“I’m not ready, Nathan… I don’t want this to end. It’s unfair. We didn’t have enough time with her.”
Her father pulled her mother into his arms, holding her tight. His lips touched her forehead and he rubbed her back soothingly with his hands.
“There’s never enough time when it comes to those we love,” he said. “And we don’t know when it will happen, only that it will someday.”
Willow trembled in his arms. “I feel it… something in the air. A darkness is coming… I can’t leave Calli to face a life without us. She’s ours, Nathan. Our daughter, how can you just give up?”
Calli, still living in that past memory, held her little mummy stuffed toy tight, seeing now with adult eyes what she couldn’t understand then. Her father’s gaze drifted from her mother to Calli’s hiding spot. He held Calli’s gaze, as if he knew the adult her was there watching him.
“I’m not giving up,” he said. “I’m steeling myself to be ready to let go so that she might have the life we always wanted for her. I will live my life up until the moment it’s time for me to go, however short or long fate gives me. I’m not surrendering to the prophecy, I’m just not going to do anything different to avoid it. You know how prophecies are, Willow. The more you do to avoid them, the more you sometimes play right into the very situation you want to avoid. What if it doesn’t mean we die. What if it means she must simply leave us? You have to trust yourself, Willow. You’re a good mother, and we have given Calli everything she needs in life, and we will continue to do so until we can’t anymore.”
He had spoken to Willow loudly enough that Calli heard the entire conversation from her hiding spot. Those words were meant for her… the woman who years from now in a future moment in time would find her way back to this memory and hear her father’s heartbroken words.
“I want to fight it, Nathan. I love her too much to accept this…” Willow’s voice broke as she choked on a quiet sob.
“Zelda said we have to leave Calli, so she could find and meet the warlock that would be her destiny. I want her to know the joy of a love like ours.” His father whispered as he held her mother close. “I want her to have everything, Willow. Even if that means saying goodbye.”
The memory slowly turned to hazy smoke and faded away, leaving Calli feeling hollow. She was once more in Zelda’s back room, seated at the fortune-telling table. The air was wispy with the aroma of vanishing spells.
“They knew…” The words rang like the bells tolling at a funeral. They seemed to echo within the valleys of grief growing inside her. How was it possible to feel her parents’ loss so deeply when she’d spent years healing that wound? Now she was breaking into a thousand pieces all over again.
“Knew what?” Malcolm asked.
“That I’d lose them somehow as a child. They didn’t know when or how… just that someday they would be gone and I’d grow up without them.” Why hadn’t she remembered that night? Had it been because of the accident like Malcolm guessed? Had her mind suppressed one of those final memories to keep her safe from a tidal wave of sorrow that was rushing at her now?
Zelda made a soft sound of grief, but Calli was too numb to truly notice. Too numb for anything.
A warm hand covered hers, the heat shooting electric pulses of awareness through her, trying to break through the numbness. She felt so dark, so cold, so lifeless, yet that touch was like soaring high in the sky and looking down at the earth, seeing flashes of lightning on the clouds below storms covered the landscape, illuminating the dark patches with light. It was Malcolm’s magic… rather than her own that she felt through his touch.
Malcolm put an arm around her shoulder, enveloping her in his scent, his warmth. But he said nothing. He was giving her time to sort out all of her feelings and thoughts.
Dazed, she turned to look up at him. “They knew you would come someday, that you and I would…” she couldn’t finish.
Her parents had known that Malcolm would be here someday, that she and Malcolm would witch-lock. Whatever else Zelda had said, she knew that Malcolm belonged to her, with her. But she’d only been able to find him by losing her parents… was it all her fault? To be born with that destiny hanging over her and her parents all that time? She swallowed down the pain that threatened to rise up in her chest and strangle her.
Did I kill my parents? A small terrified voice inside her head asked that question and it felt like she was breaking all over again.
And then she heard another voice, one that sounded so much like her grandmother in her head.
What’s done is done… You weren’t responsible for what happened to your parents. That semi-truck on the road is what killed them. You had nothing to do with that.
That second voice was right. She didn’t cause the accident. She was dozing in the car, had done nothing to cause the accident. She let out a slow, shaky breath as she looked up into Malcolm’s forest green eyes again.
“You won’t leave?” she asked. He was hers, her destiny. And while she still was unsure if they would witch-lock, she trusted how she felt about him right now. She wanted him here with her, whatever would come in the future
Malcolm cupped her cheek, his gaze soft and intense at the same time. “Bewitched broomsticks couldn’t drag me away.” And then he kissed her.
His lips grounded her, spreading heat and light through every cell in her body. She became a tree, growing roots deep into the soil, winding through the earth and bracing her for the storms ahead. Malcolm’s kiss gave her the strength to hold fast, to survive.
Their mouths parted. Malcolm pressed his forehead to hers, his eyes closed as he exhaled. Calli breathed him in, feeling so in tune with him that it should have scared her. But she wasn’t afraid. This gorgeous, caring, wonderful warlock was hers. Whether it was by chance or by prophecy, he was here with her now, and her heart ached at the thought that her parents had died so she could have this, have him.
Malcolm’s eyes opened. Those green eyes of his were so much like the force that spoke her name whenever the leaves unfurled in the spring, making her feel at home.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asked.
“I… I think so.” It was still a lot to take in, a lot to process. But she knew that Zelda was wrong. Malcolm wasn’t going to break her heart. He was going to save it.
Something shifted in the air, within her own soul.
