The Witch with No Name

You will be nothing! she howled, the sound of wings beating at me as she rolled me into nothing. I will remain! I am all. They are mine. All of them!

Fire licked my soul where she tore great chunks of me away. Ice dove deep to fracture what was left and let more fire in. I panicked, feeling myself eaten away, smaller and smaller as I cowered, trying to protect what was left. There was no attack. She had everything. She had it all. I was a fool’s thought, a failure, and she coated me in acid, eating me alive.

“Get off her, you self-absorbed bitch!”

I screamed, the sound real as it echoed in my church. The clean breath of nothing cascaded over me, astringent and biting. I was stripped bare, and I huddled in Al’s arms as the Goddess shouted and fumbled. Her mind had been ripped from mine and was now fighting great swaths of organized thought that had been strengthened beyond reason by insanity.

I blinked, realizing I was actually seeing two figures in my church, swaying back and forth, locked in a glittering sheath of white that rose through the broken roof to the stars.

“Newt?” I whispered, and Al’s arms around me tightened.

“She was the only one who wasn’t afraid,” Bis said, his leathery tail wrapping about me as he sat on Al’s shoulder.

“I know you!” the Goddess exclaimed, her bitterness harsh as a broken knife. “You’re slow with disharmony. Your smut will bring you down, and I will feast on your thoughts and make them mine again!”

There was a burst of light, and with a gasping groan, Newt fell backward, staring up at the Goddess from the floor. Panting, she wiped the blood from her mouth. “You’re right,” she said, her eyes taking on a dangerous glint. “Rachel, hold this for me.”

Hold what? I thought, then stiffened when the weight of her five thousand years of imbalance and smut fell on me. I floundered, struggling to keep my heart beating. It was everything and everywhere. Dizzy, I couldn’t get enough air as Bis took flight in one panicked swoop. Newt had dumped her smut on me, and I could hardly think.

“Newt!” Al shouted, and I cried out as the sudden vertigo became me hitting the floor. The shock struck through me, and I blearily looked through the hissing glare and darting mystics. Al was gone, really gone! I couldn’t tell who was winning. Newt and the Goddess looked the same, blurring together, becoming one.

But no one was looking at me. Suddenly I realized this was my chance. I could hardly string two thoughts together, but if I could reopen the lines . . .

Think bigger! Newt’s thought echoed in my brain as she saw my intent. The lines are dead. The ever-after is dying. Use what’s left to make a new one! Use the smut and make a new one! How do you think we did it the first time?

A new ever-after? I thought, feeling Bis’s thoughts join mine. From the ashes of the old?

Snarling, Newt fell upon the Goddess, eating through her thoughts even as the Goddess spun about and did the same. They were locked in a spiral like yin and yang, snake eating snake, the balance of becoming held in check as the worlds collided. Flat on my ass, I watched, stunned as the Goddess fought with hatred, and Newt balanced it with a savage confidence, then whipped her thoughts in a dizzying spiral to send the Goddess quailing back until her fear shot spikes of doubt into Newt. Newt patted them out with a dizzying memory of stars and acorns.

No wonder Newt was insane.

“Rachel?”

It was Bis, and I touched his feet as he landed on my shoulder. I could hardly move under Newt’s smut, but my mystics gathered, cleaving to me, hazing my thoughts and expanding my reach. As they fought, I took in the forgotten, the wounded, bolstering them with my energy until the mystics hummed with life and brimmed with need.

Find me a thin spot in the balance of mass, I told them, opening myself. Newt’s smut was more certain than any protection circle. Find me a thin spot in time, I demanded again, and the sound of feathers filled my awareness.

Everything that had been or would be touched every other spot, existed in every time, lay dormant in every being. You just had to know where to look. And I had a thousand eyes today.

Mystics gleefully burrowed through time and space, the sound of their wings piling upon one another until a thin spot in the weft and weave began to fray. I focused on it, made it my all, funneled everything down to that point, that instant, weighing it more heavily than anything else—and with a sudden pop, a wind of thought blew through the spaces between me, sucking nothing into more nothing. I gasped as I felt it widen, expand . . .