“What’s happened to you?” I asked.
Her mouth stretched in a small smile. “What must happen to all of us.”
“What?”
“Never mind that now,” she said. “Consult your letter again.”
My eyes shot to the parchment to discover a new note.
“What are you waiting for? We’re standing right in front of you. Kill us.”
There were lots of things about those few words that sent my head into a tailspin, though the first that surfaced was: We are standing? Hortencia was here, but I couldn’t see…
No sooner had the thought entered my mind than I caught a glimpse of another frail, old women approaching from the other side of the crater. She was exactly the same height as Hortencia and the structure of her face was identical too. The only striking difference between them was that Pythia was stark naked.
I fixed my eyes firmly on Hortencia’s face. Apparently Pythia was the more, ahem, eccentric of the two.
Pythia slunk up to us, her face panned up to me as she stood beside her sister. They linked hands.
“Well?” Hortencia quirked a practically nonexistent brow. “What are you waiting for?”
My focus returned to the note. “I-I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Does this smoke impair your tender little eyes?”
“I can read,” I said, exasperated. “But I can’t kill you!” Hollow disappointment swelled in the pit of my stomach. All throughout this journey, since the very beginning, I’d been hoping that she would have some trick up her sleeve to get us all out of this—one that wouldn’t involve actual murder. That was crazy.
“Why not?” Hortencia asked, frowning. She manifested a blade in her hand and pushed it into mine. “You have the means… and we are ready for it.”
I gaped at them in disbelief. What is going on?
“I cannot kill you!” I said, discarding the dagger and throwing my hands in the air. “And why would you even want to die?” None of this makes any sense.
“Death comes for all of us eventually,” Hortencia said. “As you can see by our bodies revealing their natural age, we are well ripe for leaving this Earth… And besides, don’t you think we deserve it? After all I showed you about us?”
“I don’t care whether you’re willing to die or not,” I said. “Or whether you deserve it. I’m not the one to do it. Though I will say,” I couldn’t help but add, “I don’t think you’re really that bad. Honestly, you just seem… intensely unhappy.”
As I said the words, I realized that was exactly what they were. The root of all their meddling seemed born out of frustration. They were unhappy, miserable souls, with a curse in disguise as a gift. Born without eyes, they’d never once been able to experience the true beauty of the world. Even after everything the oracle had put me through, I couldn’t bring myself to feel a sliver of hatred for her. Instead I just… pitied her.
Hortencia smiled broadly. “Now that wasn’t too painful, was it?” she asked.
“What?” Man. She was tying my brain up in knots. Is this all a fourth test?
Hortencia beamed like the Cheshire Cat. “Just as loving is important, so equally is mercy. Remember this, Benjamin.” She clutched my wrists and if she’d had eyes, I was certain that they would be boring into me right now.
“I have lived a thousand lives,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “none of them my own. But I have witnessed enough mistakes by others to have learnt the secrets to leading a wondrously happy life… I also know the makings of a hero.” She paused, removing one hand from me and planting it on her sister’s shoulder. “Now I have done many abhorrent things in my years, as has my sister, but at the dusk of life, whoever we are, we wish to look back on something worthy of pride.”
I still don’t understand.
“Let me tell you something, child. I’ve never been proud of anything I’ve done… until I started helping you.” Huh? A clammy hand reached up to my face and patted my cheek. “In time you will understand exactly what I mean by this. For now, just know that the world in a couple of decades’ time will be in great need of men like you. All final boundaries will collapse, and that which should never be fused will fuse. You will live through this time and it will not be easy. You will be forced to become the hero whom… whom I have been attempting to train you to become. In the brief time that we’ve spent together, I’ve tried to give you a crash course, to instill in you a selection of morals I have learnt and that I believe will serve you well in the future.”
My head spun. Crash course is an appropriate term, all right…
“Why… why would you do this, though? Why would you even care?”
She smiled, bittersweet. “To leave this world with a lighter burden on my shoulders, I suppose. If you become the warrior that I see within you, and set an example for others to follow, fate might smile a little more kindly on me… for where I go next.”
“But… Hortencia. You just said that this was a test, and I should not kill you, right? Then the question remains, how will I fulfil all this without a body? How do we undo the fae’s pact?”