The House of Hidden Things

V: Whispers

Someplace

There was a voice, like a shadow in a thought. Barely there but audible.

Come find me. Come find me. Come find me.

The magician raised her body and brushed off her fingers, stained from the charred dust left from the burned doors. She'd waited. Patient and still. Listening to the bow and ease of the house around her, until her own voice came back from wherever it had reached, carrying a new sound with it, younger and delicate and female.

Come closer. Find me. Come closer.

She smiled slow and long. Listening to the highs and lows of the voice as if it was music. The vowels seemed small and simple in her ears. She couldn't help the need to followed after it. The magician moved through the hallway through an arch plastered with curling wallpaper.

A pattern of flowers dotted the walls with a different arrangement underneath where the wallpaper had been covered up. The flowers bent and dropping. The house empty and dark and warm.

The magician moved with such a smooth swiftness. The stride of her feet on the wood made little sound before the voice started to grew fainter and then that's all that remained.

The magician stilled where she was, foot raised to climb the burning steps. She waited there, flame licking at her feet, for another reply. Another sound. But there was nothing.

The delicate pitch of the voice was gone.

She clenched her hands around the railing until it cracked under the pressure. The wood splintered under her hand creating new holes for the cooling ash to fill. Her dark eyes reflected back at her in the shining brass knobs on the doors that hadn't already begun to burn and in those that had already faded away.

"Come back. Come back to me." Her voice softer now that she knew someone was listening. That someone had answered her. With a voice as soft as silk. "Come find me."

She planted her feet, wide, on the rotting wood. At the base of the burning steps, where piles of it had fallen and rotten through enough to see through the cracks. Leaving space in the world like open wounds unable to heal. A fraction of the steps rested intact, still burning.

The magician pulled in a breath of air and held it until it hurt.

It was the first time she had felt the kind of pain that could be self inflicted and she relished the control it brought. The searing in her chest was easy to let go of, easy to feel. She twisted her fingers touching two together, scouring for something to answer her as the dark had done to her before her body had grown against it. Into it.

From it.

"Come find me," came the magicians voice, steady and low and patient. Where are you?

This time there wasn't an answer spoken in words. She could feel the swell of an answer moving behind her, a light touch on her shoulder. Her magic flared and curled around her reaching out to grip what ever was speaking to her. She could taste it on the tip of her tongue.

The next touch rested against her cheek.

The magician turned in a slow circle but saw no one. Nothing. And then, quickly, she became aware of another shift. She shot her arm out at her side, reaching for the something, and she succeeded. For just a moment her fingers closed around icy cold before it slipped from her grip.

A creak in the flow behind her told her what she found was moving, steadily, away from her.

Where are you going, though the magician, what are you seeing?

Instead of another touch, a lock yielded down another hall.

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as her head snapped up towards the sound, harsh in the silence left over from the pops and cracks of the fire still burning under her feet. She tugged her magic against herself, back into herself. The ebb of it brushing her fingertips where the cold had touched.

She stepped through the scattered ashes. Not wavering as flame and smoke curled around her boots. She passed a mirror hanging crookedly against one of the many half charred walls but the reflection that passed, at the same time she did, wasn't of her but the wall behind her.

It looked through her the same way the darkness had.

A reflection in a mirror so unlike a reflection in a brass railing or melted keyhole. Those reflected those who were meant to open them, use them. A mirror didn't have that luxury. It didn't belong here.

The icy cold dissipated. Even if she could still feel it, the ghost of it. She could feel the threads of power slip away. her own and the answered power. How hers-own left crumbs of its self where it had touched, marking the door she needed like the magic that had marked her and the other her.

A claim of power. The brand that marked those who misuse it.

The magician stopped when the magic ended. The door so unlike the others, he wondered why she hadn't seem it before. It rested in a recess. Intact and unaffected by the fire spilling around it.

The magician brought her hand to the door. She curled her fingers deftly around the knob and twisted it.