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

Chapter 14: In Which Sky Meets Will's Mom, Again

Which is why she had no choice but to intervene. She'd protect them, keep protecting them, even if she was breaking the rules, even if it would mean they would punish her. But the idea that Will – she was already certain, yes, it was going to be Will – would be hurt in the process... that's what she couldn't bear. It was unfair. And yet, the gods were not fair. And it was everyone or him. She couldn't keep both safe.

She couldn't even tell Laina, Olleander and Will how all of this would inevitably end. She wanted to tell Will everything and to give him a choice. Run in the opposite direction, she wanted to yell at him. Don't come to Htrae, she warned him, but only in her head. Don't fall in love with me! But Sky couldn't bargain with the shared fate of two worlds, not because of a guilty conscience and a heavy heart. She always made the same bitter choice and she would continue to make it, over and over and over, as long as she had to.

Sky closed her eyes. She was flying high. She was stationary, lost in a shroud of soft grey clouds, subsumed by them. The clouds whispered against her and left dewy tears on her skin, crying for her. And she knew: she had to give in, to take advantage of every moment she had with Will, before ...

When she opened her eyes, there was a building in front of them – a large cement beige block on a carpet of green grass penned inside of a high iron-spiked gate. The words Barrie Mental Health Services were etched into a pink and beige granite block. The architecture was as sterile and characterless as could be, but the lot backed onto a view of Lake Ontario, and was decorated with a few weeping Willow trees and paths with wildflowers winding along the side. That, at least, was something.

Sky braced herself to face Will's mother. Again. As they parked and she got out of the car, she realized that she was very, very nervous.

***

"Maybe I should wait outside," Sky equivocated, "so the two of you can say goodbye to your mother, just as family." Avoidance. Sky should have been old enough to know better, but it was an indication of how much she cared, how she had more in common with these people than the callous Gods above. Good. If she could still feel something as mundane as an urge to escape an awkward encounter, then it was a sign she would never take up her mother's mantle.

"No, no," Will insisted. "Come on in. You're welcome."

Why did Will have to be so damn accommodating?

And it had gone pretty much exactly the way she'd expected it to: it had been a bloody mess.

When they walked into the room, the former Queen of Aary, Meryl, sat in a day chair by the window, humming. The image of the woman in front of Sky, in a pink robe with slippers dotted with roses, her hair white and sheared short to her head, her eyes hazy and unfocused, stood in sharp contrast to the regal and intelligent Queen of Aary, the fiercely protective and loving mother, the young flaxen-haired beauty she'd once been. That witch was gone, and in her stead was an old woman, but one who couldn't be far into her forties. Perhaps the overuse of magic, the lack of selfcare, or the atmosphere at the institution were to blame, but it was sad to see what had befallen this woman.

When she saw her children, her eyes lit up and she flapped her hands at them in childlike glee. Will and Laina each hugged her, and she clung to them until they broke away. Then she saw Olleander, and said, "Hello father," in a jubilant tone. It was clear she was happy about the visit, and was preparing to put her best foot forward.

She wore a shadow of the smile she had had the first time Sky had met her: the day she had held her newborn daughter, the heir of Aary, Rowan, in her arms for the first time. It was the day Sky's aunt, the Wyrd Veroandi had laid a destiny, one Sky was still not privy to, upon the babe's brow.