The Red Books

Note: This story contains physical violence and a reference to self harm (off the page).

The Red Books

by Jessica Fisher Riches

Nobody believed in me. That was their first mistake.

*

Gwen stood in front of the locked door, empty handed but for the key. No tool, no potion, no rune stones. Just a key, and a word.

Two weeks of blowing off her homework to read mind-crushing non-school related textbooks, endless botanical potion trials, and sneaking around the house in the dead of night to test each magical utterance, and she finally had it: the one word necessary to break the spells on Aunt Marged’s secret atelier door.

Seisill.

An absurd word for this purpose, in Gwen’s opinion. She’d looked it up. It was just an ordinary—if fundamentally un-cool—Welsh name. Who knew why Marged had chosen it? Why’d she do anything? But that was it. Gwen had looked through every other inch of this house and found not a single clue related to her mother’s death. Not even a photo. If Marged was hiding info, it had to be here.

She took a breath.

“Seisill.”

She turned the key. The door opened.

Gwen’s heart sank.

It was a tiny room, maybe five meters square, with hardwood parquet and floor-to-ceiling shelves of books on three walls. A tiny desk sat opposite the entrance, holding stacks of additional books and a brass lamp. It was like a walk-in closet library. Gwen’s version of hell.

She wasn’t sure what she’d envisaged—perhaps, secretly, a shrine to her dead mother. But a library?

What, disappointed, Gwenny? No signed confession? ‘You got me! I killed her!’ You twat.

She pushed the voice away and stepped inside. The desk contained two drawers. The top one held a box of posh pens. Gwen considered stealing one, just as a “Fuck you. See? I got into your bloody classified vault”—but it wasn’t worth getting caught, after the work she’d put in. She’d created an entire masking spell from scratch, after all.

The second drawer held an undated green leather diary with timetables of Marged’s university lectures and office hours going back several years. Gwen flipped to the back. Just a list of names, all but a few crossed out. The desk was a bust.

Which meant…the books.

It just had to be bloody books. Typical. Because normal people liked books. You’re the freak, Gwenny.

Well. Whatever Marged used this room for, Gwen would figure it out. She’d take her time. She’d open every book, read every stupid word, if she had to. Marged wasn’t due back until morning.

For the next hour, Gwen methodically removed each book on the shelf and flipped through the pages, searching for anything that might indicate what Marged was up to, or offer clues to Eira’s death. Nothing. Just standard spellbooks, plus endless texts on divination and trees, and a whole section on portals. Bo-ring. Still, she took a few pictures of pages with obscure references to plants. Could be an advantage in her botany class.

On the bottom of the back wall, hardest to get to, was a set of six books, all the same: large, unmarked spines in red leather. Gwen pulled out the first and flipped it open. Her heart nearly stopped. This was Marged’s own handwriting.

She checked each red book. All six contained nothing but Marged’s slanted script.

Her journals.

Gotcha.

She slid the first journal out and went to the desk to read.

Journal of Marged Beynon

Mr. Rhiwallon tells me I must begin an account of my “journey.” He said I’m special, like him, and special people must not be selfish. We must think of how later, others will want to know about our accomplishments and what made us who we are—like origin stories. Powerful people are always an inspiration for lower, common people, he says. So, I’ll keep a record, and when I’m famous, people will read my story in a museum. It’s called “posterity.”

It’s a bit stupid, really. Museums and history are dead boring, and so are biographies. But I’ll do as he says, obviously. For now.

Having magic is amazing! I can feel it in my blood, like another heartbeat. I love it. Bloody Eira has been bragging about hers for two years, and now I can finally tell her to sod off. She’s a crap druid anyway. Mr. Rhiwallon says so. He could tell right away that she was worthless and I was special. All Eira cares about is healing, which is basically giving your magic away, he says. What you want to do is the opposite. He’s going to teach me how. He’s going to teach me everything he knows, and we can leave all these idiots in the dust.

It’s been hard to get away for my work with Mr. Rhiwallon, recently. Ever since Great Aunt Nia came to live with us. Once Eira’s 18, she’ll be old enough to be my guardian, without supervision. Then we can send Aunt Nia packing, and I’ll be able to do what I want. Of course, Saint Eira claims she wants to take care of me—as if I need her! Anyway, that’s bollocks. She just wants to play the orphan and swan around in her embarrassing homemade dresses (which she thinks are so cool!) and have boys moon over her. She’s a joke.

So, to attend my special lessons, I usually just tell Aunt Nia I’m meeting with my advisor. I don’t think Aunt Nia gives a toss anyway, too busy acting like the Grand Dame, now that she lives in our villa. She’s so obvious.

Anyway, Mr. Rhiwallon has been working at the infirmary for like a hundred years, maybe more—so long that people barely even notice him anymore. No joke. He says soon I’ll be old enough to see how he accomplishes his “longevity.” It sounds alright, but I’m definitely going to make sure I preserve my looks so I don’t end up like him. He’s so ancient his skin is transparent and you can see the veins in his head. Disgusting. He’s always referring to his “days of power,” but now all he cares about is getting to Annwn. I’d say he’s bonkers, but…he really seems to believe we can get there. Apparently, magic is much stronger there, and it will make this world look dingy. We’ll have to amass power to do it.

For now, he says I need to “manipulate the lines of power in the clan.” So, that’s on my agenda this week.

*

Journal of Marged Beynon

Get this: Eira is preggers! What a joke. Aunt Nia is furious, of course. They row about it constantly, which is great in terms of me sneaking out of the house. And good thing.

Rhiwallon has finally shown me how he got his power.

We’ve been going into Haverfordwest town a couple times a week, visiting a small magic shop—nothing special, really, just loads of candles and herbs and occult jewellery. (Eira would flipping love it.) I didn’t really understand what the point was, especially since Rhiwallon told the shop owner, Aderyn, that I was his daughter. (More like great-great granddaughter!) He’d gotten really chummy with the lady, and she was definitely buying it, being all soppy-nice to me. Then finally he told me that she was a witch.

I admit I still didn’t really get the point, but this evening it became clear. He was really amped up in the car on the way there, and he’d brought his black doctor’s bag, which normally sits in his office at the infirmary.

We got to the shop at closing time, but Aderyn let us in, and while she was in the back getting a sample of obsidian for Rhiwallon, he whispered that I should raise my magic and let him take the lead. When she came back, he cracked her over the head with a huge showstone, and she fell to the floor behind the counter. I was sure she was dead, but no.

“We must work quickly, now,” Rhiwallon said. “Fetch a censer.”

I grabbed one that Aderyn had on display, and he placed the obsidian in it. He opened his bag and took out a whole bunch of things I didn’t recognise, plus a few I did: garnet, a dried bindweed blossom, vetiver oil and a pair of scissors. They all went into the censer, except the scissors, which he used to cut a lock of Aderyn’s hair.

“Find something with her signature on it,” he said. I found a letter in a drawer and he added that to the censer, then he lit the whole mess on fire. He chanted in some weird language and finally added a pinch of some kind of powder. The smoke from the fire turned magenta and flashed out—the flames disappearing completely.

Kneeling, he rummaged in his doctor’s bag and found an athame, which he dipped in the burnt remains of his ingredients, and then wiped across Aderyn’s forehead, leaving a black smear just where her glyph would be. She went utterly rigid, and began to shake—proper epileptic shaking, mind you—while he dipped the knife in the censer again, muttering more of the weird language, and then wiped it on his own, shining glyph.

For a moment he went all rigid, too, and the room sort of pulsed. I thought that maybe I’d have to drive the car back to Cadfan. But it only lasted a minute, and then they both went back to normal.

“It is done.” He was grinning. (Honestly, he looks like a monster when he smiles. It’s no wonder he never does it. I don’t think he could help himself, though. He was acting sort of drunk.)

“What’s done?” I asked. “Did you kill her?”

He stood and dusted himself off. “No. I have taken her Sil-Lori.”

“Her what?”

He flexed his hideous, veiny, old-man fingers. “Her magic. It’s what witches call it.”

“And now it’s in you?”

“Precisely.”

I stared down at Aderyn. She still looked dead. “Can you do that with druids?”

“Of course. The process is slightly altered, of course, because of our rituals. But similar.” He picked up his bag. “Bring the censer.”

He had a potion in his pocket that he said would erase our magical presence, and he sort of wafted it around the room, while guess who tidied up. (Pretty fed up with being his maid, I must say.) We left Aderyn on the floor.

In the car he was still acting blotto. “In time, Marged, you will have the opportunity to perform the ritual yourself. It will be an important step towards our eventual move to Annwn. First, however, we must wait until Beltane, when we shall take our association to a new level.”

What the hell does that mean?

Gwen closed the journal with a small shudder. It was past midnight, and she desperately needed to catch up on sleep, but she couldn’t stop yet. It might be through Marged’s warped perspective, but it was still actual information about her mum.

She’d never considered that her mother and Aunt Marged had been orphaned, like she was. She might even have felt sorry for Marged, if she hadn’t proved to have been as vile a teenager as she was a woman.

And, horrid young Marged had found someone just as awful to be her teacher. Whoever Mr. Rhiwallon was, he sounded ghastly.

Poor shopkeeper lady. What terrible luck, to fall into the path of those two.

Gwen pulled out the next red journal.

Journal of Marged Beynon

There’s to be a Culling next year. I wish I could do it.

That old biddy, Alys Lewis, is Mistress of Magical Transfers at the moment, but that job is going to be mine one day. Obviously, it’s the best job in the touta. Being Grand High Druid is pointless—sitting around spouting boring chanty bollocks and having people bothering you all the time—no thanks! Anyway, you don’t have to be Grand High Derwydd to get power. People are idiots not to see the opportunities in magical transfers, but that’s no surprise. People are idiots about everything.

Apparently, Rhiwallon thinks I’m stupid too, thinks I don’t know he’s keeping things from me. For example, those lost portals to Annwn—I know he has more information about their locations than what he’s shared (basically nothing). He’s been researching for yonks. He just wants to be in control of the info, which I understand. I would do the same thing in his shoes. But obviously, I won’t put up with that much longer.

Anyway, Eira says the Culling will be “noble,” but that’s just typical Eira. Ever since that baby was born, she acts like she’s some bloody Earth Mother Goddess, pretending to care about everyone, no matter how horrible they are. She even tries to parent me! Ha! Luckily she’s too tired to pay much attention, running around after the baby, who is spoiled rotten—a total attention hog. And Eira just puts up with it, when all it takes is a good sharp pinch to shut the brat up.

I don’t know why people let themselves be taken advantage of. What does it get them? Eira for example. All she does is worry about what other people want. She gets nothing back, and nobody respects her. She’s nothing in this touta—has no power, no future. And she claims she doesn’t care.

This is how the world really works: Take what you can and then take more. If you don’t, someone stronger will. Being “nice” gets you nothing. Or it just gets you dead like Mummy and Daddy. Years of being good little touta members and they end up dead in a stupid road accident. The most mundane, pathetic deaths possible.

Well, I have no intention of ending up dead, and I’m not going to be a nothing, either.

Gwen took a calming breath.

That bitch.

She pulled up her sleeve and stared at the series of small welts she’d given herself earlier in the week. Was it possible she…remembered Marged’s pinches from her childhood? Surely not. Surely that wasn’t the reason she had begun using the tweezers. The idea was too repulsive.

Still. That was the end of those.

Journal of Mistress Marged Beynon

I did it. Nobody believed in me, other than Rhiwallon. I’m now the youngest Mistress of Magical Transfers Cadfan Touta has ever had. Barely nineteen. Called it!

It was pathetically easy to get rid of Alys Lewis after learning the ritual. She never saw it coming.

And those geezers on the Council didn’t even notice. In fact, they couldn’t be happier. They keep calling me a prodigy!

I’ve already amassed enough boring Gwyar magic from the job. Most of the transfers are done in private, so I can just take the magic for myself instead of “passing it back to the aether of the group.” (Insert me laughing. Honestly, druids are wankers.)

I’m ready to move beyond Gwyar now. When I took over the late Alyse Lewis’s office, I found a book explaining the other two types of transfers, so I know how to proceed. I’ll start with a Nwyfre extraction, probably from one of my “clients,” ha ha.

Rhiwallon is getting nervous, I can tell, jealous of my power. He’s completely stopped discussing portals with me, but I don’t need him anymore. I found a book about visions, and guess what? All I need is one kid to have one vision and I’m in.

So now I have a few strings to pull. I need to teach divination in addition to tree lore. That will make it even easier to spot any likely kids to use. So much bloody work all the time. I should get myself a personal assistant!

It was the last entry.

Gwen shut the journal, stomach twisting, and replaced it on the shelf. Marged was a monster. Well, she’d always known that. She’d lived with her all her life.

But.

She opened the desk drawer again and took out the small green book. Those names…The first one crossed out: Alyse Lewis.

Most of the others she didn’t recognize, but her mother’s was there, a neat line right through it. Was it enough proof?

There were many names after Eira Beynon, a few at the end of the list yet to be crossed out. The last name on the list was Gwendolyn Beynon.

She slipped the diary in her pocket and whispered the word spell: Seisill.

EPILOGUE

In a tiny cottage in a remote wood somewhere in Anglesey, a man sat in a lumpy armchair, staring at his reflection in the glass of the enchanted window.

His bone structure had always been good. He remembered feeling pride in that. But his skin… translucent now, every vein and artery showing. The hands at the ends of his arms were foreign entities. At times he was paralysed with confusion at the sight of them.

Was he a man? He no longer thought of himself as a man, and perhaps he had stopped being one.

Long ago he had been someone, he was sure of it. But…that girl had done something.

She’d tossed her glossy red hair and flashed her brilliant smile. “Time to move on, Seisill.”

Mocking him with his true name. She’d tricked him, done something to him…something with blood. She’d made him like this: powerless, pathetic, and mute. With that name, which he’d worn with such dignity for so many years. Ungrateful cow, that’s what she was. He should never have taught her the ritual.

She’d plopped him down here like a dead animal years ago, tying him to this room so securely with her stolen magic that he could only shuffle between this disgusting old chair and the privy.

His squawking laugh died in his throat. He could not protest, of course. She’d seen to that.

She’d cut out his tongue long ago.