Resurrection

by Zed Amadeo

  “What are you doing here?” the raspy male voice asked me. I didn’t want to turn around and see who it belonged to. Though the creature was tugging my other shoulder in the opposite direction, I was still too scared to move.

  “Did you hear me?” he asked again, now yelling. “I said, what are you doing here?” He grabbed my shoulders and forcefully rolled me onto my back.

  “Nothing,” I said. My lips trembled with every word. “I just want to leave.”

  “You’re one of the Ordinary aren’t you?” he asked. “I can tell.” I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I didn’t respond.

  “How did you end up here?” he bellowed.

  “I don’t know!” I said, close to tears. “Please, I just want to leave!” He shook his head.

  “Do you know what we do to people like you?” he asked. “We can’t just let you leave.” He whistled, and within seconds I was surrounded by a crowd, staring at me from all angles.

  There was going to be no getting out of here for me.

  The man who had discovered me grabbed my legs, while someone else took my arms. Despite my attempts to struggle against them, they heaved me above their heads, carrying me through the crowd to a ring of stones. They tossed me in the center, pinning down my arms and legs. The scenario felt uncomfortably familiar. I felt like I was having yet another flashback, only this one existed outside my mind. Though I screamed, no one seemed to hear me until someone ripped off my shirt, revealing my scar to the crowd. That did more to silence them than anything I could’ve done.

  “What’s that symbol doing on her?” someone yelled. “A living Ordinary?”

  “She should be dead,” another said. She clasped her hands over her face and began to whimper.

  “How did you get that?” someone asked. The little blue creature suddenly reappeared, hovering next to my face. My only comfort in this increasingly terrifying situation. The crowd’s disdain and disgust toward me transformed into stares of wonder. They began to make startled noises and started sentences that went unfinished. I wanted to get away, but could see no path out of this terror.

  “It can’t be!” someone yelled, pointing toward the creature at my side. “A companion!”

  Some woman pushed her way to the front of the frozen crowd, gasping when she caught sight of me. I was in too much shock to get a good look at her at the time.

  “What have you done?” she asked, her question directed toward the crowd. The man who had begun all of this was the first to answer.

  “I thought she was an Ordinary,” he said. “We were gonna take care of the situation.” He bowed his head in shame.

  “Can you not see what she is?” the woman said. “She bears the mark. Everything about what you are doing is wrong.” The crowd remained silent.

  “Come with me,” she said. I didn’t realize she was talking to me until she held out her arms. She embraced me and pulled me away from the crowd, handing what remained of my torn shirt to me. She gave her parting words to the crowd as we walked away.

  “Enjoy the rest of your carnival.”

  She walked me to a tent decorated like a festive candy cane, brushing aside the curtain and setting me down on a pile of cushions. A moment later, the tiny flying creature joined us and sat on my shoulder. My face was all wet and snotty from crying. I was too embarrassed to look her in the eye.

  “Hey,” she said. “Look at me.” She grabbed my chin and tilted my face upwards, forcing me to look into her eyes, blue and watery, surrounded by golden brown skin and hair almost as blonde as my own.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “You’re safe with me.” I felt like she was peering into my soul. Without my permission, she was seeing into me.

  “There is nothing to be ashamed of,” she reminded me. “Those people were out of line. You did nothing to deserve what just happened.” I nodded my head like I understood when I was actually more confused than ever before.

  “You went through something terrible to get that scar,” she stated. My temporary lull in crying came to an end as I found myself back in tears.

  “I’m tired of being misunderstood,” I said. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore.”

  “You don’t have to be,” she said. Her voice soothed me like a spoonful of honey. “I know you don’t realize it now, but you have the power to do anything you want and more.” I knew that she was probably trying to comfort me, but so far, she was only succeeding in adding to my confusion.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. She pursed her lips and smiled like she was hiding some delicious secret.

  “You’re like me,” she said. “You’re made of magic.”

  “‘Magic?’” I asked in disbelief. She nodded.

  “I’m Alejandra,” she said to me. “What’s your name?”

  “Dina,” I mumbled.

  “Dina, I know that all of this might be hard for you to understand now,” she said, “But I promise that it will all make sense in time.”

  “I never wanted any of this,” I said.

  “It’s too late for that now,” she said. “You’re going to have to understand and accept that. What is happening to you isn’t scary. It’s beautiful.”

  “How do you know?” I asked her.

  “I because I went through the same thing.” She grabbed both sides of my face and forced me to look directly into her eyes again.

  “Better now?” she asked. I nodded. She smiled and took her hands away.

  “We should get going,” she said. “I think I’ve spent more than enough time here tonight.” She started walking toward the tent’s entrance.

  “I expect that you’ll have many questions,” she said. “I can give you answers.”

  “I would like that,” I said. She smirked like she had been expecting that answer.

  “Follow me,” she said. I again put my trust into someone that I did not fully understand. I followed the woman out of the tent, to her broomstick leaned up against the side. She straddled the broomstick and it began to hover parallel to the ground. She hopped right on it. I stared at the flying broom beneath her, feeling a flurry of paralyzing emotions.

  “Hop on,” she said. I still didn’t move.

  “There is no need to be afraid,” she added. I didn’t have much of a choice. I got on the back of the broom, trying to block the memories that I could feel bubbling to the front of my mind.

  “Hold on tight,” she said. I wrapped my arms around her waist. The creature’s little fingers dug into my shoulder. Within minutes, we were up in the sky. The carnival became a vague association of colorful shapes and gave way to the rest of the city. I had to get over my fear of falling to appreciate the entirely new view of the city below.

  Alejandra descended when we were over the well-to-do part of the city, landing in the backyard of a palatial house. When our feet touched land, she told me it was safe to walk around. After we had gotten off, the broom plopped down onto the ground, now an ordinary household cleaning device. She picked it up and carried it in her hands. I followed her through the back door and into the house. As we walked through one room after another, I thought I could hear the indistinct sounds of something moving in the distance. Because Alejandra did not seem to acknowledge them, I decided to ignore them as well.

  “Welcome to my home, Dina,” she said. I followed her through room after lavishly furnished room until we reached the dining room, populated with a long wooden table surrounded by several antique-looking chairs.

  “Have a seat,” she told me. “Anywhere you want.”

  Once I had selected my seat, she took the one across from me. She snapped her fingers, and immediately after a thumping sound began to approach the room, culminating in a figure appearing at the door. I watched in silence as a huge humanoid figure, electric-blue from head to toe, walked into the room and wandered over to Alejandra, shaking the floor with each step. I wasn’t sure whether I needed to be scared, but my terror began to fla
re up regardless.

  “What…would…you…like?” it asked, stretching out a short sentence into a novel. Its flat voice startled me, as I had not been expecting any speech. As it spoke, its face remained locked in a blank, almost bored, expression.

  “Tea and biscuits for our guest,” Alejandra said, glancing over at me with that sly smile.

  “That will be all,” she added. The thing thudded back out the way that it had come in.

  “He’s my newest creation,” she said. “Still working out a few minor difficulties, but he gets the job done. I used to have human allies for this kind of help. Had to get rid of them all recently. It can be hard to trust anyone around here.” I nodded my head. She was only pushing me further into confusion. I was too afraid of doing the wrong thing, so I kept silent.

  Alejandra proudly watched as he thudded back into the room a moment later to place the tray of requested items on the table between us before leaving again. Alejandra removed two of the cups from the tray and filled them with tea from the fancy kettle. I nervously took the cup she handed to me, still too concerned with other emotions to think about my physical needs. The cup shook in my hands all the way from the table to my mouth. Alejandra wasted little time in pointing this out.

  “You have no reason to be scared,” she said. “You’re safe here. I promise.” I forced myself to take another sip of tea to be polite.

  “There must be so many things that you want to know,” she said, ending with a pause. I had so many questions that it was hard to think of which one I should begin with.

  “What are you?” I asked.

  “That’s simple,” she said. “I’m a witch. I have the ability to direct the flow of magic. I can see into worlds that ordinary humans cannot.”

  Witch.

  “You’re a witch too, Dina,” Alejandra said.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Just a few months ago I was normal Dina.”

  “Dina, you’ve gone through something traumatic,” she asked. “And since then you’ve seen things that neither you nor anyone else can explain.” My response was confused silence.

  “You were on the news,” she added. “The victim of a brutal attack. Left for dead. As soon as they saw that symbol on your stomach, everyone knew who you were. That is a symbol reserved only for specific types of sacrifices.” I finally felt ready to let the question that had been burning inside of me into the world.

  “Why me?” I asked. “I never wanted any of this!”

  “You must understand,” she said, “What happened to you wasn’t your fault. The only thing you can do is make good of it, and right now, right before me, I see something amazing.”

  “This isn’t amazing!” I yelled. “What about any of this is amazing? Why did they do this to me?”

  “Because they wrongly thought that you had seen too much,” she said.

  “But that wasn’t my fault!” I said.

  “You’re right,” Alejandra agreed. “None of that was your fault. You see, we usually disguise the more visible parts of our world with magic to keep ourselves hidden from all of the Ordinaries,” she continued. “But no magic is foolproof. Sometimes a stray human gets sight of our world. If they’ve only caught a glimpse, we simply let them go. We have different rules, however, if we think that they have seen too much.” Her words started to touch upon what Joe and Nameless had said to me that night.

  “Death?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “If an ordinary person has seen too much, we have to kill them. Otherwise, they put our world at risk for being revealed to everyone. We are supposed to sacrifice them in a certain way to ensure that their death brings prosperity to our community. That symbol carved into you is a part of that ritual. A human who dies this way disappears from the outside world. That’s what would have happened to you.”

  “Then what happened?” I asked. “Why am I still here?”

  “The ritual must have gone wrong,” she explained. “Your attackers thought they had killed you, but they did not. In certain magical rituals, if a human isn’t killed, they will rise again with latent powers activated within them. There are two ways to become a witch: you can either be born, or you can be created. Having that kind of power flow through you turned you into the latter. If your attackers had carried out the ritual correctly – “

  “‘Correctly?’” I yelled. “I didn’t deserve anything that they did to me. How can you sit there defending them?”

  “I am not defending them, Dina,” she said. “Not in the slightest. What they did to you was unacceptable. They should not have performed the ritual in the first place. You saw something small once, late at night. They should have fled as soon as they realized that you saw them. Even when the circumstances do call for it, the ritual is supposed to be quick and dignified. It’s not supposed to involve the kind of torture that they put you through. But rest assured, we have taken justice on these two sadistic warlocks. When I found out about their deed, I had them branded and banished. They will never be able to hurt you again.”

  “After what they did,” I said, “You only banished them?”

  “The rules are different here,” she said, taking a pause.

  “Those two warlocks are gone,” she said. “You must move beyond that moment. You can take that horror and turn it into something good.”

  “So this…ritual,” I said, still in shock, “Changed me? Into a witch?” Alejandra nodded.

  “Exactly,” she said. “We call the marvelous little creature that has been by your side a companion. They come from another realm entirely to accompany created witches and warlocks with their initial journey into magic.” The creature. My companion. In my mind, she transformed from an “it” to a “she.” She leapt off my shoulder and onto the plate of biscuits, shoving her face into one and devouring the treat with her previously hidden mouth of sharp teeth.

  “What if I don’t want any of this?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t matter whether or not you want it,” she said. “I didn’t choose this path. I was born a witch. And despite some of the grief it has caused me, I wouldn’t have it any other way. At this stage, you only get to choose whether you embrace it or push it away. Should you decide to reject it, you must remember that you can only bury this so far down. You’ll never be able to shield yourself from the other face of the city.” She spoke too strongly. I couldn’t resist agreeing with what she told me.

  “Of course, the choice is still yours,” Alejandra said. After my companion had engorged its-herself on biscuits, she crept back up to my shoulders.

  “I can tell that you’re ready to leave,” she said. “Let me give you a ride home.” She stood up from the table and I followed her to her broom in the backyard. After I told her my address, we arrived at my house surprisingly quickly.

  “Goodbye, Dina,” she said once I had disembarked toward my front door. “I trust we’ll be meeting again soon.” She flew off again, disappearing into the distance.

  Kayla flipped out when I walked back into the house, asked me where I had been all night, almost calling the police out of worry. I just sat on my bed in a daze, uncertain of my future. My life was finally beginning to settle into a strange, logical truth, though not a truth that I wanted to accept.

  After my terrifying encounter at the carnival, I felt surprisingly ready to put all of the strange and frightening events that had happened behind me. It took another traumatic event for me to accept who and what I was becoming.

  A loud crash woke me from my sleep that night, followed by a shriek from my sister. I jumped out of bed and rushed over to the sound’s source. As I moved into the doorframe of the living room, I could already see the horrible scene going on in front of me.

  Kayla was lying flat on the floor, struggling against a man in black mask who had his hands wrapped around her throat. I wanted to jump in and do anything to save my sister from what was happening to her. But all my body did was stand there in shock a
s my sister and her assailant transformed into me and Nameless. I was replaying the incident again in third person, watching myself fall unconscious as Nameless walked away from the scene, leaving me for dead in the grass. Nameless didn’t turn back into my sister’s assailant until he reached down to grab his bag and slip out of the window, seeming to ignore my presence. Even after he was gone, I remained horrified and frozen.

  Kayla wasn’t moving. I thought for sure that she was dead, and it was all my fault because I was too scared to do anything beyond watch the attack happen. I didn’t move until she called out to me.

  “Call the police,” she said in a voice barely higher than a whisper.

  I kept apologizing to Kayla, repeatedly trying to express my sorrow for being a bystander. Even though she kept telling me that there was no need to blame myself, it became all that I could do. I couldn’t even escape it in my dreams. My home had been my final sanctuary. After what had happened, I realized that I was not even safe there anymore. I wasn’t safe anywhere. I think Kayla began to understand my predicament more than she was willing to say. We had never been close enough to have deep talks with each other, but I started to notice how she became more withdrawn, going out increasingly less. I needed a way out of my broken sanctuary.

  I remembered what Alejandra had told me about how I could keep trying to push magic away from my life, but I could never be truly successful. I yearned for the presence of my companion each day. I couldn’t wait for the night when my companion flew into my room, holding one of the candies that I had left out for her on my windowsill.

  “Do you remember how to get to Alejandra’s?” I asked her. She nodded her head in delight.

  When we arrived at Alejandra’s estate, I was in tears. My companion led me through the rows of plants and bushes that stood on either side of her front door. After a couple of knocks, a low, grunting voice asked me for my name. I was crying so hard that I could barely even get that little piece of information out of me. The voice left, and after what felt like an eternity, Alejandra’s voice awaited me instead. I fell into her arms when she opened the door.