| |
Sitting in bed with my headphones on, I banged my head to some loud metal music. I was dressed in a hoodie and wore thick eyeliner around my eyes. That was the fourteen-year-old me, before law school and witchcraft, and before I ever met Joe or learned to drive my Jeep. In my hands, I held the newest issue of She-Hulk, my favorite avenger. I loved Jennifer Walters because she was both a female superhero and a kick-ass lawyer. I wanted to be like her one day, except I didn’t want to be green.
Tara walked into the room, dressed in pajamas with a picture of a guitar on it. Around her wrist, she had a blue beaded bracelet to protect her from the ‘Evil Eye.’ I guess Tara was always Tara, superstitious and all.
"This came for you, Stiff Head," Tara said. Stiff Head was her nickname for me. God, how I hated it.
"Finally." I took the envelope from her and opened it. The school had requested my health documents so I’d be able to join the volleyball team. All the cool girls played volleyball, and I wanted to be one. So I had the documents delivered from Dr. Jensen’s office.
Tara gave me her "What a loser" look. Unlike me, she wasn’t desperate to fit in. Everybody loved sweet, artistic Tara and wanted to be her friend.
"That’s odd." I stared at the papers. "There’s a root canal report here. I never had a root canal."
"Mom did. Maybe they sent her documents by mistake."
"I guess so." I quickly scanned the files until something caught my attention. "Oh my God."
I jumped off the bed and stormed out of the room. Tara yelled, "Echo, what’s wrong?" but I never answered.
I charged into the living room where Mother and aunt Cona took their afternoon tea. Lillian Blackwood was a classy, forty-year-old businesswoman with a diplomatic attitude. Like Tara and I, she had brown hair, but her face was taller and had sharper features. Her best friend, aunt Cona, had dark brown skin, short hair, and a raspy voice. The Maya Angelou of Oracles Island, she was a tough woman, unafraid to speak her mind.
"I knew you hated me," I cried out, throwing the envelope at the table in front of them.
Mother put down her tea and asked, "What’s this?"
"You tried to abort me when you were pregnant, didn’t you?" I asked.
She crumbled into her chair.
While looking through my mother’s medical files, I realized when she was pregnant with me, she tried to induce self-abortion and ended up at the ER. She almost died trying to kill me, but I happened to survive.
"Echo, it’s not what it looks like," she said.
"Really?" I tried to hold back my tears. "Because it looks like you never wanted me to exist. You hated me...I hate you too. I wish you died and Dad was still alive."
"Don’t you speak to your mother like this." Cona’s eyes bulged from their sockets.
"It’s okay," Mother wanted to calm her down.
"No, it’s not." Her voice grew furious. "This girl is ungrateful. She doesn’t understand how much you do for her. You risk your—"
"Stop." Mother pressed her hand to her forehead. Cona clenched her fists and gritted her teeth.
"Echo, please, wait in your room," Mother said. "I’ll finish my work with Cona, and we’ll talk. Please, just wait."
I had always been waiting for my mother. Whether it was my birthday party, my poetry recital, or even a dentist appointment—I waited for her, and she never showed up. For years, I wanted to confront her, to let her know what a terrible parent she was and how unloved she made me feel. I had rehearsed my speech many times before, and I rehearsed it again as I waited in my room that day.
An hour passed, but Mother never came to see me. I heard her car drive off. She and Cona left for another business meeting.
"She’ll explain when she has a chance," Tara said, hoping to comfort me, but Mother had already lost all her chances. That night, the police found her body.
***
"Come on, Baby Girl. Smile for Auntie Echo." I sat on the side of Tara’s bed, holding my niece in my arms. "Tara look. She’s smiling back. She loves me."
"Yeah, she’s probably passing gas." Tara unpacked her clothes and arranged them in her closet.
"You’re just jealous," I said. When the stink reached my nose, I puckered my face in disgust. "Eww. Our little bundle of love is full of gas."
A titter came from the corner of the room. "Ebba, I almost forgot you’re here," I said. After Tara came back, I invited Ebba to stay in the house. I thought it would be a good idea for her to spend some time with my family. Plus, I wanted to keep her away from Doyle. "Come play."
"I’m n-not g-good with children." She wrapped her hands together in front of her body and spoke in a demure tone.
"What are you, scared of babies?" The thought made me laugh. "She’s a month old. Just talk to her. Or sing. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are. You love stars, Baby Girl? I love them too, cause they’re spaaarklyyyy."
"You know Baby Girl has a name, right?" Tara asked.
"Baby Girl is my nickname for her," I cheered, keeping my eyes on my lovely niece.
"Aha."
"It is. She likes it too. Don’t you, Baby Girl? Dooon’t yoooouu?"
"Well, I’m Lillian’s mother, and I want you to use her real name."
"Why does it matter, Tara?" I asked in an irritated tone. "She doesn’t understand what I’m saying."
"Unless you call her by her name, you don’t get to talk to her at all."
I laid the baby in her bassinet and turned to my sister, who had her hands pressed to her waist. "Look who’s the stiff head now?" I asked. "So I have issues with Mother’s name. That doesn’t give you the right to pester me about it, does it?" I came to my feet. "I’m out of here," I said as I left the room.
***
Our garage stood next to the house. It had stone walls, a coated floor, and a space for three cars, although that day, none were parked.
I opened and closed the drawers of the storing unit, collecting items that would’ve seemed random to a normal person—some old chalk, a tape, a brass bowl, and a spoon.
"I can—I can tell you a joke," Ebba said. "Uhh. How come people can weigh fish so easily?"
"Huh?" I turned to her with a confused look.
"B-because they have scales.” She giggled, but my unamusement caused her to drop her head in embarrassment. "I thought you’d laugh."
It took me a moment to realize Ebba was trying to cheer me up. She must have thought I was still mad at Tara. "Now that I get the joke, it’s really funny." I chortled. "Thank you, Ebba."
She smiled. I had never met anyone like Ebba before. She was awkward, but her heart was in the right place.
On the wall, I drew a pentacle and hung up a picture of my Jeep in the middle. It had been two days since Kirby and I fought Doyle on that dirty hill. I left my car there, and I wanted to get her back.
With the spoon, I struck the brass bowl, which emitted a sound akin to a bell. "Invoco vires quas adstrinxisti, mei enim obiectum inveniendum est," I chanted.
The lights flickered, and the ground quaked beneath my feet. I would’ve followed my invocation by another strike on the bowl, but a sudden headache forced me to drop everything and press my hands to my head.
"Echo, are you okay?" Ebba cried out. "Echo?" Her voice seemed distant.
A brief vision snatched me away from reality. I saw the most peculiar man, with eyes as wrathful as the devil's and a wide, malicious grin on his face. He had long, black hair and wore a purple topcoat and a green scarf. The image flashed in my mind so quickly that I couldn’t tell what was happening.
I came back to the present moment. Ebba was standing near my Jeep, which had appeared in its spot. "I missed you so much," I cried, jumping onto the car with a hug despite the filth it had collected. "I’m going to give you a good wash later."
"So strange, your f-friendship with your car." Ebba tittered. "Talking to it like it’s a person."
"Don’t judge me." I raised my finger. "You’re scared of babies."
***
Sitting on Vanna’s couch, I stared at the ceiling. "I don’t think this is going to work."
"You did it once, Echo," Kirby said. "You should be able to do it again." No matter how many times I told Vanna and Kirby that I couldn’t teleport, they insisted I try.
"Last time, it was an accident," I said. "Doyle hit me on the head."
"Maybe I should hit you with a pat?" Kirby smirked.
"Please, don’t hit me with a pat."
"How about a punch in the nose?"
"How about I turn you into a squirrel?"
On went the banter. Nothing stopped us except the headache, which crept up on me, knocking on my brain like a giant hammer. "Ahhh." I groaned and held my head.
"What’s going on?" Vanna asked.
"Echo, are you okay?" Kirby sat next to me and pressed his fingers on my temples.
"I’m fine. I’m fine," I said with a gasp. "I thi-I think I saw the future." I paused, staring at Kirby’s worried face. "Zaros is going to kill me."
Kirby’s eyebrows shot up. Even Vanna looked worried. In my vision, I saw the man in a purple coat, Zaros, and we fought. I transformed myself into an eagle and attacked him, but he batted me like a mosquito, breaking my wing. "You call this an eagle?" he asked. "Let me show you a real one." Circling his arms, he created a huge fiery bird that darted towards me, and with that, the vision ended.
"We need help," Vanna said. "I’m calling our friend." She ran to her room. I had heard about that ‘friend’ before. Many times, Vanna and Kirby called them for advice, but I was never allowed to contact them.
"Don’t worry, Echo." Kirby pulled me into a hug. "Everything will be okay." Although he tried to comfort me, I sensed the panic in his voice. His face had lost all color when I mentioned Zaros’s name.
In a few minutes, Vanna came back with news. "Cona is missing. She is not answering any of her phones. Her nurse says she disappeared two weeks ago."
Cona? The name rang in my head.
"Maybe she went out of town," Kirby said.
"She would’ve told us," Vanna replied. "Echo, can you cast a locator spell to find her?"
"Do you have something of hers I can use?" I asked.
"I keep a locket of her hair in case of emergencies," Vanna replied.
The locator spell was a basic version of what Seers used to glimpse into the future and the past. By tracing the energy of an object, I could pinpoint the location of its owner. For this to work, the object had to be personal, so a strand of hair worked best.
On the floor of Vanna’s living room, I drew a pentacle with an eye in its center. Kirby placed five candles around the edges.
Kneeling, I held to the hair and cast my incantation: "Custos vanescentium. Audi me nunc. Aperi oculos. Ostende ubi sit ea."
At first, nothing happened. Perhaps I was nervous, or maybe the vision I had seen distracted me from the quest at hand. Hearing the name Cona also brought up a lot of mixed emotions. Is it a coincidence?
"Echo, breathe," Kirby said. "Try to empty your mind. Remember the mediation we do together."
Nodding, I closed my eyes. Kirby had taught me to let go of intruding thoughts by visualizing them floating up to heaven. When that failed, I imagined firing a gun at my concerns. That worked well. "Custos vanescentium. Audi me nunc. Aperi oculos. Ostende ubi sit ea."
Soft crackles sounded as the candles guttered. Suddenly, an image flashed in my mind. "A Ouija board," I said. "I see three people sitting around a table with a Ouija board. Their faces are blurred out."
"Try to control the image," Vanna told me. "Move around the room."
"Control the image. Got it." Forcing myself to concentrate, I zoomed out of the picture, just like on a computer or a phone. The room began to shrink, and I found myself moving through a wall then a dark corridor. For a moment, I was underwater, but as I moved further, I could form the full picture.
I opened my eyes, offering them a nervous grin. "She’s locked up in an underground room beneath the national museum in Spiritsvale."
"Let’s go," Kirby said, standing up.
***
Spiritsvale was a big city two hours to the north. At its center was The National Museum of Oracles Island—a large building with a dome on the top and a fountain with a witch’s statue in the front. According to the locator spell, that fountain was the gate to the underground room we wanted.
At nightfall, Kirby and I arrived at the museum. We waited for the closing time before sneaking in. As I approached the fountain, the water sprayed at my face, just a reminder of how frigid the winter had been.
"Do I use a spell to open the door?" I asked.
"Let’s look first," Kirby said. "There must be a key somewhere."
We began to inspect the fountain up close. I climbed up on its edge to check the witch’s hat and broom.
"I think there’s something here." Kirby dug his finger into the witch’s nose. "A button."
"What are you waiting for, then?"
"Ugh." He curled his lips in disgust. "This feels wrong."
Once Kirby pressed the button, the water sank into the drains with a loud, whooshing sound. The floor of the fountain split open, showing the stairs to an underground passage.
"Woah," I uttered.
"Brace yourself," Kirby said. "There’ll definitely be guards down there."
***
In the middle of a dim-lit corridor, a fireball shot towards us like a meteor. "Everto." I fluttered my hand, and the attack dissipated into nothing.
Running towards us were two men in suits, the first witches I had ever fought. They raised their fingers, preparing for another blow.
"Dormeo." I ordered them to sleep, and they keeled.
"Wow." I was impressed with myself. Though I knew noble witches were more powerful than others, I didn’t expect to neutralize two men in a few seconds.
"Let’s go, Echo. We shouldn’t risk more witches coming." Kirby motioned me along the corridor that led us to a hall with three rooms. The one in the middle had a brown, steel door.
"This is it," I said, reaching for the doorknob to find the door unlocked.
"Don’t!" We were about to walk in when a woman yelled from inside. "There’s a spell on the door. Whoever walks in can’t leave."
I peeked inside. Three people sat around the table with a Ouija board between them—two senior men with nothing special about their looks, and the woman who gave me the warning. That was the ‘friend’ I had heard about so many times, the one I glimpsed at through my vision. Finally, I got to meet her.
"A-aunt Cona?" It had been years since I last saw those expressive eyes. Cona was wearing round earrings and a gypsy-style dress, and on her legs lay a small blanket. She had changed a lot, yet she looked as stubborn as she used to be.
"There’s no time to talk, Echo," she said. "Break the spell."
"O-okay."
Brushing my hands on the door, I tried to sense the enchantment on it. A noble witch could remove a basic spell cast by a common witch. To reverse noble magic, however, was no easy matter. There were only three options. (1) Use an enchanted object, such as the Amulet of Divinity. (2) Figure out the exact steps used to create the spell, which worked best with rituals that required certain actions or offerings. (3) Kill the witch who created the spell. A few spells rely on the life force of their creator, but that wouldn’t be the case for a door lock.
I followed the aura around the door, searching for its center, the point from where the energy flowed. Touching it gave me the feel of a wind on my hand. The intensity indicated the presence of noble magic.
"Can you break it?" Kirby asked. I could’ve admitted the problem, but that meant our quest had failed.
If I’m not strong enough to do this, how am I going to save the world? The ends justify the means, right?
"Let me try something." From my backpack, I produced a pack of chalk, and on the door, I drew two parallel lines joined together by a diagonal one, an unbinding sigil that belonged to Dark Magic.
What my guides weren’t aware of, what I feared to tell them, was that I had been studying the dark arts. After what happened in the Land of no Return, I couldn’t hold myself back from exploring, from cracking that pandora box open, just enough to peek in.
May they never find out, I prayed. I pressed my hand on the sigil, and a white glow emerged, pushing against the noble spell until it dissipated.
"Done." I drew a grin on my face. Nothing bad will come out of this.
Kirby hurried into the room and carried Cona to a wheelchair in the corner. The other men picked up the Ouija board.
As we left the room, another witch appeared in the hallway—a blonde woman dressed in a fancy pantsuit. She seemed to be my age, maybe a few years older, but her condescending stare added a decade or two to her look. "What’dja do to the guards?" she asked in a British accent.
"They’re just asleep," I said, opening my palm up. "Let us go. I don’t want to harm you."
"It isn’t you who’ll do the harming." The witch smirked. Throwing her hand like pitching a ball, she slammed my friends to the wall. Cona’s chair wheeled back and crashed loudly, but luckily, she wasn’t hurt.
"You shouldn’t have come here, Blackwood," the witch said.
"You know who I am?"
"Everyone on the Board knows who you are." She peered down her nose. "You’re a cockroach."
"And you just crossed the line." I stomped my foot, harnessing the magic of Earth. The ground cracked. Sharp-edged rocks ascended and dashed at the witch.
Pitching, again, she emitted a projectile of air that stood in the way of my attack. "You think you’re better than me, Blackwood?" she asked. "I’m noble." She threw the other arm, strengthening her projectile and sending my rocks flying back at me.
I hurled myself to the ground to avoid the hit. The rocks pelted down on the wall behind me. Faster. I pointed my fingers at the witch, and the rocks flew up and darted at her with greater speed. She lapsed back when one of them hit her shoulder.
Brimming with anger, she raised her arm, discharging a wave. I had always thought the wind was an invisible force, but a noble witch with Air Magic had the power to make it seen. Like a heavy haze, a wave of wind spiraled around her balled fist, growing bigger and clearer.
When the witch punched, the wave whipped at me, crushing my organs, and forcing me to spit blood. That was the unmatched might of the air, controlled by a witch that had mastered her specialty. What could a novice like me do? I was a ‘magic generalist,’ someone who experimented with all elements but never knew what mastery felt like.
As the air lambasted my abdomen, legs, and arms, my feigned pride crumbled, and I was left prey to the fear I once outgrew. I prayed for Dark Magic to take over my body and save me like it did in the very first fight. But it seemed that even darkness abandoned me. What a pitiful thought I had.
"Echo," Kirby shouted. Despite being pinned to a wall, he still worried about me. Thinking of him gave me enough strength to break the steel door from its hinges using the object-control spell. I put all my magic into throwing the door. The longer edge bashed the witch’s stomach in, forcing her to yelp and bite her lips. Veins bulged on her forehead, and her eyes shot open.
As she wailed in pain, the spell that trapped my friends was broken, and they fell to the ground. The whip of air on my stomach ceased, and I was free to breathe, but as soon as the witch regained control, the wind slapped me again.
"Enough," yelled a strange male voice. The witch stopped and turned around to see the two men standing near Cona’s wheelchair. The three pairs of eyes had turned milky white and glowed in the dark like cats’ eyes. "Enough." They spoke in one voice. "The spirits of light have passed their judgment. Let the chosen witch go."
"Spirits?" the witch asked.
"Guru?" Kirby seemed to recognize the voice.
"Let the chosen witch be. She has a role to play."
"A role in what? Starting the apocalypse?" the witch said. I could taste the abhor seeping through her.
"You shall not meddle with destiny. Let the chosen witch live."
"Why shall I?" she asked with a hint of arrogance in her tone.
"Obey the spirits," the voices commanded.
Shaking, the witch huffed and bit her lips. She paused, probably weighing her options before she surrendered. "Leave. All of you, leave before I change my mind." She looked away with dignity.
Kirby ran to help me off the floor. The three witches regained their consciousness as their eyes turned back to normal. "Let’s go," one of them said as they pushed Cona’s chair along the corridor, not seeming to be surprised or confused by what happened to them.
Our ride home was quiet. Kirby dropped off Cona’s friends at their places while she used a basic healing spell on me to stop what she diagnosed as internal bleeding. I wondered why the spirits had intervened to save me and what kind of destiny I was supposed to fulfill. The witch said I would start the apocalypse. That reminded me of Heidi’s warning from before: "When the war comes, you won’t be fighting Jivar. You’ll be helping him." I prayed to God to spare me from such an ill fate.
***
"The three of you owe me an explanation," I said, barging into Vanna’s room. Cona was lying in bed with my guides by her side. "Since when are you, Aunt Cona, a witch? Who the hell were those people who kidnapped you? And how do you know Kirby and Vanna?"
Cona scowled. "I was born a witch. The Magic Board kidnapped me. Vanna and Kirby are old friends of mine."
"Is that all you have to say?" I was going crazy. "I haven’t seen you since...Now you’re back, and you’re a witch?"
"What do you expect me to say, Echo?" Cona pushed herself up to sit. "I’m Cona Sullivan, from the Sullivan bloodline. I have the Magic of Sight, and so do the other two who were kidnapped with me."
I bit my lips to stop myself from yelling. "What did the Magic Board want from you?"
"They wanted us to look into the future and tell them when and where Jivar will be returning to Earth." Her eyes were confronting, cruel.
"Can you do that?"
She shook her head. "We Seers can only see what the spirits want us to see."
"Oh." My face contorted.
"Do you have any more questions for me, Echo?" she asked.
My gaze flitted between the three. Of course, I had more questions, but I was terrified of the answers. If Cona knew Vanna and Kirby, did Mother too? What other secrets were they keeping from me?
"No." I decided I was better off not knowing, but fate wouldn’t let me off the hook so easily. As soon as I turned around to leave the room, the headache returned, and my vision continued.
"You call this an eagle?" Zaros asked. "Let me show you a real one." Circling his hands, he created a blaze in the form of an eagle, darting right towards me.
"Watch out." Kirby hurled his body in front of mine, cutting through Zaros’s fire with his light sword.
"Thank you," I whispered in a weak voice.
"No time for this, Lillian," he said. "Take Cona and get out of here."
"I’m not leaving you behind," I said, clutching at his shirt. "I dragged you into this. There’s no way I’m letting you die to save me."
***
The headache subsided, though that last strike was the most intense. It hurt so much that I fell to my knees.
Kirby and Vanna helped me stand.
"Mother," I uttered, smacking my chest. "Mother fought Zaros."
Kirby’s face grew ashen, and Vanna’s mouth opened. It turned out I wasn’t seeing visions of the future. It was the past that revealed itself to me.
"Finally," Cona broke in. "It’s about time you find out the truth."
That day, I learned about my mother, Lillian Blackwood, a woman I never really knew. Lillian had no magic or special powers. When she learned she was pregnant with the chosen witch, she feared hurting her family. She tried to get rid of the child—of me—but fate persisted.
After giving birth, Lillian’s heart changed. She became willing to do anything to protect me from Jivar. The Magic Board refused to help her, so she turned to her best friend, the Seer.
"She asked me to find something for her, the Amulet of Divinity," Cona said. "At first, she used it to hide you from Jivar, to keep you safe. Then she thought she could do more. All she wanted was to give you a normal life, to watch you grow healthy and happy, so she decided to fight in your place."
"That’s why she summoned us," Vanna added. "We weren’t sent here to be your guides, Echo. Our quest was to help your mother fight Jivar. Back then, we had our full powers, and for years, we fought by Lillian’s side, Cona too. We saved a lot of lives."
"But in the end, we failed her." Kirby’s voice wailed with grief.
Shock, anger, guilt, shame—a million different emotions flooded me. God, how I feared the answer to my following question. "What do you mean by failed her?"
"It was my fault." Kirby’s tears poured. "I got injured. Zaros almost killed me."
I shuffled to the back and reached for a chair. I thought about the last time I saw Mother. I wish you died, and Dad was alive. How could I have said those things to her?
Ever since I was little, I believed my mother hated me. That thought burned inside me like a harsh chemical, aggravating my soul and poisoning me with self-loathe. After all those years, it turned out my mother loved me. So much so that it scared her. So much so that she couldn’t get close; otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to lose me.
***
"How do you feel?" Cona waved her hand to check if I was conscious. I hadn’t said a word for more than ten minutes. I just stared at the floor, my mind rumbling with regrets.
"I’m fine."
"Your face is yellow, dear. Talk to me."
I lifted my eyes to see her. Her eyes were soft and empathetic, though she hated to show it.
"She died for me, Cona. I’m not worth her life."
"Nonsense," she said forcefully. "A mother would do anything for her child, but is it worth it? That’s for you to decide by not letting her death be in vain."
Cona glanced at Kirby and Vanna, who sat on the couch outside. Kirby was in bad shape, almost as bad as me.
"I owe you an apology, Echo," she said. "I should’ve been here for you. After what happened to Lillian, I left the city and started a new life. But Kirby and Vanna, those two have hearts of gold. They watched over you all these years."
I took a deep, painful breath and glanced at Cona’s wheelchair. "Your legs. Was it Zaros?"
"A Kataru... But don’t worry about me." She flexed her arm to show me her biceps. "I’m a fighter."
I gave her a weak smile.
When I was young and fragile, I created a story about my Mother and her friend abandoning me. That story gave me certainty when I didn’t know enough, validation when my feelings were unaccepted. It justified the hatred I held for the two and placed me in the role of the victim. Now that I was older and stronger, I wished I could go back to that false certainty, to a world where I could live guilt-free and blame my mother for my brokenness.
