The Wind Between Worlds

by Julie Hutchings

  Lux had wandered off. We’d disappointed him. He’d come from The Gone, risked the wrath of his family to help us. After all, he was helping us—me—when he should have been trying to gain footing and free The Gone from our hold. He pitied us; we were more oppressed than he was. At least the hopeless in The Gone knew they were captive. The Poisons had been fools.

  “Lux!” I called as he got further away. I couldn’t have him that far away, the only one who entirely believed in me. He bent down to pick up some woodland thing that intrigued him, and when he did, leaves and dirt erupted from the ground, creating a curtain so thick that I could hardly see Lux in it. A tornado of earth and twigs, leaves and rocks, whipping around him, coming together and forming her.

  Vera’s mother, the Earth Elemental.

  She towered as tall as the trees, her figure made of the darkest dirt and sharpest rocks. Her massive eyes blinked like the closing of caves, no warmth of the woods behind them. There was no Spirit Elemental influence in her, none of the Mother Nature sweetness.

  Lux was trapped inside of her storm, and in the blink of an eye she’d sucked him into the torn forest floor, leaving only rusty leaves swirling in their wake.

  “No!” I ran to the shivering ground where they’d been, as quiet as it had been seconds before he was taken away from me. The earth rumbled, making tortured groaning noises. I could just see the chain links under the dirt, barely visible but definitely there. Always there.

  As the dust and leaves settled around me, I saw Vera across the woods. A nightmare doll in the fading sunlight in her sundress and bare feet, red hair fettered with bones hanging in her face. She didn’t move, just watched me with her chin on her chest.

  “Vera,” I whispered. But she heard me. Her lips turned up in a grim smile cracking the fingers of the red hand painted over her mouth and chin. She walked towards me, and if I could have run without being totally ashamed of myself, I would have.

  “You’ve seen her evil,” the Witch of Wicked Words said, inches from me, grinning painfully wide.

  I nodded; it was all I could do. “Where did she take Lux? Vera, please.”

  “No.” I let out a breath as Vera took her eyes off me and looked at the pulsing earth. She swept her foot through it gently, then dug her toes in, curling them like claws, the tendons standing out on top. Moths wiggled out of the ground around her. The smile was still there, even though tears streamed down her face.

  “Vera, you want the Elementals dead, and so does Lux. Help me get him back.”

  “It starts with one. The proof is in the blood-drenched earth,” she said.

  “You sound like him.” It pained my heart that they were so alike, the way they spoke.

  Her eyes were wild when she snapped her head back up, tears trickling over her widened lips. “He’ll listen to my Whisper,” she said. “He’ll kill her to save himself.”

  “I don’t think he can do it alone, Vera. I don’t think your mom—”

  “Don’t call her that.”

  “—the Earth Elemental wants to hurt him. She wants him on her side.”

  Her grin faded and she looked so small suddenly, like a little girl. I couldn’t bear to think that she was one once. “But he has to,” she pleaded, “because I can’t.”

  “Why did you want her dead so much, Vera? Before you knew she would kill you first?” I felt like I was seeing puzzle pieces rearranged and forced to fit together in the wrong ways, but I was trying to see the layers of this thing, and that had to help.

  Vera spit when she spoke, and curled her broken fingernails into her hair like her toes were curled into the dirt. Her pain was worse than Lux’s, and it was only hers. “She. Did. This. To me,” she said.

  Chapter 17

  The wildness of the Earth Elemental’s storm was nothing next to the stillness of her daughter. We all watched, stunned as Vera’s whole body shook in a waking seizure. There but not there. Just as fast, she snapped out of it, not bothering to wipe the line of drool off her chin.

  “We have got to do something about how freaky you are,” Una said.

  “Leave Vera alone. She just watched her mother drag Lux into the earth,” Cymbeline said.

  Vera growled from her spot on a tree stump. “I have hurt. I own hurt. It’s mine. I want to use it.”

  “Jesus Christ, you creep. Can you just say something that isn’t weird as hell?”

  “Una,” I warned.

  Vera smiled at me, a real smile like I wanted to see. A normal one, despite the war paint. “It’s okay, Celeste. She doesn’t know. Nobody does.”

  “Know what?” I asked her quietly. Cymbeline inched closer to me and took my hand.

  “My mother loved me. She told me she did over and over.” She traced circles in the air with her finger. “’From snowfall to spring blooms,’ she said.” We all felt Vera losing herself in her mind. She could make us feel her from the inside out.

  All of our heads whipped around as we heard Whispers, thousands of them, in the trees, the air, vibrating under our shoes. Whispers that came from a spot in Vera’s belly that was glowing ever so faintly.

  “She made those men take me. She made me this. Had me locked in that dungeon and took my Whispers away, left me with only Wicked Words. Her love for me did it. This is the love I know. I want to make it awful for her.”

  Una and Delcine were shaking their heads, whispering to each other in confusion, while Cymbeline squeezed my hand with her cold one. Big, round tears rolled down her porcelain face.

  Vera just stood, hands on the glowing spot on her belly, swaying to the rhythm of the Whispers inside her.

  It was a disgusting truth, I knew it like I knew my own name, like I knew Lux wasn’t crazy, like I knew that The Chains and The Gone weren’t what our mothers told us. Vera’s mother had arranged her kidnapping and torture, had ruined her this way.

  I hated that I knew why.

  “She did it to make you dark,” I said, inching towards Vera. “She wanted you to be evil and lost. She thinks you’re more powerful this way.”

  Vera lifted her head, eyes red with tears that had long since dried. Her voice was scratchy, underused. “She was right.”

  I gathered Vera into my arms tightly, ignoring Delcine’s gasp and Una’s swears. Vera struggled for a second, but went limp against me. Her nest of hair smelled like dirt. Owl feathers brushed my cheeks. If she hadn’t been born a witch, the poor girl would be normal. The power didn’t serve her at all.

  I held her close, held her up. “We can make you good again, Vera,” I whispered, fully aware that if she Whispered anything in my ear that I would never be the same.

  “I’m so glad we’re getting all our warm and fuzzies out, but we have to do something. Like, an actual thing.” Una stood in a thick mud puddle in her blank-slate white, hands on her hips. “We decided we wanted to talk to Lux,” she said, eyebrows raised with a glance to me, “but he’s gone.”

  “So we go get him,” Delcine said.

  “You can Wish him back,” Cymbeline said.

  I nodded. “I’ve done it before.”

  “She can’t,” Vera said. “The Earth Elemental has cursed the earth to keep you away.” I didn’t have to ask how she knew; Vera knew the darkest desires within us. I could only imagine what she knew about her own mother.

  “Great, now what?” Delcine said, taking another cigarette out of her bra.

  “We try anyway.” Una knelt in the mud, and dug her fingers into it. In an instant, her entire body, clothes and all, turned the rich color of soil. Her eyelids fluttered open, revealing that they too were as dark as the dirt. The Witch of Shades let out a scream, twisting her head inhumanly, tendons bulging.

  “Is she okay?” Delcine asked, voice trembling.

  “She’s strong,” I answered. The Elementals led us to believe that the Witch of Shades was the weakest of the coven, but Una used her power of color with the same brutal rawness of a shark ripping apart a dead whale.

  “She does
n’t look okay,” Delcine said.

  Una growled, convulsing violently, head snapping back and forth until I thought her neck would break, hands still buried in the earth. That’s where the color change began, her hands. A blood red took over the dirt shade, but Una wasn’t changing it from within; red seeped upwards from the ground, covering her hands, arms, shoulders, creeping up her face as her head whipped.

  “What do we do?” Delcine yelled, despair all over her face. The Witch of Sweets had no one to tempt; Empty Things had nothing to fill; Vera had no one to Whisper to, least of all Una who was wrestling and writhing so fast it hurt to watch, her body a blur with it, her bones cracking and snapping.

  This was what made me the leader of the coven. I was the only one who could help her.

  “I Wish Una to be free of the Earth!” The sky shuddered and bowed down above the canopy of trees, but no stars revealed themselves. Una’s face was covered in mucky blood red: her eyeballs, her hair, all of her. I Wished again, screeching into the woods for the stars to come to me, but the only reply was the sound of small animals scattering; they answered to the Earth Elemental, not to me.

  Una let out a strangled cry, and fell to the ground amidst the rest of our screams. The ground began sucking her in with painful slowness, as if it delighted in knowing it hurt us.

  “No!” Delcine ran to Una and pulled her arm as the other disappeared. I couldn’t move. Sweat trickled down my back.

  I was going to lose Una.

  Without Una, the coven would be broken; weakening, maybe eliminating, all of our powers with her. The Elementals would destroy us for our uselessness before we even made it to seventeen. We were growing out of their control and they were getting desperate enough to do it.

  And as if that wasn’t enough reason for me to get over my failure, the next thought slapped me back into action.

  If we lose Una we might not ever get Lux back.

  Cymbeline was on her knees, crying silently. She looked up at me and mouthed the word, “please.”

  I was angry at the stars for betraying me, but it wasn’t the stars that made me who I was. I used them.

  And I could use something else.

  I scanned the ground for something rising tall above the scattered leaves, something white against the fallen colors that got darker as the Witch of Shades disappeared. The leaves on the forest floor were blackening before my eyes. As the dark overran the ground, my eyes landed on the white bloom, a diamond against black velvet. A sparkling star in the midnight sky.

  A dandelion.

  I walked slowly to it, afraid it would blow away or the Earth Elemental would see my intent. Una sunk beyond reach, and Delcine let out a sob as her fingers let Una’s go.

  I picked the dandelion out of the ground, the faint snap of it overpowering the screams and tears, the rumble of the earth doing the unthinkable for its master.

  “I Wish for my friend to come back to us,” I whispered, and I blew the tiny feathers into the wind.

  The ground had gone still, its job complete. The air was silent.

  “I was too late,” I squeaked, and fell to the ground next to Cymbeline. “I was too late. She’s gone.” And Lux was gone. Our future, gone.

  Delcine slumped against the log where Una had been just moments before. Una, who took the lead and did what had to be done, even if she didn’t know it would work, even though it could take her life, showing us how powerful she was, because she decided to be. “What are we going to do without her?” Delcine said, her voice thick. “We can’t keep The Chains together without her.”

  “We’ll never get the chance,” Vera said.

  “I don’t want to keep The Chains like they are! They’re trapped souls! We’re worse than the Elementals if we don’t fix this. Worse than The Gone.” I meant every word.

  “We can’t do it without her. They’ve won,” Delcine muttered.

  “No,” I said gruffly, getting to my feet. “I won’t let the Elementals ruin us. We’re the Poisons, and we won’t be dismantled. I won’t let us be disposed of.”

  I still held the dandelion stem in my hand. It was naked.

  “It has no wishes left to grant,” Cymbeline said.

  Cymbeline.

  “It’s not just naked,” I said, my smile spreading wide across my face. “It’s empty.”

  Cymbeline staggered to her feet, wiping the tears from her cheeks. Her giant eyes crossed as she looked at the stem closely, and without a blink, she filled it again with the white fuzz. We all breathed a sigh of relief.

  The Earth Elemental hadn’t thought of everything.

  “Make this one count, Celeste,” Delcine said. Then she took my hand and squeezed it. Vera’s lips twitched. I had to do it. For them and for Lux, for The Chains. And for me. I wanted him with me, and I wanted my sister home. I wanted to win.

  I concentrated hard on the dandelion in my hand, dug my Wish out from under the desperation and fear, and Wished with all the desire I possessed to have my whole coven together.

  I wanted that. I lusted for it. To lead the Poisons and see how powerful we could be.

  “I Wish for the Witch of Shades to return to her coven,” I said, shocking myself with the menace in my voice.

  I blew the white fluff, scattering it to the wind, but only for a second before they came together again and formed a fuzzy little star, hanging in the air.

  “Now you guys blow,” I said. Una would have made a dirty joke about it. The others came together under the star, made silent wishes and sent the seeds flying once again.

  My heart swelled when the ground let out a wounded dog bellow before spitting a filthy Una out at us, tossing her limp body frightfully high into the air.

  “Oh my God!” I cried, watching her plummet, unconscious, back to the world.

  Delcine stepped forward and threw her hands wide, a magician presenting her latest trick, and streams of a red gelatin shot from her palms, its trail solidifying as it clung to tree branches in an intricate web of sticky sweet veins.

  “It’s too fragile, it won’t hold her!” I yelled desperately.

  “Shut up,” Delcine snapped as Una hit the spun sugar. The broken strands wrapped around her body like ropes and gently lowered her to the ground, with a sigh that sounded so alive it was chilling.

  Una squinted and blinked, dirt falling from her hair, that was no longer brown or red, but her original fake white again. “Nice, Spidey.”

  “It was nothing,” Delcine said, flicking her cigarette at the ground with a little more gusto than usual. She gave the soil the finger.

  Pulling the sticky bits off of herself, the tendrils unraveling and dissipating into the air, Una came to us looking not even a little shaken. She bit the chain link in her lip, spitting red stickiness off of it.

  “Well. The Gone can’t be any worse than the inside of your mother’s heart,” Una said, nodding at Vera. “That was—” She looked like she might vomit, but quickly stuck up her chin in that better-than-you manner of hers. “Where she brought me was black. I don’t mean it was dark…. I could see everything but there was nothing worth seeing. Like living tar. I don’t think I can ever use black again.”

  We believed her, every one of us. It was clear in our silence, the acknowledgement that she was giving up so much. Her colors were a piece of her, and this one had been forever tarnished by Vera’s mother.

  “She’s capable of good,” Vera said, shocking me.

  “Um,” my voice was hoarse, “I don’t know that she is, Vera. I mean, what reason do we have to think so?”

  “Yeah, look what she did to you.” Delcine finished my thought out loud and pulled a nip out of her bra, which seemed to house an endless supply of spoils. She looked at it once but gave it to Vera, who took it and merely held the tiny bottle with both hands against her breastbone, like a holy man would a cross.

  Una ran her fingers through her mohawk again, making me smile despite myself. It was something she did when she was prepared to take on th
e world. Her recovery from being dragged into the earth was truly admirable. I could never do that. She’d had to bounce back every single day. Her own mother was so awful to her.

  “We need Lux if we want to live. That’s the end of it,” I said, hating the idea of him in that place, more soulless than his own home.

  “No, you need Lux,” Una said. “This is about you and your boyfriend. We’ve never needed more than the Poisons before and we don’t need a demon now.”

  “This again? We don’t have time for bickering, Una! Do you not remember where you were, like seconds ago? We know who the enemy is now.” I looked at each of them in turn. It felt good to take control of the day once again, but it was exhausting. “We’ve never needed more than us before because we’ve never faced elimination before. The Elementals have murdered who knows how many witches, and we don’t stand a chance if we don’t think differently. We have to work together, as a coven, as sisters. And we need any weapon we can get on our side. Lux is the weapon they want. Are we going to let them have him?”

  “Una, she’s right. It doesn’t matter how she feels about him, she’s right. And I want to live.”

  “Thanks, Delcine.”

  “I want to see what happens next.”

  Things were falling into place, even if they left an ugly path behind them. Magic buzzed in me. Guilt that my magic was coming to life was easily suppressed after seeing what Vera’s mother had done to Una. Magic was given to us to use. Like only using ten percent of the brain; why have it? What’s it doing there?

  There’s a price to pay for everything with magic. I cared about the world balance, but not as much as my own life. It was time to pay up, and the price to stay alive might have to be my mother. She sacrificed for me, she made me sacrifice, and in the end one of us would have to make the greatest sacrifice we could. The balance was tipping, and I was the lynchpin.

  “I’m going after Lux,” I said, picking up my bag out of the leaves. “We need to choose sides; the demon boy or survival.” I took a deep breath. “The Elementals, or me.”