by Lily Velez
I watched myself offer a weary, plastic smile to everyone who shook my hand or hugged me and wondered at how I’d manage to get through this day when all I’d wanted to do was curl up in bed and cry until my tears ran dry.
“Do you remember how long you spent in front of the mirror that day?” my shadow self asked.
It seemed an odd question. I took in my black, knee-length dress, the matching cardigan I wore over it, and the butterfly bracelet on my wrist, which had been my mom’s last gift to me. I’d used a curling iron to give my hair some volume that day, and though I typically went au naturel, I’d gone through the trouble of wearing a little bit of makeup too. My world had just been upended, and though I’d felt like a train wreck, I guessed I hadn’t wanted to look like one too.
“No, that wasn’t it,” my shadow self said with a wry smile. “Not really.” She nodded toward something, and I followed her line of sight.
Next in line to offer their condolences were my very own grandparents, the ones who had turned their backs on my mom when she’d gotten pregnant with me.
“You knew they would be there that day,” my shadow self said. “You went to such lengths to doll yourself up, but it wasn’t to mask your pain. You thought you might be able to endear yourself to the only family you had left in Colorado. Maybe if they saw what a beautiful, sweet girl you were, they’d take you in like a stray puppy and beg your forgiveness for never wanting to get to know you. Then you wouldn’t have to be all alone.”
Embarrassment stained my cheeks red, a flash of heat covering my face like a simmering mask.
“You told Jack you hadn’t wanted anything to do with them, but that wasn’t entirely the truth, was it? Somewhere deep down inside, there was a small part of you that hoped they’d invite you to their home, even if only for one dinner. You figured one dinner would be enough to charm them, that it would eventually lead to more invitations, and that over time, the three of you would be thick as thieves. You thought you could finish what mommy dearest had started and heal what was once broken beyond repair. But mostly, you just wanted to be loved.”
“So what? Everyone wants to be loved, don’t they?”
My shadow self’s smile was venomous. “Oh, yes. We all crave connection. We just don’t all get what we ask for, do we? Your grandparents were relieved to know you’d be going to live with your father in Ireland. It took them ‘off the hook,’ as they say. Tell me, did you ever see or hear from them again after that?”
I gritted my teeth. “You already know I didn’t.”
“Poor, little Scarlet,” she cooed. “And you checked the mailbox every day in the months afterward, didn’t you? Even when you moved in with your dear friend Natalie’s family, you still walked to your former house daily to see if your grandparents had sent any correspondence whatsoever.”
I cringed, hating the truth. Crossing my arms, I glared at the scene, at my grandparents and the relieved set of their shoulders as they walked away from me that day, never to see me again. I pressed my lips firmly together until I was sure they made a white slash on my face. My chest became a garden of weeds, all of which were snaking around my lungs and just about choking them.
My shadow self laughed. I wanted to shove that cackle back into her mouth. “You just couldn’t accept the fact that your own flesh and blood would choose to abandon you in your time of greatest need. You couldn’t accept the fact that you were meant to be woefully alone.”
The word ‘alone’ echoed throughout the cavern, each syllable reverberating against my bones. It was a chisel at my heart, and my shadow self was the mallet driving it deeper and deeper until cracks were everywhere and pieces crumbling off faster than I could keep count.
“I was never entirely alone,” I challenged. “I still had my friends.”
At that, my surroundings rippled like the disturbed surface of a pond, and a new scene knitted itself together and wrapped around me. I was in my bedroom at my dad’s house now.
“Yes, of course,” my shadow self said, gliding toward my desk, where yet another version of me sat before a laptop. “Darling Natalie. The two of you have been friends since elementary school, haven’t you? She was such a rock for you during mommy dearest’s battle with cancer. She stood by your side in the months afterward too. Tell me, how are things between the two of you?”
I scoffed. “Things are perfectly fine. We talk all the time.”
“Do you?”
I switched my attention to the transparent copy of me seated in front of the computer and quickly realized which moment in time I now viewed. This was shortly after the Reaping, when my dad was still in the hospital for observation. He’d insisted I sleep in my own bed that night, and I eventually caved, figuring a good night’s sleep might do me some good.
That, and a tell-all with someone I trusted. I’d wanted nothing more than to catch Natalie up on everything. Witches, demons, curses—all of it. I was bursting at the seams by that point, and longed to spill all the details with my best friend before I went crazy from keeping it in.
I watched as my quivering apparition placed a call to Natalie via video chat. The line rang and rang and rang, but Natalie never answered. I frowned and picked up my cell phone to text her. We’d set a time beforehand, and I was pretty sure I’d gotten it right, but maybe I’d messed up the time zone calculation.
Me: Hey, we’re still on for our catch-up date, right? Or did I get the time wrong? Can’t wait to finally get to talk to you! xo
Her text came a minute or two later.
Natalie: OMG! I’m sooo sorry! I totally forgot!
My heart had fallen slightly, but I did my best to shake it off. After all, I’d been M.I.A. for weeks, unable to get in touch with her for any number of reasons, poor cell reception and witch hunters among them, and she certainly hadn’t taken me to task for it. I didn’t have much of a right to be upset.
Me: Lol, no worries. My day is pretty wide open, so we can just reschedule to later tonight if you want?
Natalie: I wish I could, but I have plans tonight. : (
Me: Okay, who are you and what have you done with my BFF? Since when do you have Saturday night plans?! (Is it a date?? lol)
Natalie: Ha! Not a date. (I wish!) No, I’m sleeping over at Kristin’s house. We’re doing a movie night.
Me: Kristin Bradshaw?
Natalie: Yeah. We’ve been hanging out here and there. I’m so, so sorry I’m missing our date, though! Can we chat tomorrow? I want to hear all about Ireland!
We had rescheduled, of course, and she never missed any of our subsequent catch-up dates after that, but things had felt different between us. I knew it was because I let them feel different, but it was hard not to. Logging into social media the day I was stood up, a wasteland I’d pretty much abandoned after my mom’s death, I’d seen the truth firsthand.
Natalie’s profile had been overrun with an abundance of pictures cataloguing her new friendship with Kristin Bradshaw. The girl had been no more than an acquaintance when I’d lived in Colorado, someone from Natalie’s theater class that she rarely hung out with. But picture after picture posted in the wake of my move to Ireland told a new story now. No more evident than in a comment Kristin had left under a picture of her and Natalie in costume for a play rehearsal.
It read, I love my BFF!
“You didn’t think she’d never replace you, did you?” my shadow self asked.
I had thought that actually. Maybe it was juvenile or unrealistic, but I’d wanted to believe the distance would do little damage to our friendship. There was just so much between us. So many inside jokes, so many memories. Outside of family, she’d always been my number-one, go-to person, and I’d always been hers. It crushed me to realize she’d possibly found someone else to fill those shoes and that I’d possibly dropped in her hierarchy of importance because of my absence.
“You felt so wretchedly alone that night. You must’ve hated her for—”
“Wrong,” I said, glaring at my sin
ister twin. I was almost sure an engorged vein in my neck was twitching. I wanted nothing more than for my shadow self to dematerialize into wisps of smoke and leave me alone. “I wasn’t angry with Natalie, only with the situation.”
“A situation that slingshotted you thousands of miles away to a father who was a stranger to you. You probably thought he’d abandon you too. What forty-year-old bachelor wants to suddenly assume responsibility for a teenaged girl? Isn’t that why you planned to return to the United States as soon as you finished school here? Better to be the one who leaves than the one who’s left behind.”
My stomach hardened as something boiled deep in my gut. Shut up! I wanted to scream. Actually, I wanted to do more than scream. I wanted to close my hands around her neck and throttle her. My muscles quivered with anticipation as I considered doing just that. She didn’t know what she was talking about. It was all meaningless dribble.
“Fortunately for you,” she went on, “Gavin Monroe has been welcoming enough, hasn’t he? But only time can tell what the future will bring. Perhaps he’ll want to resume his university lectures one day, and fatherhood will no longer suit him. People do have a way of abandoning you, so why should it be any different with him?”
My heart seized, as if a fist had tightened around it. My lips parted at the sudden, unnerving sensation of not being able to breathe, but when my lungs expanded with air, I realized it was all in my mind. It was only her words that had caught me off guard.
People do have a way of abandoning you…
No, that wasn’t true.
My pulse stalled. Its tap against my wrist seemed to slow, my blood moving as sluggishly as sap in my veins. My mind was turning in dizzying revolutions so that I staggered back a little.
It’s not true!
But…what if it was?
My mom had left me, hadn’t she? No, it hadn’t been her choice, but it had still happened. And yes, I’d felt hopelessly alone afterward, like my world had come to a brutal standstill that left me raw and dazed. It was a jarring feeling to return to a home you’d once shared with a person and to be met with only absence, with inescapable emptiness, to accept they’d been so totally removed from your life, permanently cropped out.
And what about my grandparents? They’d practically washed their hands of me. Here was a granddaughter who desperately needed them, with no one local to turn to, and they’d left me there in that funeral home without so much as a phone number to reach them at. Why? Did I not matter to them? Would taking me in have been so much trouble, more effort than they were willing to expend? Was I not worth it?
Alone.
The word nipped at my heart. It burrowed itself deep into my soul until I shivered with the frost of it, until my chest caved in under its weight. What if that would always be the way of it? What if the people I cared about and loved would only ultimately abandon me in the end? Always, no matter what I did?
I didn’t think I could deal with that again. I didn’t think I could survive. My heart trembled, and I had to remind myself to breathe.
“I’d almost venture to say you’re cursed,” my shadow self said.
Cursed. The word slithered through me like poison.
A few weeks ago, I might’ve laughed at the notion, but these days, I knew curses were very much real, and it wasn’t so far-fetched an idea to attribute my misfortunes to one.
“Then again,” came my shadow self’s voice, pulling me out of my thoughts, “perhaps we should leave such designations to those who most deserve them.”
The scene around us transformed once more. Ash and fire rained from the sky, and scores of dragons sped through the gauze of overpowering smoke like needles through fabric. Battle cries filled the air along with the resounding, metallic clash of weapons. I couldn’t see anyone, as if they were rendered invisible to me, but I knew I was in the middle of some kind of war.
Just before me, the smoke cleared, revealing two figures, their gossamer forms spasming with light.
The breath stilled in my lungs when I realized who they were.
Me and Jack.
I furrowed my brow. “I don’t recognize this.”
“You wouldn’t,” my shadow self said, entrails of black mist wreathing around her. “It hasn’t yet transpired. This is a glimpse into the future that awaits you.”
I continued watching, entranced. Jack and I were both covered in grime and sweat, in bruises, cuts, and blood, our chests rising and falling rapidly. Streaks of war paint cut across my cheeks, and a lock of my hair was braided with thread, a feather hanging from its end.
We stood in the middle of some kind of barren valley, mountains all around us, their forms blackened in the night. In fact, the only light present came from my hand. At first, I thought it was the Hallowstone, but this version of me shifted slightly, and I realized it was some sort of dagger, its blade as bright as a sunray.
“It’s time, Scarlet,” Jack said, his eyes holding mine. He gave a nod, as if to assure me everything would be all right.
My future self brought the tip of the blade to Jack’s chest, right where his heart would be.
“What’s going on?” I asked, my heart striking my ribs in fast, throbbing beats. “This can’t be right.” I shook my head, as if doing so would erase the image before me.
It didn’t work, and my future self showed no signs of hesitation. In one quick movement, she plunged the dagger through Jack’s heart. A dark stain instantly bloomed from the point of entry, staining the front of Jack’s shirt, and he fell boneless to his knees, his face already blanching.
“No!” I cried out. I wheeled around, turning on my shadow self. “How could this possibly be a glimpse into the future? I would never do anything like that.”
“Of course you would,” she said. “It’s your destiny.”
“It’s my destiny to kill Jack? Sorry, but I don’t see how. There’s no plausible reality in which I would ever hurt Jack, much less take his life.”
My shadow self smiled in a cold, twisted way that made me think of thorns and briar patches. “Don’t you understand? As a Daughter of Brigid, you were called forth to defend witch-kind.”
“And last time I checked, Jack is a part of witch-kind.”
She laughed. The sound crept under my skin like a parasite. “At one point, he was. But he belongs to the Dark Lord now, and soon, he’ll be wielded as the weapon that destroys the world as you know it, witch-kind included. As their protector, it’ll fall upon you to bring an end to him.”
I shook my head, stepping back. “No.” A thousand times no! Surely Brigid would never ask such a thing of me.
“The champions of the gods rarely accept their fate at first, but in time, you will. It’s written in your stars. In the same way that Jack was prophesied to cause the Dark Lord’s ascension, you’re destined to be the bringer of light, the one who cancels out all darkness, even if it means destroying the very vessel of that darkness.”
My chest was tightening. Or maybe it was my throat. It was hard to tell, my thoughts a riot inside my skull. She was lying. She had to be. And yet…somewhere deep inside me, I knew she wasn’t. Every last syllable leaving her mouth connected with a deep sense of knowing rising from the pit of my stomach.
No. I shoved all of that away.
“There has to be another way,” I finally said.
She grinned, her eyes glowing with a menacing appetite. “There are many ways. Would you like to see them all?”
And then I was surrounded by more scenes than I could count, and in each one, I cut down Jack by my own hands. The manners in which I did so varied, some too gruesome for me to watch in full. But in every last one, his blood was on my hands, my face impassive as he met his end.
Jack’s responses were also wide-ranging. Sometimes, he welcomed the kill, a willing sacrifice. In others, my betrayal shocked him, and he looked up at me with stunned eyes from where he’d fallen onto the ground, blood spilling into his palms. And still in others, we fought each other,
my determination to end him only matched by a savage wrath that made him look more devil than witch, those patches under his eyes as black as they’d ever been. In those scenes, he wanted to kill me as badly as I wanted to kill him. I’d never seen Jack like that, and the sight made my chest constrict further, until I wasn’t sure if I was even breathing anymore.
“The dark against the light,” my shadow self said. “Only one of you will remain standing in the final battle. And if it’s you, you’ll be as alone as ever. Jack will be gone, his existence snuffed out by your own doing. His brothers, if they survive the war, will despise you. And witch-kind, though they’ll be glad for your labors, will fear your power too much to treat you as kin. The god-touched, while loved and admired, have always led their lives apart from their clans. What a dreadfully lonely existence you’ll lead indeed.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head again. But it didn’t matter how many times I said the word, my chest started to hollow out as a cold, heavy sensation filled me so completely.
Fear. Pure, unadulterated fear.
My heart shot off in a thunderous gallop as panic gripped me. I could see it so clearly, this path Brigid had carved out for me. Me, the savior of witch-kind. Me, traitor to the boy who’d stirred my magic, who’d introduced me to this world, who’d all but vowed to fight my battles alongside me.
He was cursed. Isn’t that what everyone had been telling me from the beginning? And that curse was meant to doom him, and when it did, the lives of everyone the world over would be in danger. Unless I stopped him.
But I couldn’t! I didn’t want to!