Imagine yourself without a hint of magic,” Hecate said sternly.
“Impossible. I’m made of magic,” I said, with more bravado than I felt.
I was in serious trouble. I had broken a major rule.
I looked back at Bari, who did not dare look up at me. Instead she patted down her skirt, as if it hadn’t just had hundreds of beetles beneath it.
“Come with me, Farrow,” Hecate commanded.
“Just me?” I asked.
“Next time I see the two of you, I expect both of you to be on your feet. Understood?”
She knew about the spell Bari had used to make her legs into beetles. Bari and Amantha shared a guilty look, then answered in chorus.
“Yes, Hecate.”
“What about South?” I asked, not moving.
“Galatea will find him.”
“I mean . . . the spell . . . his wings . . . ?” I explained.
“The magic will run out, like it always does,” Hecate reminded me.
The Entente’s magic had limits. Spells expired based on the power of the one wielding it. And I barely had any power.
I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. I hadn’t caused any permanent damage. But the look on South’s face stuck with me. He was more than hurt. And I had done that to him.
“Come, she’s waiting,” Hecate said.
“She?”
Hecate didn’t answer as she led me down the hall. I had to take two steps for every one of hers. I was in that much trouble. We passed by the courtyard, which stood in the center of the Reverie’s many buildings, as we wound our way through the labyrinth of rooms that made up our home.
Tere, one of my sisters, was experimenting with the weather in the courtyard as Galatea looked on. Tere’s eyes were closed, her wand raised to the sky, and she pulled the clouds above closer with concentration alone. I wished that I had chosen to play with clouds instead of South’s flesh.
Galatea advised, “Think of your wand as a lightning rod. The power is within you. The wand merely channels and conducts it.”
The clouds darkened from white to gray in an instant, and drops of rain began falling from the sky. Tere opened her eyes and held up her hands, marveling at her own handiwork. Galatea looked on approvingly. It looked like play, but it was practice. We believed that the atmosphere was just one of a million things that determined a moment and that every moment could change the course of Fate.
What I had done to South just now . . . What had it done to his fate? What had it done to mine?
A few minutes later we were outside the one room we were forbidden to enter without permission—Iolanta’s.
“We never get to go in there,” I whispered, feeling trepidatious as Hecate beckoned me to the door.
“I know the Future, Farrow. Galatea knows the Past. But Iolanta is the only one who knows your heart right now.”
“That’s not true. I know it too,” I countered, straightening my spine.
I took a deep breath and stepped toward the door.
Hecate leaned down and I felt her lips brush past my ear as she whispered, “Remember to keep your distance.”
She opened the door to the room and pushed me inside. I felt the whoosh of the door behind me, shutting. I was alone with Iolanta.
The room was completely pitch-black. I pulled my wand out of my pocket and illuminated it with a whisper.
“Make your mark on the dark . . .”
I could barely make out Iolanta on the floor in the dark. But her pale-gray dress stood out against the shadows. It was made by her own hands, and shabbily so. I could see the seams and I felt my wand twitch, wanting to fix it with magic. Iolanta made her clothes and her furniture and absolutely anything she touched herself so nothing around her would be tainted by human or magical hands, and they wouldn’t elicit visions of the Presents of so many lives. She had transformed the wood of the darkest part of the forest into a wooden goblet and a wooden bed. None of it would elicit the Present. But Iolanta was not a carpenter or a tailor, and the results were crude compared to the relative beauty of the rest of the Reverie, with a design limited only by Hecate’s and Galatea’s imaginations.
I remembered Hecate’s directive and Iolanta’s delicate condition. She could not be touched—not by humans, not by us or our magic.
“What has Hecate brought me?” she asked, her voice a harsh whisper. “Ah, I see . . . Farrow.”
Iolanta clapped her hands and illuminated herself with a handful of flame. I knew she was powerful. I just hadn’t seen it up close.
I gasped when I looked around. There were words and drawings scratched into the walls. The sketches were of all kinds of people captured in the moment that called to Iolanta. There was no rhyme or reason to the images. There was no discriminating: rich or poor, happy or sad, bakers, soldiers, husbands, wives, and children. There were a few of Les Soeurs, my sisters, and South. Some of the scenes were pleasant: couples kissing, families sitting down to dinner, a wedding. Others violent: a fight between men, the drowning of a woman, a man on his deathbed. It didn’t matter how high up or low down the person was—Iolanta could see them. How she chose what to record I did not know. Perhaps she did not either.
On the wall behind her there was one freshly drawn, the paint still wet—South running away from the Reverie with his wings. Just like the others, Iolanta must have drawn it as she saw it.
“My, how you have grown,” she said, focusing on me as her pupils constricted in response to the light.
“I didn’t mean to do it—” I stopped myself. I knew I was supposed to be quiet and let Iolanta read me.
“You gave South wings, and Hecate did not appreciate your gift.”
“Neither did South,” I said sadly.
“But part of you is pleased to know exactly what you are capable of.”
Was that what she saw in me?
I shook my head. “I hate that I did that to South. It was not what I meant to do.”
“Wasn’t it, though? You wanted to show him that you were not like him. I believe that you succeeded.”
Iolanta had seen not just the moment. She had felt the ugly truth inside me as well.
I shook my head again.
“That is what I felt. But I did not know I had the power. I did not know . . . Before today I could not hurt a moth, let alone turn South into one.”
Iolanta did not respond. She stared straight forward almost as if she could see right through me to the door behind me. Her eyes glassed over. Was I so wretched that she wouldn’t even respond? Or had she drifted off to one of the other Presents?
“Please, you have to believe me. If you could feel what I felt, you had to feel that too . . . Iolanta?” I pleaded.
“Have you ever thought about what it’s like for South, not just here with us but out there? A boy unlike any other in a world run by women.”
I was struck. South didn’t really belong anywhere. And I had just made him feel that even more acutely.
“But there’s a prince now,” I said. “A boy is going to do something that only women have done. A boy is going to be king. That has to change things for South.”
“Does it . . . ? The boy prince and South are the rarest of things. And sometimes rare things spark fear where there need not be . . .”
I didn’t understand. Boys had always been treated fairly. There was only one place in the Queendoms that they couldn’t sit: the throne. And now even that was going to change.
“People are afraid the world is going to change—and when they get afraid, they do desperate things that might just change it after all.”
Suddenly Iolanta held her head in her hands as if she were in some kind of pain.
“Iolanta? Can I help you? What can I do?” I asked, rushing to her side. I touched her skin. She was burning up.
Iolanta swatted me away, sending me flying against the wall.
“Too close, my dear,” she said in a singsong voice, the lightness of which contrasted with the obvious agony she had been experiencing seconds before.
“I’m sorry,” I said as a shock of pain coursed through me, radiating from the base of my tailbone.
“That is your gift, Farrow. You knew you were not supposed to touch me, but your instinct was to help no matter the consequences. Now, come closer.”
I shook my head and remained plastered against the wall. I’d learned my lesson and it still hurt. Being with Iolanta meant having someone see you, possibly even better than you saw yourself, and I was still feeling guilty about today. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be seen.
“Run away, little mouse. But know this: you think magic is the most important gift now, but it’s the heart that is your strength—your true gift. One day you will see.”
Then just like that she became confused.
“Bari needs you. Hurry, child,” she ordered before closing her eyes.
I backed out of the room and found Hecate wasn’t waiting for me. I turned and raced for the room I shared with Bari.
When I got there, Bari’s face was filled with frustration and in her hands she was holding her wand. It took me a second to realize what she was doing. She was trying to break it in half.
“No, Bari!” I said. Whatever she had seen, it couldn’t be awful enough to make her stop using magic.
She looked up, surprised to see me. Then she turned her attention back to the wand, redoubling her efforts. The wand gave way and broke into two pieces.
“Why?” I asked.
“Hecate came back when you were with Iolanta,” Bari said. “She showed me something from my Future. I looked scary.”
I didn’t understand. I couldn’t imagine voluntarily choosing to be scary, whatever that meant. “I’m sure that you can still fix it. That’s why she showed you.”
“I don’t want to change a thing,” she asserted.
“Why not?”
“I am going to be so very powerful.” Bari seemed to have missed the point of Hecate’s lesson.
“Then why did you break your wand?” I asked.
“I need a new one, one that can rule Fate itself.”