Silver Eyes

Cursed

I knocked on Marnie's door with anxiety in my heart.

"Silver!" Marnie sung brightly, pulling me in before closing the door behind me with a glance down both sides of the hallway. "My grandmother has already staged a spell to figure out who cursed you." She said in a low tone. "Scarlet couldn't make it, but at least we can speak freely. We picked a time when my mom's not home." Marnie explained to me.

Ethel Blackwell approached me with her eyebrows uncharacteristically furrowed as she ground some pale leaves and salt in her mortar. I looked into her dark brown eyes in curiosity and she seemed to be looking through me.

"I'm sorry we had to do it so late." Marnie told me, putting a hand on my shoulder. "My grandma gets more serious and creepy at night." Marnie whispered to me with a laugh. I didn't feel uneasy with the old witch focusing on the spell that I had a good feeling would solve my predicament.

After what felt like an hour of drawing on me with a wet salty green concoction and making me lie still in the center of a circle that they kept modifying to point a different direction like a radar, I sat up in despair.

"This isn't working. Have I not been cursed?" I asked, waving my arms in exasperation.

"You have." Marnie insisted with her eyes still squinting at the bottom left of the circle. "We just can't figure who they are and why." Marnie frowned. I made a sound of frustration and got up to wash the salt off my face, abdomen, and arms. They both had a hard time fitting all the symbols on my abdomen and decided to put them on my face and hands as well to strengthen the spell. When I had wiped off all the mush, I left the bathroom to find them with their noses in the Book of Shadows.

"Yeah, so maybe the salt caused too much to go in and we needed to add more oil." Marnie considered, with a serious nod and her forefinger on her chin. She still held a piece of chalk and Ethel was looking frustrated as she read the spell again, sliding her age-warped fingers lightly along the verses.

"Silver, I'm sorry it didn't work. My grandma thinks the one that cursed you is strong and that the only way you'll get out of it is to do what they want you to do." Marnie told me softly. "Don't do anything dangerous. Let Scarlet and I know and we'll come help if you feel like you're going into trouble. My grandma said that my mom had a curse like this put on her and she ended up getting attacked by a whole circle of witches. It's part of the reason we moved here. To get away from the witches that were after her..." Worry soaked her voice and she clutched onto my shoulders as if that would keep me from giving in to the curse.

"I'll call you, okay?" I told her as I pulled away from her hands in disappointment.

"Silver!" Ethel called to me in a haunting voice, making my heart falter. She shuffled close to me and I stopped in my tracks to face her. "These are very old witches. I can't see who. They've cloaked themselves, somehow. I'm afraid that if you don't give in to the curse, it will kill you!" she told me in a hollow voice, so quietly that Marnie couldn't hear. I frowned at her knowing eyes and wondered how much she knew. If they were older than her, it meant they were probably immortals and if they were skilled enough to cloak every trace of their magic, they likely sewed up all the holes in the spell so that there was no way I could get around it.

* * *

I strode towards home from Marnie's house with hopelessness clinging to my heart. My stomach hurt and I was ravenous as usual. I clutched my fists when a couple creepy men appeared on the sidewalk in my path. I could smell them even from fifteen feet away and I tried not to look at them as I crossed the road so I wouldn't have to pass by them. Headlights blinded me momentarily as I slipped off to the other sidewalk between a tree and a telephone pole. I knew from seeing Wolf in human form, our eyes reflected light especially at night. I hoped I had kept my head down enough that they hadn't noticed. I could still feel their eyes on me so I took a sudden turn down an alleyway.