Magisterium

by Jeff Hirsch

  “Fine,” Glenn said. “Let’s go.”

  As Glenn took a step toward the ladder, a sharp pain seared through the nightshade, knocking her to the floor in a heap. Miles away, Glenn couldn’t tell where, the air was torn apart by massive explosions, just like the ones she felt in Bethany. Glenn didn’t see it or hear it so much as feel it, a wave of violence reaching out and smashing into her, like an exploding star. It was a town, hundreds of people, mostly women and children. The cataclysm came without any warning. Houses, the work of the people’s bare hands, were ripped apart. The ground torn open. Bodies. Glenn retched as they fell with sickening thumps onto the ground, the life pouring out of them. There was a pause, and then a great rushing sound as the grief of the survivors washed over Glenn.

  She tried to push it away, but there was another explosion and then another. Town after town fell. The air was thick with death. Behind it all was another force, this one made of thousands of men marching in lockstep, deliberate as machines, across the border. Glenn knew Sturges was at the head of it. She could feel him grinning.

  And then it was gone and Kevin was kneeling beside her, his hand at her elbow, frantically calling for her.

  “Glenn?” He turned back to Opal. “The nightshade.”

  “No!” Glenn seized his arm. Her head was pounding. It was a struggle to breathe. “Take me to my mother.”

  “No. Glenn, listen — ”

  “Hundreds of people I don’t know just died, because I took away the only protection they had,” she said in a vicious whisper. “I won’t let him hurt anyone else. Not because of me.”

  Kevin began to protest, but Glenn’s fury stopped him cold. He backed away and Glenn threw herself onto the ladder and climbed up into the house. Wavering on unsteady legs, Glenn made it out to the hallway and then stopped at the doorway of the bedroom she had once stayed in.

  In the dark, she could see the outline of the bed and a still shape lying under the covers. Glenn’s breath caught in her chest. She could feel Kevin and Opal standing behind her in the hallway, waiting. Glenn took a deep breath and stepped into the room. As she drew closer to the bed, her head swam and she had to reach out and brace herself against the wall.

  Opal lit a candle behind her, then another, filling the room with an uneven amber light. Glenn fixed her eyes on the wall above the bed.

  She couldn’t bring herself to look at her. She flinched as shards of the world outside cut through the haze of the nightshade. More fire. More steel. More pain.

  “If we remove the bracelet,” Glenn said, “she’ll go back to being what she was. She’ll be able to stop Sturges.”

  “Yes,” Opal answered. “But, Glenn — ”

  “Can you stop him?” Glenn snapped. “Can anyone here?”

  Opal said nothing. Glenn drew the blanket aside until she saw the edge of the bracelet. It was huge on her mother’s birdlike wrist. Its jewel shone dully. Glenn touched its surface, feeling the ridges and planes. It was strange to see someone else wear it. For a confused moment, it was as if she was in a dream and looking down at her own body ravaged with age. Somewhere far away, the air was torn with another explosion. It hit Glenn like a fist to her chest. She had to get this over with. She had to put things back the way they were.

  Glenn wrapped her hand around the bracelet.

  “Glenn?”

  Her hand froze. The voice was thin and dry. Weak. Glenn stared at the bracelet. She willed her hand to take it off, but her fingers wouldn’t move. Her mother said her name, gently, quietly, and then again. Glenn drew her eyes up along her mother’s narrow hips and over the dark stain of blood from her wound, until finally their eyes met.

  Her mother’s eyes seemed to be the one thing about her that hadn’t changed. Their beauty was unearthly. Bright blue, the color of lapis. Glenn wanted to look away, and as she did, her own eyes burned.

  “Glenn.” The bedclothes rustled as her mother reached for her, but Glenn retreated to the edge of the bed, beyond her grasp. Glenn crossed her arms over her chest and focused intently on the rough weave of the bedcover.

  “The Colloquium is here,” Glenn said, forcing the words out mechanically as if she were working through a report in school.

  “Without you to stop them, they brought their soldiers across. They’re bombarding towns all along the border.”

  The bed creaked. Her mother had drawn the covers to her waist and was leaning against the wall behind her. Glenn fought for the strength to look directly into her deep blue eyes.

  “Do you understand?”

  Her mother held her gaze, then glanced at Kevin and Opal. “Can we have a moment, please?”

  “We don’t have time for that,” Glenn said. “We have to — ”

  “A minute, Glenn. That’s all.”

  Opal and Kevin stepped away, leaving the room achingly silent.

  Glenn gnawed at her lip and tried to hold herself as tightly as possible, her arms straining to still the whirlwind battering away inside her.

  “You — ” her mother began and then stopped herself with a small humorless laugh. “I was going to say you cut your hair. But of course you have. It’s been a long time. You can sit, at least. Can’t you?”

  Glenn didn’t move.

  “Your father made this,” her mother said, her eyes on the bracelet.

  “Didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is — ”

  “Don’t ask me how he is,” Glenn snapped, a cord of tension ratcheting tighter within her. “Don’t ask me how I am.”

  “Glenn, I don’t — I don’t know what I can say to you.”

  “You don’t have to say anything.”

  “I wanted to come back.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Glenn — ”

  “Don’t tell me you couldn’t!” Glenn cried. “Ever since I took that bracelet off, I’ve felt exactly what you felt and I fought it. I stayed who I was. If I could do it, then why couldn’t you?”

  “It was different. I — ”

  “You didn’t want to! You wanted to be here!” Glenn charged to her mother’s side and bore down on her. “Do you know what happened after you left? Do you know what it did to us? To Dad? To me?!”

  Glenn’s throat constricted and the angry tears she had been fighting burned down her cheeks. She hated them, but she couldn’t stop it now.

  “It killed him. It killed us!”

  “Glenn, wait!”

  But Glenn was already out the door, slamming it behind her. She blew past Kevin and Opal, tore through the kitchen and out the front door.

  The night was icy cold, with a long moan of wind blowing up from the river. Glenn sucked in gulps of air, but they only made the shudders that were racking her body worse. The Magisterium rushed in around her, desperate for a way in. The grass and the trees thrummed with life. The earth churned. The nightshade was fading. Glenn tried to push back the tide, but it hammered at her over and over. She’d be helpless against it soon.

  “Here. Take this.”

  Aamon was kneeling beside her, a bowl of the nightshade in his hand. After what she did to him in the house, a rush of shame filled her to be so close to him again.

  “Hurry,” he said.

  Glenn took the bowl from him and forced the liquid down her throat, nearly retching at the foulness of it. As it sank into her, it became a little easier to push the thousand sensations pressing into her away, but only slightly.

  “It’s not working like it did,” Glenn said.

  “Your body gets used to it. It doesn’t matter. We’ll get you and Kevin home.”

  “I can’t go home,” Glenn said. “I can’t ever go home. Not now.”

  Aamon said nothing. What could he say? It was true. As the

  nightshade did its job, Glenn’s head began to clear, as if a curtain had been drawn down between her and the world. A tremor shook the thin woods around her. Another explosion far off.

  “You knew she was here the whole t
ime,” Glenn said. “Why

  didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought you might try and see her.”

  “When you came for her,” Glenn said, “did you know what

  would happen to her if she returned?”

  Aamon lowered his head. A broad silence fell between them.

  “I knew it was possible,” he said. Even through the nightshade, Glenn could feel the keenness of the pain inside him. “I was created to serve the Magisterium. Farrick and his revolution wanted to destroy that. I did whatever I had to do to stop him. When your grandparents were killed, your mother was next in line to rule. It was my responsibility to bring her back. That’s all I knew or cared about. But then she told me to stay with you, to look after you and … you said you thought it must have been horrible, being Hopkins, but it wasn’t.”

  Aamon moved his hands over his blood-matted arms.

  “It was a relief.”

  The lines of Aamon’s face and the splashes of blood were at once alien and so familiar. She had seen him like this before, long ago. A small broken thing needing to be saved. Glenn reached out and took his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” Glenn said.

  “For what?”

  The images flashed in Glenn’s mind again. Aamon and the man in the river. Aamon and Garen Tom. Aamon kneeling at a shattered altar, begging for forgiveness.

  “That you had to be that person again because of me.”

  “I would do it again if I had to,” he said. “For you.”

  “What do we do?” Glenn asked. “We can’t go home again.

  Sturges would never allow it. Not now.”

  “There are places in the Magisterium that maybe even Michael Sturges will fear to go. We’ll stay there until we can fight back. Opal can help you. Teach you how to control your Affinity.”

  Beyond the trees, the sky was covered with clouds and the

  drifting smoke of a hundred battles near and far. There was no path of stars, no constellations writing messages across the sky.

  They could hide, but for how long? Until Sturges wrestled the secret of her father’s work away from him and used it to tear the last bits of the Magisterium apart? Glenn imagined an army of skiffs and drones flooding the farms and villages of the Magisterium and shivered.

  How many more people would die while she hid?

  “Aamon?”

  They both turned and there, in the doorway, stood the Magistra.

  She was barefoot, dressed in a white gown that hung off her frail body in billows. She had one hand pressed into the doorway to hold herself up.

  Glenn tightened her hand on Aamon’s. He squeezed her hand

  back and then left her in the yard to disappear into the house. Her mother’s footsteps whispered across the grass, stopping just behind Glenn.

  “I was your age when it started,” she said. “I was in the orchards outside my parents’ castle, and a bird landed on one of the branches. A callowell. Black, with a long silver-tipped tail. Beautiful. It landed on an apple tree nearby so I got a net and tried to coax it in, but I got too close and it pecked my hand hard enough to draw blood. Then it just stared at me with these black hateful eyes. I stood there, furious, watching my blood fall into the grass. That’s when I felt it for the first time.”

  Glenn turned. Her mother was staring down into the grass. She looked small and pale. Not at all the towering Magistra.

  “I stood there, watching my blood fall, and a million voices began screaming in my ears all at once. The orchard. The sky. The people in the castle. The callowell. All of it rushed into me. I could feel the callowell’s heart, this bright tiny thing. So delicate. It was like it was sitting in the palm of my hand and all I had to do was …”

  Her mother’s fingers snapped into a fist.

  “The callowell fell into the grass and I watched its wings twitch as its life drained away. It was like a clock winding down. And then it was gone. There was just emptiness. And the worst of it was, right then, I felt nothing. It made me mad so I killed it. With billions of voices all around me, what difference did it make that one of them was gone? I turned back to the castle and I felt all those people moving within its walls and I thought, what difference would it make if any of them were gone?”

  “That’s when I ran away. I got as far away as I could and the voices quieted enough for me to think. I had heard about people like me, people so full of Affinity they were barely human. I decided it would never happen again. I’d never hurt anything again. I’d throw myself off Lanton Cliffs and be done with it. But I was running so fast and I was so afraid that I got lost in the forest and I found myself out near the border and that’s … that’s when I saw your father.”

  Her mother’s chin tipped up, pointing into the sky. A faint glow washed over her.

  “I’d been told that all that lay on the other side were ghosts and so at first I was afraid. But then he took a step across the border and I could feel him, all of him, rush into me at once. I took his hand and he brought me across and it all just fell away. The terror. The voices. I didn’t think I could be any happier, but then we had you, and I was.

  One happiness piled on top of the other for years, until I thought they’d stretch all the way to the moon. But then one night, you and I went outside to chase fireflies and when we got back … there was Aamon.

  Hopkins.”

  Her face darkened.

  “I said I wasn’t the princess anymore and that the Magisterium could rot for all I cared, but in the end … I couldn’t just run away. I thought I’d be able to fight it, that I could go and come back, but I had been away so long and then I found Mom and Dad and … I didn’t remember what it was like. Affinity. It’s like …”

  “A flood,” Glenn said.

  “Yes. You swim for a while, but sooner or later you get weak and go under.”

  The two of them were quiet, sitting close, the world thrumming around them. A war raging beyond their reach.

  “I wish …” Glenn began, searching for the words. “I wish you had told me. I wish you had done anything other than disappear.”

  “I wish that too,” her mother said, almost too low to hear. Her eyes lightly fell closed and her head dipped forward.

  Glenn took her arm. “Are you okay?”

  “Just … tired.”

  Glenn laid the back of her hand along her mother’s temple. Her skin was waxen and cold.

  “Come on,” Glenn said. “Let’s get you inside.”

  Glenn managed to get her standing, but it was only for a moment before all the strength went out of her and she stumbled forward into Glenn’s arms. Glenn clasped her hands tight around her mother’s back then lifted her up and eased her across the grass. When they got inside, Glenn laid her down onto the bed. She was asleep before Glenn could even get the blankets over her.

  Even unconscious, her brow was furrowed and she tossed and

  turned, mumbling to herself. A sheen of sweat shone in the candlelight.

  Glenn imagined the last ten years and all those deaths turning inside her, never allowing her to rest.

  “She doesn’t look the way I remember,” Kevin said.

  Kevin was in the doorway behind Glenn. She didn’t have to turn.

  She could feel him standing there. The way Cort remembers, she thought to say, but pulled it back. Glenn lifted the blanket up to cover her mother’s trembling shoulders.

  “She doesn’t look the way I remember, either,” Glenn said.

  The floor creaked as Kevin took a step closer. “I shouldn’t have lied to you,” he said. “That night at the inn, with Farrick … Opal didn’t tell me who the Magistra was. I didn’t know until Aamon told me.”

  “Would it have mattered?”

  “Yes,” Kevin said quietly. “Maybe that’s wrong, but it would have. Doesn’t it matter to you?”

  Does it? Glenn wondered. Could the woman her mother had been for a few years make up for what she had become? For all the people she had hurt and ki
lled? Glenn tried to hold the image of her mother from when she was a girl and the monstrous thing she had become in Glenn’s head at the same time, but the effort left her reeling.

  Kevin followed as she left the house and went out into the yard.

  Once they made it down the slate path, she could see the dark rush of the river going by. Glenn could feel its chill and the swarm of life moving in it. Glenn untied the laces on her boots and slipped them off so she could feel the damp grass and the earth below. In the distance the air shuddered with the booms and flares of fighting. Throughout the woods, terrified animals sprinted away, their small hearts pounding.

  The nightshade was fading. Glenn clenched her hand into a fist and held the voices at bay.

  “Is he still there?”

  “Who?” Kevin asked.

  “Cort.”

  Kevin said nothing for a moment, his face clouding as he stared out into the dark.

  “I’m still me,” he said. “But there are times when I remember parts of his life better than I remember my own.”

  “You remember what he died for.”

  “I do.”

  Glenn didn’t take her eyes off the sweep of the dark water below.

  “I want you to make me a promise,” she said. “If I lose myself, if I become what she did, you’ll stop me.”

  “That’s not going to happen. Opal can help you.”

  “Promise me,” Glenn insisted.

  Kevin relented. “I promise,” he said. “Now come on. We should — ”

  Glenn pulled Kevin into her arms and found his lips with hers.

  One of his hands pressed against her lower back and drew her body close while the other rose up until his fingers were tangled in her hair.

  Their breath passed hot and fast between them. They had been this close before, but now that the nightshade was nearly gone, there was no barrier between them at all. No thoughts, no fears, just tides of warmth radiating off of him and enveloping her. He flowed into her and she into him.

  29

  When they parted, there was only a sliver of space between them filled with the white steam of their breath. Glenn brushed her fingertips along the stubble on the side of his head.

  “That night on the train platform,” Glenn said. “I guess I just wanted to have something that didn’t change. You know?”