Page 75 of Scarred Resolve

“What is the moon?” she asked finally.

“A celestial body, orbits Earth, and is tidally locked,” I said, shrugging. “It’s stuck in Earth’s gravitational field and has its own rotational spinning. I’m not really a space person.”

“You don’t know everything about it, but you know, for certainty, that it’s not a god or goddess. You know that it’s notmagic,” she pointed out. “The witch that created the moon cursed didn’t know those things. The witch that created uscouldn’thave known that.”

“What?” I heard what she had said. I understood what she had said, but I was still blindsided by it.

“The witch who created the moon cursed didn’t know the moon wasn’t magic. It was heavily tied with the feminine, though. Always had been and always will be, thanks to the timing of human female reproductive cycles, the tides, and stereotypes. What better object could be used when a woman is turning men into monsters?” Subira kept staring at me, not moving at all, but her expression seemed distant, unfocused. “The moon isn’t magic, people now say. We know too much about it. Yet… it is now.Shemade it magic by tying a powerful and eternal curse to it. Only the best of witches, warlocks, wizards, whatever they want to be called, can actually tap intothat magic because it is very far away. Only the best of them, of us, can actually feel the magic in it, forever flowing, forever vast, and forever feeding an unbreakable curse. I can, but I am also cursed, so I’m not human on the nights when it would be the most potent. Even though I can tap into the magic she placed there, the world todayisn’twrong. The moon itself was never magic. It was the moon, a large rocky body floating around our Earth with nothing special about it and is still that moon.”

“Uh…” I understood, but it felt too big for me to know. Such a simple idea of knowing versus not knowing that as humans explained more of the universe, the less powerful they could be because they believed it was impossible. Even with such a simple explanation and the truth thrown at me, I couldn’t bring myself to believe the moon was actually magic. It was impossible.

“I see,” I said softly, nodding as I realized what hurdles were faced when it came to such a concept. You spend your entire life being told something was right and something else was wrong because neither was supposed to be true at the same time. I was learning both were true.

“The curse we have, Jacky, was the first time humans irrevocably changed the world we are in with magic. It was the first and greatest of the impossible magic. It slowly tapered off over the centuries until we have the magic we have today in the vast majority of mortal witches. All the others ended up using what she left behind to do other things, but none were as great as what she did because there was literallynothingtelling her that it was impossible. If witches today believed that nothing was impossible, they could band together and do great things, but they don’t therefore theycan’t. Knowledge, while valuable, also contaminates and ruins the possibility of seeing magic like that ever again.”

“On a scale of… making the moon magic and making a piece of bread that feeds someone in a single bite, what is this?” I asked, waving a hand at the witches in the room.

“Oh, they’ve done great magic, without a doubt. There can’t be many who can properly do this, certainly not in this day and age. It’s not the type of magic I enjoy, but I could do it. Zuri, if she trained to it, could do it. Jabari and Makalo have the power. It’s great magic because it’s considered somewhat impossible to rob someone of their own will and thoughts, to completely subjugate like this. Human science certainly never found a way. However, in the supernatural world, it already exists, so that is the shred of belief they needed, and it was an easy connection. Magic does this in other ways; certainly, they can do it now with magic.”

I could only nod. Subira thought this was great magic. Great didn’t mean positive, and I had to reframe some thoughts as I considered that. She was using great as is in powerful, immense, world or belief altering.

“You have other questions,” she said gently. “Ask them. I don’t often offer information for free. I want to hear the questions. It keeps me from offering more than someone is willing to handle.”

“Have you done impossible magic?” I wanted to know. She was powerful. She had no ego about it. She just was, and no one could tell her otherwise. “Have you done great magic, to steal your term?”

“I have,” she confirmed. “I still feed and focus on those spells to this day.”

“Wait…” That related back to something she’d said while the others had been downstairs. “But you aren’t like them. They were defenseless and…”

“I’m better than them.” Subira shrugged. “But it’s also why I don’t do large and impressive magics much anymore. You’veseen me do some impossible things. Freezing Aisha in time to give her a chance to survive her injuries, but I couldn’t hold it for very long because I must constantly keep a large portion of my power dedicated to other spells I cast thousands of years ago.”

“And that’s why you do things like… potions, charms, foods…” A dozen questions of mine had been answered so quickly. Maybe even more.

“Exactly. I can do small things now, but I try not to do much else because it’s a risk for me to do much else. I will, and I have to recover from those because…” She waved a hand at the dead. “Luckily, I can heal from the problems faced from having to hold multiple powerful spells that once took all of my power to cast.”

“How do you keep focusing on them during the full moon?” I asked, imagining the pain of the Change and the way a werecat’s instincts could go a little haywire in those moments.

“Because at a full moon, I might not be in a human form, but I’m more powerful than I ever am,” she answered, a coy smile on her face. “Because the moonismagic, and that magic is forus.”

“Are you saying…”

“That I tap into our curse to make myself more powerful?Absolutely,” she said, the coy smile growing into something truly joyful and victorious. “Something no purely human witch could ever really do, not like I can.” She stepped closer to me. “I heard once that Hasan threatened Matilda and Johann with bringing me into that situation in front of you. Do you know why they’re scared of me?”

“You’re more powerful than them by several degrees?” I had thought my idea of it was right, but she made me think otherwise.

“Because I’ve done impossible things from a time before knowledge tainted all the witches in the world, and because I’ve done them, I can do them again. They don’t know what I have and haven’t done, and they don’t want to find out whatunknown impossibilities I can achieve. If they knew, they could defend themselves, or they would have some hope of being able to defend themselves. Raw power, in a magical sense, is nothing without skill and creativity, both of which I outdo them by several degrees, as you say. Now, that also means the reason I don’t tell people all of what I can do is so I can keep that element of surprise. While I would love for all my children to know everything about me, not even Zuri and Jabari know some of my greatest spells, and if I have my way, none of you ever will.”

“Does that mean if you stopped holding those spells, you could do big, insane things like that witch who cursed us?”

“Possibly, but I will never stop holding those spells, not willingly. Those spells are more important than the Tribunal. They are more important than world peace. They are…” Subira tilted her head, her eyes faraway again. “The greatest thing I have ever offered this world.” Then she was back in the present. “Like the witch who created the moon cursed, I will die for those spells if I must.”

“Please don’t talk like that,” I said quickly, uncomfortable with the idea that the ancient woman who adopted me with an open heart would ever die. I hadn’t known her long, but imagining a world without her felt like imagining a world that was empty. She was woven into the fabric of the life I knew now. If her thread was pulled out or cut short, everything would unravel.

“Would you like to know more of her story? That witch?” Subira quickly turned the subject for me, away from her possible death.

“Yeah, definitely,” I said but quickly realized we were done downstairs. “But we’re in the middle of a lot right now, and I’ve kept you from seeing everything else.”

“I don’t need to see everything else, but those above us will want to hear from you,” she said, sighing. “Hasan is doing hisbest right now. Before we arrived, I warned him that this might be the case. I had my suspicions based on what Davor had relayed to us to convince everyone that I needed to come. He’s not trying to be intentionally cold right now. He’s trying not to think about the worst time of his life.”

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