"What are we going to do for school today?" Sasha asked, and then took a long sip of milk.
"I thought we would begin with reading and then go on to math."
"Will we have song time?" Sasha asked.
Desdemona stopped short for a moment and then shook her head.
"I think we're going to skip song time today. You will need to work on your math to keep up in the new world."
"That's not fair," Sasha whined.
"Finish your breakfast and get over to the school room,” their dad said, putting an end to Sasha’s whining.
Desdemona finished her food before taking her sister to the school room, just off the barn. It had its own wood-burning fireplace. One of her cousins had already started the fire first thing that morning. Sasha and Desdemona arrived, and she opened the front door to find all of her students already there.
"Good morning children," she said.
"Good morning Miss Hawthorne," the children said.
"Sasha, take your seat," Desdemona said.
Desdemona faced her students from in front of her desk. She taught five children. Three were cousins, one was her sister, and the other was the child of a family friend. They ranged in age from six to thirteen. As the oldest child in the group, she was expected to educate and tutor all the other children. It had been going well for the last year or so. The adults in the compounds still considered her the best option for schoolteacher.
They were now reading the Odyssey by Homer and all the children were deeply engaged with the hero’s adventures, even the little ones. When she finished her reading for the day, she asked the children questions about what they’d heard.
After story time, she started math time, instructing each child on their own level until lunch. The children all ran outside to the rope swing and tree fort where they liked to play at recess.
They all played for a little while before her aunt came out and told them all to sit down at the picnic table. Lunchtime was Desdemona’s break so she went to the pantry to sneak her supplies for her escape later that night.
When she made it to the pantry, she squeezed her eyes shut and a tear ran down her cheek. The thought of leaving her family and heading into the unknown was terrifying and heartbreaking. But she didn't have any choice.
She knew what would happen if they found out about her magic. She had to get away to protect them and to protect herself. She grabbed a backpack from the bottom shelf of the pantry that they used when going on hunting expeditions on horseback, and she began shoving food into the pack, and then hid it behind the flour sacks.
When she was done squirreling away her supplies of food, matches, kerosene, and cooking utensils, she went back outside to join the children for lunch. There was still a sandwich waiting for her at her place and she stepped into the picnic table to eat it. When she was done, her sister Sasha came running up, holding her guitar with a bright smile on her little face. Her nose was rosy from the cold air and her smile was so big it gripped Desdemona's heart. She would never see her sister again.
"Play us a song, Desi," Sasha said.
"No, I don't think so," Desdemona said, terrified of what would happen if she did.
"Desdemona, what's the matter?" her aunt asked.
"I just don’t feel like it right now," she said.
"Desdemona doesn't want to play?" her father said as he passed by, pushing the wheelbarrow.
He gave her a questioning look, his eyebrows knitting over his eyes. She was acting suspicious, she realized, so she took the guitar and strummed.
"I need new strings," she said, adjusting one of the tuning pegs. "It's getting hard to keep my guitar in tune."
"We'll get you new strings the next time we go into town," her father said before walking away.
Desdemona took a deep breath and let it out before she started one of the children's favorite songs. It was a pop song before the dark times and they still liked to listen to her play it.
They danced around and played. Her twelve-year-old cousin Roy got in on the jam with his little lap drum. Desdemona was so lost in the moment, watching the children laugh and play, that she didn't notice the whirlwind of oak leaves dancing around the treehouse above them. Stella, her cousin, was sitting in the treehouse, and she looked up at the leaves in wonder as the rest of the family’s faces froze in shock. Desdemona stopped playing and sat down her guitar, knowing what was coming next.
"Do it again," Sasha cheered, clapping her hands together.
Desdemona stared at her sister, her mouth hanging open in shock. Everyone had seen what she'd done. She glanced up at her father who'd stopped dead in his tracks, still holding the wheelbarrow tight in his big rough hands.
"Father," she gasped, but her voice was hoarse and quiet.
"What have you done?" her father asked, his dark complexion turning rosy with emotion.
"I haven't done anything," she said. "I didn't mean it."
"You’re a witch," her father said, finally setting down the wheelbarrow and walking toward her.
"Father, please," she started, standing from the bench.
"You have to go to the temple," he said. "I had a suspicion for a while now. It is my great sadness that you have turned out to be one of them. We will all miss you a great deal, daughter," he said, gripping her forearm in his hand.
He started to pull her away from the children and toward the house, but she stopped and yanked her arm away from her father's grasp.
"I don't want to go," she said.
"You must go. It's the only safe place for you to be. You can't stay here. The immortal rogues will find you and take you away. We can't offer you any protection."
"I can fend for myself."
"Not possible."
Desdemona closed her mouth and stopped talking. She couldn't give away her plans. She may still have a chance to escape tonight while everyone was sleeping.
"Fine," she said. "I'll go to the temple."
“It will be a long drive through the mountains," he said, “I'm going to tune up the car.”
"I'll pack my things," she said, taking a deep breath and letting it out.
They gave each other a dark look for long moments before her father broke the gaze and started toward the old truck parked in the driveway. Desdemona huffed and made her way to the house, feeling like a prisoner in her own home. She passed through the door and found her mother sitting at the kitchen table, shelling beans.
"What is it?" her mother asked, seeing Desdemona’s angry expression.
"Father found out that I'm a witch. He's forcing me to go to the temple tomorrow."
"What?" her mother said, standing.
Her mother enfolded her in her arms. Feeling the warm embrace of her mother, she felt a tear squeeze from beneath her tightly shut eye lid.
"Oh, mother," she wailed, the emotion finally breaking through. "Please don't make me go."
"You know it's the best place for a witch to be, Desdemona. They will protect you there, and they will teach you how to use your magic. You must see it as a blessing instead of a curse. Now you have opportunities that no one else at the compound will ever have. You will see many wonderful things, and you will be the bride of an immortal."
"But I don't want to be the bride of an immortal. I don't want to be anyone's bride. I just want to play my guitar and make my own choices."
"If you don't accept the protection of the temple," her mother started, "you will be in grave danger anywhere you go. Your father is right."
"I can see I’m not getting any understanding here," she said, coldly brushing past her mother on the way down the hall to her bedroom.
She slammed the door behind her, unable to hold back the raging tide of emotion. It wasn't fair that she had to give her life to a cause she didn't understand and didn't believe in. The immortals wanted children to build their numbers. Why should she have anything to do with it?
She didn't know these people, their politics, or why they had destroyed the world sh
e'd once known. People used to have TVs and video games and decent running cars and electricity.
Humanity had to start over from scratch, finding electronic parts that weren't fried in the solar flare. Everyone had to piece things together themselves. So many people had been sick and hurt and injured. So many had died. She could never forgive the immortals for the destruction they’d brought to her world.
She had been a human until a few days ago, and happy to be so. Her loyalty would forever be to the people she'd always known as her family. Her sister, her cousins, her mother and father, aunt and uncle. They meant everything to her.
She pulled the duffel bag out of the closet and began throwing things inside. Worn out jeans, ratty T-shirts, flannels, thermals and fleece. She threw in socks and underwear and her one extra pair of shoes. Her wardrobe wasn't exactly fancy but it had gotten her through the last year and a half.
She heard the people in town were rewiring the city grid and trying to turn it back on. Projects like that were happening around the country, but it couldn't be done fast enough. She couldn't blame the people who were moving into the immortal-occupied cities that were so quickly retrofitted for human life.
Maybe the immortals were trying to help humans after the dark times. But the sun going dark never should have happened. It was pure evil, just like the murders the Surge had committed since the sun went black.
She finished packing and put her duffel bag at the foot of her bed. Desdemona didn’t find her mother when she passed through the kitchen. She felt relieved and guilty on the way out to the backyard.
The children had left the playground. Probably taken back to the school room or home. Desdemona's guitar was still sitting at the picnic table. She crossed the yard, crunching through the new fallen maple leaves to the picnic table. Her guitar lay across the knotted wood, a maple leaf laying on the fretboard.
She brushed the leaf away, feeling a mixture of emptiness and anxiety that made her want to scratch out of her own skin. She sank down on the bench, facing away from the table. She pulled her pick out of the frets and began to strum. This time, instead of trying to will away her magic or pretending that it wasn't there, she focused on it as the chords progressed and her voice rose in harmony. She closed her eyes and felt the deepening magic vibrate through her.
She opened her eyes again to see the dry maple leaves rising from the ground, orange and yellow and dazzling. They danced before her to the cadence of her melody. Her heart leapt and a smile curved on her lips. Maybe this whole magic thing wasn't so bad after all.
Desdemona crept out of the top bunk and climbed down her ladder. She was already dressed under her nightgown. She peeled it off and threw it in her suitcase, careful not to wake Sasha. She slowly crept down the hallway and through the kitchen to the back door.
She gripped the handle and turned it, sneaking through on the balls of her feet. She shut the door gently and then turned to walk across the yard to the barn. She set her things on the ground and opened the stall for the horses.
The appaloosa Ronnie was waiting for her in his stall next to Shasta, the white mare they used for farming. Ronnie had been ridden more than Shasta and Desdemona knew that she was taking her family's best riding horse. But she had no other choice. She had to go.
Desdemona saddled and bridled Ronnie, tied her packs to the saddle, and slung her guitar over her back. She climbed on, then guided him through the barn and out the door into the front yard, crossing it quickly and making it into the driveway.
Once she made it past the truck, she kicked Ronnie's flank and started into a canter. The light switched on behind her, brightening everything around. She gasped and turned to see her father sitting in the truck with his shotgun.
"Are you going to shoot me?" she asked indignantly.
"I'll shoot the horse if it means saving your life," he said.
"Why are you doing this?"
“I'm not going to let you be prey for rogue immortals, Desdemona. We are going to the temple and that's final. You can learn about that magic of yours and you should be happy."
Her father opened the truck door and walked toward her, holding up his free hand to grab Ronnie's reins. He walked the horse back to the barn and brought them into his stall where he started removing her packs, and the saddle and bridle.
"Since you're so eager to go, I guess we'll get going now," her father said.
He grabbed her bags and carried them to the truck. Desdemona stomped behind him and growled. He was being such an asshole. Maybe she would rather die in the wilds than be sentenced to give herself as up as an offering to some dragon or vampire.
"You'll thank me someday," he said, throwing her things in the back of the truck. "Get in."
She climbed into the passenger seat and slammed the door. When her father got in and turned the engine, she crossed her arms over her chest and looked out the side window and away from him. She vowed not to speak to him the entire time.
"I've heard there are some amazing things at this temple," her father said.
She didn't respond, she just stared out the window into the darkness, wishing he would get the message. She would never forgive him for this. He was taking her freedom away from her and nothing could be worse than that. She did want to learn about her magic, her father was right about that much, but she wasn't going to this temple on her own terms like it was some kind of post-apocalyptic witch college. She was going there to be forced to mate with a man she didn’t want.
Desdemona had never so much as kissed a boy. Before the Dark Sun, she’d lived in a small town. There weren't many boys her age in the first place. She'd made it to her senior year of high school with not so much as a peck on the cheek.
People told her she was beautiful, but she didn't believe it. The only thing about herself that she thought was beautiful was her music, which was what she spent most of her time and effort and energy on. She'd wanted to go to college to study music and had been accepted to a conservatory in San Francisco. But then the sun had gone out and the world had been turned upside down. The dreams of yesterday were gone and the only dream she had now was to be left alone. But she wouldn't get either. Her fate was something else entirely, something beyond her own imagination.
"I can't believe that you would want me to prostitute myself to an immortal. Live free or die," she challenged.
"Freedom is in your mind, Desdemona. You don't know yet what kind of man you will marry. The women who keep the temple will ensure you are not given to a villain. That is the entire point of these places."
"How do you know so much about witch temples?" she asked.
"There are flyers circulating about them, haven't you read them yourself?"
"I read a few but I didn't pay attention to the details because the whole breeding with the immortals thing grossed me out. Those fliers just seem like propaganda. They tell the peasants throughout the land that if anyone suspects anyone of being a witch they should report them to the authorities. I seem to remember learning about something like that in history class, dad," Desdemona said, staring down her father.
"I don't think this is going to be a Spanish Inquisition-style witch burning," her father said.
"You can't guarantee that, father. I may be just as much in danger going to this temple as I would be out on my own.”
"That may be true, daughter, but this is the best option we have. I've heard stories about what happens to the women who don't go to the temples, and to their families. I won't have that happen to you or to any of the people we love. I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to keep you safe."
Desdemona turned away and tried to settle in for the ride. She was angry as hell and she didn't want to talk anymore. She'd never even kissed a boy and now she was going to have to marry some man who was thousands of years old. Seemed inappropriate in her opinion. But that was the whole crux of the situation, wasn't it? There weren't any immortal women who could give birth to immortal children, other than the witches. All the witches ali
ve today hadn't known they were witches until a year and a half ago. Just like Desdemona, who had spent her entire life believing she was a normal human girl, just to look up one day and realized that her music was making the leaves dance. At least she would be around other women like herself, recovering from the shock of realizing that they had magic and immortality.
The reality of Desdemona's new immortal life began to sink in. She hadn't even thought about it before. When her family grew old and died, even her younger sister Sasha, Desdemona would live on. It sent a chill down her spine and she pressed her eyes closed. She couldn't think about it. The weight of immortality was too much to bear even in contemplating it for the first time.
As her father drove down the treacherous highway between the central mountains and the coast, she drifted off to sleep.
Later that morning when the sun had risen from the east and cast its long yellow fingers over the green ferns and coastal forests, she opened her eyes and found herself parked in front of a metal gate. It was a rich person’s compound. With its own thirty-foot brick wall all around.
Some rich bastard had built himself a fortress in the middle of the California coastal mountains and now it served as a witch temple. Her father walked up to the gate and began speaking into a microphone by a control panel. Desdemona rolled down her window and listened.
"I’ve brought my daughter to the temple. She is a witch and I ask for her protection,"
"Come in," the soft voice said.
Her father came back to the car and got inside as the metal gate slid open. He turned the motor and drove through the gate. It slid shut behind him as they drove up the long circular drive past a fountain depicting a goddess holding a bowl of water that poured into the pool below. They came to the front of the four-story mansion with its grand staircase ascending to the second floor.
They were met by a woman wearing a long black dress with flowing sleeves. It was gauzy but thick and looked to be made of extremely fine fabric. Desdemona hadn't seen clothing like that in so long. The woman had a round belly and was at least six months pregnant with child. She reached out to Desdemona as she approached. Desdemona felt warmth in her heart as the woman smiled at her. She held out her hand for the priestess to grasp it.