Page 28 of The Eighth Isle

“They did,” Reeva said without hesitation. “They foresaw the end three weeks before it happened, and they didn’t believe their own selves, their own skills. Look at these—” She grabbed more scrolls and unrolled them on the table to show me the same drawings and symbols in different handwritings. “They called for witches all over the continent to do readings—back then everyone lived where they wanted. We weren’t divided intoIsles,” Reeva said. “But all who came to read with Maydana, the witch who first saw the end, read the same thing. The stars said it loudly. They said it clearly—and they were right.”

My heart beat so loudly in my ears I could hardly hear myself thinking.

“I need you to turn around now, Autumn, and I need you to look into this glass.”

Suddenly, Reeva was by the telescope, waving her hand toward the eyepiece. Every thought in my head came to a halt—no.

No, I did not want to look into that eyepiece. I did not want to see the stars.

I just wanted to run out of this hat and out of Witches’ Wing as fast as my legs could carry me.

“Come, young one. Don’t be afraid,” said Reeva, and she came to grab my hand gently, and pull me to the telescope.

I didn’t have it in me to saynoor to take my hand back, and before I knew it, I was standing in front of the telescope, feelingtiny. Feeling like I might collapse any second now, but I didn’t. A hum in the air, and the magic that came alive around me startled me, but I couldn’t move a single inch.

“Breathe,”Reeva whispered, as the colorful liquids in the vials around my feet began to boil with her magic. The sound of it filled my head instantly.

“And watch.” Pulling the eyepiece down in front of me, Reeva put her hand on the back of my neck and pushed me toward it because I was incapable of moving myself.

Then, I saw.

Videos and images of outer space were all over the internet and I’d seen plenty. None of it came close tothis,though. None—not even the clearest pictures could compare to what my eye was telling me, what that telescope said was out there beyond the blue of the sky and the clouds and the world as we knew it.

A galaxy so full of life. Full of colors. Full of stars.

“Do you see?” Reeva’s voice came as if from a world away.

“Yes,” I breathed, surprised that I was even able to produce enough voice.

“Good,” she said. “Now, watch this.”

Her magic charged the air once more, and the gadgets in the telescope moved—I could hear them, could feel them vibrating against my cheek where the eye piece rested on my skin. Then the view of the sky zoomed in more and more and more, until it felt like I wasthrownamong those stars, and I was right in the middle of them.

I was in the middle of a constellation with three stars to the east, two to the south, and four others spread around the west—so similar to the stars drawn on those scrolls that Reeva had showed me just now.

So, so similar…

I moved, pushed myself back on instinct, air refusing to fill my lungs still. I blinked and blinked the image of the stars away until I saw Reeva’s face, the look in her glossy eyes, the sad smile on her dry lips.

“You saw,” she concluded.

I shook my head. “It’s…it was…it was…” I couldn’t even find words to speak with.

Then she went back to the other side of the telescope, to the table and the scrolls she’d opened for me, and I had no choice but to follow. No choice but to keep moving; otherwise, the magic that was burning in my chest might explode and take everything down with it.

“It’s different.” My voice echoed in the tall ceiling, and I was relieved for a moment because it really was different. What I saw through that telescope and what her ancestors had drawn on these scrolls weren’t identical—the four stars around the west were positioned very differently.

Then Reeva produced another scroll, this one smaller, and put it next to the old one.

The small one was an exact drawing of the stars I saw, and below them were the same symbols in Faeish, like she’d translated them.

“I’ve read them over and over, and they always say the same thing,” Reeva said.

My hand shook as I reached to touch these new symbols she’d written, the ink darker, much more precise.Fresh.

“What’s that? What does this mean?” Because it was different. The stars—and the symbols—were slightly different from the ones her ancestors had recorded on the scrolls.

And Reeva said, “It means,Fall of the Seven Isles.”

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