The Ether Witch

Eli finished tying her black shirt with quick, tight movements. The smell of the freshly lit fire in the room gently coaxing her to not rush out into the night, as the promise of a warm, quiet room all to herself beckoned with all the inviting comfort as a new mother’s voice to her newborn.

The comforter on the low wooden bed had been fluffed and warmed in the sun that day. It was a wonderful weighty thing, and Eli hadn’t been able to have such a luxury and truly enjoy it since she was a child…

But she was only getting a taste of such peace thanks to the very man she needed to go find.

The crescent moon had almost crested the peak of the night sky, and the air was colder than it had been the past few evenings.

She was wearing black pants that she had managed to stow away out of the keen eyes of Ms. Haewon, and while her hair was growing incredibly quickly, it was still too short to fully tie back. Luckily, she managed to keep it out of her face successfully with a black ribbon she tied at the back of her head.

Everything was set, but while turning toward the ground level balcony that she intended to leap over to escape the house unnoticed, Eli halted in her tracks at the sound of the door being slid slowly open.

Her heart leapt to her throat as she expected Tam to appear…

Only it was Luca instead.

The boy had been completely silent throughout dinner, and when he’d asked where his father was, had only been told that Tam would be away studying for a while, but he’d come back as soon as possible…

It had been obvious that Luca had wanted to ask more, but despite his young age, even he had noticed the grim atmosphere that hung over Jeong, Bong, and Eli.

Eli had barely eaten the entire meal.

Bong and Jeong still left that evening, though they didn’t say what they were doing, Eli knew Bong was going to continue to make an impression on the local nobility and build a reputation, while Jeong would look more for Tam.

But Jeong had returned not long ago, and if Eli strained to listen, she could already hear the Zinferan man’s snores echoing down the halls, from her room.

Despite the deepness of the night, Luca proceeded into the room, and closed the door behind himself.

But then, in the dull glow of the firelight, he saw Eli, awake, and dressed.

“Where are you going?” he asked fearfully.

“I’m going to see your father.” Eli faced the child and answered quietly, already listening to see if Bong or Jeong were aware that Luca had snuck out of bed.

Luca stepped forward. “Can I go with you?”

Eli shook her head. “I am sorry, Luca, but your father would want you to stay safe. I’ll be back soon.”

“Is… Is my dad lost?” Luca questioned next, his voice coming out a croak.

The assistant could see in the faint light the tears glistening in the boy’s eyes.

“He isn’t studying… is he?” Luca whispered.

While she debated lying to Luca again, a foreign ache in her chest stopped her… Until she reminded herself Tam would most likely ask her to try to be honest, but not to the point of revealing anything worrisome.

“I don’t know. He might be.”

Luca blinked quickly, forcing his tears back. “Can I wait here until you get back?”

While she wanted to say no, Eli discovered her compassionate side enduring a rapid growth spurt, and so she answered. “Fine. But sleep in the meantime. Your tutor is going to start lessons with you tomorrow.”

Luca’s face wrinkled, making him look more like his usual self.

“Do you promise, Luca?” Eli folded her hands behind her back as she waited sternly.

“Yes… I promise.”

Satisfied with his word, she turned on her heel and strode toward the balcony door.

“Eli?”

The assistant stopped and looked back over her shoulder.

“You won’t leave me, too… right?” Luca looked shy and timid in the firelight, but the way he set his chin showed her he was determined to hear her answer.

Eli let out a breath, her eyes moving to the floor before facing the child again.

“One day I probably will, but not today. Probably in a year.”

“Why can’t we all stay together?” Luca’s voice increased in volume as he was unable to hide his emotions from his face any longer.

“No one stays together forever. Not even families.” Eli was unaware there was a streak of pain and bitterness in her tone as she responded.

“But… why not stay together as long as possible?”

A funny old memory was stirring in Eli’s mind… One where she was screaming at her mother… Begging her to not make her leave for the palace. That she wanted to stay home… And then the way her mother had turned away from her without a word as the emperor’s men grabbed her arms and hauled her away.

Eli had escaped the luxurious inn she had been dropped off by her father at earlier that day only the one time… She never tried again.

The day she had been officially made a princess, she’d been unaware it was happening. She had simply thought she was on a fun outing with her father, and had naively started to think that her parents were going to forgive her for what she’d done in her mother’s quarters when her magic had surfaced…

Eli shoved the memory aside.“Life isn’t kind, and everyone is doing what they believe is best to survive. Being together and relying on people, family or not, is hard.”

“My dad is kind.”

Unable to say otherwise, Eli nodded. “He is.”

“And I won’t leave you… You’re… You’re my mom now. I mean… I have a mother back home, too, and I know with you it’s pretend, but still. Even if you are my dad’s assistant, you talk to me a lot nicer than my mother did anyway.” Luca looked away, pain in his young eyes that rattled Eli to her core as she felt herself resonate with it and recall what made such a look appear.

Rejection, and apathy from someone you loved more than anything or anyone…

Some small instinct in her told Eli that the right thing to do was to hug Luca, but that was for someone who was willing to love others and rely on them.

“I’ll be going now. Get under the blankets. It’s cold tonight,” was the only stiff farewell she could manage, and so she slipped out into the night trying to pull her thoughts from her horrible past and onto the present.

*

The moon had lowered in the sky, and a bird or two chirped in question as a sprinkling of stars started to fade while Eli snuck back into her room.

It had been a frustrating night…

For one, it had been years since she’d used her magic, and letting it loose once more was very disconcerting. Though Eli counted herself lucky she hadn’t really felt an urge to use it in the years she’d chosen not to. She’d never had the troubles Tam evidently did, or the way his sister was rumored to.

That said… it had twinged a few times since Tam had been missing.

Eli blamed the fact that she was so focused on finding a witch just like herself, which automatically made her think about magic.

Though she now doubted using her magic would make all that much of a difference in finding Tam even if it were another witch with different abilities searching for him. She gathered this as even when she used her magic in the street where he had first disappeared, she could sense him, but… she could also sense that he wasn’t quite in their world anymore.

Then, his presence would suddenly disappear. Eli would wait silently, and sometimes he would flicker back, but no matter how hard she looked, or flexed her abilities, she was left clueless and frantic again and again, trying to find some shred of Tamlin Ashowan.

Undressing herself quickly, and slipping back into her shift, Eli crawled into bed and almost yelped when she felt the small body there.

Then she recalled she had told Luca he could wait there, and with her hand still clamped on her mouth, she stared down at him.

He looked so helpless.

His mouth was open, his face slack, and his dark lashes sharp in contrast against his pale cheeks…

Eli finished climbing into bed beside him, and lay staring at him.

“I’m sorry I can’t be a better mother figure for you, Luca…” she whispered. “I just… never really had a mom either.”

Swallowing down the lump that had formed in record speed as she said the words, Eli cleared her throat and turned onto her back to hopefully get a bit of sleep before she had to wake up.

Only she was unaware that when Ms. Haewon came in later to wake her up, Luca’s hand was holding her own as they slept deeply beside one another.

***

Eli continued scrawling down her summary of the day’s events, her eyes heavy as she struggled to stay awake. The evening wind rustled the plum tree, and slid across the back of her neck, making her reach back and gently scratch the spot. She had started logging everything that happened while Tam was gone. That way it would be easier for him to catch up once he returned…

It was the night of the party at Lord Guk’s house, and Eli had been forced through a day of skin care and massages in preparation. Of course Jeong and Bong weren’t of any help when she had insisted she didn’t need it. Really she just wanted to keep trying to track down another witch in Junya, and searching for Tam…

Days had passed without any sign of the future duke. Despite this, every day, Jeong and Bong would search through Junya for him, and at night, Eli would sneak out and look for him herself using her magic.

Unfortunately, she had yet another negative driving factor to her dogged attempts at tracking down her employer…

She couldn’t stand it if one day she had to tell Luca that Tam wouldn’t be coming home.

And so she dreaded going to a party of all things, and yet again seeing Luca’s slim shoulders sag as he’d be left alone once more.

Though his initial foyer into formal lessons and their subsequent homework weren’t really helping his spirits much, remarkably he didn’t seem to be holding them against Eli. Which she was grateful for, though she’d never admit to it.

She couldn’t quite explain what had changed between them in those three days since Tam had vanished, but she did know that she had come to expect returning to her room to find Luca asleep under the feather stuffed duvet, and on occasion, if he had one foot sticking out from under the blanket, she would make sure to get it pulled back into the cozy warmth… And maybe one of the nights she gently rested her shin against his toes when they felt cold.

“Eli?”

She jumped. Had she been sleeping sitting up?

Blinking rapidly, Eli realized the last sentence she had written made no sense, and so she cursed softly to herself.

“Eli.”

She startled a second time, and then belatedly recalled that someone had to be with her to be calling her name.

Looking over her shoulder where Bong and Ms. Haewon stood, she was not obtuse or sleep deprived quite enough to miss their disapproving expressions.

“You should try to sleep before we go tonight,” Bong suggested softly.

Eli made a disgruntled noise in the back of her throat that she knew wasn’t like her usual polite self, and that must have disconcerted Haewon as the woman shifted back subtly.

“Fine. I also won’t stay long at the party. Just until we make the proper introductions.” Secretly Eli intended to slip out again to keep searching for Tam later on.

As Eli stood, Bong waved away Haewon, and fixed his somber gaze on her, drawing her bleary attention to him.

“I know you’ve been going out every night to look for Tam.”

Eli straightened her posture and schooled her expression the best she could with burning eyes.

“You need to take better care of yourself. I know you’re worried about Tam-”

“Pardon me, my lord, but I should go sleep.” Cutting Bong off curtly, Eli inclined herself to him and excused herself.

Nothing had really improved between them since Eli’s outburst the other day when shopping.

Not needing yet another reason to stress, she yet again pushed it out of her mind as she entered her room and eyed the fluffed blankets hungrily.

Without bothering to change out of her day dress, Eli crawled onto the bed, and fell unconscious almost instantly.

As always since her employer had gone missing, her dreams were filled with blackness… and images of Tam as he wandered and called out in the vast empty space. Sometimes he was talking to a peasant man, sometimes he was pulling on something, sweat pouring down his face as he struggled…

Seeing him in this dark world alone, Eli jerked and tossed in her sleep as was the norm over the past few days, only this time a certain boy who would hold her hand through the dreams wasn’t there to comfort her quietly. And so, as her frustration rose, from the depths of her subconscious she uttered,

“Tam… come back.”