Excerpted from Luminous
by Mara Rutherford, © 2021 by Mara Rutherford. Used with permission from
Inkyard Press/HarperCollins.
My father once described magic as an invisible beast, an unseen enemy that could snatch our lives away at any moment. As a small, impressionable child, I had imagined a lupine creature lurking outside among the whispering pines, breathing over my shoulder in our garden. For years, I didn’t even leave the house; it was magic that had killed my mother, after all.
I was old enough now to understand that magic didn’t work
that way. But as I hurried down the dark road, past the woods that had become
my haven during daylight hours, my childhood fears didn’t feel so foolish. I
glanced behind me, sure I’d find Belle Sabine, the fabled witch of every young
woman’s nightmares, swooping down as silent as an owl, ready to steal my youth
and leave an empty husk behind.
To my relief, there was nothing there. My only traveling
companion was the wind nipping at my heels, spurring me forward. But in my
brief distraction, I tripped over a rock in the road, falling hard onto my
knees. Cursing myself for my clumsiness and superstition, I dusted off my
hands, wincing as a sharp pebble dislodged from my palm. I couldn’t afford this
kind of delay. It was close to midnight, and there was no moon to speak of,
which made my situation even more precarious; my exposed skin glowed so
brightly that moths circled me like a flame. But my little sister, Mina, was
missing. I had to tell Father.
As I rose, I heard the sound of footsteps up the road. I
glanced around for a place to hide, but there was no time. A moment later, a
figure loomed at the margins of my glow.
Some said Belle Sabine had died, others that she was
biding her time until the townspeople became complacent once again. But I was
convinced she had come to kill me on the one night I had dared to venture past
our threshold.
I shrank back as skirts and slippered feet came into
view, followed by a woman’s arms cradling a basket, and finally, the face of
Margana, the weaver who lived next door. Not here to kill me, then. But a
witch, nevertheless. And one arguably as dangerous as Belle Sabine, given who
she worked for.
“What are you doing on the road, Liora? It’s the middle
of the night.”
“Mina is gone,” I said. “Father is still at work, and I
didn’t know what else to do.”
Margana scrutinized me for a moment. “You’re a witch.”
A chill that had nothing to do with the cool night air
crept over my scalp. No one had ever called me a witch to my face before,
though of course I knew what I was. My entire life revolved around my glowing
skin and the fear that the kingdom’s most powerful warlock would discover it.
Lord Darius was employed by the king himself, gathering mages and torturing
them if they didn’t do his bidding.
I pulled Father’s cloak tighter around myself, but it was
futile. She already knew. I had wasted too much time getting up the nerve to
leave the house after I found Mina’s bed empty, wringing my hands at the
window, wondering if she’d been kidnapped by drifters or lured into the forest
by a ghost lantern. Then, once I was on the road, I had foolishly stopped to
look at the devil’s footprints, little white mushrooms that grew in pairs of
two, resembling the cloven hooves of a demon. I’d seen them in daylight plenty
of times, but never at night. They had caught my eye because their glow was so
similar to my own.
Oddly, Margana’s basket was full of the mushrooms. Her
cornflower-blue eyes and auburn hair were pale and otherworldly in their light.
As if sensing my curiosity, she shifted the basket to her other hip. Margana
was one of the few people who lived outside the gates of the ancient village of
Sylvan, like us. She was also my best friend Evran’s mother—and the only other
witch I knew.
“I always wondered why your father moved you girls out
here after your mother died,” she said. “Now it all makes sense. But something
tells me your father wouldn’t be pleased to know you’re outside, exposing
yourself.” She grabbed one of my hands and turned it over, examining it like a
bruised apple at market. Against Margana’s dull skin, mine looked false, as if
I wasn’t a real person at all.
I pulled my hand free as politely as possible. “I should
go.”
She sighed. “Keep your head down, and pray you don’t meet
anyone on the road. Darius’s spies are everywhere.”
My eyes widened in fear, and she chuckled to herself.
“Not me, silly girl.”
I swallowed audibly. If there really were spies in
Sylvan, Margana was the most likely suspect. After all, she did work for Lord
Darius. She might not be his servant by choice, but he was dangerous enough
that no mage dared cross him. No mage who had lived to tell about it, anyway.
I was about to step around her when my eyes drifted to
the basket once again. “I thought the devil’s footprints were poisonous.”
Her lips curved in a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Oh, they are. Highly. Fortunately, I don’t plan on eating them. Good luck,
Liora.”
I nodded and hurried to the stone steps leading down to
Sylvan, which was tucked away in a gorge, hidden from the roving eyes of river
pirates. Above me, a heavy iron chain was suspended between the cliffs. As far
as I knew, Sylvan was the only village in Antalla—maybe the world—that could
boast having attracted not one, but two falling stars. A fragment of the first
had been melted into the shape of a five-pointed star and hung from the chain.
At night, it was only a glimmer overhead.
The second star—my star—had disintegrated amid the flames
when it landed.
I wound my way silently through Sylvan’s narrow streets,
toward Father’s shop. He and Adelle, my older, more responsible sister, were
likely the only ones working at this hour. Just as I quickened my pace, I heard
a high-pitched shriek from somewhere above me. I looked up to where a lamp
winked on in an apartment window, illuminating two silhouettes, then down to
the shop on my left. The tailor’s shop.
Mina.
Without thinking, I grabbed the cast-iron boot scraper
sitting by the front door of the shop and hurled it through the window. Glass
shattered, leaving a jagged hole that gaped like a mouth midscream.
Heart racing, I flattened myself against the alcove by
the door as a man shouted and a window screeched open. The tailor, a young man
nearly as alluring as the fabrics he sold, poked his head out for a moment,
then disappeared, likely heading downstairs to look for the culprit. I scurried
to the nook in front of the butcher’s, hoping my light would be hidden there.
“Get behind me,” Luc said from somewhere inside the shop.
“The thief could still be out there.”
“You’re so brave.”
I sighed in relief at the sound of Mina’s voice, before
fury shot through me like an arrow. I should have known she would come to the
tailor’s; she had flirted with Luc relentlessly today, which was how we’d
acquired four yards of the champagne-colored silk she wanted for the dress I’d
spent all evening working on.
A moment later, they emerged onto the street, Mina
clutching at Luc’s sleeve as he lifted his lamp and peered into the darkness.
He tossed his black hair out of his eyes and frowned. “It
doesn’t look like they stole anything. Just vandals, I suppose.”
“Or someone trying to send you a message,” Mina breathed,
dramatic as ever. “Do you have any nemeses?”
When he turned his dark gaze on her, something tugged at
my heart. She was wearing a dress I’d made for myself when I was her age. It
hung loose on her thin frame, but the hem grazed her calves, a sure sign she
had altered it. She had nothing but a shawl pulled around her shoulders, and
from where I stood, it was painfully clear that the tailor was not interested
in her the way she no doubt hoped.
“I have to find a member of the night guard and report
this. You shouldn’t be here. If your father catches you, he’ll have me hanged.
You’re a sweet girl, Mina, but this is inappropriate.”
“But the silk…”
“That was for your sister. Now, please, go home.”
Mina caught her lip in her teeth to keep from crying.
With a nod, she hurried away, tears already streaming down her cheeks. I waited
for Luc to start up the street before I ran out of the alcove to catch her.
She squealed in alarm when I placed my hand on her
shoulder, and I quickly clapped my other hand over her mouth.
“It’s me,” I whispered, lowering my hand slowly when I
was confident she wouldn’t scream.
She swiped at her tears. “Liora? What are you doing out?
What if someone sees you?”
My anger softened at her concern, until I remembered that
she was the reason I was out in the first place. “I might ask you the same
questions. If Father had come home and found you missing, he’d have killed
you.”
“And what if he goes home and finds both of us missing?
Have you considered that?”
I opened my mouth to scold her, but she was right. “You
can explain what you were doing once we get back,” I said.
In typical Mina fashion, she stuck her tongue out at me,
then turned and ran toward home.
* * *
We were indeed lucky. We made it home not long before
Father and Adelle. By the time he came to our room to check on us, we were both
in bed. I waved sleepily at him and Mina let out an emphatic snore, but once
the door was closed, I threw back my covers and leaped out of bed.
“I hope you have a good explanation for this,” I hissed.
Her voice was muffled by the thick blanket pulled up to
her nose, but I could hear the tremor in it when she said, “I thought Luc liked
me.”
“And I thought you were dead!” I whisper-shouted, then
stalked to the window ledge to keep myself from throttling her. I plucked a
pendant from the collar of my nightgown, running my fingers over the five
points on the star charm to calm myself. Evran had given it to me, years ago,
and its contours were as familiar to me now as the feel of his hand in mine as
he pulled me through the Sylvan woods toward home at twilight. Perhaps I was
being too hard on Mina. I would risk a lot of things for Evran.
“Luc told me he was having a party tonight,” she said. “I
didn’t realize how late it was when I got there. Everyone else had already
left.”
I was surprised that the thought of her getting ready for
a party, the excitement she must have felt as she sneaked into Sylvan to meet a
handsome young man, made me more envious than angry. “I heard you cry out.”
The whites of her eyes flashed in the dark.
“Don’t you dare roll your eyes at me,” I snapped.
“I’m just stretching them, Ora.” The world-weary tone was
classic Mina: so eager to be a grown-up, ever since she was little. “A moth got
tangled in my hair. Anyway, Luc was a perfect gentleman. And as it turns out,
it’s not me he wants.”
The silk was for me. The last of my anger waned as I
imagined how sure Mina must have been of Luc to do something so foolish, only
to find she’d made a huge mistake. This was his fault as much as it was hers.
“He was just being kind because I spend so much money in his shop.”
She snorted. “He spoke about you the entire time. He
asked why you hadn’t come to the party, and what you liked to do in your free
time, and why he never saw you out in town.”
“What did you tell him?” I dropped the pendant into my
collar and pulled back the edge of the curtain just a bit to gaze at the real
stars.
“I told him you were making me a dress, that that’s what
you’re doing most of the time.”
I sighed and let the curtain fall. For a girl with
glowing skin, I sounded unbearably dull. But it was the truth. If I wasn’t
sewing, I was cooking, cleaning, or rereading one of our few books.
Father trusted me enough to let me go out on sunny days
now. The smallest stars don’t shine at noon, he said, and my glow could be kept
dim as long as I stayed in control of my emotions. But the downside of having
even just a little bit of freedom was that it came with responsibilities.
Father had only given me permission to go to town for errands, never to dawdle,
which made taking Mina along particularly frustrating. She had made an art form
out of window-shopping. I missed my afternoons in the woods with Evran, those
glorious days when I could sneak out unnoticed while Father was working and my
sisters were in their lessons.
I climbed back into bed and pulled the covers up, a wave
of guilt washing over me. Had I really believed Mina was in mortal peril?
Because if not, there was no excuse for my own behavior. What if some part of
me had risked going out tonight because I wanted to prove to myself, finally,
that my magic wasn’t as dangerous as Father feared?
If that was the case, I had failed spectacularly. It had
only taken a few minutes for me to undo all our years of hard work, and I
couldn’t blame my sister for that.
“Promise me you won’t sneak out again, Mina. I don’t know
what I’d do if something happened to you.”
She twisted onto her side to face me. “I’m sorry. I
should never have put you at risk like that. I won’t do it again.”
“It’s all right. Get some sleep now.”
Mina responded a moment later with a very genuine snore.
I smiled and tried to fall asleep myself, but I lay awake
for hours, thinking about Margana. Would she tell Darius about me, potentially
destroying not just my life but those of everyone I loved? I thought of Father
and wondered if all this time it hadn’t been me he was protecting, but them.
Because as much as I had wanted to believe that the
invisible beast was out there, that if I simply hid myself away like a secret,
we would be safe, I had known for quite some time that the beast Father feared
most lived inside of me.
