She was flung back with the light, unprepared and unsuspecting. With no shield no protect her, she flew through the air, crashing against and shattering stone plinths, cracking tree trunks.
Her careering path through the garden was marked by a sheen of falling snow, a thick veil of flakes already moving back into the areas vacated by the darkness.
She groaned as, mildly stunned but nowhere near dead, she painfully stirred on the ground where she had fallen.
I rose to my feet, no longer feeling so weak, so beaten.
I dashed across the lawn, through the bushes. The snow was following me, swirling round me like so much beautifully disturbed blossom.
‘Danny, stop, stop!’ a male voice cried out behind me.
I stopped, turned.
Richard was running through the snow towards me, beaming excitedly, his dressing gown flapping around him like an orange flame.
He had fully recovered, no longer displaying even the slightest sign of illness.
‘Everything’s turned out just as it was supposed to!’ he yelled elatedly.
*
Chapter 44
To calm the mind, burn either blooms or shoots of the Broom.
A Guide for Young Wytches
Richard ignored the cold flakes of snow swirling around him as he strode towards me.
He smiled gleefully.
He had never looked more handsome.
If only poor Lisa had seen him like this.
But then again, she had: when she was younger; when he was well.
There was an abrupt thump, a crackling of electricity, of fire. The blue light of a cast spell rippled uselessly around my shield.
I contemptuously glanced back towards my darker self. She had risen unsteadily to her feet, taken advantage of the distraction to finally kill me.
It hadn’t worked.
I had recognised, at last, where my powers had been stored.
I brought forth my own spell, letting the light rise up through my body, out through my skin, out towards my target.
The blue light danced and coursed through the air.
It hit Richard.
Even if he’d been expecting it, he didn’t have the power to resist it.
Before he even crumpled to the ground, he was dead.
*
Chapter 45
Making your Own Wand: Part 8
Once your wand is ready, sand it smoother, then stop it drying out further by applying coatings of either beeswax, oil, or polish.
A Guide for Young Wytches
The upper reaches of the dark areas were already letting in the first fluttering flakes of the snowfall.
Around and upon Richard, they were already accumulating, already covering him.
My darker self rushed by me, knelt down beside him, already weeping.
‘You killed him! Even you’re own creation; you killed him too!’
While looking down at him, I couldn’t help but see only the good Richard there.
‘What choice did I have?’ I answered blithely. ‘It was time to put an end to all this. If I hadn’t, your king would have eventually found some way to break free.’
She glanced up at me, some form of understanding beginning to flicker within her eyes.
‘You…you arranged all this, didn’t you?’
‘As long as he remained in his realm, I couldn’t touch him. As soon as he entered Richard, he entered mine…’
I didn’t need to offer any more of my weary explanation.
‘But your power came from Richard; how could you use it once he was no longer yours?’
I shook my head, disagreeing with her. Yet hadn’t I originally made the same mistake, assuming my capabilities had been stored within Richard, waiting there for me to access them?
‘Lisa was the memory of my powers: when you killed her, they passed to me. Earlier than it seems I’d intended, as it was before my own memory was fully restored; a memory that had to be hidden from all of us, of course, until the moment was right.’
‘Who are you?’ she demand, bewilderment clouding her eyes once more as she rose to her feet, glared at me accusingly. ‘Why don’t I know who you really are?’
She glanced down at Richard’s body, still amazed, awestruck, that her powerful king had been so apparently effortlessly killed.
‘How much power did I really have?’ She looked to me once more. ‘Like your creation of Richard, I was given an incomplete memory, wasn’t I? So I wouldn’t ever recognise who I really was?’
‘You’re the dark side of a recall of what was necessarily an incomplete memory. You could never be who I really am.’
The snow was now covering her too. She stared at the flakes covering her arms in horror.
‘No! You can’t be! That is impossible!’
She whirled frenziedly in the swiftly falling snow, flailing uselessly at the flakes, attempting to dash them from her arms, her body, her face.
She stopped, realising it was too late. It was fruitless.
She glared up into the seemingly endlessly swirling flakes
‘You can’t be the snow!’
She looked everywhere about her, increasingly bewildered as she increasingly understood.
‘The castle; you’re the castle too,’ she wailed miserably.
‘But you created the snow, created the castle…’
By attempting to use only reason, she was only adding to her confusion.
Then, at last, I saw the dawning of true understanding within her blazingly irate eyes.
‘The book! When dark powers created the book, a balance was created in your world. A power that could restrain it!’
‘I simply needed time to decide what form I should take.’
She began to warily back away from me.
‘But if you’re telling me all this now…’
‘Yes: it’s time to end it all.’
I made her end as swift and painless as I could.
*
Chapter 46
To attract love, string and hang the mature berries of the Juniper within your home.
A Guide for Young Wytches
The children play happily within the garden.
I brought them all here, of course.
Even the ones in the tank that had been damaged, and had got lost on the way here.
That’s the advantage of entering the world every now and again.
You understand that some wrongs need addressing. That sorely mistreated souls deserve setting free.
Are such children of the dark, or of the light?
It’s not for me to judge.
As for Richard, the Richard of the light, I’ve granted him life again.
Naturally, he has no true role now.
But that means I can now allow him a memory of whom he now is; a rich, young. handsome boy.
One who is well. One who can live and age naturally.
And Lisa? What role could there be for her now?
Still, I’ve brought her back to life too.
Brought her back as the young girl she had been when I had first introduced Richard to her.
‘Don’t….don’t I know you from somewhere?’ Richard asks gaily as he helps me take my bags out of the back of the taxi.
‘Maybe we met once before,’ I reply with a smile.
For, of course, Lisa and I are one.
And I love Richard as much as he loves me.
End
If you enjoyed reading this book, you might also enjoy (or yo
u may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.
The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly
The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale
A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)
The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator
Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll’s Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666
P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers
Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)
Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent
Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak
Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World – The Truth About Fairies – Lowlife
Elm of False Dreams – God of the 4th Sun
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