Until We're Home

by Lina Langley

  “Yes,” Salisei said. “She healed you, too.”

  Taln inspected his body. Where the stitches had been, there now was a small discoloration, a remnant of a scar. Taln touched his stomach and he winced. The scar may have been gone but the pain was still there.

  “She said you were difficult,” Salisei said. Taln didn’t realize she was still watching him. “She said you were too affected by the realm we were just in.”

  Taln nodded, a bit dizzy as he sat up and leaned against the mud wall. “Did she say anything else?”

  Salisei sighed. “She said she would be back soon. And that it would take you a while to heal and you may do or say some strange things.”

  “Strange things like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Fine,” Taln said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She smiled at him and her eyes shone, but her smile didn’t appear very sincere to Taln. “I’m glad you’re okay, too. Would you like something to drink?”

  “Water would be good,” Taln said, sighing. “I’m—”

  “Thirsty?”

  “Sure.” He wasn’t thirsty, exactly. He did feel empty. He hated The Mage’s hut. He had only been there a few times before, when he was a kid, and then later, when he was banished.

  He was about to say something else when Isocrice walked inside. She looked different than when he had last seen her. Her eyes were cloudy and bloodshot, and her hair was tied up in a messy up-do.

  “Taln.”

  Taln tried his best to smile, but he couldn’t get himself to. He bared his teeth and thanked her before he felt all the energy drain from his body.

  Isocrice paled and approached him, grabbing his hand before she sat on the floor next to him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I tried to stop her.”

  “Stop her?”

  “The Conjurer,” Isocrice replied. “She’s coming to see you. Taln—”

  “Yes?”

  “I have always liked you. You’ve always been good, if slightly rebellious. The Conjurer, she doesn’t understand. She never understood.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Taln said. This conversation was exhausting him. He just wanted to go to sleep.

  “Yes, you do,” Isocrice said. “We only have a moment. She has crushed your spirit. You were not banished because you didn’t follow the rules, there are more appropriate punishments for that. You were punished because you threaten her. She’s afraid of you.”

  Taln smiled this time. “Yes, the Lahtinen clan is legendarily terrifying.”

  “Sarcasm,” Isocrice said, before she took a deep breath. “That’s not of this realm. And you’d do better to eliminate it from your vernacular.”

  Taln scoffed. “What difference does it make? I’m sure I’ll be sent to another random realm in no time.”

  “For what it is worth, I am sorry. I did try to talk her out of it. You are aware of her personality.”

  “I don’t care,” Taln said to Isocrice.

  “You should care. She will—”

  “I don’t care what she does, Isocrice. I will never forgive her. I know she planned this. I know you planned this. I don’t understand how, yet, but you’re a seer. You knew something like this would happen. You knew I would get hurt. You knew Salisei would get hurt. Worse still, you knew about Jesse. You knew what he would have to do. You knew he would feel responsible. I will recover but I will never forgive you for what you have done to him.”

  “You do not understand.”

  “You are cruel,” Taln said. “Sending her to fetch me. You could have just let me live.”

  “It wasn’t my decision.”

  “What about Jesse? Did you choose him?”

  “No,” Isocrice said. “She chose him.”

  “So she knew. All along, she knew what would happen. She wasn’t punishing me. She was punishing him.”

  “No. He was incidental,” Isocrice replied. “She knew he would care—but this happening, that was one of the worst outcomes I predicted. You could have changed it.”

  “How?”

  Isocrice looked away from him. “I didn’t expect you to—I knew you would care about him. I didn’t expect you to care about him to the extent that you do.”

  “So I could have changed it by not caring. Great. Thanks, Isocrice.”

  “Watch the sarcasm, Taln. You haven’t an idea of how much worse your punishment can be.”

  “I don’t care,” he said, again, before his expression softened. “Thank you for healing me.”

  “She wants to see you.”

  “I don’t want to see her,” Taln replied.

  “I don’t think you have a choice.” Salisei piped up from where she was sitting. “I think you’ve been spoiled by Earth.”

  “Spoiled,” Taln replied, glaring at her. “Or maybe I’ve just learnt.”

  * * *

  The Conjurer wasn’t as scary as Taln remembered her. She was a tiny woman and she wore her hair down. Her dress was the only colorful one in the realm, it was a royal blue that contrasted with her light skin.

  Her fingers were really long and thin. The gold collar around the neckline of her dress made the yellowish hue of her hair stand out, even inside the hut.

  Taln thought she hadn’t changed at all since the last time he had seen her, but he also thought that she looked totally different. She looked smaller, frailer. Her slow walking didn’t feel like a threat against him, rather, it felt like that was how she had to walk because she couldn’t hold herself up if she were to take quick strides.

  “Taln Lahtinen.”

  “Conjurer,” Taln said, not getting up from the bed as Salisei stood. No one remained sitting if The Conjurer was standing.

  “You have served your sentence,” she said. “And you have returned home.”

  Taln arched one eyebrow, a small smile playing on his face.

  “I have returned to the realm I was born in,” Taln said. “I always appreciated your accuracy when speaking, so I would appreciate it if you were accurate when addressing me.”

  The Conjurer approached him and leaned down, scrunching up her face when she saw him. She was about two inches away from him. Taln thought he would be able to head butt her, maybe, but he had no idea what would happen after that. Her magic was stronger than his. It was stronger than anyone’s. She could crush him in a second. He would have still taken the fight if it wasn’t for the fact that Salisei was standing there.

  He understood now why she hadn’t been sent out to do her chores after being healed.

  His sister was insurance.

  “You remain true to yourself,” Taln said, the scornful smile on his face widening as he realized what she had done.

  “I can see nothing has changed for you,” The Conjurer replied, a thin smile on her face.

  “You’re wrong,” Taln replied, his eyes narrowing. “Everything has changed for me.”

  The Conjurer smirked. “I guess we will have to wait to see how true that is. I just wanted to come and welcome you back.”

  “You have done plenty,” Taln replied.

  “Yes,” she said. “I expect so.”

  Taln watched her walk out of the hut before he put his head in his hands.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Jesse studied the ceiling in the guest room.

  He pushed his tongue against the new permanent crowns that had replaced his front teeth. They felt weird, oddly smooth. Everything felt weird and oddly smooth. Things seemed to have lost their edges and everything was softer. Everything was blunt.

  He didn’t want to deal with it.

  He put his forearm over his eyes and tried to think about something else. It wasn’t like he could help it; his mind would keep wandering until it landed firmly back on Taln and he would be left worried sick and with no answers.

  He kept going back to that night and thinking about what had actually happened. His brain couldn’t make sense of
it. The longer Rayne and Peter went without believing him, the harder it was for him to believe that it had actually happened. They really didn’t believe him. They hadn’t even pretended to believe him, which he would have found offensive if it wasn’t for the way he sounded. The more he tried to convince them, the less plausible it seemed. He had just walked out of the room mid-sentence when he had seen the expressions on their faces.

  He couldn’t fault them for it.

  He probably wouldn’t have believed them if he was in their position. He hadn’t believed Taln at first, after all. He hadn’t even believed him after the first time he had healed him. Now—

  “Jesse?”

  Jesse sat up when he heard Peter’s voice.

  “The door was open.”

  “Yeah, come in,” Jesse replied. Rayne was standing behind him. Jesse noticed that Peter was holding her hand.

  They sat at the bottom of the bed, one next to the other, still holding hands. Rayne looked down when he looked at her, knitting his eyebrows.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We have news,” Peter said.

  “News,” Jesse repeated. It wasn’t really a question. Whatever they had to say, he knew that it couldn’t be good.

  “The police found Jon,” Rayne said after clearing his throat.

  “Oh,” Jesse replied, confused. “That’s good, right? I mean, now—”

  “He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “He’s dead,” Peter repeated. “The police did find him. He came at them with a gun so they shot him down.”

  “Wait, what? He had a gun?”

  “They, um, found him in this apartment downtown and they told him to come out and he had a gun, so they shot him down,” Rayne said. “They rushed him to the hospital but he died pretty quickly.”

  “Oh, wow. Um. Alright.”

  Rayne and Peter waited. Jesse ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled. “I don’t really know how I’m supposed to feel right now.”

  Rayne nodded. “There’s something else.”

  “Right,” Jesse said. “Of course there is.”

  “He had this letter on him,” Rayne said. “It was for you.”

  “You’re saying letter, but you mean a suicide note, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “That he addressed to me?”

  “Yes,” Rayne said.

  “Oh, well, that’s just fucking wonderful.”

  “It’s in evidence now,” Peter said “So you can’t have it. They did take a picture of it, if you wanted to read it, though.”

  “Which you shouldn’t,” Rayne said. “It’s thirty-six pages of the same thing.”

  “Thirty-six pages?”

  “Yes,” Rayne said.

  Jesse rubbed his temple. “I should read it.”

  “I really don’t think you should,” Rayne replied.

  “I have to read it,” Jesse said. “He killed himself and he wrote me. Wouldn’t you want to read something like that?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Rayne said. She was keeping her cool, professional voice, but Jesse could tell she had started to get annoyed. “He’s not part of your life anymore. You should let it go.”

  “Rayne,” Jesse said. “He almost killed me. He almost killed Taln. As far as I know, he killed Taln’s sister. How is it possible that you think he isn’t part of my life?”

  “Jesse—”

  “Hold on. Because of him, I had to withdraw from the semester, I’m probably going to lose my apartment and I have twenty-nine real teeth. So yeah, I don’t know what you’re smoking, but Jon is and will probably remain part of my life until I die. So I would like to read his note, even if you have decided it’s not in my best interest.”

  “Okay,” Rayne said. “Here.”

  Jesse took the phone from her hand and started to read the note. As soon as he got to his name, he looked up. “Can you guys give me a minute?”

  Jesse’s eyes scanned photographed note, over and over again.

  He knew he had already memorized it. He mouthed the words as he read them, once again. He told himself he would only read the first few paragraphs before he stopped, but he wasn’t sure that he would be able to stop.

  Dear Jesse,

  If you’re reading this, it’s too late. I know that I was not a good boyfriend to you and for that I am very sorry. I tried very hard to be a good person. For some people—people like you—it’s not that difficult to be good. For me, every day trying to be a good person was a struggle.

  I’m very sorry for making your life with your new boyfriend difficult. I’m still not quite sure what happened, but for what it’s worth, I’m sure you didn’t deserve any of it.

  I know now that there was no point in trying to fight what I always knew I would become. You used to joke about it, telling me that I should just stop trying not to become my father when I would shout at the TV or get angry in traffic. You seemed to think it was cute.

  It wasn’t cute. I hated it and I wished you would never bring it up, but that would only make me angrier. The worst part was that I was never angry at myself. I was always angry at you, because as far as I could tell, you had no right to bring it up. I never understood why you were trying to change me. I always liked you so much and it upset me that you didn’t seem to like me as much as I liked you. It’s not an excuse, but that’s the reason I could never really commit. I should have spoken to you about it, I know that now. But at the time, it felt like you wouldn’t understand, and I just assumed that you didn’t. I’m sorry for that, too. There are so many things I regret and I would go back and change now if I could.

  “Jesse?”

  Jesse looked up to see Rayne standing at the door.

  “You’ve been in here for ages,” she said. “And I need my phone back.”

  “Oh,” Jesse said. He thought he handed Rayne the phone, but he wasn’t sure.

  She sat down next to him on the bed. “Are you okay?”

  After a second, Jesse nodded. His head hurt. “I’m going to lie down for a bit. Would you mind closing the door on your way out?”

  “No,” Rayne said, getting to her feet. “No problem. Do you want me to come get you when dinner is ready?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  It had been weeks since Taln had arrived back to his realm, but he hadn’t gotten used to anything yet. Everything felt foreign, somehow even more foreign than when he had arrived on earth.

  The fields he had played in when he was a child, the castle he slept in, they all felt like they were part of a bad dream.

  At least he still had Jesse, even if Jesse didn’t believe it was him.

  It had happened that very first night, when he was back in his cot, thinking about Jesse’s warm bed. The cot was barely an inch off the ground and there was one person to his right and one person to his left.

  He knew that, within the week, he would be assigned someone and he would get his own private room. With whoever she was. Lucky for him, the first girl that they had assigned to him was now with another person. Lucky for him.

  He didn’t want a wife. He wanted Jesse.

  That was the first time, since he had gotten home, where he had heard Jesse’s voice in his head.

  Taln, Jesse had said. I miss you too. I miss you so much. Is your sister okay?

  Taln had instantly felt better. That was definitely Jesse’s voice. He was concerned. He missed him, too. Taln had been right, Jesse had been lying.

  She’s okay. Isocrice healed her. How are you?

  In pain, Jesse replied. And hearing voices. Rayne and Peter picked me up from my apartment after they found out I snuck out of the hospital and now I’m in their guest bedroom after being interviewed by the police.

  The police?

  Yeah, I guess they’re like your guards. They’re the people that protect us and stuff. They wanted to know where you and your sister are.

  Taln smiled. What did you tell
them?

  The truth, Jesse replied. That I didn’t know. How are you? Did you get better?

  Yes, Taln said. I was healed.

  Good. That’s good to hear. Taln—

  Yes?

  I’m so sorry, Jesse said. I’m sorry about what I said to you. I’m sorry about everything that has happened. I’m sorry your sister got hurt and I’m sorry I told you it wasn’t real. It was very real.

  I know, Taln replied. I know you were doing what you had to do.

  I love you, Jesse replied.

  Taln’s smile widened, though he wasn’t sure what to say, or, more accurately, think. I don’t know what that is.

  Yes, you do, Jesse’s voice came back. Where are you?

  In bed, Taln replied. But it’s not the same without you.

  Yeah, Jesse said. I know. It’s not the same for me either. Good night. I love you. Sleep well.

  Good night, Jesse, Taln thought. He looked around before he closed his eyes and noticed how everything had started to look real. At least a little more real.

  Their conversations had been less frequent but a lot longer since then. Jesse struggled to believe that the person in his head was Taln and not himself. Taln understood. He assumed that the magic from Jesse’s realm was a lot less intrusive. The more he tried to convince Jesse that it was him, the less Jesse seemed to believe him.

  It had been frustrating at first but Taln had decided that it didn’t matter.

  “You,” a guard said. “Get back to work.”

  Taln rolled his eyes. “I have no assignment.”

  The guard came up to him. Taln had known his name once, but he had forgotten it. He circled around him a few times before he shook his head. “You’re Taln Lahtinen.”

  “Yes,” Taln replied, rolling his eyes again.

  “The Conjurer wants to see you,” the guard said.

  “What a shock.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Taln jumped down from the ledge and made his way toward the castle when he heard Jesse’s voice in his head.

  * * *

  Taln made sure that the guard wasn’t watching him anymore before he ran in the opposite direction of the castle. There was a field there that he knew would be empty at this time of day. Later, it would be filled with guards and laborers, but for the time being, he could hide between the tall weeds and grass.