The Well had changed since the thing at the bottom of it had decided to ignore me.

  Ever since I had resisted the metallic thumps of its call atop the stone table of the colosseum, there had been no sound or sign that it existed at all.

  It was still a near infinite library filled with the memories of all the sorceresses that had ever lived.

  That was all that remained the same as it had been in Erosette.

  The thing had been watching when I had been somewhere underneath The Mother in Red’s cliff side mansion. Gone were the fireplaces and the high backed arm chairs on every identical floor. In their place were tables and alcoves identical to a real library that I had been in before. There were no paintings, nor was there a pleasant mannered man with a warm smile. When I had gone to The Well for the first time after Rhiannon's punishment, the ethereal structure in my mind had become a perfect mimic of Patience’s library.

  Like his and the one that Anna had taken me to in Erosette, the books that the shelves held had been organized. Not by name or who had written them, but by color. Shelves of gradient blues lines the walls and were spaced evenly in the space between. From the shade of black water to a blue so bright it was nearly white. If there were any other rules they were sorted by, I was blind to them, but gone were the days when there was no rhyme or reason to the books placement.

  At the back of each room, by each of the strange black doors that had once served as my entrance, lay two sets of stone stairs. One led to the floors above and the other led to the floors beneath my feet.

  Above me would be nothing but reds, above the reds would be nothing but oranges, and above the oranges would be nothing but whites. Once I reached the sparsely spaced whites, the stairs would lead me to greens and it would begin again in a seemingly infinite loop.

  Green, Purple, Grey, Brown, Yellow, Blue, Red, Orange, White. I repeated in my mind.

  The loop and the organization should have made it easier for me to find something of note, but in practice, that could not have been further from the truth.

  I had been searching for Katarina’s book for so long that I had lost count how many floors of blue I had been through. I had not found a single name I recognized. None of the six precepts, not Nami or Spring Tana, nothing.

  Even with Alexei’s guidance, we had not found Reese in Hymneth the day before, and I had not found her amongst any of the orange tomes I had searched through.

  There were too many books, too many names, too many memories.

  After wasting my time running my hands over the spines of another blue floor, I sat down and leaned back against one of the strange black doors.

  If my freedom from the debt that I owed The Mothers depended on me viewing every single memory in The Well, then I would never be free. My life would never be truly my own.

  I could only remember less than half of my life. Most of it had been spent in one small place with my mother where nothing of note happened. It would take me even longer to view them than it had to live them. Each memory came with going in and out of The Well. Upon each return I had to answer Sam’s questions. My mind had nearly broken before. If I did nothing but throw myself into the memories of others in pursuit of progress, I didn’t think I could take it.

  “The worst part of it all,” I said aloud, knowing that the thing could hear me no matter how bad it did not want to. “Is I can’t even be sad about it.”

  Anna and I had discussed The Well at length in the weeks before we came to Lun. Then, when we thought we understood what those conversations had pointed to, we had brought our thoughts to Sam.

  When The Lady in Red had been about to join my head with the soil underneath it outside of Erosette, I had gone into a memory of hers. I had not realized it at the time, but when I had come back and her power cloaked fist still had not crushed me, almost no time had passed at all.

  Sam had not felt the magical compulsion to ask me his questions.

  All of the normal after effects of The Well hadn’t happened.

  “I don’t know if you understand how much shit I have to do in here, but I could use your help again.” I called out, knowing that I would not receive an answer.

  I had focused on Katarina’s name when I had entered The Well that morning, but it had done nothing.

  “I’m going to start getting angry.” I warned the emptiness, wishing there were still fireplaces for me to cause nonexistent destruction with.

  I could not be sad because of the unusual way things had occurred during my flight and fight with Trea.

  With Sam's agreement, we had discovered that time inside my mind did not run equal to time outside of it. If I had done it once, I could do it again, all I had to do was figure out how. When I learned how to do it at will, viewing memories would take much less of my life and I could be truly free at last.

  “Will you at least let me leave? I don’t want to see anything right now.” I shouted, my face burning with the anger I had promised.

  When there was no answer, I slammed my back against the strange black door behind me in frustration. It swung inwards and I went rolling back into the room that used to be all I knew of The Well.

  Thunk. Came the metallic heartbeat sound that rarely meant anything good for me.

  I rolled back onto my feet into the strange dark room. I had not been in it in longer than I could remember, but what I could remember had not been good.

  “No! I do not want to be crushed!" I shouted, stomping my feet in anger.

  Thunk. It came again.

  “Whatever you are doing, stop it!” I shouted again, my voice echoing into the emptiness of The Well.

  A long moment of silence came and I held my breath through it, waiting in jaw clenched tension for the third beat to sound. When it didn't and the walls remained where they were, I sighed. “Thank you. I'm sorry tha-”

  Thunk.

  The floor underneath my feet vanished and I dropped straight down into a lightless pit of nothingness. Only the echo of my scream met me in the never ending void, but even it grew quiet as I fell out of The Well. . .

  I did not come back to myself gently.

  I came back to myself shouting and flailing. My hands struck something hard and sent pain through my knuckles. It took far too long for me to understand that my dark descent had ended and that the wooden bottom of the bath was solidly underneath me.

  The water within its rounded walls had grown cold and my whole body shivered when my mind accepted that.

  It had not been when I had slipped into The Well earlier. Anna had woken me up with the tub already filled by an uncountable amount of trips she had taken from the stove to the bathroom. She had not done so I could view my three required memories first thing in the morning, she had done it out of kindness alone, but I had gone anyway.

  Without thinking, I brought myself to bending branch and let my aura build pressure behind my left palm. I thought of Anna and I’s reflection in the window the day before during the small moment I had been myself and not been Maiden Ire.

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  Fireworks burst from my palm underneath the surface of the water, but they were not red.

  Bright blue and thin like needles, they shot through the water like tiny little icicles.

  I snatched my legs away and pulled myself up by the rim of the bath. My working swirled in my wake and felt like they were freezing the water around my skin.

  “Autumn? Are you okay?” Anna called through the door.

  Sam sat beside the bath, his deep blue eyes scowling up at me like I had just personally insulted him.

  “I will speak with you alone.” My big blue cat of a familiar growled, something more in his voice than his usual contempt.

  “Don’t come in!” I shouted back at her.

  “Okay? I’ll just start breakfast then.” Anna called back, confusion evident in her voice.

  The last time I had returned from The Well, there had been blood splattering against the window and Sam dragging the half corpse of a very unfortunate rabbit through it. He was doing nothing so morbid then, but that made me more uneasy than the horror from before.

  “What do you want?” I asked him as I pulled a towel from the hook behind the door and wrapped it around myself.

  “Nothing. Begone.” He said, twisting his feline face into an even more severe scowl. He showed me the white tips of his fangs before turning around and moving towards the window.

  “No, wait,” I said, following right behind him and pressing my hand against the cold glass to prevent his escape. “What is it?”

  He stood up on his hind legs and thumped his big paw against my arm, hitting me with enough force to knock my hand away, but he hadn’t used his claws.

  Something was wrong with him.

  “Release me.” Sam growled as he pushed the window up without leaving the ground.

  I pulled it closed and sent the glass rattling in its frame. “Tell me what you wanted or I am going to tell Anna that you called her a lady.”

  “Betrayer!” Sam’s sudden shout shook the already shaking window with such violence that I cowered away from it in fear of it shattering.

  “It was you who spoke the words, my familiar, and it will be you who suffers the consequences,” I said through a laugh, unable to keep serious as I matched the big blue cat’s dramatic demeanor. “I’ll tell her unless you start talking.”

  The mottled fur along his spine and tail stood on end.

  “One.” I counted and held up a finger.

  He let out a hiss that sounded more like stone grinding against stone than something a cat could make.

  “Two.” I raised another finger.

  A single arc of yellow lightning appeared at his chest and coursed wildly over his body. Everywhere it passed, it brought his fur further up from his body. Between that, his deadly blue eyes, and the sharp claws of his paws, I found myself facing down a demon.

  Unfortunately for him, he was my demon.

  “Three,” I furrowed my brow and raised my final finger. When Sam did not back away from my laughing obstinance, I turned my eyes towards the door. “Ann-“

  “Silence! I will speak!” Sam thundered and cut me off before I could deliver on my threat.

  “Good.” I nodded. I gave him a moment to calm himself and pulled the drain at the bottom of the bath. The blue remnants of my aura swirled down with the cold water and I wrapped a second towel around my wet hair. The loss from my small working washed over me and I took a moment to let it pass before I turned back to him.

  With his back turned to me and his paws still held against the window, he stared out at the snowy forest outside as he spoke. “When I came to you during your trial, we formed a compact that I never intended to keep. It has eaten at me every moment since. I would have this torture end."

  I remembered him telling me that would consider what I had offered when he had brought me Anna's note. So much had happened since that I had forgotten about it.

  Anna's note. I thought to myself. What had I done with it? Did I leave it laying in the snow, discarded as if I didn't care about it or had I taken it into the river with me where it had been torn apart by the rushing water?

  I should have kept it. I should have folded it neatly and pushed into the tiny vial that hung from my neck. She had taken the time to write it just for me and I had treated it as if it meant nothing.

  Swallowing the lump that had formed in my throat, I brought my hand up to the vial of yellow dust and black hair and squeezed. The sharp points of the small silver crescent that Anna had added to the thin chain pressed into my palm. Glim's firefly, my victory over The River Eae, Anna, all of the memories the vial brought held me together as the small sorrow of my afterglow passed.

  "Hey, Autumn?" Anna called through the door again as Sam lost his patience.

  He pushed the window open and dragged himself up to leave, heavy muscle rippling visibly underneath his mottled blue fur.

  “Just a minute," I called back and then rushed over to my escaping familiar. It took all of my restraint to not grab him by his tail and pull him back inside. “Wait, I can help.”

  "Tell me what you have proposed so I may be done with this.” Sam commanded as he made no move to turn around.

  I rewrapped my towel against the cold air that crept in through the window and told him how I thought he could surpass the barriers in his mind.

  “When something comes up that reminds you of who you were before, it hurts right? I’ve caused you a lot of pain that way. I’ve had to deal with so many people having to find ways to tell me things because there are bindings or something else that keeps them from just saying it.” I began, thinking of the trick my mother had needed to play on me just so I could find my true shade of red. All the times she had needed to speak to me as if I already knew what she was going to say, she must have been tiptoeing around barriers of her own. Rhiannon had hurt herself willingly just to tell me that she loved me.

  Sam did not leave.

  My explanation had intrigued him.

  “I won’t say all the things I’ve said or mention the times you have met your boundaries because whether you believe it or not, I don’t want to hurt you,” I tried to choose my words as carefully as I could. “If there was an other Sam, one that already knew the things you can't but isn't bound the way you are-"

  "Autumn." Anna said, with the sharp knock on the closed door.

  I did not answer her. I sat and waited to see if my familiar benefited from what I had offered.

  "Impressive, my lady." Sam said simply.

  I was glad his back was turned to me, I would have hated for him to see how big a smile his approval had spread across my face.

  "For example, you may not be able to tell me anything about what being a twinsoul means, but if the other Sam knew something. . ." I trailed off at the sight of his ears beginning to twitch violently.

  I had said too much.

  I had hurt him again.

  "This will take time, much more time than that." My familiar growled.

  "I'm sorry," I apologized, thinking of the accidental blue I had manifested in the bath. "It was worth a try."

  Without another word, Sam leapt from the second story window and landed in the wind blown snow against the side of the shack. I let out a deep sigh as I pushed my confused feelings aside and thought of my aura.

  I had found blue in my soul, but had that come at the cost of my red?

  Closing the window and leaving the bathroom, I started talking aloud as I went to the bed.

  "We have a problem," I said to Anna as I pulled the towel from my head and dried my still wet hair with it roughly. "You know how I warm the water with my fireworks? When I came back from The Well, which was a waste of time anyways, I couldn't even find anything that rhymed with Katarina, but the water in the bath had gone cold."

  "Hey, hold on a second." Anna said from behind me.

  I threw my hair towel down to the wooden floor atop the damp spot I had left on the floor. Letting the one around my body fall as I felt the heat from the stove warm my chilly skin, I started to get dressed as I continued.

  "When I focused my aura and made my firework, it came out all blue and cold. I'm scared I lost my red, that it's not in my soul anymore. What do you think I should do? Do you have something in your notes that you think can help?" I carried on as I pulled on the new pajamas that Anna had gotten me.

  "Uhm, we can definitely talk about that later." Anna said when I paused to take a breath, her voice sounded quiet and muffled.

  "Why later?" I asked, turning around to look at her.

  "Because we have a visitor." She said through her hands.

  The Mother in Blue sat right in front of our stove atop the empty chest that held my sandals. She wore a long and thin dress like she always did and the light of the fire that leaked through the iron grate beside her danced along her dark skin. Her ocean eyes met mine and an amused expression came over her. "Hello, Underwitch Autumn."

  I had been too busy talking to realize that Anna had been trying to stop me from dropping my towel and changing.

  "Why is she here?" I asked Anna, too ashamed to look at Nami again.

  Nami answered for herself. "I've come to take you to your permanent quarters, the new moon ball is tomorrow and your first cycle begins the day after."

  I may or may not have lost my red, I did not know, but the heat of embarrassment that stung my cheeks burned hot enough that I thought it would catch flame.

  If the floor under my feet fell away like it had in The Well, I would have welcomed it.