Page 80 of Witchlore
I remember the day I was givenThe Witchlore of Bodiesby my father. I remember my seventeenth birthday and setting my pen to the page.
I remember my parents, their love and their joy and their fear for my future. I remember defying their expectations, refusing to settle in one resting form.
I remember switching into a female form to march with the Pankhursts, to stare down anti-protesters and face imprisonment along with my sisters.
I remember taking a male form when war broke out, switching into a younger form to go to France, to fight on the battlefields and cower in the trenches. To suffer on a bayonet in no-man’s-land and almost drown in the dirt.
I remember being brought home to St. Anne’s Hospital, the smell of the sea air in my room as I recovered.
I remember my father fading, our terrible, desolate last words to one another. I remember my mother’s death from influenza years later and the sensation of my loneliness stretching.
I remember war breaking out again and shifting into a female form to serve, too ashamed of my father’s death to face the fighting once again. I remember meeting Bisan and feeling my world light up.
I remember Bisan’s death. I remember standing over her grave. I remember her mother coming to find me, I remember her last words to me before the magic hit: “You will forget the long years you have lived, you will forget your wealth, your experience, and my daughter. You will even forget how to use your own power! You will live only twenty-one years, without craft or coven, over and over, for all eternity, just as long as my daughter lived!”
I remember what I felt right before the magic engulfed me, cursing me to live over and over without remembrance. I remember I felt relieved. The last thought I have is Bisan, looking into my face and smiling. “I love you, Ariel Lander,” she says.
That’s when I remember my name. Ariel Lander. Orlando Southerns. I remember who I have always been.
CHAPTERTHIRTY
First, I feel the familiar ache associated with the shift. I distantly examine how my body feels, trying to work out what form this is and realize I can do it much quicker than before. The ancient memory of decades of shifts completes the gaps in my knowledge. I feel out the skin of this new male form. Something about it is peculiarly familiar to me, the soft hair and the thin wrists. Then, I hear voices.
“What do youmeanthey’re the shifter from the book?”
“Just that, Bastian, they’ve been living without their memories, without access to their magic, living a different twenty-one years over and over since 1941—”
“They won’t remember that, will they?” The voice is urgent, worried, but I feel such safety from it. “That’s horrible to remember, never being able to use magic, only living until twenty-one and then dying, over and over?”
“I doubt it, it was part of the curse to forget.”
“But… Lando won’t forgettheseyears, will they? With Elizabeth and… and me? Will they remember who they are now?”
Even with my eyes closed and my mind full of the past, I am sure that Bastian Chevret is someone I could never forget.
“They’ll remember their past self but, yes, they won’t forget they’ve been Orlando in the present.”
I can feel someone stroking my hair. It is so pleasant. Immediately, it’s chased by other memories, as if I’m watching them on a screen inside my mind.My mother, stroking my hair back from my face as I dressed for the suffragist march; my father, stroking my hair as I recovered from my trench wound; Bisan, tucking a piece of my hair into my tin helmet before we went out in the ambulance.My heart is suddenly full with it all. In a lifetime of thinking I had only really been loved by Elizabeth, now I know it is not true. I have been loved, so loved, many times.
“Do you know what their name was before?” Bastian asks.
“Ariel,” I whisper, opening my eyes. “My name was Ariel Lander.”
I stare at them both, at Kira and Bastian, my mind brimming with the past. It’s as if I’m waking up from the most vivid dream and I am remembering all of it, stories of so many different shifts and faces unraveling inside my head. I don’t look for Elizabeth because I already know she won’t be here. The resurrection was not for her. I also realize that the person I really want to see, the last person I would want to see if I were dying and the first person I want to see when I wake up, is looking down at me, an intense and familiar frown on his face.You can be sad about Elizabeth’s death and be happy about other things, Lando.It’s taken a whole life of restored memories, but now I do think that Counselor Cooper might actually be a very good counselor.
“Lando?” Bastian asks tentatively. “Are you okay?”
“You came,” I whisper up at him. “How did you know?”
“Just a hunch.” Bastian grins.
I chuckle weakly and look between them. Kira, who remindsme of faces from the past, and Bastian, who reminds me of everything I’ve lived in these short years of being Lando. I turn to Kira. “You look like Bisan’s mother.”
“I know.” Kira tucks her hair behind her ear nervously. That gesture, how powerfully it reminds me of her great-aunt, and for the first time in this life, I feel a rush of fondness for Kira Tavi. “I’m sorry she cursed you.”
“That’s okay.” I sit up slowly. Bastian still has his hand on my back and I’m happy about it. “You… undid it?”
“Not me.” Kira shakes her head fondly. “It was my grandfather. Great-Aunt Bisan’s brother, Samir Tavi. He was a great witch, Grandfather Samir. He went to your old house and foundThe Witchlore of Bodiesafter the curse had been done. He wrote the spell to undo it, called it the resurrection spell, locked it to anyone’s blood but yours. He didn’t even know you had blood-locked the diary, too. I didn’t know until you showed me. Did you do that yourself?”
