Plink~*

Echo fell to the windowsill, a puff of dust still dancing in the air where she’d collided with the glass. Her antennae still rang like a tuning fork, her wings ached where she’d landed on them. This is why she only went out after dark! She was too hasty, too prone to light’s trickeries. But she’d lingered in this house too long already, and would rather not spend another night.

It was supposed to be a quick in-and-out job. Grab the oldest looking pieces jewelry she could find, let her human apprentice hawk them as haunted relics, and eat like a queen for the coming month. But clearly, whoever owned this mansion liked her jewelry. Echo had never seen so many applications of rhinestones, intricate knottings of chains, and deep, vibrant gemstones, the latter of which had so captivated her that she must… just… have run out of time. But hours? Could it have been hours?

But no, don’t linger on it. Plenty of time to puzzle out a timeline after she was out. of. here. This window was open last night, when had it been closed? Normally, Echo was attuned to the creaking of footsteps, even in a place as big as this. That should have been her signal to make up her mind and go, but now here she was, scrambling to shove her ill-gotten goods back into her pouch, willing herself not to lose any more time gazing into the depths of their inset gems (why was she so worried about that? Later, questions for later).

Someone spoke to her. Too close, so close that at first that Echo couldn’t determine where it came from. Honeyed, seductive, but with an edge of cruelty to it.

“Well. Aren’t you a lucky find?”

Echo pulled herself away from the garnet abyss of the pendant she’d been lost in (damn it!) and found herself face to face with its owner. The human woman had a catlike intensity to her. Her features that were visibly aged, but with such unnatural grace that one might wonder if each wrinkle around her eyes and lips were intentionally engineered to express wisdom and authority. She wore a luxurious satin and velvet gown patterned with deep, warm colors, and from the look of things, wore very little else. Judging by the damp towel wrapped around her head, she’d even managed to get a morning shower while Echo was distracted. She emanated an aura of pachouli and jasmine.

Echo shut her eyes tight, leaving her plunder where it lay, and zipped into the air, trusting every sense but sight to guide her. Immediately, the woman snatched her from the air, bare-handed.

“Come now, don’t be rude,” She teased, without a hint of mercy. “You haven’t even introduced yourself! Naughty little thing...”

This shouldn’t be happening. Echo had stuck to the magical currents, luck should have prevented a human from even seeing her, let alone capturing her. There could only be one, dreadful explanation for this. Echo had attempted to steal from a witch; one much more powerful than and she'd met before.

“Let me go!” Echo shouted, “I- I’m spoken for already!”

“Spoken for? Is someone else practicing so near to me? You simply must acquaint us.”

“N-no, I mean, I was just-!”

“Hush.”

With that final word, the witch set her thumb on the fairy’s head, jamming it neatly into her closed fist. Echo writhed, but the pressure only mounted, each near breakthrough met with redoubled intensity. The witch was stronger than she looked, not that it would take much against such a frail subject. Within a minute, Echo’s resistance turned feeble, then ceased. Any more, and the witch might break something, and then she may never be free.

Before she knew what was happening, there was light, a clink overhead, the air turned nearly stagnant. Echo’s body throbbed, so beaten in by the witch’s grip that it had to reacquaint itself with empty space. Her vision blurred, too. The walls rolled somewhere in the distance like a wine-colored sea. Still, Echo had her self-preservation instinct, she leapt forward once more and, for the second time that morning, hit her head against glass. It wasn’t her vision; she was in an ornate pitcher, faceted in a diamond-cut at its base. Trapped.

Echo pressed herself to one of the pitcher’s flat edges, and this time was able to make out more of the room in front of her. There was a four-poster bed with a large, wooden chest at its base. On the adjoining wall, an open door to a walk-in closet. Framed in the doorway, one very nude witch, her robe tossed haphazardly on the plush black rug below as she picked out an outfit. Her body was as elegantly built as her face, full at the breasts and hips, with a tasteful hint of sagging weight on the chest and belly, still-wet pitch-black hair clinging to her curves. She stood up straighter the instant Echo focused on her.

“Go back to sleep, pest,” the witch snapped “You haven’t earned the privilege yet.”

Echo didn’t remember being asleep before, and didn’t remember it now. The witch was already fully adorned in a form-fitting black velvet dress, her hair dry, wavy, and glossy around her shoulders. Echo wasn’t in the pitcher anymore either. Her limbs were chained to a pendant, which now swung gently in front of her captor’s face.

“Now we can start with pleasantries. What do you call yourself?” Asked the witch.

Echo didn’t want to say anything. She answered truthfully.

The witch repeated the name thoughtfully, playing with the glottal stop between its syllables. “Echo… Eck-oh… I must say, I don’t mind that one. You can have that name back once you learn to behave yourself. Until then, you have none. You are nothing but a thief, and that is what I shall call you.”

The fairy tried to speak, but the sound caught in her chest as the pendulum swung further, urged on by a twitch off the witch’s finger.

“I go by Merlot, which I only tell you in case someone asks who you belong to. You will only ever call me “Madame.” Or “Mistress,” she adds as an afterthought.

“I don’t belong to-” But the fairy could not finish her thought, steeling herself as the pendulum broke from its linear axis in favor of a circular path.

“No,” Merlot dismissed her protests. “You do belong to me. Who else would you belong to?”

“No one…”

“Exactly. No one else.”

“That wasn’t what I meant-”

“Yes, it was,” The witch insisted, patiently. The pendulum began to slow. Echo felt dizzy, nauseous, and confused. Her head continued to roll on her shoulders, even as her body came to a full stop. Merlot leaned in closer, so Echo could barely see more than her black lipstick, the heat of her breath bombarding as she spoke,

“Now, thief, you said before that you were “spoken for.” Be a dear and… illuminate what that means, for me.”

Echo bit down hard on her tongue. Whatever charm this sorceress had over her, she wouldn’t allow herself to put her apprentice, her friend at risk.

Merlot frowned, no, sneered, and abruptly flicked her nail against the side of the pendulum, spinning Echo wildly and erratically.

“Don’t try to be a hero. I don’t take kindly to amateurs infringing on my domain. I will track this… magician of yours down myself, if I have to. But I think you’ll find things go much better for you if you make my life easier.”

Echo’s world was expanding much too fast. Even a powerful human shouldn’t be able to trace the currents. Could this woman somehow have the sense? Or… or perhaps Echo wasn’t the first. The ease with which she’d been captured, the confidence with which the witch spoke of things most humans didn’t even know existed. She must have more of Echo’s kind locked away somewhere in this estate, sealed away so well that Echo hadn’t detected them. Images of dismal dungeons began to creep into Echo’s mind, chambers where others like her were locked up tight. Or maybe, she hadn’t detected them because they’d already been used up, drained of their magic, spent as ingredients for this woman’s hellish concoctions. She caught herself staring once more at her captor’s lips, at the brilliant white teeth that flashed behind them.

Merlot pinched the tip of the pendulum, this time lowering one glaring green eye to meet Echo’s face, and demanded again,”

“Where. Did. You. Come. From?”

Echo shut her eyes as tight as she could, but she could still feel that gaze penetrating her, drawing out a whine, each word tugged out of her as if by force, as if each syllable were physical, slimy, heavy, passing her tongue like river rocks.

“Therrrre you are” Merlot’s tone softened, sweet and encouraging. “Let it all out for me, that’s a good little thief…”

Echo’s thoughts weren’t with her words. They were just… happening on their own, while internally, dread and pride, shame and comfort, were making a slurry of her emotions. The harder she resisted the witch’s thrall, the tighter the walls felt, the more the truth squeezed out of her. It felt twisted, sickening, like the greatest burden was being lifted. She clung to it, even as it slipped away.

“Shhh… It’s okay, don’t stop. You’re doing marvelously… you’re such a perfect, pretty thing…”

And then it stopped. Or rather, it had been over for some time, and the static was just now creeping from her extremeties. Echo was sprawled out on a soft, pillowy surface. Dark cotton threads, a vertically ribbed pattern, stretched over—Echo groggily realized—Merlot’s inner thigh. The witch was reclined on her bed, dress hiked up enough for the fairy to rest on her stocking while she gently stroked the edges of her wings with a fingertip. The sensation was unbearably pleasant, the soreness slipping away as easily as everything else the witch had taken. She felt lighter than she had all day. Lighter than she had in weeks.

“That’s much better, isn’t it?” Merlot asked. “I think you’ll find I take very good care of my ‘belongings, so long as they serve their purpose.”

“Th… thank you?” Echo felt wrong saying it, but was having trouble remembering why.

“Thank you who?” The witch prompted.

And then, the last piece fell back into place. She knew what she had done, with painful clarity.

“You… monster.”

Merlot’s eye visibly twitched, her expression flipping as immediately as opposite sides of a coin.

“You ungrateful thief.”

Merlot grabbed Echo firmly once more, and this time Echo caught every step as she stormed to the closet, and retrieved a small, silver birdcage from on top of a shelf.

“We’ll work on obedience training in the morning,” Merlot growled.

That night, locked away in a dark closet that smelled of sweet perfume, Echo the thief wondered what would become of her. And deep down, in some corner of her heart she hadn’t known she held, part of her wondered if she might let herself get used to this.