Broken Wish Page 19

  Still, the witch made no answer.

  “I can make today up to you,” Elva vowed. “You won’t ever have to teach me anything ever again. I won’t ask for anything more from you than sitting and talking with me.”

  Mathilda tugged gently on the donkey’s harness and it moved forward at once, pulling the wagon behind it. “Go back to your life,” she said, without looking back. “Go back to your family and pretend I never existed. I wish with all my heart that Hanau will never find out about your powers and treat you the way they have treated me.”

  Elva tried to grab her arm, but something like a thick, invisible curtain hung in the air between them. She flailed against the magical boundary helplessly. “Please, don’t go!”

  “Good-bye, Elva.”

  “This is what you do!” Elva shouted after her, pushing against the boundary in vain. “Don’t you see? You put up all these walls around yourself, magical or otherwise, and when someone manages to get past, you find ways to put them up again. Mathilda!”

  The witch, the donkey, and the wagon passed the willow tree and vanished. Immediately, the boundary dissolved and Elva tumbled onto the grass, facedown. “Mathilda, come back!” she sobbed, but there was no sign of her. And when she climbed to her feet and looked behind her, there was nothing there except an empty clearing in the woods.

  It was all over—a friendship that had meant the world to her. She had lost the one person who had understood her, and she couldn’t even tell her family about it. Nor could she confide in Willem anymore.

  “Oh, but she is involved. More than you know, sir,” he had said at the trial. There was no telling what he might do or say against her—and he could sully her family’s reputation as well. Perhaps they would have to leave Hanau, too, which would devastate Mama and Papa. Even that terrible storm would be better than giving up their farm and the life they had built.

  Elva buried her face in her hands, weeping, wondering how it had all gone so wrong. As useless as she knew it would be, she wanted to run back to the well where she had found Cay. She longed, with all her heart, that it would appear for her as it had for him so she could look down into the darkness and shout the most desperate wish of her soul: that none of this—Willem’s betrayal, Mathilda’s trial, and Cay’s disappearance—had ever happened.

  It was all her fault.

  If she hadn’t been so trusting and careless, Willem would never have known her secret.

  If she had been a better sister, Cay would never have gone off alone and hurt himself.

  If she had been a better friend, Mathilda would still be here, safe and snug in her cottage.

  “Come back, come back,” Elva muttered under her breath, pinching her eyes shut, as though she could will the witch and the cottage and the wagon all back into existence. But no matter how hard she wished, she was all alone and Mathilda was gone. She wiped her face and got to her feet, feeling more exhausted and drained than she ever had after using her magic.

  Elva froze.

  Her magic.

  Her heart beat faster, skipping along the edges of an impossible thought. She still had her own mirror, the sister to Mathilda’s looking glass. She knew how to open the willow tree door. The last time she had done it, she had almost kept that farmhand from tripping over the rake. He had still tripped, but she had delayed it. Despite Mathilda’s skepticism, Elva was certain that she’d had a hand in changing that future. All she had to do was try again. She would call up what she wanted most to change: her prediction at the Easter party that Willem would catch the Blue Mermaid, the night she had suggested that Mathilda rejoin society, and the first day Cay had talked about the wishing well. She would imagine herself making different choices this time.

  How many times had she heard Mathilda praise her natural skill?

  She would clear her mind of everything else but turning back the hands of the clock and feeling the rise and fall of the sun in her bones. Mathilda had warned that it was dangerous, that it was folly and madness to play with time, and it would take more energy than Elva had ever dared give before to her magic. But it was the only thing she could do.

  She had to protect her family.

  She would go back and change everything: keep Willem a stranger; keep Cay whole and unhurt; and keep Mathilda by her side where she belonged.

  “I’m going to fix this.” Elva clenched her fists, turning her face to the sky, and her whisper became a shout. “I’m going to fix this!”

  Her voice echoed through the trees as she ran into the forest, her hair flying out behind her. She was going to make this all disappear. She would make it right.

  That night, Elva stopped by Cay’s room to check on him. She found him sleeping with his injured leg wrapped and laid upon some pillows. His bedside table was littered with tea, soup, medicine, and the candy Mama never let him have except on special occasions. Elva looked down at his face, framed by feathery tendrils of hair. His eyelids were a constellation of deep blue veins, just as they had been when he was a baby. Even then, he had looked up at her with clear, bright eyes, as though he had already known and loved her as his big sister.

  Elva stroked the hair off his forehead, thinking of all the stories they had told and the adventures they’d had. It would be more than worth the risk of playing with time, just for him.

  His eyes opened. “Elva?”

  “How are you?” she whispered, kneeling down beside the bed.

  “Honestly? Bored.”

  Elva laughed. “You’ve been laid up for only half a day.”

  “The physician said my leg will heal fast.” He peered at her. “How are you? Did you find Mathilda? I heard Mama and Papa talking about what happened to her at the trial.”

  “She was angry with me.” Elva laid her weary head on his pillow. “I broke my promise to be at the town hall with her. She left Hanau and won’t be back.”

  “It’s my fault,” Cay said quietly. “I should have listened when you warned me about the woods. If I hadn’t gone to the well by myself, you would have been with her.”

  “It is not your fault. I should have been there for you.”

  “I saw how hard you were trying to protect us,” he said. “I just wanted to help you. And I thought I’d able to if I could somehow find a real wishing well.”

  “Did you see anything when you went down the one you found?”

  “Not much. It was more of a feeling.” Cay hesitated. “The same feeling I get when I know there’s water nearby, like a tingling on my skin. It looked like a dried-up old well, but when I touched the stones, they were wet and there was something strange about them. Like they were talking to me, but I couldn’t hear voices or see their mouths moving.”

  Elva shivered. “What did they say to you?”

  “I’m not sure. But it was like they knew me. I called hello and my voice echoed, and I thought if I went all the way down, I might end up somewhere new. A different world.”

  “But you didn’t go all the way down.”

  “I got nervous. I was afraid I would get there and find myself all alone in that world. And I wanted you to come with me.” He paused. “I did make a wish, though.”

  She draped an arm over him. “That the curse would be lifted?”

  Cay shook his head wearily. “I thought I would ask for that, but when I was hanging there, it felt wrong. Like it was too easy. I felt like the well was trying to tell me that you can’t just wish away your problems. Does that sound strange?”

  “Yes,” Elva said. “But I believe you. What did you wish for, then?”

  “I wished that our family would be brave enough and strong enough to get through anything.” He gave an enormous yawn that showed every one of his teeth.

  “I think that’s a very good wish. And I think it’s time for me to go so you can rest.”

  But Cay held on tight to her hand. “Elva?”

  “Yes?”

  “Mathilda will come back.”

  Elva’s throat tightened. “How do you
know that?”

  “Because that’s what real friends do.” Cay let go of her hand and snuggled deeper into his blankets. His eyes closed, and within seconds his breathing grew slow and even.

  Elva watched him sleep, thinking that she had never loved anyone as much as this courageous brother of hers. She owed it to him, as much as to Mathilda, to do what she planned.

  In her own room, she pulled the mirror out from its hiding place beneath her bed. She closed her eyes at the feel of the cool glass against her skin, not wanting to look into it just yet. Her heart rattled against her rib cage like a prisoner longing for freedom. She had been so sure she wanted to do this, but now that the moment was here, she kept hearing Mathilda’s voice warning her against it. “Magic-wielders have tried to play games with time in the past, and they have always lost. They have killed others or died in the process, or worse.”

  Elva would be experimenting with a branch of magic that not even Mathilda knew well. Still, the longing to have her mentor by her side again was so powerful, it was almost painful.

  I’m doing this to bring her back, she told herself.

  This was not a choice. This was the only way she could make it all right. She had to force back the hands of time, send the sun and moon backward in their circular dance over the North Woods, and fix everything. And this time, she would be there for both Cay and Mathilda.

  She tilted her face to the window and felt the moonlight wash over her. She steeled her nerves, slowly opened her eyes, and looked right into the mirror.

  Perhaps it was only a trick of light and shadow, but her reflection seemed to belong to a stranger. The moon made her skin glow and her hair shine white-gold, and her eyes were dark and inscrutable. She looked every inch a witch: powerful and unknowable, with a heart like the sea and a will like the force that kept the stars in the heavens. She looked like someone who would sing the universe to sleep and bend time itself if it meant achieving her greatest wish.

  Elva let her breathing slow and deepen. Practice eased the process of erasing the room around her and any consciousness of her family sleeping down the hall. She let go of her awareness of the floorboards beneath her and the slight ripple of her curtain in the breeze. She allowed herself to forget where she was in time and space, until there was only her and the mirror in her hands. She thought of Mathilda, her face strong and lovely with eyes like a bonfire, like an approaching storm. Mathilda making sarcastic comments, Mathilda turning fireflies into flowers, Mathilda remembering the handsome woodcutter whose heart had nearly been hers.

  A vision appeared in the mirror: the witch turning and leading her wagon away.

  Go back, Elva thought, straining with the urge to reverse time the way one could flip back the pages of a book. The willow tree symbol flashed, and then Elva saw herself bursting into the witch’s cottage, saying, “I have news!” It was the night she had told Mathilda about the trial. Go back, she thought again, and the willow tree became a scene of her and Mathilda in the North Woods, listening to Willem and his companions talk. Go back, she thought once more.

  Scene after scene, lesson after lesson, until she saw an image of Mathilda holding a pink-and-gold flower in her hand. The blossom opened and closed its petals, then turned a rich purple. She heard herself say, “It’s beautiful, what you can do with magic. I wish more people could see this,” to which Mathilda replied, “If they could, I’d likely be killed on sight. But thank you.”

  This is it, Elva thought, her pulse picking up.

  The Elva in the mirror asked if Mathilda had ever thought about disguising herself and walking in the village, if she ever got lonely. “Let’s be clear on two points,” the witch said, setting the jar of flowers on the table with a loud clunk. “I choose to be alone. I chose it a long time ago. And as for disguising myself, I’m not ashamed of who I am. I won’t walk around this town that hates me unless I get to be myself.”

  “I understand that, but—”

  “And I’m not lonely. I don’t need people.”

  “Everyone needs someone,” said the Elva in the mirror.

  “Not me. And this conversation is over. It’s time for you to get home.”

  The moment the willow tree flashed, Elva reached out without hesitation and slid her fingers around the edge. The door opened, and the scene replayed. “It’s beautiful, what you can do with magic,” she heard herself say, and she focused with all her might on erasing the next sentence. I never said it, she thought furiously, as the familiar pain tugged at her temples. I never put the idea into her mind of people accepting magic. And it was just as she imagined: Mathilda put the vase of flowers on the table and gave her a half smile, and they talked of something else.

  One by one, Elva summoned every scene, every lesson in her memory, and wiped from each of them the mention of the outside world. Instead of talking of Hanau or bringing the witch out into the woods, she imagined them sitting side by side in the safety of Mathilda’s cottage, making jars float and chairs move, whipping up potions with herbs from the garden, eating cake and drinking tea by the fire. They laughed and talked and were happy, and never once did either allude to the existence of a world outside and whether it might accept them. There was no mention of a trial, and Elva said nothing to Papa, and the council knew nothing of Mathilda.

  Beads of sweat slipped down Elva’s face as she worked, trickling under the neck of her nightgown, which itched against her skin. Concentrate, she told her mind sternly, and the sweat and itching vanished from her awareness at once. She closed herself once more in her thoughts.

  Willem came into her mind next. She called up the memories of them together, from that moment at Mathilda’s trial and the argument in the barn all the way up to the Easter party, when he had found the copper ring, claimed her kiss, and walked her to the river, where she had foreseen that he would catch the Blue Mermaid. She imagined, with all her might, that she had remained silent throughout the vision. “Did you see something in the river?” she heard Willem ask, to which she smiled and replied, “No, of course not. Excuse me, I better hurry back. My parents will be looking for me.” And then she took off the ring, gave it back to him, and returned to the party alone.

  The glass grew warmer and warmer in Elva’s hands. It slipped a little in her clammy fingers and she tightened her grip, ignoring her aching head as she forced herself to focus.

  Cay, next. She pictured her brother with his sunshine smile, eccentric ways, and limitless heart, embroidering a skirt with her and telling her his dreams. She imagined taking him out into the North Woods dappled with sunlight, the sway of the treetops like green lace above them as they searched for the wishing well. She could almost smell the moss beneath their feet as Cay turned back to look at her. “Hurry up!” he shouted, and raced her to the well. They stood side by side, hands braced on the stone lip, and looked in together. The vision suddenly wavered, as though she was looking into a pool of water and someone had dropped in a pebble.

  A sharp spark of pain pierced her temple. Elva felt a deep cold seeping through her body, bleeding into her arms and legs, and the edge of her bedroom curtains brushed her face. No, she told herself feverishly. You are not in your room. You are not anywhere.

  She sank again into the nothingness her magic required, but the effort required felt monumentally greater. In the mirror, Elva imagined herself grabbing Cay’s arm to keep him from falling into the well. They looked at each other, laughed, and shouted a wish together, their words blending until neither could tell what the other had asked for. And that was just as well. “Wishes aren’t always meant to be shared,” said the Cay in the mirror.

  The mirror felt almost unbearably hot in Elva’s hands, and the bedroom floor seemed to shift beneath her. Though she was sitting, she felt herself almost lose her balance and had to put out a hand to steady herself on the floorboards. Her whole body shook uncontrollably, as though she had gone swimming in the river on a winter’s night. A cricket sang outside her window, and somewhere down the hal
l, Papa was snoring. No, she thought angrily, this won’t do. Focus.

  But try as she might, she couldn’t get back to that peaceful, empty state of mind.

  Another powerful tremor snaked through her body. Her nightgown was damp with sweat and clung unpleasantly to her skin, and her back ached from having sat too long on the hard floorboards. How long had she been looking into the mirror?

  The mirror pulsed with heat, burning her fingers. Elva cried out in pain, but her hands seemed to be stuck to it. She could not let it go, nor could she tear her eyes away from it as it went blank and showed her pale, exhausted reflection. In the glass, the night sky outside her window was boiling like a poisonous black soup studded with sharp stars. Elva watched in horror as the clouds swirled and tossed, waves in a cruel ocean, and extinguished the sickly moon. A great rumble of thunder shook the earth, and then a heavy, pelting rain began to throw itself against her window with frantic violence. Drop after drop of water, large and weighty as onyx pearls, plummeted to the earth as furious light ripped open the sky.

  What was real? What was only a vision?

  She found, with increasing panic, that she could not be sure her eyes were open. Perhaps they were closed. Perhaps she was envisioning all this, and the strength of her magic had called forth the storm. I’m imagining it, she told herself frantically, even as the lightning raged and the thunder screamed and the rain beat upon the window.

  Elva tried to drop the mirror again, but it seemed to be stuck to her skin. Her hands blistered and burned with the heat of the glass, but she could not release her fingers or her eyes from it. She was trapped in her own fever dream. She tried to cry out again, but her lips were every bit as disobedient as her hands and eyes. She had lost control of her body.

  At that moment, her reflection in the looking glass disappeared.

  In its place, Elva saw the willow tree in the North Woods, the first landmark that would lead her to Mathilda. Her soul ached at the sight of it. She wanted desperately to wrap her arms around it and press her face to its warm, rough bark, and as this thought crossed her mind, Elva felt herself drifting upward. A strange force was lifting her, tugging her with unimaginable strength off the floor of her bedroom and straight into the mirror toward the image of the tree.