A Clove of Fates

7. The Shard Became A Living Thing

They were making a mistake.

She had made her choice, they kept saying over and over again. To me or to themselves, I wasn't sure, but it was always this. She made her choice. There would be no rescue mission, no journey into the city to see if she was okay. No letter back to offer her any support. Her cry for help would fall on deaf ears, and that would be the last we would hear from her ever again.

Because she had made her choice.

They were lying of course. You could see it in the way their hands shook or the way their eyes never really focused on anything when they spoke. You could even hear it, in the stilted nature of their voices, the uniformity of their words. Elke was right. It wasn't wisdom or pride that tied them to this land: it was fear.

I didn't even think they knew that they were scared. Maybe they were too embarrassed to admit it.

But I was free from this. Free from their fears. Elke and I, we had never possessed it, not truly. Not in the way that our parents' anxieties hung over their shoulders every moment of every day. I would ask later what happened to them, but my mind was too crowded for questions.

Now was a time for preparation.

I packed a bag that night. Clothes, mynt, food and water. An emergency box of sacrificial crickets, just in case some of my enchantments needed a little extra juice. I scrambled for the weathered wooden box under my bed filled with Elke's letters. I searched through them until I found it. The letter with the instructions for a scrying glass enchantment. Mama had made us throw the one's she sent away, but I had a shard of glass under my bed that would work just as well.

I grabbed it, wincing as the sharp edges sliced through my finger tips, nearly dropping it. I should have sanded it down before, but it didn't matter. In fact, this was a blessing in disguise. Blood sacrifice only worked on the surprised, and made for much stronger personal enchantments.

I shifted the shard from one hand to the other, careful not to make the same mistake. I closed my eyes, moving my finger across the glass and muttering the spell. "Sjadu i, sjadu i gegn, sjadu ut." My voice was shaking and so was my hand. The glass still felt cold against my palm. Like something broken. I grit my teeth and set my resolve. I repeated the spell once more. "Sjadu i, sjadu i gegn, sjadu ut."

I shifted. A spark between my fingers.

Once more would do the trick.

A bit louder this time, "Sjadu i, sjadu i gegn, sjadu ut."

And the shard became a living thing.

I remember looking down at the thing in my hands. An enchanted portable scrying glass that I'd made using one of Elke's spells.

"Glass, Jarelis. It's just a Glass," Elke had told me on many occasions prior. "If you go around calling it an enchanted portable scrying glass to the wrong people you are going to be laughed at."