Mutante: Chapter 19
Copyright 2023 Elizabeth Frerichs
Rosie smiled up at Farfandal. She wouldn’t consider him a friend, per se. But it was nice to have someone else see her red tail as something special, rather than something to be hidden or shunned. “Thank you so much, Farfandal.”
“I did not choose to accept the blessing,” he said. “Goodbye, little one. I do not know if we will meet again, but I am certain I will enjoy all your adventures, regardless.”
Rosie bit her lip. “Right. Well, goodbye.”
“Thank you for your advice, Sir Worm,” Robert added.
Farfandal nodded and then slipped back into his hole.
The path’s ending was clearly visible to her even as the fireworm’s light dimmed, and anyway, she could feel it pulsing away in her bones. She couldn’t have gotten lost even if she’d tried. Robert appeared nearly blind, and so she held his hand, guiding him forward.
They emerged onto the path and its lightened gloom.
“Well, that was—unexpected,” Robert remarked.
Rosie giggled a bit hysterically. “You’re telling me.”
“I’m just glad you’re all right.”
“What happened?” Thomas demanded. “Were you able to obtain the necessary hair?”
Rosie nodded. “He gave us at least ten hairs.”
Thomas’s jaw dropped. “Gave? Ten? What happened?”
Rosie and Robert exchanged a glance, both amused by the mirror’s consternation. They took turns telling him what exactly had occurred, and at the end, he stared at Rosie in awe.
“I have never met someone blessed by a fireworm. I had heard such a thing was possible, but . . . . And a mutante? Your grandmother always maintained that your tail was something special before the curse. I wonder if she knew it was an omen.”
“Yeah,” Robert said, crossing his arms. “Why doesn’t the Witches’ Council know about your tail? Shouldn’t being a mutante be a good thing? They ought to be praising you, not ignoring your gifts.”
Rosie shrank back. The Witches’ Council wanting something from her? And her mother! Mariya would either be thrilled by the publicity and prestige or she would complain endlessly about how it disrupted her very important things to do. “I—let’s just focus on one thing at a time. We have to get the black sand and then make the potion.”
“And free your grandmother,” Robert said dryly. “We’ll have to go gather some of the other kelp varieties.”
“Right. Kelp first and then sand, since it’s right by the house?” She turned to Thomas. “Where do you propose making the potion? If Aunt Rina has put up traps all over the house . . . not to mention that stupid monster lurking about now. It might even have gotten out of the house since we left.”
“There is a small shed behind the house. If its wards are still intact, it would be the safest place in which to mix the potion.”
“Ok, then kelp first,” Rosie said with a smile. “I suppose, since it’s proving so useful, you could collect several fronds, Robert, as long as we keep them separated and don’t handle them directly.”
Robert smiled and swept her a deep bow. “I am more than up to the task, my lady.”
She shook her head fondly. “I think I have some containers that would suffice in grandma’s supplies.” She turned to Thomas. “What color kelp did you say we needed?”
“Turquoise.”
With hardly a thought, the rhyme rose to the surface of her mind and she said it. The path seemed to wriggle and then the tunnel did more than warp—it opened up like a cathedral, pushing aside the kelp and other creatures, reaching all the way down to the ocean floor and growing until it was wide enough for five merpeople to swim abroad or above each other’s heads.
“Whoa!”
Rosie blinked at the path. How had the rhyme had such a drastic effect? “It’s never been like this before,” she murmured. “Maybe I changed the rhyme more than I thought I did.”
Thomas cleared his throat. “If I may, I believe the primary difference is in you.”
“In me?”
“Your grandmother had her suspicions, even before the curse happened, and I have been watching you closely over the past few days.” Thomas paused as though deliberating how best to phrase his thoughts.
“And?” Robert prompted.
“What is it?” Rosie put in. What had she done wrong?
Thomas sighed. “I do not believe I am the best person to discuss this with you, however, as your mother has not seen fit to inform you and there is no one else around . . . . Miss Rose, you are a witch.”
Rosie stared at him. “I’m sorry, I must have misheard you. Could you repeat that?”
“You are a witch,” Thomas repeated.
She shook her head. “Me? A witch? Wouldn’t I know if I was a witch?”
Thomas raised an eyebrow. “You have been consistently doing magic, apparently from a young age, if you were the one to use that compass rock your grandmother gave you.”
“No, I—that doesn’t even make sense.”
“It doesn’t? Have you not been using the compass rock? And have you not used the spell to create the path multiple times in the past three days?”
“And you were able to tell which was the real path yesterday,” Robert put in.
Rosie held up a hand. “If I was a witch, someone would have told me. Magic testers would have been called, and—” And she didn’t want to be a witch! She didn’t want anything to do with magic!
“I imagine no one thought it necessary, as Madam Essie is one of the best magic testers in the kingdom,” Thomas said firmly, though the tension around his eyes betrayed his discomfort.
“But wouldn’t my parents have known?” Rosie pointed out. They couldn’t have known and just—not told her, could they? They wouldn’t have. Right?
Thomas nodded. “Certainly your mother would have recognized the signs from when she and your aunt were children, even if Madam Essie did not enlighten her.”
“But—” Rosie swayed. If her Mother had known . . . . “Why wouldn’t she have told me? Why wouldn’t she have gotten me training? She’s hired tutors for everything else under the sea! Surely, she would have had me tutored in magic if I really was—am a—a witch.”
Thomas’s expression softened. “I cannot pretend to know your mother’s mind. I would imagine that she was trying to protect you from the fate your grandmother and aunt suffered.”
Rosie glared at him. “But that had nothing to do with them being witches! The tiara would have cursed anyone who touched it!”
“Merpeople are seldom rational when it comes to their loved ones,” Thomas said gently. “Your mother may have simply eschewed magic. Has she ever called the path?”
Rosie’s tail twitched agitatedly. “I—well, no. She just told me that Grandma had left instructions for getting to her house, and I always came with her because no one was available to watch me—” Except that clearly her mother could have found someone to watch her. “Mother never said the rhyme. She said I might need to know it later and to think of it as a training exercise.”
“Because she does not have magic herself,” Thomas said. “Lady Mariya could not have called the path.”
“But—” Rosie’s thoughts twisted and turned as though they were caught in a waterspout, going round and round, trying to make sense of the information Thomas had just dumped on her.
A real waterspout sprang up in front of her.
“Quickly! Calm her!” Thomas hissed at Robert.
Robert reached for her hand and began to stroke it soothingly. “I can’t imagine how difficult this is, but please calm down, Rosie.”
“Slow your gills, Miss Rose,” Thomas instructed, his tone becoming strained as the waterspout expanded, reaching downward towards the ocean floor.
“But I—I can’t be a witch!” she wailed. “I can’t be!”
“Don’t worry about that right now,” Robert said, eyeing the waterspout. He pulled her into a tight hug. “It’ll be all right.”
Rosie’s eyes stung. It would be all right? It involved magic! Magic that she wouldn’t be able to just pack away in a closet until the day she died. Plus, she was already a disappointment to her mother. If she really was a witch, that disappointment would only grow. And what about the townspeople? Would they be terrified by another witch in the family? Was she destined to become evil like her grandmother and aunt?
“Miss Rose!” Thomas snapped. “You must control your emotions. Your magic is too strong. If you don’t calm down, you will injure one of us!”
A/N: Poor Rosie! Finding out that everything you believed was a lie is a horrible feeling.
See you on Thursday!
