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pleasant than you do, but it must be done. Your stature and future role require that you at least be exposed to this sort of knowledge even though I doubt much of it will penetrate that dense skull of yours.”
    “Insulting me doesn’t make me respect you,” I said.
    “If I craved your respect, then that would upset me,” she shot back.
    I crossed my arms and slid down in my seat, sulking. I had to be here; I did not have to like it.
    Eldrid sighed dramatically. “I cannot believe that you are to be the last of us. We are a noble race, sacrificing ourselves for the good of the world, for the good of humankind, and here sits our penultimate representative without even the courtesy to sit up straight.”
    “I can learn just as well sitting this way,” I said.
    “No doubt that’s abundantly true,” she said. The woman was never at a loss, I’ll give her that.
    “Can we just get on with this? I don’t want to be late for sword fighting practice.”
    “Very well. Today, we will talk about witchcraft.”
    That made me sit up straight. My mother, Diah, was the last Teller Witch, and as far as anyone knew, she’d died giving birth to me as all human women did birthing Reapers. Certainly Adonis thought so; he forbade anyone to mention her name. As her daughter, I had the natural inclination to magic, but I’d never been trained and certainly never attempted it myself. The craving for more powerful magic had been the reason my mother turned me over to the Demons; I wanted nothing to do with it.
    “Before we begin,” she added, “I must know: Are you using magic?”
    “Absolutely not.”
    “Are you certain?”
    “Do you think I’d do it accidentally? That I might sneeze out a spell by accident?”
    “So you’re not?”
    “No!”
    “Well, why not?” she roared again, making me jump. She was truly fearsome. “You’re not only the last Reaper, you’re the last of the line of Teller Witches. The prophecies end with you, and you seem to have no interest in continuing them.”
    I knew Diah still sat in her hut, very much alive in her own way, staring into her crystal ball and scrawling what she saw onto page after page of parchment. I wondered what she was like now, after years of isolation, but I didn’t wonder bad enough to seek her out. I didn’t trust myself to see her, and no one else knew she still lived. “You’re right about that,” I said.
    “What do you know of your mother’s lineage?” she said.
    My adopted father forbade anyone to mention my mother after I returned from Demon captivity. When I told my father she’d given me to the Demons after her supposed demise, he simply refused to believe me. My ability to describe the woman who was supposed to have died birthing me was chalked up to “magic.” Reapers revere magic. That is, Reapers who don’t have a vendetta against the witch that tossed them away for a measly potion. “Don’t…mention…my mother,” I said through my teeth.
    Eldrid smiled. She loved getting me angry. “Then we’ll talk in more general terms. The line of Teller Witches is as old as recorded history. Into every human generation, one girl discovers her ability to commune with nature: She sings to the plants, the trees, and the wind. She charms the animals and her own kind, especially men.” Her voice took on a tone I didn’t quite recognize. Was that respect? I wonder if she knew my mother well. “She can heal both humans and Reapers although not Demons. But her main gift is her direct line of communication with the Creator of All Things. Through this, she receives the prophecies, the things that guide us into the future. As the scrolls say, ‘She Tells, for She is the Teller.’”
    She held up a scroll. “Tell me, Aella, have you seen this before?”
    Amidst the text in the old language, there was a large illustration of a woman. It was of an ancient Teller Witch, but in its lines, I saw my mother’s achingly beautiful face: the distinctive eyes, the full