Chapter 32: The Price of Memory
833 Words
The swamp breathed, a thick, claustrophobic exhale of damp moss and rotting cedar. Elara pushed through the waist high muck, her boots dragging with every step. The air was a heavy shroud, smelling of stagnant water and ancient decay. Ahead, protruding from a thicket of gnarled cypress trees, stood the hut. It was a bizarre architectural nightmare, a sagging structure of driftwood and gray thatch, held aloft by two gargantuan scaly limbs that resembled the feet of a titanic plucked chicken.
Elara’s breath hitched in her throat as she approached the wooden stairs. They creaked under her weight, sounding like snapping bones. Pushing the door open, she was hit with a wall of heat. The inside was sparse, cluttered with hanging bundles of dried herbs that looked like shriveled fingers. In the center, a massive iron cauldron bubbled, emitting a violet vapor that clung to the ceiling.
Standing before the fire was a woman, thin as a winter branch, wearing a cloak woven from raven feathers. Her face was a landscape of deep, weathered creases, but it was her eyes that made Elara stop dead. Where eyes should have been, there was only smooth, pale skin, puckered like old scars.
"I’ve been expecting you, little spark," the woman croaked. Her head snapped toward Elara with unsettling precision, her empty sockets tracking the girl’s every movement.
"You knew I was coming?" Elara asked, her voice barely a whisper.
"The wind carries your grief, girl. It screams loud enough to wake the dead." The witch turned, a wooden ladle still dripping with a dark, viscous liquid. "I am the sister of Morwen. She who played at games of power and lost. You watched her fall, didn’t you? You watched the light leave her."
Elara shuddered, the memory of that day, the sound of the spell shattering, the way Morwen collapsed flashing behind her eyes. "I didn't come here to talk about her."
"You came for the boy," the witch countered, stepping closer. The smell of sulfur wafted off her. "Kael. His father’s line saved me once, long ago, when the Queen’s soldiers hunted me through these very bogs. I owe that house a debt. But debts are living things, child. They feed on what we value most."
The witch extended a hand. Her skin felt like parchment stretched over iron. "I can teach you to shatter the Queen’s barrier. But I require a sacrifice. Give me a memory. A piece of your mind. I will pluck it at random, and it shall be as if it never existed."
Elara’s heart hammered against her ribs. To lose a part of herself, it felt like a violation, a surgical strike on her soul. She thought of Kael, his face illuminated by the moonlight, the way he had looked at her before the shadows swallowed him. I will come back to you. The promise echoed in the chambers of her mind.
"What memory?" Elara’s voice trembled.
The witch offered a void like smile. "I do not know. That is the price. Could be the face of your mother. Could be the first time you felt the warmth of the sun. Could be a name, or a song, or the taste of bread. Once I take it, the space where it lived will be hollow. You won’t even know what you’ve lost."
Elara hesitated, looking at the bubbling cauldron. She thought of the pain in Kael’s voice, the cold metal of the shackles. She looked at the witch’s hand.
"Do it," Elara said, her resolve hardening. She took the witch's withered palm.
The room suddenly went silent. The crackle of the fire died away, replaced by a high thin ringing. The witch’s fingers clamped down, ice cold. Elara felt a tug, like a hook catching on a silken thread in her brain. She gasped, her knees buckling. A flicker of something, a soft blue color, the sound of a woman’s laugh flashed and then vanished into the abyss.
She blinked, gasping for air. The witch pulled away, cackling, a sound that seemed to come from the floorboards themselves.
"What did you take?" Elara grabbed her own head, searching for a gap, but she couldn't find it. The emptiness was just empty.
"You’ll find out, or you won't," the witch rasped, her eyes blind but her focus intense. "Now, listen well. The barrier is not stone. It is not iron. It is made of moonlight and grief. You cannot break it with swords or spells. You must weep it open."
Elara frowned. "Weep?"
"The Queen’s magic thrives on the sorrow she inflicts. It is her armor. But true human grief, the kind that loves, the kind that burns, is poison to that cold dead moon magic. Go back to the wall. Do not fight it. Let your heart break. Cry, girl. Cry until the world dissolves."
A violent c***k ripped through the barrier.
The Queen suddenly screamed. Not in triumph.
In terror. The girl's breath caught.
"Why is she afraid?
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