Dara, Page, and the Secrets of the Multiverse

▷ 8.4

The bonfire crackled as the flames ate away at the wood she worked so hard to gather. She poked it with a stick she found lying around, glancing at a boy hunkered under her cloak. Out only in her dress, she clamped her teeth over her lips to avoid them chattering.

She woke up to a boy waving a hand over her face as naked as a babe. Another scream had ripped out from her. She remembered bolting upright, skidding back with her palms and feet, and crashing against a tree trunk. Then, pounds of snow landed on her head, almost burying her alive.

Wet and sullen, she dug herself out and dealt with the biggest problem at hand—the beast who turned into a man. "Let me get this straight," Page blurted long after the boy finished telling his story and she had shed her equally soaked cloak just to get him to stop flashing his goods around. "You found a random amulet in a cave, and it granted you magical powers. And you..."

"Avenged my sisters from their reaping," the boy answered. His voice was silky, almost as if he grew up pampered in a docile environment. "It's...a thing from my country. They require girls to enter the temple for a night. By the time they go out, they are never the same."

Page nodded. She was familiar with that crooked practice in the neighboring kingdom. Suddenly, slaving away at a noble's house as early as twelve didn't seem so bad. "And you got even with their offenders?" she asked.

The boy drew the cloak tighter around himself. "I should have known there was a price to pay for having these powers," he said. "I used it recklessly to become the thing that I swore to never be to my sisters."

"You killed them," Page finished for him when he couldn't because of his rising sobs. "As the beast."

"I didn't mean to," he blubbered, wiping his eyes with the back of his hands. "It got to a point when I couldn't control my shifting anymore. I turned on them, and...you know. The dark magic in the amulet was unlike anything I've ever seen."

Page jerked her chin at him. "What's your name?" she asked. A poor attempt at diverting his attention to other things than dead sisters.

"Dara." The boy jerked his chin at her. "You?"

"I'm Page." She offered a hand to him, and he merely stared at it. She waved it towards him as a sign of invitation. "Come on. Don't leave me hanging."

He frowned. "I'd rather not," he said. For someone who was rabid and slobbering a few minutes earlier, he seemed eloquent now. "Who knows what would happen if I touched another living thing."

"None of that." Page waved her hand towards him again. "I have a way to get you back to normal even if you start rampaging. I don't know how it works, but it works. I'll take it."

"Which brings me to the next point of concern," Dara replied, finally taking Page's outstretched hand. Nothing happened save for the blowing of a quiet breeze. Night had fallen on them, bringing about colder winds and a darker haze. Suddenly, the fire crackling between them was the brightest thing around. "How did you get me to shift back? I've tried everything I can, but none worked."

Page debated lying and hiding the grimoire's existence. She fished it out of the bag and held it towards him. "I made the cookies from this," she explained. "I think something about the food I make from the recipes here influenced you or something."

She didn't expect Dara's eyes to widen nor his mouth to hang open slightly. "The Enchantress' grimoire," he breathed. "You opened it?"

Something about the merchant's words from long ago bled back into her mind. "Am I not supposed to?" she asked. Then, it clicked. "Wait, the Enchantress?"

Dara shook his head, his brown hair bouncing against his forehead. If not for the sheepish look on his rugged face, he might as well be the same age as her. "She's a popular figure in our history. The inventor of spells, the first mage, the tamer of beasts. The list goes on. The baseline is that she's powerful," he explained. "When she passed, she enchanted her possessions to never fall into the wrong hands by making them only accessible by her blood. I think you have an idea what it means for you to have opened it."

"Oh," came her clipped reply.

"And her rival was none other than The Wizard," Dara continued. "He made the amulet and the curse on it. I think that was why your...cookies worked. The Enchantress made her magic cancel out the Wizard's spells."

Page blinked. "Oh."

Dara faced her fully. "So, you have to help me," he concluded. "As the last descendant of the Enchantress, only you can open her trove back home. Legends say it's the home of the only spell that could reverse all of the Wizard's spells completely."

"Can't I just give you cookies until you die?" Page quipped.

If Dara was offended by that, he didn't show it. Instead, he shook his head. "The cookies succeeded only in pushing the curse back, enough to allow me to go back to my human form. Eventually, it would be rendered useless as the curse becomes stronger," he said. "I can still feel it, like an ominous shadow at the back of my head."

Page tapped her chin. What was it to her if this boy became a slobbering beast? As far as she was concerned, he wasn't anything to her. But her patrons wouldn't be able to hunt well in the forest with him around. Economy would crash, and resources would be hard to come by. Besides, if the boy turned into a beast here and Page didn't do anything even though she could, wouldn't that be equal to cursing him herself? And what about the people he would hurt? The danger he would pose to the rest of the capital's citizens?

"Fine." Page blew a breath, stirring the flickering flame beyond the tips of her boots. "But only until that cave. Got it?"

"Thank you," Dara said.

Page could have rolled her eyes. "Don't mention it," she said. "We'll go in the morning."

The marshals would find themselves back into her tavern, then. It looked like she would have to close the shop for more than a day this time.