Wyrd: Book One of the Witch War Trilogy - WATTYS 2018 WINNER!

Chapter 11: In which Laina Grapples with a Metaphorical Light bulb

There are moments in life that you can pinpoint – seconds between who you were, and who you are meant to become – that change everything. Laina sat in the sunroom in her Freudian slippers, knowing that this was one of those instances. It was as if she could see two very different diverging paths stretching before her, unravelling in alternate directions, illusive, as if her possible futures lived in the place above scalding asphalt where heat waves danced and blurred the road ahead. What she'd been told and what had just been asked of her, had the potential to alter her entire life.

              Will you come with me to Htrae? Sky had asked them.

There were now two options, two branches laying before her. She could stay in Huntsville, live her future out the way she'd expected, go to university to become an architect as she'd always dreamed, making sure to visit her mother often. Meanwhile she'd be ignoring the war waging elsewhere and any part she could play in it, ignoring the unlocked magical potential that currently might be lying dormant inside of her. But at the end of that route lay a darkness so bleak it terrified her. She looked away.

The alternative was to go to Htrae, to learn magic, to fight in a war that would be very dangerous. Doing so would mean leaving behind her mother, and Olleander – as he'd admitted he would not leave the Queen, his daughter, alone on Earth – and it meant leaving behind her beloved home in Muskoka, and her dream of becoming an architect. Somehow, though she had no way of truly knowing it, she believed wholeheartedly that one dream would preclude the other. School break had just begun and Will and Laina had had a summer of fun stretching before them just a day ago. Now, if they went, there was a deep-seated feeling in her gut that told her Htrae would rob them of their Earthly endeavors. And at the end of this gleaming path lay ... love and grief, pain and sadness like she had never known.

But this was not her decision alone. And looking at Will, peppering Grandad and Sky with questions about Htrae in the living room, Laina knew he'd already made up his mind. He knew what he wanted to do.

As Laina contemplated her options, she came upon a realization. It struck her as odd that she hadn't considered it before, so obvious was it once the thought rang true in her mind.

She unfurled from her pondering-place and paced on soft-slippered feet over to the living room.

"Cellphones?" Olleander was saying. "No, no, they use rocks etched with runes, rocky-talkies so to speak." He guffawed at his own joke and was about to continue when Laina decided to interrupt him with an urgent inquiry.

"Rowan, our sister ..." Laina began, staring directly into Sky's strange gold-and-green flecked eyes – the Valkyrie was sitting on a ledge under the fireplace munching on goldfish crackers, but became stoically still under Laina's direct gaze – "Is she," Laina hesitated trying to find the words, "platinum blonde, with ice-blue eyes and a scar running down her right side? Does she look a bit like me, but... but different?"

"Yes," Sky answered, not even batting an eyelash.

"How?" Both Will and Ollie asked together, wondering how she could have known what her sister looked like.

"I've dreamt of her since, well, since I was about five."

And all of a sudden there was a girl in that other place who she knew, who she'd watched struggle with loneliness, with war and imprisonment, and who had too much on her shoulders to carry alone. This girl was her sister, her family, and Laina wanted nothing more in all the worlds than to know her and to help her lift whatever burdens she faced. Laina let go then, of her dream to become an architect, of her fanciful drawings of buildings that plastered her bedroom wall, of the idea of finishing high school and attending prom. Sometimes, she decided, dreams changed. Sometimes living out one dream meant sacrificing another. She had a feeling she couldn't have both. But, the scale had now tipped.