Page 68 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
“Am… am I a witch now? I sent that signal—”
“You have to do it more than once, and it’s more of a career choice than an innate talent.”
“Right,” he said, panic flattening. “How did the first witches come to be?”
Aislinn smiled. “Sit down, and I shall tell you.”
Caer obliged.
“Closer.”
Cheeks heating again, he did as commanded.
Aislinn cleared her throat. “No one quite knows how the first witches were born—they have been around almost as long as Faerie, their tale lost to legend. Some say the first one was a mortal servant, wronged by her master, who learned a secret art of magic in order to enact revenge. Others say she was once a faerie who committed a horrible crime against Titania, the First Queen of the Faeries, and was stripped of her natural magic and found a way to replace it. However she came to be, it is clear that she went to the mortal world and taught the women there her art.”
“Only the women? Can men not wield magic like that?”
“They can, but apparently she found more women there in need of just revenge—women powerless that needed power to survive. The First Witch said to be wary of mortal men with power—and what they will do to keep it.”
“That sounds… entirely fair,” Caer remarked. His mother had dismissed a lot of greedy, even violent lords from her service over the years. She’d never had much more than thieving problems with the ladies in her service—and most of the time, there was a reason they were driven to such lengths. The motives of the male counterparts were rarely so pure.
“What happened to the First Witch?” he said. “After she had her army?”
“Army?” Aislinn shook her head. “Most tales agree she had her revenge in some fashion, but bringing mortals into Faerie wasn’t part of it. They were just there to… live, I think. Or maybe warn those in charge that although mortals weren’t fae… they were far from powerless. I think it was a good lesson. There have been periods in our history when we have not been kind to mortals… times when they were drugged and beaten and enslaved. It is good to remember they can defend themselves.”
Caer paused for a moment. He knew the stories well, and although it wasn’t pleasant to have Aislinn confirm them, at least she sounded repulsed by them.
“Can a mortal ever become fae?” he asked her. “If a fae can be stripped of their magic and immortality, can the reverse happen?”
“There are very few cases of both,” Aislinn explained, “although my mother is perhaps the most recent case. She still looks mortal, she can still lie… but she’s barely aged since the day she married my father, she has command over certain magics… Faerie knows its queen.”
“You speak of Faerie as if it is alive.”
“Itis,” she insisted. “All the world’s alive, but in Faerie, you can feel it. My home—the palace of Acanthia—is occupied by sentient vines.”
“Sentientvines?”
“Yes. They used to rock us to sleep when we were children and carry messages for us between our rooms. We thought everyone could use them that way when we were little, but apparently not.”
Caer blinked, taking this in. “You said your mother became fae when she married your father. Does that always happen?”
Aislinn shook her head. “Admittedly, she’s the first mortal consort so there’s no comparison, but apparently she and my father did something else that day. They share each other’s hearts.”
Caer paused, frowning. “In the literal or metaphorical sense?”
“Both? I think? Neither one of them has been able to explain it to me, but he was dying and she—”
“Your father was dying on his wedding day?”
“It wasn’t his wedding day until afterwards.”
Caer frowned harder.
“It’s a long story.”
Caer smiled. “I don’t have anywhere else I need to be. Do you?”
Aislinn told him her parents’ story until the sky was black and inky, and the fire almost worn away to embers. She drifted off beside him, and he scooted backwards to avoid rolling over and touching her in the night.
