The Wind Between Worlds

by Julie Hutchings

  “What does this mean?” I asked her.

  “We can’t trust this place without Cymbeline in it.”

  We ran for the door, but the Air Elemental formed from vapor in front of it, in a cloud the same orange as the costumes of terrifying clowns.

  “No,” the Elemental said.

  “We didn’t ask any questions,” Una spat. “Get out of our way.”

  Simultaneously, Una and I gasped for air. It had been sucked from my lungs, crushed out of my body, and Cymbeline’s mother stepped closer, her hands in claws as if she held my very breath.

  In that instant, with Una and I falling backwards, drowning in air, it didn’t matter that The Chains depended on us. The Chains were in place before the Poisons were even thoughts, and the Elementals would take care of them without us once again.

  Or they could just create more of us. Fatherless things full of magic for them to use.

  Una was turning blue, mixing hideously with the orange of her skin. She raised a hand, one still on her throat, and the gray smoggy storm she’d held in my car shot out of her palm like a cannonball, hitting the Air Elemental in the face.

  The Elemental continued not to blink, unfazed.

  My eyes met Una’s, our panic mirroring each other’s. Colors popped and blinked out all around her in dying fireworks.

  I snapped my head back to the Air Elemental, whose mouth was gaping inhumanly wide like a snake’s, swallowing our breaths as she stole them from us. Dropping my hand from my throat, I forced myself not to gasp for the air I wouldn’t get, and I Wished.

  The Air Elemental’s mouth closed fast, and both Una and I took deep, coughing breaths. But I wasn’t done.

  Gunshot sounds battered the roof over our heads, making dents. Dents in the old wooden ceiling turned into holes, and through them shot a flurry of silver stars, too bright to make out their points. They formed a stream together, and shot straight for Cymbeline’s mother, hitting her like tiny maces. Her body buckled in a dozen different places, and she cried out horribly.

  “Run,” I whispered to Una.

  We took off for the door, Una pushing the Elemental over on the way, and ran as fast as our legs would take us to the spot in the woods that was drawn on my hand.

  The Chains rumbled beneath our feet as we ran, panting and tripping through the woods in hopes that Cymbeline was there waiting for us. Una fell over a stump, and I stopped long enough to help her up, wishing there wasn’t a cool breeze gently rustling the leaves. Our attacker was behind it.

  “I got it,” she said, getting to her feet.

  We ran again.

  “Not much further,” I called over my shoulder, glancing at my hand. Then it was my turn to trip. Una pulled me up by the arm, barely stopping. I grabbed my fallen messenger bag and kept running.

  The woods grew denser and darker, and finally I felt we could stop.

  “She’s not coming after us,” I said.

  “She doesn’t have to,” Una said, hands on her knees, back heaving as she caught her breath. “She can blow in on the frigging breeze.”

  I looked at the blowing autumn leaves. If I were Cymbeline, I’d know if she were there, but I had to pretend. “No. We’re okay.”

  It was then that I spotted Cymbeline in the distance. She was sitting with her back to us in an old kitchen chair, facing a wall of trees. Her mermaid blonde waves tumbled all around her, frilly doll-like dress tumbling over the crisp leaves on the ground.

  Picture frames were nailed to the tree trunks. At least a hundred of them in different shapes and sizes, straight and crooked, higher than could be reached without a ladder, propped on the ground, everywhere. Oval silver ones, enormous rectangular wooden ones that blended with the trees themselves, white square ones.

  All empty.

  “What are you looking at?” Una asked as she straightened up. She turned around. “Oh, Christ,” she said when the weirdness hit her.

  “Well, at least Cymbeline is—okay,” I said.

  “Riiiiight. Let’s go.”

  The Witch of Empty Things didn’t turn as the satisfying crunches of leaves underfoot gave us away.

  “Cym,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder.

  “Quiet,” she said, still staring at the empty frames.

  “What’s she looking at?” Una whispered into my ear. I put a finger to my lips.

  We stood like that for a while, afraid to move, listening to the woods that should have brought us peace, but only made me think of the Elementals that could materialize any way they chose. The leaves seemed to belong to the Earth Elemental even more once they fell. I pictured the branches bursting into flames under the beating sun, the Fire Elemental’s laugh hurting my ears.

  Cymbeline stood abruptly, her eyes sharper than I was used to from her. Narrowed, instead of saucer-wide. She’d been doing magic, hard magic.

  “It’s safe now,” she said.

  “What’s with the empty frames?” Una said, still panting. “What’s in there?”

  “Nothing,” I answered, fear creeping into my voice.

  “They’re not empty anymore. They’re filled with the Elementals’ magic,” Cymbeline said as simply as if she’d said she was filling a pan with muffin mix.

  “What? How? What?” My head was spinning with the kind of power that had to take.

  Her eyes watered for a second when she looked at me, drawing me in. “Sometimes it hurts,” she said. My throat tightened but she smiled sweetly. So much stronger than she looked. “They haven’t all been here today,” Cymbeline said a little louder, glancing at the trees behind her, the frames around her tiny body. “Your mother,” she told Una.

  There may not have been a lake or swamp in the woods, but water was the essence of life. The Water Elemental could channel herself into the dewdrops on the grass, the stems of flowers, the lingering mist in the air.

  Cymbeline continued. “And Vera’s.”

  “Crap,” I muttered. The Earth Elemental was nearly as strong as the Spirit Elemental, rooted in everything we saw. As unreadable as Vera, without the madness, but with a viciousness as hard as the Earth’s core. “So she must know about the demon and that Vera’s been in contact with him.”

  “I wonder what came first, the creepy ass chicken or the freaky frigging egg,” Una muttered.

  “Was that it?” I asked, holding my breath in case she said the Spirit Elemental. It was too hard to believe my mother would snoop around behind my back, looking for answers I would give her if she asked.

  Cymbeline nodded, and I let out a breath. Una rolled her eyes.

  “Okay, first things first,” Una said, sitting in Cymbeline’s chair, pointing at the Witch of Empty Things. “Your insane mother tried to kill us.”

  Cymbeline’s lips parted in a minute show of surprise, but her eyes didn’t falter. “You’re okay.”

  “Yeah,” I said, turning to Una. “What did you do back there? The orange—it felt like lies, and the gray you threw at her?”

  Una shrugged. “I don’t ask questions, I just use the colors. But you’re the one who—saved us,” she said, trying not to grimace. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Cymbeline asked me what happened in that way of hers that never asked questions. I gave her as much detail as I could remember through the struggle for my dying breaths.

  “You Wished for stars to help you. In the daytime,” she said.

  “And they came to her,” Una added, unable to keep the awe from her voice, no matter how embarrassed she was that she’d needed my help. “Wishy Pants has been growing stronger.”

  “Maybe you’d be stronger too, if you reserved your powers.”

  Cymbeline stared at me, and plopped down on the forest floor. “No,” she said. “Celeste can pull anything into the light.”

  The words had weight I hoped I was ready to bear. I let out a breath, dragged a log over, and sat beside Cym on it, pulling a container of my mom’s shortbread cookies from my bag. Passing
them around, I said, “We’ve got more trouble than I can keep track of.”

  Una dug in my bag for a notebook and pen. “We make a list, then.”

  “Right. Number one, demon boy. Number two, he has a chain link and we don’t know how or what it can do to us. Three, Delcine is racing us to him. Four—”

  “Hey, let us weigh in here.” Una scrambled to write everything down. “The Witch of Wicked Words got to him.”

  “That’s four.”

  “I know.”

  “Five,” I went on, “Vera wants the Elementals dead. She can make the demon do it, even if that isn’t why he was here to begin with.”

  “They can’t die,” Cymbeline said.

  “Everything can die,” Una answered, not looking at anyone. “Six. The Elementals are scrambling to keep us apart. They want us dead.”

  “Not all of them,” I said quietly. “They’re our moms, for crying out loud.”

  “Before they were mothers, they were immortals,” Cym said.

  “No.” I hated that they were so quick to condemn their own mothers. “This is a mistake.”

  “Oh, shut the hell up, Celeste!” Una leaped to her feet, hands in her mohawk. “Cymbeline’s mom just tried to off us like, a second ago. The Fire Elemental would kill us just to prove she could. My mother works at killing me one smackdown at a time.” She didn’t falter. “Vera’s got reason to want her mother dead, and you can bet it has something to do with us.”

  I sighed. “Number seven. If we use our magic, it weakens the Elementals.”

  “We can use that as a weapon,” Una said.

  “No matter what, we depend on them to help us keep The Gone under control,” I barked, gritting my teeth at Una.

  She sneered. “What makes you think The Gone is under our control anymore?”

  “Or ever was?” Cymbeline chimed in, bringing us to silence.

  The silence was broken by the sound of laughter and crunching leaves. All of our heads whipped around to see Delcine, tottering through the brush in boots with four-inch heels, tipping back a bottle of Jack Daniels, dusk sheathing her.

  Walking in step with her, tangled hair falling across her freckled face, her one visible eye trained on me, was the Witch of Wicked Words.

  Chapter 12

  Delcine sat on the end of my log, crossing her long legs and lighting up a cigarette. “This is the stupidest party in the woods I’ve ever seen,” she said. “Not one boy here, demon or otherwise.” She threw the empty bottle of Jack on the ground with a pointed look at the Earth Elemental’s daughter. It didn’t matter that they’d come together; they were still worlds apart.

  “You found us,” Cymbeline said, eyes on Vera the whole time. Vera stood apart from us, staring, but not watching. She wore a tattered sleeveless sundress, even though it was dusk in October. She had no shoes on.

  Delcine put her chin in her hand, elbow on her knee, to look close at Cymbeline. Cym ducked her head, twisting her hands in her lap anxiously. I wanted to hold them for her but she could handle an unkind look. The Witch of Sweets still infuriated me.

  “Listen, Delcine, you’ve got your own agenda, and there’s a reason you weren’t asked to be here,” I said, hands on my hips. It felt dumb, and I hung them at my sides. “You’ve made it pretty obvious that you want Lux for yourself, or for the Fire Elemental.”

  “Lux?” Una said. Crap.

  Delcine laughed, head thrown back. “You know more about him than you’re letting on,” she said, like she was proud of me. “I should be taking notes.” She said that like I was a joke.

  “You know his name,” Cymbeline said.

  “I spoke with him, that’s all. He’s been in classes with me.”

  I didn’t think twice of lying to them about Lux. Talking about him the way we were, it was easy to think of him as a demon. But if I stopped, I could only see him. He deserved a chance. I gave the Poisons chances, even though most of them had deliberately given me reasons not to. Lux had been hidden away, had never hurt me, had something to offer that I’d never seen.

  I had no intention of telling them I was meeting him that night. And there I was, accusing Delcine of having a hidden agenda. The thief always diverts attention to someone else to cover up his own crimes.

  Too many of us had something to gain from having a demon on their side, or for destroying him. I was questioning whose team I was really on.

  Everyone was looking at me, all with different expressions. Even Vera, striped and spotted moth wings around her eyes in a spine-tingling wreath. But it was always Una who spoke up.

  “You’re no better than us, Stars. You haven’t got some specialness because Spirit’s your mother. You lie like the rest of us, and you’re scared like the rest of us.”

  “Fine. I haven’t told you everything and I probably never will. If that makes me like all of you, well, I guess I could do worse. You all handle yourselves pretty damn well.” Clearing my throat, I turned attention back to Delcine. “How did you get—Vera—to come?”

  Vera cocked her head at me, alien-like, as if she could tell I was talking about her but didn’t understand the words.

  “Vera,” Delcine said, drawling the name out, “knows she can trust me. I’m the only one who will talk to her after what she’s been through.”

  Una stomped over to us. “Bullshit. You’re using her. But I’ll tell you what, Sweets, Little Miss Raised-by-Wolves over there is no fool. She’s using you, too.”

  “She’ll Whisper to you,” Cymbeline said.

  Una leered at Delcine, who wasn’t in the least put off. “And you’ll have to do what she says.”

  We all looked at Vera, the setting sun running away from her, putting a halo around her dull red snarls.

  “So, what do you want, Vera?” I trembled when asking, terrified she’d come near enough to tell me.

  Her voice cracked as if a volcano had erupted inside her and scorched her voice and words. “I want The Gone to come alive.”

  It was as if the air had been sucked out of me again, for the second time that day. “The Gone?” I sputtered. I wanted her to get as far away from me as I could get her. But I had to make her work for us.

  Vera’s eyes glowed golden like she’d stolen the heat from the setting sun. “The Chains have no truth to them. I want truth.”

  Una said, “You want trouble. Don’t be dramatic.”

  Vera didn’t even look at her. Her eyes were on me and me alone. I could feel that she had something with Lux, and she knew that I did, too. And I knew that The Gone was a place for the hopeless. I should have been surprised it had taken her this long to want to see it.

  Delcine’s laugh rang through the darkening woods too loudly. “Good! We could use a little chaos around here! The Chains are dull as hell. This place never changes,” she said holding her arms out around her. She smoldered when she said, “I want to know what The Gone has to offer.”

  “No, Del. Don’t lose hope,” I whispered. I don’t know if the others knew what I meant.

  Delcine was full of more fire than her mother. Passion radiated from her skin, and not just for boys. Another secret of mine was that I knew hers. I’d seen my mother glowing, actually glowing, a berry-tinted golden light that lit up her smile like the sun. She gave me a vision of what had ignited her spirit; Delcine. The Witch of Sweets in her bedroom, full of replica artworks from every age, listening to an opera with tears in her eyes.

  All I saw in Delcine’s eyes now was disappointment.

  Cymbeline looked lost in thought. “The demon is empty. He’s full, but he’s empty.” Great. Cym finds someone to connect with, and it’s Lux. She looked at Delcine and said, “The Gone is the same, but worse.”

  “It’s got to have something better than this.”

  I took Delcine’s hand. “You have so much life. Don’t throw it away trying to go somewhere you shouldn’t be.”

  Delcine licked her lips, pulled a nip of some kind of booze out of her purse, and downed it. She faced m
e with me with the smoothness of a much older femme fatale. “Nothing,” she growled through gritted teeth, “has flavor for me anymore. Nothing feels anymore. I’m sick,” spit covered her lips, “of tempting and never being tempted. My heart beats for more. If it’s sweet, I want to taste it. If it stings, I want to feel it. And if it’s bad, baby, I wanna do it.”

  Suddenly I feared the Poisons getting a key to The Gone more than I did anything else.

  Chapter 13

  The woods went dark fast. Cymbeline held open her empty hands and filled them with a daytime’s worth of light, making us all gasp. We talked for so long, I’d nearly forgotten that the Air Elemental was still on the other side of the woods, waiting for us. But it felt like her attack at the house had been an unplanned stab, a roadblock to prevent exactly what we’d done—work together. She wouldn’t try it again so soon.

  We left the woods unafraid. And with a plan.

  We didn’t trust each other, but we all wanted the same thing—to get to Lux, and even though not a one of us said it out loud, to have him on our side if it came down to a war between The Gone and The Chains. Or a war between the Elementals and the Poisons.

  We all wanted something more than that, too. The demon held something for each of us. Me, Del, all of us—we all had a missing thing that Lux seemed able to provide. I shouldn’t have trusted him, but being able to trust someone was another thing I needed.

  So, we’d all go to school the following day only long enough to find Lux, and invite him to Cymbeline’s spot in the woods. No magic, just talk. He’d breached The Chains for us, no matter what the reasons. It was our turn to seek him.

  I didn’t mention that I could have gotten him to the woods at that very moment if I chose. My coven underestimated me, and maybe that wasn’t terrible. I didn’t tell them I’d be with Lux that night, as soon as I brought Una home, under the cover of my stars instead of in strange woods.

  Cymbeline’s house was coming into view; I felt bad leaving her there.

  “Cym, if you want to come to my house tomorrow and maybe sleep over, I think that would be cool,” I said as Una got in the Buick. Delcine and barefoot Vera were already gone.