Devil's Frost, Spellspinners Series #3 (The Spellspinners of Melas County)

Devil's Frost - Spellspinners 3

by
Heidi R. Kling

Palo Alto | San Francisco

After centuries of living in peace on the Isle of the Seven Sisters, a philosophical schism breaks witches and warlocks apart.

Female witches were eager to use their power to help humans.

Male warlocks were eager to use their power to rule over humans.

When the community succumbs to aggression, a Congression of Spellspinners intervene. The witches and warlocks are banished from the Isle to America, cursed never to marry one another; they would be able to marry only humans, and their offspring would always be their own sex.

Witches are cursed to never fall in love while warlocks are cursed with premature aging as punishment for their greed.

In one hundred years, the witches will become human unless the curse is broken, and in that there is a prophecy of hope. A male who claims the powers of both light and darkness will appear in the Spellspinner community. This chosen Spellspinner—the Roghnaithe—is the key to reversing the curse before the Great Syzygy, a rare configuration of three celestial bodies in a straight line.

The beginning of the Great Syzygy is now.

If the Hundred-Year Curse—placed on the witches and the warlocks by the Seven Sisters—is not broken after a full century apart, modern Spellspinners would face the
Deireadh na N-Amanna
, or the End of Times. Their magic would fade from existence, and modern Spellspinners would be left with only basic human bodies, impotent of the vast powers cultivated by practicing magic.

After centuries of living in peace on the Isle of the Seven Sisters, the stable family unions of male and female witches found themselves in deep-seated philosophical conflict: the women were eager to live among humans and the men lusted for the power to rule over them. Wives accused their husbands of succumbing to the temptations of dark magic. Why else would they want to rule over less-powerful beings? Husbands countered that their spouses weren’t tapping their full potential. Why waste healing energies on human children when they could be increasing their own powers? Individual families began to break apart, and coven communities succumbed to aggression. When the warring covens couldn’t come to terms, violence ensued. The Seven Sisters, a governing, celestial being, were forced to intervene and create a new order.

Ruling Spellspinners were ill equipped to control the great surge of energy that came from the union of dark and light powers coursing between them. The Sisters were left with no choice but to separate the two sides, ordering female witches to continue living among humans but to practice their light magic in secret. Male witches were branded with a new name, warlock, and they were banished from witch communities and the human world. They could practice their dark magic in secret at a candestine school setting and compete twice a year on the solstice against their female counterparts, in the Gleaning, to ensure balance of magic.

To maintain their new order, the Seven Sisters created a council of Spellspinners that would govern over the witches and warlocks. The Congression would be comprised of seven Spinners, the majority of whom would alternate between witch and warlock. All Congression appointments are appointed and approved by the Sisters through a magic oracle.

At the first Gleaning, on the Isle of the Sisters, a tragedy occurred. A warlock murdered the opposing witch he was meant to glean light magic from, and in retaliation, a warlock was murdered by a witch. The Congression intervened, and the Seven Sisters cursed the Spellspinning community as a whole, banishing them from their sacred isle to America. They cursed the warlock community with premature aging as punishment for their greed; witches, for retaliating without permission, inherited the curse of never falling in love. They could marry only humans and would never again know the passionate joy of loving their magical equal. Warlocks’ wives would give birth only to male progeny, Sons of Darkness, while witches would spawn only Daughters of Light.

To punish the community further, the Sisters gifted their female counterparts with eternal youth and indescribable beauty, ensuring that the warlocks would desire what they could never have, while witches would watch their magical equals deteriorate before their eyes, without ever knowing their love.

But there’s a prophecy of hope. Before the hundred-year cycle is complete, a male who claims the powers of both light and darkness will appear in the Spellspinner community. This chosen Spellspinner—the Roghnaithe—is the key to reversing the curse before the Great Syzygy, a rare configuration of three celestial bodies in a straight line.

The Oracle offered this first loosely translated clue:

Under a broken rose moon

lies a broken magic man

with the art of a broken rose moon.

There is rumored to be another part of the curse involving a female Spellspinner, but all evidence alluding to such has been destroyed. This modern Gleaning is the eve of the Transition Year, meaning the witches will start transitioning back to humans unless the curse is broken.

There’s an old-fashioned movie booth at the boardwalk that both intrigues and disturbs me. You slip in a token, churn the vintage bronze handle, and watch as darkly romantic images fade into one another; black-and-white blurs of figures—women, men, children—move in a dancer’s trance against a backdrop of historic carnival rides, their cadence choppy and slow as pieces of film roll over eerie music box tunes.

What happened next was like that.

Only now, our music was angry thunder pounding through storm clouds and low, gasped cries as cloaked Spellspinners moved, hypnotized, toward the crumpled heap of blood and bones splayed in the center of the Stones. Under the gaze of the hooded crowd, my best friend, Orchid, splayed akimbo—an unnatural shape of body parts drenched in malodorous gunk like she’d been bit in half and then spit out of a monster’s gut. Near her rib cage, her white uniform was stained with thick red.

I lifted my shaking hand off of Logan’s now-beating heart and stared at her with sickening disbelief.

Orchid was the doppelganger?

How was this even possible?

The enormity of the betrayal stung as deep as Orchid’s wound.
Her wound
. The blood rushed from her body because of my unknowing hand.
Did my sword pierce her heart?
I was trying to stop the doppelganger, not slaughter my best friend.

How could I have known they were one and the same?

I choked back a cry of pain and guilt so deep it felt like I’d been the one stabbed.
What happened?
I struggled to rewind the events in my head, my scattered mind like that vintage screen, replaying my memories to make sense of them all:

Me finding out Logan was the Chosen One, the Roghnaithe; Logan dying; bringing him back to life using our conjoined amulet, now the most sought-after charm the Spellspinners had; Jude and Jacob doing everything they could to get it.

If Orchid was the doppelganger…then it was Orchid who, pretending to be me, kissed Logan in the forest. Orchid—
my best friend, Orchid—
who not only threw herself all over him but then tried to kill him tonight. Unforgivable! Sickeningly so. Taking my place in the Solstice Stones—the magic-exchanging tournament I’d been training for since I was a new witch—to what end? It couldn’t be because she wanted to be splayed, bleeding,
dying
on the dirt.

“Apply pressure to the wound.” Camellia’s urgent voice sounded as if from far off, as though she were at the other end of a long tunnel instead of kneeling over Orchid’s body. “Stay with me, dear.”

Jacob and the young warlocks, who, only moments ago, were viciously vying for our amulet, flocked to Logan’s side. His eyes were closed, but he was breathing. I had put so much of my healing magic into him. No matter what happened to my betraying best friend, at least Logan, my darling Logan, would be okay. I kissed his hand and then took off across the ring toward Camellia and my mom, Iris, who both tended to Orchid.

I stopped short.

It was much, much worse than I had realized.

Covering my nose and mouth with my sleeve to keep at bay the nauseating stench, like fruit rotting in summer heat, I stood over her. Orchid’s beautifully smooth, olive skin was covered with a black substance like the goo covering a butterfly’s wings after struggling from its cocoon. Her eyes were glued shut with it, her mouth partially opened but filled with it, this vile liquid thick as honey.

Camellia, our Mistress of Light, turned to my mother, whose concerned face was sadly ashen. Long lines of wrinkles stretched across her forehead; the skin under her neck sagged like a paper bag in the wind. The elder witches all looked to be about thirty-four years old, but after using up so much of her magic saving my amulet from evil warlock (and Logan’s adoptive father) Jacob, my mother now looked at least sixty. Her blond hair was predominantly gray; her eyes drooped. I cringed, not because she looked older, but because of what she had given up to protect me.

“Mom, is she g-going to…?” No matter my feelings of rage and anger, the affection I’ve always felt for Orchid crept out in the form of a gasping, desperate voice. My earlier bravado left me shaken and scared. Orchid may have betrayed me, but I didn’t want her to
die.
I wanted her to wake up so I could hug her and then shake the crap out of her, screaming questions in her face until she told me what I’d done to cause her to treat me like this.