EMberlight

Chapter 1: A Battle of Worth Forgetting

Kelsey

Kelsey Black dug her nails into the most vulnerable part of the wicker effigy, knowing full well it would christen a war. She ripped through the knotted rattan and yanked until the pointed hat broke free.

Hatless and bedraggled, the effigy no longer resembled a witch. It resembled a human and nothing more.

Her mother would boil at the sight of her ruined display, or that’s what Kelsey hoped. Boiling wasn’t the same as burning. If her mother broke down in front of her followers, she would be too angry to rise up as the leader of her anti-magic group. Then maybe they could be a normal family again.

Tossing the hat into the depths of the alleyway, she shimmied down the stake, feet snapping the kindling below. A smirk sharpened her thin lips as she considered the message it would send her mother: Ester could force Kelsey to sit through her meetings, but she couldn’t force her daughter to agree.

“Okay, so it’s just a bunch of sticks now. Are you ready to run?” her best friend, Feya, asked warily. Despite plaiting her hair at the scalp, Feya’s black curls still frizzed out from her ponytail as erratic as her worried eyes. The setting sun had cast an eerie light over the empty town square, and she checked over her shoulder as if Kelsey’s mother haunted the alleyways. Her dark skin, a smooth sepia colour, helped conceal some of the pale worry from her face, but Kelsey knew not to push the mischief too far.

Not that she could help herself.

 “Almost.” Kelsey pulled out a phone from her leather jacket and took a selfie. She despised the way her cropped dark hair and pallid face looked sickly in the twilight, but this wasn’t about her. It was about making a statement…although it didn’t feel barbed enough.

She knelt and swapped her phone for a lighter.

“Oh, no,” Feya said, jumping forwards.

“Oh, yes,” Kelsey said, grinning wildly. “No one will know as long as we run.”

“But you can’t leave a bonfire unattended! The town hall could go up, and then the houses could catch, and—and…You’ll burn down the whole town!”

With a sigh, Kelsey knew her friend was somewhat right, but her fingers still itched for destruction. If I can’t burn it, how do I destroy it? She looked to the safety bucket of water beside the sticks, a new plan tingling the palms of her hands. “You’re right. You’re always right.” Kelsey hauled the bucket of water over the effigy, drenching the figure entirely. She stashed the firelighters in her schoolbag and stood beside her best friend with a sense of pride over her miraculous restraint. “Now it can’t burn at all.”

“That works for me. Can we go?”

They fled the scene towards Kelsey’s house, dawdling as they reached the chunks of broken pavement, bent lampposts, and general signs of magical mishaps. Somehow this had become the norm on their route to Kelsey’s house.

“Can’t believe you snuck out of detention for that,” Feya said, although she tagged a smile on at the end that showed her amusement. “You’re so going to be grounded.”

“I’m doing them a favour.”

“Who? The ‘witches’?” Feya frowned. “I thought you didn’t care about magic.”

“I don’t,” Kelsey said a little too fast. “I care about my family. My mum can’t handle them like she thinks she can. They’d retaliate.”

Feya shrugged. “I don’t know. I like to think they’re too busy to care about us. It makes sense, you know? They just want us to forget about them.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Kelsey joked, but it wasn’t that simple. The witches had cursed the magicless to forget magic on sight. It made anyone without magic forget unnatural powers, forget any magic they may see, and even render them confused at the very mention of the witches’ true name: Embers.

But it didn’t always work.

Children remembered perfectly, and some adults like Kelsey’s mum could fight it, although it left them angry and unable to understand. Even Kelsey and Feya were still waiting for the Aversion spell to kick in and convert them into non-believers. They had yet to forgot any of the magical destruction they had witnessed, and the horrors of the Embers’ powers still haunted their dreams. The weight of magic hung heavy on their shoulders with every step they took, even now.

That’s when the pavement cracked.

The cement split in the middle like a dried-out sponge cake, earth spilling up through it. The world rumbled beneath Kelsey and Feya, threatening their balance.

Across the street, a man fell to the road, his shopping breaking free from the plastic bag in his hand. He should have made a run for it like his loose oranges rolling free towards the horizon, but instead he glanced over his shoulder—a mistake that rooted him to the spot, thanks to the Aversion. It must have worked well in him.

“Oh, no. Not again,” Feya groaned.

Kelsey didn’t complain. Her heart raced to the beat of the approaching footsteps, the thumping sound pounding all of her thoughts to the corner of her mind, except one.

Act now, think later.

The Embers were coming—they had to hide. Kelsey grabbed Feya’s shoulder. They dove over a garden wall like synchronised swimmers and landed in the Smith’s front garden with a mouthful of tulips.

Like always, Feya curled up into a ball and focused on deep, even breaths, in and out, but Kelsey surfed the adrenaline that pumped through her, riding the high to the beat of her eager heart. Finally, she thought. This wasn’t the first Ember-Bloodwitch fight she had witnessed, but it was the first time she no longer felt petrified.

And that meant her grand plan could work. Finally.

She crawled through the rhododendrons and peered over the bricks, whipping out her phone to record the battle. If she could get this right, she could use the Aversion to her favour. One look at the evidence of magic, and the effigy would be complete forgotten in her mum’s mind. Maybe the meetings would be cancelled altogether!

Another rumble warned her to be careful. Two Embers, no older than eighteen, raced down the middle of the road, a girl and a boy, panting as if their lungs had holes in them. They wore matching expressions—frowns and gritted teeth—their legs caught in knots as they stumbled between deep breaths. They turned, edging backwards towards Kelsey and Feya, their steps in sync.

The boy held his arm out. A wall of earth tore up through the cracks in the concrete and towards the sky, blocking off whatever was chasing them.

Before the Embers could catch their breaths, the wall bubbled and melted like wax.

The girl hissed something, but the boy held his hand out again and clenched his jaw. More earth sprouted from the cracks, patching up the barrier. Still, the rock sizzled and dissolved. The girl put her hand on the boy’s shoulder and tensed. Somehow the rock reformed faster and faster as if she were passing her energy to the boy, saving them, until the wall crashed down into a smoking puddle, revealing a beautiful woman on the other side.

A smell sicklier than honey filled the air, the aftertaste bitter. The woman leaped over the puddle, lithe as poison in the breeze. Her bronze curls were too luscious, her face too flawless, her olive skin too smooth. Her violet dress hung off her body as if she were a model in front of a wind machine. She raised a vial of blood to her lips, knocking it back in a shot.

“So is that all you are?” the boy yelled at the woman. The fluff of a first beard covered his chin. “A filthy Bloodwitch!”

Kelsey’s hand shook, blurring the video in a way her mind never would. Filming the boy and girl’s last moments was like capturing their souls. Did she have the right to do that?

Get a grip! she told herself. She leaned her arm against the wall to steady herself. If no one records it, no one will remember. Guilt dug its fingernails into her stomach as she let the scene unfold.

The Bloodwitch swished her hand out towards the Embers, palm up, a devilish smile plastered across her face.

“We’re trying to save you!” the girl screamed as the boy pulled her into a run.

Kelsey knew what would happen next. She had seen it before. Her breath hitched as the danger caught in her lungs, weighing her down. She promised herself not to flinch this time. It would never be okay, but this time she would handle it.

Wisps of purple smoke danced around the witch’s outstretched arm, sailing forward until the locks of smoke engulfed the teenagers in a sickening hiss. The Embers shrieked. Their skin bubbled and bled as they collapsed onto the concrete. New shrieks layered atop their echoes. The stench of burning skin saturated the air, clashing with the sweet, cloying scent. When their tortured cries faded, the girl writhed in pain. The boy lay still.

Kelsey realised she had been holding her breath and let it out with a shudder. It was impossible to watch, yet even more impossible to help them.

Her mother couldn’t be more wrong. Embers weren’t the problem. The Bloodwitches were the ones wreaking havoc, but with the Aversion stopping the magicaless from processing the truth, they needed to stay out of the battle. Why couldn’t Ester see that?

Feya uncurled slightly. “Is the man okay?”

“What man?”

“The one who lost his oranges.”

Kelsey tensed. She hadn’t been able to save the Embers, but she wasn’t useless. The Bloodwitches tended to leave the magicless alone, but that didn’t mean no one got hurt. It just meant they couldn’t remember how.

As the Bloodwitch swished her arm, the acid melted the shield of earth. Kelsey peered through the smokescreen of branches and leaves. The shopping had settled, but Mrs Smith’s unruly bushels of lavender shrouded the stranger—unless something had happened to him. She leaned over the wall, further and further, but it wasn’t enough. She needed to step over the wall, and maybe a bit into the road…

A hand wrapped around her ankle: Feya’s.

Fine, I’ll find another way. Kelsey stretched her arm out and twisted and twizzled her phone until it illuminated her blind spot. 

The man stared at the Embers, his jaw lax and a sway for every breeze. Red blisters kissed his skin, his body steps away from the Bloodwitch but his mind clearly elsewhere. Magic had rendered him part of the scenery.

“The Aversion’s doing its job,” Kelsey said, sitting back and inhaling the lavender. “This will be a day-dream or nightmare to him.”

“Really? She’s not hurting him? That’s lucky,” Feya murmured.

Kelsey rolled her eyes. Feya would never understand the thrill of the fight. Sure, the Bloodwitch could have easily walked around the shield of earth, but that wasn’t challenging or fun, and neither was hunting a dull, ordinary, magicless human. The Aversion spell meant the magicless were like pigeons, only worth killing when they became too much of a pest.

The Embers on the other hand were prized game.

The Bloodwitch walked over to the Embers and placed a finger at her chin. She examined his tattooed arm, the only part of him spared by the toxic mist.

“Ugh, what a mess,” she told the unconscious boy, kicking his stomach. He didn’t flinch at the hit. “But you’re what he wants.” The witch lifted the boy into her arms with an ill-matched ease for her slender frame and walked off down the road leaving the other Ember behind.

A silence settled over the street.

Kelsey waited a breath or two before hopping over the wall with a car-crash type of curiosity. As sneaky as a cat in the wrong house, she approached the surviving Ember, angling her phone for a better shot of the girl’s face. Blisters crawled up the girl’s neck and cheek, and her matted hair peeled from the edge of her burning scalp. Kelsey’s stomach twisted, but she believed facing the truth of it was a necessity.

A hand latched onto her arm. The toxic Bloodwitch flashed in her mind, quickly replaced by brown eyes and a soft face. “What are you doing? We’ve got to get out of here!”

Kelsey ended the video. “And the man?”

“He’s fine, I think,” Feya said, her gaze never leaving the Ember. “Should we help her somehow?”

Kelsey spoke against her gut instincts. “No. The Embers will find her. Like you said, we’ve got to go.” She glanced down at the blistered girl and swallowed.

They left the girl in the streets for the Embers to rescue. The man would be fine—the Embers would check for signs of the Aversion and leave him be, but the same could not be said for them.

The clouds pulled together to unleash a downpour, and Kelsey welcomed the chance to wash the sweat from her brow. She tucked her phone into her pocket, the overused battery warm against her chest. Her mother’s group might be resistant to the spell, but they couldn’t ignore the truth forever, and if Kelsey could keep her temper under control, then maybe she could help them understand.