by C. L. Bush
Clara blinked, nervously turning her bracelet.
“What’s wrong with my bracelet?”
“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with it here. Out there...” Helen shook her head in disagreement. “It was your mother’s, of course. After a particularly nasty spell, the Richmond coven decided to punish her by limiting her use of magic. Fools.”
“What did she do?” Clara frowned but once again, gained no desired answer.
“That is irrelevant now. What is relevant is that I do want you to wear that cuff at all times.”
“To limit my magic?”
“Certainly not! Transient objects are accessible in the Arch; however, their nature is twisted,” Helen explained, slightly annoyed by Clara’s dumbfounded expression. “That means that, in most cases, magical objects here do exactly the opposite of what they’re used for in reality.”
“So... this will increase my magic? But, won’t the-the wraiths find me then?”
“They’ll find you anyway,” Helen said lightly, repeating herself absentmindedly. “Your magic is young and raw. They’ll find you probably anyway.”
“I don’t even know how to use it!”
“Should you encounter any of them on your own, a tremendous magical outburst might be the only thing that can save you.”
“Well, that sounds just great. And highly dangerous,” Clara concluded anxiously and only saw the unimpressed drop of Helen’s shoulders.
“Everything is dangerous here,” she said, somewhat distantly.
“Okay,” Clara responded slowly, spinning her cuff faster now. She turned around herself, trying to take as much of the town as possible. “What were those flashes in town? The flashes of light we passed?”
“They were fragments,” Helen answered, picking up her pace.
“Fragments of what?” Clara asked breathlessly, struggling to keep up.
“Of people,” Helen continued. “The flashes are fragments of people using magic. You might come across them periodically. They’re usually gone in the blink of an eye. Unless it’s a more demanding spell.”
“You mean, I can see people who’re using magic in Richmond while they’re using magic?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it now?”
“Then I can see my mother,” Clara concluded. “Can she see me?”
“No, she can’t,” Helen answered quickly, leaving Clara devastated. Now, as her fear and adrenaline subsided, grief and sorrow slowly plucked at her.
“I’m stuck here, aren’t I?” Clara asked. Helen’s silence was answer enough. Clara fought back tears. They quickly walked away from town, and Clara realized Helen’s steps were used to this death stroll. She took a turn at the Welcome to Richmond sign and Clara realized just where she was headed to.
Formidable rubble that was the Parkers’ mansion in her Richmond scarcely resembled what she saw before her now. The house stretched before her, its long lawn creating an awe-inspiring approach to the mansion. Wide, dark and majestic. It was hard for Clara to imagine her laid-back mother dating or loving anyone who lived in such a rigid structure.
Clara stopped before the massive front doors, observing the crest above it. She recognized the family alder tree but was unable to discern the words.
“Welcome home, Clara Parker,” her grandmother announced and pushed the massive doors open. She entered confidently, draping her scarf over a fading table, and rushed up the staircase. Clara wrestled the doors to a close and skipped two steps at a time just to reach the mistress of the house.
The walls were covered in large windows, but light somehow seemed to come from inside of the house instead of the shadowy outdoors. The floor cracked beneath Clara’s feet and she wondered for a bit how Helen managed to move so effortlessly quiet.
Down a long hallway, another set of doors await. These were large, made of glass, and surprisingly led to a glassed garden. Plants covered most of the walls, and the smell of herbs was faint, almost nonexistent.
“It took us some time to find you,” Helen said, nonchalantly selecting a comfortable seat among the fading greenery. “Once inside the Arch, people usually go to the place they relate to most in Richmond until their body goes through the transition and heals from the shock.”
“You mean the pain?” Clara asked, rubbing her shoulders absently.
“Among other things,” Helen agreed.
“Wait. You said ‘people’. How many people have entered the Arch?”
“Who survived? Two,” she answered before giving Clara a measured look. “Three including you.”
“Who’s the third person?” Clara stepped forward, but Helen inadvertently dismissed her hopes with a slight head movement. So, it wasn’t Clara’s father who survived entering the Arch. Clara wished Xander had somehow ended up in this distorted version of Richmond. However unbelievable this magical world was, it had to have its limitations. Clara closed her eyes for a moment, struggling with the memory of Xander’s cold, motionless body while Samantha read a eulogy at his funeral.
Sam. Would she read a eulogy for Clara now?
“She’ll be back soon,” Helen continued, snapping Clara out of her thoughts. She folded her delicate but able hands in her lap.
“Who?”
“I’ll let her introduce herself.” Her gaze locked onto Clara, silently studying her before speaking again. “There’s something else you should know.”
“How are you alive?” Clara interrupted bluntly and met her grandmother’s iron eyes.
“The time passes differently here,” she explained with a sigh. “Ian tied the time lapse in the Arch with the phases of the Moon.”
“What does that mean?”
“That means the length of a day here doesn’t correlate to the time in the Richmond you came from. It starts with the new moon and ends when it’s full.”
Clara swallowed heavily, tightly pulling her bag closer to herself.
“How long? How long have I been here?”
“Not even a day.”
“And there? How long has passed in real time?”
“About half a month. Maybe more,” Helen answered and Clara’s knees weakened. She swayed and grabbed the back of a nearby chair for support.
“Do they know? Do they know I’m alive?”
“Do they know I’m alive?” Helen’s retort froze Clara’s blood and she shivered. “There’s much to be covered and we don’t have a lot of time. The Arch has never been more fragile and there are decisions that have to be made, and actions that have to be taken.”
Fragile Arch be damned, was she stuck here? If they didn’t know her grandmother was alive how would they know she was? Clara shivered again at the realization that she might never get back home.
“How long have you been here?” Clara croaked and noticed Helen Parker seemed uncomfortable for the first time.
“Around seven months,” she said and Clara gasped for air. “Happy eighteenth birthday, dear.”
“We’re trapped here,” Clara voiced, as her breathing shallowed and sped up. “Aren’t we?”
“Yes, and no.” Helen clasped her hands together. “There are many things to discuss but before we start - have you managed to learn any spell at all?”
“Spell?” Clara shot her a bewildered look. “I found out magic is real less than twenty-four hours ago! No, I don’t know any spells.”
Helen redirected her gaze, thoughtfully tapping her lip.
“Well, that’ll have to change as soon as possible,” she reasoned and jumped to her feet. Clara found herself surprised by the agility this woman possessed, and the strength she radiated. It was as frightening as it was enchanting. “Christina should be near the house now.”
“Christina?” Clara frowned and followed her grandmother with her eyes. “Christina Wentworth?”
“Indeed,” Helen answered simply, flipping through a book with little interest to whatever Clara was saying.
“She’s alive? She was mentioned as one of the victims of the Richmond Re
aper.”
“Ah, if only the journalists of Richmond knew how to do research as well as they know how to gossip,” Helen mused, her eyes lingering on an especially tempting page of the heavy tome.
“But I read about her. She was one of the victims. Her bloodless body was found in the woods. They said it was a suicide, but it wasn’t, was it? She was among the first who died. Her death cracked the Arch, didn’t it?”
“I’ll let Christina fill you in on her personal history since she’s already here,” Helen said without even raising an eye from the pages before her. “Yes, I believe we’ll start with this one.”
Clara rushed to the window and glanced outside, only to see a lean, energized figure steadily approaching the property.
“Everyone thinks you’re both dead,” Clara whispered but Helen ignored the comment. Instead, she tapped the book before her with a finger while her other hand rested on a hip.
“We have no time to teach you defensive spells, so we’ll focus on offensive ones,” Helen declared, bringing the book to Clara. “This is the first one.”
Clara glanced at the page and turned to her grandmother.
“I don’t even know how to defend myself and you expect me to attack someone?”
“I expect you to attack something,” Helen corrected her. “Most progressive defensive spells take more skill and control over the magic than you have at the moment. The basic defensive spells won’t help you with what you’ll face here, and would take too much time for you to master or even get a grip of. On the other hand, several quite effective offensive spells require little more than raw power. Instead of teaching you how to defend yourself from a wraith, I’ll teach you how to cast a strong enough first blow to give yourself time to run and save yourself.”
Clara lowered her eyes from her grandmother’s unyielding face to the page she displayed.
“What is this? What does it do?”
“It’s called ‘Armis Centum’, or one hundred weapons. It afflicts the adversary with one hundred cuts. It could kill an untrained human, but it’ll only slow down a wraith. It’s straightforward, so you can certainly produce it, and the trinket will help.”
Clara glanced at her cuff, her mother’s cuff, and stepped back from both her grandmother and the book she held.
“Look, lady. I don’t know if we’re related, but even if we’re and even if we’re in a crazy monster world, I’m not going to cut anyone a hundred times.”
“Even if your life depends on it?” Helen asked calmly, closing the book and resting it on her hip. “The wraiths aren’t just a danger to us, you realize that? Each wraith that manages to claw its way into the Arch from Pandemonium can and will claw its way into Richmond. Especially the water wraiths. That stream is already harboring a demon. The wraiths will be next to plague our town.”
Clara opened her mouth but before she managed to utter a word, the doors opened and a girl about her age entered.
Curly-haired with the same shy smile Clara remembered from an aged photograph her mother had shown her, Christina Wentworth looked barely a year older than she did in the photo. She widened her smile at Clara and hurried to hug her. Clara let her, awkwardly standing, unsure whether to return the hug or move away.
“Oh, Clara! I’m so glad you’re okay! I’ve been going through the town for hours looking for you,” the girl explained. She took off her torn, bloody gloves and flicked them into a corner. “This must be crazy for you. Let me introduce myself. I am-”
“Christina Wentworth,” Clara finished and the girl’s smile widened.
“You know about me?”
“My mom showed me an old photograph of you,” Clara answered, lowering her voice.
“Did she? I do miss your mom. In fact, I miss everyone,” the decade-old teenager said wistfully, before turning to Clara with a burning gleam in her eyes. “How is everyone? How’s Richie?”
“Richie?” Clara frowned and Christina’s smile melted in worry.
“Richie, yes. He was your mother’s friend as well. Richard. You must know him,” she told Clara, almost desperately.
“You mean Richard Gaskill?” Clara asked, shocked that someone, at a point in time, called Richard Gaskill, the most frightening man she had the opportunity to meet, Richie. “He’s alive.”
Or at least Clara hoped so.
“Of course, he is.” The girl nodded and a smile on her face re-appeared.
“I’m sorry.” Clara stepped back, elongating her arms and averting her eyes. “This is all just too much. I don’t even know how I got here and I don’t know anything about any of this. I’m sorry. I’m just not- I’m not what you’re looking for.”
“Of course, you know how you got here.” Helen’s no-nonsense voice lacked patience. “You stepped into the Arch. You’re in the Arch now. And we don’t have the luxury of looking for anyone. We have what we have, and we’ll work with that.”
“Work on what? What’s the end game here anyway? If we’re stuck here, and we can’t go back home, and the monsters keep coming through... It’s not like we can fight them all away for all eternity,” Clara finished and her grandmother and Christina exchanged looks.
“Don’t tell me that’s the plan?” Clara asked, shocked as her grandmother walked away in annoyance.
“Not quite.” Christina smiled softly and approached Clara. “We’ll explain everything.”
“Well, explain it now. How did you make this place? And how are you still alive?”
“The first question is a bit of history, really,” Christina announced regretfully. Clara’s eyes followed her grandmother as she assessed the plants covering the far-right wall. “To answer your second question... well, we’re not.”
“What?” Clara finally dragged her eyes to Christina’s face.
“You see, time passes differently here,” she tried but Clara interrupted her.
“I heard. One day here, a month outside.”
“Yes, well. You see, we’re alive here. In a way. We exist, like on a pause. Don’t age, don’t feel hunger or tiredness very often. Almost never, really. But, if we were to step outside of the Arch, the time we lost would try to catch up with us. Our bodies would age at a speed that we couldn’t survive.”
Clara blinked, dropped her backpack on the marvel floor and left the garden. It was all too much. She walked down the hallway until the very end of it. There, she stopped, panting, her chest on fire.
This, indeed, had been the worst birthday ever.
CHAPTER THREE
Beginning of February
SAM
February had crept in their lives heavily and with reluctance. With each passing day since Clara had disappeared, the hours seemed to stretch unto the breaking point, and Sam had grown less and less patient. As the holiday season died, the schoolwork and day-to-day socialization began to resurface, and Samantha found herself in a state she had never felt before. The intense need to be alone, unbothered, and to be able to focus her whole time and self to one goal. So, she skipped movie nights, homework, and birthday parties in exchange for lessons with Zoey and self-study in her room. Both were equally inefficient and frustrating, Samantha found.
“Do it again,” Zoey instructed coldly, and Sam shot her an annoyed look. She was sleep deprived, hungry and her muscles ached from the extended magical use. The sleep stone Damen had given her worked, but just barely.
“I did the spell perfectly,” Samantha responded, folding her hands defiantly.
Zoey deeply believed the best way to learn something was through trial and error - which seemed great in the beginning. But with time, Samantha realized it also meant she would be doing the same spells over and over, no matter how skilled or strong she would get in the meantime. It reminded her of the dancing classes her parents made her take as a child. A year later she was still starting each class with the same simple, boring movements. Sam quit dancing pretty soon after the realization that the routine would remain despite the progress.
“You di
d it too fast,” Zoey explained with disdain. “You have to be aware of each movement, of each step, of each word you say. You mustn’t rush through it. This isn’t your Spanish exam.”
“I did it perfectly. Let’s move to the next one.” Sam brushed the repaired mirror away and pulled Zoey’s Grimoire closer, flipping through the pages at fast speed. “This one, let’s do this one.”
Zoey’s eyes grazed the summoning spell before demonstratively closing the Grimoire and placing it safely on the counter behind her. In annoyance, Sam rubbed her eyes before taking a deep breath.
“Fine, I’ll do the repair spell again.”
“Today’s session is over,” Zoey responded cruelly. Sam, in return, pushed the mirror off the table, smashing it once again in hundreds of pieces. “Pick it up.”
“I’m sick of this,” Samantha said, her usual cooperative personality vanishing with each word. “You’ve me repeating baby steps for a month now, Zoey. I haven’t lit a single candle during our sessions for the weeks and you’re doing nothing, nothing to actually teach me how to use magic. I can’t afford you slowing me down.”
“Slowing down is exactly what you need,” Zoey responded sharply, kicking away the mirror fragments as she paced through the kitchen of her family’s home.
Sam had played tag in the same hallways as a child and would always win against the boys. She’d also played hide-and-seek; Xander usually won that one. It was hard not thinking about him while being in his home, and his parents’ deprecating looks didn’t help. The only person who made her feel welcome in the house was Zoey, and it was hard for Samantha to lower her guard with her mentor.
“You’re moving too fast, Sam, too fast for your own or anyone else’s good - which is what got us in this mess to start with. Hell, just two weeks ago you shattered one of your house windows and splintered the fence out front of your house.”
Sam swallowed heavily before replying with bitterness. “I did NOT do that, as I have told you and anyone else over and over again. And I think you mean, my arrogance allowed us to lose Clara.”
“I mean your overestimation of your abilities and lack of basic understanding of magic contributed to the loss of Clara and furthered disintegration of the Arch. The same way that contributed to the death of my brother.”