Cloak as Red as Blood

Chapter 12: Village of the Strange

 "Let's go over this one more time", said Puss. "What is a witch's yard?" "A magical trap used by 

powerful dark witches to ensnare their victims", I answered. "How?" "The dark witch builds a 

trap out of certain objects she has enchanted to fight and kill her victims." "And how does one 

escape a witch's yard?" "By destroying the source of the dark enchantment or overwhelming it 

with one's own magic", I answered. After the battle with Tava, her pack, and the Lamia witch 

Mary, Puss decided to turn the entire experience into a lesson. He explained to me how Mary 

used the dolls to control and torture us, and how she became that nightmarish creature when 

she seemingly died at his claws. I still can't get Mary's word out of my head though. "You have 

the eyes of the betrayer, my former Queen."  What did she mean by that? According to my 

memory flashes Granny had been apart of the war she had told us about. But in each vision she 

was a soldier, not a queen. In all of my nightmares the queen Mary mentioned had icy blue eyes. 

Granny and I had one blue and one grey eye. "Puss?", I asked as we were finishing today's 

lesson. "Yes Skylar?"  "Is there a way to bring up Granny's memories quicker?" I don't know if it 

was just my imagination, but I could have sworn I saw him stiffen a little. "Why?", he asked. "It's 

just that every night I get flashes of her life as a witch, but they're slow and vague.  I want 

answers." "To what?" "To everything! Where the magic in my family comes from!  Why that 

Lamia said I looked like her Queen! Who I really am!" "I'd slow down with trying to remember 

too much if I were you Skylar. These memories are not your own. If you're not careful they could 

consume you. You could in a sense become your grandmother if you're not careful." "What do 

you mean?" "I mean the more you remember about her life the less you'll remember about your 

own life. One of the things  Soul Eaters struggle with is developing multiple memories at once. 

Causes them to lose their minds quicker." I opened my mouth to ague when suddenly I felt the 

whole room shake. I had to hold on to my desk to keep my balance. "What in the nine hells was 

that?", asked Puss. "I don't know but we'd better go and check it out."

After exiting the classroom dimension Puss and I walked out of the closet to see what all the 

commotion was about. "What's going on out here?", I demanded. Something was wrong, the 

cottage had stopped moving. I turned to look at the boys who were sitting at the kitchen table 

with a look of fright on their faces. The windows were cracked and something had fallen to the 

ground. "What happened?", I asked again. "For some reason the house lost the large chicken 

legs you summoned for it", answered Hunter. "It was all I could do to keep the place from being 

destroyed." House Gothle appeared out of nowhere in a flash of light. "What do you mean all