by Hal Schrieve
“Hey, kid, stand back!” One of the policemen threw something up between Aysel and the car, like a shield. It was made of painful, pointed noise.
Aysel allowed herself to release a little of the fire welling between her fingers, and a pulse of blue energy radiated out from the glass shell in a shriek of noise that made one of the policewomen cover her ears. She looked over at the red and black and bloody wound which had opened, pouring darkness, at the crown of Z’s skull. Aysel was now certain that she was going to kill them.
She let out a great cackle, but it might have sounded like a cough or scream. One of the police officers stepped backward and reached into a holster, pulling out a gun and pointing it at her, with both arms.
“Shoot to kill, she’s a sorcerer.”
The juice of the fire hit the police officer’s face first and he escalated himself backward in a lurching path that defied the order and solid presence of each of his limbs. Another officer, one of the other men, raised a gun while one of the other officers scrambled away toward the cruiser she had come out of. Aysel spun around and threw a great flux of stippled hairy conflagration at her, and it caught her in the back. She went down and Aysel did not see her come up.
“Aysel!” a voice called from behind her.
Aysel turned.
The car that Tommy and Z had been led toward had split along its seams into white fractured pieces of metal and there was nothing at the heart of it anymore, it seemed, only that glowing light like a sun except there was no sun. There was a rending sound as glass and piping and wires flew into the air and then hung suspended, spinning in organic shapes like succulents radiating from a central cluster. There was a great shrieking that filled the air, a pulse that came from the center of the light. It flashed and made Aysel blink hard.
“Tommy,” she whispered.
Something inside Tommy had been released, or broken, or freed. All the components of the car he had been held against went rocketing away at top speed in all directions. A piece of fiery metal caught a fuel dispenser and blasted it open, and a fireball shot in all directions. The police dived out of the way. Aysel flinched, but when she opened her eyes she found herself untouched by the flame. One of the officers who was still standing was forced forward and fell flat on the ground, arms outstretched in front of him. A wave of heat rippled over the cement. It distorted Aysel’s vision before it hit her and the officer. To Aysel it felt like a comfortable warmth. The heat smelled familiar, like firewood and the smell of almost crying. It sizzled on her skin. Aysel looked over at another officer. The cop was frozen, eyes wide, staring at the explosion, while covering part of her face with one hand. Her skin seemed to be blistering.
The white light faded, and there was no longer any car, and no boy inside of it. Instead, there was an enormous white beast standing on delicate feet in the midst of burning rubber things that had once been tires, which curled and fell like a shield around the body of Z. Two of the officers who were still uninjured pulled themselves to their feet and stared at it in consternation. The beast had a mane like Tommy’s hair and dark eyes. Tommy was a great, white, goatlike, horselike thing with a single horn growing from between two flexible pointed ears, eyes flashing fire and sunlight.
The remaining police cars had caught fire in the blast of Tommy’s transformation, and now formed a blazing wall between Tommy, Z, Aysel, and the remaining police officers. Aysel could see their dim shapes flickering through the haze. Several of them had their guns out. Aysel turned in a circle to look at them all. As she did so, she felt something whiz past her ear. She looked up and saw one of the guns pointed at her.
“Hands up, and don’t move,” the officer called out.
Aysel dropped to all fours and crawled, and the next bullet hit a car on the other side of the ring. She edged toward Z, her hands scraping the cement.
Tommy shifted, his shape jumping between forms. He was a great white bird, and then he was a boy hugging Z. Z was still sprawled on the ground spitting bits of black and green liquid onto the pavement. Aysel moved toward Z too. She undid the zip ties on Z’s arms.
“We need to go now, now, now,” Aysel said to Tommy in a low, panicked voice.
“I don’t think we’re going to get out of this alive,” Tommy said. “Z’s hurt. I can feel it in my chest—can you feel—”
“I feel it pulling on me,” Aysel said.
Z turned their head toward his voice. Their eyes were screwed shut. “We are,” they said. “We are going to get out of this alive.” Then they bent and held their hand over their mouth and heaved again. Aysel did not want to watch Z’s organs all come up through their mouth, and she shut her eyes. She remembered the first day she had seen Z’s black guts empty themselves onto the pavement.
“Z, you’re warm,” Tommy said to Z, who looked like a corpse. Tommy trembled, and Aysel felt herself shake at the same time.
Aysel scrunched her eyes shut and then opened them again and bent town to touch Z. Their skin was hotter than hers. Their eye was hanging on a thread of muscle down their cheek, and Aysel pushed it back into the socket. Z shuddered as it popped into place, but didn’t say anything.
“What the hell is happening to you?” Aysel demanded. “What’s going on?”
Z’s eyes flickered for a second and opened. They let out a retch and a stream of glowing green vomit, which collected on the pavement and steamed. Aysel felt herself breathe in deeply, the biggest gasp she’d ever taken. She bent down with Tommy and wrapped her arms around Z’s shoulders. She felt like throwing up too, but instead swallowed sharply and scowled at the open wound in Z’s skull. In the middle of Z’s chest there was a bright fire burning at the skin.
Tommy looked up. “Mr. Weber threw something at Z,” he said, “and since then I’ve felt them kind of pulling at me. I think he was trying to set off their spell and release the magic so we could use it to get out of here. But if that’s true, then they’ll die, right?”
Z was breathing; Aysel could feel the inhale and the exhale. Aysel kept her arm around their shoulders. The blood was still dripping from the place the baton had hit them, and it covered Aysel’s hands in black ooze. She felt like she and Z were melding into one being. Tommy was breathing in time with her. They shuddered with a violence such that Aysel thought they would break apart in their hands, and then they fell flat to the ground again, their face contorting.
“Don’t die,” Aysel said.
“I’m not going to die!” Z rasped. “You’re not going to die either. Neither of you.”
Aysel thought Z was about to throw up again, but then something else came out of their mouth—a bright green light.
“What’s happening?” Aysel screamed.
The light was liquid, sort of, and poured out of Z in a fresh wave that did not smell of death. When it hit the pavement it sizzled and burned through it, and quickly formed an expanding pool. Z’s hands were submerged in the liquid, and then the stuff spread and began soaking through Aysel’s pajamas. It felt like cold water. Aysel looked at Tommy in a panic.
“Holy . . .” Tommy said.
He gestured, and Aysel saw that at the edges of the pool the cement was crumbling away and tendrils like those of plants were sprouting out of the cracks and spreading outward.
Aysel could see, where Tommy touched Z, the light spreading from his hands to Z. She looked down at herself and saw pulses of sparks shooting into Z’s body. But neither Tommy nor Aysel had any control. Z absorbed it, and shook, and screamed, their face flaking, and they hit the ground with their hands, and the magic went through them and out again in a torrent that even Z did not seem to be able to direct or move.
The pool engulfed the whole circle between the cars in a matter of seconds and began to spread outward through the fire Aysel and Tommy had set, sending up a fifteen-foot-high shield of green smoke that filled the air above the gas station with an eerie glow. Aysel couldn’t understand how it was all coming out of Z, who was still shivering in her arms like they h
ad a fever that was breaking. As the watery light welled up, Aysel lifted Z and held them under their arms with their back against her. Sitting, she was submerged up to her hips. There was nothing to do but hold on.
“What the hell is that stuff?” Aysel heard an officer shout from behind the rubber-smelling wall of burning car.
A second officer responded by screaming. Aysel squinted through the haze and tried to make out what was happening.
It didn’t quite make sense. Aysel and Tommy seemed to be protected from it, but everything else the spreading light touched floated like steam. Matter shook like shadows in the sun, and shrank back. The parts of the cars, for example. They fractured and split apart, and through the diminishing flames and steam they appeared to turn into something that looked like the material of a spider’s web. The cars had been metal a moment before, but now they swayed like silk.
As the two officers moved toward Aysel, Tommy, and Z through the immaterial barrier, they turned into other things. The liquid spreading across the parking lot touched their boots and changed them. The tall blond one was the first. He dropped his gun with a splash and started back in shock. His arms became porcelain, or something that looked like fractured porcelain, and began to crumble. His other arm followed. Aysel sat in awe of the grass that was springing up from the wet earth underneath Z’s body. Behind the car, the officer Aysel had thrown fire at was standing. She did not seem eager to advance toward them. This did not seem to matter. The light around Z was not a stable thing, and as Aysel watched it spread out toward the figures assembled around the perimeter of the glow. The grass and flowers that now sprang up from the pavement followed the light. The officer watched as the light came toward her, and stepped back, but too slowly. She turned into something that resembled condensation on the edge of a glass, and then dissipated and became a series of musical notes and mist. The world bent and space shifted and their forms changed, and flew backward in drops of dew. One of the men’s badges had become a dandelion.
Distantly, Aysel heard the sound of the ocean.
The world rippled around Aysel and Z and Tommy. The light was still expanding dramatically. Tommy’s form began to shift from a unicorn into a bird and then into a cat, a dog, a wolf, changing so quickly that one couldn’t follow the shifts. There was so much light one could barely make out the edges of one’s own skin. The grass that had come up from the pavement was getting longer. Aysel found she could smell the leaves, the crisp earthiness that crumbled under the roots of each plant. It smelled like the edge of the universe. It smelled like magic, but deeper, hotter, more star like.
Gradually, the fires Aysel and Tommy had set died out completely, submerged in a thick steam which obscured everything around the ruins of the gas station. Aysel felt herself closing her eyes against the steam. Her glasses were fogged up. Her skin prickled with a new sweat. When the air around her finally began to cool again she opened her eyes one at a time.
“Where did the road go?” Tommy asked before Aysel could say anything.
The heap of spiderwebs which had been the police cars lay spread out like deflated ashy tents in a circle around them. There was no sign of the police officers. There was also no sign that the place where the three friends were crouched had ever been touched by human habitation. Around the perimeter of what had been the parking lot, there was a ring of enormous trees. Branches and undergrowth were still sprouting from a glowing wetness that soaked the earth. In places, splintered cement had been thrown up in vertical projections among the proliferating roots. The shells of the gas-station fuel dispensers that still remained were now backed against the base of cedars.
Z spat a last green spark into the grass they were kneeling in, and reached out to grip Aysel’s arm. They leaned against her.
“Help me stand,” they said.
Tommy and Aysel both grabbed Z and tried to support them. They stood slowly, and swayed in the middle of the clearing in the black woods. The air around them smelled clean.
“What the hell did you do?” Aysel asked Z.
“I don’t know,” Z said. “I don’t know. I wanted you all to be okay but I couldn’t remember any spells, and I was just shaking. I had Mr. Weber undo the sigil so I could take magic from everywhere at once. I felt like I was tapping into you more. I hope it didn’t hurt.”
“This isn’t even sorcerer-level magic,” Tommy said. “That’s something else. That was my magic. This was like the moment I was in Archie Pagan’s chair and the power was turned up all the way. It didn’t hurt but it felt like the same charge. I changed form without even thinking about it, like, five times. I was flickering. It was scary.”
“It was like transforming but I wasn’t transforming,” Aysel said. “Everything else was.”
“Sorry,” Z said.
“No,” Tommy said, “it’s okay. Look what you did, though.”
Z leaned their neck into Aysel’s shoulder and she felt their blood through her shirt. “Guess we’re really fucked up now, huh,” they said. “This is next-level.” They looked around. “Where are the police?”
“You made them disappear,” Aysel said.
Off in the distance, an owl made a noise.
“Where are we?”
“I don’t know,” Aysel said. “I don’t know if you moved us or if you changed where we were. But we could walk, and find out.” She paused and squinted at Z in the dark. “If you can walk.”
“If you lean against me I can walk,” Z said.
Aysel hooked her arms underneath Z and propped their worn body against her. Tommy stood by for a second, and then moved forward and wrapped his arm around Z’s waist. Their feet dragged against the naked green earth for a second and then they shakily found their footing again.
“Which direction should we go?” Tommy asked.
“I think any direction we move in will be okay,” Aysel said.
They walked a little through the giant roots and the ruined cement and asphalt pieces, picking their way slowly along. It was dark, but Aysel felt nervous about casting a spell for light. Even if they were in a forest now, there was presumably an end to that forest, and on the other side was a town full of policemen and rioters and people who had watched the building Aysel had set fire to burn to the ground. The deep blue light was barely sufficient, but it had to do. The wind rustled in the branches.
“Do you smell something like the ocean?” Tommy said.
“I can’t really smell,” Z muttered weakly.
“I can hear the ocean,” Tommy said.
“I heard it when you did your spell,” Aysel said. She paused. “The ocean is better than sirens, though.”
“I swear I hear the ocean,” Tommy said. He grew quiet again, as if straining to hear. Aysel could feel the tightness of his hand on Z’s waist as it pressed against her own side.
“This is really weird,” Aysel said a few minutes later. They were lifting Z over a stump which looked as if it belonged to a recently fallen three-hundred-year-old tree. The farther the three moved, the less the forest seemed to have an ending. The roots grew large and violet blue-black. There were no signs of houses or power lines or even roads. Aysel shivered, in a wind that seemed all the colder for the recent heat Aysel had been in the center of. She whipped her head around and squinted for any sign of the familiar in the new growth of forest. Above the trees, she thought she could see a pillar of smoke rising in the distance, but with every second it seemed to be coming from farther off.
“Is that a stop sign?” Tommy asked, and pointed. All of them paused and looked. It was. It was embedded in the middle of an oak.
Z, their arm around Aysel’s shoulder, started to laugh. “What if I made a forest that destroyed the whole town?” they asked quietly.
Neither Tommy nor Aysel answered. They looked at each other over Z’s bloody head.
Suddenly in the underbrush behind them, Aysel heard something move. It was followed by a human shout.
“Who’s there?” Aysel cried out, turni
ng. “Who are you?” She wheeled around, letting Z fall against Tommy’s skinny body. Tommy stumbled back from their weight and landed in a patch of ferns.
Aysel raised her fists. She felt too worn out to cast any more spells. She strained her eyes against the deep scratchy darkness.
“Aysel?”
Azra’s hair was pulled rigidly back on her head. Her face was blotchy and worn-looking. She was wearing a housecoat over the suit she had worn to work; she had put on sneakers with yellow stripes on the sides. Her coat was covered in mud.
“Oh God, it is you,” she said.
“Mom,” Aysel said uncertainly. “How did you find us? What are you doing here?”
“We saw the light in the distance when we were two streets away. The fire. You left a trail of fire.” She swayed, looking a little dizzy. “And then these trees began to grow. Are the policemen dead?”
“Maybe,” Tommy said faintly.
Elaine appeared beside Azra, from behind a tree. “Holy shit, it’s them,” she said.
“You have to go back,” Aysel said. “You have to go back home. You can’t be here.”
“Go back where?” Elaine said. “There is no back.” She pointed behind her. “This goes on for miles.”
“But you can’t be with us,” Aysel said, her voice getting hysterical. “We just set fire to a bunch of cop cars. We’re wanted criminals. You need to get out of here, both of you.”
“I can do whatever I like,” Azra snapped. “I knew you were in trouble. I’ve been letting you get into trouble, letting you run loose and nearly get killed. I need to protect you. I need to be there with you.”
“Mom, go home. Mom. Mom, you’re not like me, you’re normal, you can live a normal life!” Aysel found herself getting hoarse, and on the last word her voice cracked. “I’m a werewolf and have to run away my whole life, but you don’t have to. You need to go. You need to go!”
“What’s happening with your friend? With Zee? What is wrong with Zee?” Azra asked, looking over to where Z and Tommy were struggling to stand against each other.