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Eda adjusted her fanny pack strap to rest a little more comfortably around her waist and checked that her pant legs hadn’t bunched in the calf length boots she now wore. The clothing was made of a strange material from what she would normally wear but the puppet master controlled everyone’s wardrobe now. Eda wasn’t sure how Lilith had ditched her get-up for the hooded cloak she now wore, but she knew she only got away with it since the Collector rarely ever played with them. Eda’s own attire was deemed too tattered by the Collector and was thrown out. Not that Eda minded, her kid told her she could ‘pull off anything’.
The witch was thankful King managed to convince his ‘best friend’ that Eda needed Lilith to brew their elixir. When King asked her the ingredients she needed, Eda rattled off the top stock she could never seem to lay her own hands on, paying special attention to moon phases and gathering instructions. Lilith even complimented her on memorizing the brewing instructions down to the letter. Eda just reminded her sister that memorization was never her problem back at Hexside, it was the meticulous execution Lilith excelled at that she always struggled with. The elixir needed 100% concentration and the best, regulated, ingredients. Two things Eda couldn’t seem to wrangle for herself for thirty plus years. Licenses and bounties kept mucking up her legitimate business needs. Their keeper suffered from no such set backs and seemed able to conjure the ingredients without breaking a sweat whenever King asked for a restock.
The Owl Lady let the silence of the room settle on her. She heard her own breathing, although she longed to hear theirs. Any of theirs. She swore the sound of her own heart beat echoed back at her from the cool blue walls. She had ravaged the hallway and cage the Collector originally locked her up in. The scored tapestries and stone remined her that the Owlbeast did not like the Collector. The beast still flared and raged in her mind when the kid entered the room, but she’d convinced it that they were safer in Eda’s skin. The star child loved to torment their beast form and King grew too upset when they were baited and bound over and over again.
Better to sit tight and wait for our chance, Beastie. We can’t stress out King. What if the Collector hurt him? The Owlbeast refused to answer her query and roved restlessly around her conscious thought. Its rage remained familiar, but now possessed a direction Eda had never known before.
Eda pushed back at its frustration and brought her own to the fore. She looked again at the line in the floor that marked the bounds of her own freedom. The Collector caught on to the fact that the Beast would destroy any cage they put it in, but balked at hurting the coven heads. King didn’t tell them that Eda stopped her beast from hurting Raine, specifically. Now the coven heads were her watch dogs. If she tried to leave, they would chase her down and harm her under the Collector’s orders. A living barrier that stopped her much more effectively than metal bars could.
“Oh, Raine,” she whispered to herself. She reached out and straightened their tunic. Smoothing out a couple wrinkles and hating the pleasantly plastic look in their eyes. “There is so much I need to tell you. So much I’ve been wanting to show you for years.” She paused and looked down at their fingers, wishing she could take their hand, or smooth her fingertips over their calluses, or run her fingers through their still growing hair. She tried once. They forced her into a hasty retreat all the way back to the little room inside her cage with their spells when she did.
Now she toed the boundary line whenever she needed to see the heat of determination in their gaze again. Needed them to look at her just as they had at the coven day parade when she begged them to run away with her. She sighed and settled her back to the wall still facing her bard. She leveraged against the flat surface between the tapestry frame and the support beam to slide down to the floor. Her wrapped arm loosely around her knees and looked up at the love of her life.
“I’ve been thinking a lot—for decades—on why we didn’t work out, and you’ve always been right.” She let her tears well up, but they didn’t spill over, and the cloudy barrier veiled her view of the witch who stood right in front of her. Her obscured vision mirrored the confusing mix of peace and loneliness welling up in her soul. “All I’ve wanted since the BATT raids was to be around you. Heh.” She choked a laugh and the tears spilled across her cheeks to merge and drip from her chin. “Well, here you are, and I’ve never felt so alone before. Titan!” She shouted as loud as she dared.
King and the Collector were down in Bonesbourough playing defeat the beast, but that pompous bitch Odalia still prowled through the halls in their absence. Eda would need to scram if she showed up. The witch did not know what she’d do if that Bitch came to torment Raine just to get to her.
“Raine, you wanted to know what it’s been like to live with the Owlbeast. It’s been hell. When we were still kids I didn’t feel the drain so much. It took a while to find the right elixir to control the transformations. I couldn’t’ see you or go to school for months, you remember. We wrote letters. I kept all of them, they were with my journals back at the Owl House. If the scouts found those old things, they should still be together, but I hid them pretty good under a floor board in the potion’s room. Even King never found those. You probably shouldn’t read them though. I was in a really dark place…”
“Well, anyway, as I grew up, transforming started to hurt more and more. At first the ache would disappear after a few hours, then a few days… The migraines would last for hours, and no pain potions, elixirs, or spells could touch them. Once the migraine melted away, all I could focus on was the joint pains or the muscle cramps any time I tried to straighten out of the fetal position. I’m glad I didn’t live with anyone but Hooty on those days. I was not a nice person to be around. Even Owlbert would annoy me,” she wiped her forearm across her eyes and used her sleeve to wick some moisture from under her chin, although she knew the tears would keep flowing.
“The little task manager would let me moan, curse, and growl for half a day and then pester me to get a drink of water, or roll over to my other side. You wouldn’t believe how often they guilted me through the shower and begged me to eat a piece of toast. They even convinced Hooty to lock me in the house a few times until I freshened my nest, or washed my cloths.” Eda staired up at the ceiling and remembered screaming at the breathing walls, raging at her own locked doors and windows—snapping at her precious palisman before breaking down and holding him close. Her whole body vibrating with the power hidden in her powerless hours spent just rocking on the floor.
“Then I found this little demon out on this mysterious island way off shore. I was attacked shortly after I walked through the front door to this huge tower in the middle of the island by some weird golem. Sorta’ like an abomination, but made of some weird stone…King was so tiny and cute. He didn’t really have the hang of walking around on two feet then. He could scuttle so fast on four legs, I don’t think it mattered though. He was hit by a blast by that thing during our escape and it broke off one of his horns. We didn’t go back for years, and well, surprise, surprise, I wasn’t completely honest with him about why. When he did go back it was with Lily, Hooty, and Luz. I followed as quickly as I could, ‘cause I knew about the danger of entering the tower. He freaked out a little when he realized that he never was a king of anyone. It was stupid of me to think he wouldn’t care. To let him believe he was something he fabricated himself. I just loved how happy it seemed to make him. His confidence was so refreshing to be around when I felt so useless all the time. Watching you and Lilith, and our old classmates back at Hexside actually make something of their lives while I just kept stirring potions and getting into trouble for staying wild. Almost like we never left school.” She wiped away the last of her tears and drew her knees ever closer to her chest. Feeling the cold stone seeping into the muscles of her butt and the ache of her back pressed firmly against the equally cold wall.
“I already told you, but I met Luz when she wandered in through the portal door while I was out selling human junk at the stall. I thought she was a riot, wanting to learn magic, and about the Boiling Isles. Talking about magic school and her the friends she made. She learned her first glyph when my curse started acting up. I, uh, never told King about it and figured I could keep it quiet from Luz too, but the Titan had other plans, apparently. She told me her name means light in her mother’s tongue and I saw it every day. She is just so smart, and funny, and friendly, Raine. I worried so much for her when we couldn’t figure out how to make another portal door. It was like she dimmed. I had to tell her of how we met to see that spark come back into her eyes. But now she’s safe back with her,” Eda pulled air in around the sob in her throat, she needed to know Luz would be ok, “her real family… Camila will be able to help her more than I can without any magic, or plan to fix this planet of ours.”
“You know it was Lily who cursed me? I was really pissed when I found out, but she was trying to kill Luz at the time too. So many years of my life spent on the run, loosing you, and the slow drain from my magic. Thousands of snails I never really had, essentially flushed down the pipes, and the years of isolation. But she finally dragged me in front of Belos and that bastard showed her his true colors. She saved Owlbert, and tried to save me too, but endangered Luz, King, and herself in the process,” Eda wiped at the tracts at her cheeks again and huffed when she couldn’t snort, “typical Clawthorne. She did a basic pain sharing spell and picked up some of the burden of my curse. I know she suffered enough for decades beating herself up for ‘ruining’ my future.” Eda scoffed a humorless huff. She folded her legs underneath herself and curled her arm around her belly. She rotated her neck to stretch out some of the tension building up in her shoulders.
“I couldn’t stay mad once she actually started talking to me again. Telling me about the stylistic choices of the Deadwardian era as if I remembered anything about it after all those years. You remember how much she changed after our farce of a duel, Raine. She became a different witch. I knew something was wrong, but I never guessed what. I just wanted us to face the world together, like we always said we would. These last few months, it’s been almost normal to see her and my parents again.” Eda leaned her head back to look up at the ceiling, knowing that her aching eyes would drift back down to Raine.
“It was Luz who finally swung mom around to see reason. She came around to force another one of her cures down my throat and took advantage of Luz to do so. I was, justifiably, upset that she couldn’t just leave me alone. Every time she came around with one of her cures I just felt like she rubbed my face in every choice I’d made since the beginning. I tried to tell her about the advanced potions I crafted—I even sold a few to Hettie over there before she became coven head—but she would just tell me “that’s nice dear,” Eda used her best Gwendolyn voice in an sarcastic aside, “and push on about fairy teeth under my pillow, or slitherbeast enamel and manticore venom keeping my feathers from sprouting. Anyway, I let myself get upset, and mom broke all my elixirs. She didn’t know that Lily preformed the sharing spell and Lilith’s beast attacked mine right in front of her. I guess Lily was pretty upset about how dear mother ignored her that morning. Again. Lilith’s beast is, like, twice the size of mine and just as fierce. I don’t know how mom wasn’t scared of approaching us fighting like that. Those beastkeepers build a different kind of courage, I guess.”
“Mom said that she loved me, all of me, even the beast I became. I don’t know. I always knew she wouldn’t hurt me to cure my curse, at least on purpose. I just really needed to hear it. When she said she loved all of me after years of me believing she hated the part of me I knew I wouldn’t be rid of. Well, I felt like I could try to do the same. I was able to shrink down the colossal behemoth the beast had become in my head to something more manageable. I finally figured out how to take control of the beast form and was able to help mom apologize to Lily too.” Eda reached up to run her fingers through the, now, shorter hair at the back of her head, noting that she needed a shower soon.
“Hooty, weirdly, helped me strike a truce with the Owlbeast. He slipped me some sleeping nettles, even though I told him I was struggling with the control, and he knows sleeping usually pulls my guard down enough for it to break free. It was the weirdest dream I’ve ever had, and the most beautiful too. I swear the collector was there, but that bit is a bit hazy. I think he was part of a nightmare of the beast’s and not mine?? Anyway, the beast and I ended up on the beach and it kept trying to fly away, but it was anchored to me on the shore. It fell into the sea, over and over again, until it was too exhausted to try anymore. I felt so bad for it. We really were just scared and tired from struggling against the same song and dance over and over again.” Eda let her head thump against the stone wall behind her and took in Raine’s green hair from that angle.
“The beast trying to fly to the surface and take control of our connection to soar across the sea and me trying to keep it in and live as normal a life as I could. I realized all this in both seconds and hours—you know the way dreams go—and the sea turned to gold and floated an elixir over to me. I was able to strike a deal with the beast so we can both live together in this, impossible, life of ours. Work through our fears and carve out a little happiness in the day to day. I can turn into a harpy form now. I showed it to you before after you woke up. You remember? I lost control and King had to talk us back down and got us back here somehow. The Owlbeast does not like playing with the Collector…”
“I needed to get over myself to talk to dad, though. I managed to avoid him for years after I almost killed him. That was when I ran away and I just kept running from him, even after mom tracked me down. Raine, I knew, I knew, he didn’t blame me for what happened. It’s just that I blamed myself. I couldn’t help believing that I could do that to anyone anytime something startled me or I let myself get too pissed off. That’s why I kept our visits so short. Why I never stayed over, or let you handle my elixirs. Why I freaked out anytime we talked about the future, or even what we were going to do for every tomorrow. You’d bring up a concert, or visiting your parents, or…,” the tears rose up back into her eyes, “or, Titan forbid, we see a kid up to no good and you’d get that far away look in your eyes. And I just couldn’t breathe.” Eda stifled a sob and worked on breathing around her headache, noting some feathers sprouting on her arms.
“Raine, I knew I couldn’t bring your witchlets into the world. Not with what I became. Not when I was scared to fall asleep in your arms when I might wake up to sheets saturated in blood. Or wake up in the forest somewhere and panic until I could see your perfect face again and know I didn’t hurt you like I did my father.” Eda took another deep breath that shook all the way thorough her chest. When she spoke again it was with a voice sodden in a sorrow she’d held close to her heart for over a decade.
“Raine before you broke it off, I knew we weren’t going to work. Not when I couldn’t be honest with you about how scared I was. Not when I felt like I was just holding you back. I wouldn’t fight you when you told me we should see other people, because I felt that you deserved so much better than me. You deserved a houseful of turquoise haired witchlets shaking the foundations playing the drums, or the tuba, or even outdoing you on the kazoo. I didn’t check up on you for years because I dreaded, and I hoped, that you would live that life I pictured for us with someone else.”
“Then I ran into you again as a rebel leader, and I didn’t find green haired witchlets rifling through your sheet music or scratching your records. You’d adopted your own family just like me. Not that I knew King wrote up those papers, then. I spent every moment with the BATT raids running from one on one time with my son, because I was scared he was trying to leave me to go find his real dad out there. I knew Luz would find a way back to her mother too. Raine, after getting my family back, I just couldn’t think about those two special kids who gave the world back to me, just leaving it. I was scared of going back to that dark place with Owlbert begging me to drink a Belos—be—damned glass of water instead of drowning in apple blood. Again. I was getting by everyday telling myself I didn’t need a career or magic as long as I had my family. Then we found out how terrible Belos really was, and my kid grew even more screwed up thinking this whole mess is on her shoulders. King is in the same boat thinking he is the only one who can stop his friend because he is the last Titan.”
Eda patted her hand against her thigh and stood up. She walked over to Raine and leaned around the line to look into their fixed stare. The Raine she’d always known would never smile like that. They just looked so sad, and concerned, and placating all at once. She backed up a few paces and stepped over the line for the coven heads to spring into attack mode. Just to watch that false simpering expression disappear for the six and a half seconds before her guards attacked her for real. She stepped back and returned to their side once more after the line up returned to their former positions.
“Raine. I don’t know if you can hear me, or if you even care about my curse, or my life, anymore. Meeting you again after all this time, and just standing beside you is more than I ever expected after…that day. I didn’t even say good bye. I really was a piece of work…” Eda let the silence hang in the chill air for a moment. Something about talking to Raine like this reminded her of her secret wish whispered to Owlbert to awaken him several lifetimes ago.
“I regret not doing more with you and for you every second we spent together over all these years.” She sniffled and wiped her eyes again before aiming the ghost of a smile at her former lover. “I would say you were the light of my life, but I found two kids who outshine us both. If we ever get out of this, I hope we can be friends again, even if you don’t want to pick up where we left off.” Eda reached out and traced the bridge of Raine’s nose, over their cheek, and the front of their lips, her fingers millimeters from their skin. She settled their glasses a little higher on their nose, just like they liked it, from what she remembered.
“You’re still the coolest witch I’ve ever met. I wish I could have found the courage to tell you how scared of myself I was all those years ago. I wish I was smart enough to know that I needed to lean on you and you needed to be leaned on. I spend every day hoping I can wield half the strength I’ve always seen in you. I never stopped loving you, Raine.”
The puppet could not move without direction, Eda knew, and still she looked for any animation in their face. No recognition or love shone out through their eyes, however, and the witch heard her sister calling her to test her elixir from the other room. She let herself wave as if Raine could focus on anything in the room around them.
“Well, I’ll see you around, Rainstorm. I’m not giving up on you or this world of ours. Our kids are out there somewhere.”