Prologue
Double tiger, hidden dragon. Grab the groom, and hitch the wagon.
Bubbling trouble, brewing storm. Your destiny begins to take form.
Follow the shadow to the sun. The future is already begun.
Be the light in the night, the right in the fright.
Draw on the stars, their power is sure. Draw on the animals, their love is pure.
Heed this: give as much as you take, lest the darkness be your fate.
Double tiger, hidden dragon. Grab the groom, and hitch the wagon.
Adira The Lightest, stared down at the ancient slip of paper she held in her hand. It was crinkled, and the places where it had been folded and opened over and over were cracking with wear. The riddle was ridiculous enough to warrant a major eyeroll, except this was too serious a problem.
“Something’s amiss. What kind of spell is this? No ancient words to recite. Nothing to end our plight. No chanting, or anything like that. What exactly am I looking at?”
“You did it again,” Nastia The Wisest murmured.
“Hmm?”
“Rhyme. It’s a sickness, I swear. It’s like Doctor Seuss’s ghost is inhabiting part of your brain.”
“Did not. It’s just… this spell is a long shot. Tell me, sister, what have we bought?” Adira clamped her mouth shut. The rhyming was annoying. Even she could admit it. But it wasn’t going to end until they found a way to break the curse.
Well, not a curse so much as their destiny. It was every Sorcera’s fate to turn dark if they failed to find their anchor in the allotted time.
Nastia rolled her eyes. “My goodness. You’re not even good at it.” Turning to Mirena The Bravest, she said, “Isn’t there something we can do about this? Some spell that will take the rhyming out of her? We are powerful Sorcera. We should be able to find a way.”
Mirena straightened the long skirt of her prim cotton dress and pressed her elaborately styled bouffant hair into place. “Being powerful has nothing to do with anything anymore. And we’ve wasted our money on this spell. True love can’t be coerced by magic. I told you this was a bad idea.”
Adira sighed. They all had their ticks. The rhyming was annoying, but not nearly as bad as Nastia’s compulsion to count rocks or Mirena’s impulse to make dares with everyone she came in contact with.
The solution was to find each of their anchors—the one person who could fasten them to the light, the good, the right—or find a spell to circumvent the shifting of their powers from light magic to dark.
So far, no Sorcera had managed to come up with such a spell.
Adira dropped her gaze back to the aged parchment. Surely they’d wasted their money, wasted their time—which was precious since they only had until the autumnal equinox to find their anchors—wasted their breath begging the old seer to part with this supposed precious spell.
“When shall we try it then?” She stared upward to the dark sky sprinkled with the lights that gave them power. “The stars shine bright. If it’s going to work, tonight, it might.”
Mirena glanced to Nastia. She was the wittiest, the most clever, and the most studied of the three. No doubt she’d been combing over the spell in her crafty little mind, seeking out the best potential use for it. She was what commoners might call a… nerd. Adira would only call her that lovingly of course.
“Adira is correct,” she agreed. “The moon is large and the stars are powerful this night. Look up. The darkness is not so dark for now.”
Adira followed Mirena’s gaze back to the sky. The darkness was more powerful than the light. It always was. Look upward any given night and the black expanse far outweighed the pinpricks of white. It was the same in life. The evil was more enticing, more captivating, than the good.
It was why the anchors were necessary. For every yin there had to be a yang. For every necessary evil there must be an unnecessary good. If she was lucky, the darkness that was coming for her would mix with someone else’s light and create something gray. Something acceptable. A balance.
“Let us waste no more time,” Mirena urged.
The three came together in the spot where their power was the strongest, near the old well that was no longer used but still held water. It sat in the midst of the trees behind their small cabin, but was open to the sky, to their power source. The combined elements of water and heavens formed the perfect channel for the mystics to work.
With their feet anchored to the earth and their palms touching to form a perfect ring, they began to recite the silly spell even thought there was no Latin to it, and it seemed more a puzzle than magic.
“Double tiger, hidden dragon. Grab the groom, and hitch the wagon…”