The Wind Between Worlds

by Julie Hutchings

  He was still while he listened to me ramble on about all the things my mother would tell me not to say out loud. He concentrated extra hard to absorb every word. “Your ideas are so beautifully simple, it must be maddening to not make them come true.”

  “They’re not ideas, they’re Wishes,” I said with more venom than intended. “Ideas are thought of, wishes have heart. I’ve heard enough wishes to know the difference. The best wishes have a little desperation buried in them.”

  “Or a lot of lust.”

  When it had become so late that even my mother would worry, I sighed and tried to pick out what I could use of this night for the next day.

  I still hadn’t told him that the Poisons planned to confront him.

  “I—we—have school tomorrow. Gotta go soon,” I said. I fell back on the blanket, and stared up at the stars. I felt them looking back at me. “Making sense of this—it’s like reading Shakespeare.”

  “I always wanted to read Shakespeare,” he said.

  It was the first thing I’d heard him say about himself that didn’t have the weight of worlds behind it. “Why don’t you?”

  “I can try,” he said mournfully. “While I’m here, I can try. The Gone offers everything and gives nothing. My simplest and most extravagant desires are at my fingertips, and they couldn’t be further away. I can read in The Gone, but I remember nothing, absorb nothing.”

  And yet he created a poetry all his own. It saddened me. “So that’s what Hell is like.”

  He swung his neck toward me. “Still think I come from Hell, do you?”

  “I—I’m sorry, but that sounds pretty awful.”

  “It’s not awful, it’s who I am.”

  I put my hand on his cheek without hesitation. “It’s only part of who you are. You’re more than just Lust, I know you can be.”

  “You wish that I was.”

  I saw The Gone in your eyes, but that isn’t all you—”

  “They tell you stories of The Gone, right? Of a place they’ve never seen?”

  “My mother’s told me stories, yes. The Elementals tell us all the same ones. They didn’t get it right, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong, you know?”

  He looked at me with such pity in his eyes that I cringed. I wanted to yell at him to stop looking at me like I was some lesser being—he was the one from beneath us, from a place where souls went to die, an empty world constantly evolving to become more evil. Perfect choice to tell my most embarrassing need for a real family to.

  Bowing his head, he said, “With all you’ve learned of me, Celeste, have you not seen what it is your mother wants?” He swallowed. “Have you not seen me?”

  My chest heaved. “I know she’s figured out how powerful you are. The Seventh Son of a Seventh Son would tip the scales, make the Elemental that has you invincible.”

  “That is the dented corner of a box you haven’t opened.”

  “Then open the box for me, Lux.”

  “You forget to whom you speak,” he said, taking my chin between his thumb and forefinger, his breath cold on my lips. “I need you to lust for the entire truth as much as you fear it and then give me the pleasure of exposing it for you, Celeste.“

  When I caught my breath, I was mad. “My life isn’t an outlet for you!”

  “I’m not trapped by who I am, Witch of Stars. I don’t need an outlet, I need to feel what I am. I want to feel it with you. But you’re more trapped than any soul in The Gone,” he sneered with royal arrogance. “Your Elementals would make a slave of me, just like they’ve done to you.” He leaned close, not for intimacy but for intimidation. “The stars speak to you, but The Chains do not?”

  I saw flickers of incoming voices cross through him, like shadows over a shadow. I felt him slipping away even as he reached out for me to give in.

  I didn’t want to be afraid.

  I pulled his slim hand to my heart, covering it with my own. If I’d been brave, I’d have Wished my fears away, but that was too scary for me. Instead I Wished to see what the Elementals lusted after. What they planned.

  That same black and green swarm of desire swept through me, like the things that hide under the forest floor, too ugly to be seen in light. I weeded through them and found the Elementals inside him, and I looked at them harder than I had ever looked at anything.

  “Celeste!” he cried out, and he was leaning over me, the stars a frame around his nightshade hair. I was on my back. A streak of pain shot through my head, and with it came the words that I couldn’t consider as real. Looking up at this stranger who knew me more than anyone, faster than anyone had ever tried to know me, I said what he wanted me to see.

  “The Elementals are going to kill us. All five of us. On our seventeenth birthday. And if you don’t help them, they’ll erase The Gone and everyone in it.”

  Chapter 14

  My hands were frozen, shaking on the wheel, but sweat stuck to my back and chest. I rolled down the window, autumn air slapping me hard, but it didn’t stop the jumble of images in my head, the pounding of my heart, the hopelessness that precedes my panic attacks. I was helpless against everything. The tug of war between my utter uselessness and overwhelming responsibility to everyone always sent me scrambling for good ol’ Prescription Panic Pills. This was worse, so much worse.

  I could try not to fail everyone, but that’s all I felt like I was doing.

  It was impossible, the Elementals plotting to kill us. To kill us. The truth was, I could believe it of the others—but my mom? The words didn’t even go together in a sentence. She was everything good and honest, the only person I trusted completely. Even if she couldn’t always do the best thing, she always did the right thing. And the way she looked at me—she wouldn’t want to live in a world without me.

  She wouldn’t destroy her only child.

  And yet, I didn’t just believe Lux, I tasted the truth of what he said when I used magic on him. I couldn’t think long enough to question why, and the more the panic meds settled in, the more I thought it was something I needed to hear in the presence of the Poisons anyway.

  I had to stop moving. I should be going home. I ignored my buzzing phone and that it was after midnight. I already knew the text would say I wasn’t in trouble, because I was never in trouble and Mom always made a point to say so whenever I might think I was. She didn’t blindly trust me—she knew I was reasonable. I had to be. I was strong enough to tether The Chains, even if I didn’t believe it. She believed in me.

  How was I supposed to believe she wanted me dead?

  I had to get ready for school in like, six hours. I had to be there to summon Lux to the woods, or the Poisons would do it without me.

  “No, no, no,” I said out loud. I should have given him the heads up. My stomach went cold. Then my insides just about froze when I finally pulled into my driveway. Their presence was cloying, like too much perfume and tension. My mom wasn’t alone; her half of our coven was with her. I ran inside, and dashed down to the basement, led by the smell of incense.

  None of them turned when I ran down the stairs; they were all focused on my mother. The Earth, Air, Water and Fire Elementals sat in our old dining room chairs around her, chanting in a language I’d never heard.

  My mother sat on a short stool in the center of them, eyes dark as tar. She was naked, not even wearing the chains on her shoulders and neck. In her hands she held high the frame of the giant brass pentagram. The bottom of it rested on her knees.

  This was a different kind of ritual than I’d ever seen. And it had to be something wild for the Elementals to come together for it.

  “Spiritus!” the five of them cried together, making me stumble back into a stack of dusty failed crafts.

  She wasn’t my mother then, just the Spirit Elemental. Too powerful to look at directly. The incense-thick air became heavier with magic, making my chest hurt. My mother threw her head back as a stream of fire wound around her bare body. A rush of wind blasted her from above, whipping her hair;
water bubbled up from the ground until it puddled around her ankles, and from it exploded a shower of dark dirt. When all the elements came together, my mother’s head dropped, teeth bared, and she bent the brass hoop in her hands effortlessly, bowing it into a hemisphere in a show of magical strength. The semi-circle sucked the elements in, creating a vicious storm that my mother held like Atlas on her shoulders. When the storm grew too powerful to contain itself, the pentagram snapped back to shape with a deafening mesh of wind, crackling fire, and screeching metal. Spirit didn’t even flinch.

  In the destroyed spot on the ground where the storm had touched down, amid the broken rubble of the floor, was a tiny city. It was so little that I wouldn’t have been able to see it from where I stood had it not been for the glowing lights from its windows and the movement of people in its miniature streets. Cotton-ball sized clouds even hovered over the buildings. A dollhouse-perfect vision with evening purple buildings, magenta cobblestones, and golden lights.

  “The Gone,” I whispered.

  The Elementals got down on their hands and knees simultaneously, apart from my mother, and stared into the tiny city; the miniature people didn’t notice, like they were in a crystal ball, but not even a globe of glass protected them.

  My mother sat, head high, looking down at her coven with heavy lids. “Now,” she said.

  My stomach lurched.

  The four Elementals raised up on their knees, hands held above their heads, closing them into fists. Ready to smash The Gone.

  “No!” I screamed, scrambling to get to them. The Elementals snapped into alertness, noticing me for the first time in their trance, but the Spirit Elemental had them back in their places with a single chanted word.

  “Celeste,” my mom gasped, blinking once. That little movement caused a sliver of distrust to open in me. “Baby, I was wondering when you’d be home. You were with him. Weren’t you?” The Spirit Elemental softened, her eyes my mom’s again—but still so exposed, the pentagram doing nothing to cover her intent.

  She certainly didn’t look like I’d weakened her just then. And I’d used so much magic, more than the day before when she looked so ill. The sliver of distrust widened.

  “What’s going on, Mom?” Look around you, moron—she’s destroying The Gone.

  “Yes, what is going on, Damaris?” the Fire Elemental hissed. It had been so long since I’d heard my mother’s name spoken, it carried a power all its own. “This is no summoning of a demon—you bewitched us. You used our powers against us!” Her anger propelled her to her feet, and the others soon followed, pointing their fingers and hissing, spitting.

  In her breathy voice, the Air Elemental said, “You told me that this was to help us regain the powers the Poisons have been robbing us of.”

  My mother’s eyes swung to me. She was lying to them, too. Making them use magic that even she couldn’t handle alone—destroying an entire world. They’d created it together, and it would take all of them to decimate it.

  “Destroying The Gone would outrage the demon, make him impossible to control or to bargain with,” I said, more to myself than to the Elementals.

  “Yes,” the Earth Elemental said, eyes wild. “What reason would you have to make an even greater enemy for us?” Then the other Elementals chimed in, growing frantic.

  “To end the purpose of our existence?”

  “Expose our magic to the fools of this world?”

  “Possibly unleash the demons upon us?”

  “No,” I said, mind working out all the angles, becoming more afraid all the time. “If The Gone could be obliterated, why wouldn’t you have done it before, Mom? Why are you willing to destroy the balance now?”

  “Have your loyalties shifted with the balance, as well?” my mother said. To me.

  My eyes got hot. Trust had never been a question between us. No matter what happened with the rest of the coven, we were a team. But we couldn’t trust each other anymore.

  She didn’t give birth to you. You’re not really her daughter. Never before had I let that thought rise to the surface, but then seemed like the time.

  As fast as my mind was working, I knew my mother’s would work faster. She knew if I’d spent time with Lux, he’d have told me things that endangered the Elementals’ plans.

  Sort it out fast, Celeste. The Elementals were arguing amongst themselves, my mother hearing none of it, only watching me.

  If she knew Lux was the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, she knew he was the Lust Demon, and I’d bet she knew that I was his counterpart. She’d know I was angry that information was kept from me—he was a part of me that I’d been missing. She would worry that I’d be angry enough to believe him about her murder plan. She’d worry that I’d been spending time with the Poisons and that we would rebel before our seventeenth birthday, with the power of the Royal Demon on our side.

  I had no idea where my loyalties were anymore. I was lying to everyone—except Lux. I was really only thinking of myself.

  “My loyalties are always with you, Mom, how can you even say that?” I felt like a liar the second it came out.

  “This is insane!” the Earth Elemental screeched, stepping closer to my mom. The ground rumbled beneath our feet. “You nearly made us destroy The Gone and all the souls trapped there. Why? How can the Spirit Elemental, of all of us, want to destroy a realm full of souls?” There was hurt in her voice. I realized that for all their struggles, the Earth Elemental respected my mother. It was disturbing.

  My mother sat immobile, exuding control.

  “I owe you nothing, least of all an explanation,” Spirit said, her voice chilled. “Now get out. All of you. Be thankful I haven’t gotten angry.”

  I was afraid for them to leave me alone with her. Those monsters to leave me with my own mother.

  “I’ll get answers one way or another,” the Fire Elemental said, and with a devious smile she exploded into a pillar of flame and was gone. The others disappeared in bursts of their own elements, leaving us in the ruins of the basement.

  She stood, unabashed by her nudity. I’d seen her naked before—witches weren’t known for being discreet—but this time she felt dirty to me.

  “Mom, I need answers,” I said shakily.

  “I think we both need some answers, baby,” she said as she padded past me, and went up the stairs. The tiny city of The Gone vanished like a popped bubble.

  Guilt flooded me as I mouthed a Wish for its safety and my own.

  Wobbly with nerves, I leaned against the basement wall and texted Una, asking if she was okay. Of all of us, she was surely in the most danger. She only said that the “human tsunami” wasn’t home yet. She joked, but I could just about smell the fear through the phone. Seconds later she texted asking why I’d asked. I couldn’t answer her. I put the phone back in my pocket and marched up the stairs.

  “Mom?”

  “In here,” she said, her voice firm, but sweet. She sounded good. The magic had done that for her. Or had it been because she pulled a fast one on the other Elementals, and on me?

  She was in the kitchen, right where I expected her to be, brewing a cup of tea, already in sweats and a hoodie, the chains on her shoulders making bumps under the fabric.

  “You’re wearing the chains under your clothes,” I said.

  She turned, two mugs in her hands, and smiled at me with the grace of a queen. “I wanted to feel them close to me,” she said, with a hint of sadness.

  “Why would you want that? It’s not like you ever get a day off from them.”

  “Celeste, The Chains aren’t my cross to bear,” she said, shaking her head. “They’re part of my spirit, of me. Just like you.”

  Part of me. Like Lux is part of me, I thought with a surge of anger.

  “Mom, I don’t know where to start with what I saw downstairs.”

  “Well then, let me. The Gone needs to be extinguished before the demons grow more powerful. That one of their own is here—”

  “It’s scary that a
demon breached The Chains. It’s not an excuse to destroy The Gone.”

  “We can’t afford to let any more demons come across.” She took a deep breath. “And we can’t afford to let the one that’s here go back. We need him.” She was masking desperation, but her spirit showed its unease.

  “What do you know about him, Mom?”

  She smiled, the same warm smile I knew. Not the witch that had very nearly destroyed a world in our basement. “I know he’s the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. I know that he’s got powers that even he could not comprehend, a boy of his age, but the Royal Demons believe he will be instrumental in a war against The Chains. He has incredible healing abilities that will make them all but invincible. And I know he could be invaluable to us in taking over the Elementals and ridding ourselves of their pettiness once and for all.”

  My head spun and I had to sit down on one of the breakfast bar stools. Healing powers sure didn’t sound evil. The idea of such a wonderful gift made my blood warm. As more cuts tore across my life, I hoped he could heal me.

  And there was more to what she wanted him for. It was obvious. “Smashing his entire world to ensure his help sounds pretty drastic. Not to mention mean. And what would we do to the Elementals?”

  She put her elbows on the counter like she’d done so many times when we talked about boys, or how fat she felt one day, or how much we needed to go away for a weekend. “Demons need to be dealt with as the soulless things they are, Celeste. And as for the Elementals, they see me as the threat that would make slaves of them. And they would be right.”

  An echo of Lux’s words. He’d said they would make a slave of him. It was all too interconnected for him not to be telling the truth.