Badlands Witch: A Cormac and Amelia Story by Carrie Vaughn

Author:Carrie Vaughn [Vaughn, Carrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carrie Vaughn, LLC
Published: 2019-11-11T18:30:00+00:00

At the age of twenty Amelia Parker left her well-born family’s comfortable estate in Kent forever. She wanted to learn magic. All of it.

She hadn’t started particularly well.

A woman could travel alone, even at the turn of the last century, but she had to be prepared, to plan ahead. To walk with a certain swagger that no one could question. Having a lot of money to smooth the way didn’t hurt. Additionally, as young as she’d been she had had to remain on guard—primarily against a certain type of older gentleman, entrenched in colonial bureaucracy, who simply had to be helpful.

She didn’t want help. She wanted power. So she buttoned herself up tight, put her hat firmly upon her head and kept her parasol close at hand, and set out, determined.

And still, despite it all, she would find herself on foreign shores, in an exotic market, staring around her with wonder and thinking this was it, this was all she wanted. To be part of the world.

At a market in Marrakech, only a few months into her journey, she grew drunk on the smells of spices and herbs, held back from pawing at baskets of dates and figs. Meat sizzled over braziers, and voices cried out, hawking their wares. This was just like she’d read about, exactly how she’d imagined traveling would be. The whole world was a market, but now that she was in the middle of it she didn’t know what to try first. She bought a packet of figs and another of almonds, and tried to simply take it all in.

She mostly spoke French to get by, learned some basic Arabic. She searched for magic.

When she found a series of medieval alchemical symbols carved into the wood frame of an awning outside one shop, she stopped and stared. So far she had seen Turkish eyes and blessings in Arabic, some Sanskrit and even a bit of Hebrew. Common prayers and blessings, no more remarkable than a cross in a Christian country. But she had not expected to see such an arcane set of writing here, like this. To the casual gaze the symbols did not stand out among the other whorls and arabesques of the decoration on the shop’s lintel. But to Amelia’s eye they blazed, incongruous. This was not mere decoration. It was intentional, from another time and place and with its own meaning. It was a warding, for protection.

This was magic in the wild, and the thrill of finding it rooted her to her spot.

“Miss? Miss?”

She started back to herself, gripping her parasol. She really needed to be more careful. The person who had spoken to her was a woman, shorter than Amelia, round of face and stout of body, long black hair with a few gray streaks touching it. She wore a printed blouse, full skirt and vest in wild colors, and seemed like exactly the sort of woman who would inhabit a stall decorated with an alchemical ward.

“Are you all right, miss?” the woman asked in lilting English, and Amelia was a bit annoyed that she was so easily identified.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.