Witch Doctors Inc: SEASON ONE (Completed!)

Part 1.4

I dream I'm falling from the sky again, but this time anger falls with me. It's an anger I feel in my bones. It consumes me.

I'm still surrounded by glittering stones, but they have more of a shape now...walls? There's a panel in front of me. Its lights are flashing furiously. I'm punching the buttons with my fist. I didn't come all this way to die here...

When I wake the cacti on my windowsill are fizzing with magic. I quickly reach out to them. I don't understand exactly how I do it, but I touch their essence. The magic cools.

Onyx is watching me from his spot on the sofa. Did you remember anything?

"Onyx...it wasn't a meteor shower, was it? A thousand years ago? It was a ship."

A ship broken up into a million pieces. A ship made of fire quartz.

Yes.

I think back to the incident with Ruby. "There's a city too. It has three moons in the sky."

Onyx hops onto the bed and looks up at me. Fire quartz is simply a storage material. It isn't magical on its own. Magic is in the very essence of things.

"Does this have anything to do with my curse?"

Onyx blinks. Curse. He sidles into my lap, purring pointedly. I oblige and stroke him. The people of this planet cannot use magic. They can only release it from fire quartz.

"That's how you do magic," I retort. "Anything else is for -"

I refuse to say the word.

Onyx says it for me. Witches.

That's what he's saying I am. A witch. An unnatural being, an evil thing. He's saying that I am the scary story told to children at night.

I feel sick. I can't handle this. But it makes sense logically. Addy couldn't find a curse on me. And even stories come from somewhere. It's time I faced the truth: I am a monster.

I've been searching for an explanation for too long. I wanted something nice and neat. But this thing I have, these things I sense and feel, they're not natural. And as much as it scares me, this is now the most likely explanation.

"I have to leave," I say. "I have to be somewhere where I can't hurt other people. A...cave, or a hut in the Crystal Hills. If you're sure I can't hurt you, you can come with me. We'll...have each other." I choke back a sob.

Onyx shakes his head. Your powers are too great. If you do not learn to control them it will not matter where you stay. This world will crumble around you.

I don't care about image anymore. I let the tears out. I cry and cry. I'm a witch. I'm an unnatural being. I'm a monster.

But I won't hurt my friends. I won't put any more clients in the hospital. If controlling what I am is the only way, I'll learn to do it.

"Where did that ship come from?" I ask Onyx.

A place long gone. His eyes are sad. Our civilisation stood tall as your people were still learning to make fire. Our technology was next to none. Our race was nothing like yours. We do not have fixed forms like you do. We are energy. As such we are connected to other forms of energy - life energy, spiritual energy, emotional energy. We can shape it just as we can shape ourselves.

I think back to my dream. "One of your spaceships crashed onto our planet. But it was manned, wasn't it? Someone fell with it..."

Onyx closes his eyes. Amarat. You call her the First Witch.

"So I'm descended from her? That's why I'm...like this?"

We are energy. We are not chained to one shape. Even after our form deteriorates our energy is merely dispersed. We can form ourselves once again, if we choose.

My breath stalls. "You're saying I am her."

Reincarnation is the word you would use. Every time you are reborn, you lose your memories. They return to you slowly as your powers awaken.

I should be questioning him, asking him for hard evidence. I shouldn't be accepting any of this. It's completely insane...and yet, it's almost a relief. I don't have to care about losing my job anymore. My job, my entire world, was built on lies. Logical, reasonable lies.

"Why didn't you tell me this before?"

When I found you, you showed no signs of being a magic-wielder. I hoped you would never awaken. Even when your spells started to go awry I was hopeful you would not fully awaken. And yet, you are awakening. The cycle continues.

I lift him off my lap. His charcoal eyes are large and resentful. You must remember your connection to magic. You could wield it once, as easily as you breathe now, but you have forgotten. You must remember again. You must remember...everything. He turns his eyes away.

"How am I supposed to do that?" I demand. "I have flashbacks, but I can't control them."

Onyx looks at me thoughtfully. Then he trots out the door without so much as a goodbye. I don't want to be left alone, not now. I'm looking forward to giving him a piece of my mind. But when he returns he has something in his mouth. He drops it in my lap.

In my curiosity I forget to yell at him. It's a bracelet in a pattern of twisting vines. It had perhaps been silver once, but the surface was so tarnished I couldn't tell for sure.

I knew this bracelet. It wasn't this dirty once. It was beautiful when he'd given it to me.

I trace the blackened vines with my finger.

You loved this. We had finer things back home, but you loved this more. No one had given you a gift before.

I'm somewhere else now. A garden or a greenhouse. No, it was a garden. Our garden. I'm poking a clump of acanthines. Their vine tips lunge at my fingers but they only nip me gently. I laugh, delighted.

I can see my face in the reflection of the water pail. I have my same lilac hair, but my face is longer, my eyes darker. I'm wearing a simple smock. There are berry stains on my apron.

"Don't play with them too much, Ammie. In the end they'll bite you the same as everyone else."

The voice vibrates in my mind. His dialect is unfamiliar, his words strange and rounded, but I understand the meaning all the same.

He's a portly middle-aged man. He wears simple clothes - worn brown trousers and a brown vest over a white shirt. His round face, red cheeks, and tufts of white hair give off an aura of jolliness.

I laugh off his warning. "They won't bite me. We have a bond."

The garden fades.

I'm back in my room with Onyx. The bracelet is in my fingers.

Onyx peers at me curiously. What did you remember?

I feel a little like I have motion sickness. It takes a while for my room to look right to me again. "I was in a garden," I tell him. "There's an old man with me. He's warning me about the acanthines."

Arti. Our ship was destroyed and Amarat was injured. Arti and his wife took her in. She had many happy years here.

Yes, I think. Happy. But something about the word bothers me.