by Katrina Leno
“Who told you that?” Allison had snapped, her eyes flashing white in the darkness.
“I don’t remember. I just heard it.”
“Well, who did you hear it from?”
“I don’t remember!”
“Oh, it just, like, appeared in your brain one day?”
“In the lunchroom, I think. I think… Elisabeth might have said something.”
“Elisabeth? Okay. Thanks for telling me. It’s not fucking true, obviously. The only people richer than my parents in this town are the Phipps.”
The next day at lunch, Elisabeth, who usually sat at Allison and Magpie’s table, was sitting clear across the cafeteria.
The rumors died down abruptly.
Magpie never mentioned it again.
Magpie had believed Allison. She had believed Elisabeth had made the entire thing up to get back at Allison for borrowing and ruining one of Elisabeth’s favorite dresses.
But now, in Kent’s, her heart pounding, her head spinning, it all came rushing back.
She stood motionless, counting.
She counted to one hundred.
Then she grabbed the first frozen meal her hand landed on—something with rice and quinoa and corn and halved cherry tomatoes and baby spinach—and paid for it at the self-checkout with her mother’s credit card. She was out of the store and on her bike less than a minute later, pedaling furiously, her heart hammering in her ears. Why would Allison shop at Kent’s instead of Baker Farms where she worked? But the movie theater was closer to Kent’s. It made sense for them to stop there on their way.
Magpie was sweating by the time she reached her driveway, and just the sight of the darkened windows helped calm her down. It was one of those things she had gotten used to since her father had left and her mother had started drinking again: arriving home to an empty house. Usually, she didn’t know where her mother was, but now Ann Marie was accounted for, safely tucked into her hospital bed where she would watch Jeopardy! until she fell asleep with the remote still clutched in her hand, a line of drool making its way sedately down her chin. It was okay. Magpie was alone. Allison hadn’t seen her. Brandon hadn’t seen her.
She rolled her bike into the driveway and let herself in the house.
Twilight was her favorite time to be alone because the light that made its way through the windows was soft and gentle, and if she kept the lamps off in the house, the whole place was lit in the last rays of daylight. She put her dinner in the microwave and poured herself what was left of the lemonade and added some ice and vodka to it, then she stood at the kitchen sink, letting her breathing slowly return to normal, taking small sips of the drink, letting the ice clink against her teeth.
And then—in the indescribable way people sometimes have of knowing they are suddenly not alone—she froze.
And many things happened at once.
The short feather-soft hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and the skin on her arms erupted into goose bumps, and her breath caught somewhere in the middle of her throat, stubbornly refusing to dislodge.
And it was the culmination of all of these things, but also something not so easily pinpointed, something quieter and stranger and more dangerous and more terrifying, that made her pick up the kitchen knife currently sitting in the drying rack.
And turn around.
There was no one there.
But maybe, to be more accurate, there was nothing there.
Except there was.
There was something. Both something and nothing.
And as Magpie watched, it seemed to solidify.
Something impossible took shape in front of her. Something she did not have a word for. Something there and not there, as the shed in Near had been both there and not there. So she wasn’t scared of this thing before her because it was obviously from Near, and Near was obviously a fierce and burning part of her, and being part of her, it could not hurt her, could never hurt her, and she breathed a sigh of relief and clutched the knife to her chest.
You’re going to poke your eye out.
How to describe what it sounded like?
When it talked, it was as if its words were both drilled directly into Magpie’s heart and whispered into her ear while also somehow reverberating from every angle of the kitchen. She was filled with its words although she could not say if the voice was more female or more male because it seemed to be somewhere between the two polarities, a happy medium that reminded her of the way her own voice sounded when she internally monologued. Much like she was doing now: Oh my God; oh my God; ohmyGod.
She put the knife down on the counter, understanding that its warning had been a good one, that her hand was shaking too much to be trusted with something so sharp.
And then—how to describe what it looked like?
That was a little trickier.
Because the thing before her had both shape and didn’t, had both form and was see-through, stood both before her and floated, looked both solid and ephemeral, elusive and ambiguous. And the more Magpie tried to focus on whatever it was, the harder it became to see. It had an almost human shape. An almost bestial shape. It was a hundred almost things without being any of them at all.
You’re going to wear me out if you keep staring, it said.
For that’s how Magpie had begun to think about it. As an it.
Because that’s not offensive at all.
And then she realized it could read her mind.
And then she realized it probably was her mind. And—
You’re both right and not right. Plus, you’re being rude. Say something.
So Magpie said, “Hello?”
And the thing before her smiled a smile that was a million teeth and the darkest shadow on a winter’s night and the sharp flash of tongue that beasts do to taste the air that surrounds them.
And it said:
It’s nice to finally meet you.
SIX FOR GOLD
Both the thing and Magpie did not move for a solid minute.
A minute is a very long time to not move.
Try it now. Stand up. Are you in your bed? In a café? On a train, a plane?
Stand up and look at your watch and do not move for sixty seconds.
And while you’re not moving, pretend that you’re standing in a darkened kitchen with your frozen dinner burning in the microwave behind you, wishing suddenly you hadn’t put down the kitchen knife, wishing suddenly you had called Clare after all, wishing suddenly a whole slew of things, probably none of which would actually help you now had they been what you did instead of coming home alone to the empty house on Pine Street and pouring yourself a glass of vodka lemonade.
The safeness inside Magpie, the assurance that this thing, this it could not hurt her because it so clearly came from Near, and Near so clearly came from inside her own body, crafted out of her own mind and flesh and blood, was slowly leaving her. Your own mind could hurt you. She knew this. And so—when it came right down to it—so could it.
Will you stop calling me that?
“What should I call you?” Magpie asked, not missing how strange it was to stand in one’s own kitchen and have a conversation with a thing that probably wasn’t real but that seemed so real that it made everything else seem somehow less than real. The fridge—a laughable make-believe thing. The countertops—how could she have ever considered them to be solid? The only real thing in the entire world was this shadow in front of her and, perhaps, Magpie (although just barely).
Something clever. Something deserving.
And then the name leaped to the tip of her tongue with such sudden force that it almost knocked her over. The thing laughed. (Because it could read her mind, remember.) (Because it was her mind, remember.)
Hither. I like that. You have this whole directional thing going on.
“Can you stop doing that? Stop answering me before I’ve said anything?”
Sorry. But you made me this way. You wrote me down in your little notebook. What was it? Oh,
yes—“and I will have someone who knows me as I know myself and who wishes me only happiness and who will never betray me.” Well—one lifelong friend at your service.
“But you don’t… I mean, you aren’t…”
You should have specified human if it’s bothering you that much. But you didn’t, so here I am, as wishy-washy as you wrote me to be.
As if to demonstrate, it shifted lazily into something like a dog, then into something like a giant, then into something like a wolf.
All the better to eat your enemies, my dear.
“What? I don’t want you to eat anyone!”
Well, that’s awfully boring.
It shifted back into something like a human. But not a human. As if you described to an alien what a human looked like and they managed to get it almost right. Mostly right. Teeth too big, eyes too close, ears too pointy. Skin too pale.
“You’re from Near?”
Of course I am. The most perfect place in the world. I have to thank you for rendering it so completely even if you failed to do so for me.
“But I’ve been writing about Near for six months. Why has it taken me this long to find it?”
It was waiting for a sacrifice. It was waiting to see if you were really, really ready.
“A sacrifice?”
A sacrifice, a promise, a test, a tear.
“A tear? My tear?”
The night Ann Marie had gone to the hospital. The night she’d almost drank herself to death. Magpie had cried on the notebook, one single tear blotting out the word ME.
You don’t cry that much for such a sad girl. It’s a pity, really. I liked it when you cried. It made you smell like rain.
“You’re a little creepy, do you know that?”
That’s because you’re a little creepy, Magpie. Do you know that?
And she did, and she let this word into her heart, creepy; she opened up a tiny door for it to crawl in and settle among the blood; she felt it pumping in time with the little chambers there, settling in to the rhythm of her body.
“Near is real,” she whispered.
Of course it is. You’ve been there.
“And I can go back?”
Whenever you’d like. The door will always be open to you.
She looked out the kitchen window now, and as she looked, the light in the shed turned on. She found that by simply thinking it she could turn it on and off. She could open or close the doorway. She was the maker and the ruler of an entire world.
Don’t let it go to your head.
She blushed. Hither shook with something like laughter.
“I still don’t understand—why would me crying have anything to do with it?”
You crafted my home out of your own sadness. You peeled it out of you and shaped it into trees and grass and houses and hills. Your despair made Near. You felt so deeply, and for so long, that your very sadness grew limbs and walked away from you. You have moved mountains, Magpie Lewis, and you are only just getting started.
Magpie could not deny that she liked the sound of that. And she liked the sound of her voice, the way it echoed pleasantly in the small kitchen, the way it bounced against the cabinets and walls, and made her sound bigger than she actually was when she said, “What do we do first?”
And she liked the hissing, quiet way Hither looked at her with its not-quite eyes and its not-quite mouth and its bloodless skin, when it replied:
My dear. We do exactly what you want to do.
So Magpie went back to Near.
Hither stayed close to her, always in the corners of her eyes, always dancing around her periphery just out of reach.
Not that she wanted to reach out to it, really, because she imagined its body would turn to smoke in her hands, running through her fingers like murky water dredged out of some haunted fairy-tale swamp.
She led the way through the not-shed to the bright high spot on the hill. The perfect hill, the perfect day, all blue and cloudless, warm and soft.
She remembered—suddenly—the hospital waiting room, the way her hand had shook with cold as she’d pulled out the notebook and written I am always warm.
And she was warm now, and happy and peaceful, and there was her world in front of her, her world of Near spread out before her.
And anything she wrote in the yellow notebook would come true.
Oh, but you needn’t waste your time with writing now.
“What do you mean?”
Writing is so tedious. And plus, you didn’t even bring a pen with you. Although… you could just make one…
“Make a pen?”
Wish one up. Go on, give it a try. Wish up a pen. Wish up anything you like.
So Magpie held out her hand, flat, palm up to the perfect Near sky, and she wished for a pen.
And nothing happened.
You’ve already done it, so you already know you can do it.
“I’ve already done it?”
With the little kid. What’s-his-name. Lennon?
“Ringo?” Clare’s brother. He was here in Near, and Magpie definitely hadn’t written him down in her notebook. She hadn’t even really wanted him here in the first place but…
Clare had. Clare had said, Have you noticed that there aren’t any people? and Magpie had said, Would it make you feel better if there were people here? and then there had been a person there. Ringo. He had appeared in an instant, and what had he said about their father? That he was here and alive?
Now you have it.
“So I just… wished him into being? I wished an entire person into being?”
Don’t get ahead of yourself. You wished a copy of a person into being. A temporary copy. The little twerp disappeared as soon as he was out of your sight. His sole purpose was to put your friend at ease. Not your fault that it didn’t really work, though. You tried your best, and it was very kind of you. And I’ve seen your mind, Magpie. There isn’t room for many kind thoughts in there.
“That’s a little rude,” Magpie said.
You’ll live. Now go on; try again. Practice makes perfect.
So Magpie held up her hand again. And she closed her eyes to block out a bit of the sunshine, to concentrate a little harder. And she thought of a pen.
Or rather—the pen leaped, fully formed, into her brain.
It was a pen she’d never seen before. A bright shining silver. And instead of a normal clip, there was a pen roll shaped like a snake that slithered around the cap three times before coming to a rest. It had eyes of bloodred, and Magpie knew somehow that they were two little rubies. In her mind, she uncapped it, and it was a fountain pen with a nib the color of coal, a deep, vibrant black that shone with spots of ink that matched the rubies. Bloodred and glistening.
And then she became aware of a weight in her hand, a delicate line of coolness that started at the tips of her fingers and ended where her wrist began.
She opened her eyes and there it was—the pen of her mind. Perfect in its beauty, so shiny that it caught the sun and burned her eyes.
That’s not bad for a second try. If a bit pretentious.
Magpie ignored this, uncapped the pen, and looked at the nib. It seemed made out of something impossible, a heavy black that couldn’t have been from this world.
“But will this exist only in here? Or can I… take it home?”
You are home. But if you mean can you take it back to Farther, then I think the answer depends on how much you want it.
Magpie wanted it very much. She slipped the pen into her pocket and felt its weight press reassuringly against her hip. She wondered what else she would be able to make. She had only the limitations of her own mind to contend with.
Don’t get too ahead of yourself. These things are made from you. And you are not limitless.
There had been a blood drive at her high school last year—before it had all happened. Magpie had just turned sixteen, and with her mother’s signature, she had been allowed to give blood for the first time. She remembered the experienc
e now in stark detail: the peanut butter crackers they had put into her hands; the gymnasium all neat and orderly with cots and tubes and intravenous infusion poles; the people who drew the blood, their hair in neat little buns or clipped back into ponytails; the quirky cartooned scrubs they wore. The way they had lifted her arm above her head when the flow of blood hadn’t immediately started. The way the red leaked slowly from her veins and filled up such a large bag. Did she really have that much to spare?
She had expected to feel something as the blood was siphoned out of her, but aside from a slight burning at the needle’s entry point, a gentle tug around the tiny wound, there had been nothing.
Except afterward when she had sat nibbling at the peanut butter crackers, dutifully eating one after another until the package was gone.
She stood up. She kept a hand on the cot. She felt a gentle rushing of blood to her head, a sensation she couldn’t exactly call unpleasant, more like… different. One pint lighter. She began to see stars across her vision, a general lightening. She sat back down and took a deep breath. Someone handed her a cookie. Chocolate chip. She ate it.
The next time she stood up, she felt stronger. She felt her body recovering. But still… the sensation of being lighter… the sensation of having given something, of having something removed from her… it was at once impossible to describe but also impossible to ignore. She had felt less than. Slightly less than. But still less than.
You are not limitless, Hither had said.
Magpie thought she knew exactly what it meant. But she patted her pocket where the silver pen now rested. Maybe not, but you’d be amazed at what a little rest and a little sugar can do for a person, she thought.
Right, but the effort needed to wish up a chocolate chip cookie negates the restorative properties of said cookie.
“Maybe I can wish up you not reading my mind all the time,” Magpie snapped, and Hither fell into an irritable silence and became even more transparent than it had been a moment before.
Magpie began to walk down the hill to the town of Near.
She let herself be impressed by what a stunning job she had done.