Page 9 of The Witch & the Tiger

“Yannick said he’d discovered something really cool, and he wanted to show it to us. He said that there was an area in the woods near Oakwend where you could see the sea. Obviously, we all thought he was insane, but he really wanted to show us, and we arranged to meet there.

“He didn’t say much about how he knew of this place. It was more of a ‘wait and see, once I show you the place, you’ll believe me’ type of attitude. So, all five of us gathered together on a foggy day. We went to where he said… and… he wasn’t lying. The mist was so thick that we could barely see ten meters ahead of us. It seemed like we were in the woods – and then, before us, the trees thinned, and there was a rugged coast and the smell of salt in the air.”

His nose twitched slightly as if he could smell the salt now. She shivered, picturing the world changing around her, emerging out of the fog. Something about the fog sounded magical – and most likely where the realms overlapped, though it still didn’t quite explain why the overlap was temporary instead of solid like the ones they had around Dreadmor Academy.

“You don’t have to keep talking if you don’t want to,” she said, though she didn’t want him to stop. He waved off the concern, saying he still wanted to talk.

“There was… a coastal path. Yannick and the others were so excited and intrigued. I was a little… wary. It didn’t make sense that a coastline would be here, but you know how it is when you’re in a group, and everyone wants to do something you don’t really want to do. You get overruled. We went down this thin cliff path. The sea was at a distance, and there was damp sand below. Low tide. There was this little sign with the times for low and hide tide. Apparently, no high tide would occur for at least five hours. The cycles are in six-hour increments. We thought we had plenty of time. We found this seaweed-drenched cave; we went in there…” He paused.

“That’s when it gets fuzzy. I don’t really remember much after that, but something happened in that cave. Something that means my friend is still missing today, and the other three are gone.”

Her story ended so abruptly that she waited a little longer, thinking he might continue, but he didn’t. His eyes were wintry, cold, somehow lost in the turmoil of a memory that he fought to reach for. Except he couldn’t remember. And he was driven to find out what happened.

That sounded… insanely dangerous. “And your goal is to find this place again, however you accessed it the first time, and, what? Find your friend?”

“Find him. Find out how to make the place reappear. Find out if there’s another reason for my missing memories.” He floundered slightly, and Willow was reminded again of the suggestion that he might be enchanted.

Whether he was or he wasn’t, she did see an avenue to help him. If the issue was the rising tide, she could prevent drowning with her magic. That wasn’t too complicated. If that was all he needed…

“I’d be happy to help you. But I need to feel safe. I wouldn’t feel too confident if it were just the two of us if there’s something else at work there. Maybe we need a teacher or some professionals to come and help…”

His lips thinned slightly. “If they’re willing to come, they can. But I can’t promise if I can even find the place again.”

Well, that didn’t sound exactly… ideal. But it did make sense why he might still be looking for answers five months after the event. Maybe she could do some research, but she didn’t know what she might find that he and his sister hadn’t.

“I’ve spent far too much time talking about myself,” he said, gesturing for her to follow him. “I’d feel a lot better if you could share something about yourself. Maybe something small like a favorite day of the week or something.”

She chortled at that. He didn’t want to put pressure on her to respond with something equally deep, though she didn’t have anything deep to reveal unless you counted her perpetually drifting future, not really knowing what she wanted, where she wanted to go. Even coming to the academy was more her mother’s suggestion than anything else.

“Sunday’s my favorite day,” she said. “You can spend time at home, the shops close early, some of the best meals are cooked on that day, and it’s a great opportunity to visit grandparents or spend some catching up with people you don’t see often.”

An absent smile appeared on his face, and warmth shone in his eyes. “Okay, I can see that. A Sunday child. You sound as if you like your family. Did I get that right?”

“Yeah, I have a big one with lots of quirky magic. My mother sells potions and witch paraphernalia to humans. I’m about ninety percent sure the potions are just common tinctures with herbs that do help but have nothing to do with magic, while the other part… is some serious magic.”

“Not love potions, I hope?”

“Oh, that’d be illegal.” She grinned. “But she does have fake ones because people ask for those the most. Forcing people to love you isn’t a great idea.

“People could go to jail if they used a dangerous love potion. Human will shouldn’t be overridden, but that didn’t mean that all fae stuck obeyed the law. Love potions have only been outlawed in the last twenty years or so.”

Also, thinking of love potions made her think of what might be enchanting Martin without him knowing. She resolved to message her mother and see if she knew anything about them.

“What about your favorite color?”

“Orange,” she said before flushing slightly because that was the color of his hair.

“Is that so?” The smile turned devious. “Interesting.”

Willow gulped. “Yeah, it’s, uh, bright, warm, the same color as my bedroom walls. I have a fall landscape with the sun and the leaves on the ground.”

“That sounds wonderful.” He looked a little wistful, and a lump formed in her throat, a brief sense of loss for a time gone by. Her parents had sold the house with the wall painting and bought a new one – a much bigger one, of course – but it wasn’t her childhood home. “It’s interesting, isn’t it? The things we remember from childhood that we didn’t think were that important back then.”

She agreed wholeheartedly. They continued the conversation at a gentler pace, taking the time to speak of less charged topics. It seemed that when Martin wasn’t obsessing over finding the mysterious coastal area, he had some pretty wild memories of going hunting with his family, stalking prey through the mountains, mushroom foraging, building his own shelters, and going fishing and hiking through magnificent scenery.

That was completely different from her upbringing, which was in a suburb of a big city with a lot less opportunity to connect with the wild unless you counted going to a zoo.

Honestly, Martin sounded completely out of her league. It didn’t stop her from occasionally daydreaming about being with him and wondering what it would be like to get to know him better. If it meant taking long hikes and camping trips and learning to fish… that didn’t seem too bad. Maybe it could work out.

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