Page 20 of Wicked Curses
Zeth glanced at the clock. “I’ll be returning to mine soon.”
“Have a good one.”
“You too.”
Sahira made her way out the door and descended the steps. Once there, she realized she had no idea where to go and stood looking up and down the street.
It was much quieter today, and the only one around to ask was a witch glaring at her from the porch across the way. Preferring to be lost, Sahira turned to the right. They’d mostly gone toward the left yesterday, and she didn’t recall seeing a library.
Unlike her brother and niece, she wasn’t a big bookworm. She read occasionally but didn’t spend every spare minute buried in books like they did.
She preferred working in the garden, where she tended her herbs and flowers. She was never happier than when she was turning the land over, planting seeds, and checking her plants. The feel of dirt running through her fingers always brought comfort and peace.
If she could live with her fingers in the earth, she would. She loved everything about it, from the smell to the touch to the worms crawling beneath the surface and making her plants healthier.
As a child, she’d spend hours in the gardens with her father. He wasn’t a big gardener, but to make her happy, he’d sit there watching and helping her while Del read under the shade of the willow tree.
As she got older, he didn’t have to supervise her, but he’d still sit there, trying to help in his awkward way. His fingers were always too big for seeds, and he lost more than he successfully planted.
He never gave up, and he never stopped coming to sit with her. It was their bonding time as they either talked about the plants and what was on their minds or sat in comfortable silence.
They were some of her best memories, and she smiled as she recalled them. He’d been gone over four hundred years, but his loss still caused a pang in her heart.
She would have much preferred the gardens to the library. She was part witch and, as such, felt a stronger connection to the earth and all living things. Even now, the life force of this realm vibrated through her boots and into her body.
This place was like an outer realm in many ways, but it had far more life flowing through it than any of the others she’d visited. That life was one more mystery about this place.
With a sigh, she studied the town as she walked. Life thrummed through the ground, but no birds took to the air, and no animals scurried through the town. Despite the low hum of conversations, the realm was eerily subdued.
In the distance, the large gardens next to the lake shimmered in the red sun. The planted fields were opposite where the witches and warlocks resided in their tepees and homes.
Behind those residences were the remnants of a dwindling forest. The trees had no leaves but still stretched toward the sky.
Sahira suspected the witches did most of the work in the gardens, but she hadn’t decided against working in them because of the witches. They’d been anything but welcoming since she arrived; in this realm, things were the same as they’d been for centuries.
She was fine with that and used to dealing with a bunch of assholes. She hadn’t chosen the library over the gardens to avoid those snotty shrews; she’d chosen it because she hoped to find answers in the books there.
Or at least she hoped there would be answers. For all she knew, there were fifty books in the whole place, all on the joys of cooking.
She was sure that, with all the immortals here, at least a few had read through all the books. She wouldn’t be satisfied thinking there was nothing to be found in them until she read them all herself.
She could always switch to working in the gardens if there weren’t any answers in the library. She could ignore a bunch of witches if it allowed her to dig in the earth, and Belda said she could do some extra work and earn more things if she helped tend the gardens after the library.
For now, she hoped the library possessed some answers or something to help her flee this place. She’d find out when she got there.
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
She strolled past more houses,stores, and immortals as she searched the eclectic buildings for the library. At the end of the road, a wooden tower with a ladder on the side and a pole descending from the center of it stretched fifty feet into the air.
A single immortal stood beneath the tower’s bell; a rope dangled beside him. It was one of the bell towers she’d seen on the list of jobs Belda set before her. Unlike most other jobs, there weren’t any openings for work in the bell towers.
Sahira stopped and shaded her eyes against the red sun as she turned to search the skyline. Another tower was located at the far edge of town to her right. Another rose from the earth back toward the pit, and a fourth was a couple thousand yards away, at the other corner of town.
Immortals manned all the towers; they remained resolutely focused on the Barren Lands beyond the town. Those in the towers would be the first to notice the scarog beetles coming for them.
Despite the warm day, a shiver ran down her spine at the reminder of those flesh-eating monstrosities. She wasn’t looking forward to seeing those things and hoped to be gone before they arrived.
Sahira continued down what she considered the main street, but when she reached the end, she didn’t see a library. She glanced at the different roads beyond this one; it wasn’t a big town, but she wasn’t in the mood to wander until she stumbled across her new place of work.
