Goldeline by Jimmy Cajoleas (i read books txt) 📕

“You can’t murder a witch,” says Cyrus. “You can only give her what she deserves.”

He spins around, his arms out wide, his body making a tall black cross.

“I spent five years doing penance,” he howls. “Five years wandering in the desert. Five years of pain and suffering. Then I saw it. A vision. I saw your mother, Goldeline. I saw her as a snake with red eyes and fangs, gliding across the waters. I saw a white worm cross the sky above me and the earth tremble. I was given a mission. I was to rid the world of all the magic types, of the sinners and gamblers and outlaws, of anyone who didn’t fit in this world. To make a new world, to cleanse it. And I was given the power to do it. See, it wasn’t my fault what happened, what I did. I’m blameless. It was your mother’s.” He points his finger at my face. “Same as you.”

“I heard about enough of this junk,” says the third man. He points his own rifle at Cyrus. No one stops him. The men back away from Cyrus. They don’t want to be near him. It’s like he’s cursed, like he’s infected with some looming disease. His power is waning. They don’t want what’s coming for him to get them too.

I can feel the magic rise up in me, covering me like a white dress, like my skin is made of moonlight. I can feel myself glow. I take a step toward Cyrus. I am growing taller in his eyes, I can feel it. I am growing more lovely and more beautiful. The light from inside me is borne all over my body, it’s shining from the gold in my eyes. I can control it. My light is mightier than Cyrus’s darkness ever can be. I can make Cyrus see what I want him to see.

I smile at Cyrus and his eyes go wide.

Because Cyrus isn’t seeing me anymore. He’s seeing someone else. All he sees now is Momma.

“I loved you,” says Cyrus.

The men gape openmouthed. The trees bow to me in the wind. Cardinals rise over our heads in whirls of fire.

“Oh God,” says Cyrus. “What did I do?”

Cyrus falls backward, stumbling. I walk toward him, slow and brave, elegant, graceful, the way Momma walked. My head held high, my back straight, my hair billowing like a snowstorm behind me. He won’t let me near him, he staggers backward with every step I take toward him, he’s afraid of me. I know my eyes spark gold brighter than fire, brighter than Chester and Lance’s home engulfed in flames, the doorway sagging, the pit of fire Cyrus is backing himself toward.

I’m my own. That’s my magic. Momma named me. I’m Goldeline, and I can do what she couldn’t.

“Stay away from me,” says Cyrus, stumbling backward, his hands covering his face. “Don’t come any closer.”

I don’t stop, I keep on walking, sure now, steady and brave. Cyrus is nearly to the burning house, he has his back right up to it. He must feel the heat lap at him, the flames longing to swallow him whole.

I take a final step toward him. The men watch in awe as Cyrus turns to run away from me, as he flings himself right into the burning house. The roof caves in, embers scattering wild as birds into the black night. The house crumbles and falls. Cyrus vanishes into the flame and crash and smoke.

The cardinals swoop together in a great cloud of red and vanish into the night.

He’s dead. The Preacher is dead. The shadow that stretched over my whole life is vanished. All this running, all this death. It’s over. I don’t know why but I’m sad somehow, like I lost something forever.

There’s a quiet over all Cyrus’s men, the Townies. Cyrus’s spell has been broken. All the men blink awake, their minds unpoisoned for the first time in months, maybe even years. They look down at their boots, at the sky, anywhere but at me. They’re ashamed, of what they’ve done, of what they almost did. Tommy’s shivering on his stomach, eyes bleary, not even crying anymore.

“Somebody help me,” I say. “He’s sick. We got to get him to the doctor.”

“What just happened?” says the third man. “I don’t understand.”

“This boy is dying. His name is Tommy and he’s my friend. You have to help him.”

The third man sighs.

“We got us a wounded kid here,” he says to the men, “sick cold in the rain. We got to get him back to town, to Dr. Gilbert.”

He and a few others pick Tommy up and sit him on a horse with another man.

“I’m coming too,” I say. “I’m not leaving Tommy.”

The man looks at me for a minute, then nods. I climb up with them, holding Tommy close to me, keep him sitting up, ready to ride back into town. Before we leave I see Regis walk up to Chester and Lance. He bows his head a little in front of them, as if he’s paying penance.

“I’m sorry about your house,” he says.

Lance looks up at him, red-eyed and bleeding. He doesn’t say anything. But something happens, quiet as a sunrise. Maybe an understanding, or what might be. But I don’t get to see what happens next, because we’re riding, riding fast, down the road and back toward Templeton.

TWENTY

It takes hours and hours of riding. I think so at least. It’s hard to tell, I’m so tired. But I hold on tight to Tommy and though he cries sometimes from the pain he never falls off, he never even totters. When we get to Templeton it’s almost morning. The streets are just waking up, some people already going about their Townie business. The strange thing is how I don’t hate them anymore. I don’t forgive them, mind you. I don’t know if I can ever do that. But I don’t hate them either. They don’t look evil or scary