Finally, it stopped. I opened my eyes, keeping the protective bubble around our bodies, and enforced as strongly as I could manage. It sounded like the devastation was over, but I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t risk it.
After a moment of stillness, I realised my level of magic was no longer necessary. There was nothing left. Nothing but a vacant block of land. The farm we’d grown up with, nurtured and loved, was gone. The animals we raised as beloved pets were no more. No chickens, no cows.
No servant screeching early in the morning as she attempted to feed the chickens only to have them chase after her. No Courtney complaining about her back after a minute or two of milking the cows.
There was nothing left. We were truly alone.
A ringing silence hung in the crisp air. It pinched my cheeks, as though it wanted to remind me that this was my new reality. Encompassed by space, encompassed by silence. It was a straightjacket I could not see or feel.
I could not bring anything back. I could not make life the way it was before our mother died. But I could attempt to soothe them as much as my magic would allow.
After a moment, their sobs faded as well.
Not a speck of my mother’s magic lingered. I could feel it disappear from my body, from everywhere. She was truly gone.
Finally, I could let go of my spell and take my first breath of truly clean air. It was a bittersweet moment. I’d lost my mother. I’d lost my home. I’d lost everything I knew to be true.
And yet, now, I was free.
It was a strange revelation, to consider myself free from something good and true, something that I felt was vital to my identity.
But I revelled in it. From now on, I was free to make choices. I was free to do what I wished. Consequences were more dire—Mother was not here any longer to offer her guidance—but we could start a new chapter in our lives. Something real. Something that couldn’t be taken away from us.
We were three adult witches standing in a field, clinging to one another for dear life, and I had no idea what the next step was. I took a breath of the fresh air, then another. My lungs expanded. It almost hurt.
Courtney looked up at me, her eyes brimming with tears.
“Ava, what happened?” she said, whimpering. Her big eyes were wide, filled with such vulnerable fear. It was only then did I feel my own eyes tear up. “Where’s our house?”
I clasped my sisters’ hands in mine and told them everything I knew, and everything I didn’t. I was as honest with them as I could possibly be. I knew they wouldn’t like it. I knew they wouldn’t understand. But I didn’t want to keep them in the dark if I didn’t have to. I wouldn’t do that to them. Not any longer.
One thing I did know for sure was that my mother’s magic no longer held me. She could not command me to obey her. I did not have to match her ridiculously high expectations, expectations I struggled to meet, let alone exceed. She could not make decisions for me. And she couldn’t stop me from fulfilling the only wish I’d ever had for myself: finding my father. Through him, I hoped to finally understand who I was.
Chapter 2.
We were standing in the field, no longer surrounded by debris, instead there was only a calm nothingness.
“What do you mean we have nothing left, Ava? Where are we to go?” Courtney asked, her face red from crying so long. She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand before sniffling unattractively. She wiped the stray snot on her skirt.
I frowned but I could not blame her. There was nothing for her to wipe her hands on, save for the grass beneath our feet.
Bella stood stoically silent. This surprised me. Out of the three of us, Bella was the one who had an opinion about everything. If something was not going her way, she had no problem saying so. Perhaps she was more able to acclimate to sudden change than I had given her credit for. Or, perhaps we were as close to losing her as we had lost Mother.
I didn’t blame Bella for her silence. What was there to say when you found out your mother had conjured every detail of your home, even down to the precious books you loved so much? The precious oils and paints you mad
e yourself? What did you say when you realized your mother had been lying to you since before you were born?
I glanced down at our clothes.
“I suppose we should be thankful to still be wearing something,” I said. I wasn’t sure if this was to myself or if I was genuinely giving my sisters advice. I took the scratchy material of my skirts between my fingers. It wasn’t the finest dress, but it fit me. It was still on my back.
I could not imagine if it were not. If all three of us were naked, devastated in an empty field. I did not know the magic my mother had used to create something from nothing, especially something that sheltered us, that interacted with us, that we could touch, consume, and smell. That we could see and hear and use to manipulate with our own magic when we were practicing.
A strange laugh made its way up my throat. It was a totally inappropriate response to stress, so I swallowed hard against the feeling and tried to stay serious. The last thing I needed my sisters to think was that I thought this tragedy was amusing. I could not forget that we all had lost our mother along with everything else. And that was the last thing to be laughed at.
Bella rolled her eyes.
“Luck had nothing to do with it, Ava,” she said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. She flipped her hair over her shoulder. I noticed charcoal smudges on her fingers from her latest oil design. Interesting how the truth that it existed had not faded from her, but the actual oil and the parchment used to paint did. “Your magic protected us, and with it, the clothes we wore. If you hadn’t, apart from being dead, we’d probably be naked as well.”