Chapter Thirty-Six: In Which Apple Comes Up With the Solution
"SHE'S A WITCH!" Apple burst out excitedly. Thirteen faces (fourteen, if you counted Toby's) turned to stare at her.
"Who's a witch?" Sep asked.
"Celia!" Apple said happily.
"No kidding?" Liara said sarcastically.
"No, I mean she's a witch!" Apple said. "A real witch! NOT a sorceress!"
"What's the difference?" Mitena asked. Now everyone turned to stare at Mitena.
"You don't know?" Jay asked in disbelief.
Mitena shifted uncomfortably. "We don't really have them where I'm from." She said. "What IS the difference?"
"Witches need wands or staffs to do magic and sorceresses don't." Flo explained.
"Ohhhh." Mitena said. "But wait: Celia doesn't use a wand. Wouldn't that make her a sorceress?"
"Yeah, I think you got your facts mixed up, Apple." Atticus said.
"No, it says right here in this diary that she used a wand when she was younger. And if you need a wand to make magic, you can never stop using it; just look!" Apple passed Irena's diary to Atticus.
When the young merprince took a look at the last entry on the diary page, something strange happened; he flinched, groaned, and clutched his head as if something had landed on it.
"Atticus!" Mel-Mel cried.
"Are you alright?!" Percy asked.
"Yeah..." He said with a shake of his head. "That was weird..."
"But did you see the part about Celia having a wand?" Apple asked.
"Yes, but that's not news, Celia's always been a witch, Mom said so..." Atticus stopped as he realized what he was saying.
Percy stared at his brother in confusion. "No she didn't." He said.
"That's right..." Atticus said slowly. "No, it's wrong...she really DID say so, but I didn't remember. Until now."
Liara frowned. "Are you kidding? You can bore us out of our skulls with history, but you can't remember what Mom said?"
"That's not like you." Percy added. "You remember tons of stuff." Percy picked up the diary and looked at it himself. And he flinched too!
"Arrrrrg..." He groaned. And then his eyes grew wide. "OhMyPoseidon! It's TRUE! Mom DID say so. And Grandpa too! Just look Li!"
Liara took a look and clutched her head in pain. "GAH!" Then her mouth practically hit the floor as she came to the same realization Percy and Atticus had. "Holy fuck...how did we forget this?!" She shouted.
Apple turned to her host father. "What's going on?" She asked. The mermagician looked thoughtful and reached for the book himself. He scanned the last entry and without warning, he doubled over as he suffered from what appeared to be the mother of all headaches.
"AAAARRRRRRRGGHH!" Roland yelled.
"ROLAND!" Apple cried in alarm. He was having a much worse reaction than the others. But the pain quickly subsided and when Roland floated upright again, he looked almost jubilant.
"MASS UN FACTO TABITUM!' He declared.
"Massun facto what now?" Sep asked.
"Mass Un Facto Tabitum!" Roland said excitedly. It's very old, very powerful, and very dark magic. That spell has been lost for centuries!"
"What IS it?" Clara asked.
"A spell that's capable of making an entire civilization loose a single fact from their minds." Roland explained. "A spell that can only be broken when the people are presented with proof of the truth, like this diary! "
"Ouch!" Mel-Mel cried as she took a look at the diary over Roland's shoulder. "That smarts!"
"That means the spell is being broken." Roland said. "The symptoms are exactly as the ancients texts said it would be; sharp cranial pain after being confronted with physical, factual evidence! This HAS to be Mass Un Facto Tabitum!"
"But how come I didn't feel anything?" Apple asked.
Roland looked thoughtful. "Here Flo, you take a look." He said. The young nixie nervously took the book and braced himself for any pain. But none came.
"Just as I thought." Roland said. "The spell only affects those who knew of Celia in their lifetime or grew up knowing about her." He gestured at Apple and the freshwater merfolk. "You came from the land and you three came from rivers, so the spell never affected you."
"Ack! But what about you?" Sep asked as he rubbed his head after reading the diary himself. "How come it hurt you to read it more than anyone else?"
"Simple. Unlike the rest of you, I was actually there to see Celia use a wand. I was a kid during the last challenges, her terrorist attacks, her banishment, ALL of it. I had more to forget than those of you who only heard what your parents told you." Roland said.
"But why would Celia want to erase that memory at all?" Mitena asked. "What's the point?"
"The point is, she's got a weakness!" Apple said excitedly. "A huge one! Witches can't do magic without their wands, no matter HOW powerful they are! And once you break the wand..."
"NO MORE POWER!" Percy finished joyfully. "She probably cast the spell so nobody would remember that weakness!"
"Exactly! All we have to do is break Celia's wand!" Apple suddenly found everyone staring at her and Percy as if they had lost their minds.
"You're crazy." Atticus finally said. "You're stone, cold, crazy. Break her wand?! Do you really think it's going to be that simple?!"
"No of course, not but..." Percy started.
"I mean, where is she even keeping her wand?!" Atticus half-shouted.
Once again, Atticus had an excellent point; where was Celia keeping her wand? And furthermore, how was she able to appear as if she did magic without it?
"Does she keep it in her clothes?" Sep asked.
"Where?" Liara asked sarcastically.
"And she'd have to be holding it." Roland added. "That's how wands work; you can't access their magic otherwise."
"Maybe it's invisible?" Mel-Mel said.
"No, we still would have seen her holding it." Roland said.
"Maybe we couldn't see it because of the memory spell?" Orlando suggested. "And now we could?"
"But then WE would have seen it." Clara pointed out.
"That's true," Mitena said. "We all saw what you saw." Everyone nodded thoughtfully. Whatever Celia had done with her wand, she had managed to fool everyone at the ball into thinking she was a sorceress, not just the people that knew of her.
Apple racked her brain; how could a witch completely hide a wand and still be able to wield it? Perhaps there was another clue in the diary.
"Ruby, let me see that book again." Apple said. Ruby, who was the last person to look at the diary entry tossed it back to her. Apple quickly flipped through the pages, hoping to find something useful.
Apple stopped at a picture of the last generation of the Atlantean royal family. It was the only picture she could find of Celia (apparently Irena didn't care much for her evil big sister). Unfortunately, Celia wasn't holding a wand in the picture. In fact, the nineteen-year-old Celia Tritinus looked very much the same as she did now. Except for the lack of black, sinister scar on her arm, of course...
Wait a minute...Apple thought. That scar was about the same length as a wand and it was definitely above Celia's casting hand. Perhaps the answer had been in front of them the whole time...
"Roland?" Apple asked. "Would it be possible for a witch to put her wand inside her arm and still use it?" The mermish magician pondered this.
"Well, if she found a way to connect the wand to her blood stream, arm muscles, metacarpals, and phalanges...which could be done, I suppose, though she'd have to have a way for the magic to get out...but even the tiniest paper cut on her fingers could do it. She definitely had the raw power when she was younger to start that kind of process, and said power has undoubtedly increased with time and practice. She'd need access to strong black magic to pull off that kind of feat...but she already has that, if the Mass Un Facto Tabitum spell is any indication. It would take years to find said black magic spells and complete them, but she's had the time to do it. And it would take a huge commitment to darkness and pain, which I think she's more than committed to...so, yes." Roland said as his eyes widened in wonder as he came to the same realization as Apple. "It's completely possible."
"The scar!" Percy exclaimed.
"Precisely!" Apple said. "Celia hid her wand in her arm and it left that scar!"
"Not only that, it's a brilliant disguise." Roland said. "Lots of evil sorcerers self mutilate themselves as part of their pledge to pain; it looked just like the real thing."
"So to break her wand, we've just got to break her arm!" Mel-Mel said gleefully.
"I like it!" Liara grinned.
"Break her arm?" Atticus said dubiously. "We can't just float up to her and break her arm!"
"Yeah, wouldn't it have some sort of anti-break charm on it anyway?" Sep said.
"If it does, it probably doesn't work." Roland said.
"Why?" Sep asked.
"That wand is part of her body; aside from casting spells, as it would do in any case, it has to maintain and process blood flow twenty-four seven. That kind of constant strain on the wand would weaken any spells placed on itself and would probably make it even more fragile than usual." Roland explained.
Atticus frowned. "Maybe so, but that's not the main issue. Before we even get close to Celia, she'll sic her mutants on us, hex us, and then feed us to the kraken."
The mutants. The magic fireballs. The kraken. The mere thought of that trifecta from hell immediately dampened everyone's hopes.
"Face it." Atticus said. "Without a way to get past those, we're sunk."
But Apple refused to believe that they were simply sunk. After everyone left, she stayed up half the night looking up everything thing she could about the kraken in the Merlins' personal library. She figured that out of all the obstacles they faced, the kraken was the most formidable and ought to be tackled first.
Most of what she found in the Merlin's books was old news to her. And downright discouraging. According to all the books she read, the kraken was a humongous, fearsome creature with crab and squidlike features. There were no pictures of it though, since nobody wanted to hang around it long enough to take one. It was decidedly carnivorous and had been known to eat entire whales. It was also strong enough to sink several ships at once. And the only way to control it was through Blood Conch (though none of the books described how that process actually worked). Really, the only good news about the kraken was that it was the only one of its kind; after laying a single egg that it fertilized itself, the old kraken would die to make room for the new after a lifespan of a two hundred years.
And it would be too lucky if those two hundred years were nearly up. Apple thought, as she closed yet another useless book. She had gone through nearly every single book that mentioned the kraken and she had found nothing in terms of weaknesses, or how to fight it.
Maybe if I take a little break that will help me think better. She thought. And she reached for her copy of Raidne's Labor. She opened to the last part she had been rereading; the part where a mermaid warrior named Drea was trying to convince King Triton that she should be his queen, and not Raidne:
Forget the missing maiden silver fair
Behold this maiden shining golden bright
She may attempt an impossible feat
I have done more impossible than she
I have fought for my kingdom and my king
I have encircled the twisted demon,
The fish all fear, the dreaded crab-squid
Apple stopped as she realized what she just read. Crab-squid? She thought. The kraken? She had never paid much attention to the warrior character before; she just thought she was a pushy braggart who was meant to be a foil to Raidne. But if Raidne's Labor was based on a true story, maybe this Drea and her claims were real too. Apple looked her up in the history book Atticus gave her.
According to the history book, Drea Gloriosis was a mermish general who led a cavalry of mermaids riding hippocampi. The calvary faced many sea monsters, including the kraken. Although they were unable to kill the kraken as they had with the other monsters they battled, they were able to drive it away from Atlantis so King Triton could injure it with the Trident and discourage it from bothering the kingdom. But after the hippocampi in the calvary rebelled and escaped to the wild, Drea fell into disgrace because she was unable to recapture or retame them.
But I can! Apple thought. Once again, the answer was staring her right in the face. Mr. Shelldon said that more of Galahad's kind had been sighted recently. If Apple could find them, befriend them, and reunite them with the Atlanteans, then they might have a fighting chance against the kraken. If one rider on a hippocampus could charge a dozen sharks, then a hundred hippocampi riders could face the kraken. Such a force could probably do a lot of damage to the mutants too, and such an attack would distract Celia long enough for someone to ambush her, and break her hidden wand.
Apple started throwing things into her purse. She'd have to get moving right away!