7. Praying
Kinana was groggy when she was finally able to open her eyes. Her mouth tasted like sand and was just as dry. Her eyelids felt like they weighed several pounds, but she forced herself to blink the weight away until she could focus on something.
The first thing she noticed was the darkness. The only light leaked in from a crack in what she could only assume was a door. She was tied to a wooden chair, her wrists joined together in the back and her feet tied to the legs. There was no gag around her mouth, but she doubted that anyone would hear her if she made a noise.
She dared to whisper, "Hello? Is anyone there?"
No one answered.
Kinana swallowed the panic that rose up in her throat. The last thing she remembered was falling into bed, thinking of Erik and wishing he was with her. There may have been something strange on her pillow, a powder she couldn't identify, but she was so tired she'd fallen asleep before investigating it. Now she realized someone had drugged her.
But who would do that?
Kinana decided she didn't want to find out. She twisted her wrists to test the bonds. Tight rope, bound to the back supports of the chair and wrapped several times around her hands. Her ankles were similarly secured. There was no wriggling out of these. Her only option was to try to break the support of the chair.
The door opened, letting in a blinding light. Kinana squinted up at the figure who approached her. It was an old woman, hobbling and gray, with a white braid twisting down her shoulder and a bitter, wrinkled face. She smiled when she saw Kinana was struggling, revealing rotten brown teeth.
"Perfect timing," she crooned, patting her hands together. Kinana gulped. The woman's hands were hideously mutilated, the last two fingers of each hand chopped off and scars as thick and pink as worms running from her palms down into the sleeves of her wool dress.
"Who are you?" Kinana asked, looking around at her surroundings. Now she could see she was in a plain cellar, the earthen floor dusty with herbs, the ceiling decorated with their dried skeletons. "Where am I?"
She jumped as a chair moved of its own accord from behind her, screeching to a stop behind the woman, who sat in it with a gentle groan.
"You're a mage," Kinana gasped.
"Wrong," the woman said. "I'm a witch. A subtle distinction, but a distinction I must make based on sheer principle. I'm not overly fond of mages."
Kinana's mind went to Porlyusica, the surly witch who lived in the East Forest and used her capable knowledge to heal a Fairy Tail mage from time to time. "You sound like someone else I know," Kinana muttered dryly.
"Shouldn't you be afraid?" the witch said with a hint of irritation. "Intimidated, at the very least? I've got magic. I could hurt you badly, girl. I've already kidnapped you. No one knows where you are. You're completely at my disposal."
Kinana tried not to let that get to her. She jutted her chin out stubbornly. "You don't know my friends. They'll find me in no time at all, and then you're in for a heap of trouble, lady. So you might as well let me go now."
The witch tipped back her head and cackled. "Are you talking about the little wood-make mage you live with? Or the old hag who works in your diner? Or maybe the zookeeper you're dating?" She laughed again at Kinana's shocked expression. "That's right, girl, I'm no fool. I've watched you for quite some time, ever since I heard that voice of yours singing on the street. You sing just like your mother."
"My mother?" Kinana's chest tightened at the words. Her mother. She had her mother's voice. Her mother sang. "You know my mother?"
"I knew her," the witch sneered. "She's dead, now. Been dead for many years."
And just like that, the woman extinguished all of Kinana's fruitless hopes that she'd harbored since that day she woke up in the guild hall. Her mother was dead. Tears filled her eyes. Her mother was dead, and Kinana couldn't even pull the memories from her brain. If there were even any memories to pull.
"It doesn't surprise me you don't remember her," the witch sighed, leaning back in the chair. "Transformation magic does that sometimes."
"Transformation magic?" Kinana said. "What are you talking about?"
The witch raised an eyebrow. "It must have really wiped you out, then. Sylvia was new at transformation magic. It doesn't surprise me that her spell was sloppy enough to cause this amnesia."
Kinana was stupefied. Her amnesia wasn't caused by some freak accident, but by a transformation spell? Too inflamed by curiosity to be afraid, she tried to fish more information out of the witch. "Who's Sylvia?"
"Your mother," the witch growled, as though this was obvious. "She was my apprentice, you know. A poor soul. Dirt-poor, orphaned at sixteen, knocked up by a musician who died in a hotel fire sleeping with some other woman—she didn't have anywhere else to go. I took her in when I realized her potential."
"My mother had magic," Kinana murmured, wonderstruck.
"I taught her everything she knew," the witch said, as lost in the story as Kinana. "Sylvia was a talented witch, I'll give her that. And she was mean as a dog, which I liked. I don't think she really loved anything, until she had you, of course. She died fighting to protect you."
Kinana throat suddenly went dry. "Protecting me from what?"
"From me, stupid girl," the witch chuckled, showing her rotten teeth. "That's why she transformed you into a snake. It was a last-ditch effort to keep me from using you, a precious newborn babe, in my elixir for immortality. You were the final ingredient in a process that took me almost five months, and damned Sylvia ruined it. I knew she'd run if she found out, so I was very discreet—but one day I caught her putting the pieces together, and I knew she'd run, so I chained her up until she went into labor." The witch shrugged. "I didn't think she'd fight so hard. Babies are easy to make. But she used the last of her strength to transform you, and once you'd become a snake I knew I couldn't use you. She died without transforming you back. I threw you to the side in an effort to revive her, and you'd slithered away by the time I gave up."
Kinana stared hard at the witch, dumbstruck. Tears of anger pricked in her eyes. "You…you killed my mother," she accused quietly. "You planned to kill me before I was even born. What kind of monster does that?"
"I didn't kill your mother, she killed herself," the witch retorted. "I tried to save her, ungrateful child. I'm no monster. What would you do for immortality? The opportunity to be young and beautiful for a million years?"
"I wouldn't want that," Kinana snarled. "Not when I'd have to watch everyone I love grow old and die before me. But I suppose that doesn't concern someone like you." She struggled with her bonds. "What do you want with me after all these years? You can't use me in an elixir now. I'm not an innocent newborn."
"No, you're certainly not," the witch remarked. She grabbed Kinana's face roughly in her hands, turning it from side to side. Kinana grimaced and turned away, but she didn't have anywhere to go. "But I've found something almost as good. A spell to switch bodies with another person. I thought it'd be fitting to use you."
"Switch bodies?" Kinana gasped, finally pulling out of the witch's clutches. "You can't have my body!"
"Oh, but that's where you're wrong. I've already prepared everything. I've been using some of your mother's hair to summon you since I heard your voice on the street, but between the transformation magic and the fact that you're only half of her, it's been little good. I had to come get you myself."
Kinana's thoughts when to the sinister voice that had replaced the kind one in her head for the past few days. "That was you," she said. "You were the voice in my head."
"So you did hear me. Interesting." The witch tapped her chin.
"Please," Kinana begged, tears rolling down her cheeks as she realized the hopelessness of her situation. She had no magic with which to fight, no weapons to use. Laki had no idea where she'd gone, and Erik…she didn't even know if Erik was still in town. All she could do was plead. "If you had any affection for my mother, please let me go. I don't have magic, so it's not like you could continue your witchcraft in my body anyway. She was your apprentice, and she wanted me to live. She died trying to protect me. Doesn't that sacrifice mean anything to you?"
"You don't understand, stupid girl," the witch huffed. "I did like Sylvia. This is a gesture of respect. You're wrong about another thing; your body is bursting with magic. It would take months for you to tap into it, maybe years. What better way to expedite the process than to transfer that ability to someone who can really use it? And it's not like you're going to die—you'll have my body, for however long I have left to live. If you'd like, I'll even offer you the opportunity to select another body to switch again. You could be anyone you want. That's a deal Sylvia would take, if she were in your place."
Kinana shut her mouth. There was nothing that could persuade this woman. Her only hope was that Laki found her in time, or that she somehow tapped into this mysterious magic inside of her while chained to this chair. Neither seemed likely. The witch stood with a groan and hobbled away. "Time to get started, then."
Kinana closed her eyes. She found herself yearning for the first voice in her head, the friendly one who only ever wanted to hear her singing. She was never lonely with it around, not until its strange disappearance. She hadn't heard it since that night she'd sung the bawdy song by the canal. The witch's calling had replaced its warm tenor.
Kinana's eyes suddenly opened. If the witch's voice had a receiving end, then maybe, just maybe, the friendly voice did, too. The voice could be a real person out there in the world, trying to get in touch with her. Kinana didn't want to think about the implications of multiple people trying to get inside her head, but she knew it was her only chance of escape.
She'd never tried to initiate a conversation with it before, so she didn't really know how to start. Hello? she thought, hoping that she wasn't just going to hold a conversation with herself. Are you there? When she didn't get a response, she tried mentally screaming out into the universe, hoping that someone might hear her and coming looking. Please, please help me! If you were ever really there, if you ever cared, if you were ever a real person, please come save me! I don't know what to do, I don't have anything to protect myself. Please, please help me! I'll speak to you whenever you want, I'll sing whatever song you want me to. Just please, don't leave me here to die.
"You're awfully quiet over there," the witch remarked. Kinana could hear her grinding some herbs. "What are you doing?"
Kinana closed her eyes, too focused on her praying to respond.
