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“Okay, everyone!” Amity called as she beckoned the crowd of kids to the reading rug. “Come over, it’s reading time!”
“What are we reading today, miss Amity?”
She grinned at the little demon and reached for the book sitting atop Otabin.
Sorry, friend, I’ll read you to them some other time.
Otabin was a classic, but he’d have to wait. She laid the other book in her lap, her hand running along the edge of the cover. Her skin prickled the way it had on her very first day at the library, with her nervous system bouncing between calm and panic. She still remembered holding onto the string of her staff card, waiting for someone to rip it away.
She never predicted how valuable that little card would become. At first, it just for was extra credit. A way to advance her station just a little bit further. Then, without her realizing, it became an excuse for the thirteen year-old not to go home. Before her first month at the library passed, it was the only place where she could breathe.
Ten years, and she was back to dressed in anxiety and sparking with excitement. All thanks to the book in her palms. This book was special, and new, having been published not quite a cycle ago.
It was the only work of writing she’d ever felt the need to make known.
“Today’s a special day. Can anyone tell me what day it is?” She asked, holding her voice level.
“Today is the Day of Light!” A small witch with snow white hair cheered from the center of the pack. The other kids grinned and nodded and yeah!’d along.
“Exactly right,” Amity beamed. The kids cheerfulness were already melting the anxiety from her nerves. “Can anyone tell me why we celebrate it?”
“Because… the Isles were saved?”
“I thought it was because that’s when the Titan moved.”
“Why, miss Amity?” Another witchling asked. Amity softened at the memories—the most fear and helplessness she’d ever felt in her life. Her hand tightened around the book’s bound edge. “It was the day that the Isles were saved, exactly nine years ago. And this—” She waved the book gently, “—is the story of how.”
The rabble rose in the kids, their pitching leaping into squealing soprano. She held out her hand, “Easy, okay, okay. You guys wanna hear the story, don’t you?”
“Yes, miss Amity!” They cheered in unison as they settled, tucking their hands into their laps. They leaned forward with that endless childlike wonder that had, once upon a time, been the only light in Amity’s life.
“Then, let’s begin.” She split open the cover, flipping past the acknowledgements, to the text splayed out beside a drawing of the sprawling breadth of Bonesburough in the background as two men—humans, stared over it in the foreground. She had decided only to read the summaries for each section—they had only so much time together, and the kids wouldn't understand a lot of nitty-gritty details in the full chapters anyway.
“Hundreds of years ago, two human brothers stumbled into our world: Caleb and Philip Wittebane, witch hunters from the human realm.”
“They desired to destroy the Isles, but while Philip began to plan, Caleb learned about the world before him. He met demons and witches, and fell in love with one. He begged his brother to change his mind. That the world here was beautiful and good in its own way.”
“But Philip refused to hear his brother’s plea. With his case falling on deaf ears, Caleb tried to flee with his love, but Philip caught up to them, and killed the witch.”
The children gasped. Amity paused as their whispered died away, then continued.
“Caleb was devastated. The brothers fought, and Philip killed his own brother, too.
Another round of gasps.
“Philip persisted in the demon realm, neither his rage nor cunning ever waning. For hundreds of years he plotted to destroy the world, and he found a way. He tricked everyone he met, and declared that he could speak to the Titan. That he was a prophet for its word.”
“He began calling himself Belos, and, sixty years ago, he became the emperor of the Boiling Isles. He declared that the Titan was disgraced by the use of ‘wild magic.’ He established the coven system, and maintained that he alone had the right to all forms of magic.”
“But that’s not fair!” One of the witches argued.
“You’re right, Ija,” Amity agreed. “It wasn’t fair… but the emperor was a master of trickery.. He convinced the people of the Isles that this was the right way. He even cut his own ears to look like a witch himself!” She added on, pointing at her own pointed ears.
“Ew!”
With a solemn nod of agreement, Amity turned her attention back to the page:
“This began what is now known as the Gilded Empire. The coven system was pushed, and wild magic was outlawed. Children were indoctrinated into the belief that only one type of magic was allowed to be used. For fifty years, his philosophy prevailed.”
“Until one fateful day, when another human appeared in the Boiling Isles. Her name was Luz Noceda—an average teen with a heart of gold and a dream of becoming a witch.”
“Humans can’t be witches!” A boy declared.
“Don’t be so sure, Wroxel.” Amity wagged her finger, “Luz was far from ordinary. Belos may have claimed that he could speak to the Titan, but the Titan itself saw something special in Luz.”
“Luz couldn’t draw magic circles. She had no bile sac, and, seemingly, no magic. She made mistakes, she was tricked by monsters and time and time again she faced perilous odds. Despite the dangers, she survived, and one day, the Titan showed her a path. It shared with her the language of its soul—a way to speak to the magic it left behind as it died. These were called glyphs. Special patterns that commanded the magic of the world.”
“Through glyphs, Luz became a true witch. She trained hard, and while she had a lot to learn, she became the light of so many lives with her kindness. And then… she learned the truth about Belos. Despite all the danger, she was determined to stop him, and save the ones she loved.”
She moved to flip the page when the class’s teacher, Mister Mcghoul, stepped in. “Amity, it’s time for the kids to check out books.”
“I must’ve lost track of time…” Amity murmured. “Okay, kids, I guess we’ll have to pick up from here next time.
“Wait!” Wroxel cried. “What happened?!? Did Luz win?!?”
“Well… there’s a lot more to the story, but… yeah, she won.” Amity murmured. “The Isles were saved.”
“Where’s Luz now?!” Estra asked.
Amity opened her mouth to answer, but she was interrupted:
“Nobody knows for sure.” A voice rasped from around the corner of a bookshelf. “But, most believe she’s on a perilous quest.” The girl stepped out, a paper bag in her grasp. “—A quest to bring her fiancé the lunch she forgot!”
The kids looked from Amity to the woman, then back, then back again. “Is that…”
“Her ears are round!” Ija screamed.
The reading rug erupted.
“You’re Luz?!”
“You saved the Isles!”
The kids were on their feet before Amity could stop them. They stormed towards Luz, whose faces turned from joy to terror as little bodies tackled her to the floor.
“Wait, watch the lunch!!” Luz cried beneath the swell of giggles and cheers and jabbering questions.
“Show us a glyph!”
“You’re so cool!”
“Can you sign my arm?!”
“I wanna be like you!”
“Children, behave!” Mr. Mcghoul snapped through a hiss. “This is a library!”
Slowly, the mob of them shifted their focus away from Luz, who was laying on the floor, her hair frazzled in disarray while her gaze went a thousand miles away. The bagged lunch was all but pummeled into the floor by little feet.
“I think I almost died.” Luz breathed shakily as she struggled to her feet. “I… uh…” She held the destroyed bag up in disappointment. “I tried…”
“I know…” Amity chuckled. She moved to Luz’s side and kissed her against the cheek. “You’re sweet.”
Luz tugged out the remains of the lunch—a sandwich squished into mush and something else that was definitely a lost cause—and took a tentative bite from the crust. “It’s still pretty good.” She laughed. “So… they like your book.”
“Well, I only read the summaries.” Amity clarified. “They’re just kids… they wouldn’t really understand all the bits and pieces.”
“We were just kids…” Luz mused to the air. “But, I guess we still had a few years on those little rascals.”
Amity nodded and set down the book. In all truth, it really wasn’t meant for children. It wasn’t even supposed to be a book. At first, she’d started it as a way to spill all the memories into something besides nightmares. It helped, so she kept writing, and somewhere along the line, it grew from coping to creating.
It was practically a classroom textbook, now, save for the fact that she had no ability to write outside her head. Maybe it was better to think of it as a chronological novel, detailing everything about Luz’s time in the human realm.
The only reason she’d chosen to include Philip at all was because of his pertinence to the rest of Luz’s story. She had spent days asking Eda, Gus, and Willow all sorts of questions, as well as racking and re-racking her own memory.
In those pages was everything she and the rest of them had endured. She chose not to write them as invincible rebels. She wrote the truth, and the truth was that they were all scared kids trying to hold on to the people and world they all loved.
She didn’t plan to write it.
She didn’t plan to publish it.
She didn’t plan to be holding it now. But she was. And there were people who didn’t know what happened on the Day of Unity. On the Day of Light.
Maybe they were too young…
Luz nearly read her mind. “I’m sure you didn’t scar them too badly. It’s a good story.”
“It’s your story, Luz.”
“Nah. It was never just me.” Luz waved her off. “I had Eda and King, you, Willow, Gus, and Hunter… my mom, Vee…” She prattled on and on until she ran out of names. “Besides, I still caus—”
“—No, you didn’t. Not from where I’m standing.” Amity blunted. “You didn’t cause anything. Belos would have found someone else to use. Nobody else could have stopped him.”
“Lots of other—”
“You did it, Luz. The Titan gave you his power. You stopped Belos. Nobody else could’ve done that because nobody else is you.” Amity squeezed the girl’s hand. “You’re a hero—our hero. Just like you dreamed. Just like Azura… you’re my hero.”
Luz blushed, turning away to face the wall. “You’re embarrassing me.” She whined.
Amity laughed as she took a piece of the sandwich from Luz. She bit into it to taste buttery peanut and a sweet punch of strawberry—she’d come to love fruit from the human world. “This is really good.” She agreed. “Thank you.”
“Anytime, sweet potato.” Luz purred as she stole a quick kiss. Before they could part for long, Amity rested her head on Luz’s shoulder.
“I still think you should consider lecturing.” She murmured.
“Amity…”
“You still haven’t told me why you turned them down.”
“It’s just…” Luz sighed. “They’re not asking for me. They’re asking for Luz the Human, the fearless hero of the Boiling Isles.”
Amity wrapped one arm around her fiancé, then tilted her chin toward her with her other hand. “Luz… it’s the same person. It’s all you.”
“I know… but… it doesn’t feel like it is.” She stumbled. “I still wake up and think he’s alive. I still hear his voice, all tangled up in Hunter’s…” She leaned down into herself, voice turning frail. “I can’t pretend to be some hero when I’m still so scared.”
Amity took her hand. “You don’t have to. Luz, don’t you get it? You read Azura, you read this—” She held up the book. “—you’re not a hero because you’re fearless. You’re a hero because you were scared, and you stepped up anyway! Read any sentence from this story and you’ll see that your legacy—your real legacy—isn’t the fact that you won, but the fact that you never gave up, no matter how bad the situation was, or how scared you were. It’s all about your heart, Luz.”
“My heart… huh?” The girl clutch a fist over her chest before she looked up at Amity, her flighty gaze settling its feathers away as she eased into Amity’s palm. “You were a hero too, then.” She cooed. “You were always there for me.”
Not always.
She could never scrape the feeling from memory. The lights floating into the archives, fluttering down around them while a pit of doom sank through her shoes.
Nothing scared her more than the certainty she’d had that Luz was dead. Nothing worse than knowing she hadn’t been there.
Definitely not always.
“Not always… I almost got you dissected, remember?”
“And I almost got you flattened into two dimensions.” Luz laughed. “And almost got your siblings eaten by a slitherbeast…
“I mean, Grom almost ate you.” Amity countered.
Their laughter filled the space between the shelves as happier images flooded their minds. “Well.” Luz joked. “I guess I better marry you fast before we do kill each other, huh?”
“You better.”
A small squeak drew their focus toward the edge of a bookshelf. A little witch girl stood with her fingers gripping the wooden panel. One nervous eye peeked at them.
“Zasa?” Amity leaned slightly toward the girl. “What’s wrong?”
Zasa stepped out, her hands shaking as she stepped onto the reading rug. “Can I… sit with you?”
Amity tugged Luz’s sleeve as she shifted from the chair to the rug. “Of course.”
Luz knelt down with them, “You find any books you like?” she asked, her voice dripping with honey—the human kind… not the firebee kind.
Zasa shook her head with a scowl “I hate books!”
Amity could see a bitter pain in her eyes. One look to Luz told her the human saw it, too.
“How come?” Amity asked. “You were having so much fun last week, did something happen?”
“No!” Zasa curled into herself. Giggles pricked at Amity’s ears, and she looked up to see a few girls turn away. A nudge in her side drew her attention as Luz whispered: “I think I got this.”
“Hey, Zasa, was it?” She coaxed.
Zasa nodded.
“Don’t listen to them, kiddo. You wanna know why they laugh? Why they’re so mean?”
“Why?”
“Because, deep down, they’re just as scared of being judged. They’re not as confident as you think.” Luz explained. “Try to remember that, and try to be kind to them, okay? You never know what they’re going through. Like…” She knelt down further and stretched out a hand, pointing at the space where the girls had been. “Maybe one of them just lost her mom, or dad. Or maybe her parents aren’t nice. Maybe she’s not having a good time in school.”
“How do you know all of this?” Zasa asked.
“Well… I used to get laughed at, too.”
Amity’s fist tightened. Luz hadn’t told her much about the bullying back in the human world—though it probably wasn’t much better than the bullying here.
“Huh? No way! You’re Luz! You saved the Isles!”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t always a witch.” She explained. “Back in the human realm, everyone just thought I was a weird loser. I didn’t have any real friends until I came here.”
Amity watched Zasa’s eyes glow with admiration as Luz’s hand tugged a notepad free from her pocket. She knew it all too well—Luz whipped through them like crazy while she was practicing King’s glyphs.
“My dad told me that there are two rules you need to live a good life.” Luz reminisced as her pen swirled in old, yet unforgettable circles. “One, be good to others. Give them the kindness you’d want to get. Two, don’t change yourself for people who don’t follow the first rule.” The pen’s tip rose and dipped and swirled, Zasa was engrossed in its movements as Luz closed the fourth circle.
“Are those…” Zasa began, only to trail off.
“This is the language of the Boiling Isles.” Luz displayed the pad across her palm. “The Titan—King’s father—helped me see them.”
Amity remembered Luz telling her once: ‘Magic is everywhere! The glyphs are like words!’
“They don’t work anymore… but these symbols are what let me become a witch.”
“They’re so pretty.” Zasa murmured.
“They really are…” Luz’s eyes drifted through the floor and into memory for a moment before she blinked back tears. “Say, why don’t you hold onto them?” She offered. “I think the Titan would want you to know his language, too.”
Zasa took the page in her hand with wide eyes and a jaw on the floor. “Y-you’re… sure?”
“Yeah, they’re yours, kiddo. Now, why don’t you go find a book you’ll like? Amity said you liked reading.”
“Uhm… Miss Amity?”
Amity leaned forward, “Yes?”
“Can I check out that book?” She pointed at Amity’s work, set atop the table. Her insides tensed for a moment, anticipating parental complaints. She could get away with this overstep solely because she had summarized it so heavily…
But… she wants to know.
Isn’t that why you wrote it?
She nodded and handed the book to Zasa. “Go right ahead. I know you’ll take good care of it until next week.”
“Thank you, Miss Amity! Luz!” Zasa took off for the front desk, the book cradled in her arms. Luz watched her go with soft eyes. She looked like she could lay down, stretch, yawn and slip straight into sleep because her work was done.
“And you say you’re no hero.” Amity chortled.
“Huh?”
“You reach people. I told you—it’s your heart.” Amity reminded her. “That’s what makes you a hero, and that’s why I had to write that book. People need to know that it’s not about being fearless or crazy powerful.”
It’s all in the heart. She thought. She reached for Luz’s notepad and tore a page free. Luz gave her a curious look.
“Just a reminder for myself for next week.” She explained as she wrote:
Finish ‘Heart of the Isles’ for next Reading Time.