“From which section did you take it?” Isis asked through a tight smile.
“My own, of course,” Medea promised, hand to her heart. Under her palm, it pounded with excitement to share her new discovery with her sisters. “Don’t you see? With this, the tanglewood tree is always close to me. With this… wand… I can wield my magic more effectively.”
“You think you can,” Circe said. “Or it might explode in your face.”
Her sisters crowded around her, staring at the wand, and Medea displayed it openly for their perusal. To think what they could do if Isis and Circe made their own. How powerful they would be!
“If you die, sister, I can bring you back,” Isis said darkly.
“Can you? For certain?” Fighting back a chill, Medea gave her a sideways glance.
Isis shrugged. “I’ve done it with animals. A baby bird that fell from a nest, a sheep born too early.”
Beside her, Circe shivered. “You scare me sometimes.”
Isis grinned in a way that showed all her teeth, sending goose bumps up Medea’s arms. Medea swore that sometimes her sister enjoyed scaring her and Circe with her dark magic.
“So,” Medea asked through an impish grin, breathless with anticipation. “Will you help me conjure something?”
“That depends. What do you plan to bring forth?” Circe asked.
Medea took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Do you remember when Mother was teaching us our lessons and I asked her where she had learned it all from?”
“She said she learned it in a book,” Isis said. “I’ve never seen a book.”
“Neither have I,” Circe said.
“It’s a source of knowledge. Something that can teach us spells. If we had a book, we could grow stronger and even better at magic.” The wand tingled in Medea’s grip, begging her to use it.
“Oh, a book would be very exciting!” Isis rubbed her hands together.
“So will you help me?”
“Mother and Father would not approve of this.” Circe chewed her lip.
Medea nudged her side and bounced on her toes. “If we do it quickly, they needn’t know. They left on their walk of the gardens not so long ago. It will be some time before they return.”
“But to conjure something, you must hold the thought of it in your mind in a clear and focused manner. How can you conjure a book when you have never seen a book?”
Isis placed her hand on Medea’s. “We have seen one. The paper on which Mother writes her recipes. The one that she says she brought here in her basket. Not quite a book, but you can picture a stack of those papers. A stack of knowledge. I stack ofmagicalknowledge.”
Medea swallowed. “I think I see it in here.” She pointed to her head. “I will concentrate on bringing us the most powerful book of magic that exists anywhere.”
“Oh!” Circe squirmed. Of the three of them, disobeying their parents was the hardest for Circe, but even she could not deny that a book would be a welcome distraction. The garden was so boring, and it seemed they’d exhausted their parents’ knowledge of magic. “Yes. Do it. Do it quickly before Mother and Father return.”
Medea closed her eyes and raised the wand, allowing the power of the tanglewood tree to flow through her. She could feel the energy of the garden below the floor under her bare feet and the pulse of power she was born with deep in the marrow of her bones. With a quiet mind, she concentrated on what she thought a book must look like and her desire for the knowledge it must contain. Her entire body tensed for it. She could almost see it, glinting at the corner of her consciousness.
It was all too much. Sweat dripped down her temple, and her knees began to shake. She swayed on her feet. Isis and Circe held her up, imbuing her with their strength. Isis’s strange power over life and death whirled in her veins like icy water while Circe’s magic grew down her arm like a twisting vine and left the taste of basil in her mouth. Together, they ignited something fierce inside her. What was a glint at the edge of her consciousness became a rush of gold heat.
A heavy weight plowed into her chest, knocking her backward onto her bottom. The fall broke her sisters’ contact with her, and their power cut off abruptly. The absence of her sisters’ touch left her hollow inside. Her eyelids fluttered.
There was something in her arms. Something cold and heavy. Something gold.
“By the gods,” Circe said from above her. “Are you injured?”
She shook her head but truly could hardly breathe beneath the thing. “Heavy,” she rasped.
Isis and Circe reached down and together lifted the weight off her and slammed it onto the table where it rattled the wood. Medea climbed to her feet. She was holding her wand so tightly her knuckles had turned white. Shakily, she placed it back inside her sleeve.
