There was a voice coaxing her into consciousness, gentle, soft…

And male.

She bolted upright, realizing that her mother was suddenly gone, replaced by a stranger. She nearly bumped heads with the bearded old man who hovered over her. She wasn't dead, she wasn't at home, she wasn't in Palmacosta, she hurt all over, her head felt like a fire was burning inside it—

"What do you want with me?" she nearly screamed.

He recoiled, a little surprised at her vitriol. "Well, that's not a very kind way to say hello."

"Who are you?" Raine asked, realizing that she was on her back in a bed and her brother was suspiciously absent. Oh, gods, what if they had found her, dragged her back into a bedroom, and this was her newest guest, and what had they done to her in her sleep—

"Just relax a little," he said, standing, restoring her personal space. "You're still a bit sick. You ate some very strange plants out there in the wilderness."

Slowly, Raine began to recollect the events of the past few days. "I… where's my brother?"

"He's fine. He's in the kitchen, stuffing his face. You know he nearly set half the forest aflame. I'd never seen a toddler that nutty. He was spewing fire everywhere and screaming your name. Made it easier to find you, I admit. But gods, how did you ever live with a child that reckless?"

Raine rubbed her head. "Where… where are we?"

"A few days' walk from Asgard, in the foothills. You nearly made it all the way across the Hakenosia range. It was a valiant effort, but I'm afraid you messed up, big time. You kept mumbling nonsense in your sleep. About the Witches of Asgard. You said you were one of them, and that you had to get home."

"I… did?"

"I'm afraid I have some bad news for you, delirious girl. They're all dead."

Raine slapped her cheeks, trying to encourage her mind into full wakefulness. "You know about the Witches of Asgard?"

"I should," he smiled. "They are my area of study."

Raine had to hide her smile. She was alive, and she was as close to the witches as she would ever get. But her joy was marred by the memory of the last time she was alone with a highly educated, bearded individual.

He raised an eyebrow at her incredulous look. "So, how did a little half-elf girl like you get lost in the mountains?"

"I'm actually full elf, not half."

"Yeah, and I'm Mithos the Hero." He laughed heartily.

Raine shivered, pulling the covers closer to her. "No, really. I am."

"You seem like a smart young woman, but you can't trick me. I've survived five daughters, one of them of mixed blood. So you can't pull the wool over my eyes." He paused, staring at her. When she remained silent, he sighed. "I made some stew. And it doesn't have poisonous berries in it. So get up when you're ready and come eat."

He left Raine alone in the tiny bedroom, and she relaxed a little. At least he hadn't tried to kiss her or anything like that. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and yawned. Gods, she was sore, hungry, she stank, her dress was still stained with blood. She stretched and stood, wiggling her toes, and examined her surroundings.

She was in a tiny bedroom with one window, looking out over a cluster of young pine trees. The walls were a homey mix of stone and wood, and a small stove in the corner warmed the room to perfection. Raine walked through the thin doorway, entered a small, shadowy hall, and followed the echoes of childish laughter down the stairs to the small kitchen. Genis sat at a pine table, eating voraciously. The man sat across from him and stroked his grey beard thoughtfully, as if puzzled such a tiny child could consume so much at once.

Raine, barefoot, slipped down the stairs and pulled out an empty chair beside her brother. He looked up at her and grinned, obviously pleased with himself, for some reason.

"Little Genis here helped with the stew," the old man said. "He's got talent in the kitchen already. If I were you, I'd make him cook for me every day."

Raine sat down and portioned out some stew for herself. Her stomach went mad with hunger, but she forced herself to eat slowly, to chew completely, and after each swallow take a moment to compose her thoughts.

"Thank you very much for your help," she began. "But I'm afraid we have to go. We're on our way to Asgard to meet our parents."

The old man smiled at her, kindly, unconvinced. "I happen to know that's utter nonsense, Raine. Genis here told me everything."

Raine shot an accusatory look at her brother.

"Oh, don't give him that," the man said, laughing. "You were asleep for days. He was bored out of his skull. He didn't stop talking. Seems like you've been through a rough patch. But you can stay here as long as you like. No matter how much I convince myself I'm done with the little bastards, I actually miss having children here. It does get lonely."

"He knows the Witches!" Genis yelled.

"I heard." Raine studied this man, trying to assess his intentions. He didn't seem like a bad person, but then again, Raine had misjudged characters before and had paid dearly for it. "Is it true that you're studying them?"

"Well, what's left of them. Which is a bunch of ruins and some very fascinating artifacts. A few miles up the hillside is one of their fortresses. I was fortunate enough to get there before any of my greedy colleagues." He took a moment to swear, and complain about some administrative intricacies Raine didn't understand or care about. "Anyway, long story short, I kept the ruin a secret and bought acres and acres of this wasteland so none of my bastard compatriots could get their grubby meathooks on my discovery. Said I wanted a large farm to raise a family. Bah! Like my family could handle a farm. Insolent, lazy lot, all of them."

"Where are they now?" Raine ventured. She stuffed another spoonful of delicious stew into her mouth.

"Well, my wife's long gone. Good riddance to her, I say. Oh, stop with the looks, she's not dead. She ran off with some other man, they're in… don't know, don't care, some tiny town in the middle of the boondocks. She's probably giving him a terrible time as we speak.

"My daughters married themselves off one by one to some simpleton or another. All their jackass husbands are interchangeable. Eh, so are my daughters. I can barely remember their names. Except my littlest… my favorite. She's the reason my wife left, I figure. She's a half-breed, just like you. She was so adorable when she was small, and talented—she could bring down the rain just by pouting, cause an avalanche if she waved her arms too fast."

"What happened to her?" Raine asked, wondering if that daughter had found a safe haven for herself in this world, and was now living happily. Maybe the old man would tell Raine where she could find her, and she could get get her to tell Genis all she knew about magic.

"Oh, I don't know. She left a few years ago. Last I heard she got herself tangled up in a human ranch operation somewhere. Iselia, I think. Or was it Palmacosta? I don't know. All I can hope for is that she'll grow out of this phase soon. You know how some kids are cruel to animals for a while, until they develop sympathy? Well, I don't think her frontal lobe is all there yet. She's got some growing to do—she grew pretty slow, like half-elves usually do. But she'll mature, and then she'll be back to visit." He looked to the ceiling hopelessly. "Someday."

Raine stared into her empty bowl. So, there really weren't many places for half-elves to go, besides the ranches. She didn't want to grow up to be a cog in a machine like that. She wasn't even sure she wanted to grow up at all.

"So," the old man looked over at her, hands crossed. "You said you were interested in the Witches? You some sort of magician?"

"Yes. I can heal, and apparently my brother can set things on fire. I didn't know he could until we were halfway across the mountains. Now I need to find someone to teach him before he sets everything aflame. That's why we have to move on. I know I was spouting some nonsense about witches, but in reality, I think I just…" Raine looked at her feet, wondering what to say. The revelation that she had no goal, no destination, no idea what she was doing, hit her suddenly, and she had to wipe away a tear. She tried to steady her voice. "I don't know. I just don't know what I'm doing. I don't know where I'm going. I'm lost, I have no parents." She glanced up at the old man's face, and was met with a sympathetic look. "I burnt down half of Palmacoasta." She shut her mouth quickly. She had no idea why she admitted that.

The old man blinked, taken aback, but soon he broke into a smile. "Now we're getting somewhere. So you're running from the authorities, eh? Well, so are plenty of people. They won't find you out in these hills, I guarantee it. So, why did you burn down half the town?"

"I quit my job and my boss didn't like it very much."

"What was your job?"

"I was…" a prostitute? A cleaning lady? Human decoration? What was she going to tell him? "I was a model. At a place… where… um, you know… in… revealing clothes." She turned red.

"Oh gods, leave it to a trash heap like Palmacosta to have a child sex industry." She saw his fist clench. "Look, girl. I'll never tell anyone you came by here, if you want to keep going. But you're safe here. No one is going to come by looking for you, so you should stay for a while."

"Thank you for your offer, but…" she looked at Genis. "My brother is a wreck. I want him to learn to control his magic. Somewhere with a school, maybe."

"Well… I know a thing or two about impulsive wizard children. I had one, remember? And besides, who better to teach him than the old Witches themselves? You know they left plenty of manuscripts."

This caught Raine's attention. She looked up at the old man and could tell he was pleased with himself for having piqued her interest. "Manuscripts? Where? How old?"

"Hold your horses, little girl. You're still sick. You need rest. I'm not taking you out into the wilderness to see the library anytime soon. But…" he grinned, "I do have a few texts in the house. I have been periodically nicking the easier-to-carry tablets and scrolls. You can sit down with one if you'd like."

Raine couldn't help beaming at him. "I would like that very much."

"Well, there we go. You're already a more interesting character than any of my good-for-nothing daughters. They couldn't even humor my research, much less force themselves to be interested in it."

Raine spooned herself another bowl of soup, and Genis bounced on his chair, smiling. "Can we stay here?" he asked.

Raine shrugged. "For a little while, anyway. I guess we can."

The old man stood. "I might as well get you some reading material if that's your cup of tea."

"Wait," Raine said, as he made his way toward the door. "What's your name?"

"Lurian."


Raine dove into the ancient manuscripts like a cool pond on a scorching day. She spent hours, weeks, pouring over poetry, spells, histories. Lurian taught her the basics of their ancient alphabet and within a few days she could read fluently. The spoken language was some sort of cross between ancient pre-Dynastic Sylvaranti, with some Elvish thrown in there.

The content of the texts themselves, though readable, were cryptic and could take days to decipher. This is what Raine liked most about them. Every time she reread a sentence, there was something new to discover inside.

"This language is so much more… charged than ours is," she said one day over breakfast. She had stayed up all night with a particular tale of one young witch who had been raised by a she-wolf, but the writing was so full of double-meanings and allusions and wordplay that she was only a quarter of the way through it.

"What do you mean?" Lurian asked from the stove. He was teaching Genis to scramble eggs.

"I mean, when we say what we say, even in writing, except for maybe some complex poetry…" Raine stopped to think. "Generally we mean what we say. What these people wrote can have two or three meanings at least. If you translate a word differently than the intention the whole sentence can mean the opposite of what it says."

"Ah, it's difficult for you, I take it. Don't worry. You're just a beginner. The reading gets smoother the more you know about the language. Pretty soon you'll be able to read through one manuscript and have two or three parallel but completely different narratives in your head. It's pivotal to the language to be able to notice and keep in memory the different meanings of each sentence. You're meant to misinterpret them, to some degree. But…" he poured some milk into the frying pan, to Genis' delight. "That's the essence of witchcraft, or so these women thought. Your ability to keep aware of your surroundings and muster the concentration to spell cast is basically what good magic is all about. You need to keep two, three, four parallel thoughts in your head at once. If you want to cross and combine spells, if you want to cast a spell in a hurry or during a fight… compartmentalizing concentration is what these women were quite good at."

Raine reexamined the tale, confused. "I guess I never thought of it that way. I usually have to close my eyes and think really hard before I can use my magic… but sometimes… if I'm really desperate…" she thought of the beam of light she threw toward the innocent Palmacostan gatekeeper. The blindness she inflicted on that teacher. What had she been thinking about? Light, oceans, fear… They were all clumsy, panicked excuses for magic, but they had worked.

"Put more salt!" Genis squeaked. "More salt!"

"Are you trying to kill us?" Lurian laughed. "No more salt."

When Raine was presented with the eggs, she was too engrossed in reinterpreting the narrative about the wolf and the girl to even notice if they were too salty or not. She did not leave the table until she had fully read the manuscript and interpreted any meaning she could glean. She learned it wasn't just a children's story about a young witch and a wolf, but it seemed to be a spell to protect a mother during childbirth, a procedure to ensure that the season's crop would not wilt, and also… perhaps a recipe for grilled badger? She didn't quite know enough words to properly interpret the last possibility.

By the time she looked up from the text, night had already fallen and Lurian was setting up a fire, letting Genis provide the spark. "So, you get it yet?"

"No," Raine answered. "Sort of. I needed to write every possible meaning down before I could get it all straight in my head."

"Ah, well, you're young. It'll be easy for you to learn." He got up and leaned over her work. "Grilled badger? What the hell are you reading?" He looked at the source material and laughed. "Gods, you do have some learning to do."


A few weeks later, when Raine had fattened up and become so annoyingly inquisitive that Lurian had no choice but to cave into her requests, he took her and Genis to see the old ruins. The first chills of fall were shivering through the mountain, turning the birch leaves yellow and plucking them from their branches. Raine held Genis' gloved hand, dragging him up the hillside, ignoring his complaints. He had grown fat and lazy these past couple weeks, used to cooking with Lurian in the warmth of the kitchen. The sudden chill and the steady upward climb had him complaining that he was uncomfortable and exhausted, but Raine could tell he was growing taller and stronger by the day.

"Shut that little piglet up," Lurian smiled as they stopped on a steep hillside. "Or he doesn't get to see the Witches."

"Hear that, Genis?" Raine said. "Quiet."

Lurian knelt down beside him. "Hey, remember that crap you do with your hands? The fire stuff?"

Genis nodded.

"Well, we need some light. You want to see how long you can hold a flame at the end of your fingers?"

Genis nodded vigorously. He raised his hand and immediately summoned a flame, large and bright but controlled. He had had plenty of practice lighting Lurian's stove over the past few weeks. Lurian cleared away a few branches and revealed a black doorway, leading into the darkness of the mountain. The shadows beyond the stone doorway were pure, complete, seemingly impenetrable. Genis gulped once, but followed Lurian into the darkness.

Raine came in last, glancing once back at the sunlit world before following them down into the blackness. Genis' little flame lit up two stone walls, engraved with symbols and writing. She wanted to stop and read them, but Lurian led them down farther into the tiny tunnel, deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountain. Raine wished she could say that she was unafraid, but the tiny walls, the low ceiling, the moldy smell, the darkness… they all unnerved her.

"Genis, you okay?" she asked.

"Yup!" came the reply. He seemed a little too excited. Well, he was small, this tunnel probably didn't feel nearly as confining as it did to Raine or Lurian.

"Don't freak out, you two," Lurian said. "It opens up. And it should be late afternoon soon. You'll be able to see then."

Raine didn't understand, but figured she should probably just shut her mouth and follow him. For what seemed like hours, she followed in his stride, keeping to herself, trying to quell her uneasiness. To her surprise, the darkness eased up the farther they crept into the mountain. She was just about to ask Lurian why when the tunnel widened suddenly and bright golden light flooded her vision.

Genis extinguished his torch and followed her gaze to the ceiling. They were in a great hall, walls lined with statues and engravings, grooves and massive columns. The ceiling of the place curved above her like the massive ribs of some great animal, glinting with fragments of glass and precious stone. Through a tiny slit in the roof of the great cavern came a wave of sunlight, reflected and multiplied a thousand times to light up the great hall.

Raine laughed without meaning to. She spread her arms and spun around in the sunlight, so delighted to see it way down in the bowels of this mountain. "This is brilliant!" she couldn't help exclaiming, her voice echoing around the massive chamber, rebounding and hitting her ears a hundred times over.

"I thought you'd like it. This architecture is unique to the temples in this region."

"There are more?" Raine let her eyes skim the walls, trying to make out the stories and pictures. There were too many for her to discern—she would have to come back here many, many times to read them all.

"This one is the biggest. On the opposite hill is a small one, which I think functioned as a library. That's where I found all the manuscripts. This one seems more social, like a gathering hall for ceremonies and meetings."

Raine watched the afternoon light flicker all around the hall, smiling. "How do you like it, Genis?" she asked him.

"I like it, I guess," he said, obviously expecting something a little more exciting at the end of the tunnel; perhaps a monster or a hoard of gold. As soon as he finished talking, the light went out nearly instantly, and again the hall fell into darkness.

Instinctively, Genis relit his torch and Lurian led them toward the center of the hall. "As you can see, the sun's position is vital to this temple, which is why I think any ceremonies held here were celestially significant."

Raine was a little irked that it she had had so little time to admire the hall. But she also didn't have time to pout since Lurian grabbed her hand and led her to a silvery staircase. He urged her and her brother forward up the stairs, telling them that there was more to the temple than just the meeting hall. After about a thousand steps Genis started complaining about the walk.

"I guess you can just turn back and go back to the house by yourself, then," Raine said. He shut up after that. In his defense, it was an exhausting trip up, but when Raine emerged from the stone stairwell into the starlight, she was pleased she had made the effort.

"This is what I assume is the observatory," Lurian said. Raine looked across the massive arc of sky above them, then glanced to what looked to be stone rostrum, etched with designs and constellations and mathematical trajectories. It looked to be something of a sundial or calendar, but Raine would have to study it more to decipher its true meaning and use.

Even Genis was impressed with the view. He bounced up and down, pointing to this star and that—stars he never got to see in Palmacosta, with its hundreds of street lamps and ever-glowing cloud cover. A streak of galaxy glittered across Raine's view. She sat down on the dais, pulled Genis into her lap, and watched a sliver of a moon rise slowly from the mountaintops to the east.

Lurian sat down beside her and pulled out a wooden tobacco pipe. He sat back and looked at the sky with her, telling her the legends the witches concocted to explain why the stars were arranged in their particular constellations. She relaxed in the cool air and listened intently, letting her thoughts wander to the celestial realms, leaving the cruel world behind.

As she cuddled Genis and immersed herself in the stories, she finally realized that maybe, just maybe, she could manage to make a home here, and be happy.

Maybe.