She was so close she could taste it.

The wind carried the smells of Bluddrayl across the cattle fields and swept them up the cliffside to the rocky bluff on which Magenta stood. After the rain last night, the trace of damp pine and sandstone softened the yeasty, acrid, and animal scents of leather processing and mead fermentation. There was something bracing about the all-too-human combination, which was good, because Magenta was trying precisely to brace herself for her return.

She was also so close that she could see the town. Did it look as she remembered? She wasn’t sure. She’d never had cause to view the town from such a vantage. Maybe there were more homes in the settlers’ annex. Given what she’d seen on her journey, that wouldn’t surprise her; many people had been displaced as a consequence of Dreathus’ ever-reaching influence over the coastlands. Five years might not be so long, but it was long enough for some things to change — and it was long enough for Magenta to forget the precise contours of her former home.

It might be long enough to forget, but is it long enough to forgive?

She dipped her head and swept the free strands of ruddy blonde hair back from her face. She had come to the outcrop to sight a path down to the town. But now she was just stalling. And questions like that didn’t help.

Three days she had travelled on foot from Galledfjord. It should have taken her two but the closer she got the slower she seemed to cross the distance. Until now, where she’d stilled altogether.

The wind worked to loosen and swirl her heavy woollen travelling cape away from her body. She fidgeted it back into place around her, then kicked a restless foot at the ground. Well, she’d almost stilled.

And then with a sudden, decisive jerk, Magenta unslung the violin case from her back. She could admit that there was no tug in her chest insisting that she play; not a magic one, anyway. But there was instead a little voice in her head suggesting that a song might steel her nerve just enough to get moving again.

The outside of the case may have been battered, but, inside, the violin was pristine. This wasn’t just a feature of Magenta’s tender care for the instrument. If you knew just how to look for power, you could see the shimmer of spellworking in the spiraled scroll. Even unplayed the strings trembled with potential. She had travelled to Ivek with her master to find the black Ivekian horse from which the hairs of her bow would be made, along with a single hair from her own head, irrevocably bonding her magic to that of the violin’s.

She crouched down, untying the maroon-coloured velvet interior case bindings, when she heard the rustle of the leaves in the woods behind her; a discordant accompaniment to the soft, whispering of the pine needles in the wind.

‘I was just about to get this out anyway,’ she called to no one.

When the creature screeched out of the treetops and swooped down at her, she was ready with her bow poised above the strings. It hurtled toward her, about the size of a human head, writhing inelegantly, all gnashing teeth and flailing wings, like it didn’t just want to hurt her, it was desperate to hurt her.

Maletre, she thought. And then the genesis of a song stirred in her: seeded from her heart, it proceeded to course right through her; it seeped up and across her shoulders, its tender but powerful fibers filtering to her fingertips.

She held no fear in that moment for the thing now merely moments from reaching her.

She simply held the music’s unfolding in her body.

And then unleashed it in a first crisp, sharp note — the attack — an open, resounding G.

The winged black mass hurtled by within a foot of her face, but miss her it did. She cut what would have seemed a strange figure to anyone watching who didn’t understand Magenta’s powers. At the edge of the cliff, a compact maroon-caped silhouette standing brazenly — foolishly — before an assailant hell bent on mauling whatever part of her it could reach first. But she had learned that there was strength of many kinds in refusing to let others’ misunderstandings of her hold sway over her choices. And, anyway, she had come across more than one maletre in her travels. Magenta could sense that this maletre bat contained a heightened vehemence but comparatively little manifested power; not to be underestimated, but not something she couldn’t handle.

As Magenta eased into the first full chord, and then to the second, and third, repeated, settling into a simple progression of D major, G chord, A, A, then looping to repeat again, the song began to look for its home, began to seek the seat for its power. Magenta followed where the song led. She didn’t decide which chord to play in the moments before it came to her; the heart seemed to speak directly to the hands, arms, even the torso as she swayed, rhythmically, unconsciously.

With another gust of wind came the sensory strike of inspiration and a shortcut to a rich, memory-laden vein of power.

Her breath caught but she didn’t miss a beat; the tempo lifted and her fingertips danced on the strings now, no longer simple chords but a ripple of enmixing trills and scales, G, A, B, C, D —

The old woman’s hand on her arm. She felt it grab her, as real as if she stood beside her just as she had that night. Trying to hold her back. Tabitha. Her face cast in stark shadow from the flickering light of the raging fire. The prominent lines around her eyes held all the force of her penetrating green-eyed gaze. The fire’s creeping warmth; sweat beading on the back of her neck. Pulling her arm out of the grip — shaking her head — no — Tabitha’s eyes again, wide, compassionate, and then her lips forming a simple soundless don’t —

The taste of blood. Smeared red on the back of her hand. Stumbling up the rocks. The grating of each breath in her tight throat, bitter and stinging with bile.

Each flash was all too familiar, but they came fast and incoherent, a jumble more of feeling than meaning. What the music roused in her — these flashes from her past — she didn’t fight it, but she felt the tug in her chest build now. It had found its anchor raw and deep and the pain tore at her insides. But she needed to lean in. Leaning in was the foundation of her power.

She closed her eyes and let her senses be overcome.

Furious orange, red vibrant heat reaching up and up to the stars. Roaring into her ears. Names of children screamed so shrill the shape of the sound became lost in anguish.

The dark. A moment slowed in time. A shadow figure at the edge of town. Looking back to see them watching — too far to see clearly and yet — the moment she knew he had turned away — staring on into the empty dark —

The pull of the magic grew tauter. The same magic that had compelled her that very remembered night to leave. The magic that she had learned to trust and yet it was that one night she still questioned ever since. And the same magic pull that she had now followed back again.

As the maletre bat turned a flying arc around to redouble on her, a sharp note in the crescendo rent it limb from limb.

The pain eased into a tight readiness as the flashes faded. Magenta returned to her own senses and listened to the music she played as though she hadn’t truly heard it in the moments before. She knew this meant the magic was nearly spent.

She played to the last note, held to its final full count of eight.

Then, and only then, she opened her eyes.

Letting her instrument and bow rest at her sides, she walked over and looked down at the dismembered corpse. The maletre bat was barely recognisable. Perhaps she had leaned in a little far. But even if that performance had been more than the threat warranted, it had been just what she needed to reassure herself: She was ready to return home. She had done exactly what she knew she’d needed to do when she left. She was powerful now. The town would acknowledge what she had sacrificed to become this. This magic was the proof that she was worthy of returning after all this time, despite what she had done.

Then she frowned and the elation of the fight and the song waned. A maletre bat this close to Bluddrayl... A dark force must be manifesting them nearby. That wasn't good. She was either arriving just in time, or not soon enough.

When a branch snapped in the woods behind her, she sighed and readjusted her grip on her bow. Round two. The encore.