With each land his daughters conquered, Prava pieced together the spell for immortality. From the island winds where Eulalia ruled and the shifting deserts that Euphemia pillaged, Prava stole half the spell. From the whispering caves of a lost land where Evadne seduced and the dusty library of a forgetful god where Eustacia connived, Pravawrenched the secrets of the spell’s second half. From the enchantments of Dulcinea’s baleful song and Corisande’s soul-searing lament, Prava knew how the spell wished to be spoken.
Now all that was left was the sacrifice.
It was here that Demelza hoped—needed—to shine. Language and stories were her specialty and it was she who realized the spell had been written in an ink distilled of midday sunshine and thus could only be performed when the sun was at its peak. She had also been the one to deduce that the material upon which the spell was written was not vellum cured from the pelt of a white fawn, but winter moonlight reflected on the snow. One could only read the spell wearing the very same fabric, and missing that detail could have been disastrous. Prava had been so proud of her.Should you ever doubt yourself, my little one, remember that wings are no match for wisdom.The words glowed through her entire being.
Everything was nearly ready for Prava’s spell. Everything except the sacrifice in question.A sacrifice of a_______born of_______and beast.
No matter what Demelza did, she could not coax out the missing words. Someone had injured the sentence, and so it often collapsed from the mere stress of being observed.
For the past year, Prava had been even more obsessed than usual and spent long hours in his study trying to decipher the sentence. Demelza wanted her father to succeed, but in her heart of hearts, she wished to be the one to offer the missing piece. Perhaps then her mother would finallylet her live. Demelza was the last of her sisters to remain in the nest, and if Araminta had her way, perhaps she would never leave.
“You seem rather despondent. Did you get another letter?”
Demelza turned to see the library wyvern at her feet. The wyvern did not look like a dragon. It looked, if anything, like a rabbit. But a rabbit with a long, scaled tail made of writing quills and who occasionally huffed out smoke. The wyvern’s fur was the color of yellowed parchment. Its paws were ink black, and wherever it hopped, it left behind lines of poetry. The only hint of its dragon self lay in the eyes, which resembled banked fires and ancient gold.
Prava had hired the wyvern as his personal librarian when it was little more than a hatchling. It had been cast out of its horde for collecting books instead of gold out of the belief that knowledge was a far greater treasure to possess. Demelza agreed, though why it had chosen to take on the form of a rabbit made little sense to her.
Books are very flammable, the wyvern once told her. And rabbits are delicious.
The wyvern hopped closer, tapping an inky paw on a stack of correspondence.
“You did get a letter,” it said.
Demelza managed a weary smile. “Corisande’s latest report. Shall I read it?”
The wyvern rose up on its hind legs, nodding eagerly. Demelza sighed. Her stomach growled, but she ignored it.She had no desire to go down and see her mother. In fact, she didn’t wish to see anyone.
The library had sensed her mood and cinched the room tight like the drawstrings of a purse. At the moment, the walls of books spiraled up and up, their end point obscured by the webs of fire spiders, whose intricate nests cast a soft glow on the rich green carpets and golden tables piled high with Demelza’s abandoned teacups and notebooks.
Until last year, it had just been Corisande and Demelza left in the nest. Demelza had selfishly hoped that Corisande might never molt but then one day she woke up and saw a pile of brown feathers on the floor of the nest. The next morning, Corisande was sent off to a faraway desert to serve in the court of a young queen as her personal secretary and spy. Demelza read the letter aloud:
“I have foiled yet another assassination attempt, though this one pained me… the queen had ordered her master tailor to sew her a dress so bright that the moon would rise early out of envy, and goodness, Demelza, you would have loved the gown! It was poisoned, of course, and so deadly that the mouse that crept in the shadow of its hem perished on the spot… but still. One must admire the handiwork!
“Thinking of you, dear sister, and confident that you will be the one to solve father’s dilemma. I am sure by then mother will see that you are more than capable of leaving the nest. My hope is that afterward you too shall know the joy of bringing down an entire kingdom! Or conducting your first siege! You are Demelza the Dread, after all!
“Yours,
Corisande”
Demelza set down the letter. Then she grabbed a pillow and smushed it over her face. Then she screamed. When she was done, the wyvern blinked.
“If I might be permitted to make an observation… I see that you are disheveled, horizontal, and clearly hungry. Is your frustration with this letter compounded by the fact that not only is our research going nowhere, but also you have already fought with your mother today?”
“I don’t fight with my mother!” said Demelza, tossing the pillow. “I speak to my mother with reason, compassion and patience. And she returns it with madness, meanness and manipulation.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” asked Demelza. “I didn’t know you had a mother.”
“Oh, not a mother in the sense you understand it,” said the wyvern, twitching its rabbit ear. “I was essentially born from the union of imagination and man’s insatiable greed, but from what I have gathered from my readings, mothers are tricky creatures. Imagine a being racked by the resentments of youth, embattled by societal claims upon its body and beset by an abundance of altruistic love. Even acts of affection might carry poison.”
Demelza grumbled. “Nothing Araminta does seems like affection.”
“I could pull some tomes on mothers who eat their young if that might change your perspective and improve your mood?”
Demelza shuddered. “No thank you.”
“Perhaps at breakfast you should tell her how you feel,” suggested the wyvern.
