Page 225 of A Winding Wave of Magic
But right now, it was the least of my worries.
I thrashed on the ground, throwing myself against the stone as I grabbed at my hair, my scalp, desperate to escape this horrible hold.Get out of my head!
“Then tell me what I need to know, witch!” Senni shouted right back. “Tell me what your grandmother was guarding. I See it now—there was a package, sent over the winter. She died and bade you to guard it. But you don’t have to do that anymore. You don’t have to be as selfish as she was. The Council didn’t understand the Secret, so they wanted it hidden away, but it is the key to the lives we are all promised by the magic itself. You are keeping it from us!”
The shroud of his power had returned, blinding me again while he skipped through my memories like a rock across a river. I tried to grab it with my mind’s own grip again and pulled.
I’m not keeping anything!I twisted out of his power’s sway, and to my shock, it was as if I had pushed Senni across the room.
“No!” he seethed and whipped his mind around mine once more with an unbreakable hold.
I threw my hands out, looking for purchase, anything to root me in the here and now instead of the oblivion he was chasing with every memory that dripped out of my brain and into his.
My mind was about to crack. Still, there was a shape there, one I hadn’t Seen before. Tall and round, like one of the hubcap-sized rocks that made up the walls of this stone prison. But unlike the stones, it wasn’t strong. Like an egg, it would shatter with just the right tap.
Please, I begged someone. Anyone. A vision, a bit of energy, the goddesses or fair folk the ancients believed lived in places like these.Brigid,help me.
A spirit drifted from the rock and appeared between Senni and me. Tall and statuesque, she had bright blue eyes and dark skin, with silver hair that hung to her hips over a ragged tunic. Gold rings pierced all the way around one ear along with beads hanging off braids and around her wrists.
Senni seemed to look right through her, but she spoke to me directly.
Sister, she said without really saying it. It was a language similar to Irish, but not quite the same. Enough that I could understand her meaning. If I listened with my heart.
She closed her eyes, and I Saw the truth.
She was no goddess, but a woman like me.
An oracle, a vector for the world. Someone who had been laid to rest under this dungeon and tortured above it. Who had lived just long enough for her life and knowledge to connect with the stone.
Imbolc to Solstice, dying with the light of the sun before her remains were charred under the sun’s rays. Her body was gone.
But her life remained in the stone.
Help,I asked her.Help me escape.
There is no help for you.She almost seemed amused.This is your fate. It’s why you are here.
I didn’t come here to die, I said.
No,she agreed.You did not come here to die.
Then what?I asked as Senni continued to plow through my brain, taking the memories I could not shield.
Find the Lost One. Free her Secret. Be at peace.
How?I asked.How do I find her? How do I get out of here to do that?
She cocked her head, as if the question was absurd, then looked at the vial around my neck.
How else?she replied.Touch the water.
I took my hands from the ground, and the spirit disappeared. Under my dress, a vial of water hung between my breasts on the chain my cousins had brought me.
Blindly, I pulled it out and unscrewed the stopper, then tipped the remaining liquid into my palm.
Water flowed over my fingers, but instead of falling to the floor, the shape of it appeared before me, dispersing the fragile stone with a mere splash and taking up its position within me. Lending me its shape.
Magic flowed through my memories and took my power, then surged through the shroud Senni had woven to capture it. Soaking it. Drowning it. Then rushing through those threads with the force of a storm and washing me free as it drowned him completely.
