A Wish Upon the Stars

by T. J. Klune

  I gaped at him.

  He smiled at me, his liver lips stretched thin.

  “Sweet molasses,” I said faintly. “I don’t know what to do with any of that.”

  “Nor would I expect you to.”

  “Why didn’t you just get sucked through your magic hole?”

  He shrugged. “Now, where would the fun in that be? Just because I can do certain types of magic doesn’t always mean I will. Magic can’t be the answer to everything, Sam.”

  “You’re telling me that you’ve been gone all this time because you were undercover? With nuns?”

  “Not the whole time,” he said. “Just most of the time.”

  “You can never call me out for my shit again. Ever. What the hell, Randall.”

  “I highly doubt that’s going to happen. You do stupid things that need to be pointed out.”

  “Pot. Kettle.”

  “Well, I suppose that makes sense. You are named after me now, after all.”

  “Nope. Nope, nope, nope. That’s it. From this day forward, I am now Sam the Awesomely Amazing, and no one can say otherwise. You are appalling, and I absolutely refuse to be named after you, oh my gods. And if you ever call me your child again, I’m going to turn your fucking tongue into a dick, and you will choke on it.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve choked—”

  “No. You stop. Why are you like this? Who hurt you? Oh. Right. Myrin. Oops. Okay, I’ll allow it. For the next five minutes. After that, it’s over, and you are not allowed to be gross for the rest of your life. And if you are, we are in agreement that I can punch you in the throat to make you stop. It’s only fair.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Myrin. Thank you for the segue.”

  “That wasn’t a segue—”

  And then he said, “Morgan knew something was off that day. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he was agitated. Antsy in way I hadn’t seen in a very long time. Somehow, he knew.”

  I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to know any of this.

  “When he was younger, he was like you in that regard. Always moving. His mind. His body. Everything was at a pace that was hard for others to fathom. He had ideas that he’d focus on one minute, and then throw them out the next for something entirely different. Spells. Constructs. Incantations. Outlines for magic far beyond his abilities. His parents didn’t know what to do with him. He didn’t fit the mold for what a wizard should be. Not like I did. I took my studies seriously, to the point where I could go for decades on a singular idea that I would allow to consume me.”

  “And Myrin?” I asked quietly.

  Randall laughed quietly. “Myrin didn’t care much for magic.”

  “What?”

  “He was the bane of his parents’ existence. Really, the both of them were, but at least when Morgan came along, he was making the required attempts, even if he was all over the place. Myrin didn’t—he thought that magic was too easy. That for those it came naturally to, it made them superior. He didn’t like the thought of being better than anyone else. Their parents were… well. They had disdain for non-magic-users. And even though they publicly spoke out against the Darks, they had a certain amount of respect for them. Because they still had magic when most others didn’t. Myrin was their great disappointment. And he knew it.”

  “What changed?”

  Randall looked down at his hands. “He met me.”

  The fire snapped and popped.

  And even though we were talking about the darkest wizard of all, my inner romantic couldn’t help but ask, “Was it love at first sight?”

  Randall laughed. “Oh gods, no. I despised the very sight of him. He thought the same of me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know. And maybe you won’t ever. I hated him until I didn’t. I don’t know if I could ever pinpoint the one moment when I realized my feelings toward him had changed, but I do remember looking at him one day and thinking how handsome he was. How wonderful his smile could be. How mischievous. And as it turned out, he’d been trying to impress me for far longer than I knew.”

  “The Great White didn’t like that very much, did he. Being your mentor and all.”

  “No, I don’t suppose he did. Things were different then, Sam. Wizards were more commonplace. Not just the Darks, though they’ve never had a problem thriving. After everything changed, after Myrin fell into shadow, the Darks splintered into the forest, and those that walked the path of light chose instead to just… walk away, beyond the borders of Verania. In the end, there were only a few of us left.

  “But before that, it was good. I had the man I was convinced would be my cornerstone, though I had already passed the Trials on my own. And I had Morgan. The Great White was gone, but I was convinced I’d made the right choice.”

  He looked back up at me, a somber expression on his face. “Morgan had such potential. Even though I thought him brash and foolish, I could see the strength in him. Myrin could too, and though I thought there was some jealousy there, it wasn’t enough to come between them. Morgan loved his brother more than anything else in this world. He worshipped the ground Myrin walked on. It almost destroyed him when—” He sighed wearily. “It almost destroyed the both of us.”

  “You went Dark.”

  He nodded. “After we banished Myrin to the realm of shadows and after I brought the King of Sorrows back from madness, I felt it. In my head. And in my heart. It started out small and quiet and went on for years. It was a seduction, always there and whispering to me. All I had to do was give in to it and all my wounds would be healed. All my grief would just… fade away. And I would like to tell you I fought it valiantly. That I resisted and was almost able to escape it, and that in the end, it proved to be too strong. But that would be a lie. It was shocking, Sam, just how easy it was to give in, to bend to its whims. I locked myself in Castle Freesias and just… let it consume me.”

  A twisted thrill raced along my skin, and I fidgeted in my seat.

  “It was without order,” Randall said, voice flat. “Without reason. It was chaos, but there was such a beauty in it that I wondered why I hadn’t considered it before. Why I had looked down on the Darks as I had, given how free I felt. I was without a cornerstone, though I had never needed one. Cornerstones die, Sam. One day they die, and you are left alone. I knew this. And I still wasn’t prepared for it. Maybe my circumstances were different, maybe fighting Myrin as I had compounded my situation, but I don’t know if I can use that as an excuse. I was angry. And in mourning. And raging against everyone and everything. And it was easy. To give in.”

  “How did you come back?”

  “Just because I’d given up on myself doesn’t mean that others had given up on me,” Randall said. “You’ve seen them before, yes? The addicts. In the hospitals. In the streets of Meridian City.”

  I nodded.

  “It was like that, I think. An addiction. And I needed to be detoxified.”

  “Morgan.”

  “Morgan,” Randall agreed. “And at great cost to his life. I could have killed him. I almost did. He never gave up on me, even when I’d given up on myself.”

  “And the Great White? Why didn’t he—”

  Randall snorted. “He didn’t need words to make his disdain for my relationship with Myrin known. I understood that I had a choice. I could continue my education with him, or I could choose Myrin. I made my choice. I haven’t seen the Great White since. And I can’t say that I wouldn’t make the same decision if I had to do it all over again. For all that I’ve lost, for all that Myrin has done, I did love him once. And he loved me. Maybe I could have done more to save him, but—I don’t know that it matters. Not anymore.” He smiled sadly. “That’s the price to pay for living such a long life, Sam. You have time to dwell on all your mistakes.”

  “Can you see why I don’t want it?”

  “I can,” he said, not unkindly. “But I don’t know if you have a choice.”

  And I hesitated.
r />   “There,” Randall said with a frown. “That. What was that?”

  “I….”

  He watched me with a thoughtful look on his face. “What happened to you? In the Dark Woods. You’re not who you once were.”

  “Are any of us?”

  “Deflection.”

  I rolled my eyes. “So maybe some things are the same.”

  “I can feel it, you know. Your magic. Even when you were young, it was expansive. More so than I’d ever seen before or since with any magical being.”

  “And now?”

  “Now it seems almost limitless.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, even though I thought it could be true. “I can’t do the things you can.”

  “No, I don’t expect you can. But then I am far older than you. Give it time.”

  I was annoyed at that. “We don’t have time. Myrin’s—”

  “Myrin can wait. For now. Sam. The woods. What—”

  “I don’t—”

  “You do,” he snapped. “Don’t play coy with me, boy. It’s not a good look on you, and I’m not the fool you seem to take me for. The Grimoires.”

  I slumped in the chair. “Man, I thought we were done being serious and morose. Then, once I was feeling sufficiently good about myself, I was going to go have sex with my boyfriend, maybe eat some cheese, and then go to sleep.”

  “There are more important things than postsex cheese.”

  “That’s certainly not true.”

  “You have them? Morgan’s. Myrin’s. Your own.”

  I nodded.

  “Did you open them?”

  “Only mine when GW had me work on it.”

  “He hates it, doesn’t he.”

  I grinned. “So much.”

  Randall looked like he was fighting a smile. Or having a small stroke. “Why?”

  “What?”

  “Why didn’t you open the other two?”

  I decided to be as honest as possible. “It hurt too much.”

  “Morgan’s.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Myrin’s?”

  “Too angry.”

  “I don’t blame you for that.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Well. Thanks. I guess.”

  “But you’re going to have to.”

  I sat up straight in the chair, my skin clammy. “Why?”

  “Because you need to see. The past. The future.”

  “That’s… vaguely ominous. No thank you.”

  “That wasn’t a request, Sam.”

  “We could pretend it was. You used the word ask, after all.”

  “Sam.”

  I stared at him.

  He was infuriatingly calm.

  I sighed and picked up the pack from beside my chair. I set it in my lap and just… left it there. There was something I needed to say before we did whatever we were about to do. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like it either way, so the longer I could put it off, the better.

  “The Trials.”

  He blinked. “What about them? They’re irrelevant to you now, I would think.”

  “I know. But if you think I should still go through them, I will.”

  “You don’t need to prove yourself to me.”

  I arched an eyebrow at him. “I’ve always had to prove myself to you. That’s kind of our thing.”

  “I only ever wanted the best for you.”

  “Even when I turned your nose into a dick?”

  “Even then.”

  I sighed and looked down at the pack in my lap. I had to get this out before I couldn’t. “I don’t remember some of it. About being in the woods. It’s like… a dream. The more I’m removed from it, the hazier it gets.”

  Randall said nothing.

  “Not all of it, though. Some things are startlingly clear. I remember the rain on my face when I walked through the Dark Woods. I remember the pain I felt. The grief. I remember questioning myself, if I was doing the right thing. If I was just running away again. Or if I was doing what was expected of me. After… after Morgan died, when you came and took Myrin away, you told me that I had to do what was necessary, even if my heart was breaking.”

  Randall closed his eyes and breathed.

  “And I did. I did, Randall, even though my heart was breaking. Because I was lost. Morgan was gone. You were gone. Ryan was… dying. The King proclaimed I would be his wizard when you returned. And the gods, they… you know what they wanted from me. What they asked. The Great White told me the first time that I had to go with him. That I had to leave all others behind and enter the woods.”

  Randall opened his eyes. “I thought that might be the case.”

  I smiled weakly. “Which is why you said what you did.”

  “I didn’t—”

  I shook my head. “After you took him, where did you go?”

  “To the ends of the earth. To a place where fire and ice meet along great frozen shelves and the ground splits and lava spills. I left him there, but I knew it to be a temporary fix. That in the end, it would only hobble him until he could return. It was the only thing I could think to do to buy us all time. But he was stronger than I expected, and it didn’t take him long to find his way back to Verania.”

  “Because of what he consumed.”

  “Yes, Sam. Because of what he consumed.”

  “You told me once that you had hope, that you thought one day he could find his way back from the Dark. Like you did.”

  “Yes.”

  I looked him straight in the eye. “He lost that right. When he took Morgan. Whatever was left of the Myrin you knew is gone now.”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “But I believe my cornerstone was lost long before he ever stepped foot back in Verania.”

  I believed him. “We traveled into the woods. For weeks. I didn’t… I didn’t think they were so large. I was sure that the farther we walked, the greater the chance we’d come out on the other side and that I’d see the Northern Mountains in the distance. But it didn’t happen. The forest went on and on and on, and eventually we weren’t in Verania anymore. We were… beyond it. In between this world and the next. The trees were ancient. The sun was bigger. The stars were different. I asked the Great White where we were, and he told me that it didn’t matter. That I had to clear my mind. That I had to forget. My friends. My family. My cornerstone.” I laughed bitterly. “I was a weapon of the gods, after all. And here I was, far from home, being crammed full of magic, so much so that I thought my soul would break, preparing to face down a man who has taken so much from all of us. And what choice did I have? If the gods wanted Myrin vanquished, then he would be. If they wanted me to stop him, then I would. Instead I was a pawn on a board, a piece being moved from square to square, and it was a game.”

  “You were angry.”

  “Very,” I admitted. “I raged against the stars and against the dragons. Against you and Morgan and Vadoma for putting me in this position. Against my magic for even existing at all. It was a burden, one that I never asked for.” I sighed. “But then I realized I had asked for it. When I was a kid, I’d made a wish upon the stars. I wished to be someone important. Someone who mattered. And my wish had been granted. Because I was important, though not in the way I expected. I mattered. And not because of what the gods had placed upon me. I mattered because I was loved. My parents. The King. Morgan. Justin. Gary and Tiggy and Kevin. Pete. Ryan, always my cornerstone. You.”

  He took in a sharp breath.

  “My wish came true,” I continued, brushing my fingers over the pack, feeling the enclosed Grimoires. “I was important, and not because of what I could do. But because of the people who would lay down their life for me. I mattered, and not because of the magic I wield, but because there were people counting on me. And I was going to do everything I could to get back to them. Maybe it’s selfish, but I didn’t stay in the woods for the sake of Verania. I stayed because I’m loved, and I love in return. A
nd that was something the gods could never understand. That the Great White could never understand, for all his anger toward cornerstones. That magic doesn’t matter—none of this matters—if you have to go it alone.”

  “What did you do?” Randall whispered.

  All that was left was the truth. “I agreed to go with the Great White. I agreed to let him change me. To make me into a wizard. To turn me into someone capable of mastering the dragons of Verania. To accept my destiny and become what the gods were forcing me to be, if and only if, after all was said and done, after Myrin had been vanquished and the Darks banished from Verania, he would take my magic from me and make me mortal.”

  The only sounds came from the fire.

  “He fought me on it,” I said. “For a long time. In that hazy place. For weeks, I think, we fought.”

  “And he agreed?”

  I rolled my eyes. “What? Of course not. He’s an asshole. Like hell he would do that. He was offended I even asked him, and eventually he told me either I would shut up, or he would banish me to a realm filled with tiny fish who would gnaw on me for decades.”

  “That… sounds like him.”

  “And then he pointed out that there would always be villains even beyond Myrin, and that me not having my magic was a really stupid idea. Which, you know, fair point.”

  “But then how—”

  I grinned rakishly at him. “I’m Sam of Dragons. Do you really think I’d let something like that stop me? You said it yourself. My magic seems limitless. And it’s what would extend my life. What the Great White didn’t realize was that by teaching me control, to harness everything that was bursting from my lightning-struck heart, he gave me the tools to do it myself. You and Morgan always told me that I was the most powerful wizard in an age. I don’t know if that’s true. But I do have enough power in me to stop it from extending my life. I am a wizard, Randall. But I will age, just like my parents. Like the King. And Justin. And Ryan. We’ll grow old together. And should one of us cross the veil before the other, it can be done with the knowledge that we’ll soon be together again.”