The First Confessor: The Legend of Magda Searus

Chapter 36

Magda watched Isidore silently rubbing a thumb on the side of her knee for a moment, gathering her thoughts before she went on. Magda could not imagine what it must have been like for this woman, all alone, haunted by her calling of working with the spirit world and by the spirits that were missing from it. Despite how thin and frail she looked, this was a woman of enormous determination.

“I remember the last day I had normal sight,” Isidore finally said.

Seeing the woman’s courage flag as her jaw trembled for just a moment, Magda placed a reassuring hand on Isidore’s back, but said nothing.

Isidore spoke softly as she picked up the story. “After giving him the details he would need, all the things I knew as a spiritist that he would likely be unaware of, I’d let Merritt work on the problem. I had told him that it was in his hands and asked him to come to me when he was ready.

“He worked for weeks. Not once did I go to see him. I let him create what he would in his own way.

“Merritt hated the thought of taking my eyes, he truly did, but he understood that I wasn’t really asking to be blind. I was actually asking for something far greater than the sight we are all born with.

“I was asking for wizard-created sight.”

Magda stared at the candle flames wavering slowing as they burned, trying to imagine such a thing, trying to imagine what she would feel like, knowing that she was about to be changed forever by a wizard’s power. She knew from Baraccus that when a wizard changed a person in such a way, there could be no going back. Such changes could not be reversed.

“One day a messenger delivered a note. It was from Merritt, saying that he was ready and would arrive shortly. It asked that I be ready.” Isidore took a deep breath, letting it out with a sigh. “I remember how my heart started hammering when he knocked on my door that day. My heart was pounding against my ribs and I could hear each beat whooshing in my ears. I had to stop for a moment, hold on to the back of a chair, and make myself slow my breathing before I went to the door.

“I had made preparations for the day when he would finally arrive. I had gone over everything countless times as I waited. The waiting had been agony, but I knew that the last thing I wanted was to rush him. I needed him to get it right.

“I remember frantically looking at everything on my way to the door, trying to take it all in, trying to remember what everything looked like. I tried to remember the shape of the pottery bowl on the table, the simple design of the chair, the grain of the wooden table.

“It was a small place, but I had arranged the few pieces of furniture in it so that once I could no longer see I would be able to get around and find things fairly easily. I had tried to anticipate every aspect of being blind, tried to set things out that I would need to find, move things that might trip me, ready everything I could think of.

“Still, despite my preparations, I was terrified.

“I had several scarves laid out in a line on my small sleeping mat. I’d selected them because they were each a different color. For some reason, color seemed more important to me, more dear to me, than anything else.

“I desperately wanted to remember color.

“I had tied knots in the ends of each scarf, a different number of knots for each different color. One knot meant that it was a red scarf, two knots was brown, three green, and so on. I don’t really know why I thought that was so important, considering that it could make no difference if I couldn’t actually see the color, but I remember being panicked that I might forget what color looked like, what flowers looked like, what sunlight looked like, what a child’s smile looked like.

“I guess that those scarves with the knots in the ends were my connection to all those things. They were my talisman to recall what color looked like . . . and so much more.”

Magda felt tears running down her cheeks and dripping off her jaw. She tried to imagine eyes in the sunken hollows Isidore was left with. She must have been a beautiful woman, with big beautiful eyes looking out from a beautiful soul.

“I plucked up those scarves on the way to the door. I held them in a death grip, as if I could somehow hold on to color itself.”

Isidore cocked her head, as if recalling the scene. “When I opened the door, I was surprised to see that Merritt’s eyes were red. To this day, that, and not the scarf with one knot, is my memory of red.

“He told me in a quiet voice that he had figured out how to do what it was I wanted. He asked if I was sure, if I still wanted to go through with it. In answer, I took up his hand, kissed it, and held it to my cheek for a moment as I thanked him for what he was about to do. He nodded without saying anything.

“I was joyous for the lost souls that I hoped to be able to find. Merritt was miserable.

“He had a roll of papers he’d brought along with him. He unfurled them on the table and I saw then that each one had some kind of drawings all over it. He arranged them just so, putting various pieces where they belonged so that together they became parts of a larger drawing. When it was all arranged, I could see that he had drawn what looked to be a complex maze with odd symbols at various places.”

“A maze?” Magda managed to ask without the tears surfacing in her voice.

Isidore nodded. “I asked him what he thought he was doing. I told him that drawings for a maze had nothing to do with the new kind of sight that I needed.

“He straightened then—he is an imposing man—and asked what I thought I was going to do. Walk all over the New World looking for ghosts? Look in dark corners and under beds? He said that it wasn’t enough to be able to see such spirits as I was hunting. He said that I needed something more to help me find them.

“He said that he had not merely thought of a way to create a new kind of sight so that I could see them, but a way that might attract them, draw them to me.

“I was stunned. It was brilliant. I hadn’t thought it through, thought about how I would actually search, but Merritt had. He had considered the entirety of the problem and he’d come up with a way for me not only to see spirits, but to draw the dead to me.”

Magda glanced around the circular room, imagining what was out beyond, remembering the way she had come in through the maze to find Isidore’s place.

“You mean to say that Merritt designed this maze down here? That maze out there, that confusing place with all the dead ends, all the twists and turns, all the confusing passageways, all the hanging cloth, and the empty rooms?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t understand. How can it help you? Why the passageways to nowhere that dead-end? The hanging panels of cloth? The empty rooms? What’s the purpose?”

“To make them feel safe,” Isidore said.

Magda blinked in surprise. “To make the . . . spirits feel safe?”

“That’s right. The dead ends make them feel a sense of safety, feel that others can’t sneak up on them. The cloth gives them the comforting sense of being shrouded. Did you notice that the cloth panels have protection spells either painted on them or woven into the fabric? Most of it is very faint, but spirits can see them, or maybe they are aware of the spells in their own way.”

“I guess I hadn’t noticed,” Magda said.

“Some of those spells on the hanging fabric are my own creation, born of my work as a spiritist. They’re powerful and significant.” Isidore leaned toward Magda a bit. “The dead must heed them.”

“And the empty rooms?”

“The rooms are refuges that give the dead a sense of place. It has to be hard for them, not knowing where they belong. The rooms are empty so that the spirits don’t feel like they are intruding into someone else’s place. You see, the whole maze is a sanctuary for the spirits who find themselves trapped in this world.

“That day in my room, standing over the papers, Merritt said that he knew the right place to build such a sanctuary. He said that it would be down in the lower reaches of the Keep, below the crypts, where there were countless dead laid to rest. The crypts, he said, were a place of such specific energy that spirits trapped in this world would already tend to haunt that area. He said that the refuge he would build below would then draw them in to me.

“He said, then, that he would personally oversee the construction.” Isidore swallowed. “I knew what he meant. He meant that it was time for him to first take my sight.”

“I don’t see how you could allow a wizard to alter you in such a way,” Magda said, unable to contain her emotion any longer.

“Sometimes, it is necessary to step beyond what you have known and to reach for something more.”

Magda had intended not to bring her own views into the conversation—after all, what was done was done—but she couldn’t help herself. “I’m sorry, Isidore, but I can’t see how you could allow it. How could you stand to give up so much? How could you allow a wizard to alter you from the way you were born?”

Isidore smiled then. “It’s not that way at all, Magda. You were born unable to speak a language. Without people changing you from that natural, unaltered state, you would to this day not understand the spoken word, or be able to communicate.”

“That’s different,” Magda said. “A person is born with that potential.”

“A person is born with the potential to change, to learn, to grow. It’s not always an easy step to take. You were changed by being taught to read and write. Reading and writing aren’t natural abilities. They were instilled in you. Aren’t you happy that people cared enough to change you so that you would be better than you were born and thus have a better life? Aren’t you better for it? Didn’t the struggle make you stronger?”

Magda swiped back her short hair. “But Isidore, he took your sight. How could you stand to lose—”

“No,” Isidore said, holding up a finger to cut Magda off. “It’s not that way at all. Yes, I lost something, but I gained something truly remarkable. I gained far more than I lost. Do you know that I’ve never again bothered to hold those scarves with the knots?”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t need them. That memory is the past. I can see so much more now.”

Magda frowned. “What do you mean? See what?”

Isidore lifted an arm, slowly sweeping it around the room. “Well, I can see . . .”

The cat hissed as she suddenly jumped to her feet and rose up onto her toes.

Isidore’s arm halted in place.

The cat arched her back high. Her black hair stood on end as her mouth opened wide. Her muzzle drew back, exposing her teeth as she hissed.

Magda blinked at the cat. “Shadow . . . what’s the matter with you?”

“You should run,” Isidore whispered.

Magda looked up. “What?”

“Run.”