Chapter 100

Nazim kept his word after sitting me down at the kitchen table and promising me if I ran, he would catch me. Having seen the wolfkin move — truly move — I didn’t doubt him. My hearing wasn’t good enough that I could make out what was happening above, but I figured it out when Nazim returned with not only Gramps but Mum as well.

“Tell them,” he ordered as the three of them sat down around the table.

Gramps, dressed in a nightgown, looked angry at first. Understandable since I was kitted out for sneaking around at night, which was plenty of proof that I had lied to them. Mum looked more worried than angry, and perhaps a little hurt. Seeing that expression on her face made the shame come rushing back, the little light inside of me that I imagined was filling the all consuming darkness flickering under the weight of my betrayal.

Then I started talking — really talking — as I tried to express my emotions instead of continuing to bury them. As the words tumbled out of me their facial expressions began to shift but in different directions. Gramps’ eyes changed from angry to being unable to meet my own. His shoulders slumped as he looked down at the table rather than at me or Mum. I thought that perhaps he was ashamed, but it was hard to tell through the haze of tears and my hoarse voice as I spilled my guts.

Mum started to choke up, her eyes welling with tears as she reached out tentatively to touch me. In her gaze, I saw a mirror of my own feelings… the self-hate I had felt for so long. I knew she was blaming herself like I knew the sky was blue and that black clouds meant rain. Seeing her like that set my lip to quivering. Even with the emotional cauldron the kitchen had turned into, they never once interrupted me — letting me talk till I ran out of things to say.

“I’m sorry,” Mum whispered when I was done, holding my hand tightly like it was a lifeline. I gripped her back with the same strength. “I knew you were hurting, that you missed Etta, and that you had gone through a terrible ordeal. Every time I tried to get you to talk to me about it, you resisted, and I was worried if I pushed too hard, it would make it all worse—”

She started crying, never looking away from me as though she were facing down her fears.

“Instead, I just made it worse!”

I pushed myself out of my seat and wrapped my arms around her.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I whispered into her shoulder, hearing the exact same thing Nazim had said to me coming out of my own mouth.

“I should’ve done more, my poor baby,” she crooned, her hand stroking the back of my head as she started to rock us back and forth.

The light inside of me that had been wavering grew, and it felt like a tightness across my shoulders and in my stomach slowly relaxed. I wasn’t ‘good’ — not by a long shot — but I felt ‘better’ than I had in forever.

“You can blame me instead,” Gramps muttered. “It sounds like I have been giving mixed signals about Agnes, and instead of taking in both sides, fed into your fears about Songleaf. I… I messed up, Penny — and I am sorry. Bastian, Agnes would be a fool not to take you, and though my sister can be onerous, she is not a fool. Even if you had nothing else but Gifted, she would still have taken you on. To her, that would be more than worth investing in.”

I heard him grind his teeth as he spoke, clearly angry at himself.

“You have something the nobility covet, of course she is going to take you. You just always pushed yourself so hard and it made you happy… or it used to, before that night. I thought seeing your progress might bring that happiness back. Instead, it feels like I have been piling more and more weight on your shoulders till you thought your only way out was to do something suicidal.”

Mum shifted her head from where she held me at Gramps' reminder of my plans to enter a Rift.

“What about Magatha?” she asked. I had seen my Mother angry a few times — seen her hurt and sad or worried. I had never once heard the level of vitriol from her that I did in those three words.

“I’ll deal with her,” Gramps growled. “But in the morning. It can wait that long at least. Assuming you’re not going to sneak out without telling us again?”

I shook my head. I was emotionally drained, but for the first time since Etta left, I could see a path back towards the person I had been before that night. Mum came with me upstairs and without saying a word, joined me under my covers, unwilling to leave my side. When I fell asleep that night, for the first time in months, I didn’t dream of Lucille’s death.

Morning found us back in the kitchen. Everyone seemed tired, but I got the sense that the feeling of the room was like the sun peeking out from behind the clouds. We weren’t out of the storm yet, but there was the promise of warmth in the air.

Mum took me for lessons straight after breakfast, instead of heading out with Gramps and Nazim. I watched the pair go and had very little doubt of where they were headed. Mum didn’t ask them either, but the utter hatred in her eyes when she glanced in the direction they had gone told me she knew just as well as I.

***

Cornelius stomped down the road like it had insulted him. Each footfall was another assault against the thing that had wronged him.

“I’m starting to see where he gets it from,” Nazim commented.

“She almost let him go into a Rift on his own under my very nose!” Cornelius growled, grinding his teeth again as he resisted the urge to pull his pipe out. He was stressed enough that he was worried he’d leave teeth marks in the wood… the pipe itself a gift from his grandson.

Nazim shook his head. “But she didn’t. We put a stop to it, finally lancing that festering boil that was ruining him.”

“You put a stop to it—”

Nazim interrupted him. “No, I just caught him sneaking out and made him tell me why. I doubt that would have helped in the long term though. It was you and Miss Penelope that he thought he was failing — and himself of course. He’s his own worst critic. Something to consider for the future, and perhaps behaviour best not modelled for him?”

Cornelius frowned at the insinuation before breathing out some of his anger. The wolfkin was right. Cornelius blamed himself for dragging his daughter out here into the middle of nowhere, just as he blamed himself for not getting Bastian the tutors he deserved and the delays on the Path manuals to help him. The boy wasn’t blind. How could he see the way Cornelius reacted — one of the only adult influences the boy had — and not copy him.

He kept breathing slowly, getting his anger under control — and to a small extent the blame he cast on himself for this whole situation. Doing so much wrong didn’t mean he couldn’t start doing something right.

“Point taken,” he acknowledged. A lesser man, or beastkin, might have been smug — Nazim simply nodded.

Walking into Magatha’s domain was always like stepping out of autumn and into spring. The air became warmer, the smells became more vibrant and varied, and it was almost as though the sun shone brighter through the canopy above. Nazim’s fur shifted visibly, hackles rising.

“Something wrong?” Cornelius asked.

“Smells are all wrong, cloying up my nose so I can’t make sense of any of them.”

Cornelius acknowledged the wolfkin’s concern but didn’t stop walking. Entering the clearing, he found the Hedge Witch waiting for him at the edge of her garden.

“So, the little shit got caught?” she called out with a sneer as a tree peeled off the side of her cottage, stomping around till it stood beside her.

Cornelius had known Magatha was skilled for a Witch. He had not known about the Pacted Path with a forest spirit. Still, that didn’t change anything and he wasn’t here to pass judgement on those choices. The choices related to his grandson were another matter.

“Magatha, for the history we share and the assistance you have given the past I will make this simple and brief. Don’t ever come near my family again.”

“The boy came to me,” she pointed out.

“He did. He’s not blameless in this, but he won’t be coming back. You mind your business. We’ll mind ours, and heavens willing, this will be the last time yours and mine cross paths.”

Magatha sniffed, “And if I say no? If I decide that you’ve no right to tell me where I can go and who I can see?”

Fire formed around his hand, shooting forth in an instant. The forest spirit, for all its size and power, did not move quickly. Cornelius controlled his fireball spell so that it impacted the creature's arm. The flames quickly spread before Cornelius snuffed them out with a Spell of Flame Suppression. The scorch marks on the forest spirit looked like a dark sun, the bark cracked and broken where he had struck.

“A tree is just tinder for the fire, Magatha. If you make me come back here, I promise you there will be nothing left of your home, garden, or tree-spirit by the time I am done.”

Magatha’s face was twisted by rage and hatred, but she said nothing. Cornelius took that as a message delivered, turning to leave.

The Hedge Witch’s voice called after them, "Something's not right with him! What is he?”

“My grandson,” he called back.

***

When they returned a few hours later, I admit I was worried about what had happened. So, when they led me out towards our training area in the trees, I couldn’t help but ask.

“You… you didn’t kill her, right?”

I didn’t like Magatha — nor did I trust her — but that didn’t mean I wanted her dead. For all her greed, trickery, threats, and attempted enspellment, she hadn’t actually hurt me. Then again, she had been willing to risk my life, and who knew if she had actually planned to bleed me dry or not. Gramps likely took a very dim view of such actions, and his anger had been plain to see when he left.

“No. For all her many faults I don’t think she deserved to die — and you did go seeking her out. I just warned her to never go near my family again while reminding her that I knew where she lived and how easily trees can burn. She got the message,” Gramps replied quietly.

Training went more smoothly, my anger dimmed — but not forgotten — allowing me to feel some of the joy once more as I gained steps in Daggers and Shieldwork. Aether Manipulation, without the weight of my own expectations, felt less like I was beating my head against a wall and more like I was on the early steps of wielding spells like Gramps did.

Out from under the dark haze, the world became brighter once more, the green of the leaves more vivid and the sound of the stream bubbling down the mountain more musical. When I climbed into the water to swim, it felt like I was washing away more than just sweat — the coolness of it finally doing what I had suspected Nazim had hoped for all along as my anger fled before the cold deluge.

I could tell Gramps noticed it, but he didn’t say anything. The tension was still there between us — a single night not enough to undo the past year — but as we practised, I felt like I was finally on the path towards being mended, and in so doing, mending the damage I had wrought on my family while falling into a dark spiral.