Page 100 of Castle of the Cursed
Antonela’s face slackens with a bewilderment that seems to rob her of speech.
“I am not proud of this,” Brálaga explains, “but most—if not all—of your classmates will perish here. We pump their blood to run this world, and as their bodies wear out, we must cycle in a new generation of children. Graduation means your class will soon be swept into the walls.”
Antonela looks as horrified as I feel. I stare, transfixed, at the sentient flesh surrounding us. The walls contract subtly at a steady rate, hardly noticeable, almost like they’re breathing. It makes me wonder if the other castle exists in the belly of a living creature.
“Why are you admitting all this to me?” asks Antonela, and my own muscles contract in fear for her fate.
“Because this is not your path,” says Brálaga. “Humans are something of a special project of mine. You are young evolutionarily. You do not yet have interdimensional travel, and as your world is ruled by matter, it is not hospitable to many species. Yet humans’ greatest asset is also their greatest flaw—their outsize emotions.”
Antonela presses a hand to her heart, like she’s pointing to where she feels.
“Exactly,” they say. “That is why at school we aim to stamp it out of you. The affliction of emotions is not exclusive to humans, yet the ailment is more prevalent among your kind because you do not possess magic. There is no counterbalance to the power of feelings.”
As if to illustrate, my sister’s face sours. “Why am I here if I was never cut out for casting?”
From her defiance, I know her classmates and this castle have not broken her. Not yet.
“Because I am betting on you.”
Brálaga’s voice deepens, and on hearing that note of pride again, I wonder if they realize they’ve also succumbed to this affliction of outsize emotions. “You lack power because magic requires sacrifice. You risk nothing because you believe you have nothing to lose. Until now, you never wanted.”
Antonela looks confused, and I don’t blame her. This is all overwhelming. She’s gone from lifelong numbness to experiencing every feeling possible.
“At first, I scorned and pitied humans,” Brálaga goes on, like they’re conversing with a friend. “I could not believe such a weak species had not been destroyed. Yet I watched them for so long that something happened which I did not anticipate… I fell in love with the fools.”
Brálaga smiles again, and I spy Mom’s and my solitary dimple.
“So my bloodline was born. Yet before abandoning the dimension, I left a way for my most gifted descendants to cross over.”
“Why would you want humans here at all if we are so weak and ill-suited for magic?” Antonela seems to be reading my thoughts.
“You are here because I want something as well,” says Brálaga. “My goal is for my blood to become the building block of magic on Earth. For that to happen, I must keep waiting for one of you to make it back.”
“What do you mean by one of you?”
“My dear,” says Brálaga with a pitying look. “Not a single human caster has ever survived.”
CHAPTER 23
THE ALEPH OF MEMORIES IS back, and in every window, Antonela is either studying or training.
One of the windows grows larger, and I see my sister reading from a very small collection of tomes. Now that she knows what she is and where she comes from, she must have a sense of where to look.
She finds the journals of other descendants who hailed from Earth. None of their stories are complete, but one thing is clear across all of them—to make it back, one must locate their bloodline on Earth and establish a connection.
I watch my sister in a corner alone, sitting in a meditative pose. Eyes closed and lids flickering, she’s chanting something under her breath. A spell.
She pulls back the sleeve of her cloak and looks at the inside of her wrist. There’s a tattoo I never noticed: a circle made up of twelve black moons, only the twelfth one is fading.
It must be a gift from Brálaga so she can track how long she has left.
Time swirls around us, splitting everything into more windows where Antonela is spending all her time meditating to retrieve her memories and studying solutions in what must be the library. All the while, the moons keep fading from her skin.
When the next scene grows larger, half the moons are already gone.
Antonela is chanting, working on her memory spell, when she conjures something. Images manifest in the air, and she opens her eyes to a film playing out before us.
My heart hurts.
