by Russell Moon
I am face-to-face with him. Practically nose-to-nose. I am so sorry.
“I should have stopped this, Chuck,” I say, choking on the words as emotion wells up. “I should have somehow known, known what would happen, known what to do…. I owed you better, boy.”
I lean my head against Chuck’s and hold it there for a few seconds, hold on for a few seconds more.
Then I reach up, haul my old friend into my arms, and pull him down into the hole with me. I lay him there gently.
And, I swear, I want to be able to stretch out next to Chuck and make my last move by pulling all that dirt right in on top of us, bringing us equal bits of quiet, of calm, of rest.
But I know I cannot. I know that no matter how tired I get, how sick of it all I get, how scared, I know there is Eleanor.
And then it has also gone further than her. And much further than the hope I had once of getting all the witch bullshit out of my life and reverting to the peaceful nothingness I had before.
Because I know now, I feel it. I feel a desire, a need, a passion for annihilation. I know that when the time comes I am not going to be rational. I want people hurt and suffering greatly. I want revenge, I want overkill.
I am in this war. My father may have different reasons, but we now share a goal. The coven cannot be dead enough.
I want to make sure that the people who have taken so much away from me will lose far more than they ever could have imagined. For taking my life and my loved ones away from me…I cannot even conceive of appropriate compensation for all of that. And when I do conceive of it, I am going to top it. By a long way.
And that is if I get Eleanor back okay.
There is one more place that holds out a possibility, but I can’t go there now. Right now all I can do is put my friend away properly. I pat him once more, pat his head, his shoulder, his stiffening legs.
“’Bye, Chuck,” I say.
I climb out, and I pour the dirt, one spadeful at a time, over him until he is not there anymore.
I pat the last bits of earth down hard over him, stamping them down with my feet, dropping to my knees again and smoothing it all over him again and again until every grain is in place.
And I flash on them: all the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of times Chuck watched over me when there was no father to do it. As a kid. As no longer a kid. How many times did I wake up with him on my bed? How many times did I emerge from the virtual-reality stupor of Brainwave to find him guarding my bedroom door while I played, like a sentinel. Guarding me from what?
I wonder now how many times, in how many ways, did he save me without my knowing it? Ageless Chuck, tree-climbing Chuck, covering my whole life like a warm blanket wherever, whenever he was needed.
Exhausted, I lower myself down, right there over him, on his perfectly formed burial mound. I close my eyes.
I will seed over him tomorrow. I will plant. This will be a very special place.
It is chilly when I wake up. Summer seems to have left during the night, September turning to October as if it were Sunday turning to Monday. And in fact, Sunday has turned to Monday. It’s time to go.
I sit up in the cloud-covered Blackwater morning, and I hug myself. The sky is one smooth wipe of gray-white frosting, not threatening, not full of enough moisture to rain, but thick enough to completely shield this world from whatever is above.
Then I realize I am also cold from below. When I put my palms flat on the ground for balance, I feel it: thick, lush, cool turf. I gaze downward and see the finest, densest grass. Soft and aromatic, almost like moss, it is gorgeous and inviting, and it has grown over Chuck and under me in the few short hours I have slept.
Then I look up and around. God. There is more.
All around us—around me and Chuck, exclusively—an honor guard has sprung in the tight little oblong of land rimming Chuck’s grave, of ancient, tall, thin, but invincible trees.
All I can do for the moment is look straight up at them. A couple of them seem to have no end, shooting as they do into the opaque whiteness of the cloud cover, like Jack’s beanstalk. I look ahead, behind me, from side to side, and I grow dizzy from staring, but I keep at it for as long as I can.
Until I have to blink it away, rub my eyes, get to all fours, and finally stand.
I walk to the tree directly ahead. I put both hands on it, like I’m putting hands on a waist. Checking for realness.
It is real, it is substantial. They all are.
They stand there in their circle, arranged, I now notice, not unlike the standing stones that make up the coven’s seat of power. Like the gods, watching.
It is fair and fitting, right and wonderful. Chuck and I and the woods have been as one for so long that perhaps we still are. So much of my strength, of whatever magic I possess, I’ve learned, has come from the woods. I do not know if it is me who has done it, for I still don’t know the extent of my power, but now the trees stand guard over Chuck as he once did over me, and it is a comfort.
It makes me feel less alone—that the forest is on my side. It settles me, helps me to let go, to get on. I reach into my pocket.
I hadn’t forgotten about it. How could you ever forget about a thing like this, if there even ever was a thing like this?
My father’s ring. The King’s ring. The match to the one on my finger now—the Prince ring, which, back before I knew or understood any of this, he left behind for me to find. Back when I slipped that ring on, I had no idea what it meant. I didn’t know it was a sacred symbol, and a powerful tool, of our bloodline. That it would grow into me—taking root in my very bones.
This time, I know. I know the sacrifice it took for my father to give this to me—tearing it off of his finger and thereby tearing it out of himself—maybe, I fear, killing himself in the process.
I know the ring can never be removed. I know it is like committing for good.
I roll this second ring around in my hand, admiring the intricate, muscular, bony beauty of it. I bump it up against the one I already wear, and they look so right together, so magical, like they are about to fuse together right here before me into something greater.
I think no more. I jam the ring on my finger.
Back when I put the first ring on, all I felt was a curious thrill. Now it is as if I have been hit with a sledgehammer or lightning. My head screams with that indefinable magical noise of an obair, only amplified ten thousand times. My knees buckle, I’m weak all over…but that is nothing compared to the cruel, relentless beast of pain snaking up my finger, through the bones of my arm, my shoulder, chest. There is a charge, a powerful electrical current, meeting in the dead center of me, as the two rings seem to attack me from either flank.
I am down on my knees, then hands and knees. I am spitting blood, and I think I must look just like my father did when he gave up this very ring, pulled it right up out of the very heart of himself to prove our alliance, to win my trust, to empower me. (And, for all I know, he has died because of it.)
And then it is over.
I remain there, hunched, coughing, panting, spitting, spluttering.
Then it’s like a charge of an entirely different kind. Everything that was just pulled out of me, extracted like the guts being stripped out of a fish, feels like it’s been replaced with something times and times and many times better. Stronger, clearer.
Unambiguous. I feel mighty, magical, somehow flush, with an obair.
I jump to my feet. I look all around me, my fists clenched and banging off my own thighs as I search all over for somewhere to go with this, something to burn this off before the fire consumes me.
I start walking, fast, aware that Eleanor is out there somewhere and that she is enduring God knows what.
I don’t go into the house to change, despite the foul and well-traveled clothes I have been wearing for days, for what seems like centuries. My hands opening and closing, opening, closing, clenching, trying to crush themselves as I watch them, as if I have never seen them bef
ore.
I feel like a giant.
I am pounding along the road to my school, to the only remaining place where I have previously encountered the coven. I am taking steps that seem to eat up a hundred yards at a time. Power, anger, and revenge surge through me the whole time, some chemical amalgam forming like I’m an endurance athlete discovering new chemical balances in the brain at extreme levels of demand.
I am aware, also, that this Blackwater seems nothing at all like the one I have known. There is a vacuum feel, like even more has been drained out of the place than Chuck and possibly Eleanor and the coven. A whole essence is missing—even though the appearance of life goes on.
I stomp through the school gate, across the parking lot, and into the school like I am Armageddon itself, smashing through the big double doors and making them crash fantastically off the concrete walls. The echo in the halls lasts for ages. Clearly I am late, and everyone is already in class.
In the quiet, I attract the attention of some teacher-administrator type, who comes rushing out of an office and charges toward me.
“Just what exactly do you think you are doing?” she says in that urgent, scolding stage whisper of teacher-administrator types when class is in session.
“Looking for some folks,” I say without giving her a second glance.
“Oh my,” she says, and covers her mouth with her hand. “Who are you? What do you want here?”
I look at her now, as she is still walking with me but has fallen off the pace. She looks like she is going to puke or cry or both. She is staring at me, somewhere around the chest area.
I look down. Right. Blood, sweat, and what have you.
“Sorry about that,” I say, my manners making a fleeting but genuine reappearance. But I keep walking. I have no time to be nice for long. I need to see. I need to find witches, to get my hands on someone, to get to the ones who can get me to Eleanor, if they are still here.
“You cannot be in here,” she says urgently.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m a student. I go to class here.” But as I hear the words come out of me, rushed, charged, desperate, I realize they wouldn’t reassure anyone.
“I don’t think you do,” she says incredulously. “And if you did, I don’t think you would be here looking like this.” She makes a very accusatory gesture at me.
“Tell you what,” I say as we pass the bathrooms, “I’ll wash up.”
I double back and shove the bathroom door open.
“Stop. Stop this right now,” she says to my back.
There is a girl just finishing up at the sink as I stride in.
“Ahhh!” she screams and grabs up her stuff quickly, dropping half the contents of her bag on the floor and leaving them there. I wonder if the screaming isn’t a little bit unnecessary and overdramatic. I don’t bother worrying about stumbling into the girls’ room.
Then I take over the mirror.
Damn.
They have a point. As I stare into the harsh light of the white-tiled bathroom’s mirror, I see staring back at me some kind of cruel phantasm of myself. I look older. I look, in many ways—in many of the worst, most unpleasant ways—like my father. My eyes, the damnable mismatched gray-green eyes that are his most prominent visible gift to me, are there, as bright and piercing and dizzying as ever. Only now they sit in pools of deep, advanced bloodshot. There is little white showing in the eyes but plenty in the skin. My hair, always long and lank, hangs down either side of my face from the straight middle part like slabs of glistening seaweed.
I try to smile at myself, joke with myself, whistle past the graveyard that is myself, and it only gets worse. I raise my hands to my face, and complete the picture. There is little flesh to speak of on my hands, but lots of sinew and muscle. The fingers look longer than they ever did before, the effect accentuated by the enormity of the rings and the garish length of my nails. These hands look like they could snap tree trunks.
I am transfixed by what I see.
I look like hate. I look like I am withering.
And yet.
The contrast could not be more stark. For inside I feel more powerful, more focused and purposeful and mighty than I have ever dreamed possible.
Right and righteous is what I see.
Heroic hate is what I see.
“All right now,” a man’s voice calls from outside the bathroom door. “You. Come out here now. Right now.”
“All right,” I say. “I will.”
I come out of the girls’ bathroom to a greeting committee of what must be all the available burly male staff members and that administration lady behind them.
“What can I do for you?” I say.
“I was going to ask you that,” says the lead man. Has to be a gym teacher, with his casual clothes, sandy hair, big neck.
“I’m just here to go to school,” I say. I feel nervous, even though I feel sure I could do whatever I want to the bunch of them. I feel like they are standing in the way, slowing me down, allowing the coven, Eleanor, everything important to slip further out of my reach.
“You don’t go to school here.”
“Excuse me, but I believe I do.” I find myself looking past them, looking around, bouncing anxiously from foot to foot.
“What is your name, then?”
“Listen,” I say, growing rapidly weary and irritated with these people and whatever it is they are up to. “I just want to go into class, see my friends.” I half want to tell them I agree with them, that I don’t like the way I look either, that I understand. But I can’t. There is no time to be understanding. I brush past them, toward a classroom door—any classroom door.
“Wait,” the gym teacher says, grabbing my upper arm. I turn to stare at him and notice his posse gathering behind him, the whole group forming a spearhead. “Who are you looking for?” Apparently he doesn’t recognize me.
I sigh. “Arj, Eartha, Winston, Baron, you know, that group.” I give him a bit of a conspiratorial wink, as if we are all in on it now.
“I know every kid in this school, and there is no such group.”
“Ask Mr. Sedaris, the guidance counselor….”
“No such person,” he says with finality. He gives my arm a bit of a tighter squeeze.
Fury rises in me, mixed with an equal measure of panic. This was the last resort. What if they don’t want me to find them, ever? What if it’s not a lure? Maybe they have killed Eleanor already, maybe as punishment.
How can I even begin to find out, if the entire trail has been obliterated? If I could hit something now, break something, kill something in order to get what I need, that would be a good start, that would be just the thing.
I stare at the guy’s hand, then at his eyes.
I see, in his flinch. I see he sees.
But he doesn’t know what he sees.
“What is your name?” he insists.
“Marcus Aurelius,” I say forcefully.
“Oh, the Roman emperor?” cracks a big head teacher from the pack somewhere.
“No,” I say, yanking my arm out of the gym teacher’s hand with enough force to send him stumbling. “The Witch Boy Prince.”
That must be it. They must be in on it. They must be involved, and the others must really be here. There is no other solution.
There is no other hope.
I leave them all flatfooted and make for the classroom door.
There is a great commotion behind me. They want me to stop, to get out of here. They are calling the cops. They are going to use force if necessary.
I throw open the door and stand there, at the head of some unsuspecting English teacher’s class, with my hands on my hips and my mad eyes all over the place.
I fall back against the door, huffing. None of them is here. No Council of Youngers. No Arj, no Marthe, none of them.
But more than that. Nobody is shimmering. Nobody in this class is giving off the shimmering, humming, glowing, unmistakable energy of the witch, the telltale sign of ma
gic that once filled half of every classroom in this place. Everyone here is a mortal.
Trying to piece myself back together, I burst out of the class and bump my way like a linebacker through the crowd of useless teachers, ripping open the next door.
Nothing. Nobody.
I repeat the procedure all through the school, first floor and second, panic growing like a mushroom cloud inside my chest, and I can see not a single witch.
It is almost as if I have come to the completely wrong school. But I am still determined to open every single door when I come to an abrupt halt. I hear a siren in the distance. They have done it. They have brought the cops. The thought that I could be locked up brings me a whole new level of terror since, though my power is clearly real and could probably free me, I haven’t much idea how to control it.
It is mere animal logic that spurs me on, since I have no idea what else there possibly is that I can do. The power of panic—the primal need to go on, to get away—drives me down the back stairs, sliding around the corners on the landing, sliding again when I hit the shady, shadowy bottom floor of the school and sprint for the emergency exit at the far end of the long, empty hall.
Until. Flash.
Could not be. Could not possibly be.
Far at the other end of the darkly lit, deserted basement corridor—I swear it is her.
Eartha. Bitch. Humming, hopping, magic-sparking witch Eartha.
She makes a sweeping, waving gesture at me, then disappears into a room.
I tear after her, and I don’t care if the cops get me right now, as long as I get to Eartha first.
I am sliding as I crash into the door where she ducked out.
Photography club. Right. Secret home of the witches’ Council of Youngers.
This is good. This is great.
I throw open the photo-club door, throw myself through.
Into darkness. Cold, icy nothingness. I am frozen by it, frozen inside it, until I pull up all my strength and haul myself back out through the doorway again.
I am standing on the brink, looking into the photo club’s darkroom. It is illuminated only by a low red safelight. Eartha stands at arm’s length before me. Gathering myself, ignoring the strangeness of what I see, I lunge toward her. But she is not there. My hand passes through her, as if she is a hologram. She smiles knowingly. She looks down, and so do I.