The Witch's Hunger (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 3) (8 page)

I considered for a brief moment that I could just tell him. But even the thought that I might speak about the Grail: the truth that I had it and drank from it nightly aroused a rattling venomous rage in me along with a dark hole of shame, and that was with my Grail locked away safe.

"There are no secrets,” I lied. “I ask nothing from you but your absence." This was important. “You may not see me again.” This must happen or every part of my plan would fall apart. "I need to never see you again, Merlin." My voice almost broke. My feet almost flew toward him and my arms almost embraced him as I ached to be with him, forever and always.

Forever and nevermore.

“I expect you to be gone by the time I return,” I said as I fled the house. I caught a glimpse of his ruined face as I ran.

I ran all the way to the small space where I made spells and kept the bulk of my magical supplies. With shaking hands and a shattered heart, I formed a spell. The spell I had to make to save Merlin. It was the biggest and best forgetting spell I had ever made: that the world had ever known, quite likely.

With the spell, I erased all knowledge of the Grail and broke its hunger and hold upon my soul.

With the spell, I erased all memories of Merlin, because if I remembered him I would remember all of him, and how we found the Grail together.

And because I erased my Merlin, it took with it so much of my own life, for Merlin had been in my life, enemy and then love, ever since I was sixteen.

And so I disappeared into myself, and for the next nine hundred years I lived half-empty, spelled to never even question all the parts of myself that were missing.

But then Merlin came back and it all began to break. With it, the Grail hunger came back, roaring and desperate, twice as strong and thrice as tricky as the first time around.

14

It Is Done

I came back to myself on the cold shore of Avalon, heaving and writhing across the rocks. I couldn’t be here, alive in my own skin, knowing all that I had done and feeling the hunger that had felled me, raging still within my shivering body. I couldn’t be here, alive and on the far side of that spell, knowing I had failed and fallen, once again.

I sat next to a sticky puddle of my own vomit. A sharp sea breeze blew at my face. My mind flashed through all of the nine cold centuries when I’d been confused but never asked myself why, for I’d been thorough and spelled myself to forget any line of reasoning that would lead to me finding my forgetting spell. The strongest parts of that spell centered on me not questioning my forgetfulness, and of course, forgetting all things in association with the Grail.

With that thought more memories flowed into me and I knew, I truly knew, why we were on Avalon. I knew it all. I glanced at the forgetting spell on my wrist. The thin blue line was gone. Truly gone. I was free. I laughed hoarsely at the idea that I could ever be truly free.

For now the fog of my life was lifted and the truth of it? It hurt all the way down.

I stood and grabbed my bag. It was time to find my Grail and disappear on some far land. To hide from the world and live my life of hunger and want in peace. I had found my Merlin again, and look where it had gotten me? I would hide for the rest of my days, anonymous. Alone with my hunger. I reached into it for my crystal ball that with one word would carry me back to my shop and my Grail. Instead of its smooth surface, my hand was pierced by a dozen glass shards that bit into my fingers and palm. I pulled my hand out and saw pieces of my broken crystal ball jutting out of my hand. I searched my bag and found broken eagle feathers and no other spells that could take me away.

I growled and uttered the word “
Annu.
” I waved my hands through the air, summoning the forces within me that could bind the wind to my body and carry me to Seattle. I closed my eyes and breathed deep, reaching into myself and pulling out the— nothing. No magic. There was some sort of barrier between me and my magic. I felt like screaming, but the Grail was safe. So why did I feel like every second it moved further away from my grasp?

“Cookie? And ouch,” Lila said, wincing as she stared at my hand. “There’s a, um, a dampening spell around the island, that you put up so no one would be able to leave. I know you made it so you could still come and go, but Merlin broke that part of it. And Cleopatra set an alchemical cleanser across this beach that would kill any spells. And Ada and Ise set up electro-magnetic traps across the island that will kick in if any living body tries to leave. I mean, try all you want, I just thought you should know. I’m sorry, Morgan. I had no idea when I first started to suspect stuff, I had no idea how bad it was for you.”

“Nothing is bad for me,” I said.

“Okay. Sure, but I mean attacking every immortal who’d drank from the Grail? Wow. The Flamels and Ada wanted to murder you really hard or at least torture you, but Merlin convinced them it was like a madness. An addiction, and I vouched for you too, how you are such good people, ninety-nine percent of the time. I mean when you are not attacking people and kidnapping them and putting spells on an island so no one can get away and all.” She smiled nervously. “Say something?”

I let go of the wind spell and thought about how I could unmake the spell surrounding my island. It would take time that I was beginning to suspect I didn’t have. “What have you done, Lila?”

“You just seemed really out of it when I saw you the other night.”

“Where is Merlin?” I asked coolly. “I’d like to speak to him about all of this.”

“He’s not… here.” She bit her lip and looked out at the roiling waves of gray and blue, forever crashing on the shore and falling back to the greater body of water.

I heard other footsteps coming from the same hill and braced myself for whoever might appear.

It was Cleopatra, looking sharp and hungry. “Morgan.” She carried a plate of silvery sardines, charred from a fire. Her fingers were dirty and her shirt was torn at the shoulder. I remembered attacking her in her sleep. I remembered her rising and throwing powders in the air a moment before I grabbed her and took us both to Avalon. Where I’d left her. Where I’d left all of them, planning on keeping them on this island prison for the rest of their days. “For you,” she held out the plate. “You’ll be needing sustenance. This day will not be kind to you.”

“Poison, Alchemist?” I asked.

“You’ve poisoned yourself more than enough,” she replied mildly. Dark fires danced in her eyes.

“Where’s Merlin?” I asked my old friend.

“You know where,” Cleopatra said.

Lila shifted from one foot to the other.

“He will never get through the spells that guard my treasures,” I said.

“True, if you hadn’t been videotaped undoing those spells that opened the door,” Cleopatra said.

Videotaped? Damn this modern world of technology that slipped in everywhere. How had this happened, in my very own store? I turned to Lila.

“Yeah, so, remember my tech friends and me putting teddy bears around the store? They helped me set up nanny cams in the shop,” Lila said. “You were acting so weird, and you always say I should follow my gut, and so the teddy bears taped you. They saw you stumble out of the room all wicked and nasty and talk about how you had to destroy all the immortals. It was some seriously grade-A horror movie footage.”

“Who put you up to that? Cleopatra or Merlin?” I asked, remembering how the Grail water had enraged me. The memory was not flattering, and I hated that she had seen it.

Lila stood up straighter and shook her head. “Me. I made the tapes and then contacted Merlin and told him everything that was going on. I told him that if he couldn’t help, I would find someone else who would, because you looked so bad, Morgan. So strung out. But Merlin said he was on it. He loves you no matter what. He seemed relieved, almost. He said something about how it explained his long-lost demon.”

“It will take time even for him to break my spells, there are nasty traps laid within for any who try to break them—” I said, tamping down the growing terror in my belly. I would have to break the dampening spell on the island and then send spells hurling halfway across the world to attack Merlin. Then I would fly off this island and get there before he could break down the door and steal my Grail.

I closed my eyes and felt the hunger rage through me. My cup felt too far away. I had to do something. Now.

Lila’s phone made the sound of a chirping cricket. She looked at a text message that appeared on its smooth screen. “It’s over,” she said with a small voice. “Morgan, I’m sorry. But also, this had to happen. It’s done.”

“He has it?” I asked.

Lila shook her head. “No. He got rid of it.”

“What have you done?” I hissed. I ran at her and slapped Lila with my bare hand. She stumbled back, her mouth falling open.

A moment later a popping sound filled the air and a bright flash of light filled my vision. When it cleared, Merlin stood on the beach, not ten feet from me. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, dark circles underlined his eyes, and he opened his mouth to speak.

“Where is it?” I screamed.

“Love. Morgan,” he said with all the weight of the world. “It was not a thing that could be here. I dropped it into an unpopulated universe, so that none would stumble upon it and fall again.” He took a step closer and held out his arms to hold me.

I threw all of my magic at him.

15

So Be It

All of them gave me pitying looks as they left me on my Avalon. It was a fitting place, this cursed land laced with the memories of my beginning.

The things they left me:

A lean-to shelter with a flat mattress, a warm blanket, and a pillow.

An outdoor cooking area with wood, matches, a stocked cooler, and pots and pans.

A hunger that tore me apart.

A rage of what had been done to my Grail.

A shame, just as deep as that rage.

A spell that kept me on the island, so long as I was beholden to the Grail’s hunger.

I planned to lie on the mattress and let myself fade away into the land and darkness. But hunger and a thirst more mundane than the Grail’s dragged me up. I ate. I walked across the island to the small well, filled my canteen, and walked back again. I wondered if there was any reason, big or small, that I should stay on this green earth now that the Grail was gone. Must I exist and be yet another worthless immortal? I sat on the shore and watched the waves do the tides’ bidding. The water felt the pull of the moon that rose full in the sky and traced a slow line across the world before it sank back to nothingness again. All around me was the natural world, and here I sat, an unnatural creature. I shivered with the need for the cup’s water. I growled and moaned, and nothing helped.

Time and days and weeks passed.

Nothing healed.

It couldn’t. For if it did? If the hunger went away, then what did I have? Nothing. A terrible and stupid decision followed by wasted century upon wasted century. An addiction, not a glory.

Nothing would change, I vowed, but even so, the roaring hunger gentled, and there were long moments when I did not think of my lost cup. I tried to hold on to the memory of the bright and beautiful life it gave me, but that too faded. The logics of it did not make sense in this land of grey and faded green. A sense that my whole life was made of nothing filled me. It had all been for nothing. As though I could not hold onto the dignity of my most basic convictions. I picked shriveled and pocked apples, cutting away the rot and biting into the soft and mushy parts. I gathered small crabs from beneath the rocks of my island and boiled them in water. I ate them with black seaweed. The night wind blew across me, puckering my skin and naming me human and small. I balanced rocks upon the shores in unlikely cairns. I waited and wondered if this would be my end.

But no, I found one reason to live. There were threads in my life that needed binding. There were things I must set in order, I would not leave behind a mess. And after that? It would end. Peace came with that thought, despite the fading Grail hunger that still battered me.

And then one day, I awoke and the hunger was well and truly gone. With its absence, the spell that kept me impotent and on this island was broken as well. I could use my magic again. I could leave this island, if I chose. I spent the morning boiling the silvery fish I’d caught with a net and wondering if he would come. I spent the morning making a spell. A small thing, satisfying despite its simplicity. I’d missed using my magic. I waited, all the while wondering if he would come.

Flashing his magic before him, Merlin arrived. He looked older, though we did not age. He looked as though the months upon him had been years.

“Morgan, I—”

“I thought you would come here, when you felt the spell break.” I stared past him. “I thought you would come to tell me I was wrong and that you were right. To gloat.”

“Morgan, I’ve suffered every moment I’ve been away. I’ve wanted to be here with you, but knew you needed the space to grieve and transform. To move beyond this.”

“I almost chose death,” I said. “And I will choose it, someday soon. When I have set my house in order. In my remaining time, do not dare be in my presence. You stole from me the most important thing in my life, Merlin. And with it you proved how utterly worthless my days have been.”