Speaker 1: Magic is not learned. It remembers us Henry in one
of his many moments of wisdom. Silver whispered the words
into the dimming light, though she could not recall when
she had first heard them. They lived in her the
way roots lived beneath the forest floor, unseen, ancient and
far older than she had reason to be. She sat
quietly in the shallow cave as the last threads of
sunlight bled gold and lavender across the sky. The air
grew colder with each breath of evening, and she pulled
her cloak tighter around her shoulders, tucking her bare toes
beneath the folds for warmth. The pine boughs she gathered
earlier rustled beneath her, a far more respectable bed than
the sad, crunchy pile she'd collapsed onto the night before.
She stretched her tired legs, leaned back against the cave wall,
and allowed herself to pretend she was comfortable. Her hand drifted,
as it always did when she was tired or afraid,
to the silk over pendant resting against her chest. It
hung suspended from a simple leather cord, warm as a
heart beat. The charm was a tiny cottage framed by
two tall pines, a carved wreath hanging upon the door
and in the window, impossibly small, yet undeniably present, the
silhouette of a girl gazing out from behind the imagined glass,
her mother's silhouette. Silver had worn the pendant every day
since she was twelve. Before that, she had seen it
only once, glinting in the firelight, when her father pulled
it from his pocket and quickly tucked it away again,
as though afraid it might burst into flame. Not yet,
he warned, and never touch it, which naturally made touching
it inevitable. After he vanished, without explanation, without farewell, she
found the pendant wrapped in linen and hidden in the
bottom drawer of his writing desk. The moment she lifted
it into the firelight, a warmth unfurled in her chest,
something like belonging, something like being remembered. She slid it
over her wild red curls and settled it at the
base of her throat. Though cold when she first touched it,
the metal warmed instantly, alive. Somehow the day had unfolded
like any other. She fed the ducks, and the two
perpetually unimpressed chickens. She tended the garden. She toasted bread
and nibbled cheese. She brewed the evening tea her father
always drank, more out of habit than fondness. The tea
tasted bitter, earthy, like soil and regret, but it did
something to her. Her eyelids grew heavy, her limbs soft
and dream like. She barely remembered climbing into the loft
to sleep, but she remembered waking, not in her bed,
but seated upright on a wooden bench in a strange,
silent village of unfamiliar buildings. There were glowing glass bulbs
that needed no flame, metal machines covered in buttons and numbers,
clear containers made of something she later learned was called plastic.
Everything was curious, beautiful, impossible, except for the cat. A fat,
gray creature sat beside her, blinking slowly, wearing the patient
disappointed expression of someone who had been waiting far longer
than politeness required. She named him Henry, mostly because he
looked as though he already knew his name and would
judge her if she chose something unsuitable. Henry became her
first friend on the other side. For a week, the
crossings continued, tea or no tea, loft or floor. She
always woke on that same bench, Henry beside her like
a mildly offended chaperone. Once she attempted an experiment and
slept in the garden shed. Henry found her face down
in cold grass ten feet from the bench the next morning,
and yowled his disapproval for the better part of an hour.
It wasn't until she remembered the necklace, the warm that
her collarbone, that everything snapped into place. One night she
removed it. She wrapped it in cloth, tucked it in
her night stand, and slept that night. She did not cross. Instead,
she dreamed of her father warning her she would regret
wearing the pendant, and of her mother's voice, soft as
falling snow, whispering, you will carry the legacy. Be strong.
One day we will meet again. She awoke at dawn
with a damp pillow and an aching heart. She never
removed the pendant again, and for the next ten years
she lived two intertwined lives, one in the lonely woods
of sixteen ninety four and one in the silent future,
where Henry ruled with a fluffy iron paw. Eventually she
found the cottage, the very one etched into the silver charm.
It sat behind the shop called the Witch's Brew, nestled
among trees and brambles, nearly identical to her real cottage,
yet brighter, whitewashed stone, black framed windows, ivy spilling from
flower boxes. Bees hummed around their hive, and she learned
to tend them. Honey became plentiful, an arrangement Henry considered
the bare minimum requirement for civilized tea. She made that
place her home, as real as her own, as hers
as anything had ever been. And now, sitting alone in
a cave, with the forest whispering outside and destiny pressing
heavy against her ribs, one truth glowed inside her, like
a hidden ember. She needed to get back there, not
just for comfort, not just for Henry, but because her survival,
her future, depended on it. Curling on to her pine
bough bed, cloak drawn, tight fingers curled around the warm
leather cord, Silver closed her eyes, Moonlight brushed her face.
The air hummed a faint, familiar thrumb, like a thread
pulling tout between two worlds. She exhaled, Sleep took her,
and the world began to rewrite itself,