Witch Doctors Inc: SEASON TWO (Ongoing)

Part 1.13

This changes many things.

Onyx hops off the windowsill, throws one last pointed glare at the butterfly curtains, and wedges himself between Maya's feet.

"Does it mean that Lily is even wronger than before?" Ruby sniggers.

Yes, yes. This is all about how wrong I am. Never mind everyone being held hostage by a tree.

"What's so special about those flowers?" Addy reaches out to stroke Onyx, and the traitor moves to her feet instead.

I have only seen those flowers once, the cat tells us. On the third and farthest moon of Phaedra, Persephone. Also called Pandora's Moon.

The moon.

Phaedra's moon.

There was a girl on the moon, calling me.

"How did they get here?" Maya wonders.

They came with the First Witch. Onyx closes his eyes, lost in a moment of lifetimes ago. Before we left Phaedra, the First Witch collected as many botanical specimens as she could to bring with us. Seeds and plant cuttings. She wanted to save as much of our world as she could.

Understanding wriggles inside my stomach. Sightings of Ignatius were common, the book had said, before the meteor shower. The meteor shower that was not a meteor shower at all, but a doomed spaceship.

It is likely the seeds travelled after the ship broke apart, and eventually germinated upon the eastern plains of Kadrea. If it had been anyone but Amarat...Onyx dips his head. Most Phaedreans avoid that moon, but Amarat had no fear. She listened only to science.

"Fear of what?" I prod.

Onyx yawns. Of the legend, of course.

I close my eyes and count to ten. "Onyx...could you please tell us what legend you're talking about?"

The legend of Pandora's Moon, he replies, as if this was something an idiot would know. Legend has it that almost two millennia ago a small girl named Pandora was lost on that moon. Over centuries her energy became part of the flora of the moon, infusing it with the loneliness she felt. To visit Pandora's Moon is to never return.

I'm silent while this sinks in. The plant wrapped around Ignatius was infused with the essence of a child whose lonely life was spent on the moon.

Trapped, Ignatius had said. He wasn't talking about the villagers. He was talking about himself. He was trapped. That was the reason for his slumber. He could not be with his brothers and sisters because Pandora would not let him go.

It wasn't Ignatius holding the villagers hostage...it was that which felled him.

"That poor child," Addy says. "I wish I could hug her and never let go. Why didn't her parents come for her?"

I do not know, Onyx says. This was before I awakened.

"If it's just a child, I'm sure we could reason with her," I say. "I assume I can communicate with her because we're both Phaedrean?"

I glance to Onyx, but he's already lost interest in Pandora and gone back to glaring at the curtains.

"Onyx." I snap my fingers. "Concentrate."

Onyx narrows his eyes. That butterfly bit me.

"Butterflies don't bite."

That one does.

If it did, serves him right. It's high time he left those curtains alone. Magic doesn't like to be bothered.

"Lily was saying she's going to communicate with Pandora," Addy explains to the cat. "If we can make her understand that it's wrong to trap people with her, she might stop."

That plant is not Pandora, Onyx says. Not all of her, at least. It holds some of her feelings, but it does not equate to intact consciousness.

"Whatever," I say. "I'll talk to the plant then." Something gnaws at the edge of my mind. "Maya...you said you had the plant in your room."

"That's right," Maya says. "There's a patch of it near my bed, and it's all up and down my tree lamp."

I count the days we've been in the cottage off on my fingers. One, two...

"Maya, how do you feel about leaving Naemar?"

The pink in her eyes shifts uncomfortably. "I like it here," she says. "I wouldn't want my break to end."

"Maya..." I take a deep breath. "Can you leave Naemar?"

All eyes swivel to face her.

Maya laughs. "Of course I can."

"So if I called the cart right now, you would go back to Zilitron?"

She pauses. "There's no reason for me to go back to Zilitron."

Dread grips my blood vessels.

I turn back to the others.

"Guys," I say, "Maya is trapped."