Virago kneels, then, gently, slowly, with deep reverence, one hand in a fist over her heart, her head inclined toward the painting, her eyes closed, her jaw set.
Aidan gazes across the room at me, head cocked, one brow up, arms shrugged.
“She’s a witch?” he mouths to me.
I shrug, too, because Virago isn’t a witch, but how does she know that this is a piece of sacred art?
And why is she so touched by it?
But then Virago is standing smoothly, breathing out, not wiping away that tear that still remains clearly etched on her face.
It remains there, bright and shining, a visible symbol of her strength and humility that she has no problem bearing.
“This is a beautiful place,” says Virago, then, to Aidan, her words low and rough, full of emotion.
Aidan opens and shuts his mouth, and then my brother
actually blushes
.
“That means a lot to me,” he says simply, smiling up at her.
“Thank you.”
Of course Aidan adores her pretty much instantly.
He’s my brother.
He loves everyone, and everyone—pretty much just as instantly—loves him.
But this is different.
This is Virago.
Aidan, who can pretty much tell about someone just by looking at them, adores
her
.
I glance from my brother to Virago back to my brother again.
That’s a very good sign.
Not that I needed a good sign.
But still.
“Who are you?” asks Aidan then, crossing his arms over his chest, head to the side, eyes narrowed as he gazes at her wonderingly.
“Have I met you before, maybe at an open circle?
Are you Wiccan, too?
I mean you reacted to…”
He trails off as he gestures to the painting, back to Virago, shuts his mouth.
Waits.
Virago looks to me, and I nod, once.
Now’s as good a time as ever.
And there’s really no use beating around the bush.
Which is exactly what Virago does
not
do.
She stands full to attention, rolling her shoulders back, her chin up, and her face resolved.
Then Virago reaches over her shoulder and pulls her sword out of the scabbard (that she ecstatically was able to put back on again once we left the mall), now pulling it over her head and
thunking
it down so that the pointed end lands surely in the carpeting at her feet.
She kneels down, head against the pommel, touching her heart with her fingers again.
“I am Virago, of the Knights of Arktos City, capital of Arktos of the world of Agrotera.
The lady Holly, your sister, said that you might be able to aid me in my quest, sir Aidan.
I am hoping that you can.”
My brother opens and shuts his mouth again, glances up at me with wide eyes, then back down at Virago.
Then he smiles, chuckling a little, sprawling back in his favorite too-stuffed chair (not surprisingly, a velvet purple number).
“God, Holly loves all this chivalry stuff,” he says then, practically giggling as he hooks his thumb to point toward me.
“She has since she was little.
You’re very convincing, by the way.
And I love your sword!
I’ve been trying to order some good swords in for the shop, but…”
Virago gazes up at him, her eyes dark, and she shakes her head only once, my brother trailing off into uneasy silence.
“I am not from the Knights of Valor Festival,” she says tiredly, softly, as my brother shuts up, his eyes wide.
“I am Virago, and I know that this is strange and difficult to believe,” she sighs out again, “but I beg of your indulgence to try.
I am from the world of Agrotera, and last night, I was fighting a sinister beast on
my
world, and a portal opened, and we came together, the beast and I, to this place.
And now the beast has gone missing, and I
must
find him,” she says, standing then, feet planted strongly hip-width apart as she hefts the sword up easily from its resting place, imbedded in the floor, “and I am hoping that you may help me,” she says, eyes steely, “because you are a witch.
Can you do magic?”
“Magic?”
Aidan splutters, glancing to me.
“I mean, I’m a
Wiccan
.
I don’t go flying around on brooms or turning people into toads, if that’s the kind of magic you’re thinking.”
He licks his lips, shrugs, says in a smaller voice:
“What kind
are
you talking about?”
“I need you to be able to open a portal to a place between worlds, so that we may usher the beast through, so that he may be contained, and cause no more death,” says Virago easily.
“Do you have the ability to open portals?”
Aidan is looking at me again as he splutters, tries to find the right words.
And then his eyes narrow, too.
“Is this woman for real, Holly?” he asks me, voice tight.
“Does she
actually
believe she’s from another world?”
I shrug, fold my arms.
“Yes.
She does,” I tell him, simply.
“Look…she’s not crazy.
Things really add up.
She really might be…”
I trail off.
I’d have to show him the massive, monstrous footprints in my backyard, and my smashed shed, and—admittedly—he didn’t see Virago heal, but maybe he’d believe that she did if I told him.
But I shake my head, sigh.
“I know it’s very strange,” I tell him softly, “but she really does need help, and I thought—I mean, I don’t know what I thought.
You’re a witch.
You’ve never talked to me about
portals
, but I didn’t know if…maybe…”
I wave my hand.
“She just really needs help, and I thought of you immediately,” I tell him.
His face softens at that, and he gazes back at Virago, then, eyes immediately drawn to her sword.
“So,” says Aidan slowly, carefully, “last night, I was doing a spell for prosperity because of the waxing moon...”
I raise my eyebrows at him.
“Muggle-speak, Aidan.
We’re not all witches here.
Please translate for us?” I ask him, my mouth twitching into a smile.
He chuckles a little, but it’s forced.
“I was doing a spell,” he says, annunciating the words, “…and the power went out.”
He points upward.
“Which isn’t unusual—I mean, it was a bad storm around here last night.
But I felt a great darkness come into the city, and I knew something was wrong.
And
then
the bowl with my herbs in it cracked in two.
And I knew they’d absorbed something dark that was meant for me.”
“Aidan…”
I groan.
Sometimes, he gets pretty new agey, and I don’t know if Virago is following this, but she’s nodding, puts her sword back into her scabbard effortlessly, shrugging the metal blade over her shoulder.
“That’s good,” she’s telling him, and then she’s walking in step with him toward the far altar beneath the painting of the Goddess Hestia.
It’s a low table covered with candles, a brass incense holder, and multiple statues of Goddesses—all his favorites.
“The beast would have been repelled by any good magics,” she tells him, crouching down before the altar and examining the crystal bowl that Aidan points to—the bowl that I assume held his spell ingredients.
It’s in two neat pieces, like this was the way it came.
Again, I feel vastly in over my head.
Aidan flops down in a chair next to Virago then, rubs at his little beard, gazing at her with wide, questioning eyes.
“But I mean…” he trails off, looks up at me.
“How can we really know that she’s telling the truth?” he mutters to me.
I shrug, mouth dry.
I
don’t
know.
I mean, Aidan would really be the one to know over me.
He has faith in stuff, and I really…don’t.
I certainly don’t claim to know all of the mysteries of the universe, and when I join in on Aidan’s meditations, I feel something good happening in my stomach, and I relax, but how he believes in the Goddess and that spells and magic actually influence things, that rituals actually change stuff in the world…I don’t know if I necessarily believe that.
I certainly don’t disbelieve it, and it brings him a lot of happiness.
But faith has never really been something that felt like it was for me.
Virago sighs, then, and she takes up her sword.
She holds it out to us in her palms, and I don’t really know what she’s about to do until she nods her head to me, holding the sword out.
“A demonstration,” she whispers.
And then she grasps the blade with her left palm and
squeezes
.
“Oh, my God…oh, my
God
…” I whisper as scarlet blood begins to drip in a steady patter onto the dark carpeting.
Virago grits her teeth together as she lowers the sword deftly, and then holds her palm out to us.
The ugly wound that stretches across her open palm is mangled, raw and red, muscle and tissue visible, as well as a small shard of bone.
I feel like I’m going to be sick as both Aidan and I stare at that gaping, angry for a spellbound moment.
I don’t think either of us have a single clue of what to do.
I snap out of it a little, move to go grab some paper towels on pure instinct.
But Virago clears her throat, and I pause.
“Blessed mother, please help me.
By your power, Lady,” she whispers, and she closes her eyes.
Nothing happens for a heartbeat, but then beneath her feet, the carpet begins to…well, the best way I can describe it is that the carpeting itself is
glowing
with light.
Aidan and I stare as light seems to flow up Virago’s body like a reverse waterfall, twining around her limbs like a vine made of white sunshine, and pours down her arm into her hand.
There’s a pulse of glowing light, and then the light disappears completely, leaving black spots in my vision.
I blink them away as Virago holds her hand out to us.
I feel my heart skip a beat, catch my breath.
There’s no blood.
No wound.
It’s
gone
.
Aidan sighs out for a very long moment, then gazes at me, his eyes wide and round.
“Oh, my God, Holly.
She’s real.
She’s
real
.
She’s…”
He splutters, gets up, takes Virago’s hand and turns it over and back again, gently pressing down on her palm a few times with his fingers.
Virago stands tall, head bent to Aidan, lashes lowered, her lips twitching into a smirk as Aidan turns her hand over and over again, his mouth open.
“She’s
real
…”
He repeats, voice wondering.
“Can you help me?” asks Virago then, searching his face.
He gazes up at her, swallows, lets go of her hand.
“I…I don’t know,” he says.
The truth.
“But I can try.
Hell.
Maybe we
can
open a portal,” he glances up at me.
“The coven.
With so many witches together, maybe we could raise the energy, and…and…”
He’s thinking fast, biting his lip.
“Maybe we could open it up
on
the full moon—it would give the energy a boost for sure, at least.”
“How soon is the full moon?” I ask him.
“In three days,” he says distractedly, waving his hand.
“Three days?”
I bite my lip, watch Virago, but she’s studying my face.
“Aidan, what if…I mean, the beast—it could attack in the meantime.”
“I think that it’s gone into hiding,” says Virago, glancing over at me with her steady blue eyes.
“But I must find it before the full moon and before we try to open the portal, because I believe the portal
can
and
will
be opened that day—doors between worlds are thinner during the full moon.”
Of course.
That makes as much sense as any of this.
I run my fingers through my hair and shrug.
I don’t want to get my hopes up.
I appreciate Aidan’s enthusiasm, and his coven is full of very well-meaning people and really nice witches, but they can’t agree on what type of cookies they should bake for Samhain (Halloween to us ordinary folk), and if they should do a gift exchange or raise money for charity on Yule.
They’re a splintered group of people with strong opinions, and them opening a portal to another world…seems like a fairy tale.
But I don’t want to tell this to Virago.
This might be the only hope she has in getting the beast safely out of our world and locked away.
As I stare at her inclining her head toward my brother, I take a deep breath.
This might be her only chance to go…home.