanna know how’s…” He hesitated. “Um, how’s your mom?”

Rowan shrugged. “She’s fine? She’s alive, that’s all that matters to me.”

His mother had been smarter, thanks to Noina’s influence, of all things. They had fled the mountain the second Zara had been restrained. He and his father had met them on ground level, hours later. They’d been a safe distance away from the damage, though there had been no way to avoid witnessing the people plummeting past them. One man had severed his wrist trying to grab onto a jutting rock on the side of the cliff.

Oddly enough, his mother and aunt hadn’t felt any quake from where they were. No one in town did either. Rowan didn’t know it was possible for a quake to happen only on one side of a mountain, but he didn’t know too much about quakes in the first place. Other than the fact that they usually started in the ground…

Shia had been quiet, but finally interrupted his pondering with another question. “And your sister, then?” he asked, his tone quick and gentle. “How’s Zara doing?”

Shia hadn’t attended the ceremony, but he’d heard plenty about it. Neither of his parents approved of the ceremony in the first place, not that they would publicly claim it. Shia said they didn’t trust witch doctors either. They, like everyone else now, believed the ceremony had been cursed—and rightfully so.

Rowan bristled at the mention of Zara. “I don’t know,” he said flatly.

Shia frowned. “What does that mean?”

“My parents locked her away. I never got a chance to see her.”

Shia’s brows flew up. “Why would they do that?” he exclaimed.

“She…spoke out of line over there. Almost got us all killed.” Like every outsider, Shia knew nothing of Zara’s true identity. Rowan had to pick his words wisely, be partial with the truth. The only problem was, the partial truth hindered the witch doctor’s credibility. Rowan could feel it and it angered him. It was blasphemy.

“Sure but…it wasn’t her fault that stupid quack accused her of witchcraft. She almost died for no reason. That old fool could have killed her and I fucking bet that boy’s also—”

“Don’t say that!” Rowan cut him off.

“What?”

“Don’t call Dr. Uqzar a quack. Or a fool.”

Shia’s frown deepened. “And why not?”

“Just don’t.”

“Rowan, he couldn’t even see that Zara wasn’t a witch. I’m telling you, these ‘doctors’ don’t make any sense—”

“Is that you talking or your parents?” Rowan snapped back.

“What are you talking about?” Shia was losing his patience but Rowan didn’t care.

“My family’s been through enough, okay? I’ve been through enough. I don’t want Mother Lilith punishing us for insulting someone She blessed herself. It’s just wrong.”

“Maybe for you, but I don’t believe that. I’ll say what I feel. You know I always do. And you never minded before.”

“That was before I knew something like this could happen to us.”

That doctor was no quack. He couldn’t be. He almost had Zara—no, he had her by the hair, quite literally.

But…in the end, his trust for his niece had won him over? Rowan ran a hand over his tangled mane. He didn’t understand. Uqzar had let Zara go in the end…but was it out of mercy? Confusion? Maybe Zara had managed to conceal her magic at the last minute and Uqzar was unable to sense it?

Doubt was creeping into his mind and he wanted it to stop. Stupid Shia and his stupid anti-religious bullshit. He knew nothing, and it was going to bite him one day.

Rowan grabbed a fried meat pastry off the tray and stood. “I’m going,” he said.

“What?!” Shia protested. “Already? Why?”

Rowan didn’t answer right away. He took a bite of the pastry. It was oily and delicious. “Because I don’t feel like staying,” he said with a full mouth.

Shia looked angry. “Is it because I asked about Zara or because I think ‘His Holiness’ is full of shit?”

“Shut up,” Rowan grumbled.

He took his cloak and turned his back on Shia, gobbling the pastry down as he walked out the door. He should have taken two more of those. They were good. Shia’s mother was a great cook.

Rowan sighed. He felt like an ass. His parents finally showed him enough sympathy to let him out of the house this week but he couldn’t even be grateful.

Couldn’t even be a proper friend.

He just didn’t want to talk about Zara, mainly. Thinking about her turned his stomach, because he didn’t know what to think anymore. If he’d been fascinated about magic before, he no longer was. It was dangerous, that was for certain. Zara suffered for it all the time, and while a part of him believed she deserved it, the rest of him still pitied her.

19 Rodh 1436

I missed the memorial today. It was for all the people I hadn’t meant to kill.

I hadn’t realized what I’d done. I was partways down the mountain when I fell apart. I thought I was having a nightmare. This couldn’t have been real. I wanted to jump off, just to see if I’d wake up. Cina thought I was trying to kill myself. She wouldn’t let me. She cried with me. She said we would find our families together. Dr. Uqzar did not speak to me. He hadn’t looked at me once on the way down.

Our families were okay, just separated and lost. Cina’s father suffered a head injury and wanted to be checked at the clinic. His words were slurring. I do not know what became of him to this day.

My mother and aunt are fine. They had abandoned us the moment I was found out. Baba and Rowan are injured, but it’s not critical. They are healing fine. At first I was thankful, but since that night I’ve been kept away in my bedroom, then eventually locked in. Baba installed the deadbolt outside my door. I only see my mother when she brings me food and water and switches out my chamber pot and washing supplies. She seems sad, but she does not speak to me.

I have not seen anyone else, and not even Rowan has tried sneaking in, though he’s been cold to me for a while now anyway. I don’t know the reason for this and likely never will. I thought we were heading in a good direction, but I was wrong. I’m still a freak in his eyes.

Not even my father has come to beat me like I expected him to. He only threatened to hit me on the day he installed the deadbolt. Never have I doubted one of his threats. He’s always serious, but this time, it’s a different kind of seriousness. I don’t know how to explain it accurately. It was almost melancholic. I think he wishes I didn’t exist. If I slip up, he will surely throw me out. I can’t afford to cross him yet. I still need this roof over my head, just for a little longer.

The memorial was held at The Diamond. I assume everyone’s had a prayer, which I could only offer from here. I did not mean to harm anyone, I swear of it. I prayed so hard to take it all back. To turn back time. I wish I had a power like that. A useful power. A helpful power. But instead I am stuck with destructive ones. I am sure everybody is talking about me. I’m such a failure. I wanted to save a life, only to end up taking away and hurting many.

Revan tells me this is normal, that my magic is very unstable right now because I’m coming to terms with what I am and what I could do. He tells me I need to control my emotions. That’s where the issue arises. After what he’s witnessed, he believes my magic can control the elements—and that ‘my show’ on the mountain was proof of how great my potential is. I had created an illusion of a quake, to make way for the rocks to fall. Nobody on the ground had felt any quake. Not in town, and not near the base of mountain either, for the farmers who were there. Ma and Auntie hadn’t felt anything too, even while they were still running down. Revan tells me the cracks on the cliff, the ones that had threatened the witch doctor’s life, had disappeared after we left. I don’t know how any of that’s possible or how I did it. I don’t know what happened to me. I felt like I was in a fog.

Revan tells me to think about my motivation, about what I wanted up there to cause such damage, to the point of putting my own family at risk. The reasoning is beginning to make sense. All my turmoil left me the minute I placed my hands on the trail. It was similar to what I felt with the beetle, but more. It ran from the base of my palms through my entire body. My head was warm, and that’s where the fog started. My vision blurred. And then it was over.

I began training under Revan two days later. The pain has slowly gone bit by bit as the weeks passed. I dream about it, and when I wake up, it doesn’t feel real. So that’s how I will see it as—a dream. To keep myself sane.

So, that’s that. It didn’t happen. I’ve recounted it here, because tonight, I was not allowed at the memorial on Baba’s orders and it brought the pain right back. But after I finish this entry, it will go back to being a dream. I need to focus on the only thing I have right now—my power.

Her door might have been barred, but the window remained free. Revan would come tonight to escort her out of it. She had lessons with him twice a week. Tonight would be lesson number four. She was always home before sunrise.

She stood in front of her full length mirror, tying on a light cloak. The weather was warmer now, even during the night. She dabbed some moisturizing oil on her face. Her scars from the ceremony had healed well. She hadn’t been immune to the sharp stones lashing down on her weeks ago—her own doing—and Revan saw to it that she received proper medication again. He’d been unharmed, courtesy of a protection spell, and he promised to teach Zara the same spell for herself.

She knelt down and undid the silver anklets on her feet. She had plenty of time and solitude to dance these days, so as long as she did so quietly. She buried the anklets in her desk drawer underneath the textbook of mage history she’d stolen from the library last month, her journal, and multiple scroll pages of unfinished chores lists.

“Ready now?”

Zara jumped, slamming the drawer shut. “Shit!”

Revan put a finger to his lip. “Shh. You’ll wake the house.”

Zara frowned at The Sorcerer standing by her open window. He gestured to it. “The ladder is all set.”

“How do you just appear like that?” she said, annoyed. “And please, don’t do it again.”

Revan chuckled.

“By the way,” Zara went on, knowing she wasn’t going to get an answer from him. “When will you teach me how to become a bird and fly like you?”

“When will you stop asking me that question?”

She slipped on her shoes. “Um…the night you show me how?”

“How about this,” Revan said with a smile, “when you stop pestering me about doing this and that, I’ll show you what you want to know.”

Zara was not satisfied, but she’d rather not argue. The more time she spent with the man, the more comfortable she became. His easygoing nature made this so. But she was still cautious not to overstep any boundaries. During her first lesson, he was clear that there were lines that shouldn’t be crossed.

She strode to the window. Revan held her back.

“One moment,” he said. He opened one of his palms for her.

Zara gasped at the object in his hand. “This—! Where? Where did you get it?”

“I stole it back. It was with the boy’s other belongings.” He put the ring Zara had given Yohid as a gift in her hand. “It was yours. You should have it back.”

Her lip trembled. The stone, once smooth and clear, was now heavily scratched. She clutched the ring tight.

“After you,” Revan offered, stepping aside.

Zara climbed out of the window and down the transparent ladder. Revan followed, shutting the window before making his descent. The ladder vanished as soon as they both landed on the courtyard grass.

Revan led the way out the gates and toward the forest. The soft breeze was comforting. Zara regarded the ring once more before slipping it on her finger.