Ruby Red and Gentilberry Green: A Fantastical Romance - Part XXVII

This is the twenty-seventh part of an ongoing serial. Here are Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six. Updates every two days, barring minor mishaps.

It felt like she was falling through the sky again, only this time instead of the sky it almost seemed like she was inside a world-sized diamond. Light shot through the unseen corners all around her, splitting into a million prismatic shards. Her own face, the off-kilter mask of the other her, preened smugly from every side.

She opened her mouth, expecting to be slapped by the rushing air, but instead felt nothing at all. It was even worse, somehow, in that endless tumble. Like if she kept this up for much longer her soul would stretch out from her body like so much wet clay.

"Who... who are you?" she gasped. "Why..."

The other her smirked, a million times at once. She was just like Anne herself, only now that Anne could get a closer look, her hair was an unconvincing shade of off-red, and her eyes were...

Sky-blue?

"Do you even have to ask that question? I'm you."

"Another me," said Anne. "Fantastic. So, where do you come from?"

"Oh, not very far," said the other Anne. "By your reckoning, it's about two years in the future."

"What?"

The other Anne snickered and made a gesture. Anne balked, her confusion only doubled. She had stopped falling. She was standing in a blank white space, filled with the murmur of a brook and the scent of apple pie. The space beneath her feet had all the texture of new-grown grass.

No, that wasn't right. She was never falling to begin with. She wasn't anywhere. By a completely strict definition, she was in the space between worlds, and so...

"I'm not anywhere at all."

"Wrong," said the other Anne, stepping into view. With a jolt, Anne realised that the other girl was wearing the green dress that had appeared in her closet on Necristo's world, the day before that fateful breakfast. "You are very much somewhere. Or at least, you are now. You can call me Annabel, I suppose. It might make things easier."

"I hate it when Ma does that," muttered Anne.

The white parted at Annabel's feet like water, revealing the tufts of green beneath. The grassy pool shimmered like mother-of-pearl at the edges.

Soulstuff. Anne stared down at it, resisting the urge to dip her fingers in the silvery white.

"I hope you have an explanation for this," she said.

Annabel rolled her eyes and waved her hand.

"Oh, those old things? Why, when I was your age, I..."

Anne concentrated. The soulstuff behind her splashed, hung in the air, then turned to shards thin as the edge of a fine knife. Annabel whistled.

"Well, you do learn quickly, don't you? I'm not here to tangle with you, just so you know. We have better things to do. Don't we?"

And with that, the air beneath Anne turned into a high chair. She gasped as her legs splayed up, slamming her skirt down out of merciful habit. The weaponized shards burst, one by one, into rose-petals, before fluttering down to float in the soulstuff.

"You're a sorceress!" Anne gasped.

"As are you," said Annabel. "Or, well, half a sorceress. Funny how that happens, isn't it?"

"Necristo gave me his power," said Anne, getting to her feet with no small amount of ill-will.

"He did not," balked Annabel.

"He did," said Anne.

"Did you take his heart?" asked Annabel.

"No," said Anne, feeling very much like a large rat in a tiny cage. "Or at least, well, not the way Aunt Mattie wanted me to. Or the way he wanted me to. Or... look, look here, just how does this whole heart business work anyway?"

Annabel blinked. Anne fumed.

"Oh, gods," said Annabel. "You have no idea how magic works, do you? You're the dumbest me I've seen in a long time. What do you do, count chickens all day?"

"I don't even know what to believe anymore," groaned Anne. "Everyone tells me different things. I have a knife in my pocket that takes hearts, so all I had to do was stab Necristo to take his heart and his power. But then Necristo wanted me to take his heart to kill him without his power, but then it turns out I had Necristo's power anyway..."

"Did they really tell you different things," frowned Annabel, "or is that just what you took away from the whole kerfluffle?"

Anne put her head in her hands and thought harder than she'd ever thought in her life.

"Bingo," said Annabel, snapping her fingers. "I knew it. Always happens."

Anne emitted a low whining noise.

"See," said Annabel, sounding very pleased at the opportunity to lecture her inexperienced self, "magic is a bit like language. Spellcasters know letters, witches can use syllables, and wizards sometimes have dictionaries... oh, but you wouldn't know what those are, do you?"

"I know what a dictionary is!" burst out Anne, stamping her foot in impotent rage. "It tells you to speak good!"

"Exactly," said Annabel. "Now, it just so turns out that we sorcerers and sorceresses can, in fact, speak good. But riddle me this, other me: if a man asked you for your heart, what would you think he wanted?"

"My hand," pouted Anne.

"And that," said Annabel with a dust of her hands, "is exactly what the problem with sorcery is, because he might darn well get it right off your wrist. Once you get up there, to the point where you're breathing and blinking magic, the meaning of spells doesn't really matter anymore. You can do almost anything, as long as you own the world you're on. And because of this..."

"If you're not careful," breathed Anne, "magic does everything at once."

Annabel nodded, then lowered her gaze.

"Sorcerers can't die, plain and simple. Not even if you take our hearts. Most of us give up our hearts at Skalathos. Sell them for power, or pleasure, or just the convenience of not feeling anymore. They get kept in a vault, you see, safe from prying hands."

The sorceress touched her left breast. Anne shuddered.

"Necristo didn't give up his heart," she said. "He kept it."

"It was a silly thing to do, really," said Annabel. "I'm not from his batch, there's more than one of us... but still, if I knew the guy, I'd be all over his case by now."

"Why?" asked Anne. "He said if I took his heart I could kill him."

"The greatest magic is bound in the heart," said Annabel. "The powers of Creation and Destruction, the secrets of soulstuff, the Phoenix Charm... Wizards know that, or at least the good ones do, but they're too scared to do anything about it. It's why they keep their magic in words and gems and wands, because that way, they don't have to risk who they are. True sorcerers have to give their lives to their magic. They have to purge their hearts and leave themselves empty. But if someone, theoretically, were to steal and fill a sorcerer's heart with something other than magic, like love..."

"He would lose his power," said Anne. "He would die."

"Well, not all at once," said Annabel, "but you're more or less right. He would lose his immortality. I bet your Aunt Mattie never told you to destroy his heart, only take it. That's because destroying his heart wouldn't do anything at all. The best ones all do that, just to make a point. They crush their hearts and become greedy, and empty, and cruel."

"And lonely," said Anne. "Which level are we working on again?"

"Both," grinned Annabel. "And you should see their worlds!"

The thought was too depressing to even dwell on for too long.

"So if I used this..."

Anne pulled Hearthunter from her dress pocket and let it spring to its normal size. Annabel made an appreciative noise.

"That's a strong one," she said. "No telling what it'd do. It could make him fall in love with you, or it could rip his heart clean from his chest and plop it right in your lap. The first one would be more or less fatal. The second one... eh. By the way, if you didn't use that, how did you get half his magic in the first place? It's like he's already smitten."

"He..."

Annabel looked at her expectantly. Anne flushed, then blanched. Everything, at that moment, slid right into place.

"I need to go," she said. "Can you send me to Necristo's world?"

"Not if you don't know the way," said Annabel. "But I have a feeling that one might."

Anne turned around, opened her mouth, and saw Uncle Matt.