The Wind Between Worlds

by Julie Hutchings

  “These woods don’t feel like any place in The Gone,” Lux muttered, looking up at the trees. “It feels like things can change here.”

  The stories my mom told me of demons and The Gone gave me nightmares; terrible tortures and betrayals, monsters overtaking and dragging souls through the fiery battlefields of The Gone, never to be recovered. She’d never told me that demons could be kids like me. My own coven scared me more than Lux did; the threat of what they might do to me seemed so much greater.

  That was Lux’s real power; he could make me want to be with him, want to change my whole world. I’d been given these visions of our worlds for so long, and I was ready to abandon them. It didn’t feel like he was taking anything from me, it felt like he was giving me something that mattered more.

  My heart was ready to burst. He looked adorable, the mess that he was, all dressed up, kicking leaves with a smirk, his demon horde family dancing in his eyes. I took his hand. I took the responsibility of keeping him happy like this, making him happier.

  “I want to live past Halloween, to see autumn end with you,” I said. “The last of pumpkin picking, the candy, the smoke from chimneys. I want to be here for the start of winter, the Christmas lights being hung too early. I don’t want to see Halloween as a ritual—I want to see it as my birthday. I want to see winter as a beginning. When I look at the sky through the treetops like you are, I want to see the stars through the snow. I want to live to show it to you like I see it.”

  Sadness dragged the autumn air down. He squeezed my hand. “I want you to live for my own reasons.”

  Cymbeline ghosted up next to me with Una, taking me by surprise. Not far behind was Delcine, with a can of beer and a boy. She shoved the beer can into his hands and turned him back towards the road with a deep kiss that made me blush.

  “You guys interrupted my date,” Delcine said. “So, let’s get this thing moving. I want a new demon boy.”

  Vera appeared out of nowhere with a chorus of cicadas. It was such a disgusting sound. Una swore in her general direction. “He follows you,” Vera breathed at me.

  “He’s here with you already?” Cymbeline asked, looking hurt. Lux was pretending to ignore them, but I saw the tension of his shoulders from between the trees, his stillness. I wanted the leaf-kicking boy back.

  “Yeah, I took him straight from class. I Wished us here.” I couldn’t be bothered to hide it, couldn’t care what they saw when they looked at me. I had to believe I was the voice of reason and I had to stand behind my actions. Lord knows the others did.

  “Nice going, Celeste,” Una said, walking up behind me and flipping my silver hair up. “You Wished him here?”

  “I had to. You guys, he’s afraid of all of us together, but he’ll never say it—”

  “Well, look who knows an awful lot about our boy,” Delcine said through snarling, kiss-puffed lips.

  I stiffened my spine. “You should be thanking me. In the wrong hands—”

  “I bet he’s been in your hands,” Delcine growled.

  “—he would be the end of us. We’re lucky—you’re lucky—that he talks to me. It could save us.”

  I took a deep breath and started with what I’d seen in my basement. I told the Poisons what my mom had said about Lux having healing powers. The war between all of us—the Elementals with each other, The Gone and The Chains, our families—it was more muddled and more clear by the second. Every second hurt. And Lux was wanted on every side at any cost.

  “They wanted to destroy The Gone?” Delcine gasped. “But that would destroy the balance of…. everything.”

  “Not they,” I said. “Only my mom. She tricked your mothers into it.” I tried not to hang my head, but failed. Cymbeline put her hand on my shoulder.

  Una threw a rock at a tree, knocking an empty frame down. “Whatever it is that the Spirit Elemental wants, she clearly thinks it’s worth the risk of destroying the goddamn world order over. It’s more than being scared of more demons coming across.”

  “What could be so important?” Cymbeline stood close to me. She felt safe with me, and I felt safer with her.

  Delcine’s usual condescending sneer returned. “I bet I know.” Both she and Una glared at me, as though I should be ashamed.

  “You can’t make me feel bad that my mother loves me.” But still wants to kill me.

  “Oh no?” Una started. “You don’t feel bad that The Chains are at risk? That because of you—”

  I pushed Una’s shoulder hard, and she fell on her ass. “Stop frigging fighting me, Una! She’s hiding something!” I swallowed back tears. I wouldn’t let her see them. “She wants to hide something. Maybe my life isn’t as perfect as you think; I just don’t have bruises to show for it.”

  Lux had quickly come to my side, and I bristled with pride over it. The Chains, The Gone, world order, all of it was secondary to the fact that he could be next to Del or Cymbeline, or helping Una up, but he stood with me.

  “Stop fighting amongst yourselves,” Lux said evenly. “You don’t stand a chance if you don’t work together.”

  Una got to her feet, not bothering to brush off the leaves that clung to her. “And why in hell should we listen to you?”

  “Your anger is the most vivid of all your colors,” Lux murmured. His eyes glazed over as he stared at Una. Where I only saw the usual brash Witch of Shades, he saw something else. He left my side and stepped to her, and she waited for him. They were alone in that moment. Softly he said to her, “If the Water Elemental stole me away, if your mother had supreme power, she would use me to paint The Chains with your colors, ripping them from you one by one until your blankness pained you more than her fists.”

  Lux turned to Delcine next. I saw that each of us held something for him to lust after. The stab of jealousy tore me in half.

  “Witch of Sweets,” Lux said. “Deadly delicious. The Fire Elemental would erase you. With all other threats gone, the heat in her would beg for a new adversary. You match the description far too well.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Delcine said, not as easily swayed by his voice as Una had been.

  I got defensive, protective. “Hey, we’re the ones who wanted him here. This isn’t an attack. Let’s not act like our mothers. We have no reason not to trust him. He’s the Royal Demon of Lust, and the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.”

  “Demon of Lust. So you’re here to get in our pants?” Una. Always the forward thinker. Lux shot her a look, but didn’t deny it.

  His lips turned up. “I apologize if that’s all you think lust is.”

  “But I feel your want,” Cym said. Boy, did that ever get my attention.

  He went slowly to her, each step crisp and determined. “You all hold something for me,” he said in a voice he’d never used with me. “Something I can never attain. Carnal lust that smells like cherries and forever.” His eyes lingered on Delcine’s lips. “The Witch of Wicked Words speaks to my blackest depths, wants the same things I do in places I don’t like to go. And I would color the world with Una as we saw fit. And you, my Empty Thing, your heart echoes like my own. It’s found no one worthy to fill it, but time is always moving, love.” Her chin rested in his palm, eyes ever wider, lip trembling. “The glimmer of hope in your eyes complements your vacant heart beautifully.”

  “Beautiful,” Una muttered. Apparently I wasn’t the only one on fire with jealousy. “How can he think that buck-toothed, hubcap-eyed, see-through weirdo is—”

  Lux trained his eyes on Una, who just seemed to be on the receiving end of anger today. “In a life full of shadows, Cymbeline was the first truly beautiful thing I’d ever seen.” His eyes immediately swung to me, glittering blue snaked with black that threatened to take them over. I saw the demons looking out with more lust than Lux himself was capable of, desperate to see the Poisons, their counterparts, in the flesh. Lux had done something they never could.

  He winced and took my hand, the demons closed tight behind his lids. Fighting them was easier f
or him in the woods. Pulling me close to his chest as the others watched, he whispered in my ear, “It’s you for me. You’ve wrapped yourself around my heart, and the tighter you squeeze, the easier I breathe.”

  “Okay, enough of this crap,” Del said, but not with her usual bite. She took a beer can out of her purse and cracked it open. “Tell us something that matters, Lux.”

  Una was still painted with rage. “Can you stop drinking for like, one second?”

  “Why? I’m a witch, not a Cub Scout leader.” Del smirked and took a sip.

  “This is serious, Sweets. And it’s Girl Scout leader,” Una said.

  “No. Cub Scouts would pay more attention to me. I know which is which, Una. I’m a slut, not an idiot.”

  “You’re neither,” I said firmly. “Don’t listen to what your frigging mother says, Delcine. You’re a better woman than her already.” I surprised myself with how much I meant it.

  Lux backed away from me, and looked at all of us in turn. “Your mothers cannot be trusted.”

  “You came from Hell to tell us that? I’ve got six or seven bruises that beat you to the punch. Get it?” Una shifted her feet, glaring at me instead of laughing at her own joke.

  Lux swaggered to the empty chair, a prince in every sense, even if it was of the dark and dirty. He was no longer out of his element. Our curiosity had us at his mercy—I would have listened to him recite a grocery list.

  He crossed his legs, one arm over the back of the rickety chair, more at home in the woods in a suit than the animals were. “Story time, girls,” he said. Silently we sat in a circle around him, even Delcine in her skirt, on the forest floor. And he began.

  “Your mothers are going to kill you. This Halloween, your seventeenth birthdays.”

  I looked at the others, taking in their shock. Poor, sweet Cymbeline had tears pooling in her eyes. Before that week I’d known her as sort of a monster, able to create something where there was nothing, and her imagination came up with some pretty terrifying stuff. Knowing her the way I’d come to, the little girl façade wasn’t an act—she was that vulnerable, but still so wildly brave to use her magic any way she wanted to, even if it was for the wrong reasons. I should have been doing that. I should have been stronger.

  Una was glaring around the woods, taking clumps of leaves in her hands and crushing them. For her, the Elementals’ death plot must not be so hard to believe, and she was red in the face with anger that her suspicions were all true. Her mother would miss abusing her more than she’d miss anything else about her.

  Vera sat still as death, sinfully smug.

  Delcine was the first to freak out.

  “No! She told me— My mother told me that we’d rule The Chains together! Fire and Temptation, it would be—” She shook her head, ruby red bottom lip trembling. I hated seeing her reduced to tears. It was too unlike her, too much like watching the fall of a Hollywood starlet.

  “Come on, Del, you didn’t seriously think the Fire Elemental was going to share, did you?” Una said. Delcine had nothing to say. But she screamed from so deep, I thought my heart would burst. The pain of wanting the love of her mother, who betrayed her every minute of her life with the terrible things she said, that she made her own daughter believe, taking advantage of the heated desire that made her who she was. A sickening odor like burning vinegar and too-sweet chocolate emanated from the Witch of Sweets. Poison burning from the inside out.

  Lux continued, “All of the Elementals want my help. I get visions from them all, wanting me with so much force that it pulled me from The Gone.” A wry smile scarred his expression. “I couldn’t live without it anymore. As we speak, they’re working their devious little minds to burning, trying to figure out how to keep the five of you at odds so you won’t see the truth before they can end you.”

  “Why?” I asked. “I still don’t know why.”

  He looked deeply into my eyes. “Your Elementals are bound to each other in their immortality. They were once this world’s witches, like you, long ago, but death loomed over them like any human. They found a way to make their lives everlasting, by giving to the power that gave to them. Living sacrifices.”

  “The Poisons,” I whispered.

  “The Elementals are rooted in the world, but the Poisons fill needs. The world needed the exact kind of magic that you command, and the Elementals brought it to life. Your power has potential, it grows, it feeds, it is ever-changing. That of the Elementals is lasting, but never new. They’ve told you to keep your magic strong by reserving it, but the only thing you’re reserving it for is their use.”

  Una piped up, “So let me guess. On Halloween, they cash in all our reserved power by murdering the shit out of us.”

  He didn’t have to answer.

  “I don’t buy that you know all this because their lust called to you or whatever,” Una said, wiggling her hands, mocking him. “You’re not telling us everything.”

  “Oh my God.” It became clear, and I believed every word he said when it did. “That’s what you meant when you said The Chains speak to you.”

  “Wait, what?” Delcine snapped out of her sulking and drinking.

  My stomach plummeted. “I knew there was more to them than just being chain links, that never made sense, and then when that one grabbed Del on her birthday….”

  “I thought I was going crazy,” Delcine said. “What are they, Lux?”

  He held his own chain link in his hand, rolling it over and over. Not like a plaything, but like he felt honored to touch it, wanted to feel every inch of it. We all touched our own representations of The Chains as one. Lux looked so sad when he said, “That they make you wear representations of The Chains—demoralizing. They bind you together in ignorance, fear, guilt.” He wiped a palm over his face. “I’ve spent a long time thinking of how to tell you this, but it never becomes any clearer,” he said, eyes roving over each of us in turn, and ending on mine. “The Elementals have mothered countless daughters. Witches. On their seventeenth birthdays, when their powers are at their strongest, the Elementals use the witches’ blood to create newborns.”

  Murmurs of “I’m not an only child?” and “I had sisters,” tumbled from our lips amidst groans and gagging.

  “The Chains are human souls, stretched as far as they can go to protect the magic that created them. The power gave them their lives and they will forever serve it. Their spirits are wound together when their lifeblood is drained, and the greater the web they create, the more of The Gone they cover. Holding it down so those hopeless souls won’t ever rise again.”

  I looked down at Link like a lead weight had been tied to my neck. I started to speak, but no words could come out, not over the sobs that shook me as I held that piece of a person in my hand. It was more grotesque than anything I could have ever thought of. And I owed my life to it.

  My head snapped up when Una ran off, leaned against a tree and vomited. Delcine went to her side, her shoulders shaking. Vera and Cymbeline sat silently, stiffly, staring into the woods, their fingers entwined. We were more than the Poisons—we were sisters. Buried under the same magic that made us, unified in the hate we’d been fed. We were five against the world, but there had been so many more before us. I gripped Link and felt it—her—speak through my blood.

  “Spells create, raise and keep the world. The Chains hide and strangle its magic.”

  “Lux,” I whimpered, my mind a whirlwind. I was the one who was supposed to save my coven? I couldn’t just stop there; these wrongs had to be righted. I couldn’t turn my back on the horror of it. How could I even survive?

  Una, pacing, was becoming more and more feral in her fury. White bolts shot from her body like an electrical storm. “They call them The Chains because we’re fucking captive to them! They don’t hold down reality or keep anything safe! They hold us down. Who named them The Chains? Witches, just like us. And here we are, struggling, when we should be the strongest force on the planet!”

  Vera finally spoke.
“Slaves when we should enslave.”

  “Instead, you’ve been kept apart with lies,” Lux said. “Work together and you could own the world instead of being these pinned butterflies.”

  Una calmed at that, the lightning bolts fizzling to sparks that licked her skin. “So, what do we do?” she asked Lux. I bristled that she hadn’t asked me. She must have noticed because she spun on me. “If you wanted to run the show, Celeste, you shouldn’t have kept secrets from us.”

  “I didn’t! Well, not many. I can have some secrets! I don’t have to trust you with everything! You trust me with nothing!”

  “That isn’t true,” Una said. “But I won’t make the mistake of thinking you’re different from them again. You’re just like the Elementals, only nicer.”

  Vera said, “She makes wishes like the child I was.”

  “It’s true,” Delcine said, and I started to feel like a cornered animal. “Why have the power to move stars if you don’t use it? Your mother’s more important to you, that’s why. We’re created from the same blood, but the woman who would kill you comes first. And if not her, a demon,” she spat. “How can we ever trust you, Celeste?”

  As evenly as I could, I said, “I don’t need magic to make me strong. I don’t need magic to lead you, to help us save each other. But magic can’t make me perfect.”

  “But your boyfriend here said you have the power because the world requires it.” Una was delighted to turn her anger out, at anyone she could. And I was easy prey. Some leader.

  “Fine, Una. You want to hear that I’m too weak to use my magic? That it scares me? You’ve always thought I was weak anyway. But things don’t need to be changed by magic just because they can be. Look what magic has made us! We hate each other.” They all looked at the ground then, and for as proud as we all were to be the world’s only witches in our own ways, we all held shame close to our hearts for different reasons, too. I held my head high. “One thing that does need to change is this coven. We need to choose us over the Elementals. We need to help the witches that came before us.” The Chains quaked in the ground at my words.