Blight
“This excerpt comes from one of my favorite worlds. I started with the idea of a magical charm bracelet, and Jamael just sprang to life. I hope you enjoy this little glimpse into a modern world full of charming magic . . . and characters who definitely aren’t telling each other the whole truth.”
This story won a Silver Honorable Mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest.
"In there?" I ask, incredulous.
Jamael said we’d get right to work, which I thought meant heading straight to the Under Man’s safehouse. Instead, he’s brought me here, to this blackened piece of real estate.
He nods, his gaze fixed on the cottage barely visible through the twisted trees and thorn-choked brush. There’s a tightness to his eyes that wasn’t there before, a tiny crack in his cocksure mask.
I don’t like this place, either.
The rest of this neighborhood is quaint. Charming. The other houses boast brightly painted gabled roofs, white picket fences, front gardens overflowing with a boisterous abundance of flowers. My kind of place.
Not this cottage. It’s as if a blighted old forest bought a cottage in this historic neighborhood just to spite the homeowner’s association and then it did its level best to send them into an apoplectic fit.
Deadwood trees thrust themselves from the ground, their blackened, twisted trunks clawing at the sky. Thorny bushes crawl between them, laying siege to their taller cousins. And in the middle of it all squats a once-white cottage, now gray and half-consumed by a network of black ivy, lustrous in the shadows as it assaults the windows, the roof, and half the door.
I suppress a shudder. “You’re joking.”
My skin crawls and my fingers itch to call forth my father’s magic to battle these . . . these weeds, these interlopers from a black wode. The blight runs deep. I may not be able to uproot it, but still, I want to try.
“Not about this.” Jamael glances at me, his icy eyes bright. “I never joke where the Under Lord’s involved.”
“I am not going in there.” I hug my arms to myself. I belong in a forest of golden sunlight and abundant growth. Not in some twisted nightmare of what a forest has been. Everything about this place is wrong.
“There’s nothing to be scared of, love.” He loops his arm around my shoulders.
I shrug him off with a scowl. “I’m not afraid.”
He raises a brow.
“A blightborn lives there,” I point through the tangled thorns to the barely visible cottage. The beast’s dark magic looms in my mind: moldy and full of malicious decay. Intransigent creatures, difficult to exterminate. Their blight has no place in this world.
Jamael’s expression turns assessing. “And do you have much experience with blightborn?”
If only he could see my scars.
I snort. “Trust me, you don’t want to touch anything created by a blightborn.”
“Are you worried about me, love?” Jamael’s voice is cloyingly seductive, like getting tangled in a century-old lilac bush.
I roll my eyes. “I’m worried about the wisdom of getting sidetracked. We need to focus on the job.” Liliana’s terrified face is all I see when I close my eyes.
“Oh, but that’s what I’m doing. I just need to collect something first.”
“I don’t like it.”
His grin is quick and cocky. “It’ll only take a few minutes. And if it makes you feel any better,” he fiddles with his bracelet as he steps onto the thornily narrow path winding towards the cottage, “You can wait here.”
I sense magic – warm sandalwood seeps through my mind like sunlight through a dappled canopy.
Ah, so Jamael has a darkbarrier charm. They’re terribly useful to have around, and they’re not easy to acquire. When activated, they create a magical shield around you that darker magics find difficult to penetrate, similar to how an oil-coated dish resists water.
What other charms does Jamael’s bracelet hold? The wrong ones could be detrimental to my plan. Either a brethren charm or a repellant charm could bring the whole thing crashing down, and then I’d never recover Liliana.
Jamael wends through the deadwood trees and bushes, graceful like a dancer. Confident, too, like the three-inch-long thorns – red-tipped, of course – he’s passing pose no more danger to him than fern fronds. He reaches the front door and flashes that cocksure grin at me over his shoulder before knocking on the dark wood. It opens a moment later, and he whisks inside the cottage.
Despite myself, I worry for him. Only a little bit. Because I need him to rescue Liliana, of course. I can’t do that without him.
But what could he possibly want from a blightborn? Their magic can’t be trusted. It always carries a steep cost.
I tear my gaze from the cottage and wander along the line of deadwood trees nearest the sidewalk. The thorny bushes huddle a few feet away, as if unwilling to try to claim the space closest to the sidewalk. That’s fine by me. I don’t fancy those thorns ripping into my flesh. Nasty things.
I lay a hand on one black, twisted deadtree trunk. The tree’s pain screams through the sharp-edged bark, slicing into my mind. Once this tree was verdant, healthy. But the blightborn’s presence corrupted it. Hateful creatures, blightborn, usurping the natural order wherever they go. You have to root them out before they sink their roots too deep.
Unbidden, a tendril of my father’s magic slips into the poisoned tree. Wood morphs under my hand, regaining color while green bleeds through the blackened leaves. I feed more and more magic into the tree until it stands reformed in front of me, brilliantly alive against the backdrop of deadwoods surrounding it.
Tears prickle at my eyes. Am I cruel to have restored the tree, knowing the change is only temporary? Once I leave, the blightborn’s influence will reassert itself, and this tree will become deadwood once again. Unless . . .
A voice rustles like dry leaves. “You know it won’t be allowed to stay that way.”
I spin.
There, squatting on the lowest branch of the closest deadwood tree, a bark-skinned being studies me from a childlike face. A wode nymph.
“I couldn’t help it,” I say.
She cocks her head, her ashen eyes somber. “No, I suppose you couldn’t have, my Lady. You greenborn are always so . . .” she gestures towards the now living tree with a grimace, “Helpful.” She says it like a curse.
“I’m not your Lady.”
She shrugs and shifts on her branch, one disproportionately long leg dangling beneath her, the other bent so her knee is level with the top of her head.
“You could have been, once.”
“Before he came?”
She nods. Blightborns don’t just corrupt trees.
“Perhaps I could’ve.” I slide my hands into my pockets, “But then again, perhaps not. Blood is everything and mine –”
“Yours is exceptional.” Hunger glints in her eyes and sharp black teeth poke from between her lips. “I can smell it from here.”
“Mine’s inconvenient,” I say, casually taking a step backwards.
I’m not afraid of her, but the last thing I need is a wode nymph trying to sample my blood. What would I tell Jamael if he came out while she had her teeth in me? He still believes I’m fully human. I think.
“That’s because you don’t use it properly.” She loops an elbow around her bent leg.
It’s my turn for a toothy grin.
“Who says I don’t?” A touch of my other heritage creeps into my voice, grating like steel on stone.
She scrambles to her feet, backing against the tree trunk.
“I don’t want any trouble, Lady.”
“Then don’t spread your roots where they don’t belong.”
She flees.
I turn back to my tree. It’s a glorious specimen with broad, achingly green leaves and a mahogany trunk. Knowing it’ll return to its previous deadened state makes its beauty poignant, raw. My heart clenches. I shouldn’t have interfered.
I glimpse a few stones nearby, each about the size of my hand.
Perhaps the tree doesn’t have to revert after all.
I dig the stones free of the loamy earth. One by one, I imbue each with my mother’s magic, filling them with intention. My finger traces over the stones and my magic carves runes into their rough faces: Life, Protection, and, I smirk, thinking of Jamael, Constancy. And then I place the stones in a circle around my tree, nestling them against its roots.
Now it can never be corrupted.
Jamael emerges from the blightborn’s cabin moments later. He winds his way back to where I wait for him on the sidewalk, a smug smile stretching his face.
“I’m guessing you got what you came for?” I ask.
“And for a very good price.” He pats his hip then gestures down the street. “Shall we?”
I walk that way. “Happy to.”
“That’s interesting,” he says after a few paces. He’s looking back towards the blighted land we just left.
I glance back. “Hmm?”
“I could’ve sworn there were no living trees on his property.”
I shove my hands into my jacket pockets, hiding the dirt beneath my nails. “Really?”
His eyes gleam. Cunning glints in those icy depths.
“I guess I was mistaken.”
“Won’t be the first time, love.”
