by Jeff Hirsch
Glenn opened her mouth, but all that escaped was a strangled gasp.
I have a name, she thought, but it was like a wind rushing past her. She couldn’t grab hold.
I am …
I am …
But there was nothing there. She had no name. She was not man.
She was green grass. She was blue water. She was rough hands. She was earth.
A hand shot down through the bodies and grabbed her. Glenn
struggled, just as all of those around her did, but the hand grasped harder and pulled. Glenn screamed. She knew what happened when one of her number was chosen. The blade to the neck. The blood. She had seen it before. Glenn struggled against it, but the hand was stronger. It pulled her to her feet and shook her, pulling her out of the herd. Glenn thrashed, but she felt herself stumbling across the grass, away from her brothers and sisters. Soon it was not grass under her feet but fallen leaves and twigs. She tripped and fell into the woods, terrified, waiting for the blade. The loss of the herd was like a dark hole inside her.
Her cheek stung with a slap. “Wake up!” It was a woman’s voice.
“Wake up! You are Glennora Morgan! You are Glennora Morgan!”
Her head was filled with a thick fog, but suddenly there seemed to be a crack in it, like a door opening.
Glennora Morgan.
Glenn.
She opened her eyes. There was an old woman huddled over her, her hands on Glenn’s shoulders. Her eyes were blank. Glenn was sure she knew her, but no name came to mind. She knocked the old woman’s hands away and sat up. Out past the trees she could see the huddled shadows of the herd. Sadness tugged at her from being separated from them, but soon even that felt strange and distant.
“Did she talk to you?” The woman had her hand clamped around Glenn’s arm. Her voice was sharp and urgent.
“What? No, I — ”
“A woman’s voice? Think!”
“No!”
“Stupid girl. Going off by yourself like that.” The woman turned her head, listening to the wind, deliberating. “Perhaps we were lucky.
Perhaps she was looking the other way.”
“Who?”
Opal — her name dropped into Glenn’s mind from nowhere -
lifted her up off the ground. “Come,” she said. “We have to get you inside before anyone sees. Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“Good; then we won’t need the nightshade.”
“The what?”
Opal took Glenn’s arm and led her through the woods, moving fast, picking out the way easily despite her clouded eyes. The trees pulsed with life, a low and steady hum. Glenn could feel the animals all around her, darting through the brush and treetops.
Glenn was out of breath when they left the woods. She could feel Kevin and Aamon sleeping — small, banked fires. As soon as Opal opened the door, Glenn pushed past her, feeling through the darkness until she reached her room. She snatched the bracelet off the toy chest’s wooden top. The blare of the forest and the animals and Opal and Aamon and Kevin beat at her. Glenn fumbled with the bracelet, nearly dropping it before she was able to force it onto her wrist, relishing the scrape against her skin.
Glenn expected it to be like a door slamming shut, but instead it was as if the voices were all slowly turned down, one or two disappearing at a time until, finally, there was quiet. She took a long breath and let it rattle out of her. As it did, her body grew solid once more, a barricade against the world outside.
“How” — Glenn stumbled over her words, overwhelmed -
“how is any of this possible?”
Glenn turned to find Opal standing motionless in the doorway.
“There are stories,” she said. “But all we know for sure is that our part of the world used to be just like yours until one day the earth shook and there was a blinding light in the sky. Millions died as the machines they had come to rely on failed. Millions more in the chaos that followed. The ones that survived found that while much had been taken from us, a greater gift had been left in its place.”
“Affinity.”
Opal inclined her head.
“What is it?”
“It’s … a way of experiencing the world,” Opal said. “Your body, the air, the water, the floor beneath your feet — they appear to be different things. Separate things. Affinity exposes that as a lie. It allows you to experience the world as it truly is, a single piece of fabric woven from an infinite number of threads.”
Glenn lowered herself to the edge of the bed. She still felt herself tumbling through the sky.
“How do you stand it?”
“My gifts are modest,” Opal said. “Most of us who possess an Affinity have it for one thing or another. Fire. Stone. The wind. Mine is for this place. This forest. But for people like you, whose Affinities connect them to the entire world, it’s as if you’re standing in the middle of a crowded room and everyone is talking at once. At first it’s overwhelming, but with practice you learn to control it, to hear the voices you want to hear and ignore the rest. Once you do then you and the voices can work together.”
“Work to do what?”
“When I was a girl there was talk of people who could walk from world to world like they were moving through rooms in a house.”
“And if you can’t learn to control it?”
Opal drifted farther into the room. “When the Magistra returned to us,” she said, “she was very much like you. Her Affinities were vast but she was untrained. When she found her mother and father, the previous Magister and Magistra, dead at the hands of Merrin Farrick, her anger and grief were so great that she couldn’t keep the voices at bay. They warped her into what she is now.”
“What is she?”
“A monster,” Opal said. “Even after she crushed Farrick’s
revolution she saw traitors everywhere. She decided that to keep the peace there could be no power in the Magisterium but her. She imprisoned the Miel Pan. She destroyed the guilds and the royal houses.
In the end, when the people turned to their gods for relief, she burned the temples and unleashed the Menagerie to slaughter anyone with an Affinity. Only a very few of us survived and we’re scattered.
Impotent.”
“You said the Magistra returned,” Glenn said. “Where was she?”
Opal hesitated. “When Farrick’s revolution seemed about to
succeed,” she said. “Aamon Marta fought his way out of the
Magisterium to bring the Magistra back from across the border.”
The room, the house, the wind outside, fell into stillness.
“She was in the Colloquium.”
“Yes,” Opal said quietly. “For many years.”
The room seemed to grow dimmer around her. Glenn felt it again
— that feeling of being stalked from out in the darkness. Faint voices whispered in her ear. Glenn hefted the bracelet in one hand. Once again, she felt herself standing in front of a closed door, only this time she couldn’t stop herself from turning the handle and stepping through.
“When did she return?”
Glenn turned at Opal’s silence. In her gray dress, standing half in and half out of the thin light, the old woman seemed like an apparition.
“The Magistra returned to us ten years ago.”
The shadow that had been pursuing Glenn all these years fell upon her, its cold weight sinking into her bones.
Ten years.
The bed shifted beside Glenn as Opal sat down.
“An amazing thing,” she said, drawing one thin finger across the bracelet’s jewel. “Until you took it off I had no idea that you were her daughter.”
Glenn closed her eyes, but when she did all she saw was a boy lying dead in Haymarket and another mounting a gallows with his two friends.
“I’m not,” Glenn said. “She can’t be …”
Opal’s hand, dry and warm, fell on Glenn’s arm.
“I’d like to be alone.”
“Glenn,” Opal said. “If that piece of metal was on her wrist rather than yours … you could free a world from madness.”
Glenn pulled her arm out of the old woman’s grasp. “It’s not my world,” she said.
The air between them seemed to go thick and oppressive. There was a pause and the mattress lifted beside Glenn. Opal’s hand brushed Glenn’s shoulder as she walked to the door.
“Some people aren’t separate from us,” Opal said. “No matter how much we might like them to be. Over time, we merge. When Cort died, I sat there drinking my tea and building my fire, but I was an outline. A sketch in the sand. I can’t be whole without him.”
“I don’t need anyone else to be whole.”
“Yes,” Opal said. “Of course.”
The hush of her footsteps disappeared into the darkness down the hall, and Glenn was alone. The house settled with small aching sighs.
Glenn shut her eyes and draped her arm over them, but it was useless.
She wouldn’t sleep. Not that night. Glenn tore herself off the bed and went outside to stand in the chilly air.
Above the trees a billion stars sparkled, so many of them and so clear that Glenn’s eyes ached as she went from one to the next. She hunted through the clutter of light until she was able to find Orion.
Alnitak. Alnilam. Mintaka.
Glenn savored the words’ rounded tones in her head, even though she could hardly make out their namesakes amongst the bright noise of the Magisterium’s sky.
As Glenn stood there, the rush of the river near her became the gentle swish of a lake’s tide in her ears. She almost thought she could hear the sound of the summer crickets chirping far out on a distant shore.
It was April. Glenn was five and her mother had planned a girls-only getaway to a nearby lake.
When they arrived, the sun was casting bright stitches along the lake’s surface. Its waters were packed with swimmers and, farther out, the crisscrossing wakes of motorboats and skiers. The beach was alive with families, their winter bodies spread out on the sand to soak up the warmth. Storm fronts of teenagers roamed about, laughing and screeching. Glenn flinched at all the bustle and noise. Her mom set her hand on Glenn’s shoulder and led her to a shady and quiet spot out at the edge of the beach.
Mom stripped off her shorts and T-shirt, leaving her in a red two-piece that stood out against her pale skin and black hair. Mom would be covered in freckles by the end of the day, but she didn’t seem to care. She leaned forward into the day as if she was trying to open up every part of herself and take it all in.
But as beautiful as the day was, it was only prelude to their secret plans. Glenn and her mother waited until long after the sun went down, when everyone had gone and the rippled lake became a pane of black glass. A frogs’ chorus began in the trees, and the fireflies flitted here and there.
“Okay,” Mom said. “Ready?”
Glenn nodded and, shivering a little, stepped into the water.
Together they swam out to the center of the lake and, once there, they eased over onto their backs, paddling gently to stay afloat. The water lapped at their ears so one moment they could hear the night birds and the thin sounds of the city that drifted in over the treetops, and the next there was the deep echoey silence far below the water’s surface. At first Glenn was terrified that she’d sink into the depths, but her mother’s hand was always there at the small of her back, holding her up.
Above were the few stars that escaped the glare of the city lights.
The way they were reflected in the glassy black water that surrounded Glenn and her mom, it seemed like there were stars above and below and all around them. Glenn and her mother floated in their pale light and in the emptiness that filled the spaces between.
“Pretty,” her mom said, her voice a hush spreading over the surface of the water. “Isn’t it, Glenny?”
“Did you go to the beach like this when you were little?”
“No,” she said. “My parents were always too busy to take me.”
“Why?”
“They were very important people.”
“How?”
Her mother flipped over and swam grandly around Glenn in a
circle. “Together they ruled a vast kingdom.”
Glenn splashed at her. “Mom! They did not!”
“How do you know?”
“Because there aren’t kingdoms anymore,” Glenn instructed.
“Those are just in stories.”
Glenn’s mom went quiet, only her head and shoulders bobbing out of the water, then with two clean strokes, she returned to Glenn’s side and rose up onto her back again. The water stilled and it was quiet except for the faint clap of the tide meeting the beach far away. Glenn felt a rising pressure below her palm and then there was her mother’s hand easing into hers, locking them together.
“You’re right,” she said. “Just in stories.”
Glenn stood with the warmth of that memory wrapped around her like a cloak. She tried to wish away everything that Opal had said, but as much as Glenn wanted to she couldn’t tolerate such a comforting lie.
Too many pieces had fallen into place over the last few days to deny the picture they created. Aamon hadn’t come across the border and stumbled onto their property. He had come to find the Magistra and bring her back. As soon as Aamon was well again it was time for her to return. That was the moment Glenn had seen out beyond the border the night her mother disappeared. It was no dream.
Now she knew why her mother had always avoided talk of her
past and her family. Why she looked out across the border like she was terrified of what lay on the other side. The cruelty of her abandonment, which had once seemed inexplicable, was now so clear. It was simply the first time Glenn had seen her mother for what she truly was.
A monster.
The word churned inside of her. How could she reconcile it with the woman who held her hand while they floated in that lake? Which was the lie?
Glenn eased a finger in between the skin of her wrist and the flat underneath of the bracelet. The world went quiet. Even her heart seemed to cease its beating. As the bracelet slid away, tendrils of the other world began to appear, reaching for her and then dancing away.
Glenn could feel the power mounting outside the edge of the bracelet’s bubble, ready to fill her again. A rush of emotions churned within her, a small newfound hope mixing with a decade of grief and rage.
What would I say if I saw her? What would I do? What does she deserve?
“Glenn?”
She turned with a start, slipping the bracelet back onto her wrist.
Kevin stood in the doorway behind her.
“What are you doing?”
“I was just … I was getting some air.”
Kevin stepped out past the flagstones and joined her, looking up into the trees.
“It’s different, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“The air. I don’t know. It feels … fuller somehow.” Kevin turned to Glenn. “Where were you? Opal left panicked and then you two were talking. Is everything — ”
“It was nothing.”
Kevin was standing between her and the house, hands stuffed in the pockets of his heavy Magisterium coat, waiting. He knew her too well to believe her when she said it was nothing. The truth rose to Glenn’s lips — what had happened when she took off the bracelet, the truth about her mother — but the enormity of it stopped her. How could she explain?
“It’s … I’m tired,” Glenn told him. “That’s all. We leave early tomorrow. We should try to get some rest.”
Glenn hurried up the slate path. Her shaking hand found the door handle and began to pull.
“I’m not going back.”
Glenn turned. Kevin stood with the bare trees swaying behind him.
“What are you talking about?”
“When all of this is over. Whatever happens. I’m not going
back.”
“Why?
”
Kevin shrugged. “Nothing to go back for.”
There was a twist in her chest as she saw falling snow and felt Kevin’s hand on her back. She remembered stumbling through the dark beside him, laughing herself breathless.
“What about — ” Glenn began.
“What?”
20
There was no sound but the faint rush of the river out in the dark.
Glenn stood at Opal’s door, her fingertips frozen on the handle. She wanted to answer, but the words wouldn’t come.
The way Kevin stood in the moon’s half-light, motionless, his eyes like cinders, he didn’t feel like Kevin at all. Something foreign sat just beneath his quiet stillness. Just like that first moment he was caught in Opal’s web, it was as if Kevin’s body was nothing more than a mask. Was this the shadow of Cort Whitley inside him? Was Kevin lost to her now too?
“Nothing,” Glenn said.
Kevin’s penetrating stare didn’t falter. Finally Glenn had to look away, wondering if he felt some sliver of her mother lurking inside her, just like she saw Cort within him.
Before Glenn knew it, he was standing right beside her. She took in a quick breath and held it. Their shoulders nearly touched as his hand disappeared behind her and took the door handle from her.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought.”
Kevin threw open the door. As he stepped inside, he dropped one hand so the back of it swept alongside hers, a warm brush of skin, and the door closed with a bang.
Glenn snapped awake hours later and sat up in the small bed. The house was dead quiet — no sounds of breathing or the house settling.
No movement inside or out. Something was wrong. Glenn was sure of it. It was like a thin, tight wire at the core of her had been plucked and was sending tremors throughout her body.
Glenn’s bare feet slipped off the mattress and touched the floor.
She dressed, crouching in the dark, then peered out her open door.
Nothing in the hallway. She crept forward, keeping low until she could just see outside.
The front of the house was lit with the barest thread of moonlight coming in from the window, but it was enough to tell that no one was there. To her left was a short hall that led to Opal’s room and the room where Kevin had been sleeping.