The Song of the Malificae

18 Years (4)

They arrive at the magistrate's house without incident, no movement but them. Liridona goes in quietly, while her sisters stand watch outside. Pushing open the door, stepping softly on her bare feet. She moves around the floor, checking rooms, and she's amazed by how much space the magistrate had, how luxurious the furniture. She exits the last room on the lower room, the kitchen, and backtracks down the hall to the staircase. Last time she was here, she had peered down the staircase into the darkness. Now she looks up the steps to the second floor, into natural light filtering through the window above.

She pads up the steps, pressing close to the wall, trying to avoid creaking the wood. The bedroom door is ahead of her, closed. Once she arrives at the landing, she peers around the corner into the large spacious room with the two chairs. One of them is occupied by the girl, head lowered over a book. She sits with her knees pressed up against the wall beneath the windowsill, as if trying to catch the setting sun in her golden hair, upon her skin, before it disappears.

Liridona steps into the room. The girl is lost in her book and Liridona stands there watching her a moment, before clearing her throat. The girl's head immediately jerks up and she spins around, nearly sending her chair out from beneath her.

It takes a moment before the girl recognizes Liridona with a choking gasp.

Before she can say anything, Liridona pulls the brooch from her pocket. "Is this yours?" she asks, holding the silver circle up. It reflects light into the girl's eyes. She blinks. When her eyes clear, she squints at it closer and her face immediately blanches.

"Where- Where did you get that from?" she whispers.

"Was the magistrate your father?"

"He is." Just as soft.

"He kept you locked in this house?"

"No." She shakes her head violently, sounding horrified. "It's to protect others from my sins."

"You make this for him?"

The girl shuts her mouth.

"Did you?" Liridona rears closer, forcing the brooch upon the girl. "Do you have magic?"

"No! I mean, yes. But I don't want the magic, it's sinful! I know that! Father said if I kept him safe and stayed away from people, God would forgive me for possessing it." She hangs her head. "I try not to use it. Father only asked that I make it for him so he—so we!—could do God's work."

Liridona looks at the top of the girl's head, aghast. The girl is older than Liridona, but she acts young. As though she never grew up, as though only her father could ever take care of her. Fitting, Liridona supposes, if all her life she's been kept away in this house.

The girl peers up. "Will you turn me in? Where is my father?"

"Your father is dead," Liridona says. The girl's mouth falls open. Tears well in her eyes and she reaches out towards Liridona. Liridona recoils a step, but the girl only reaches for the brooch. She cups it in her hands, falls to her knees; a tear drips from her eye and rolls over the face of the brooch, into the grooves of the rune.

"How? How? It protected him. It should have protected him."

Liridona stands above the girl, lets her have a moment to herself before she interrupts. "Your magic is not a curse. It may make you different, but it also makes you special. You can do things no one else can, things that are beautiful and wonderful." Her mind turns to her sisters. Their wish. Their hopes. Their beliefs. "Magic can be used to do good. Your father... your father was not a good man. I suppose that's ironic coming from me... I haven't been all that good either. But your father... he killed innocent people, sentenced them to death, brutal deaths." She pauses, considers her next words. "And he's kept you locked in this house. You may not believe it, but that's because he wouldn't have wanted people to know what kind of daughter he has. He didn't understand your magic, he feared it, hated it, and so he told you lies."