LAMIAE

CHAPTER FIFTY THREE: STONE RUN

"I'm so glad you finally know everything," repeated Arleta for the second time that day. It was Tuesday just after twelve and the girls were waiting for their last lesson - philosophy.

As Dagmara expected, Arleta was already very well informed about the previous day's event and today was completely different from the previous ones.

When she woke up, she didn't think about the information that had been withheld from her. She was already thinking about the information she would soon learn and the questions she wanted to ask. She wanted to sort them out - from the most important to the trivial ones. However, she couldn't. The questions that had once been on her mind were pushed aside after the conversation with her grandmother. Most of them, Genevieve answered her herself, the rest she asked about in the tunnels. What was left was irrelevant, because what she wanted most was to know what her grandmother didn't know. All her doubts came down to one topic, her "destined one". How will she meet him? Will it be a coincidence, will it be planned? Will this boy really be her type?

She tried to think of it. When she closed her eyes, she saw a tall, young man. He will probably have to have brown hair and the same eye color as hers – blue, his complexion swarthy, because she always liked tanned skin. Spaniard, it should be a tall Spaniard with blue eyes who would speak Polish. This would be her ideal, unfortunately an absurd combination.

She still didn't fully understand what happened yesterday. The tunnels didn't resemble reality, just some place detached from the world. Perhaps she would have easily confused these events with a dream, if not for the fact that when getting out of bed at ten o'clock today, Dagmara had to collide with them again. Namely, all the wounds on her body that she suffered while passing through the tunnels disappeared, so the girl no longer had to make up stories in front of the other students about what happened to her face and hands. It was obvious that her grandmother had caused it, when Dagmara came across her last night near the bathroom. However, it didn't take away the pain of the wounds, the pain was a reminder that what was happening wasn't a lie. She removed the visible marks, but the injury still remained under the skin. She took away what was superficial.

The day at school was extremely relaxed. Before philosophy, there was a history lesson, which probably no one, apart from the older teacher, could focus on. Both Nikolai and Alan didn't show up for lessons; Dagmara slowly got used to the empty sight of their bench.

"Yes, me too," she nodded sadly, because she thought to herself that she should have heard the story much earlier. She even had the impression that her grandmother was deliberately deceiving her mind, which at the beginning of her stay searched for the truth, then stopped searching, and then searched again. It was too much of a coincidence that Dagmara thought most clearly when Genevieve wasn't around her.

"How did you find out?" she asked, but Arleta just waved her hand.

"Nothing special. Auntie found me about three years ago."

"That is, before your seventeenth birthday," so far it seemed to her that girls learned the truth a year before they came of age.

"Yes," the girl lowered her voice, moving a little closer to her. "You know, that was the first time I accidentally used magic. When you use magic, even unintentionally, you must talk to one of the aunts."

Dagmara became lost in thought. Something didn't feel right to her.

"But Victoria wrote in her diary that her first contact with magic was when a porcelain swan came to life in her hand. From what I concluded later, she didn't know anything about it for a long time. Secondly, one of the aunts? Is there more of them?"

"Both yes. Yes, because I'm talking about some use of magic visible to outsiders. For example, auntie got to me when, in my anger, I destroyed a building. Fortunately, it was after working hours, so everyone went home. In Kielce, it is your grandmother who guides us, but of course there are more of them. You've even seen them..."

She thought carefully about where she could have seen her "aunts". And the only thing that came to her mind was the unexpected visit to the residence of about a dozen women, as eccentric as her grandmother. It had been some time ago, but she still clearly remembered these rickety, ancient cars in the driveway.

"Yes I know. Then, in the living room..." she could still feel the aftertaste of that humiliation. She felt bad because no one wanted her, and instead of inviting her to the living room to sit with everyone, her grandmother sent her upstairs to her room.

"Yes," Arleta confirmed cheerfully. "There are sixteen of them, one for each voivodeship."

"Is this some equivalent of the Council?" she asked. She didn't understand why women would meet.

"No, no way," she said. "They're good," she said, as if that would forever end the discussion between the differences of these two groups. "They rarely meet at someone's house, but when they do they always talk about politics."

"Politics?"

"That's what I call it," Arleta moved her shoulders slightly. "I'm talking politics, but I mean talking about one of us's eighteenth birthday. The last time you saw aunts, they gathered to talk about my birthday. That's why Alan was invited. He has an idea on how to save me from death and thus not arouse the suspicion of the Council.

Dagmara's next question was interrupted by the bell ringing for the lesson. The class began to lazily line up around her and Arleta, so the girls stopped talking. It was too crowded for them to needlessly risk being overheard.

Philosophy wasn't an interesting subject. It was led by a young man who recited the rules he had previously learned by heart. Their teacher reminded Dagmar of a soldier who, after an ill-fated action, lost the ability to practice his profession and became useless in combat. Due to the loss of his previous passion, without the possibility of returning, he could pursue something stable, which was provided by working at school, but at a terrible price. Dealing with teenagers whose thoughts were more dead than the opponents he killed in battle was far from the apogee of his life aspirations.

"Dagmara?" only now did the girl realize that Arleta was poking her in the shoulder. "Look," she whispered, stealthily passing her cell phone under the bench.

There was a text message from Sandra in the cell phone with the following text:

Arleta, today we meet in Stone Run. Auntie tells you to tell Dagmara that she can come with us if she wants. There will also be a new one, Laura. I can't be there earlier, so we'll meet there at the agreed time."

Seeing that Dagmara had read the message, Arleta took her phone back and replied, adding a smiley face at the end:

OK, bye :)

Then she looked at Dagmara and whispered:

"I'll tell you later."

Returning to the residence by car with Casper, Dagmara learned that Stone Run was just a meeting place for them. In fact, the place they will go to later is a little higher and you will have to climb it.