Page 33 of The Hocus Pocus Handbook

Please don’t hurt him. He’s been hurt enough.

“Then I am willing to trade for your expertise,” Kerboros answers.

Macha’s delight is unnerving as she glides toward him and frames his head in her hands. Her long nails curl downward, pricking into the top of his skull, and shadows flicker, darting inside his head like tentacles made of smoke and spite. Though Macha isn’t evil per se, she does take some joy in tormenting others.

He flinches, and then the smoke tentacles withdraw, glowing with orange at their tips.

The swamp witch inhales her prize and then faces me. “That could have seemed cruel. But if you knew what I know, you might call it a kindness.”

I can’t piss her off. “Maybe so. Should I accompany you?”

Even when I lived here as a lizard, I never saw the inside of Macha’s home. I don’t expect that ever to change. She’s revered and feared, but no one knows her. Not intimately. I’ve heard stories, of course, tragedies—a mortal artist who broke her heart long ago. But I’ve never gotten confirmation, and I think she prefers to maintain that air of mystique.

Yet it’s better to be sure.

She sears me with a stare. “Wait. I will attempt to discern what you wish to know.”

16

Sacrifice

This piece is carved from fallen wood. It depicts a woman on her knees, sobbing into her hands with abject despair. Each detail is carefully rendered, including her torn clothing and tumbled hair in disarray. Only her face is hidden, though her posture reveals the depths of her grief. Her back is bowed. Her shoulders are rounded, heavy with whatever brought her low. She holds herself like a woman who has been sacrificed for someone else’s good, and perhaps she wasn’t consulted as to whether she wanted to pay that price. The statuette imbues a deep uneasiness, as if the artist witnessed something unspeakable, so terrible that it had to be purged from the soul through the slow, inexorable scrapes of a blade.

Kerboros

The interloper has vanished.

Did Zeph lose interest and wander off? It seems suspicious that they didn’t say farewell. When I turn to Thea to inquire about her thoughts, I find her studying me closely. Is she concerned about the aftermath of whatever the swamp witch did?

“Are you all right?” she whispers.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you lost a memory. An important one, most likely.”

I hesitate. “I’m aware that…there used to be pain. Now it feels like…”

“Like what?”

“If you’ll forgive the analogy, it feels as if a wound has been lanced. And the poison is gone, leaving a space instead of a festering core.”

The sensation troubles me somewhat. It feels as if I’ve lost something significant, but when I reach for it, there’s nothing. Only smoke where there once was fire. I shake my head, impatient with myself. I have spent enough time on retrospection during my solitary pursuits. In another life, perhaps I would be an artist. That work has granted both solace and joy through dire tribulations.

“Then I do hope it wasn’t bad. What she did to you.”

“As do I. But failure isn’t an option, and I had to sacrifice something, or the consequences for both of us would be unbearable.”

Her eyes widen slightly. Then her lips curve. It seems that I’ve pleased her, judging by the sparkle in her eyes. But I remain unsure what I said that summoned such a delighted expression and how I might replicate it.

“She took a memory about your mother, I think,” Thea says. “Based on what we talked about before. You told me that she called you Ori.”

“I shared that with you?”

I don’t remember telling Thea; the thread must have unraveled when Macha stole my memory of my mother. I know I had one, but I can no longer recall what she looked or smelled like or how her voice sounded. The name Ori is familiar, and it makes me ache in some inchoate way, yet I can’t summon specific recollections. Thea knowing this about me feels…important. Intimate, even. She’s a living link to a memory I’ve lost forever.

“Yes. I’m so sorry.”

“About what?”