Running with my cloak fastened around my neck had the unexpected effect of making me feel like I was moving with wicked speed.

  It billowed out behind me as I ran straight towards the other new moons in pursuit of my contemptuous familiar.

  The underwitch I did not know stepped out of my way. Underwitch Plia threw herself against the wall of the hall with obvious fright on her face. Underwitch Tana, with her glossy brown hair and blue stones neckce, did not so much as lean away from me.

  Certain that she meant for it to happen, I had to skip to my left to avoid running into her or tripping over her legs.

  “I would never speak to him that way.” I heard her announce for everyone to hear as I successfully evaded her attempt at being an obstacle.

  You’ll never have a familiar to speak to. I thought to myself in annoyance at her. What did she know about what having a familiar was like?

  Nothing. She knew nothing.

  No one knew anything about it, which was what made being Sam’s master so absolutely frustrating.

  Precept Seram could teach me all about how to use my power. Anna could connect the scraps of knowledge I was able to tear out of The Well with her books and notes. The only person that I knew had once had a familiar and would be willing to speak with me was Rhiannon.

  Had Bayle given her half the problems that Sam had given me?

  Unless I ced my words with my power and called to The Mothers for help, I had no reasonable way to get in touch with her. For more reasons that I could count, giving The Mothers a reminder that I existed was something I knew I should not do.

  So, without anything resembling guidance, I reached the hall that Sam had run down and slowed my pace to a slow stalk.

  “Where have you been?” I shouted towards my familiar as he dashed across the hall from closed door to closed door, presumably looking for a way to escape.

  He did not answer.

  “I haven’t gone,” I paused and gnced back over my shoulder. The other new moons were nowhere to be seen beyond the singing stairs. Only Alexei’s one white eye stared back at me. He knew who I was, there was no need for me to mask my words if no one else could hear. “I don’t feel comfortable going into The Well if you aren’t there.”

  Again, as I crept ever closer to him, he did not answer.

  “You can’t just tell me you created something and then disappear. I don’t even know what you meant. Is there another Sam running around now?” Growing more frustrated at his silence with every step I took towards him.

  No answer.

  The doors evidently locked, all that y beyond my familiar was the back wall of the hall, two wooden benches, and a rge paneled window that looked out over an endless ocean of white snow.

  There was nowhere else for him to run, no path he could take to escape, and he would answer to me.

  “Samsara. I asked you where you have been.” I demanded as I cornered him against the bottom of the window.

  “Wherever my paws have led me.” He growled back at me, his voice sounding unusually high pitched.

  In one sudden movement, he flipped himself forward and rolled until his back was pressed into the corner in a defensive position.

  All of him was wrong. His fur was not puffed out or standing on end, his cws were not extended towards me, and there was none of the usual contempt in his deep blue eyes.

  “If you believe you have won, my dy, you are sorely mistaken.” He growled again in his new tone as he pawed the air in my direction.

  My jaw dropped as I spoke the words of an unbelievable realization. “Are you trying to py with me?”

  My familiar became as still as the serpent skeleton that filled the hall of conquest. Then, he raked his big paws over his head and shut his eyes. Still in the strange high pitched tone, he answered. “Yes, I believe that I am.”

  “Sam? Are you well?” I asked as I lowered myself to my knees and reached a hand out to him.

  Just before I touched him, his eyes snapped back open.

  Burning bright yellow like the moons on the back of higher ranked underwitch's cloaks, his deep blue was nowhere to be seen.

  I had looked into those eyes many times before. They had been flits of light floating in the empty eye sockets of his fleshless skull, but their color was one and the same with what stared up at me then.

  A moment passed.

  “You will have to catch me if you wish for an answer.” My familiar ughed as he threw himself to his feet.

  Sam doesn’t ugh. Ever. He is not capable. You have truly broken him. The disturbing thoughts ran through my mind as I made a desperate attempt to take him by the scruff of his neck.

  I did not know what I would do if I did catch him. The days when I could hold him in one hand or pick him up were long past, but I had to try.

  That was all I managed to do.

  I tried, and failed miserably.

  He slipped past me and streaked under the bench on my left.

  Before I could think to try and grab him again, he was tearing down the hall back towards the singing stairs. Alexei stood silently at its end and made no move to halt my broken familiar.

  I ran after him.

  I didn’t really have another choice.

  Broken or not, he was my familiar.

  “You could have helped me!” I shouted at my guard as I passed him without taking the time to hear his response.

  From the grey stones of the floor to the crystalline stairs that held the center of Lun, Sam bounded up from glowing step to glowing step at a speed that I could never hope to keep up with.

  “Sam!” I shouted after him as my mind was filled with the singing stair’s usually calming song. Deep blue, pale purples, watery greens, and pearlescent whites met the bottoms of my boots as I threw myself up them two steps at a time. Their song matched my pace, sounding hollow and incomplete without the notes that I leapt over.

  Whoever Caerulus was, I doubted that she had meant for her lulby to be heard in the sorry state my chase was pying it in.

  Sam reached the next floor of Lun and spun into a sliding turn as he left the stairs, his unusual ughter filling the air as he went. It was not a bad sound, most ughs weren’t, but the fact that it was coming from was enough to send my thoughts into a sickening spiral.

  I remembered what I had told Sam specifically.

  I had not said create something known as Othersam. I had told him that if there was another Sam, that the painful boundaries in his mind might not hurt him as much.

  However he had interpreted my attempt at guidance was not what I had intended.

  My familiar was strong. He could survive all manner of grievous wounds and did not need his flesh to survive. With nothing but spoken word, he could take someone somewhere and hold them until he wished to release them. The big blue cat could summon actual lightning. If his mind had been broken or lost because of my words, there was no end to the havoc he could wreak. Stopping him was no longer about my anger at him for leaving me alone, I had to stop him to keep anyone from getting hurt.

  I turned off the staircase far too long after my familiar had done the same.

  My mind understood that I was no longer climbing stairs.

  My feet didn’t.

  The tip of my boot caught on the perfectly ft and easily walkable floor and I pitched forward before I could ever begin to look for my familiar.

  Fortunately, there was a wooden bench against the closest wall and I managed to catch and throw myself onto it before I could hit the ground. Sitting up just in time to see an Underwitch appear from a door on my right, I crossed my legs and snapped into what I hoped was a believable imitation of rest.

  Either I was a wonderful actor or the underwitch was more interested in what she was reading than she was what surrounded her. I kept my eyes on the half moon that covered the back of her cloak as she passed Alexei without a word.

  The moment she left my sight, I snapped to my feet and called out for my possibly insane familiar once again.

  I had not seen much of Lun beyond my quarters, Precept Seram’s cssroom, the dining hall, and the hall of conquest. The floor I had followed Sam onto had the same shape and size as the floor that I was meant to be on, but it was not the same.

  A long rug ran down the length of one of the wings, covering the grey stone with its cool colors and intricate pattern. Weapons and suits of armor hung and stood all along another, each armament encased in what looked to be solid sapphire. There was one hall that was darkened by so many bnkets and pillows that it looked like the mother of the covery on Seram’s hall.

  If I were a cat that wasn’t actually a cat and I was leading my master on the most frustrating game of hide and seek that had ever been pyed, where would I be? I asked myself, feeling like I knew the answer before I ever finished thinking of the question.

  He was too big to hide behind anything in the armory hall and I doubted the change in his eyes gave him the ability to ftten his body completely. That left the forest of bnkets as the best pce to start.

  I started towards it, but a sudden sharp sound stopped me.

  Alexei had snapped his fingers, and when I met his eye, he nodded down at my feet.

  I looked down, at the bench and then the floor. When I saw nothing, I looked back up at him and he nodded again.

  I knelt down and looked under the bench.

  Sam swung one of his massive paws out at me and smacked it against my cheek.

  “Come here!” I growled as I shoved my hands under the bench and clutched at any scrap of fur I could get my fingers around.

  Yellow eyes shining in the small shadows, Sam twisted and turned around my grab. With a wicked ugh, he escaped me yet again as his tail slipped through my hands before I could close them around his tail.

  He tore towards the wing with the long rug.

  I followed as quickly as I could make my body move, but with my cloak tangling around my desperate movements, that was not nearly fast enough.

  I would never catch him if we went on the way we were.

  For a moment, he was painted even bluer than he already was by the blue light that leaked through an open door on the right side of the hall.

  I stopped before the open door and brought my power to life within me. Bringing that power to my words, I gave my familiar a command. “Samsara, stop!”

  The big blue cat did as I said.

  “Turn around!” I shouted.

  He did.

  “Come here. Why are you being this way?” I shouted again and pointed at the section of rug beneath my feet.

  That was when my familiar broke my heart.

  "I am sorry, my Lady. I was only enjoying myself. I cannot remember the st time I could run free without pain. Surely, you of all people must understand that." He said in his high voice as he followed my orders and walked back to me.

  He was right, I knew all too well what sudden freedom could do to a soul.

  He passed through the blue light once again, and I swallowed the shame I felt at having commanded him. "You are just having fun? You have not lost yourself or created some other Sam?"

  "No. I have created Othersam as you suggested. It is he who feels the pain when the barriers of my mind are met. Without that pain, I am able to be more of myself." My familiar answered me.

  I knelt down so our eyes were on the same level and ignored the growing noise that had begun to spill into the hall alongside the blue light. "All the growling and meanness that I'm used to, that was because of the pain?"

  "No. That is part of me too, but this part has been-"

  A chorus of sudden shouts and cheers erupted from the room with the cracked open door. The light coming from it grew even brighter and I could not help but see what was happening. By the time I had peaked my head through the door, Sam had done the same, so I did not fear him suddenly running off again.

  Through the circle of Underwitchs that filled the otherwise empty room, I saw Precept Jasna.

  Her downy bck hair and the feathers braided within it were flowing back from her head like she was facing a blustery gust of wind. The split tails of her icy blue cloak billowed out behind her as she stared at the source of the gale force.

  Three arcs of blue aura spiraled down into the hands of the underwitch opposite Jasna. The light of her power was too bright for me to see her face, but over the cheers of the others, I could hear her shouting. "I did! I did it! I did it!"

  "What is its name? You must call it out!" Jasna called to her as the aura began to coalesce.

  The shape of a bde began to grow up from her hands as panic filled her voice. "I don't know, it's too much, I don't know!"

  "Calm, Iliza," Jasna said, one of her hands pced calmly on the underwitch's shoulder. "What is its name?"

  I looked down just to make sure that Sam was still where I hoped he was.

  He was.

  "I don't know!" The underwitch called once more.

  I knew what was happening, I had seen it many times before.

  Vowkeeper, Silkshifter, Gloomwalker, Trea and her Rifthammer, Goldluster and her Fortunefavors, Frostdancer and The Bitter End, whatever they were, the underwitch was attempting to do the same.

  The arcs that were forming the bde began to spin wildly and in a sudden fsh, the Underwitch's working came apart violently.

  The open door smmed shut in Sam and I's face. I fell back to the intricate rug and held the heels of my hands against my eyes to try to rid myself of the fsh's echo. Through the closed door, without the cheering of the then silent underwitchs, I heard the one make Iliza scream out in pain.

  I knew what was happening to her then as well.

  Through the eyes of others, I had felt that pain in my hands and my legs.

  I opened my eyes as I stood, not wishing to be anywhere near that sound if I did not have to be. The memory of what it felt like in others memories was enough to make my stomach turn.

  "Come on, Sam." I said down to my familiar as I walked to where Alexei waited at the stairs.

  "I will come behind you, my Lady. I do not wish to be near your guard." Sam growled in answer, his voice no longer high and his eyes no longer yellow.

  Iliza screamed again, and my whole body cringed as I left my once again normal familiar where he sat.

  "She is fine." Alexei said once I reached him.

  "I know." I answered after yet another scream.

  My guard let a small smirk show on his normally pcid face. "Then why do you look so troubled? That will be you before long."

  "What do you mean?" I said, feeling like I was on the verge of being sick. I was normally the one screaming in pain, and I did not have the stomach to hear someone else doing it.

  Still smirking, he gave me the worst answer I could have possibly imagined at that moment. "That is what being one of Lun's moons is for, to break yourself."