Lily Pondwhisper's Arc

Chapter 5 of 12

The door slammed behind Lily. She hung in the air of the moth-shaped house, wings buzzing hard. The guardian pressed one clawed hand to the wood and watched her with a single burning eye. She flew higher, out of its reach, and looked for the answer it guarded. Markings covered the inner walls. Someone had scratched them deep into the black timber. Loops, dots, jagged little lines. Lily flew close and traced one with her finger. She could not read a word of it. These marks held the shape of the curse. If she guessed wrong, she could shrink her grandmother and the others forever. Her cat leaped to a low shelf and knocked something loose. A pair of round spectacles fell and clinked on the floor. Dark lenses. Twisted frames. Tiny symbols ran along the edges, the same jagged marks as the walls. Lily dropped down and lifted them. They were heavy for her small hands. "Those will not save you," the guardian said. It stepped off the door. The floor groaned under its weight. "The one who wrote them is under my water. She will not write again." Lily slid the spectacles over her eyes. The dark lenses swallowed the room. Then the wall markings began to glow. The loops and lines rearranged into words she could read. She read fast, mouthing each line. The curse fed on the caster's own fear. To shrink the fairies, the caster had walked into the black lake and given herself to what waited below. The marks named the way back. Return what the water took. Bring the caster to the surface, and the curse would lift. Break it any other way, and the small ones stayed small for good. Lily's chest tightened. She had almost tried to smash the marks apart. That would have doomed them all. The guardian's wings spread wide. "You read them." Its voice dropped low and wet. "Then you know you must come to the water. Come, little light. Come see what I keep." It was not warning her off now. It wanted her below. That scared her more than the claws. Lily backed toward a colored window. She kept the spectacles on. Through the dark lenses she saw thin glowing script on the glass too, marking a seam where the pane met the frame. A way out. She pushed the rose gold rod against the seam and pried. The pane swung open. Cold air rushed in off the lake. The guardian lunged. Lily dove through the gap with her cat close behind and shot toward the black water below. She understood the curse now. She knew how to break it. But the only way to break it led straight down, under the flat dark surface, to the trapped caster and the thing that had awakened there. She hovered above the lake and stared at her own reflection through the witch's dark lenses.