Witches Burn at Dawn ✔

2. Yaroslava

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On our way from the graveyard, none of my new acquaintances utter a word. I look out the car window, watching as the empty moonlit streets of the city pass by.

The city of St. Daktalion. A daydream and a nightmare, a place that doesn't welcome you in and then doesn't let you out.

The old story goes it was built on the bones of four vedmaks, or mages, who used blood magic and bound demons to serve them. For centuries, people lived in terror; kings and queens from all over the world came here to find a way to beat their final hour.

To die but stay alive.

Then over one night, the vedmaks disappeared, and nobody remembered their faces, none could tell if they really ever existed. Life carried on, and all left of magic was mist in the forests surrounding the city.

Another story states that there were no mages, but one ugly witch, a vedma, who could turn into a beautiful nymph, steal people's talents and trade them to the others--that was why the city saw so many artists, rich and fortunate people throughout its history. Sophisticated and regal, its every building is a masterpiece carved of white stones, every street a perfect line, every park, every church, every bridge over the sapphire blue river of Nótt...a dream.

And finally, there's the third version.

Mages existed alongside a witch, who was beautiful. But she only became a witch after stealing the heart of one of the mages. (I never knew if this was a figure of speech). And before that, she was just a girl, so smart and sweet that one of the mages fell in love with her and got stripped of his magic for his affection by higher, darker powers. But instead, two lovers were gifted with a child.

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Seven years ago

"Vedmaks must be immortal, right?" Bogdan would ask, squinting at the hot summer wind tousling his chestnut hair. "Does it mean their child is, too?"

It was always windy in the hospital yard, an old bowing oak and a rusty wrought-iron fence couldn't stop nature. And somehow stories always gave a bad windy day a good meaning. A purpose. A promise.

That day I sat on a bench, Bogdan in his wheelchair next to me. His grandmother was a nurse, and he spent most of his time in the hospital's halls and the yard, reading, talking to me when I came, or watching school kids play football across the street.

"I don't know." I shrugged. I never had the courage to ask him about the wheelchair. "But I'm pretty sure it means their child has magic, too." I wish I did.

All kids in our little town of Blakfait loved the stories about the city. I had never been there, even though the road took three hours at most, but I saw rare guests from St. Daktalion, visiting their relatives, their expensive cars driving our streets. Evidently, the city folks didn't like those visits: they glanced around with disdain and left almost as soon as arrived.

Back to the mystery.

"Two bruises, huh?" Bogdan asked when I said nothing else, stealing glances at my face. He had a tiny freckle under his left eye, which looked like a tear if you blinked without staring. Because of that freckle, his expression always seemed sympathetic, even when he scowled.

I bit my lip, reluctant to answer. The bruises weren't my today's trophy. "Mmh." I looked down at my hand. The battered knuckles were though. "You haven't seen the others."