Page 60 of The Witches Catalogue of Wanderlust Essentials (Natural Magic #2)
Chapter 34
The Eclipse
Z ani awoke with a start, her eyes adjusting to the amber light filtering through the dirigible’s stained-glass windows. She’d nearly forgotten where she was. The curved wooden panels and brass fixtures of their cabin felt like a movie set—something from another world. And in a way, it was. But there was also something so familiar and cozy about it. The white sheets were crisp, and the fluffy down pillows soft. She could get used to living in a floating home like this.
“Will?” Zani’s voice echoed out in the main cabin.
A rustling came from the hallway. “I’m right here. I found some interesting tea. Well, I think it’s tea.”
Zani stood, stretched, and padded out to the main cabin. Will greeted her with a kiss. His red hair was wild from sleep.
“This is tea, isn’t it? It smells like cinnamon and... thyme? Does that seem right?”
“I think it’s something else. Coriander maybe?” Whatever the combination, it smelled delicious.
Will handed her the cup as they reached the main area. “Here, take it, this one’s for you. I’ve already had some rather awful coffee. Trust me, you’re better off with the tea.”
He inspected the well-organized, leather-bound volumes on the bookshelves as he sipped, pulling out some of the books and setting them aside for later reading. Outside the window, when she looked down, Zani saw a carpet of large, fluffy clouds.
“Anything I should read?” Zani asked.
“Actually, I should warn you, I’ve just had a thorough read-through of the so-called manual for this airship. I wish I could say that Burnside spared no detail, but it’s more like he shared no details. I guess we’ll have to wing it today.”
Will moved toward the control cabinet Zani had shown him the night before. He opened a hinged door and looked back over his shoulder “How are you feeling? Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, but not nearly enough.” Zani set down her mug and joined him at the controls. “I keep thinking about Ondalune and Cosimo and the stone.” She frowned as she looked at the complex array of dials. “Whether we ultimately hand the stone to Cosimo, or Ondalune, we’re only going to get one shot at this, Will. And first we have to actually get there. What happens if we miss the mark, or if we’re too late?”
The weight of their responsibility settled over both of them. And she noticed something else. The bloodstone amulet, safely tucked in her satchel, seemed to beat with an astral rhythm. Zani could practically feel its thrumming call to the other eleven stones in the Weight of the World collection. She saw Will steal a glance at the bag as well.
“You sense it too, don’t you?” she asked.
“Yes.” Will nodded. “It wants to go home. Perhaps the stone will help us navigate.”
He poked at the controls and flipped a switch. The lights flickered and a scratchy sea shanty played on the Victrola in the corner.
“Well. Now we know what that one does!” Will bit his lip and considered the console again.
“We need to figure this out quickly,” Zani worried aloud. The stone was growing louder and more insistent with every passing second, a drumbeat that could not be ignored. “Burnside said it would take us wherever we needed to go, but I’ve never seen a dashboard with sundials and weathervanes for the controls.” She ran her hands over the captain’s wheel, its blue compass face marked with inscrutable alchemical symbols rather than cardinal directions. “I’d know my way around most sailboats and could probably drive a yacht, but I must confess, I’m not quite sure how to steer this thing. North isn’t north on this ship. It’s ‘past’ or ‘future’ or who knows what.”
Will noticed the small mirror mounted beside the wheel. “You said you saw Burnside hold his hand over this?”
“Yes, just before we ported to the train. His hand was, you know… doing the porter thing.” Zani wiggled her fingers at Will. “Maybe it reads intentions? Or amplifies them somehow?”
“It would have to, in order to transport the whole airship.” Will hesitated, then placed his palm over the mirror’s surface. Nothing happened.
Will closed his eyes. Then he spoke their destination out loud. “Catalina Island. Today. Just before the eclipse.” When nothing happened, he blew out a frustrated raspberry. “I know where I want to go, but it’s more difficult to feel the ley lines in the airship. And it’s a difficult nexus to get to, out in the open without any significant structures or a mirror to pass through. And that stone. Its incessant beating is throwing me off.”
“Can I try something?” Zani asked quietly. She retrieved her satchel and withdrew the amulet. Holding it in two hands, she asked the stone, “Can you take us where you need us to be?”
Will raised an eyebrow. “Do you think that will work?”
“Shhhh.” Zani hushed him. She could feel the stone growing warmer in her hands. Its insistent beat was changing. It was now emitting a gentler vibration, like the soft hum of a motor. “Can I try the mirror?”
Zani gently nudged Will aside and placed her cupped hands with the stone onto the mirror. She squeezed her eyes shut in concentration, but felt nothing special. “Ugh.” Zani grunted. “Nothing’s happening. I don’t have your touch.”
“Let’s try it together,” Will said, placing both his hands over hers.
The mirror’s surface quivered like the surface of disturbed water, then glowed with a soft blue light that spread up Zani’s arm and illuminated her face from below.
“I can almost see it,” she whispered, eyes still closed. Images began to form in her mind, dangling at the other end of the invisible strings that were wrapping tight around their fingers. She could see it more clearly now. “I see the island. People are gathering in the town for the film festival…” Zani was surprised that the vision didn’t stop there. She thought it was supposed to stop there. Instead, she felt pulled past the island, and back out to sea. She frowned, trying to understand.
“What are you picturing now?” Will asked.
“There’s a rock formation just off the coast of the island,” Zani reported, trying to describe what the stone was showing her. “It’s not too far from the harbor. It’s pretty big. I don’t know. I don’t know why it’s showing that to me. But I think that’s where we need to go?”
The dirigible hummed to life around them, brass pipes in the walls beginning to sing in a way that was too harmonically perfect to be purely mechanical. The alchemical symbols on the compass spun, and outside the windows, the dawn light melted into a swirl of colors.
“You’re doing it,” Will breathed into her ear. His hands were still tightly clasped around her own.
“ We’re doing it.” Zani opened her eyes.
Will moved one hand to the captain’s wheel. He turned it slightly toward a symbol that looked like a crescent moon embracing a sun. “The eclipse,” he said. “I think if we aim for that?—”
The airship bobbed, and began to ascend. Outside the windows, both daylight and darkness melted away, flickering and alternating in rapid succession.
“How much time will we have once the eclipse reaches totality?” Will asked, his knuckles white as he gripped the captain’s wheel with one hand.
Zani glanced at the strange clock on the wall, its twelve hands moving at different speeds. “Three or four minutes tops. We should try to port in ahead of it. A couple of hours, at least.” Her stomach was in knots. It was all coming down to timing.
“I don’t even know if we have too much or too little speed,” Will muttered. “I guess I’ll try this?” He found a lever shaped like a feather and impulsively pulled it down.
The dirigible’s hum deepened to a roar, and the colors outside the windows streaked even faster. They were flying like they’d been shot from a cannon. But a few seconds later, the dirigible came to an abrupt stop, skidding across the sky like a puck on ice.
As it spun out, the swirling colors outside the portholes resolved into a clear blue sky and sparkling ocean. Catalina Island lay below them, its hills green, its harbor crowded with boats.
“We made it here,” Zani breathed once the airship had stopped spinning and righted itself. She moved to the window. Her relief, however, was short-lived.
“Uh oh! Look at the sun!” she exclaimed.
Will joined her at the porthole. The eclipse had already begun—the moon’s shadow taking its first bite from the sun’s edge. They were late. Not hours early as they’d intended. They’d arrived mere minutes before totality.
“We’re late! Why do you think the stone has brought us here? And why now?” Zani’s faith in the stone wrestled with her desire to remain in control.
“Look there!” Will opened the porthole and leaned out. He pointed to the white rock formation jutting from the water just off the coast of the island.
As the dirigible sank lower, closing in on the rock, Zani could make out a figure sprawled out on the flat surface. Even from this distance, the unnatural stillness of his body was alarming. Once they drew closer, she could see the white light of the unnatural silver flames.
“It’s Cosimo,” Zani gasped. “He’s laid himself out in the sun.”
“Merlin’s beard!” Will exclaimed. “What is he doing?”
But it was obvious what he was doing, and it was a terrible sight to see the vampire’s attempt at immolation. He was engulfed in flames atop the white rock. The stone in her hand was growing hotter and hotter as well.
Zani picked up her satchel and slung it across her body. “Cosimo must have thought we weren’t coming. I think he’s trying to destroy the stone by destroying himself.”
“We have to stop him,” Will shouted. “Fast!”
“Look!” Zani pointed to the ocean now, because there, in the water, in a brilliant flash of iridescent scales and fiery red hair, was a mermaid, speeding toward the rock. Zani rummaged for her Lunar Lenses. This time she would be prepared.
“I think that’s Ondalune! She’s here, too!” exclaimed Zani, peering through the glasses.
“Hang on. I have an idea. It could buy us a little bit of time,” Will said. He swiftly guided the dirigible lower, bringing it to hover directly over the rock, where it cast its shadow across Cosimo’s prone form. “I am eclipsing the eclipse.”
With the sun and moon blocked, the flames subsided. Cosimo was no longer burning, but he remained motionless.
“We need to get down there,” Zani said, already searching for a way to descend. She opened the door to the balcony that the youthful version of Burnside had used and ran outside. Will followed.
“Here!” he shouted, pointing to a box that contained a rolled-up rope ladder. He threw the bundle over the side and the swinging ladder unfurled, tumbling down toward the rock below. “The stone?” he asked Zani.
She patted her bag. “I have it right here.”
They descended quickly; the ladder swayed in the sea breeze. Above them, the dirigible maintained its position, steadfastly anchored to the spot as if by an invisible line.
On the surface of the rock, the smell was horrible. It smelled like brimstone. Will coughed. Zani pulled her shirt up over her nose. They broke in a run toward Cosimo.
The mermaid was already by his side, the scales of her tail catching the light in prismatic bursts. Her face was a mask of grief and anger as she bent to cradle Cosimo’s head.
“You’ve come too late,” she accused. Her voice was as harsh as hard-breaking waves. Zani flinched. “He’s already been in the sun too long.”
Zani approached the Mer woman cautiously. “It isn’t too late. We have the stone.”
Cosimo’s eyes fluttered open for an instant when Zani spoke. The skin on his lips was blistered and cracking. It hurt her heart to see him like this. “Destroy it,” he croaked. “It’s the only way.”
Ondalune shook her head, tears falling onto Cosimo’s burned face. “No, my love. There is another way.” She looked up at Zani. “Hurry. Give me the stone now, please.”
The moon continued its crawl across the surface of the sun, the light growing stranger by the second. Squawking gulls fell silent. As if holding its breath, the sea grew calm and still.
Zani reached into her satchel and withdrew the bloodstone. As she pulled it out, the stone pulsed and flashed with an inner fire. Cosimo reached out a trembling hand, clawing at the air. For one terrifying moment, Zani feared he would snatch the stone from her and find a way to destroy it.
She stepped past him and placed the stone in Ondalune’s outstretched palm.
“Thank you,” the mermaid princess whispered. She pressed the stone briefly to her heart. “I remember you,” she said, then slipped back into the water.
“No!” Cosimo howled, trying to rise. “Don’t let her go! Ondalune!”
Much to Zani’s surprise, it was Will who dropped to his knees beside Cosimo. Gently, he kneeled next to the vampire, cradling his burnt body and helping him to sit upright on the edge of the rock where he could see into the water.
“We are all connected, brother,” Will said. “You need to trust her.” He shot a meaningful look at Zani. “Trust us.”
As the eclipse neared totality, colors became muted and surfaces more reflective. Everything took on the chiaroscuro qualities of a film noir movie. The world was suddenly sharply divided into its elemental qualities of light and dark.
Meters beneath the surface, the bloodstone clenched in Ondalune’s palm pulsed slowly and visibly. The sparks of red light shooting out of it were the only color in the tableau.
Finally, Ondalune surfaced again, shooting out of the water and pulling herself up onto the rock beside the burnt vampire. “Cosimo,” she commanded, “give me your hand now.”
He reached out, and she pressed the glowing amulet into his palm, closing his fingers around it. The red light leaked out between his fingers, thickening and coagulating until it became a liquid. It seeped between his fingers and dripped onto the rock in macabre rosettes. Everywhere the drops of blood landed, colorful sea anemones grew. They formed a carpet all along the water’s edge.
Cosimo shook with the effort of holding the stone aloft. Tears poured out from his eyes. Whether they came from joy or pain, Zani could not say. Possibly both.
Ondalune tore the stone free from its centuries-old setting and flung the chain back out to sea.
As the last drops of Cosimo’s blood dripped out of the stone, the last sliver of sun vanished behind the moon. Totality had begun. Ondalune slipped back into the water, pulling Cosimo with her. Zani could see their hands intertwined, both wrapped around the stone that was now glowing a brilliant blue. Ondalune embraced him tenderly and splashed water over his burns as she spoke words that sounded very much like a terrestrial witch’s spell to Zani.
Not fully of the land, nor fully of the sea
Tides of life that flow through me
Heal these wounds of fire and grief
Bind us now, by love’s eternal reef
Then, as the diamond ring of the returning sun flashed at the edge of the moon, she kissed him. The stone’s bright light enveloped them both. When she pulled away, Cosimo’s wounds were healed. She blew a cooling breeze across his body.
“You healed me once, Cosimo. Now it is my time to return the favor.”
A school of fish assembled, their silver bodies flashing as they swam in an undulating circle around the couple.
“It’s done.” Ondalune smiled, holding up the stone for all to see. In her hands, the bloodstone pulsed with a steady, healthy blue light. No longer a bloodstone, it was fully cleansed of its curse. “The Weight of the World remains intact. The connection holds.”
“I can actually feel it!” Will held up his hands excitedly and turned in a slow circle. “The ley lines are flowing so freely. It’s like they’ve been renewed!”
“You healed me,” Cosimo said. He was staring at his hand, which had a cut. The cut was bleeding.
“You’re wounded!” Ondalune exclaimed.
“It’s nothing serious. I’m just bleeding.” Cosimo laughed delightedly. “But that’s the point. I’m bleeding like an Ordinary. You didn’t only heal my burns. You’ve restored me. I’m not a vampire anymore,” he said with wonder.
Zani pressed her fingers to Cosimo’s wrist. “You have a pulse.”
Will coughed suddenly, and Zani noticed his eyes watering. She was glad she had her Lunar Lenses to hide behind. “Are you crying, Will?” Zani teased.
“No!” He waved his hand in front of his face and fanned himself. “It’s just that smell. What on earth is it?”
Ondalune wrinkled her nose and laughed in a very un-mermaid princess-like way. “I hate to tell you this now while you’re sitting in it, Will, but there’s a pretty crappy reason this rock is called Bird Rock. It’s completely covered in bird turds!”
This was the moment when Zani decided she and Ondalune would definitely be friends.
Zani glanced up at the dirigible still hovering above them, then at the Celestial Sapphire resting in Ondalune’s palm. “What happens now? To the stone, I mean.”
Ondalune smiled, the expression further transforming her face from otherworldly beauty to something warmer, more human. “Now it goes home, back to the deep, to my people. The Mer have been its guardians for centuries.”
“The curse,” Zani said, understanding blooming, “wasn’t actually in the stone, was it? It was our own limiting beliefs about ourselves that stole the stone’s light and severed connections.”
“You’re right,” Ondalune replied, cradling the Celestial Sapphire. Its light now pulsed in rhythm with the waves lapping against Bird Rock. “The curse that corrupted this stone is born from ancient and devious fear. It whispers to us that what we desire most can only come at a terrible cost. That abundance, for one, means scarcity for another.”
“Thus ensuring it’s so.” Will shook his head sadly. He stood up slowly and brushed bird turds off his pants. The problem was, now they were stuck to his hands. He looked absolutely miserable.
Zani decided to rescue him. “Speaking of abundance.” She tossed Will one of the Ordinary wet napkin packets that she kept in the side of her bag. “I don’t mean to swoop in with an ancient cursed stone and dash, but it’s abundantly clear to me we are all going to need to take long showers before the film festival tonight.”