Page 161 of Witchlight
Initiate.
Sheslammeddown. Pigeons burst upward, wings flapping to get out of the way before Iseult bounded down beside her.Complete.Safi started running again.
“You have bird shit on your cloak,” Iseult called after. “Left shoulder.”
“Are you serious?” Safi skidded to a halt, and sure enough, there was a fresh splat of white on her cloak. “Why?Whyis it always me and never you who gets crapped on?”
Iseult’s only reply was bubbling laughter. It floated straight up into the midnight sky. Straight up into the heavens. And Safi couldn’t help but laugh too as she chased after Iseult, toward the next rooftop.
Then the next roof after that, and the next and the next, on and on. Threadsisters to the end.
For their quest was not yet over.
It had only just begun.
THE WITCHES OF SHADOW AND LIGHT
Not long ago, when the gods began walking among us again, there was a sister of shadow and a sister of light.
These sisters were not bound by blood, but by Threads—and as everyone knows, there is no greater force in all the Witchlands than Thread-family.
One sister wanted freedom from her magic and her title.
The other sister wanted freedom from her magic and her heritage.
And both sisters believed that if they ran far enough and fast enough, they would eventually find a person or a place that could give it to them.
So the sisters did run, following mountain bats into soil and stones. Following foxes on the tides of home. They followed hounds through winds and storms, and they followed hawks into what flames had born. They followed a rook to white caps, where sunlight seared on snow, and they followed a weasel into caverns, where darkness was never foe.
They met rulers and ruffians, pirates and pickpockets, witches and waifs, and together—although, sometimes also apart—the sisters saw more of the Moon Mother’s world than any had ever seen before them, save for the goddess herself.
Which was how, together, the sister of shadow and the sister of light discovered that they could only be special if they chose to be. They could only be powerful if they demanded they be. And they could only be free if they looked inward and understood what chains really held them down.
But the greatest lesson the sisters learned was that which all heroes must eventually learn: that what we want is so very rarely what we need. And what the sisters needed, it turned out, was something they’d always had since the beginning.
Each other.
So hand in hand—and with a little monster who’d joined them along theway—the sister of shadow and the sister of light set off to be as special as they could be in their own way.
And they went on many grand adventures for all the rest of their days.
THE END
