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Julia’s shrill wail ringing through the trees punched Isaac right in the solar plexus.
He had turned his back on her for one second…
Forgetting all about the foxglove he had found, Isaac dropped the basket and hurried up towards the source of the intolerable noise: his sister, sitting on the grass damp from the dew, clutching her leg and sobbing her little lungs out. She was seven, way too old to have a fit over nothing (at that age, Isaac was already the man of the house and a babysitter, and he did a fantastic job, thank you very much); but it better had to be nothing, because Isaac would not accept being accused of letting Julia hurt herself just because she had her head in the clouds.
“Calm down, you’re not dying,” he attempted to quiet her with a huff. “Come on, let me see…”
At least, Julia was not so distraught as to ignore her older brother. Still wracked by sobs, but leaving Isaac’s ears alone, she pointed at her knee.
He expected to see a shallow scratch, that kind of silly wounds little kids tended to panic over even if it was nothing; the “kiss it to make it go away” bruises that Julia seemed to attract like flies to honey. But no: Isaac had to concede that the cut looked pretty deep, and caked in dirt and blood. On top of that, her ankle was swollen and of an angry red. For once, she had a good reason to cry.
“What happened?” Isaac asked, pinching the bridge of his nose and taking deep breaths. It was nothing that it couldn’t be fixed, surely.
Julia’s words were hard to understand under all the sobbing: “I saw… a cute snake… and I wanted to show you… so I chased it… and-and-and I tripped on a rock! It hurts!”
Oh, Julia, her and her constant demand of her brother’s attention. She couldn’t go one day without tugging Isaac’s sleeve and proudly presenting an ugly critter to him, from slimy snakes to bloated toads full of warts to crawling centipedes wrapping around her fingers. The more disgusting the animal, the wider her grin, and she only let the beasts go, horrified, when Isaac threatened to chop them for his potions.
(His pockets were heavy with the husks of insects she had gifted him, but he didn’t have it in him to throw them away. They could always turn out to be useful, he told himself.)
“Yeah, well, next time don’t prance around in a forest,” Isaac rolled his eyes: if he showed any trace of concern, Julia might start to cry again, and he simply couldn’t deal with that. He had to brew a potion quickly and without mistake: If the cut got infected, her mother would be furious with him, and he had no intention of giving that woman an inch over him.
“Alright,” he stretched his hand towards his sister, “Let’s go home and I’ll patch you up.”
Julia wasted no time in taking his hand to get on her feet, and she wasted no time in shrieking at the top of her lungs the moment they touched the ground. He didn’t mean to make Julia cry, this time: it wasn’t fun to see her in so much pain.
Fine. Isaac crouched, his back to Julia: with a squeal of delight, she climbed on top of him like a squirrel, and then with a grunt he lifted her up. That, he would miss when she’ll grow up. Even if her little hands squeezing his throat for dear life threatened to choke him before they could get home.
The foxgloves could wait until Julia stopped whimpering.
The trip back home felt twice as long. Perhaps because of the weight on Isaac’s back, or because he placed his feet with more care than usual, lest he jolted Julia and made her cry again. For what was worth, she seemed to enjoy the piggyback ride, judging by her giggles when low leaves brushed against her – at least someone was having fun.
Isaac couldn’t. It had been ingrained into him by his father, with such unusual gravity that even as a stupid brat he understood to take him seriously, to cast furtive glances everywhere, even behind him. Cover your cursed hair, bring a weapon with you, don’t wander too far away from the forest. It was tranquil at dawn, with only the chirping of birds to catch his attention, and wolves wouldn’t be too much trouble to chase away… humans stayed to larger towns… but Isaac could never know, he had to be ready to protect Julia from those stupid villagers on the hunt if the need arose…
May they try to land a hand on either of them! No animal ever escaped Isaac’s quick knife; those who worshipped a cruel God would not be the exception.
Isaac breathed a sigh of relief only when the barrier surrounding the house washed through them. Now safe from any witness, he hurried up inside, grateful that their home was so small he could waste no time in reaching the “potion tavern”, as he liked to call it, and at last removing the hood and letting Julia down next to a chair. Man, but she was growing heavy.
“Get off the ride, now, or I’ll make you pay an extra fee,” he joked.
Julia hopped on her good foot to sit, drawing her wounded leg close to her chest and looking like the picture of misery. “Am I going to walk again?” she sniffled.
Isaac rolled his eyes, and with a rag, he cleaned the wound on the knee from all the dirt. “Oh, come on, stop being so dramatic. I’ll fix you right up, just you wait.”
She nodded without further protest. Isaac could feel her wide eyes boring through him when he turned his back on her, looking for the right ingredients. Julia always followed Isaac like a more loyal shadow, observing him in everything he did; and the one thing that sparked the warmth of pride in his chest, more than successfully mastering a new spell, was Julia’s wide, toothy smile of admiration as she looked up to him.
Problem was, Isaac realized with a scratch of his head, that he had witnessed his father brew healing potions many times, but he hadn’t the foggiest idea on how to do it without assistance.
Well, fine. He didn’t need anyone! Healing potions were the bread and butter of any self-respecting witch. Even the snake that Julia wanted to catch could make one.
“Alright, I need to find Dad’s spellbook, it should be around here…”
“Do you need it? It hurts a lot!”
Alright, now Julia was playing it up on purpose. Isaac knew her better than she knew herself.
“How about I let you like this, and make you hop around on one leg, huh?” He couldn’t help himself, so kept on with a laugh: “Like a frog! You’ll be just like them, jumping around with your face full of snot!”
“No! I don’t want to!” She shook her head, distraught at the proposal. “What if I hurt the other foot?”
“Then you’ll slither around, like a ssssssnake!” At that, Isaac descended to deploy the worst weapon in his arsenal: tickling Julia’s sides. Her squeaky laughter filled up the house, until she squirmed too much and the game ended in a pained yelp, with her clutching her suffering ankle.
Right. Healing potion. Coming right up.
Confident in his impeccable memory, Isaac rummaged through the pantry of herbs and flowers, kept blossoming through magic he had to learn, someday. When did they pick up so much belladonna…? No, no, not that one, oh that would make Julia’s eyes explode – ah, there they were.
The names of the plants came to them associated with the vivid colors, from when he peered on the counter and admired his father at work. With each motion of the fingers, the instructions floated from his ingrained subconscious back to the surface. The bright orange of marigold, its petals plucked counterclockwise; fresh salve made of bay laurel leaves; finely chopped flowers and roots of garlic – Isaac ignored Julia’s noises of discontent at the smell; a dollop of honey to improve the taste; and last but not least, the secret of every sorcerer, pulverized fairy wings to give it that special touch that no charlatan could replicate.
While stirring, mindful of Father’s advice of taking his time, Isaac heard hopping and faint “ouch”es behind him. Julia must have gotten impatient with sitting prettily; but she was making progress, Isaac mused, it had been more than thirty seconds without her clinging to his tunic.
“Don’t distract me,” he demanded. But he could stir with one hand alone, so he rested the other on top of Julia’s hair, scratching her head absentmindedly. In case she acted out again, obviously. It seemed to be working: she kept quiet and still at his side, fidgeting only as much as she could on one foot. Isaac didn’t mind these working conditions.
When at last, the potion assumed the right hue of bright blue, Isaac took a sniff, and deeming it edible, he lowered it to Julia, who gulped it without so much as breathing.
After drinking every last drop, she scrunched her face and stuck out her tongue.
“Bleh.”
“What?”
“It’s bitter,” Julia whined. “And spicy. Mom’s potions are sweeter.”
Isaac looked down at her, not believing his ears. The nerve of the brat! After he managed to brew a potion without assistance! So what if he didn’t drench it in honey for her delicate tastes!
“Well, next time wait for your mom then.” He flicked her nose, just because he knew that it annoyed her. “She will pick you up if you are clumsy again. If you don’t need me anymore…”
“Nooooo, I like it better when you carry me!” She tentatively put down her foot, and bounced in delight, almost startling Isaac with her lack of hesitation. “See, I’m already better!”
That was plain to see. Isaac crouched, to make sure: indeed, the nasty cut had left merely a red splotch that would fade soon. Success! Father would be proud of his feat, he couldn’t help but think with a smile.
Julia took advantage of Isaac’s position: she squeezed him with the force of a grown man, arms around his shoulders and nearly knocking their heads.
“Oh, thank you thank you thank you, Isaac!”
“What, did you think I’d leave you hurt?” he laughed, for once not annoyed with her clinginess. He didn’t understand what made her so happy, but he wasn’t going to reject it. “What kind of brother do you take me for?”
“The best brother!” she declared at full force; and it was in moments like these, that Isaac was almost grateful for Father’s decision to have another child.
Isaac had woken up.
Julia lifted her head from the cauldron of soup that was boiling in the hearth. She hoped, she hoped with all of her heart to be wrong, but the sound of sobs filling the cottage were unmistakable.
He didn’t do much else, when he wasn’t having nightmares.
Well, time to try again. This time, she would make him eat.
Julia filled up a bowl with warm soup with more lethargy than she would have liked. Part of her was all too aware of the futility of butting heads against Isaac… but she was not going to give up without a fight. She was seventeen, now, a young woman who could take care of a brother in need.
Before opening the door of the bedroom, however, Julia got lost in the scenery visible from the tiny window. A malaise settled in her stomach. Perhaps it was a trick of her imagination, but something was… off, about the night. The moon looked of a greyish, sickly color, and the stars didn’t shimmer in the dark sky despite not being cloudy. The air weighed on Julia, like a blanket of frost; at every breath, dread penetrated into her lungs, and seized her, something is wrong, wrong, you can’t stay here, something terrible will happen.
It must have been the situation with Isaac that put her on edge. Julia could never know when sleep would grant her a vision of impending doom. No, she would not let anything bad happen.
Deep breaths. She could do this. She steeled herself, put on a small smile on her face, and turned the doorknob with her elbow while carrying the bowl of soup to her brother.
She took in the pitiful sight with a heavy heart. Isaac was sitting on the bed, curled against himself, face buried in his hands and shoulders shaking at every ragged breath. Blood seeped through the bandages wrapped around his limbs. Isaac still hadn’t told her who had left him for dead, and perhaps it was a good thing for them, that she didn’t know.
“I brought you some food,” she called for his attention, in a thin voice, almost afraid to intrude.
She would have assumed that Isaac hadn’t heard her, given that he didn’t so much as flinch. But she knew better. Despite everything, she still knew her brother. She could almost see him, rolling his eyes behind his palms.
On cue, Isaac lowered his hands, and muttered: “I haven’t seen you since you were a brat clutching at my heels, and now look at you, fretting all over me like a mother.”
His voice was weak and cracked, it lacked the barbs Julia remembered and used to find so funny when she was a child. The irony presented by Isaac was not lost on her: she held onto the swell of pride.
“About time I returned the favor,” she joked, sitting on the nearby chair with the bowl in her lap. She was no longer the little kid who needed to be protected from the scary world that was angry at her for being born: her coven taught her how to take care of herself and others, and at last, Isaac could rely on her.
In Julia’s memories, Isaac had always been tall, almost a grown-up as much as their father: she looked up to him, always searching for his gaze, the thawing of the ice that he had formed around him; but now, while he sat on the bed, only his legs not quite pressed against his body and still not quite facing her, she had to recognize that he was not as imposing as she remembered. True, he had always struggled to put on weight, much to her mother’s worry; but the man in front of her was gaunt, cheekbones jutting out of sickly skin like his puffy eyes out of his sockets. The telltale signs of a body that had been plunged in pitch-black magic, and pushed far beyond its limits.
(She had her own nightmares too, of entering Isaac’s room and being greeted by his dead body in his bed, starved, or succumbed to infection, or due to sheer despair shutting down his heart. Checking if his chest still moved had become the first step of her morning routine. She could only pray that those were mere tricks of the mind.)
Nevertheless, Julia did not lose heart. Isaac came back radically transformed: his skin was covered in black tattoos, alchemical signs and pledges to the Devil. His hair had grown longer and messier, framing a sharper face. But those were all skin-deep changes, she could count on it.
“Did you live well?” Isaac asked out of the blue, seemingly more interested in his bandaged hands than his sister. “With those witches.”
Julia smiled at the question, the crack in the ice. “They took care of me like our parents did. I never wanted for anything. No one could make a healing potion as spicy as yours, though,” she let out a small laugh. “And no one was strong enough to carry me when I was tired.”
“Why are you alone now?”
Ah. Isaac might have misunderstood. He had always been eager to defend her from any danger: countless times, her brother shielded her from kids holding rocks with nothing but a blade and the rage of a hound, and there was nothing she could do about it but watch with her back to a wall. No doubt, Isaac would try to pursue her sister witches himself if he thought she had been abandoned.
“They… got scared,” Julia admitted, tapping the edge of the bowl. It was getting cold. Isaac made no motion towards it. “When we heard rumors about executions… and the Count’s wrath on the people,” Isaac’s head twitched, “they decided they couldn’t risk again. They fled, while I stayed behind. It was my choice, don’t worry!” she hurried to explain. “It’s alright, I set up a shop here and I’m earning myself a living. You can rest well.”
She could have followed her coven further east, in colder lands where, it was whispered, witches, wizards and warlocks were better accepted, where the tendrils of the Church grew weaker. It had been a tearful goodbye, and Julia wished she could have filled their sacks with more elixirs and lucky charms. However, she never regretted her decision: a witch learns early on to trust her gut feeling, and a part deep within her knew that she could not leave her only family behind.
Isaac seemed to absorb the information in silence, his eyes covered by his long bangs – unthinkable when they lived together, when Isaac would not dare to step foot outside the door without first hiding his hair. At the time, Julia couldn’t understand why; realization only settled in when, years later, she met a witch with hair a lovely shade of red and half of her face burned. “Lord Dracula’s castle hosted witches as well,” he commented at last with a tug of the lip; and this time, the venom tasted bitter on Julia’s tongue.
What could she even say? Julia tormented her lip under her teeth until it stung. All this time, between the lines written by her brother every day, then every week, then every month or so, lingered his blame against her. For bursting into tears at the sight of that creature that welcomed them, a ghastly skeleton cloaked in a night-black robe that peered through her soul without eyes. For screaming and kicking when Isaac all but threw her at the feet of the Lord of the Castle, a monster whose face she could not even see, whose mere presence rose every hair on Julia’s skin and made her teeth rattle until she could no longer speak. For being deemed unworthy of His tutelage, unlike Isaac, who too had his cheeks streaked by tears, but not of blinding terror.
Was it Julia’s fault, that when the monster’s wife, a woman who showed her all the gentleness that the Count showed to Isaac, helped her find another coven of witches hidden behind the mountains, she agreed to live with them? Was there really no way to build a bridge over the chasm that had split open between them? She never meant to abandon her brother… even if he was the one who murdered the village’s priest and forced them on the run…
She sought him, like way back then, when all they had was each other in the world. When Isaac retreated further into his sadness, Julia reached for him, and placed a hand on his shoulder.
He smacked her.
The bowl fell from her lap and shattered on the floor.
“Don’t touch me!”
Isaac’s voice was hoarse, ragged. No less piercing. Much like his eyes, bloodshot and scorching and spirited with a terror Julia had only seen in the crowd during executions.
“You… only now you pretend to care! You think… feeding me, keeping me here, will be enough?”
Julia’s chest ached in her efforts to breathe. Her ears rang from the shock; it took her too long to piece together what Isaac meant with his ramblings.
“W-what are you talking about? You came to me! You asked me for help!”
Her visions had warned her, in shapes and symbols that she took weeks to decipher: the crunch of a broken bone, the glint of a blade, her brother’s voice weakly pleading for help. She spent every other night alert, waiting for a concrete sign. And despite it all, her heart nearly stopped the night she heard a thud at her door, and she found on her porch Isaac’s slashed body, mangled, clothes torn and soaked in blood, but alive by the will of a God who Julia did not know.
“I didn’t…” Honest confusion tinted Isaac’s expression and voice. Julia resisted the temptation to check his temperature. “I didn’t know where I was going… you should have…”
“Should have what? Let you die out there, in a pool of your own blood?”
“Yes, you idiot!” he bellowed, stunning her. “I should have never come here! It was a mistake, looking for a snake like you!”
Isaac’s words were a slap to Julia’s face. He was raving, looking through her, yet pinning her in place, judging her for sins she had never imagined she had to regret. She had been so happy to finally see her brother again, even underneath the waves of her apprehension. That he, somehow, sought refuge from death by stretching his hand towards her, just like she always did when she needed help.
“I don’t understand…” Oh, how small she sounded even to her ears. The smell of spilled soup had become revolting to her stomach. “I thought… you trusted me…”
“How? How could I? Where were you, all this time?!” Where were you when He fell!” He brought his trembling hands to his face again, knuckles white in his efforts to sink his nails into his skin. “You… and that lurid traitor…”
And before Julia could react, he let out a visceral scream:
“YOU ABANDONED ME JUST LIKE THAT BASTARD! YOU’RE ALL THE SAME! DON’T PRETEND NOW THAT I’M WORTH SOMETHING TO THE LIKES OF YOU!”
She was left still, as her brother, her hero, wailed in front of her yet so far away from her, a guttural sound broken by gasps and wheezes; he was rocking back and forth with his nails leaving red scratches on his skin, as if he could somehow escape from himself.
He sounded like a hurt child. And Julia couldn’t think at all, lest of all of how to comfort him.
“Let me die… Let me die with my Lord…”
He was no longer speaking to her.
The chill of the night seeped through her skin and bones. Tears caught in Julia’s eyelashes, but she blinked them away, even if Isaac wouldn’t see her wiping them. It was a matter of principle. Oh, but it was so hard to find strength within herself, when she was all but powerless in the face of Isaac’s despair: no magic, no potion, no spell could heal a broken heart.
Why must it be this way? I dreamed of embracing my brother again for so many years…
No. Julia inhaled, and exhaled, in hope to dispel the anguish agitating in her guts. She would not give up on Isaac. Their parents did, and whoever betrayed him did, but not his sister. Maybe Isaac himself lost trust in her – she breathed again – but if he was furious with her for leaving him behind, then she would not make the same mistake once more.
“No. You’re worth the world, to me. You are, Isaac,” she spoke, softly and slowly, close his ear. He would have to listen. She dared, and when he lost his voice, she placed the tips of her fingers on his arm: against her expectations, Isaac did not lash out, and he allowed her to lower his hand with an air of deep exhaustion carved into his face. Julia stretched her lips into her best smile, the one she learned to wear when welcoming customers. “If you eat something for me, even a spoonful, I’ll leave you be, alright?”
Red spots surrounded Isaac’s eyes. “No,” he croaked eventually.
“No?”
“I’ll eat.”
“Then what… oh.” Julia put a hand on her racing heart, touching the pendant that Isaac had gifted her. She found it easier to breathe. “I’m sorry. You’re still my big brother, you know that?”
Isaac did not speak up, nor did she expect him to. The nod he gave her was short, more of a twitch, and were he a stranger, she would have assumed it had been a trick of the moonlight.
Perhaps Julia still was the little girl who couldn’t let go of her brother’s hand. She did not mind, as long as he was willing to tend his.
Time to get to work. She felt Isaac’s presence, above and behind her, while she cleaned up the mess on the floor: his breathing was still heavy, and for the time being, she could rejoice in the fact that she was able to hear it in the first place.
The rest of the evening was spent in peace. Isaac let himself be fed without a protest, or much of anything that could be peered through: if he found the healing potion poured into the soup bitter, he did not so much as hesitate to swallow. Julia was left aching for her brother’s voice, his expressions, his tics, anything that anchored her to what once was. Still, even after he had eaten enough potion to regain his energies, he never once moved to snatch the spoon from her hand, instead allowing her to take care of him until the bowl was empty.
They were everything they had left in the world. It was up to them to look after each other, and Julia was more than ready to give Isaac all the love that never waned in all those years.
The next morning, Julia prepared a hearty breakfast for Isaac, with plenty of meat and cheese to help him regain his strength: she opened the door, and she was greeted by an empty bed and the morning cold rushing from an open window.
No no no no no no no no no no!
She didn’t care that the plate dropped from her hands, nothing mattered, she rushed out of the door and she couldn’t see, couldn’t see what was happening in front of her eyes because everything was blurry and blood rushed to her temples, and she couldn’t see beyond, her third eye looked and searched and sifted through the forest but Isaac’s magic had vanished into thin air, how, how could it be, she had—she had—!
She hadn’t done enough for him.
And in the privacy of her home in the mountains, left behind by the world, Julia wept into her hands, crushed by her failure.
